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Context (Moscow Times)
May 14, 2004
Eastward Bound
Centuries after the East-West identity debate began, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington finds that Russians are aligning themselves ever more closely with Asia.
By Walter Laqueur

Russia in Search of Itself
By James H. Billington
Woodrow Wilson Press/Johns Hopkins University Press
234 pages. $24.95

Russia has been in search of itself for a long time -- since the 18th century, in fact, with only short interruptions such as during the early Soviet period, when it was believed that the country's historical mission had finally been established.

Needless to say, these certainties did not last long, and the search for identity continues. For the present state of the old vs. new debate there is no better guide than this short book by James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress since 1987 and a distinguished student of Russian history. Billington is best known in Russia-interest circles for his classic 1966 work "The Icon and the Axe," with its emphasis on the religious elements in Russian thought. He has also been a key figure in Russian-American cultural relations as founder of the Kennan Institute in Washington and of the Open World Program, which has brought thousands of young Russian leaders to visit America.

The search for identity (and destiny) of groups and individuals is commonly believed to be an invention of 19th-century European Romanticism, but in Russia it began even earlier and, in any case, the impact of Romanticism in Russia was not that great. When do people engage in such searches? When things are not going well. But this explanation, while essentially true, is not altogether satisfactory, because if the situation is really bad, then there is no time for philosophy. As the Latin proverb says: Primo vivere -- deinde philosophare. In other words, survival comes first.

However, some societies have invested in these searches far more energy, time and emotion than others. Neither in smaller countries (say, Portugal or Greece) nor in big ones (say, China) would books entitled "The Portuguese [or the Chinese] Idea" be widely read and discussed. But in certain Russian circles, the search for a providential mission is just as relentless -- and even frantic and obsessive -- as it was centuries ago. I do not pretend to know why this is the case, and I fear that even this informative and judicious book does not give us the answer.

In some ways (but only in some ways), the ongoing quest is a continuation of the 19th-century identity debate between the Westernizers and the Slavophiles (Alexander Herzen's "ours" and "not ours"), except that the Westernizers have become fewer in number and that even disciples of liberal 20th-century thinkers such as Georgy Fedotov and Dmitry Likhachyov are not often heard in present-day discussions.

Today's Neo-Slavophiles, Billington shows, look to the East, to Eurasia, rather than to Poland or the Balkans. First developed in the early 20th century, the motives of Eurasianism (disdain and resentment of the West) are not difficult to understand, but the cure and alternatives that the philosophy proposes are far from convincing, since they rely on a brotherly Asia that exists in imagination, not reality. By and large, the West has shown far greater sympathy for Russian culture than has "Asia" -- that is to say, the Islamic world, and South and East Asia. 20th-century poet Alexander Blok and others wrote about Russia's affinity with the Scythians and the Mongols, but this has been a very one-sided love affair, politically as well as culturally, today even more so than in the past. Russia's mission in the East is largely a chimera. But it is certainly a powerful chimera, and it goes on and on.

Billington has followed diligently and not without sympathy the post-Soviet search for a spiritual renewal, which manifests itself in a variety of schools and cults ranging from cosmic speculation (the noosphere and Daniil Andreyev's mystical "Rose of the World") and the Nicholas Roerich cult -- none of them really very new -- to Alexander Dugin's post-fascist geopolitics, Alexander Panarin's planetary reformation and a variety of nationalist doctrines (Sergei Glazyev, Dmitry Rogozin, Sergei Kurginyan). He also mentions the flood of canonizations on the part of the Orthodox Church -- and the omission of notable martyrs such as the charismatic and highly educated priest Alexander Men, a convert from Judaism who was killed in circumstances that remain unclear to this day. While some of these new ideological ventures are more extreme than others, Billington notes, there is no radical break with the past and not much self criticism. Rather, there is an inclination to transfer the burden of the evil in society to others -- those Russophobes at home and abroad. What these new doctrines have in common is a more or less authoritarian nationalism and an attitude towards the West ranging from the indifferent to the hostile.

It is to the great merit of this dispassionate review of current Russian thinking that it takes seriously strands of thought that are hardly known in the West. How much attention was paid during the Cold War to even the smallest minutiae of political and cultural developments in Russia, and how little interest is there now? Perhaps this is the result of normalization; if Russia were in worse shape, interest would be greater.

But it is also true that most of these discussions about Russia's identity are limited to a small number of people and are overshadowed by present-day realities, namely, the rule of bureaucracy and the struggle between the old bureaucrats and the new oligarchs. Russian intellectual history knew important debates in the 19th century and again after 1905, but the present ideological confrontations are not really on the same level of profundity and sophistication. And it is interesting that, in a book about Russia searching for itself, not a single politician's name appears (except for the most obvious), not a single personality outside the professional seekers of identity. Compartmentalization in Russian society seems to have progressed very far. Perhaps the quest for ideological clarification has weakened after all, perhaps intellectual interest has shifted from politics to the private sphere.

Where have we come from, and in what direction is Nikolai Gogol's famous Russian troika speeding? Compared to the West, Russia remains the country of Kamo gryadeshi? (Whither Russia?) and "What is to be Done?" But past experience has shown the futility of such speculation, and given way to the philosophy of apathy -- que sera, sera.

Walter Laqueur was director of the Institute of Contemporary History in London from 1964 to 1995.