Russian Messianism: Third Rome, Revolution, Communism and After by Peter J. S. Duncan (review)

Abstract

I70 SEER, 8o, I, 2002 Duncan, PeterJ. S. Russian Messianism.Third Rome,Revolution, Communism and After.Routledge, London and New York, 2000. XiV+ 235 pp. Notes. Bibliography.Index. ?55.00PETER DUNCAN is to be commended for this thought-provokingbook on a theme which has much relevance to contemporaryRussia. Important recent scholarship on Russian attitudes to the West includes Martin Malia's Russia under Western Eyes(Cambridge,MA, I999) and Robert English'sRussiaandthe IdeaoftheWest(New York,2000). Duncan's text on Russian messianismjoins Yitzhak Brudny's Reinventing Russia(Cambridge, MA, I998) in offering a perspective on nationalism in recent Russian history. The strength of Duncan's book lies in its longer-term perspective. For Duncan, Russian messianism is a trend of thought which, although by no means always dominant, has 'emerged and re-emerged periodically throughout Russian history'(p. I 4 ). Startingwith the messianismof Muscovite ideology, Duncan tracesthe messianicdimensionsof Russianthought up untilthe I990s, ending with a chapteron post-Soviet Russia and Gennady Ziuganov. The book is particular good on the Brezhnev era. There are chapters covering both officially-sanctionedand dissidentRussian nationalism at that time. Forexample, there is a helpfuldiscussionof the culturalnationalismof thejournal Molodaia gvardiia, and of Russian nationalismin literature,art and history;and there is also a good descriptionof the differenttendencies at work in the samizdat journal Veche,and of the views of such personalities as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Gennady Shimanov and Dimitry Dudko. Duncan suggests that Russian dissident nationalism passed through three stages from underground organizations, through samizdat journals, into open human rightsactivity(p. Io8). Messianism is not easy to define. Discussion of messianismcan easily turn into discussionof nationalismin general,and occasionallythathappensin this book. Quoting the Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdiaev, Duncan observes that it is important to distinguish between 'messianism' and 'missionism' (p. 7);this is a usefulnuance, although even then it can in practicebe difficult to differentiate the two concepts. How and when did Russian messianism emerge?Duncan arguesthat 'aswith PolishandJewish messianism,it was at crisispoints that Russian messianismsometimes came to the fore' (p. I41). In general, Duncan sees two poles of Russianmessianism:one which emphasizes the state and the other which emphasizes land and people (p. 3). In the late Soviet era, he distinguishesbetween gosudarstvenniki, who favoured a strong Russianstateandwho were sympatheticto the SovietUnion, and vozrozhdentsy, who were suspicious of the policies of the Soviet state and Marxist ideology (p. I42). Duncan is rightto observethe complexities of this subject.Forexample, he notes that in some ways Solzhenitsyn had more in common at a religiousphilosophical level with one of his critics, V. P. Chalmaev, one time deputy chief editor of Molodaia gvardiia, than to the editorialboard at J'Novyi mir,where he famously published some of his work (p. 73). This is important. The fact that at a philosophical level, Solzhenitsyn and Chalmaev had something in common, whereasin theirpersonalrelationswith the Soviet statetheywere so REVIEWS 17I different, is a warning against too easy categorizations of thinkers. It is important to know not only what a person thought, but the lifestyle and practicesthat accompanied the thought. One of the difficultiesin discussing Russian messianism is thus that it is hardto knowexactlywhat certainpeople reallybelieved.AsDuncan implicitly observes,itisaproblemhighlightedby the characterof Shatovin Dostoevskii's TheDevils:Shatov believed in Russia'scallingto be a God-bearingpeople, yet was not sureof his own personalbelief in God (p. 36). ForShatov and this surely represents an important problem for the scholar of Russian messianism - ideological conviction and personalbelief did not fullycoincide. It is for this reason that I would like to have seen some reflection on the roots of messianism at a personal and experiential level. Amongst messianic and nationalistthinkers,it is not alwaysclear what kind of belief one is really dealing with. Duncan observes that there existed some kind of alliance between communism and Russian Orthodox messianism at the end of the Soviet era (p. I29). Beneath allegiances to Party or church, there were doubtless structuresof thought and habits of mind with much in common. Yet, what kind of experiences gave rise to the beliefs we are dealing with?To what extent did these ideasreflectgenuine personalbelief? One possible reason why communism and certain kinds of Orthodox messianismwere sometimes compatible is that they were abstractsystemsof thought;theycould thusbe espousedwithout anypersonalcostto...