Imperial myth, myth of Slavic unity, Russian myth | All blogs | Blogs
All these concepts are constantly on hearing. And so to do, as it seems, to understand them. As far as Putin’s imperial ambitions are concerned, the nationalist ideas of the “Russian world” are reported. The myth of “Slavic unity” was used by publicists to explain Putin’s ideology, but this, in my opinion, is its component, to which I constantly returned in previous publications.
In real life, everything is ridiculously strong, and in the madness of the aggressor, imperial, pan-Slavic and nationalist notes appear intermingled. And yet they are different notes and different ideas. They manifest themselves in history in different ways and their consequences are different, and the fight against them also takes place …
The imperial idea is very simple. This is an arrogant state that considers itself possible to join and join new territories, explaining this by some economic and resonant reactions.
The history of the Russian state, at the place of residence from Ivan the Terrible, was permeated with this imperial idea and moved with success in the West, but much more successfully in the East and the Far East. Catherine’s significant influence of the Crimea, and the Caucasian wars of the 19th century, and the excess of Central Asia, and, of course, Russia’s attempt to materialize in China, which led to the Russo-Japanese War, are connected with this imperial idea. Well, the empire “needed” Port Arthur, as an ice-free harbor and another convenient outpost in the East. The Russo-Japanese War was precisely the Eastern imperialist war.
But the First World War was just imperialist, if it was, then to the smallest degree. Contrary to Soviet historiography…
The First World War is the result of a completely different myth, deeply rooted in Russian life. A myth flared up brightly in Danilevsky’s book Russia and Europe, where the romantic idea of a “new civilization” that should replace the West was substantiated. And although a role in this fantastic new planet was supposed to play according to Danilevsky, Russia, it was not yet one new dress on the old Russian only imperial idea. The center of this civilization was supposed to lie in the Balkans and coincide with the old region of the Eastern Roman Empire – Constantinople. From the end of the 1870s. this book idea became a real and active challenge to the foreign policy of Russia, which got involved in the Balkan wars.
Let us note that this idea of Danilevsky’s “Slavic civilization” did not flash out of the blue. She had very large defenders in Russian history. First of all, the idea is Catherine’s Greek project, the revival of the “Greek Empire” in Constantinople. The inspiration for her circle was the cultural ideals of ancient Greece and Rome, which I should revive in the new empire – not the idea of a religious Orthodox community with the Greeks. And this project was not met by Manilov’s dream. Catherine and her heirs for 50 years from the beginning of the 1770s to the 1820s. one way or another stubbornly went into this addition. From Russian memory, these losses have almost completely disappeared. But they grew in many ways and became an independent Greece in 1828. (Last year, 2021, I devoted 19 posts to these events on our channel). Catherine’s legacy was rethought on the Resurrection of Nicholas I, the Sunday of conservative Orthodoxy, when Nicholas dreamed not of “Ancient Greece” but of the restoration of Byzantine control over ancient Christian shrines. Because of what, in fact, the Crimean War of 1853-1856 arose. The next variation of this Romantic idea of ”return to Constantinople” was Danilevsky’s idea of ”Slavic unity”. It is only necessary to say that two meetings are taking place in the circles of Russian society. Cases of inspiration of a narrow circle of blood circulation of the top and the highest aristocracy were revealed. But the idea of Slavic, ethnic brotherhood is romance, capturing the soul strings of a very wide range of Russian society (read Anna Karenina).
The idea of ”Slavic civilization” is not the idea of the greatness of the Russian Empire. And in many respects they developed contrary to the imperial idea. Well, Russia does not have lands in the Balkans and it did not have imperial interests there, unlike Port Arthur. There was only obsession with the mythological concept of “Slavdom”, which led Russia to unleash the First World War.
At the same time, in the politics of Russia in the 19th and 20th centuries, the Imperial idea and the “Slavic idea” did not replace one another, but coexisted together and gave rise to various political impulses. The conquest of the Caucasus and Central Asia, for example, is part of the imperial policy. But it went along with the Romantic “Slavic” service in the Balkans.
The only thing is that of the two vectors – pure empire and “Slavic civilization” – the second has grown and become predominant. That is why Russia embarked on a deadly adventure.
It is also interesting that the entire previous Russia collapsed as a result of the tragic jettisoning overboard of all the throwing about “Slavic civilization”. But at the same time, the romantic mood for the creation of a new civilization was found to be a completely extraterrestrial ideological support. Creation of a communist civilization the size of the globe (the project is right on the coat of arms of the Soviet Union.). Instead of an ethnic Slavic civilization – the international Super-civilization of communism.
