by Kerry Bolton
Their society and nationality were defined by religiosity, as was the West’s by Gothic Christianity. The newcomer to a Setch, or permanent village, was greeted by the Chief as a Christian and as a warrior: “Welcome! Do you believe in Christ?” —“I do”, replied the new-comer. “And do you believe in the Holy Trinity?” — “I do”.—“And do you go to church?”—“I do”. “Now cross yourself”.15
Gogol depicted the scorn in which trade is held, and when commerce has entered among Russians, rather than being confined to non-Russians associated with trade, it is regarded as a symptom of decadence:
“I know that baseness has now made its way into our land. Men care only to have their ricks of grain and hay, and their droves of horses, and that their mead may be safe in their cellars; they adopt, the devil only knows what Mussulman customs. They speak scornfully with their tongues. They care not to speak their real thoughts with their own countrymen. They sell their own things to their own comrades, like soulless creatures in the market-place…. . Let them know what brotherhood means on Russian soil!”16
That is “Russian socialism”; far from the dialectical materialism of Marx, the mystic we-feeling forged by the vastness of the plains and the imperative for brotherhood above economics, imposed by that landscape. Russia’s feeling of world-mission has its own form of messianism whether expressed through Orthodoxy, or by Stalin’s version of “world revolution”, which included a revival of Orthodoxy.17 In both senses, and in the embryonic forms taking place under Putin, Russia is becoming conscious of a world-mission.18
Commerce is the concern of foreigners, and the intrusions bring with them the corruption of the Russian soul and culture in general: in speech, social interaction, servility, undermining Russian “brotherhood”. The Cossack brotherhood was portrayed by Gogol as the formative process in the building up of the Russian people. This race-formation is not one of biology but of spirit. Gogol described this process among the Russians as an expanding mystic brotherhood under God:
“The father loves his children, the mother loves her children, the children love their father and mother; but this is not like that, brothers. The wild beast also loves its young. But a man can be related only by similarity of mind and not of blood. There have been brotherhoods in other lands, but never any such brotherhoods as on our Russian soil”.19
The Russian soul is born in suffering. The Russian accepts the fate of life in service to God and to his Motherland. Russia and Faith are inseparable. When the elderly warrior Bovdug is mortally struck by a Turkish bullet his final words are exhortations on the nobility of suffering, after which his spirit soars to join his ancestors.20 The mystique of death and suffering for the Motherland is described in the death of Tarus Bulba when he is captured and executed, his final words being ones of resurrection:
“Wait, the time will come when ye shall learn what the orthodox Russian faith is! Already the people scent it far and near. A czar shall arise from Russian soil, and there shall not be a power in the world which shall not submit to him!”21
Tension of Polarities
Berdyaev wrote that “Russia is a complete section of the world, a colossal East-West. It unites two worlds, and within the Russian soul two principles are always engaged in strife - the Eastern and the Western”.22
With the orientation of Russian policy towards the West, “Old Russia” was “forced into a false and artificial history”.23 With Petrinism Russia was dominated by Late Western culture: “Late-period arts and sciences, enlightenment, social ethics, the materialism of world-cities, were introduced…”24
“The first condition of emancipation for the Russian soul”, wrote Ivan Sergyeyevich Aksakov, founder of the anti-Petrinist “Slavophil” group, in 1863 to Dostoyevski, “is that it should hate Petersburg with all its might and all its soul”. Moscow is Holy, Petersburg Satanic. A widespread popular legend portrays Peter the Great as the Antichrist.
