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DOI: 10.24234/wisdom.v23i3.718
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF EURASIANISM: PARADIGMATIC FOUNDATIONS AND THEIR LIMITATIONS
Olga PLEBANEK 1 O | Vladimir PYZH 2 * © | Svetlana ROSENKO 3 9 | Sergey РЕТROV 4
1 Department of Social Sciences and Humanities, University at the Interparliamentary Assembly of the EurAsEC, Russia
2 Department of Social Sciences and Humanities, National State University of Physical Culture, Sports and Health, named after P. F. Lesgaft, St. Petersburg, Russia
3 Institute of Management and Social Technologies, National State University of Physical Culture, Sports and Health, named after P. F. Lesgaft, St. Petersburg, Russia
4 Department of Wrestling, National State University of Physical Culture, Sports and Health named after P. F. Lesgaft, St. Petersburg, Russia
* Correspondence Vladimir PYZH, prospect Engelsa, 129/1-302, Sankt-Petersburg,190 000, Russia
E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract: The article examines, in relation to the data of modern science and current geopolitical trends, the key ideas of the founders of Eurasianism, analyzes the transformation of the ideology of Eurasianism in the modern ideological and political space of Russia. The authors pay attention to the concepts of "neo-Eurasianism" and attempts to revive Eurasian ideas and supplement them with new original views. Eurasianism, being one of the largest and most significant philosophical, political and ideological projects of the XX century, as well as neo-Judaism, which became its logical continuation, attracted the attention of a large number of both supporters and opponents.
Keywords: Eurasianism, Russia, neo-Eurasianis, features of Russian Eurasianism, paradigm, characteristics of the main social-philosophical and political views of representatives of Russian Eurasianism.
Introduction
The term "Eurasia" was coined by the German geographer Alexander Humboldt. With this term, the scientist designated them the entire territory of the Old World: Europe and Asia. Introduced into the Russian language by the geographer V. I. Lamansky. In 1913 V. I. Vernadsky, after studying the history of Muscovite Rus and studying the role of the Mongol conquest in the history of Rus, Vernadsky made a conclusion that coincides with the main provisions of the future Eur-asianism.
Eurasianism is initially an ideological and ideological, then also a socio-political movement that arose among the Russian emigration of the 1920-1930s, for which the historiosophical and cultural concept of Russia-Eurasia as an original
civilization that united elements of the East and West, an independent geographical and a historical world located between Europe and Asia, but different from both in geopolitical and cultural aspects. At the origins of the Eurasian doctrine were talented scientists: philologist E. S. Tru-betskoy, musicologist and publicist E. Il. Suv-chinsky, geographer and economist E. E. Savit-sky, religious writer V. E. Ilyin, lawyer E. E. Alekseev, historians G. V. Vernadsky, L. E. Kar-savin and M. M. Shakhmatov (Plebanek, 2017).
The philosophical basis of Eurasianism is still insufficiently studied. Researchers, as a rule, identify the philosophy of Eurasianism with the concept of L.P. Karsavin, who joined the Eurasian movement in 1925. At the same time, they ignore the fact that Karsavin, by that time, was already an established philosopher and had his
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own original philosophical system, which he only cosmetically adapted to Eurasianism, which arose in 1921 independently of Karsavin. The founders of Eurasianism - P. N. Savitsky and N. S. Trubetskoy, repeatedly admitted in their correspondence that Karsavin's philosophy was deeply alien to them and that he was taken into the movement, not as an "official philosopher of Eurasianism", but only as a "specialist" (that is, a narrow specialist).
Eurasianism in the 1920s and 1930s had its own philosophical basis, different from the Karsavin pantheistic philosophy. In the late 1920s - early 1930s, this philosophical core of Eurasianism was expressed in a number of works by the founders (first of all, in the works of P. N. Savitsky, which he published under the pseudonym P. V. Logovikov). However, these ideas were latently present in the early works of P. N. Savitsky and N.S. Trubetskoy (starting with "Europe and Humanity" by N. S. Trubetskoy). This core is an original concept of structuralism, unlike the Western, although anticipating it in certain aspects.
The key ideas of Eurasianism have been reflected in the work "Exodus to the East". The preface provides a description of the global catastrophe, which was most clearly manifested in the spiritual death of the West and the destruction of former Russia. The authors believed that one could get out of this catastrophe only by turning to the East, where the creative forces and the ability to set a new impetus for cultural development are still preserved. At the same time, in the preface, the concept of Eurasians is given, by which they mean Russian people, who cannot be attributed to either Europeans or Asians.
