Why with Russia? Part II

Part I

The sociogenesis of today’s Russia

A sociogenesis of Russia which explains both the historical evolution of its civilization and its contemporary state is possible on the basis of six criteria that can be divided into constants and variables, whose succession forms the structure of sociogenesis.

1. Ethni (where the Slavic core is the constant, and the non-Slavic is the variable) make up the people (a constant);
2. People (constant) becomes the material basis of the state (variable);
3. The state (variable) creates civilization (constant)
4. Civilization (constant) creates society (variable) [1]

In terms of the constants in this system, we therefore have: 1) the Slavic ethnos; 2) the people; and 3) civilization. In terms of variables, we in turn have: 1) ethnic minorities; 2) the state; and 3) society.

The ethnos is a biological category and is connected with a concrete biotype. Its phenotype represents a biological adaption to the conditions inhabited by the ecumenical subject. It has the character of genealogical community and is bound by ties of kinship, i.e., it is composed of clans and tribes. Within the ethnos, direct relationships are formed between its members which are based more than anything else on the rise of language, tradition, and the collective cultural personality of the community.

The ethnos is a pre-reflective social category. It is not defined, named, or treated as a rule in itself and does not have its own ideology. The ethnos defends its existence and integrity by inertia, and sometimes actively - by native religious groups, for example - and resists any innovations. It sees the causes of disasters in metaphysical terms and sees in them the signs of the coming end of the world.

“In itself, the ethnos has a pre-reflective character and is unidentified and undefined. There are self-evident truths which are not subject to any mediation or any doubt. At the primary level, the “tribal” one, such a matter of fact is language itself. (…) There is simple, ordinary speech known to all peoples in the world, just as there is the speech of animals and angels, and the people is also simple and its habits are so simple and normal, like nature itself, that they do not warrant doubt, discussion, and cannot be negated or changed.” [2]

Therefore, the ethnos is associated with what is physical, authentic, close, and rooted. The ethnos is the substance of life, a way of life, and is in opposition to what is theoretical, ideological, reflective, and rational. For a people and culture to be alive, their efforts must draw upon the ethnos. The pre-reflective and pre-rational layer of truths, accepted without hesitation, and the rules and goals of life that are considered natural in Russia are connected with the Slavic ethnic core.

Peripheral ethni participated in the history of Russia in varying degrees and in varied composition. For various reasons in a given historical period, some interacted with the people of Rus, while others dropped out or strove to separate themselves. Hence peripheral ethni can be considered a variable in our system.

A people is composed of ethnic groups that makes up a collective cultural personality that realizes its uniqueness and possesses its own identity. A people is established on the basis of a shared space of inhabitance and can be created by neighboring communities or ancestral-tribal alliances and associations. A people has a durably historical character that permanently binds the subjects that contribute to it.

In its turn, civilization has a top-down character and is formed on the basis of religious unity. The profession of the same religion directs various communities towards the same supernatural goal. The civilizational grouping permeates material communities and consolidates them. Distinct ways of life are unified in it. The material reason for its establishment is often the projection of cultural patterns and life energy of one people onto its neighbors. A key factor for the founding of a common civilization is a common ideology.

The state is an historically varying category and overrides a people. Its origin is heavenly, divine, and its legitimacy is from above. The historical forms of the state can be transformed, but its politics, law, economics, administration, and borders are nonetheless beyond and above the people.

The effect of these [developments] on a people is the establishment of society. This is the result of the ideas of rulers concerning how a people should exist in line with the normative social imperative projected by the state. Society, therefore, is resultant of the forces derived from the people and the state.

The sociogenesis of Russia can be characterized by the following steps in chronological order:

1. Kievan Rus: allogeneic Varangian elite; integration of the Eastern Slavic and Ural peoples; Christianization; centralization; political domination of the princes, the landed Boyars and communes; social base in the form of the free peasantry; ideological predominance of Christian-Pagan syncretism; ethnic predominance of the Polanie and other Slavic tribes;

2. Rus in the period of disintegration: political decentralization and disintegration; political domination of the princes and communes; social base in the form of the free peasantry; ethnic predominance of the Slavs;

3. Rus in the period of Mongol domination: political and territorial fragmentation; gradual increase in the significant of Moscow; acquiring of imperial tendencies (organization of society for the needs of the military); political domination of the Tatar elite and Russian princes; social basis in the form of the free peasants; ideological combination of ordained imperial ideology and Christian religious identity; ethnic domination of the Mongols and Tatars;

