II. IDEAS OF WAR Maximalism determines the spiritual pace of development? wartime ideas; it is necessary to dwell on their content in order to more closely comprehend both the relationship of the parties and the destructive consequences of their collision. About one of these

III. WORLD IDEAS 1. THE MILITARY SITUATION WORLD The world ends the war, puts before the destruction, but - the destruction of the armed, physical. Mir vm? St? with t? m close? dancing the triumph of the victors in the wars? tendencies; and if these tendencies are by themselves? were destructive, it

The Eurasian movement was born in Sofia in 1921, when four young Russian emigrants - economist P.N. Savitsky, art critic P.P. Suvchinsky, philosopher G.D. Florovsky, who was ordained a priest, linguist and ethnographer N.S. Trubetskoy, published a collection of articles "Exodus to the East", which became a kind of manifesto of the movement, claiming a fundamentally new view of Russian and world history.

In 1922 the second book “On the tracks. Confirmation of the Eurasians ”, followed by three annual editions under the general title“ Eurasian Vremennik ”. In 1926, the Eurasians issued a systematic presentation of their concept of "Eurasianism", the main provisions of which in a concise and declarative form were promulgated in 1927 in the book "Eurasianism. Formulation 1927 " In 1931, the collection "The Thirties" was published in Paris, which summed up the ten-year activity of the movement. It should be noted that from 1925 to 1937 12 issues of the "Eurasian Chronicle" were published.

These works drew attention to themselves with a non-traditional analysis of problems traditional for Russia. Unlike the Slavophiles, Danilevsky, Leontyev and others, who pinned their hopes on an autocratic state, the Eurasians proceeded from the recognition of the fact that old Russia had collapsed and became part of history. In their opinion, the First World War and the Russian Revolution opened a qualitatively new era in the history of the country, characterized not only by the collapse of Russia, but also by an all-embracing crisis of the West, which had completely exhausted its potentials, which became the beginning of its decomposition. There is neither the past in the person of Russia, nor the present in the person of the West, and the task of Russia is to lead humanity to the shining heights of a bright future.

With its eschatological approach, Eurasianism in methodological terms did not differ much from the leading ideological and political trends of that time - fascism and Bolshevism. It is no coincidence that the views of the Eurasians in a number of aspects were close to the positions of National Bolshevism, which gained some popularity at that time, synthesizing some of the most important postulates of both fascism and Bolshevism.

It is no coincidence that the majority of Eurasians positively accepted the actions of the Bolsheviks to preserve and strengthen the territorial unity of Russia. In their firm conviction, the Russian revolution is a symbol not only of the end of the old, but also of the birth of a new Russia. So, N.S. Trubetskoy in 1922 admitted that the Soviet government and the Communist International would be able to launch a European revolution, which would be only a variant of Russian expansion, and saw the inevitable consequence of such expansion to nurture and support the "well-being of exemplary" communist states in Europe "with the sweat and blood of the Russian worker and peasant." ... Moreover, the success of the Soviet leadership in this matter was assessed as a victory of the Eurasian idea, believing that the communists are consistently realizing the age-old imperial aspirations of Russia. One of the leaders of the Eurasianists L. Karsavin insistently emphasized: "Communists ... are unconscious instruments and active carriers of the cunning Spirit of History ... and what they do is necessary and important."

The Eurasianists assigned a special place to the spiritual, primarily religious aspects. Their constructions clearly show the desire to link Russian nationalism with space. As Savitsky emphasized in his book "Geographical Overview of Russia-Eurasia", "the socio-political environment and its territory should merge for us into a single whole, into a geographic individual or landscape." Therefore, it is not surprising that their very concept of "Eurasia" was intended to denote not just a continent or a part of it in a purely geographical sense, but a kind of civilizational and cultural integrity built on the basis of a synthesis of spatial and sociocultural principles. According to this construction, Russia was considered in terms of coordinates, conventionally designated as East and West.

The essence of the Eurasian idea was that Russia, occupying the middle space of Asia and Europe, lying at the junction of two worlds - eastern and western, represents a special socio-cultural world that combines both principles. Justifying their "middle" position, the Eurasians wrote: "The culture of Russia is neither a European culture, nor one of the Asian, nor a sum or mechanical combination of elements of both ... It must be opposed to the cultures of Europe and Asia as the middle Eurasian culture." Therefore, Savitsky argued in his article "Geographical and Geopolitical Foundations of Eurasianism" (1933), "Russia has much more reason than China to be called the" Middle State ". In his opinion, this is an independent, self-sufficient and special spiritual and historical geopolitical reality, which owns its own original culture, "equally different from European and Asian."

