Nikolay Danilevsky: between Slavophilism and Pan-Slavism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21146/2072-0726-2023-16-4-5-18Keywords:
Slavophilism, Pan-Slavism, Austroslavism, cultural-historical types, Russia and Europe, Slavic cultural-historical typeAbstract
Nikolay Danilevsky’s book “Russia and Europe” was written in hot pursuit of the Crimean War (1853–1856), when the powers of Holy Union broke political equilibrium after the victory of the Russian army over Napoleon and started a new aggressive war against Russia, the only sovereign Slavic state in Europe. The book could be evaluated as an intellectual epilogue of the Crimean War in which there were pointed out two central problems: firstly, to show the sovereignty and future perspectives of Slavic civilization, which has occupied it’s own legitimate historic place in Europe as an independent cultural-historic type; secondly, to construct the project of the All-Slavic Union as a protective barrier against European invasion. The solution of the first problem was based on the traditions of Russian thought, especially on Slavophilism. So that demonstrated it’s culmination and specific Russian contribution to the world civilizational theory. The solution of the second problem was based on the “circle of conservative utopia” (A. Walicki) derived from the European Pan-Slavism (Austroslavism), founded on the territory of Austro-Hungarian Empire as early as at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The contradictory combination of Slavophilism and Pan-Slavism is the subject of the historiosophical study in the current article.