Contemporary Russian Conservatism : Problems, Paradoxes, and Perspectives [1 ed.] 9789004408005, 9789004401907

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Contemporary Russian Conservatism

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004408005_001

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Eurasian Studies Library History, Societies & Cultures in Eurasia

Series Editors Dittmar Schorkowitz (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale, Germany) David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye (Brock University, St. Catherines, Canada) Board Members Bakhtiyar Babadjanov Paul Bushkovitch Peter Finke Svetlana Gorshenina Michael Khodarkovsky Marlene Laruelle Scott C. Levi Virginia Martin Jeff Sahadeo Willard Sunderland Nikolay Tsyrempilov

VOLUME 13

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/esl





Contemporary Russian Conservatism Problems, Paradoxes, and Perspectives Edited by

Mikhail Suslov Dmitry Uzlaner

LEIDEN | BOSTON

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Cover illustration: Fragment of the monument to Grand Prince Vladimir in Moscow, photo by Dmitry Uzlaner. For more on this monument, see the contribution by Per-Arne Bodin in this volume. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Suslov, Mikhail, editor. | Uzlaner, Dmitry, editor. Title: Contemporary Russian conservatism : problems, paradoxes, and perspectives / edited by Mikhail Suslov, Dmitry Uzlaner. Other titles: Eurasian studies library ; v. 13. Description: Boston ; Leiden : Brill, 2020. | Series: Eurasian studies library: history, societies & cultures in Eurasia, 1877-9484 ; volume 13 | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2019025931 (print) | LCCN 2019025932 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004401907 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004408005 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Conservatism--Russia (Federation) Classification: LCC JC573.2.R8 C66 2020 (print) | LCC JC573.2.R8 (ebook) | DDC 320.520947--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019025931 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019025932

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1877-9484 isbn 978-90-04-40190-7 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-40800-5 (e-book) Copyright 2020 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Contents

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Contents Acknowledgments IX Contributors X XIV

Part 1 Introduction 1

Dilemmas and Paradoxes of Contemporary Russian Conservatism: Introduction 3  Mikhail Suslov and Dmitry Uzlaner

2 A History of Russian Conservatism, from the 18th Century to the End of the 20th Century 36  Mikhail Loukianov, Kåre Johan Mjør, Susanna Rabow-Edling and Mikhail Suslov

Part 2 Conceptualizing Conservatism 3 Russian Conservatism as an Ideology: The Logic of Isolationism 77  Mikhail Suslov 4 The Logic of Scapegoating in Contemporary Russian Moral Conservatism 103  Dmitry Uzlaner 5 Postmodernity and Modernity as Political Terms in Russia’s New Conservatism 128  Katharina Bluhm

Part 3 Russian Conservative Tradition in the Post-Soviet and International Context 6 The Great Expectations of Russian Young Conservatism 153  Alexander Pavlov

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7 Mirror Games? Ideological Resonances between Russian and US Radical Conservatism 177  Marlene Laruelle

Part 4 The Geopolitical Dimension 8 Russia’s Contemporary Exceptionalism and Geopolitical Conservatism 207  Alicja Curanović 9 “Making Europe Great Again”: Anti-Western Criticism from Orthodox Conservative Actors Online 234  Ekaterina Grishaeva 10 From Expansion to Seclusion and Back Again: Boris Mezhuev’s Isolationism and Its Roots in Solzhenitsyn and Tsymbursky 257  Irina Karlsohn

Part 5 History and Memory Narratives in Russian Conservatism 11 “Russia’s Thousand-Year History”: Claiming a Past in Contemporary Russian Conservative Thought 281  Kåre Johan Mjør 12 The Monument to Grand Prince Vladimir in Moscow and the Problem of Conservatism 304  Per-Arne Bodin

Part 6 Religion and Traditional Values 13 Eastern Orthodoxy, Conservatism, and (Neo)Palamite Tradition in Post-Soviet Russia 321  Andrey Shishkov

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14 Russian Neoconservatism and Apocalyptic Imperialism 347  Victor Shnirelman 15 Framing “Gay Propaganda”: Morality Policy Arguments and the Russian Orthodox Church 379  Caroline Hill Index 399

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Acknowledgments Acknowledgments

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Acknowledgments The idea for this volume came from the international conference “Conservatism in the Post-Soviet Context: Ideology, Worldview, or Moral Choice?,” which took place on 8–9 May 2017 at the Uppsala Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. The editors want to acknowledge the support of this center (especially, Professor Elena Namli), as well as the Uppsala Forum on Democracy, Peace, and Justice. They would also like to recognize Marlyn Miller for her work on the language and the style. This book was made possible thanks to the project “Postsecular Conflicts,” financed by the Austrian Science Fund FWF START GRANT 2015 Y919 G22 and by the European Research Council, project POSEC, ERC STG 2015 676804 (principal investigator Kristina Stoeckl).