Unlike those Slavophiles who affirmed the ideas and values \u200b\u200bof Pan-Slavism, the Eurasians, following Leontyev, focused on the Asian, especially the Turanian, component of this world, considering Russia the successor of the empire of Genghis Khan. As Trubetskoy wrote, for example, “the national substratum of the state that was previously called The Russian Empire, and now it is called the USSR, there can only be the entire totality of the peoples inhabiting this state, considered as a special multinational nation and as such having its own nationalism. "

This position was formulated even more clearly by Savitsky, in whose opinion the substratum of the Eurasian cultural and civilizational integrity is made up of Aryan-Slavic culture, Turkic nomadism, the Orthodox tradition: thanks to the Tatar-Mongol yoke, “Russia gained its geopolitical independence and retained its spiritual independence from the aggressive Romano-Germanic the world ". Moreover, “without Tatar, there would be no Russia,” he argued in his article “The Steppe and Settlement”. And one of the later Eurasianists L. Gumilev, whom V. Stupishin not without reason called a brilliant muddle of science, identified Ancient Russia with the Golden Horde, and Soviet statehood with the Slavic-Turkic superethnos invented by him.

Without rejecting a number of interesting observations made by the Eurasians, at the same time, it should be noted that their projects contained many erroneous propositions, which in modern conditions look like anachronisms. There were certain elements in the Eurasian ideology, the implementation of which would be fraught with voluntary isolation for Russia. So, in one of the manifestos of Eurasianism it was said: “Russian culture must be opposed to the cultures of Europe and Asia as a middle, Eurasian culture, we must recognize ourselves as Eurasians in order to recognize ourselves as Russians. By dropping tatar yoke, we must throw off the European yoke as well ”.

It is also impossible to accept the conviction of the Eurasians in the exclusivity and special mission of Russia in modern world... Thus, presenting Russia-Eurasia as a special cultural world headed by Russia, the authors of the manifesto emphasized that it, i.e. Russia-Eurasia "also claims this and believes that in our era it belongs to the leading and leading role in a number of human cultures." Such a belief, it was said later in the manifesto, can only be substantiated religiously, i.e. on the foundation of Orthodoxy: the exclusivity of Russian culture, its special mission are derived from Orthodoxy, which is “the highest confession of Christianity, unique in its completeness and purity. Outside of him everything is either paganism, or heresy, or schism. " Although the value of other Christian denominations was not completely denied, the condition was put forward: "while existing as Russian-Greek and predominantly Greek, Orthodoxy wants the whole world to become Orthodox from itself." Otherwise, the adherents of other religions were predicted decay and death.

It should be noted that the majority of the Russian émigré intelligentsia accepted Eurasian ideas rather coolly, if not negatively. Among the most active critics of Eurasianism were N.A. Berdyaev, I.A. Ilyin, P.N. Milyukov, F.A. Stepun, G.P. Fedotov. It seems quite natural that in 1928 the previously outlined split within the movement ended in a complete demarcation into the Parisian and Prague groups. Moreover, by the beginning of the 30s its most resolute supporters and even the founders N. Trubetskoy, G. Florovsky, G. Bitsilli, and others had moved away from Eurasianism. Florovsky's position is indicative in this regard. In an article with the characteristic title "The Temptation of Eurasianism" bitterly stated that "the fate of Eurasianism is a history of spiritual failure." According to him, the Eurasians “answered the questions posed by life with a ghostly lace of seductive dreams. Dreams are always seductive and dangerous when they are passed off and taken for reality. In Eurasian dreams, little truth is combined with great self-deception ... Eurasianism has failed. A dead end has been laid instead of a path. It doesn't lead anywhere. "

A notable evidence of the split in the Eurasian movement was the publication in Paris of the weekly newspaper "Eurasia" (published from November 1928 to September 1929), focused on ideological and political rapprochement with the Soviet regime. An active part in the publication of the newspaper was taken by L.P. Karsavin, Prince. D.P. Svyatopolk-Mirsky, P.P. Suvchinsky, S. Ya. Efron. The irony of history is that flirting with the Bolsheviks did not save the Eurasians from persecution by the Soviet authorities. So, Karsavin, Savitsky and others were convicted after the war and spent many years in the Gulag.

The origins of Eurasianism

The Eurasian idea was born among Russian intellectuals in 1920-1921. Its founders, like N. Berdyaev, did not feel intolerance towards Russian communism, but they did not accept the revolutionary practice of the Bolsheviks either. Their teaching was designed to explain the existence of Soviet Russia - a country that is economically and politically alien to the rest of the world - to determine its place and its path.

