Theory Second to Fact Reply to Eichler

Abstract

P rofessor Eichler is asking precisely those questions I intentionally do not wish to introduce at this stage of the development of my research, because I believe it is premature and even sociologically harmful to do so. Eichler's critique reflects the dominant trend in sociological theorizing, but it is a trend I most emphatically reject. My simple descriptive distinction between two sets of messianic phenomena is declared by Eichler to be a basic dichotomy. But this is not what I intended. Of course the two sets are empirically distinct, but my task was not to show how Russian messianic structures can be fitted into two mutually exclusive categories, but rather to show that many of these structures are both and revolutionary. The amazing, almost unbelievable evidence that the basic doctrines and structural characteristics of both and messianism are almost identical-indistinguishable for all practical purposes-struck me forcefully as a bloody fact of life in the Russian cultural context. This is what I wanted to share with students of messianic phenomena elsewhere. Eichler has misconstrued a subheading about marginal instances: Which is Which? Religious or Revolutionary? I wrote that particular section to illustrate that the many overlapping phenomena between the two make it impossible to say which is which in these marginal instances. It does not mean that all other messianic structures outside these marginal cases are not predominantly or revolutionary. Perhaps other cultural contexts would not yield the same findings, and perhaps the Russian case is so atypical that nothing like it can be found elsewhere. I doubt both these statements, but one thing I do know: in the Russian cultural context one simply has to face the stark fact of the continuity and identity of and elements in messianic structures. Eichler does not like my choice of religious and revolutionary and suggests religious vs. I have strong, empirically based reasons for rejecting the concept secular. In the Russian context any such differentiation from the point of view of many virtuosi and their disciples was not meaningful, desirable, or even possible. Eichler rightly notes that I did not provide a formal definition of messianism. She claims, however, that I do have an implicit definition. Of course I had a rough working notion of what can be called messianic and what can't. No intellectual work is possible without concepts. But I avoided on principle either imposing someone else's formalized and generalized definition on my materials or extracting from them a new formal definition to compete with all the others. I find the existing definitions premature, too arbi-