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Contributors

Contributors Katharina Bluhm is professor of sociology with a focus on Eastern Europe and Russia at the Freie Universität Berlin. She has published widely on the transition from communism to the market economy in a comparative perspective. In her recent research she deals with the emergence of a new illiberal conservatism in the region, its socioeconomic concepts, and the ways that it translates into practice. She coedited Business Elites and New Varieties of Capitalism in Post-Communist Europe (London: 2014) and New Conservatives in Russia and East Central Europe (London: 2019, together with Mihai Varga). Per-Arne Bodin is professor emeritus at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Stockholm University. He has written extensively on Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian literatures. One of his special interests is the relationship between Russian culture and Russian Orthodox tradition. His most recent books are Eternity and Time: Studies in Russian Literature and the Orthodox Tradition (Stockholm: 2007) and Language, Canonization, and Holy Foolishness: Studies in Post-Soviet Russian Culture and the Orthodox Tradition (Stockholm: 2009). He has written several collections of essays in Swedish on Russian culture, literature, and church history. He is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History, and Antiquities and doctor honoris causa at Uppsala University. Alicja Curanović is assistant professor at the Institute of International Relations at the University of Warsaw. She holds a PhD in political science (her PhD thesis is titled “The Religious Factor in the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation”). Her main research interests are international relations in the post-Soviet area; Russian foreign policy; religious factors in international relations; and perception, identity, image, and status in politics. She has conducted research at Columbia University, Stanford University, the Russian State University for Humanistic Studies, and MGIMO, inter alia. Her articles have appeared in renowned academic journals, for example, Politics and Religion, Nationalities Papers, and Religion, State and Society. She has also authored a monograph, The Religious Factor in Russia’s Foreign Policy (London: 2012).

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Ekaterina Grishaeva is a lecturer at the Department of Philosophy at Ural Federal University. She holds a PhD in philosophy from Ural Federal University. She was a junior fellow at the Institute for Human Science (Vienna, Austria), and a postdoctoral fellow at Jagiellonian University (Krakow, Poland). During 2015–2016 Dr. Grishaeva worked on the project “Traditional Religions and Religious Identity in PostSecular Society,” aimed at investigating how Orthodox believers invent their identities in post-Soviet conservative society. Caroline Hill is a researcher with the Postsecular Conflicts Project at Universität Innsbruck. She studied political science at Uppsala University, international relations at the University of Amsterdam, and Russian language at Saint Petersburg State University. Her research interests include morality policy debates in the former Soviet states and Southeastern Europe, and the role of the Orthodox Church and evangelical Christian groups in the mediatization of religion in Eastern Europe and the West. Irina Karlsohn is a senior lecturer of Russian, the Head of Subject in Russian at Dalarna University, and research fellow at the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies (IRES) at Uppsala University. In her ongoing research, she examines different aspects of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s conception of history. Other research interests include 19th- and 20th-century Russian literature and Russian intellectual history. She has published articles on these subjects, and her book V poiskakh Rusi nevidimoi: Kitezhskaia legenda v russkoi kulture 1843–1940 (Seeking invisible Russia: The legend of Kitezh in Russian culture, 1843–1940) appeared in 2011 (Gothenburg). Marlene Laruelle is professor of International Affairs and associate director at The George Washington University’s Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (IERES) in Washington, DC. Dr. Laruelle is also codirector of PONARS (Program on New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia). Dr. Laruelle received her PhD in history from the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Cultures (INALCO) and her “habilitation” at Sciences Po in Paris. Dr. Laruelle has authored Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire (Washington, DC: 2008); In the Name of the Nation: Nationalism and Politics in Contemporary Russia (New York: 2009); Russia’s Strategies in the Arctic and the Future of the Far North (Armonk, NY: 2013); and Russian Nationalism: Imaginaries, Doctrines, and Po-

