European Transfigurations—Eurafrica and Eurasia: Coudenhove and Trubetzkoy Revisited

Abstract

The Eurasianist movement launched a theory according to which Russia does not belong to Europe but forms, together with its Asian colonies, a separate continent named “Eurasia” whose Eastern border is the Pacific Ocean. Similarily, in the early 1920s, Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, the founder of the Pan-European movement, developed, the idea of “Eurafrica.” I compare the writings of Coudenhove and those of Nicolas S. Trubetzkoy and show how the idea of Europe was used as an anti-essentialist model of a cultural community. Though both “Eurasia” and “Eurafrica” may be understood to express cultural and economic imperialism, the sophistication with which both concepts are brought forward makes their interpretation as simple derivatives of chauvinism impossible. Both Trubetzkoy and Coudenhove refuse national “egocentricity” which “destroys every form of cultural communication between human beings.” Above that, Trubetzkoy and Coudenhove agree that cultural apogees have often come about through fusion. I discuss the idea of “convergence” in the context of Bergson's and Deleuze's biophilosophies.

Notes

NOTES

1. In his Second Book, Hitler mentions Coudenvhove-Kalergi's Pan Europe project and comments: “Es ist der wurzellose Geist der alten Reichshauptstadt Wien, jener Mischlingsstadt von Orient und Okzident, der dabei zu uns spricht.” Quoted in Brigitte Hamann, Hitlers Wien (Munich: Pieper, 1996), 550. I thank a reviewer of my article for having pointed this out to me.

2. Nicolas Riasanovsky continues: “Eurasianist doctrines as well as George Vernadsky's historical considerations belong to a later age.” Riasanovsky, “Russia and Asia: Two Eighteenth Century Russian Views,” in California Slavic Studies 1 (1960): 180.

3. The older Russian Slavophiles conceived Russia still as separated from Europe. Now, as the tendency developed towards Russian integration, reflections on the “spiritual” or “historical” destiny supposed to link together all Slav nations become more central. Non-Russian Pan-Slavism insists on the European character of the Slav nations that require recognition as European nations. In principle, Russian Pan-Slavism was sympathetic to these intentions. Official government policy, however, adopted imperialist traits, vaguely insisting that the union of Germans should be encountered with a “Union of Slavs.” This was contrary to the intentions of the Pan-Slav thinkers. See Hans Kohn, Pan-Slavism: Its History and Ideology (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1953).

4. Georgy Florovsky (l892–l979) is one of the most eminent Russian theologians of this century. Born in Odessa, he was professor at the Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris and moved to the United States in 1948 where he taught at different universities. He distanced himself early from the Eurasian movement. Other contributors to the Eurasian discussion are the linguist Roman Jakobson and the philosophers L. P. Karsavin and P. M. Bitsilli, who later on also distanced themselves from the movement. Some American and European historians were inspired by the ideas of the interwar émigré Eurasianists, especially George Vernadsky (see below), who authored an influential multi-volume history of Russia.

5. Cf. Sergei Glebov, “Science, Culture, and Empire: Eurasianism as a Modern Movement,” in Slavic & East European Information Resources 4.4 (2003): 16.

6. Girenok quoted from Alexander Antoshchenko, “On Eurasia and the Eurasians: Studies on Eurasianism in Current Russian Historiography” 2000 http://www.karelia.ru/psu/chairs/PreRev/bibleng.rtf.

7. I am using culturological not necessarily in the Russian sense as an identity-oriented humanistic research, but in the German or American sense of Kulturwissenschaften or cultural turn coined in the 1960s. (In Russia, culturology is an often compulsory part of university courses that largely replaces the teaching of dialectical materialism).

8. Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, Europa erwacht! (Vienna: Pan-Europa Verlag, 1934); hereafter abbreviated as Ee and cited in the text; Paneuropa (Vienna: Herold, 1966), hereafter abbreviated as PE and cited in the text; and Weltmacht Europa (Stuttgart: Seewald, 1971), hereafter abbreviated as WE and cited in the text; all translations from Coudenhove's books are mine. For Eurafrica, see also “L’Afrique,” in Paneuropa 1–3 (1929).

9. Charles R. Ageron, “L’Idée d’Eurafrique,” in Revue d’Histoire moderne et contemporaine (July-Sept. 1975): 453.

10. Kimitada Miwa, “Japanese Policies and Concepts for a Regional Order in Asia, 1938–1940,” in The Ambivalence of Nationalism: Modern Japan between East and West, ed. James White et al. (Lanham: University of America Press, 1990), 137.