The hatred of the West is the hatred for a civilisation that had already reached an advanced state of decay and sought to impose its primacy by cultural subversion rather than by combat, “poisoning the unborn culture in the womb of the land”.25 Russia was still a land where there were no bourgeois and no true class system but only lord and peasant, a view confirmed by Berdyaev, writing: “The various lines of social demarcation did not exist in Russia; there were no pronounced classes. Russia was never an aristocratic country in the Western sense, and equally there was no bourgeoisie”.26
The cities that emerged threw up an intelligentsia, copying the intelligentsia of the Late West, “bent on discovering problems and conflicts, and below, an uprooted peasantry, with all the metaphysical gloom, anxiety, and misery of their own Dostoyevsky, perpetually homesick for the open land and bitterly hating the stony grey world into which the Antichrist had tempted them. Moscow had no proper soul”.27 Berdyaev likewise stated that “Russian history was a struggle between East and West within the Russian soul”.28
Russia the Katechon
Berdyaev stated that while Petrinism introduced an epoch of cultural dynamism, it also placed a heavy burden upon Russia, and a disunity of spirit.29 However, Russia has her own religious sense of universal mission. Spengler quotes Dostoyevsky writing in 1878 that, “all men must become Russian, first and foremost Russian. If general humanity is the Russian ideal, then everyone must first of all become a Russian”.30 The Russian messianic idea found a forceful expression in Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed, where, in a conversation with Stavrogin, Shatov states:
“Reduce God to the attribute of nationality?...On the contrary, I elevate the nation to God...The people is the body of God. Every nation is a nation only so long as it has its own particular God, excluding all other gods on earth without any possible reconciliation, so long as it believes that by its own God it will conquer and drive all other gods off the face of the earth. ...The sole ‘God bearing’ nation is the Russian nation...”31
This is Russia, the Katechon, according to Russian messianism; the nation whose world-historical mission is to resist the son of perdition described by Paul:
“And now you know what is holding him back, so that he may be revealed at the proper time. For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendour of his coming”.32
We are not concerned here about the mundane reality of such beliefs, but about the imperatives of history; the role of myth. This mission as the Katechon defines Russia as something more than merely an ethno-nation-state. Even the USSR, supposedly purged of all such notions, under Stalin re-expressed the mission with Marxist rhetoric, which was no less apocalyptic and messianic, against the “decadent West”. It is not surprising that the pundits of secularised, liberal Western academia, politics and media could not understand, and indeed were outraged, when Solzhenitsyn seemed so ungrateful when in his Western exile he unequivocally condemned the West’s liberalism and materialism and did not present himself as a good democrat, like many of the other “dissidents”. A figure who was for so long esteemed as a martyr by Western liberalism transpired to be a traditional Russian and not someone who was willing to remake himself in the image of a Western liberal to for the sake of continued plaudits. He attacked the modern West’s conceptions of “rights”, “freedom”, “happiness”, and “wealth”, the irresponsibility of the “free press”, and “television stupor”. He referred to a “Western decline” in courage. He emphasised that this was a spiritual matter:
“But should I be asked, instead, whether I would propose the West, such as it is today, as a model to my country, I would frankly have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society as an ideal for the transformation of ours. Through deep suffering, people in our own country have now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present sta
te of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive. Even those characteristics of your life which I have just enumerated are extremely saddening”.33
Spengler’s thesis that Western civilisation is in decay is analogous to the more mystical evaluations of the West by the Slavophils, both reaching similar conclusions. Solzhenitsyn was in that tradition. Putin is influenced by it in his condemnation of Western liberalism. Putin recently pointed out the differences between the West and Russia as at root being moral and religious:
“Another serious challenge to Russia’s identity is linked to events taking place in the world. Here there are both foreign policy and moral aspects. We can see how many of the Euro-Atlantic countries are actually rejecting their roots, including the Christian values that constitute the basis of Western civilisation. They are denying moral principles and all traditional identities: national, cultural, religious and even sexual”. 34