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litical Battlefields (London: 2018). She has also edited Entangled Far Rights: A Russian-European Intellectual Romance in the 20th Century (Pittsburgh, PA: 2018) and Eurasianism and the European Far Right: Reshaping the Russia-Europe Relationship (Lanham, MD: 2015). Mikhail N. Loukianov is a doctor of history (Saint Petersburg Institute of History, RAS, 2004) and a pro­fessor at the Department of Modern Russian History at Perm State National Research University. His books include (with I. Kiryanov) Parlament samo­ derzhavnoi Rossii: Gosudarstvennaia Duma i ee deputaty, 1906–1917 (Perm: 1995); Rossiiskii konservatizm v kontse XVII–pervoi polovine XX veka: Sbornik dokumentov (Perm: 2010). His articles have appeared in the Slavic Review, Russian History, Kritika, Otechestvennaia istoriia, and in a number of edited volumes. Kåre Johan Mjør is a researcher in Russian philosophy and Russian intellectual history at the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Uppsala University. He is the author of Reformulating Russia: The Cultural and Intellectual Historiography of Russian First-Wave Émigré Writers (Leiden: 2011), Russiske imperium (Oslo: 2017), and several articles on Russian thought from the 18th century to the present, including contributions to journals such as Slavonic and East European Review, Slavic and East European Journal, Ab Imperio, and Studies in East European Thought. His current project, which is funded for a three-year period by the Swedish Research Council, explores the concept of “creativity” (tvorchestvo) in Russian thought. Alexander Pavlov is chair of the Department of Social Philosophy, Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences, and associate professor at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow. He is one of the leading Russian specialists on the history of social and political philosophy and cultural studies. He is the author of several books on contemporary culture and ideology, as well as the editor and author of introductions to Russian translations of leading political theorists and social philosophers, including Hannah Arendt, Slavoj Žižek, Philip Pettit, Corey Robin, and Paul E. Gottfried. Susanna Rabow-Edling is associate professor in political science and senior research fellow at the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Uppsala University. Her main research interests are Russian political thought in the long 19th century, especially

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nationalism, liberalism, and imperialism; Russian America; and women’s history. Her most important publications include Liberalism in Pre-Revolutionary Russia: State, Nation, Empire (Abingdon: 2018), Married to the Empire: Three Governors’ Wives in Russian America 1829–1864 (Fairbanks: 2015), and Slavophile Thought and the Politics of Cultural Nationalism (Albany: 2006). Andrey Shishkov is the director of the Research Center for Studies on Contemporary Ecclesiological Issues of Eastern Orthodoxy, a senior lecturer in external church relations and social sciences at Ss. Cyril and Methodius Postgraduate Institute (Moscow), and a secretary of the Synodal Biblical and Theological Commission of the Russian Orthodox Church. He reads courses on ecclesiology, political theory, and political theology at the master’s program of the Postgraduate Institute. Shishkov has been coleader of two projects on science and religion in Russia supported by the John Templeton Foundation. His research interests include ecclesiology, political theology, sociology of religion, post secular theory, political philosophy, and the dialogue of religion and science. Victor Shnirelman is a doctor in history, and senior researcher in the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences, in Moscow. His scholarly field is cultural anthropology. Research interests include nationalism, racism, ethnic conflicts, neo-paganism, cultural memory, the politics of the past in the Soviet and post-Soviet world, eschatology, and theories of conspiracy. His most recent books are Ariiskii mif v sovremennom mire (The Aryan myth in the contem­ porary world) in two volumes (Moscow: 2015); Koleno Danovo: Eskhatologiia i antisemitizm v sovremennoi Rossii (The tribe of Dan: Eschatology and antiSemitism in contemporary Russia) (Moscow: 2017); The Myth of the Khazars: Intellectual Antisemitism in Russia, 1970s–1990s (Jerusalem: 2002); and The ­Value of the Past: Myths, Identity and Politics in Transcaucasia (Osaka: 2001). Mikhail Suslov is assistant professor of Russian history and politics at the University of ­Copenhagen. His research focuses on Russian intellectual history; conser­ vative, right-wing, and religiously motivated political ideas; geopolitical ideologies; and sociopolitical utopias. His most recent papers dealing with (geo) political i­magination include “The ‘Russian World’ Concept: ‘Spheres of In­ fluence’ in the Post-Soviet Geopolitical Ideology,” Geopolitics 23, no. 2 (2018): 330–53, and “The Production of ‘Novorossiya’: A Territorial Brand in Public Debates,” Europe-Asia Studies 69, no. 2 (2017): 202–21. Recently he edited Digital