A. G. Dugin (2021) believes that Eurasianism at the level of political theory has united the basic elements of political philosophy. In his opinion, the original language of Eurasianism makes it possible to study Russian politics within the framework of special terminology, which is developed based on the analysis of the civilization-al and cultural-historical features of Russia.
The main source that allows us to reveal the specifics of the sociocultural philosophy of Eurasianism is the work of the Eurasians themselves, as well as materials from archival funds. In addition to monographic works and collections of articles, the Eurasians published thematic collections: "On the Ways. Affirmation of the Eura-
sians" (Berlin, 1922); "Eurasian Chronicle" (Edited by P. N. Savitsky, Prague, 1925-1926; Paris, 1926-1928); "Eurasian Times" (Berlin, Paris, 1923-1927); "Eurasian" (Brussels, 1929-1934); "Eurasian Notebooks" (Paris, 1934-1936). In 1928-1929, the weekly newspaper "Eurasia" was published in France. Eurasianism was ideologically heterogeneous, in connection with which the composition of the movement's participants changed frequently. The publications of the Eur-asianists were accompanied by heated discussions in the intellectual environment of Russian emigration. In the 2000s, a new stage in the comprehension of the history of Eurasianism development appears. The revival of interest in Eurasianism that arose in the 1920s in the intellectual circles of the post-October diaspora was due to the gigantic changes at the end of the 20th century - the collapse of the USSR, the end of the bipolar world, and a situation of geopolitical instability. Comprehension of the Eurasian heritage is still an urgent scientific problem and has an important theoretical, methodological and applied significance.
Methodological Framework
The very term "Eurasianism", proposed by P. N. Savitsky, caused controversy among the founders of the movement. Thus, G. B. Florovsky argued that this name obscures the Orthodox essence of Russian culture. At the same time, he recognized the name as "striking, defiant, and therefore suitable for propaganda purposes".
The Eurasian worldview is an illustrative example of how the Political is expressed in practice - through understanding the historical roots and developing projects for the future, through the application of historical and spatial paradigms, through the positioning of one's own country, power, culture in the context of other countries, powers and cultures. The Eurasians left a great literary heritage, which in recent years has found an increasing number of readers.
The problem of the possibility of implementing a Eurasian project today is interpreted in different ways in the modern research literature. In recent years, scientific and other periodicals have published a significant number of articles related to increased attention to Eurasian topics (see Dugin, 2001; Rjabotazev, 2019, etc.).
The authors used a descriptive and historical analysis of the theories of Eurasianism as a methodological base. The research methodology is to refer to a huge array of texts on the problems of Eurasianism, which have been studied to date with varying degrees of completeness (Eurasia: Historical views of emigrants, 1992).
Eurasians saw the originality of Russia not only in its unique culture but also referred to its special geographical position.
The theoretical significance of this study lies in understanding the experience of the Eurasian movement, elucidating its role in the intellectual culture of the Russian diaspora in the first half of the twentieth century, as well as in identifying the ideological core of the cultural philosophy of Eurasianism.
The main conclusions of the study are the analysis and assessment of the main ideas of Eurasianism and neo-Eurasianism, placed in the modern context of Russian socio-philosophical thought.
The Problem and the Ways of Its Solution
Eurasianism as a worldview is of certain interest to us today since it has generalized many key concepts for the philosophy of politics. The roots of the Eurasian worldview go deep into history. The closest to our time and, apparently, deeper and more consistently, his main ideas were formulated already in the nineteenth century by K. Leontiev and N. Danilevsky. But the classical period of the Eurasian concept coincides with the 1920s. Eurasianism contrasted the European concept of history as a duel between the West and the East with the model of "periphery and centre in their dynamic interaction".
A hundred years have passed since the publication of the collection, which marked the beginning of the Eurasian project1, which, after the collapse of the Soviet empire (understood by the classical Eurasians as another incarnation of the Eurasian project), received a new life in a truncated form. Stripped down not even in quantita-
1 In 1920, Prince Nikolai Trubetskoy's book "Europe and Humanity" (Sofia, 1920) was published, which laid the foundation for Eurasianism as an ideological post-revolutionary trend. Eurasianism is a set of thoughts, ideas, a socio-political trend that arose among the Russian emigration in the 1920s.
tive terms - these are only five of the former republics of the USSR, but structurally.