In the years when the Eurasian idea was taking shape, both the bourgeois West and the colonial East seemed unstable and historically doomed. Therefore, the Eurasians believed that it was in the USSR that there were those principles that would renew the world. They did not associate these principles with either socialism and communism, or with revolutionary violence and atheism. But it is obvious that the ideas and worldview of the Eurasians were a product of Soviet reality in the 1920s and 1930s.

Eurasianism arose and developed simultaneously both as a kind of political doctrine and as a definite historiophilosophical concept rooted in Russian Slavophilism and Westernism. Even N.M. Karamzin wrote in his "Note on Ancient and New Russia" (1811) that Russia "having raised its head between the Asian and European kingdoms, represented the features of both parts of the world ..." This phrase contains almost a complete set of Eurasian concepts ... N. Danilevsky with thoughts about Slavic civilization hostile to Europe and K. Leont'ev with the concepts of Byzantism have an indirect relationship to the Eurasian idea. The direct and immediate predecessor of the Eurasian historiosophy was the famous Slavist Lamansky, whose works of the last century are pure Eurasianism, free from the experiences of revolution and Soviet power.

An important component of Eurasianism is an attempt to rethink the past and present of Russia, a "new reading" of Russian history.

For true Eurasians, Russia is not a part of European civilization, not a part of Europe, and not a new Slavic civilization following the Romano-Germanic one. It is a symbiosis of Horde, Byzantine, some other "Eastern" principles and something Slavic-European. Russia is obviously "not Europe" and it is absurd to compare its history with the history of France or Spain.

In a short time, this trend brought together prominent representatives of the Russian émigré elite. Eurasian ideas were first published in the collection "Exodus to the East. Premonitions and accomplishments. The statement of the Eurasians", published in Sofia in 1921. The real founder of the new trend was the geographer and political thinker P.N. Savitsky. Prince N.S. also belonged to the Eurasians. Trubetskoy, philosopher L.P. Karsavin. For some time, Eurasianism was accepted by S.L. Frank and P.M. Bicilli. Supporters of Eurasianism have published several collections and periodically published the "Eurasian Chronicle".

Usually they distinguish between early Eurasianism - the Sophian stage - and later, dating from 1927-1928. Later, Eurasianism was divided into right and left currents. The Eurasians were especially active in the early 1920s. But by the mid-1920s, the conceptual and organizational decomposition of the movement began. This was largely due to the fact that his ideas were challenged and revised by one of the founders - G.V. Florovsky. He recognized the Eurasian constructions as rash, unfounded, often based simply on emotions, and in fact withdrew from the movement in 1922. Trubetskoy held out longer: he stated that Eurasianism disappeared in 1925. L. Karsavin took the post of ideological leader.

At the second stage, after 1925, political ideas began to acquire a self-sufficient character, the doctrine grew into an ideology. The center of Eurasianism moved to Paris, where, in 1928, the publication of the newspaper "Eurasia" began, in which the influence of the Bolsheviks was clearly traced. It was with this newspaper, which called for establishing contacts with the country of the Soviets, theoretically substantiating the need for the power of the Bolsheviks, that the decay and death of Eurasianism began. In 1929, both Karsavin and Trubetskoy finally broke with Eurasianism.

Eurasian program

In the ideology of Eurasianism, Prince P. Trubetskoy distinguished several components:

1) criticism of the Western and the development of their own concept of culture;

2) justification of ideals on the basis of the Orthodox faith;

3) comprehension of the geo-ethnic position of Russia and approval of its special development paths as Eurasia;

4) the doctrine of the ideocratic state.

Culture concept. The attitudes of Eurasianism, its values \u200b\u200band ideals were based both on a general philosophical and on a certain historiosophical basis. Eurasianism can be characterized as a kind of "holistic" "organic" trend in philosophy. Thus, according to L. Karsavin, the main mistake in the dominant Western European philosophy was that individualism flourishes in it and the "spirit" of communality is absent. Western philosophy focused on the individual "I", but lost sight of the existence of a super-individual spirit, the soul of the people and the state. The thinking prevailing in the West, which sees in the state, family, and social group only a "sum", "accumulation" of individual individuals, according to Karsavin, is fundamentally wrong. The people and other cultural and social structures are organisms themselves, albeit "super-individual organisms".