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Orthodoxy in the Post-Soviet World: The Russian Orthodox Church and Web 2.0 (Stuttgart: 2016), coedited (with Mark Bassin) Eurasia 2.0: Post-Soviet Geopolitics in the Age of New Media (Lanham, MD: 2016), and (with Per-Arne Bodin) The Post-Soviet Politics of Utopia: Language, Fiction and Fantasy in Modern ­Russia (London: 2019). Dmitry Uzlaner holds a PhD in philosophy and religious studies (M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University). He is a research fellow at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences (MSSES) and at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA). He is editor-in-chief of the journal Gosudarstvo, religiia, tserkov v Rossii i za rubezhom. In 2016 Dr. Uzlaner became part of the five-year international research project “Postsecular Conflicts” (2016–21) at the University of Innsbruck (Austria).

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Part 1 Introduction

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Dilemmas and Paradoxes of Contemporary Russian Conservatism

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Chapter 1

Dilemmas and Paradoxes of Contemporary Russian Conservatism: Introduction  Mikhail Suslov and Dmitry Uzlaner 1

The “Conservative Turn” in Russian Politics

This edited volume is a comprehensive examination of post-Soviet conservatism in Russia.1 It brings together Russia experts from various disciplines: history; philosophy; sociology; and cultural, religious, and political studies. This allows us to offer a broad-based approach that weaves together social sciences and humanities, and thereby to come to a better understanding of the variegated phenomenon of conservatism. Russia’s political leadership decisively turned to conservatism between 2007 and 2012, although elements of conservatism had always been present in the public debates and official discourses of post-Soviet Russia. Since the late 2000s, the Russian leadership has projected an image of itself both domestically and abroad as a decisive supporter of moderate conservatism, ideals of stability, controlled growth, and “traditional values.” After a period of relatively quick economic development, Russia entered into a decade of stagnation.2 In 2008, the charismatic Vladimir Putin “castled” into the shadow of the less popular Dmitry Medvedev, which required a more ideological style of legitimization for the political regime. Putin’s “Munich speech” in 2007 and the war in Georgia in 2008 created momentum toward alienation from the West in Russia’s international relations and in media rhetoric.3 Finally, Metropolitan Kirill (Gundiaev) of Smolensk, known for his vocal conservative agenda and presence in the public sphere, was enthroned as the new head of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2009. Put together, these factors conditioned an increasing 1 Russia is and has always been in its modern history a multinational country, whose constitutive parts had diverse cultural traditions and respective ideological conceptualizations, different from the “core.” This volume focuses on the intellectuals who identified themselves with this Russian national “core.” 2 See, for example, Sergei Aleksashenko, Kontrrevoliutsiia: Kak stroilas’ vertikal’ vlasti v sovre­ mennoi Rossii i kak eto vliiaet na ekonomiku (Moscow: 2019). 3 See, for example, Marcel van Herpen, Putin’s Wars: The Rise of Russia’s New Imperialism (Lanham, MD: 2016).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004408005_002