The concept of the classical Eurasians presupposed a single state and, most importantly, a single ideological core in the form of Orthodoxy, and the modern version of the Eurasian community is limited only by the Single Economic Space (CES). And there is reason to think that in the political space, the Eurasian idea is used rather as a cover for hegemonic aspirations: modern Eurasianism exists in at least two versions -the Slavic-Orthodox version and the Pan-Turkist version (N. Nazarbayev).
Although claims to the political hegemony of various civilizational forces do not exclude their Eurasian nature: any geopolitical concept is a question of hegemony and control. In classical Eurasianism, the alternation of forest (Slavic -Kievan Rus) and steppe (Iranian - Scythian-Sarmatian, Turkic - Mongol Empire) components was one of the central ideas (G. V. Vernad-sky). Why not consider that the cyclical nature of the Eurasian dynamics will logically lead at the present stage to the Turkic core of the Eurasian communities? The answer to this question can be given not by an ideologeme but by a scientifically grounded concept.
The history of the Eurasian movement is well described and well known, but the philosophical aspects of Eurasianism are less well known. Over the past hundred years, serious changes have occurred in science, and there is an opportunity to consider this concept based on new approaches, including the entire methodological arsenal of modern socio-humanitarian knowledge.
As the founders of Eurasianism themselves admitted, the ideological source of their movement was the Slavophiles and, specifically, N. Ya. Danilevsky. Danilevsky, who opposed the linear approach to world history, set the task to substantiate not only the self-sufficiency and independence of the Slavic cultural type but also the exclusiveness and progressive role in the history of Russia. In his famous book, he directly declares the exceptional character of the Slavic-Orthodox civilization, pointing out that only it is a four-basic cultural type that combines the achievements of all civilizations that existed before that time.
In this sense, it is believed that Danilevsky offered a fundamentally new view of the historical
process, but when they write that he made a revolution in science, having formulated the principle of the civilizational approach in historical knowledge, some merit is attributed to him. Without belittling the importance of his work, it should be recognized that Danilevsky was the first to create a well-founded concept of civilizations. His works were known in Russia, but not so widely, and even in Russia, they were not supported by the majority of the scientific community, having not only Westernizers' serious opponents. It was O. Spengler who made a real revolution in historical methodology, and this was recognized by the Eurasians. Much later (in 1921), P. Savitsky wrote: "We are ashamed of the Russian people who have to learn about the existence of Russian culture from the German Spengler" (Savitsky, 1997, p. 41).
It is after the "Decline of Europe" that the boom of civilizational studies begins. Danilev-sky, despite the fact that he rebelled against the linear concept of history, did not deviate much from Eurocentrism: the pathos of "Russia and Europe" consists in changing the model 'West -the bright future of humanity" to the model "Russia - the bright future of humanity". The mood of Russian intellectuals of that time is understandable. Social outsiderism always gives rise to the desire to look at the situation exactly the opposite. It is this desire that can be seen in the famous article by V. Solovyov, "Three Forces" (Soloviev, 1990, pp. 41-60), written a few years later (1877) in Danilevsky's book "Russia and Europe" (1868).
Both Soloviev and Danilevsky seem to be obsessed with one thought - to show that the vector of history is opposite to the generally accepted one, that the progressiveness of the West is illusory, that it is Russia that is ahead on the path of progress and the metaphysical goal of mankind. The opposition of the West and the East (two antagonistic forces) and the ideal harmony of the Slavs (the third force) in Solovyov's concept are based on metaphysical content, and he also puts Russia in the position of the highest stage of social progress.
The predecessors of the Eurasianists tried to develop a concept of social life in which the place of Russia in the historical process would not only have greater significance but would have, in value terms, the status of the pinnacle of progress.
Danilevsky, in his theory, where each cultural-historical type is assigned the role of the all-round and complete development of one of four types of cultural activity (some civilizations are two-core, that is, they are successful in two directions of progress at once), Russia endows Russia with a special property - it alone can be successful in all types of creativity: "the Slavic cultural-historical type for the first time will present the synthesis of all aspects of cultural activity in the broad sense of the word, the sides that were developed by its predecessors in the historical field separately or in an incomplete combination. We can hope that the Slavic type will be the first complete four-basic cultural-historical type. A particularly original feature of it should be, for the first time, a satisfactory solution to the socioeconomic problem to be realized (Danilevsky, 1995, p. 430). An allusion involuntarily comes to mind: each civilization is unique, but some are more unique than others.