Karsavin opposes individualism with the thesis that, strictly speaking, the individual "I" does not exist at all. It is the individualization of the "multi-unity" of two, three or many people, or even of all mankind. "Actual reality does not exist in the form of an individual consciousness, an individual personality, as individualists think, but there is a social personality. An individual personality is nothing more than a moment of phenomenon, an individuation of a social personality." A social personality does not exist independently of individual individuals, it exists in itself as a "pure potency", and its consciousness and will are actualized only through individual individuals. It follows from this that the "social personality" does not have the same degree of reality as separate individuals - a consequence that the Russian philosopher does not see. Every human group, united by common work or through exchange, is a social person. In addition to such short social personalities, there are very durable ones - people, state, humanity. "All people think according to the same laws of logic, which have an enduring, absolute meaning, because in each person, individualizing, humanity itself thinks." Karsavin believes that his theory links universalism with individualism. Eurasian manifestos, using this idea, often speak of a "symphonic personality", a "cultural subject".

Orthodox ideals

The concept of "symphonic personality" is one of the key ones for understanding Eurasianism. It means the organic unity of diversity or such a unity of the multitude when the unity and the multitude do not exist separately from each other. "The individual in the form in which he is usually imagined - simply does not exist and is a fiction or fiction. Man is" individual "not at all because he is separated and separated from others and the whole and closed in himself, but because he is - in his own way, in a special way, specifically expresses and realizes the whole, that is, the higher super-individual consciousness and the higher super-individual will. " There are obvious echoes of the principle of conciliarity, that is, the consideration of a religious community as a living whole.

This does not mean that the individuality of the person is denied, but it means that the individual becomes a person in relation to the whole - class, estate, family, people, humanity. Each of these formations is, in fact, a symphonic conciliar personality, and in this sense there is a certain hierarchy of personalities - in terms of the measure of their conciliarity. The relationship between individuals of varying degrees of collegiality is carried out in culture, which is the objectification of the symphonic personality. But the cultural process is possible only in genetic connection with previous generations and simultaneously with existing ones. As such a complex formation, culture is going through certain stages of its development, but not within the framework of a continuous evolutionary series, but within the circle of a complete (closed) cultural cycle.

The process of the formation of culture reaches its perfection in the Church. Therefore, we can say that the Orthodox Church is both the core of Russian culture and its goal, and determines its essence. The essence of Orthodoxy is fixed by the concept of conciliarity, "universality", that is, the unity of all and the patronage of the church over the whole world, the unity of all in faith and love. And therefore the basis of culture as a symphonic personality coincides with the concept of faith. Faith is a spiritual symbol that religiously colors a culture. The Eurasians were convinced that the birth of any national culture occurs on religious grounds. Orthodoxy became such a ground for the Eurasians. It is called to perfect itself and through itself the whole world with the aim of uniting everyone in the kingdom of God. Both of these foundations, joining, and form the basis of culture. Orthodoxy allows you to synthesize various ideological currents - both within the framework of a given culture, and those outside it. In this regard, paganism can be viewed as "potential Orthodoxy," since in the course of mastering the experience of world religions, Russian and Central Asian paganism create forms of faith that are closer and more related than, for example, Orthodoxy and European Christianity. It is no accident that the Eurasians have always insisted on the proximity of Orthodoxy to Eastern religions.

This idea of \u200b\u200bthe Eurasianists concealed a contradiction noted by N. Berdyaev. Orthodoxy was proclaimed by the Eurasians as the focal point not only of Russian, but of the entire Eurasian culture. But the latter consisted (along with the Orthodox) of powerful enclaves of Buddhist, Muslim, pagan and other cultures. Faced with this empirical fact, the Eurasianists were forced to declare Orthodoxy to be a true universal religion, a true and infallible expression of Christianity. "Outside of him, everything is either paganism, or heresy, or schism." This should not be understood in the sense that Orthodoxy turns away from the Gentiles. It only wants "the whole world to become Orthodox from itself."

The Eurasians saw a serious obstacle on this path to the Ecumenical Church in various types of Christian heresy, consciously going to schism. This kind of heresy is primarily related to "Latinism" and, as a direct product of it, "education", "liberalism" and "communism".