4. Russian lands within the borders of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Commonwealth: integration within the framework of the Lithuanian and then Polish-Lithuanian state; political dominance of the Russian-Lithuanian elite, followed by the Polish-Lithuanian; social base in the form of the subjugated peasantry and Cossacks; religious pressure of Catholicism with the resistance of Orthodoxy; ethnic domination of Poles and Lithuanians; rise of rebellious attitudes; gradual loss of Russian and Orthodox identity;

5. Muscovite Rus: political integration; theocratically organized monarchy; political domination of the Russian monarchy and Boyars; social base in the form of state peasantry, beginning of the process of the enslavement of the peasantry; ideology of “Moscow as the Third Rome,” religious domination of Muscovite Orthodoxy and the ideology of the universal mission of Russians for the creation of a global Orthodox theocracy (Imperium); ethnic domination of the Great Russians;

6. Russia after the reforms of Peter I: secular Russian Tsarism; socio-political modernization from the archaic model to the modern one; imperialism and colonialism of the Western type; political domination of the Russian Tsar and the strong influence of the Germans and England; social base in the form of the enslaved peasantry; ideological secularization, modernization, and Westernization; ethnic predominance of the Great Russians, Little Russians, and Belarusians;

7. USSR: totalitarian communist state; social modernization; gaining of superpower status; political domination of the Jewish-Russian Bolshevik elite; social base in the form of the proletarian Soviet people; ideological messianism of Marxism-Leninism and atheism; striving for the construction of communism and world communist revolution; ethnic predominance of the Great Russians, Little Russians, Belarussians along with gradual increase of Turanian ethni;

8. Russian Federation: demo-liberal system; loss of international ideological and religious meaning along with superpower status; political domination of the post-Soviet bureaucratic and capitalist oligarchy; social base in the form of the lumpenproletariat and nouveau riche; absence of own ideology, technocracy; striving to maintain status quo; ethnic predominance of Great Russians;

As can be seen in the above list, Polish conservative circles’ nostalgic and sentimental identification of the Russian idea with the times of the reign of the Romanov dynasty is not entirely correct. The peak of Rus’ historical development was reached in the days of the Muscovite Tsardom, when “[there was] the total organization of predominatingly peasant society focused on the ideal of universal salvation through religion, as well as a state with distinctly messianic features” [3].

The reforms of Peter I and the centuries-long reign of the Romanovs deprived Russia of consciousness of its historical mission and created a secular society with a closed, restricted elite that imposed upon the masses of enslaved peasants even such everyday habits as clothing, customs, language, etc. The period of the modern Romanov monarchy was a time of the gradual sliding of Russia towards the West to the point of courtly and bourgeois decadence in the years of the reign of Nicholas II (1894-1917) and the agonizing of the Russian “White” emigration in Harbin, Tokyo, Prague, and Paris.

In modern Russia, it is possible to point to symbolic “parties” of those who support either “developmental constants” or “developmental variables.” The second stands for the idea of civil society, demo-liberalism, and national policies which underestimate the importance of the Slavic ethnic core while encouraging the “nationalization” of the ethnic peripheries. An alternative, which although leads to the same result, is the conception of creating a “Russian people,” i.e., a solution which historically never existed and which could only be created on the ruins of the Great Russian ethos and peripheral ethni.

Those who base their political identity on the historical constants of Russia’s development believe that Russia has an historic mission to fulfill and that the core of the Russian people is the Great Russian ethos from which the Russian language, culture, psychological and cultural type are derived but which is also open to other ethni, desiring to tie together their fates and render them part of its people.

With which Russia?

Poland therefore needs a Russia which would regain its identity as an Empire, as a patriarchal political community, as a sacred and theocratic civilization, as a state of lands and ethni, and as a genuinely Russian and Slavic country. We need the Russia of tradition and culture, the Russia of creativity and heritage. We want a Christian and deified Russia. Christianity cannot be a mere doctrine and institution which legitimizes social order. Rather, it must be a living spiritual and moral force which shapes everyday life. Nor can this be oriented against the pre-Christian spiritual tradition, but instead should crown it or complement it. We need an autocratic Russia which could be a competitive political model to the Western polyarchy.