Soloviev was also obsessed with the idea of the super value of the Slavic cultural type, refusing any positive content to other civilizations. From the very beginning, he declares that "Both of these forces have a negative, exclusive character: the first excludes a free plurality of private forms and personal elements, free movement, progress; the solidarity of the whole. If only these two forces governed the history of mankind, then there would be nothing in it except enmity and struggle, and there would be no positive content; as a result, history would be only a mechanical movement, determined by two opposite forces and going along their diagonal" (Soloviev, 1990, p. 42).
The first power means the East, and the second power means the West. What will give a positive meaning to human history? Of course, the third force "which gives positive content to the first two, frees them from their exclusivity, reconciles the unity of the higher principle with the free multiplicity of private forms and elements, thus creates the integrity of the common human organism and gives it a quiet inner life... And these properties, undoubtedly, belong to the tribal character of the Slavs, especially the national character of the Russian people" (Solo-viev, 1990, p. 54). Isn't it very similar to another ideology that proclaimed the idea of the exclusivity of a certain nation?
Both significant works were written at a time
when the linear view of historical dynamics, given by the Hegelian scheme, was recognized as the only scientific methodology. Slavophiles make an attempt to overcome the one-liner in the vision of history, but, like the European scientific community of that time, they are still in the shackles of the classical paradigm of science, in which the historical process flows in one direction (as in physical reality, in social being, all processes are unidirectional) and therefore there is an end goal of the process. In an attempt to deny the obvious - that the West is the leader of social progress (and the concept of social progress certainly includes a high level of technical support for society, as well as the effectiveness of political and legal institutions and everything that we now call a high standard of living), that Russia is lagging behind from the West, both technologically and in achieving social justice (which ultimately led to an unprecedented social explosion), that the abolition of serfdom only further exacerbated all the problems, the Slavophiles did not create a new methodology that would cover the entire volume of sociocultural dynamics, they just changed the vector from plus to minus.
Their attempt to give a different interpretation of the place of Russia in the historical process boiled down to the fact that instead of a "dull", as Spengler later wrote, a linear picture of history, where societies are built one after another, in this picture the whole world was divided into opposition parts, antagonistic to each other, but the future is attributed to only one of the social systems.
A monochrome picture of reality and reduction of complexity to an antinomic opposition is useful only at the very initial stage of mastering a new subject field but can never become the basis for a workable theory. These concepts (in their similarities and differences) are not saved either by the fact that Solovyov has a third actor in world history (as if there is no New World at all or the diversity of the Old World), while Dani-levsky has thirteen of them.2
2 Often in serious scientific works, and even in textbooks, they write that Danilevsky singled out ten civilizations, sometimes without even mentioning that he was writing about two more that ended their existence with violent death. In this context, the "conscientiousness" of our scientific community, which did not notice the main idea of Danilevsky, amazes me: Russia is an independ-
For Solovyov, the rest of the world is reduced to East and West, and Danilevsky, in order not to solve methodological problems that are not included in the purpose of his research (to prove that Russia is a higher civilization), simply refuses many peoples to an independent place in history. In the First Law of Historical Development, which he deduced, he directly indicates that the cultural-historical type is created by an independent tribe "if it is generally capable of historical development in terms of its spiritual inclinations" (Danilevsky, 1995, p. 77).
We are by no means inclined to accuse Dani-levsky of racism, but in his concept, all ethnic groups are clearly divided into three groups in their relation to progress (as he writes, "according to their role in the historical process"): peoples constituting a cultural-historical type; peoples that give "a flourishing variety of cultural and historical type" and are not able to create their own civilization and "scourges of God" -the destroyer peoples, whose role is to make room for new civilizations (among which, by the way, he counts, in addition to the Huns, Mongols and whose Turks, both those and others, the Eurasians considered full members of the Eurasian community) (Danilevsky, 1995, p. 75). And even more concretely: "there are peoples, just like individuals, who deserve (in relation to themselves and to neighbouring peoples) imprisonment, which has always been used for evil" (Dani-levsky, 1995, p. 189). Like this! Almost the original ethnic sin.
