In the Shadow of Nikolai Danilevskii: Universalism, Particularism, and Russian Geopolitical Theory

Abstract

In order to contribute to our understanding of Russian geopolitical theory, this article investigates closely the figure of Nikolai Danilevskii. The article pays special attention to the thinker’s increased influence on contemporary Russian geopolitical thought, by presenting qualitative and quantitative evidence of this influence. It explains Danilevskii’s rise by looking at Western pressures on Russia and the country’s internal vulnerabilities. Such vulnerabilities emerged from the breakup of the Tsarist and the Soviet state, respectively, by providing the required context for the emergence of defensive nationalist ideas.

Notes

¹ See also Russkaya doktrina (Moscow, Yauza, 2007).

² In the West, Danilevskii’s book has been recently translated with an extended introduction by Stephen M. Woodburn (Danilevskii 2013). For earlier work on Danilevskii, see MacMaster (1967). Western surveys of Russian political thought normally include a review of Danilevskii. See, for example, Walicki (1979), Neumann (1996), Duncan (2000), Pipes (2008).

³ For some exceptions, see Rabotiazhev and Solov’ev (2008), Verkhovskii and Pain (2015).

⁴ For other prominent attempts to reconstruct history and development of international relations theory, see Wight (1992), Doyle (1997), Schmidt (1998), Donnelly (2000), Tickner and Waever (2009).

⁵ For a theoretical discussion of ideology, see Gerring (1997), Freeden (2006), Tsygankov and Tsygankov (2010).

⁶ For a discussion of ideas as springboards, see Goldstein and Keohane (1993).

⁷ The reverse is also true.

⁸ This section provides a brief summary of Russian intellectual developments. For a more extended analysis of Russia’s IR strands, see Tsygankov and Tsygankov (2010, 2014), Lebedeva (2012), Tsygankov (2013).

⁹ Within Russian nationalism, the so-called National Bolsheviks, to use Mikhail Agurski and John Dunlop’s term, were advocating a synthesis of the Bolshevik regime and Russia’s indigenous tradition (Dunlop 1983, pp. 254–65; Agurski 1987).

¹⁰ For surveys of Russian geopolitical thinking, see Tsygankov (2003), Bassin and Aksenov (2006), Korolev (2015).

¹¹ Russkaya doktrina (Moscow, Yauza, 2007).

¹² In addition to statists that are critical of some limited areas of Western universalism, there are also neo-Marxist scholars who remain highly critical of the West and Western modernity-defined global status quo (Kagarlitsky 2003, 2010, 2012).

¹³ For more on intellectual influences on Russian international relations approaches, see Tsygankov and Tsygankov (2007, 2014).

¹⁴ The second thinker who broke with the Slavophile line of thinking was Konstantin Leontyev (1831–1891), who thought of himself as a student of Danilevskii but went farther than his teacher, by embracing the East and predicting that Russia would establish a ‘neo-Byzantine’, rather than Slavonic, cultural type (Leontyev 2005).

¹⁵ Vladimir Solovyev offered a detailed critique of such influences in his work Nemetskii podlinnik russkii spisok (The German original and the Russian list) (Solovyev 2000a, pp. 561–91).

¹⁶ Such an approach was developed by Huntington (1997, p. 310), who considered power as preceding culture. Other approaches to inter-civilisational interaction assumed more complex relations between political and cultural (O’Hagan 2002; Tsygankov 2004; Hall & Jackson 2007; Katzeinstein 2009; Bettiza 2014).

¹⁷ Following Feodor Tyutchev, Danilevskii wanted the Russian Empire to be expanded at the expense of some territories of Austria, Italy, and Prussia (Tsymbursky 2006, p. 110).

¹⁸ Solovyev had a similarly harsh reaction to the writing of Leontyev (Solovyev 2000b, p. 418).

¹⁹ Solovyev, for instance, demonstrated his deep fear of the Muslim East, referred to Islam as an ‘inhuman God’ and later became obsessed with the ‘yellow peril’ (Duncan 2000, pp. 44–5).

²⁰ On Eurasianism, see Riasanovsky (1967), Shlapentokh (1997), Laruelle (2008), Bassin (2011), Bassin et al. (2015).