The Russia which we await is therefore the Russia of Ivan Vasilievich Kireyevski (1806-1856), Alexey Stepyanovich Khomyakov (1806-1856), Konstantin Sergeevich Aksakov (1817-1860), Lev Alexandrovich Tikhomirov (1852-1923), Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev (1803-1873), and, above all and perhaps the greatest political mind of 19th century Russia: Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev (1827-1907). All of them were representatives of the European romantic counterrevolution and are the counterparts of such Western European authors as Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821) or Adam Heinrich Muller (1779-1829). [4]

Poles need a Russia of Tradition and identity, which can overcome modernity, its points of reference from Western civilization in our national culture being republicanism, demo-liberalism, and civic traditions. Adam Mickiewicz, as cited above, pointed out that the Polish and Russian national ideas are universal and not bound to strictly concrete national paradigms.

This gives us the chance to penetrate to and, in principle, form a new national culture for ourselves. Poles were seduced by Western civilization, Aristotle, St. Thomas, Descartes, Newton, Locke, rationalism, parliamentarism, the doctrine of the separation of powers, the rule of law, and the ideals of civil and national subjectivity.

For this reason, Poland needs Russia in order to return to the Slavic patriarchal ideal of a political community ruled by a providential leader. Poles must return from Western analysis and fragmentation to the Slavic commune, recover from the complex of being a Western periphery, and must not renounce their belonging to the great Slavic family. Poles must stop being a barrier, and should start being themselves.

Finally, there is the question of religion. The meaning of the Eastern Schism should be minimized, as was done by Juraj Križanić, cited above, and Vladimir Solovyov (1853 - 1900) who followed him. Poles should be the advocates of this position for two reasons. Firstly, contrary to appearances, we acquired much of our culture and spirituality from the East. In Polish Catholicism, for example, there is widespread iconolatry, whereas a cult of statutes is practically absent. In the Mediterranean and Western countries, however, the exact opposite is true.

Secondly, our variety of Latin culture is no echo or less successful copy of its Mediterranean version, but is rather a variant which in many respects is better than its older sister. The existence of the oriental variant of Latin culture can be approximately found in the former Commonwealth countries and the former Habsburg domain, and its existence as an opposite to what is found in the Mediterranean and American variants of this culture is a historical fact.

This culture, which in many ways is morally and spiritually higher than the culture of Italy, France, or Spain, grew out of the subsoil of the Slavic ethnic identity. This is perhaps most clear in the case of our more personalized relationships with women and our higher evaluation of marriage and the family. In Poland, there is no tradition of “attending brothels” or leading on affairs, and there is no caricature of masculinity in the form of machismo [5]. Our interpersonal relationships are simple, pure, and honest.

Meanwhile, symbols of Mediterranean Latin culture can be found in Lucrezia Borgia (1480-1519), Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) and Bona Sforza (1494-1557), who has a bad reputation in our national memory. The essence of Western and Mediterranean culture is lying, duplicity, rationalism, sexual licentiousness, callousness, artificiality, deception, and cruelty [6]. The West is the “land of the dead” where there is no morality and no life.

Hence why, for the sake of Poles and the interests of Poland, we should strive to bridge the gap between the European East and European West by means of encouraging the participation of Slavic and Russian culture in European cultural dialogue. In order to overcome the Western factors in our own national culture, we should appeal to and celebrate our Slavic heritage.

Poland is not part of Eurasia or the Mediterranean. Historically, we were connected with and should continue to associate with, above all, the German cultural and geopolitical zone. This, however, does not hinder subjectively participating in the construction of Baltic Europe while being entrenched in the Slavic component of our identity.

Poland, being simultaneously a Western country and a Slavic country, has the chance to become a model for the construction of a “European Europe.” Basing ourself on the Slavic component and in looking to the East, we can overcome the Western civilization within ourselves.

Notes:

[1] A. G. Dugin, Четвертая политическая теория, Moskwa 2009.

[2] W. Pawluczuk, Ukraina. Polityka i mistyka, Kraków 1998, s. 8-9.

[3] A. G. Dugin, op. cit.

[4] The development of this thesis can also be seen in:  A. Walicki, W kręgu konserwatywnej utopii. Struktura i przemiany rosyjskiego słowianofilstwa, Warszawa 2002.

[5] Por. Z. Lew-Starowicz, Encyklopedia Erotyki, s. 464-469.

[6] Por. J. Burckhardt, Kultura Odrodzenia we Włoszech. Próba ujęcia, Warszawa 1961, s. 191-293.

Translation: Jafe Arnold