Undoubtedly, Danilevsky tried to give a more polychrome picture of social reality, which brings his concept closer to the methodological platform, which is now commonly called the non-classical paradigm of science. But it is also undoubted that the Slavophiles as a whole, like the authors of these works, were concerned not with the development of a general methodology of social knowledge adequate to the real historical process but with the ideological substantiation of the exclusive mission of the Slavs. Therefore, Slavophile ideas played their role to a greater extent in ideology, giving a positive impetus to national self-awareness, although the significance of their ideas in science cannot be denied either, since this polemic contributed to
ent civilization! So, there are 13 (thirteen), not 10, and not 12.
the development of scientific thought.
But it is absolutely certain that an inadequate methodological apparatus can contribute to the further development of thought, but it cannot answer pressing questions and, moreover, cannot serve as a basis for solving applied questions. Therefore, Slavophilism remains in vogue in the political and ideological discourse but is not included in the arsenal of scientific methodology on the basis of which real politics can be built (or substantiated). "Love" for a certain ethnic group (in a sense, the idea of the exclusivity of a certain group) cannot serve as a basis for scientific research since a general theory cannot be built on an exception.
The lack of development of the theoretical and methodological apparatus meant that existing concepts were inapplicable to explain the historical process and, most importantly, to form modernization programs and to form responses to environmental challenges. It is not surprising that, with all the reverence for older comrades, the next generation of Russian intellectuals retained the main idea - the independence of Russia as an actor in the historical process, but made significant adjustments.
First, the pathos of the metaphysical utterance has decreased: Slavism was no longer conceived either as the goal of history (Soloviev, 1990) or as another, but still the leader of socio-cultural progress (Danilevsky, 1995), and now we are not talking about the "higher task" (Soloviev, 1990) of Slavism, but only about independent, diferent from Europe and the East way of life and attitude.
At the same time, the Eurasians do not set themselves the task of giving a general theory of the historical process, but only the limited task of explaining the geopolitical processes in the Eurasian space in the broad sense of the word - on the continent, without pretending to be a general historical theory. And even now, it was not about the Slavs in general, as a single ethnocultural group.
In the writings of the Eurasian founders, even in the name of the sociocultural system, the emphasis is shifted to Russia - Russia-Eurasia, excluding the Slavic brothers. Although the Eurasians declared the Slavic-Turkic unity to be the ethnic basis of this geopolitical system, the works of the classics stipulate that it is precisely the Russian cultural component that is meant.
Savitsky even emphasizes: "We must realize the fact: we are not Slavs or Turanians (although there are both among our biological ancestors), but Russians" (Savitsky, 1997, p. 39). Secondly, the Eurasianists began to look for a basis for explaining the historical process not in metaphysical "force" but in the natural conditions of the formation of socio-cultural unity, for which P. Savitsky introduced the concept of local development.
Intellectuals of the next generation - Slavophiles in exile (or in self-isolation - watching the drama in safety) have significantly shifted the emphasis in comparison with their spiritual teacher - Danilevsky. First, Russian civilization3 is no longer imposing itself on the teacher of humanity. The 1932 Declaration of Eurasianism directly states that "the Eurasians recognize the rest of the world and its divisions into various cultural spheres of the right to independent development and original creativity" (Eurasianism. Declaration. Formulation. Theses, 1932), and more to the issues of universal human civilization and the most important tasks of world history, the Eurasians do not address, fully focusing on the local goals of the Eurasian space.
Secondly, the Eurasians abandoned the idea of Pan-Slavism, emphasizing a new interpretation of the essence of Russian civilization with a different name: Russia-Eurasia. Danilevsky uses the concept of the Slavic-Orthodox cultural type, the First and Second laws of historical development (introduced in his book "Russia and Europe"), explaining the presence of other peoples in this community and the spread of the space of this community to the local development of other linguistic groups by the fact that these peoples are not capable of creating an independent cultural type, but intended to "serve other people's goals as ethnographic material" (Danilevsky, 1995, p. 75).
He believes that the European Slavs are forcibly torn away from their cultural and historical type and, therefore, cannot realize their creative and historical potential. The Eurasians, on the contrary, pointed to the Slavic-Turkic character of the ethnic core of the community and, in the
3 In their declarative documents, the Eurasians do not use the concept of civilization - by that time it had not yet consolidated its status as a fundamental, methodological category. In its 1932 Declaration, the concept of a cultural personality is used, which will be discussed below.
name, emphasized the continuity of the Russian Empire to the Mongol state, considering it an organic and natural spread of the Russian state to the east and the inclusion of the steppe Turkic peoples in it.