Philosophical understanding of world history

The Eurasian concept of culture formed the basis for the development of the philosophy of history. In many ways, it has similarities with the concept of culture and history of O. Spengler. The Eurasians did not share the Hegelian and then the Marxist theory of linear progress and the atomistic understanding of society, people, and the state as a simple sum of individuals existing within the framework of these concepts. "... there can be and there is no general upward movement, there is no steady general improvement: this or that cultural environment and a number of them, improving in one and from one point of view, often falls in another and from another point of view." For the Eurasians, history is the realization of contacts between different cultural circles, as a result of which the formation of new peoples and global values \u200b\u200bis taking place. P. Savitsky, for example, sees the essence of the Eurasian doctrine in the "denial" of the absoluteness of "the newest" European "culture, its quality to be the" completion "of the entire process of the cultural evolution of the world that has taken place hitherto. It proceeds from the relativity of many, especially the "ideological" (that is, spiritual) and moral achievements and attitudes of European consciousness. Savitsky noted that if a European calls a society, people or way of life "backward", he does so not on the basis of certain criteria that do not exist, but only because they are different than his own society, people or image life. If the superiority of Western Europe in some branches of modern science and technology can be proved objectively, then such a proof in the field of "ideology" and morality would be simply impossible. On the contrary, in the spiritual and moral sphere, the West could be defeated by other, supposedly wild and backward peoples. This requires a correct assessment and subordination of the cultural achievements of peoples, which is possible only with the help of a "cultural examination divided into branches". Of course, the ancient inhabitants of Easter Island were backward compared to today's English in the field of empirical knowledge, Savitsky writes, but hardly in the field of sculpture. In many respects, Muscovite Russia appears to be more backward than Western Europe, but in the field of "artistic construction" it was more developed than most of the Western European countries of that period. In the knowledge of nature, another savage surpasses the European naturalist scientists. In other words: “The Eurasian concept marks a decisive rejection of cultural and historical“ Eurocentrism ”; a rejection arising not from any emotional experiences, but from certain scientific and philosophical premises. .. One of the latter is the denial of the universalist perception of culture, which dominates the newest "European concepts ...".

Such is common ground that philosophical understanding of history, its originality and meaning, which was expressed by the Eurasians. Within the framework of this approach, the history of Russia is also considered.

Questions of the history of Russia

The main thesis of Eurasianism was expressed in the following: "Russia is Eurasia, the third middle continent, along with Europe and Asia, on the continent of the Old World." The thesis immediately determined the special place of Russia in human history and the special mission of the Russian state.

The idea of \u200b\u200bthe exclusivity of Russia was also developed by the Slavophiles in the 19th century. The Eurasians, recognizing them as their ideological predecessors, in many ways, however, dissociated themselves from them. So, the Eurasians believed that the Russian nationality cannot be reduced to the Slavic ethnos. The concept of "Slavism", according to Savitsky, is not very indicative for understanding the cultural originality of Russia, since, for example, Poles and Czechs belong to Western culture. Russian culture is determined not only by Slavism, but also by Byzantism. Both European and "Asian-Asian elements" are soldered into the face of Russia. In its formation, a huge role was played by the Turkic and Ugric-Finnish tribes, who inhabited the same place with the Eastern Slavs (the White Sea-Caucasian, West Siberian and Turkestan plains) and constantly interact with them. It is the presence of all these peoples and their cultures that constitutes the strong side of Russian culture, making it unlike either the East or the West. The national substratum of the Russian state is the entire totality of the peoples inhabiting it, which constitute a single multinational nation. This nation, called Eurasian, is united not only by a common "local development", but also by a common Eurasian national identity. From this position, the Eurasians dissociated themselves from both the Slavophiles and the Westernizers.

The criticism to which Prince N.S. Trubetskoy and those, and others. From his point of view, the Slavophils (or as he calls them "reactionaries") strove for a powerful state comparable to Europe - even at the cost of abandoning the educational and humanistic European traditions. "Progressists" (Westernizers), on the contrary, strove to realize Western European values \u200b\u200b(democracy and socialism), even if they had to abandon Russian statehood). Each of these currents clearly saw the weaknesses of the other. Thus, the "reactionaries" rightly pointed out that the liberation of the dark masses demanded by the "progressives" would ultimately lead to the collapse of "Europeanization." On the other hand, the "progressives" reasonably noted that the place and role of a great power for Russia was impossible without a deep spiritual Europeanization of the country. But neither one nor the other could see their own internal inconsistency. Both were in the power of Europe: the "reactionaries" understood Europe as "force" and "power", and the "progressives" - as a "humane civilization", but both of them deified it. Both of these ideas were a product of Peter's reforms and, accordingly, a reaction to them. The tsar carried out his reforms artificially, forcibly, without caring about the attitude of the people towards them, therefore both of these ideas turned out to be alien to the people.

A new critical appraisal of the "Europeanization" of Russia made by Peter the Great is the main pathos of the "Eurasian idea." "Proclaiming the national Russian culture as its slogan, Eurasianism ideologically repels from the entire post-Petrine St. Petersburg, imperial-chief-prosecutor period of Russian history."