Spengler wrote that Petrinism represented by Tolstoy, the precursor of Bolshevism, was “the former Russia”; Dostoyevsky is “the coming Russia”. Dostoyevsky does not know the hatred of Russia for the West. Dostoyevsky and the old Russia are transcendent. “His passionate power of living is comprehensive enough to embrace all things Western as well”. Spengler quotes Dostoyevsky: “I have two fatherlands, Russia and Europe”. Dostoyevsky as the harbinger of a Russian High Culture “has passed beyond both Petrinism and revolution, and from his future he looks back over them as from afar. His soul is apocalyptic, yearning, desperate, but of this future he is certain”.35
To the “Slavophil”, including Dostoyevsky, Europe is precious. The Slavophil appreciates the richness of European High Culture while realising that Europe is in a state of decay. Berdyaev discussed the attitude of Dostoyevsky and the Slavophils towards Europe, differentiating between Kultur and Zivilisation:
“Dostoyevsky calls himself a Slavophil. He thought, as did also a large number of thinkers on the theme of Russia and Europe, that he knew decay was setting in, but that a great past exists in her, and that she has made contributions of great value to the history of mankind”.36
It is notable that while this differentiation between Kultur and Zivilisation is ascribed to a particularly German philosophical tradition, Berdyaev comments that it was present among the Russians “long before Spengler’:
“It is to be noted that long before Spengler, the Russians drew the distinction between ‘culture’ and ‘civilization’, that they attacked ‘civilization’ even when they remained supporters of ‘culture’. This distinction in actual fact, although expressed in a different phraseology, was to be found among the Slavophils”.37
Dostoyevsky was indifferent to the Late West, while Tolstoy was a product of it, the Russian Rousseau. Imbued with ideas from the Late West, the Marxists sought to replace one Petrine ruling class with another. Neither represented the soul of Russia. Spengler states: “The real Russian is the disciple of Dostoyevsky, even though he might not have read Dostoyevsky, or anyone else, nay, perhaps because he cannot read, he is himself Dostoyevsky in substance”. The intelligentsia hates, the peasant does not. He would eventually overthrow Bolshevism and any other forms of Petrinism.38 Here we see Spengler stating that the post-Western civilisation will be Russian. “For what this townless people yearns for is its own life-form, its own religion, its own history. Tolstoy’s Christianity was a misunderstanding. He spoke of Christ and he meant Marx. But to Dostoyevsky’s Christianity, the next thousand years will belong”.39
By the time Spengler had published The Hour of Decision in 1934 he was stating that Russia had overthrown Petrinism (in the guise of Bolshevism) and the trappings of the Late West, and that the orientation of Russia was “a new Idea, and an idea with a future too”.40 Russia looks towards the “East”, but while the Westerner assumes that “Asia” is synonymous with Mongol, the etymology of the word comes from Greek Aσία, circa 440 B.C., referring to all regions east of Greece.41 During his time Spengler saw in Russia that,
“Race, language, popular customs, religion, in their present form… all or any of them can and will be fundamentally transformed. What we see today then is simply the new kind of life which a vast land has conceived and will presently bring forth. It is not definable in words, nor is its bearer aware of it. Those who attempt to define, establish, lay down a program, are confusing life with a phrase, as does the ruling Bolshevism, which is not sufficiently conscious of its own West-European, Rationalistic and cosmopolitan origin”.42
Of Russia in 1934 Spengler already saw that “of genuine Marxism there is very little except in names and programs”. He doubted that the Communist programme is “really still taken seriously”. He foresaw that the vestiges of Petrine Bolshevism would be overthrown, to be replaced by a “nationalistic” Eastern type which would reach “gigantic proportions unchecked”.43 Spengler also referred to Russia as the country “least troubled by Bolshevism”.44 The “Marxian face [was] only worn for the benefit of the outside world”.45 A decade after Spengler’s death the direction of Russia under Stalin had pursued clearer definitions, but Petrine Bolshevism had been transformed in the way Spengler foresaw.46 Dr. Igor Panarin recently pointed this out, stating that Marxism had been thrown out of Russia by Stalin, while taken up by the USA as Trotskyism.47
As in Spengler’s time, and centuries before, there continues to exist two tendencies in Russia: the (traditional) Old Russian and the Petrine. Neither one nor the other spirit is presently dominant, although under Putin Old Russia struggles for resurgence. U.S. political circles see this Russia as a threat, and expend a great deal promoting “regime change” via the National Endowment for Democracy, and many other NGOs, which were shut down by Putin in 2015.