P. Savitsky, paying tribute to his predecessors, nevertheless sharply dissociates himself from the Slavophiles: "While sweeping aside the crafty attempts of the Westernizing spirit that infected the Slavophiles, to dissolve the problem of Eurasian-Russian culture in the vague doctrine of tribal kinship, we polemically emphasize the" Turanian elements "and pseudoscientific mechanical approach to the issue, we put forward the unity and harmony, the integrity of culture, its personal quality" (Savitsky, 1997, p. 41). N. Trubetskoy (1992) puts Pan-Germanism and Pan-Slavism on the same level, emphasizing that these are linguistic concepts (p. 329), and even asserts that "the border of the "east" and "west" sometimes passes precisely between the Russians and the Slavs, and sometimes the southern Slavs converge with the Russians, not because they are both Slavs, but because they both experienced a strong Turkic influence" (Trubetskoy, 1992, p. 340).
Thirdly, the Eurasians, despite their harsh criticism of materialism, in their theoretical constructions, based the concept on a completely natural factor - geography and history, which determine the economy, life and management institutions, and everything that we call culture. The concept of the Slavophiles rests on more shaky ground. Danilevsky (1995) introduced the concept of the foundation of a cultural type, by which he understands the inclination and ability to one of the four types of cultural creativity (p. 400).
First, this propensity at the population level is difficult to verify. Secondly, his analysis of the Slavic cultural type, as the only "four-basic" in history, that is, the only one with all cultural "perfections", does not stand up to criticism from the standpoint of ideology and morality - the principle of intrinsic value of all races and ethnic groups, nor from the position of scientific methodology - the principle of objectivity.
Even everyday logic suggests that if the Slavs had the ability to organize human life in all the main activities (identified by Danilevsky), for example, in the political and legal sphere, they could arrange their social institutions in a more
efficient way, preventing cataclysms of a universal scale.
The Eurasian position regarding the justification of the type and boundaries of civilization is also not free from criticism, but both Savitsky and Trubetskoy tried to rely on the scientific apparatus of that time. In a sense, it was easier for them - they were not the first who tried to get out of the mainstream of the linear version of world history with its teleologism, and they already had the opportunity to get acquainted with the emerging approaches in socio-humanitarian knowledge, which later received the name of the non-classical paradigm.
Already by that time, a new version of the civilizational concept of history had been published - O. Spengler's book 'The Decline of Europe" (1918, 1922), after which civilizational studies began. A whole area of research has already been formed - geopolitics, and the main works of Ratzel, Kjellen, and Haushoffer have been published; back in 1889, L. Mechnikov's book "Civilizations and Great Historical Rivers" was published (Russian translation in 1898). The Eurasianists did not fully include the scientific apparatus developed by that time in their concept, but the influence of these authors on Savit-sky's work is undeniable. Trubetskoy approached the problem of the origin of a cultural type as a linguist, adding to Eurasianism the argument of linguistic kinship, but he also assigns a decisive role in the formation of Eurasian civilization to geographical space.
The geographical factor as a culture-forming factor appears in the Eurasian concept in two aspects. The most important role is played by the organization of space: Eurasians see three independent, local spaces in the Eurasian continent: "1) the middle continent or Eurasia proper and two peripheral worlds; 2) Asian (China, India, Iran) and 3) European" (Savitsky, 1997, p. 41).
They leave without comment that the Asian world is also divided into independent spaces, uniting completely dissimilar worlds - in modern science, the Indian world is distinguished as a subcontinent and civilization, and Southeast Asia is also independent. They do not pay attention to the fact that the Arab-Muslim world is also independent in relation to both India and China, it seems to not exist for them, but the Hellenic world and Byzantium are considered the predecessors of Eurasian Russia.
The Eurasianists consider the latitudinal extent of the steppe to be a structure-forming factor - the fact that nothing prevents the movement of peoples (and communications in general) in a latitudinal direction, unlike mountain and sea barriers that delimit the European and Asian worlds (in their interpretation), which determined the formation of Eurasian empires in antiquity and the Russian Empire in modern times. The largest rivers of the continent, crossing these spaces, may be rightly interpreted by Eurasians as not being natural boundaries since in the northern hemisphere, the rivers flow to the north and become the most full-flowing in latitudes sparsely populated and practically not used in economic activity.
The second aspect of the geographical factor is the environment as a source of existence. The Eurasianists proceed from the fact that natural conditions dictate the type of economic activity and, in the case of the Eurasian civilization, complimentary ties. An important idea of the Eurasians is the complementary nature of the forest and the steppe, the city and the nomad.