While categorically rejecting Westernism and Slavophilism, the Eurasians constantly emphasized their middle position. "The culture of Russia is neither a European culture, nor a single Asian culture, nor a sum or a mechanical combination of elements of both ... It must be opposed to the cultures of Europe and Asia as a middle Eurasian culture."

Thus, geographical factors became the leading ones in the concept of Eurasianism. They determined the historical path of Russia and its features: it has no natural boundaries and is under constant cultural pressure from both the East and the West. According to N.S. Trubetskoy, Eurasia, this supercontinent is simply doomed to conditions of a lower standard of living compared to other regions. In Russia, transport costs are too high, so the industry will have to focus on the domestic rather than the foreign market. In addition, due to the difference in living standards, there will always be a tendency for the outflow of the most creatively active members of society. And in order to keep them, it is necessary to create for them the average European living conditions, which means to create an excessively tense social structure. Under these conditions, Russia will be able to survive only by constantly mastering the ocean as a cheaper route of transportation, equipping its borders and ports, even at the cost of the interests of certain social groups.

At first, the strength of the Orthodox faith and the cultural unity of the people within the framework of a highly centralized state contribute to the solution of these tasks. As Trubetskoy wrote, "the national substratum of the state that was formerly called the Russian Empire, and is now called the USSR, can only be the entire totality of peoples inhabiting Eurasia, considered as a special multifaceted nation." Truly, Russia has never belonged to the West; there are exceptional periods in its history that prove its involvement in Eastern, Turanian influences. The Eurasians focused on the role of the "Asian element" in the destinies of Russia and its cultural and historical development - the "steppe element" that gives the perception of the "continent-ocean".

Within the framework of the research of the Eurasians on the history of Russia, a very popular concept of Mongolophilism has developed. Its essence is as follows.

1) The domination of the Tatars in Russian history was not a negative, but a positive factor. The Mongol-Tatars not only did not destroy the forms of Russian life, but also supplemented them, giving Russia a school of administration, a financial system, organization of mail, etc.

2) The Tatar-Mongolian (Turanian) element entered the Russian ethnos so much that we cannot be considered Slavs. "We are not Slavs or Turanians, but a special ethnic type."

3) The Mongol-Tatars had a tremendous influence on the type of the Russian state and the Russian state consciousness. "The Tatar region did not muddy the purity of national creativity. The happiness of Russia is great," wrote PN Savitsky, that at the moment when she, due to her internal decay, had to fall, she went to the Tatars, and not to anyone else. " The Tatars united the disintegrating state into a huge centralized empire and thus preserved the Russian ethnos.

Sharing this position, N.S. Trubetskoy believed that the founders of the Russian state were not the Kiev princes, but the Moscow tsars, who became the successors of the Mongol khans.

4) The Turanian legacy should also determine the modern strategy and policy of Russia - the choice of goals, allies, etc.

The Mongolophilic concept of Eurasianism does not stand up to serious criticism. First, while proclaiming the principle of the middleness of Russian culture, it nevertheless accepts "light from the East" and is aggressively disposed towards the West. In their admiration for the Asian, Tatar-Mongolian principle, the Eurasians contradict the historical facts generalized and comprehended by Russian historians, S.M. Soloviev and V.O. Klyuchevsky in the first place. According to their research, there is no doubt that the Russian civilization has a European cultural and historical genotype due to the common Christian culture, economic, political and cultural ties with the West. Eurasians tried to illuminate the history of Russia, ignoring many of the essential factors in the creation of this great power. As S. Soloviev wrote, the Russian empire was created in the course of the colonization of the endless Eurasian spaces. This process began in the 15th and ended by the beginning of the 20th century. Over the centuries, Russia carried to the East and South the foundations of European Christian civilization to the peoples of the Volga region, Transcaucasia, and Central Asia, who were already the heirs of great ancient cultures. As a result, the vast civilized space was Europeanized. Many tribes inhabiting Russia came into contact not only with a different culture, but also formed a national identity in a European way.

The colonial policy of Russia was accompanied by military, political, cultural conflicts, as was the case with the creation of any other empires, for example, the British or Spanish. But the acquisition of foreign territories did not take place far from the metropolis, not across the seas, but nearby. The border between Russia and the adjacent territories remained open. The open land border created completely different models of relations between the metropolis and the colonies than those that arose when the colonies were overseas. This circumstance was correctly noted by the Eurasians, but did not receive the proper understanding.