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demand for an ideology whose staples were the extolling of the status quo, isolationism, and traditionalism in the understanding of Russia’s identity. The ruling party United Russia quickly supplied this ideology.4 In November 2009, the party’s assembly adopted the program, which declared conservatism to be the ideology of United Russia.5 The party’s ideologists tried to prove that conservatism could be combined with Medvedev’s declared goals of “modernization” and “democratization.” Andrei Isaev, the deputy chair of United Russia, interpreted Medvedev’s words as a call for “non-revolutionary and non-violent,” that is, “conservative modernization,” which would “lean upon the best traditions of our people.”6 Political conservatism combined with economic modernization, however, historically means a libertarian, businessoriented model. In order to prevent damage to the party’s reputation among the grass roots, its leadership emphasized that in their view conservative modernization meant social modernization. So, Russian conservatism should be first and foremost social conservatism. Moreover, the party’s head explicitly prioritized the country’s identity, while modernization was understood as only a means for the preservation of Russia’s values and traditions.7 The “conservative turn” became especially apparent after the wave of mass protests in winter 2011 and spring 2012. The return of Vladimir Putin to the presidency made it clear to many that an authoritarian regime had developed in Russia and that it would stay in power for an indefinite period. Simultaneously, minimal growth in the economy continued. This all made conservatism even more topical. The ideology of stability was being promoted by means of a series of moral panics around issues of identity, values, and traditions: the Pussy Riot affair (2012), the law prohibiting the adoption of Russian children by US citizens (2012), the law prohibiting “propaganda” of LGBT values (2013), and others.8 In April 2012 Dmitry Medvedev, newly appointed as head of the United Russia party, reiterated three principles of his party’s ideology: conservative values, 4 On this party, see: Sean Roberts, Putin’s United Russia Party (London: 2012). 5 “Rossiia: Sokhranim i priumnozhim,” Edinaia Rossiia: Ofitsial’nyi sait partii, 21 November 2009, accessed 30 December 2018, . 6 Andrei Isaev, “Konservatizm i modernizatsiia,” Izvestiia, no. 215M/27986, 19 November 2009. 7 Cf. polemics in: Isaev, “Agent peremen,” Izvestiia, no. 218M/27989, 25 November 2009; Vitalii Ivanov, “Konservativnaia modernizatsiia,” Izvestiia, no. 221M /27992, 30 November 2009; Boris Gryzlov, “Sokhranit’ i priumnozhit’,” Izvestiia, 222М/27993, 1 December 2009. 8 For example, Joachim Willems, Pussy Riots Punk-Gebet: Religion, Recht und Politik in Ruβland (Berlin: 2013); Irina Kotkina, “We Will ROC You!: ‘Tannhäuser’ Opera Scandal and the Freedom of Artistic Expression in Putin’s Russia,” Transcultural Studies 12, no. 1 (2016): 66–91; Marcel van Herpen, Putin’s Propaganda Machine: Soft Power and Russian Foreign Policy (Lanham, MD: 2016).

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principles of a welfare state, and centrism.9 During his tenure as a prime minister, Medvedev continued to adhere to “conservative modernization” as his worldview, decisively allying with liberalism. In his interpretation, the opposite of a conservative is a reactionary; conservatism means progress without revolutions.10 Simultaneously, United Russia hosted a more radical version of conservatism. The same Andrei Isaev who in 2009 had highlighted the progressive and assertive role of conservatism as ideological “software” for non-violent modernization, in 2012 interpreted conservatism as a defensive and somewhat messianic tool to fight the “impending chaos.”11 In the period of his third “formal” presidency Putin consistently supported conservative ideology.12 In his State of the Nation speech in December 2014, he chose a middle way between the positions of Medvedev and Isaev: he asserted that conservatism aimed at development on the basis of tradition, but at the same time he quoted from religious philosopher Nikolai Berdiaev, striking the apocalyptic note in Isaev’s vision. Conservatism in this rendition does not prevent progressive development. Instead, it prevents degeneration into “chaotic darkness.”13 Confrontation with the West on the matter of the Ukrainian crisis and the tendency toward isolationism under the regime of sanctions gave a new impulse to conservatism. The Kremlin has been desperately searching for a new universal worldview on a par with the liberal democracy of the “West” or communism during Soviet times. This ideology would help Russia to knock together an anti- or at least alt-Western bloc of states on the grounds of a shared ideology, rather than by blatantly paying or writing off the debts of friendly 9 10 11 12