The Eurasianists, proceeding from these circumstances, see the natural character and advancement of the Russians to the natural limits of the "continent of Eurasia"4 and the natural character of the combination of Slavic and Turanian elements in one state. True, the Slavic element is narrowed by the Eurasians to Eastern Slavs, and the Turanian element is expanded to the entire Altaic language family, the relationship with which the Turkic languages are discussed in modern linguistics (Gadzhieva, 1990, pp. 527529).
It is the linguistic factor that is debatable here since, in history, there have been, and there are ethnic communities that adopted a foreign language but retained their culture (for example, the Hungarians are Slavs in phenotype, genotype and culture, but Finno-Ugrians in language; the newcomer Ugrians completely disappeared in the Slavic ethnos). But the complementary nature of economic activity can indeed serve as a unifying factor.
The Eurasian concept of the Russian cultural type lies in line with geographical determinism (and the fact that one of the central principles of
4 This name was given by the compilers of the collection of works by P. N. Savitsky publishing house Agraf and direct compiler A. G. Dugin.
the Declaration of Eurasianism is ideocracy does not negate this fact) and, in fact, is an objection to N. Ya. Danilevsky. It is generally believed that the Eurasians opposed universalism in social knowledge and a linear vision of history, but this is only partly true.
Recognizing the contribution of the Slavophils to the self-knowledge of the Russian cultural type, P. N. Savitsky (1997) wrote: "The vague cultural self-awareness that the Slavophils had is no longer enough for us, although we honour them as those closest to us in spirit" (p. 40). Even at the beginning of the twentieth century, it was no longer possible either to adhere, as Spengler wrote, to the "boring" one-linear vision of history, or to develop the doctrine of the Slavophiles, contradictory in its methodological basis, who tried to go beyond the limits of classical universalism. But neither the Slavophiles nor the Eurasians were able to overcome the historical teleologism.
In fact, Slavophilism did not fundamentally differ from the Eurocentric version of history since it also implied a "higher type of culture", only refusing to claim this stage to Europe and the East. But the Eurasians also saw a linear historical process, at least for the Continent of Eurasia, not allowing deviations from the path prescribed by geography and Orthodoxy, interpreting all cultural transformations, in addition to the cycles of Turanism and Slavism, as a perversion of cultural identity.
The Eurasianists generally left aside the discussion of methodology and did not set themselves the task of constructing a theory of civilizations. They set themselves the specific task of developing a transcontinental project for Russia, far beyond the borders of the Slavs, stretching from ocean to ocean. The success of any large-scale association always requires an ideological justification (Branskij, Oganyan, & Oganyan, 2018, pp. 57-73).
To justify the Roman Empire, Pax Romana was invented; for Great Britain, the Anglo-Saxons came up with the "White Man's mission", and the Eurasians came up with Eurasia. Moreover, ideology occupies a more prominent place in the concept of Eurasianism than the material factor of space.
In the Declaration of Eurasianism of 1932, the first six paragraphs are devoted to substantiating the ideocratic essence of the Eurasian state. The
Eurasianists did not create a social theory (apparently, they were close to Danilevsky's (1995) thesis that "social phenomena are not subject to any special kind of forces. Therefore, they are not controlled by any special kind of laws... Theoretical politics or economy are just as impossible as theoretical physiology or anatomy") (p. 134). They only set the task of "organizing the life of a special world of Russia-Eurasia" (Eura-sianism. Declaration. Formulation. Theses, 1932), while sharply ignoring the ideology of the Turkic world. Recognizing the many achievements of the Bolsheviks in building the state and maintaining the former borders of the empire (which, apparently, was the most important thing in the Eurasian ideology), the Eurasianists rejected the communist ideology, which just managed to solder the entire diverse "Eurasian" world due to the fact that it was supranational. Orthodoxy does not possess such a property precisely in the conditions of Eurasia: for this space, Orthodoxy is firmly connected with the Slavs, and by that time, it had acquired a Slavic flavour. Whereas in the space of the origin of the European world in the Eastern Mediterranean, Christianity had a supranational character (Branskij, Oganyan, & Oganyan, 2018, pp. 57-73; Oganyan & Ogo-rodnikov, 2020, pp. 56-69, 2019, pp. 30-39).
