The History and Fate of Patriotic Westernism in Russia: from Peter the Great to Peter Stolypin (in the Context of Modernity

Abstract

The phenomenon of patriotic Westernism arose as a consequence of the need to resolve the contradiction between the inorganic Eurocentric modernization and the cultural and historical foundation of the civilizational identity of Russia, forming and evolving during the 18th – early 20th century. Patriotic Westernism developed as a reaction to criticism from national thought, without completely losing ideological connection with Russophobic/foreign Westernism. In the golden age of the Russian Empire, patriotic Westernism gradually became, at the level of the key theses, the semi-official worldview of both a significant part of the intelligentsia (both liberal, liberal-conservative and revolutionary) and the state authorities. The presence of utopian and inconsistent ideas against the background of the formation of (albeit slow) national-patriotic consciousness led to a wide spread of mimicry within Russophobic Westernism under the patriotic current, so that the identification of a number of representatives of Westernism who appealed to patriotism along the line of “authenticity – imaginary / quasi-patriotism” as not always possible. Adherence to the dogmatic ideas regarding the embryonicity of Russian society, originality as backwardness, invariably led to the fact that patriotic Westernism could give a short-term positive effect, followed by a long-term negative one. The crisis of the paradigm model of patriotic Westernism, which has unfolded in recent times under the influence of the complex of internal and external factors, now deprives it of serious prospects as ideology and practice of Russian national-state construction.