The presence of an open border in the south and east made it possible to significantly enrich cultures, but this circumstance does not at all follow that there was any special path of development for Russia, that Russian history is fundamentally different from Western European history. When the Eurasians wrote about the Byzantine and Horde traditions of the Russian people, they paid little attention to historical realities. Coming into contact with historical facts, Eurasianism becomes a very vulnerable concept for all its internal consistency. The facts indicate that those periods and structures that the Eurasians consider invulnerable in their concepts were in fact prone to disasters - the Muscovy, the regimes of Nicholas I and Nicholas II, etc. The legend of the Eurasians about the harmony of peoples in tsarist Russia can be refuted by a conscientious study of the economy and politics of that time.

Ideocratic state

The doctrine of the state is one of the most important in the concept of Eurasianism. The most active part in its development was L.P. Karsavin and N.N. Alekseev.

The formation of the USSR was perceived by the Eurasians as the decline of the cultural and political leadership of the West. A different era is coming, in which leadership will pass to Eurasia. "Eurasia - Russia - the knot and the beginning of a new world culture ..." - stated one of the declarations of the movement. The West has exhausted its spiritual potential, while Russia, despite the revolutionary catastrophe, was declared renewed and eager to throw off the Western yoke. In order to successfully solve the tasks assigned to it, the state must have strong power, which at the same time maintains a connection with the people and represents its ideals. Eurasians characterize it as a "demotic ruling stratum" formed by "selection" from the people and therefore capable of expressing their true interests and ideals. Demoticity, or nationality of power, is determined by the organic connection between the mass of the people and the ruling stratum, which form the power structures, with the intelligentsia adjoining it. Demotic power is fundamentally different from European democracy, based on a formal majority of votes cast for any representative of power, whose connection with the people in most cases ends there. No statistically formal majority, according to the Eurasians, can express the national spirit that unites the thoughts of the modern generation, the realized and unrealized deeds of ancestors, the hopes and possibilities of future generations. Only the "ruling stratum" connected by the same ideology with the people can express and protect their interests. A state of this type is defined as ideological or, in the terminology of the Eurasians, ideocratic. In it "a single cultural-state ideology of the ruling stratum is so connected with the unity and strength of the state that it does not exist without them, and they do not exist without it." In a state of this type, there are no objective conditions for a multi-party system. Parties in the European sense of the word simply cannot appear in them.

Emerging from the depths of the people, the ruling stratum, in order to fulfill the functions of power, must inevitably oppose itself to the “masses of the people,” for they, while remaining masses, retain the ability to act spontaneously. The task of the ruling class is to coordinate uncoordinated actions. Fulfillment of this function requires unity and unconditional coordination of efforts from the ruling stratum. This is what a special type of "selection" is aimed at. The main feature by which members of the ruling stratum are united in this type of selection is a common worldview and ideology. The party is the bearer of ideology. The Russian Communist Party, as the Eurasians believed, is the best suited to the conditions of Russia-Eurasia.

Acting in a very difficult social and political environment, an ideocratic state must be strong and even despotic. This is not the place for sentimental speculations about freedom, which can only generate anarchy. The sphere of the state is the sphere of force and coercion. Eurasians are sure that the healthier the culture and the people, the more power and cruelty their state is characterized by. The state should have the right not only to protect, but also to act as the supreme master. In this role, it must manage, plan, coordinate, give tasks to its subjects in all spheres of economic life.

As you can see, the Eurasian doctrine of the state structure is based on the converted experience of state and party building in the USSR. In the Bolshevik Party, the Eurasians discovered for themselves the prototype of an ideocratic party of a new type, "spoiled" by the idea of \u200b\u200bcommunism, and in the Soviets, a representative body of power capable of introducing the spontaneous aspirations of the masses into the channel set by the ruling stratum.

The attitude of the Eurasians to communist ideas was very contradictory. On the one hand, they perceived Bolshevism as a logical consequence of the erroneous "Europeanization" of Russia. While negatively regarding the communist ideology, the Eurasians distinguished between communists and Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks, according to the Eurasians, are dangerous as long as they are communists, as long as they have not abandoned the communist ideology. In this series, communism is seen as a false religion, a faith that grew out of the Enlightenment, materialistic contemplation, positivism and atheism. "Communism believes in materialism refuted by science, believes in the need for progress and its triumph, believes in the hypothesis class structure society and the mission of the proletariat. He is a faith, for he animates his supporters with religious pathos and creates his own sacred books, which, in his opinion, are subject only to interpretation, but not to criticism ... "Communism is not only a false, but also a harmful faith, for it asserts its heretical ideals by hard coercion.