The revival of interest in Eurasianism stems from the situation associated with the collapse of the USSR, as a result of which Russia's relations with the former Soviet republics, where the Islamic population predominates, have gained particular importance. The Eurasian discourse acquired a new impetus against the background of the same geopolitical events that classical Eurasians comprehended: Russia, in the 90s of the last century, again left those spaces that were already used to be considered Russian territories.
It should be noted that it was the dominance of the Slavic state that was the fundamental provision in the Declaration of the Classical Eurasians. This follows from: a) the theocratic nature of the state based on Orthodoxy and b) from the symbolic name - Russia-Eurasia, which emphasizes the structure-forming core of civilization.
At the same time, one of the prominent Eurasians of the classical generation, G. V. Vernad-sky, pointed to the cyclic nature of the civiliza-tional process in the Eurasian space. And if the basic position of the Eurasians is true, that the civilizational specificity, the "cultural personali-
ty", in the words of the Eurasians, is formed under the influence of a material factor - the complementarity of the forest and the steppe, then the ethnic-confessional colouring of the Eurasian discourse should be abandoned.
In this context, it is absolutely not necessary: a) that the Eurasian state should be Orthodox, and b) the institutionalization of the Eurasian community must necessarily be based on the dominance of Russia. This may well be a 'Turanian" component. In the Turkic world, too, there are contenders for collecting lands who also have experience in an ideocratic and imperial state.
Conclusion
The philosophy of the Eurasianists turned out to be quite viable and was reflected in the regional policy of the states of the post-Soviet space. It turned out to be able to explain the features of the geographical, geopolitical and cultural-civiliza-tional development of the region. The appeal to Eurasianism as an original scientific direction in the Russian emigration is caused not only by the search for solutions to pressing geopolitical, political, social and scientific and methodological problems but also by the desire to fill the incompleteness of our knowledge about the past of Russian culture, namely about the culture of Russian abroad.
Eurasianism, has emerged as an ideological, spiritual trend in the early 1920s, was transformed into an ideological and political movement. The peculiarity of the Eurasian approach to the study of the history of Russia lies in the assertion by the Eurasians of the synthetic nature of Russian culture, which combines the traditions of Eastern and Western cultures. In this context, Russia is seen as a Eurasian civilization, which, on the one hand, is a certain cultural and historical integrity. On the other hand, it appears as a historical alignment of two cultural streams - European and Asian.
However, modern Eurasianism is splitting precisely over the attitude towards the ethnic core of the Eurasian community. N. Nazarbayev, who opened a new page of Eurasianism with his famous speech at Moscow State University (March 28, 1994), quite naturally (as did the Slavophiles in their time, who also did not want to see an older brother in the face of Europeans)
is currently oriented towards the Turkic union (Kumranov, 2021), as, firstly, closer in ideology (Islamic), and secondly, with no less reason (and maybe with more) claiming a Eurasian essence.
In the end, it is the eastern Mediterranean, and not the steppe itself, that has a bi-ecumenical character (the concept of bi-ecumen was proposed by the Russian author G. Pomeranc (2017) and became a deposit of two types of civilizations. Apparently, the question of what is the future of the Eurasian project needs to be considered on a different plane: is the Eurasian concept a special case of socio-cultural dynamics and is explainable in line with scientific methodology, or is it a political and ideological project, the viability of which depends on the number of people who believe in it?
In our opinion, the diverse views of the majority of neo-Eurasians are mainly speculative and general philosophical in nature. They have nothing to do with understanding the current socio-economic and political situation in the postSoviet space. The implementation of the ideas of Eurasianism in the modern political space of Russia in one form or another is exploited by numerous politicians and parties representing the entire spectrum of Russia's political life.
History shows that artificially created narratives and superimposed constructs are rarely viable. The President of the Russian Federation, V. V. Putin, at a meeting of the Valdai Club back in 2013. He said that identity, the national idea, cannot be imposed from above and cannot be built on the basis of an ideological monopoly. Such a construction is unstable and very vulnerable; it has no future in the modern world. There is a need for historical creativity, a synthesis of the best national experience and ideas, and an understanding of our cultural, spiritual, and political traditions from different points of view. Then our identity will be based on a solid foundation (Meeting of "Valdai" international discussion club, 2013).
Civilizational relations between Russia and its neighbours have a centuries-old complex history; in the modern world, the trend towards the creation of a Eurasian Union based on the ideas of Eurasianism is regarded as one of the most productive in the concept of foreign policy, which is evidence of Russia's readiness for a full-fledged and productive inter-civilizational dialogue.
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