²¹ See Agurski (1987) for Danilevskii’s influence on Ustryalov’s ideology.

²² Some of them later chose to return to Russia, but were imprisoned by the Soviet government. On this and other developments within Russian Eurasianism, see Laruelle (2008).

²³ For Western studies of Russian nationalism, see Dunlop (1983, 1985), Agurski (1987), Brudny (1998), Tuminez (2000).

²⁴ Tsymbursky also took issue with Danilevskii’s hopes for tactical cooperation with Germany as the nation capable to destroy Russia’s favoured cultural influence in Eurasia (Tsymbursky 2015, p. 60).

²⁵ For example, see Zyuganov (1999, p. 13) and Nartov (1999, p. 95). Both writers discussed the significance of Danilevskii (and particularism more in general) vis-à-vis their own theories, devoting special chapters to Russia’s geopolitical schools. For Russian contemporary geopolitical and civilisational thinking, see Bassin and Aksenov (2006), Tsygankov and Tsygankov (2010), Suslov (2013).

²⁶ For elaboration, see Tsygankov (2013).

²⁷ In particular, Kirill endorsed Russkaya doktrina (Moscow, Yauza, 2007).

²⁸ According to the survey, Russian academics view as especially promising those thinkers who theorise nation as a special system of values. We identified 40 teachers of international relations theory and geopolitics to participate in the survey. The rate of response was 80%. Although the sample was limited in size, the respondents diverged geographically, with respect to gender, age, theoretical, and methodological preferences. In particular, 65% of them were males and 45% under the age of 45. Geographically, 45% teach in Moscow, 20% in St Petersburg, 20% in other cities of Russia, and 15% in Europe and the United States. The fact that most of those surveyed teach in Moscow and St Petersburg generally reflects the geography of Russian international relations that remains predominantly concentrated in the country’s two capitals. Participants were asked to choose amongst the categories of ‘successful development’, ‘crisis’, and ‘overcoming crisis’, or propose a classification of their own; explain the state of Russian international relations; assess the need to develop a special Russian IR school; and propose avenues for development of international relations in the country. In terms of international relations worldviews, about one third of them come close to identifying themselves as influenced by realism and another third by liberalism. Influences of the remaining part are either unknown or not related to realism and liberalism. In order to further diversify the sample, we also surveyed a small group of those Russian scholars studying international relations developments and well familiar with IR theory in Russia, but teaching in foreign universities of Europe and the United States. Although the sample of respondents is small, its results are suggestive and support results of our qualitative interviews in Moscow and St Petersburg. For further details on the survey’s results, see Tsygankov and Tsygankov (2014).

²⁹ Besides Panarin, other Eurasianist thinkers listed in Figure 1 as important are Gumelev (10%), Trubetskoi (8%), and Savitsky (5%).

³⁰ The results were obtained through https://scholar.google search engine. For comparative purposes, I entered the names of Danilevskii, Fukuyama, Huntington, Ilyin, and Trubetskoi. In order to isolate the citation impact of their most important works I entered the titles of their best-known books. The selected entries were Danilevskii’s Russia and Europe, Fukuyama’s End of History, Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations, Ilyin’s Our Tasks, and Trubetskoi’s Europe and Humanity. All categories were entered manually on 13–16 January 2014 using the ‘custom range’ option beginning with 1996.

³¹ For identity-based explanations of various Russian international relations ideas, see Tsygankov (2004, 2008), Tsygankov and Tsygankov (2010). For other, macro-sociological and materialistic explanations of ideas’ rise and fall, see Collins (1998), Cox (2000).

³² In his 2007 address to Russia’s parliament, Putin ridiculed searches for a national idea as Russian ‘old-style entertainment’ akin to searches for a meaning of life (Putin 2007). To Putin, in this sense, Russianness became a given, as it was not yet challenged by the West.

³³ A number of scholars have documented Putin’s transformation (Nation 2012; Trenin 2013; Stent 2014; Tsygankov 2016).

³⁴ Strategiya gosudarstvennoi natsional’noi politiki v RF (Moscow, 2012).