11. Cf. Seiro Kawasaki, “Origins of the Concept of the ‘Eurafrican Community,’” at http://www.tsukuba-g.ac.jp/library/kiyou/2000/2.KAWASAKI.pdf.

12. Anssi Kristian Kullberg, “The Righteous Man's Burden: Paneuropean Vision and Its Sense of Morality in the Interwar and Present European Context,” The Eurasian Politician 4 (2001): 3–4.

13. Zbigniev Brzezinsky, The Grand Chessboard—American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (New York: Basic Books, 1997), xiv.

14. Some of Dugin's most important texts as well as the programme of the neo-Eurasian Movement appear in the journals Milyi Angel, Elementy and the newspaper, Den’ (since 1993 Zavtra). Dugin's main books include Mysteries of Eurasia (1991), Hyperborean Theory (1992), and Conspirology (1992).

15. Liliana Ellena, “Political Imagination, Sexuality and Love in the Eurafrican Debate,” The European Revue of History 11.2 (2004): 244.

16. Ellena affirms this indirectly: Coudenhove's “claim that Europe does not exist geographically but only culturally and will exist politically through Paneurope corresponds with his claim that Africa exists geographically but not culturally and that it will enter the world market only through the enhancement of European technology” (247). Further, I would question her claim that Coudenhove (who was half Japanese himself) “defines [the European's] superiority in terms of cultivation, and in terms of awareness of the highest reaches of intellectual comprehension and aesthetic refinement” (249). I do not find any such statements in Coudenhove's writings but rather respectful allusions to the superiority of Chinese culture and to the strength of Japanese civilization.

17. Alexander Antoshchenko, “On Eurasia and the Eurasians: Studies on Eurasianism in Russian Historiography” at http://www.karelia.ru/psu/chairs/PreRev/bibleng.rtf.

18. The notion of Nationalbegriff, which has since been developed, is still relevant. See Antonina Kloskowska, “National Conversion: A Case Study of Polish-German Neighbourhood,” in The Neighbourhood of Cultures, ed. R. Grathoff and A. Kloskowska (Warsaw: Institute of Political Studies, 1994). I thank a reviewer of my article for having pointed this out to me.

19. Trubetzkoy, “Europe and Mankind” (1920), in The Legacy of Gengis Khan and Other Essays on Russian Identity (Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Slavic Publication, 1991), 75; all essays from which I quote are included in this collection and are cited in the text.

20. For Danilevsky, “no civilization can pride itself on having attained the point of civilization that is highest compared to predecessors and contemporaniens–and this in all domains of development” (PoccuР u Eвpona [Russia and Europe] [1867] [St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg University Press, 1995], 87; my translation). Out of Danilevsky's multilinear conception of world history flows a system that is reminiscent of anti-Darwinian theories of convergence. For Danilevsky, Greek civilization was sparked off through the reception of Persian influences and Greco-Roman civilization was spread by Byzantine emigrants; finally, overseas discoveries initiated the main advances of modern European civilization. Danilevsky pronounced no real cultural theory of convergence through contiguity as developed by Eurasians. Darwinist as he remained, his theories are clearly inscribed in a Pan-Slavist line (for Danilevsky a war with the West remains unavoidable), which led to his being classified as a “totalitarian philosopher” (MacMaster).

21. Later, George Vernadsky fleshed out Savitzky's geographical theories by stressing “the decisive significance of the relation between steppe and the forest societies on the enormous Eurasian plain, the ethnic and cultural complexity of Russia, and the major organic contribution of Eastern peoples, especially the Mongols, to Russian history.” Cf. Riasanovsky, “Russia and Asia”, in Essays on the Influence of Russia on the Asian Peoples, ed. Wayne S. Vucinich (Standford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1972), 23.

22. Gilles Deleuze, Mille Plateaux (Paris: Minuit, 1980): “Tout rhizome comprend des signes de segmentarité d’après lesquelles il est stratifié, territorialisé, organisé, signifié, attribué, etc. mais aussi des lignes de déterritorialisation par lesquelles il fuit sans cesse. Il y a rupture dans le rhizome chaque fois que des lignes segmentaires explosent dans une ligne de fuite, mais la ligne de fuite fait partie du rhizome” (16).

23. Manola Antonioli, Géophilosophie de Deleuze et Guattari (Paris: Harmattan, 2003), 26.