Spengler in a published lecture to the Rheinish-Westphalian Business Convention in 1922 referred to the “ancient, instinctive, unclear, unconscious, and subliminal drive that is present in every Russian, no matter how thoroughly westernised his conscious life may be – a mystical yearning for the South, for Constantinople and Jerusalem, a genuine crusading spirit similar to the spirit our Gothic forebears had in their blood but which we can hardly appreciate today”.48
Bolshevism destroyed one form of Petrinism with another form, clearing the way “for a new culture that will some day arise between Europe and East Asia. It is more a beginning than an end”. The peasantry “will some day become conscious of its own will, which points in a wholly different direction”. ‘The peasantry is the true Russian people of the future. It will not allow itself to be perverted or suffocated”.49
The arch-conservative, anti-Marxist, Spengler, in keeping with the German tradition of realpolitik, considered the possibility of a Russo-German alliance in his 1922 speech. The Treaty of Rapallo was a manifestation of that tradition. “A new type of leader” would be awakened in adversity, to “new crusades and legendary conquests”. The rest of the world, filled with religious yearning but falling on infertile ground, is “torn and tired enough to allow it suddenly to take on a new character under the proper circumstances”. Spengler suggested that “perhaps Bolshevism itself will change in this way under new leaders”. “But the silent, deeper Russia” would turn its attention towards the Near and East Asia, as a people of “great inland expanses”.50
Spengler foresaw new possibilities for Russia. Putin seems conscious, or at least willing to play his part, in fulfilling Russia’s historic mission, messianic and of world-scope. He promotes the “Eurasian” bloc to counter American universalism. He also talks of a Euro-Russian union from Lisbon to Vladivostok.51 Religious revival is an essential part of this process. Whatever Russia is called outwardly, there is an inner – eternal – Russia that is unfolding.
Russo-European Symbiosis
Must Europe exhaust its possibilities and succumb to fellaheen status? Organic relationships can be symbiotic and complementary,52 or amalgamate through synthesis. They need not be parasitic, distorting, or retarding in regard to a culture-organism’s life cycle. That is how new ethno
i and super-ethnoi are formed.53 Like any mixture, it depends on the qualities and circumstances of what is being mixed as to whether the consequences will be invigorating or pathogenic. A blood transfusion of compatible types might save a life, but will sicken or kill if the blood types are incompatible. A virus can create a vaccine, or it can cause sickness and death, depending on the amount and transformation of the virus.
Dr. Walter Schubart, a Baltic-German convert to Orthodoxy, widely known as an authority on Russia prior to World War II,54 reaching a similar historical-philosophy to Spengler’s, proposed the synthesis of the “Promethean” (Faustian) Westerner and the messianic Russian, each complementing the other. Of the two, Schubart wrote that “Messianic man” “longs to bring the discordant external world to harmony with the image that he carries within him”. “He does not love the world for itself but only so that he can build within it the Kingdom of God”. The world is “raw material for his mission”. “Messianic man” seeks reconciliation; unity.55 The Kingdom of God must be realised on earth.56 The Gothic Westerner had a messianic impulse with his Crusades not only to secure the Holy Land from the Moor, but to make Jerusalem the centre of the Kingdom of God.
The contrast now between the West and Russia is that “Promethean” (Faustian) man seeks only to exploit and rule the earth57, which Spengler saw as the final epoch of the Late West’s domination by the machine.58 The Westerner seeks as an end goal “middle class comfort”. The Russian is impelled to sacrifice “in a final dramatic scene”.59 The Russian is the collective Katehon, holding back the Antichrist. The West has become the Antichrist. The Russian is a martyr. He accepts his fate Christ-like. Rather than submit to Napoleon, the Russians set their Holy City, Moscow, ablaze. The sight forever affected Napoleon.60
The Russian mission is to liberate the world from the contagion of the Late West, or to liberate Europe from its own terminal Western hubris; to “redeem” the West or to “replace it”.61 This sense of mission has long been conscious among Russian thinkers and holy men. In 1852, seventy years before Spengler, Ivan Kireyevsky, the Slavophil philosopher, wrote of the decline of the West: “The spiritual development of Europe has already passed in zenith. In atheism and materialism it exhausted the only powers at its disposal – those of abstract rationalism – and now it is approaching bankruptcy”.62