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For example, Irina Kramnik, “V Edinuiu Rossiiu Dmitrii Medvedev vstupaet kak stoikii konservator,” Kommersant, no. 77, 28 April 2012. Aleksandra Samarina, “Martovskie tezisy Dmitriia Medvedeva,” Nezavisimaia gazeta, 28 March 2013. See also: Dmitrii Trenin, “Russia’s Conservative Modernization: A Mission Impossible?” SAIS Review of International Affairs 30, no. 1 (2010): 37. Nikolai Gul’binskii, “Ot vlastnoi vertikali k konkurentnoi,” Nezavisimaia gazeta, 5 June 2012. Vladimir Putin, “Poslanie Prezidenta Federal’nomu Sobraniiu,” Website of the President of Russia, 2012, accessed 18 December 2018, ; Vladimir Putin, “Poslanie Prezidenta Federal’nomu Sobraniiu,” Website of the President of Russia, 2013, accessed 28 May 2018, ; Putin, “Interv’iu Pervomu kanalu i agentstvu Associated Press,” Website of the President of Russia, 2013, accessed 20 May 2018, . See also: Leonid Poliakov, ‘“Conservatism’ in Russia: Political Tool or Historical Choice,” Russie.Nei.Vision 90 (December 2015): 1–20, accessed 9 June 2018, . For example, “Vezhlivyi konservatizm vnedriat progressivnymi metodami,” Nezavisimaia gazeta, 19 May 2014; “Prezident vzial kurs na konservatizm,” Nezavisimaia gazeta, 30 December 2013.

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regimes. In this context, conservatism emerged as a convenient, although paradoxical doctrine, combining universalism and particularism. This doctrine is shallow enough to consider any regime as friendly that is sacrificing development, modernization, and internationalization in the name of preserving identity and tradition—whatever this identity and tradition might be. The export version of conservatism differs from conservatism for domestic consumption. The former was defined mostly in negative terms as criticism of the West and the “anthropocentric” worldview in general.14 The latter was elaborated by a series of seminars organized by United Russia for its activists in 2014. Among the lecturers were Olga Vasil’eva (from 2016 to 2018 she was the minister of education and science, since 2018—the minister of education); Metropolitan Tikhon (Shevkunov), reportedly Vladimir Putin’s confessor; and Viacheslav Nikonov, the key figure in the “Russian World” project. The previous mantra of conservative modernization was replaced by a raft of different concepts that accentuated the improperness of slurring certain historical leaders (for example, Joseph Stalin was enlisted as a Russian conservative, that is, as a positive hero), the continuity of Russia’s historical development, the Slavophile juxtaposition of the good Russian narod and the Westernized intelligentsia, the West’s hostility to Russia, and—above all—the supremacy of “spiritual and moral values” in state politics.15 Proclamation of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics in Eastern Ukraine became another impetus for ideological debates, because these territories were seen in Russia as a testing ground for a more dynamic economic model, which at the same time would be socially oriented, traditionalist, and anti-globalist.16 The flagship think tank of conservatism became the Institute for SocioEconomic and Political Research (ISEPI) under the auspices of the presidential administration. In 2014 ISEPI launched an analytical journal, Tetradi po konservatizmu (Notebooks on conservatism), which brought together specialists and academics (usually with a conservative slant) in order to examine the phenomenon of Russian conservatism. In the same year ISEPI established the 14

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Mikhail Remizov, “Moskva stala vosprinimat’sia kak stolitsa ‘konservativnogo internatsionala,’” Institut natsional’noi strategii, 2016, accessed 29 May 2018, ; Igor’ Gashkov, “Sheikhi rossiiskogo konservatizma,” NG-Religii, 17 December 2014, accessed 30 December 2018, . “Edinaia Rossiia osvezhila ideologiiu,” Kommersant, no. 53, 31 March 2014; “Konservatory eto pragmatiki,” Nezavisimaia gazeta, 20 August 2014. Vladimir Podgornyi, “Kakaia ideologiia nuzhna DNR i kak ee realizovat’,” Pravdinform, 14 December 2015, accessed 30 December 2018, ; Marlene Laruelle, “The Three Colors of Novorossiya, or the Russian Nationalist Mythmaking of the Ukrainian Crisis,” Post-Soviet Affairs 38, no. 1 (2016): 1–20.