The Eurasians strive to overcome the monopoly of "false" ideology with the ideology of another, endowed by them with authentic and immutable authority - Orthodoxy, opposing it to all others. Thus, Orthodoxy was assigned a political function not characteristic of religion, which in the European tradition is the prerogative of the state. But the Eurasians do this on purpose. It is worth replacing the communist idea with the Eurasian-Orthodox one and, accordingly, updating the ruling system, as the danger of communist ideology will be eliminated. In particular, Trubetskoy sees the harmfulness of communist ideology in the fact that she bases the unity of the nation on proletarian internationalism, which is turning into class hatred. As a result, in order to justify its existence, the central authorities have to artificially inflate the danger threatening the proletariat, create an "enemy of the people." But even Trubetskoy could not foresee the scope of the policy direction he guessed would take. In addition, the communist ideology is based, as P. Savitsky writes, on a "militant economy." Historical materialism is the most perfect expression of this "economism." And the seizure of power by the communists is a triumph of historical materialism, which has become a state ideology.

On the other hand, the emergence of Bolshevism is viewed by the Eurasians as a revolt against Western European culture. The Bolsheviks destroyed the old Russian state, social and cultural structures that arose as a result of the artificial and harmful Peter's reforms. As a result, there were some points of contact between Bolshevism and Eurasianism: “Eurasianism converges with Bolshevism in rejecting not only certain political forms, but the entire culture that existed in Russia immediately before the revolution and continues to exist in the countries of the Romano-German West and in the demand for the indigenous restructuring this whole culture. "

But this resemblance is only external and formal. The Bolsheviks called the culture they were supposed to abolish bourgeois. For the Eurasians, it is "Romano-Germanic". As an alternative to it, the Bolsheviks recommended the proletarian, and the Eurasians - the "national", "Eurasian" culture. The difference is thus in the understanding of cultural factors. For the Bolsheviks, such a factor was the class, for the Eurasians - a nation, a group of nations. According to Trubetskoy, the Marxist understanding of culture distinguishes only social antagonism where, for the Eurasians, certain stages of the same national culture exist.

The struggle against "Romano-Germanic" culture and against world colonialism (which is, in fact, the cultural superiority of one nation over another ") at a certain stage were very sympathetic to the Eurasians in the Bolshevik policy.

N. Trubetskoy accuses the West of trying to colonize Russia and in this vein approves of Bolshevism as a force capable of defending the country's national identity. The overthrow of Soviet power by foreign troops would mean the enslavement of Russia. Russian patriots cannot go this way.

Trubetskoy's assessment of the Bolshevik struggle against colonialism is interesting as one of the possible explanations for the attitude of the Soviet elite to the colonial problem. Obviously, for the Bolsheviks, support for the struggles of colonial peoples was often a tactical means for splitting the non-communist world. But at the same time, the practice of Bolshevism has often been interpreted as the "modernization" or "Europeanization" of Asian and semi-Asian societies. The communists themselves rejected the term because it "erased" class distinctions. At the same time, the projects of industrialization and collectivization seemed to confirm such an interpretation. But in fact, there could be no talk of Europeanization. Europeanization meant, first of all, the strengthening of private property and democracy. Bolshevism brought collectivism and despotism.

But even though the Eurasians saw many vices of the communist ideology and power, the preservation of the communist regime seemed to them a lesser evil compared to the country's political dependence on the West.

These dangerous motives of the Eurasian doctrine did not remain hidden for contemporaries. G.F. Florovsky, who at one time belonged to the Eurasianists, stated that his like-minded people were captured by the revolutionary idea: “In a sense, the Eurasians were enchanted by the“ new Russian people, ”the brave, muscular fellows in leather jackets, with the soul of adventurers, with that reckless daring and the liberty that matured in the orgy of war, rebellion and reprisals. "

Conclusion. Eurasianism emerged in an atmosphere of catastrophic outlook and crisis that gripped the Russian intelligentsia after the 1917 revolution.This psychological moment explains a lot in the modern interest in the Eurasian topic in terms of coverage of historical and political problems.

Today Eurasianism is one of the most popular concepts in Russian history. It revises the orientation of public consciousness towards the West as an example of political, economic, and cultural life. She points out to the Russian people its identity. Psychologically, Eurasianism softens the feelings of loss and disappointment that arose during the disintegration of the former great empire Russia, and then the USSR, because it inspires hope for the revival of a great state. But in fact, in the current situation, Eurasianism is an attempt to comprehend Russia's ties with Eastern and Western cultures and put forward a kind of version of its historical path.