It must be said that as the ideas of the communist world revolution “subsided” and the creation of a “separately taken” communist power and the “socialist camp” around it, the old idea of ”Slavic civilization” grew like a stubborn weed in the collective farm field. Actually, already Stalin’s motivation in the war with Poland speaks volumes: “for the sake of helping the fraternal Belarusian and Ukrainian people.” The fraternal peoples were subsequently among the various sizes in the USSR “compared” and lived together with the presence of the USSR in the UN, forming, albeit nominal, but a triumvirate.
When the USSR finally rotted and collapsed, the old grass rose up with a new, albeit frail, color. It was tightly intertwined with the imperial idea of the USSR. A fair amount of chaos reigns in the minds of the bearers of ideas, and yet the ideological impulses of the Putin team are discernible. They themselves can sigh dreamily about the USSR, but under the word “USSR” they present the image of the three-Slavic republics in one bottle. The Asian republic was much faster and easier than the capture of Ukraine. But that didn’t interest them. The January story with Kazakhstan, which itself fell into his hands to Putin, but he did not take it, reminds of this again. Kazakhstan would be the pearl in the crown of the “Russian Empire” and the “new USSR”, but this was not and remains Putin’s main vector. He needed not the USSR, but a new Slavic “triune space”, about which his literary dreams were …
This whole idea was and remains not very tangible in Putin’s political practice. In his original intentions, he was to put Yanukovych on the throne – in Kyiv or in Kherson, as it will – declare all the occupied Ukrainian lands as Ukraine proper and create an alliance of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. It could be considered, at least in the inflamed imagination, the new “center of the multipolar world”, the new “Slavic USSR”. This gave geopolitical coordinates to his madness. But Putin has abandoned this seductive idea of a Slavic empire. Refused along with the annexation of pieces of the territory of Ukraine. And at the same time, he shifted the direction to the “national war”.
Nationalism is very simple. This cry “our beat.” This feeling of oppression on the part of the people causes a steady, sustained negative reaction caused by the war with them.
It must be said that this was not characteristic of Russia in the 19th – early 20th century. Unless sporadically, perhaps during the Napoleonic wars. Nationalism played an important role in controlling the security of other European countries – France and Germany, Austria, France, Serbia, and indeed all of Europe. Nationalism is resentment, the experience of resentment, oppression from some other national space. Russia, of course, did not have this feeling.
There was a feeling of “national greatness”, i.e. nationalism as often manifested in the suppression of “foreigners”, but there was no nationalism as a policy of response to grievances.
In general, the “Great Patriotic War” became the high point of nationalism. Here, in full growth, he stood up and painted the propaganda of the myth about the Russian people, who decided to destroy the people of the “Germans”. On this myth, the memory of the war in Soviet and post-Soviet times was built. The war was waged by the Stalinist status, – according to this myth, – not for the sake of the emergence of a world religious church empire (the Comintern remained a tongue twister in history courses, the film “The Great Citizen” was banned for hire), not for the sake of increasing the attention of Soviet power in the socialist camp (this is, as it were, the destiny ). consequences of the war), but for the sake of “saving the people”. This is, in fact, “The Last Myth” (according to the title of the documentary film about Viktor Suvorov).
This “last myth” was dispersed with might and main by the Putin leadership, an insignificant fake of the “last Nazis” in Ukrainian scenery.
But until recently, this myth was the accompaniment of two big geopolitical myths:
1. Slavic unity – Creation of a triune Slavic empire (restoration of the “Slavic Soviet Union”).
2. Imperial Russian myth from the “increment of lands”.
Myth N2 as a policy goal ended even before the war with Putin’s abandonment of Kazakhstan, which was then validated into his hands and with the practical collapse of the CSTO. Myth N1 Ukraine ended with the rejection of Yanukovych and the creation of a new triune, Ukr-Bela-Russian Union of States.
The proclamation by Putin of part of the Ukrainian land plots now has one goal – to inflate the myth of the war for “saving the people.”
Kiriyenko was delayed several times in writing down this second part of the post, and during this time Kiriyenko just delivered his speech to the teacher, began about the need for a “people’s war.”
This is their main myth now. And this myth has wider and, unfortunately, more effective drive belts than the myths of the territorial empire or the Slavic brotherhood.
While the hats of the “greatness of the Russian Empire” or the “triune people” for the majority of the population of Russia were discovered along the way, there was a sluggish battle between the “home refrigerator and TV.” The home refrigerator was lean, but it was not taken so empty. Now the final showdown between the TV and the mortuary fridge has begun, which are sent out mobilized.
It seems that the latest nonsense about a national war will collapse along with the Putin regime.
Evgeny Vilk
! Spelling and style of the author preserved