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Nikolai Berdiaev Prize in the Legacy of Russian Thought and institutionalized a regular conference, “Berdiaevskie Chteniia” (2014), which aimed to bring together Russian and some international conservative thinkers.17 ISEPI’s initiatives marked a recent tendency toward coalescence of political figures, public intellectuals, and academics interested in the conservative agenda. By the end of the 1990s, a group of historians and specialists in other social disciplines had formed a “school” of conservatism studies, generally characterized by a certain political bias in favor of conservatism, and an inclusive approach toward Russian intellectual history.18 These characteristics allowed them to construct sweeping genealogies of the Russian conservative tradition, embracing Pushkin, Dostoevsky, and other great figures of Russian culture, harking back to the medieval written tradition and the history of Orthodox Christianity. The “conservative turn” in politics created opportunities for a number of specialists in conservatism, and at the same time, it boosted the demand for knowledge and “grand narratives” about Russian conservatism. For example, Arkady Minakov, one of the foremost specialists in the history of 19th-century conservatism, participated in “Berdiaevskie Chteniia” in 2014 and joined the editorial board of Tetradi po konservatizmu—both projects sponsored by ISEPI. In summer 2018 he ran for the governor’s position in the Voronezh region. Conservatism became an intellectual vogue among many prominent cultural figures in contemporary Russia, who spoke out in support of this ideology.19 This list includes minister of culture Vladimir Medinskii,20 minister of education Olga Vasil’eva,21 and renowned film director Nikita Mikhalkov.22 A prominent streak of contemporary science fiction literature is markedly 17 18 19 20 21

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For example, the 5th conference (2016) gathered such intellectuals as Boris Mezhuev, Egor Kholmogorov, Kirill Benediktov, and John Laughland (from the Paris branch of the Institute for Democracy and Cooperation, headed by Nataliia Narochnitskaia). Mikhail Suslov, “Noveishaia istoriografiia rossiiskogo konservatizma: Ego issledovateli, kritiki i apologety,” Ab Imperio, no. 1 (2008): 253–88. We do not analyze their actual political worldviews, but rather point to a number of anecdotal incidents in which they favorably mentioned conservatism as a prospective ideology for Russia. “Medinskii rasskazal o zaprose na konservatizm u 90% rossiian,” RBK.ru, 16 October 2018, accessed 3 April 2019, . “Ol’ga Vasil’eva rasskazala na ‘Tavride’ ob otechestvennoi konservativnoi idee XIX veka,” Obshcherossiiskii narodnyi front, 18 August 2014, accessed 3 April 2019, . See, for example, his YouTube channel “Besogon TV”: , as well as his political manifesto: N. Mikhalkov, “Pravo i Pravda,” Polit.ru, 26 October 2010, accessed 3 April 2019, .

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conservative.23 In this context, we can specially mention, among dozens of others, Sergei Luk’ianenko, the most popular contemporary Russian writer in this genre.24 The “conservative turn” in Russia has attracted considerable academic attention from specialists in various disciplines. The role of the Russian Orthodox Church in setting the ideological agenda has been at the center of this attention.25 Studies of the rhetoric of traditional values have gained much prominence,26 as have studies of the implications of the “conservative turn” for Russia’s strategic culture and international behavior.27 Studies of post-Soviet nationalism pick up on one of the conservative aspects important in the context of the present volume.28 The recent volume New Conservatives in Russia 23 24

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See on this: Mikhail Suslov, “Conservative Science Fiction in Contemporary Russian Literature and Politics,” in The Post-Soviet Politics of Utopia: Language, Fiction and Fantasy in Modern Russia, ed. Mikhail Suslov and Per-Arne Bodin (London: forthcoming 2019). Sergei Luk’ianenko, “Ne znaiu, iavliaius’ li ia konservativnym fantastom, no kak chelovek ia konservator,” Russkaia Ideia, 3 June 2014, accessed 3 April 2019, . See, among others: Cyril Hovorun, Political Orthodoxies: The Unorthodoxies of the Church Coerced (Minneapolis: 2018); Katja Richters, The Post-Soviet Russian Orthodox Church: Politics, Culture and Greater Russia (Hoboken, NJ: 2012); Kathy Rousselet, “The Church in the Service of the Fatherland,” Europe-Asia Studies 67, no. 1 (2015): 49–67; Greg Simons and David Westerlund, Religion, Politics and Nation-Building in Post-Communist Countries (Farnham, Surrey: 2015); Kristina Stoeckl, “The Russian Orthodox Church as Moral Norm Entrepreneur,” Religion, State & Society 44, no. 2 (2016): 132–51. Robert Horvath, “The Reinvention of ‘Traditional Values’: Nataliya Narochnitskaya and Russia’s Assault on Universal Human Rights,” Europe-Asia Studies 68, no. 5 (2016): 868–92; G. Sharafutdinova, “The Pussy Riot Affair and Putin’s Démarche from Sovereign Democracy to Sovereign Morality,” Nationalities Papers 42, no. 4 (2014): 615–21; Elena Stepanova, “‘The Spiritual and Moral Foundation of Civilization in Every Nation for Thousands of Years’: The Traditional Values Discourse in Russia,” Politics, Religion & Ideology 16, nos. 2–3 (2015): 119–36; Cai Wilkinson, “Putting ‘Traditional Values’ into Practice: The Rise and Contestation of Anti-Homopropaganda Laws in Russia,” Journal of Human Rights 13, no. 3 (2014): 363–79; Jardar Østbø, “Securitizing ‘Spiritual-Moral Values’ in Russia,” Post-Soviet Affairs 33, no. 3 (2017): 200–216. Mikhail Antonov, “Conservatism in Russia and Sovereignty in Human Rights,” Review of Central and East European Law 39, no. 1 (2014): 1–40; Jørgen Staun and Jan Wener ­Mathiasen, “Russisk strategisk kultur under Putin,” in Kreml i Krig: Ruslands brug af militær magt, ed. Niels Bo Poulsen and Jørgen Staun (Copenhagen: 2018), 67–102; Andrei Melville, “A Neoconservative Consensus in Russia? Main Components, Factors of Stability, Potential of Erosion,” Russian Politics & Law 55, nos. 4–5 (2017): 315–35; Mikhail Suslov, “‘Russian World’ Concept: Post-Soviet Geopolitical Ideology and the Logic of ‘Spheres of Influence,’” Geopolitics 23, no. 2 (2018): 330–53. Wayne Allensworth, The Russian Question: Nationalism, Modernization, and Post-Communist Russia (Lanham, MD: 1998); Marlene Laruelle, Russian Nationalism: Imaginaries,

