Eastern theocracy in Northern Eurasia: “The Ways of Russia” in the historiosophy of I. I. Bunakov-Fondaminsky

Abstract

The article examines the question of the evolution of the philosophical and historical views of the Russian intellectual and politician Ilya Isidorovich Fondaminsky (1880–1942; literary and political pseudonym “Bunakov”). A native of a Jewish merchant family who studied phi­losophy in Berlin and Heidelberg and an active socialist-revolutionary, I.I. Bunakov-Fon­daminsky became one of the key figures of the Russian emigration. During the German oc­cupation of France, he received Orthodox baptism and ended his life in a Nazi concentration camp (in 2004, he was canonized by the Patri­archate of Constantinople). The author fo­cuses on the historiosophical concept of “Ways of Russia”, set forth by I.I. Bunakov-Fon­daminsky in the articles of the 1920s and 1940s in the Parisian emigrant magazines “Modern Notes” and “Novy Grad”. According to Bunakov-Fondaminsky, historical Russia is “The East in the North”, and its fate is the history of the “eastern theocracy in the north of Eura­sia”, for several centuries “irradiated” by the western waves.