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and East Central Europe (New York: 2018), edited by Katharina Bluhm and Mihai Varga, is an important contribution to studies of contemporary conservatism in broad comparative perspective, especially in its discussion of the institutional basis for ideational changes. Our research domain adjoins the growing body of publications on the radical (or “far” or “extreme”) right in Russia and elsewhere. As it is usually understood, the radical right is about political actions, whereas conservatism is about ideas. However, in historically specific manifestations—such as the “Con­servative Revolution” or European New Right, the radical right can become synonymous with conservatism, or rather anti-liberalism. The book Key Thinkers of the Radical Right: Behind the New Threat to Liberal Democracy, edited by Mark Sedgwick,29 provides a pantheon of such right-wing intellectuals ranging from Oswald Spengler and Carl Schmitt to Patrick Buchanan and Aleksandr Dugin—the essay on the latter was written by Marlene Laruelle, one of the contributors to the present book. She also edited another important collection, titled Entangled Far Rights: A Russian-European Intellectual Romance in the Twentieth Century (Pittsburgh: 2018), which reconstructs the long history of mutual impact and parallel development of Russian and Western conservative intellectuals.30 Unlike these books, however, the present volume emphasizes the historical and cultural specificity of Russia, such as the prominence of the imperial and Soviet legacies, which—along with other important traits—mark out the singularity of Russian conservatism as an ideology with a rich intellectual tradition and a tangible impact on today’s global politics. Without negating the importance of comparing the Russian case with other post-socialist countries, we want to highlight the identity of our research project as primarily an indepth and multidisciplinary inquiry into Russian conservatism as an ideology, that is, as an ideational phenomenon, informed by a variety of political concepts and cultural factors.

29

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Doctrines, and Political Battlefields (Abingdon: 2019); Robert Horvath, The Legacy of Soviet Dissent: Dissidents, Democratisation and Radical Nationalism in Russia (London: 2005). Mark Sedgwick (ed.), Key Thinkers of the Radical Right: Behind the New Threat to Liberal Democracy (New York: 2019). See also: Jens Rydgren (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right (New York: 2018). The chapter on post-Soviet Russia was written by Richard Arnold and Andreas Umland (pp. 582–607). See also: Anton Shekhovtsov, Russia and the Western Far Right: Tango Noir (Abingdon: 2018); Vladimir Ivanov, Aleksandr Dugin und die rechtsextremen Netzwerke (Stuttgart: 2007); Leonid Luks (ed.), Zwei “Sonderwege”? Russisch-deutsche Parallelen und Kontraste, 1917–2014 (Stuttgart: 2016).

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Conservatism(s) Interpreted

Among other things, this volume provides an analytical reflection on the concept of conservatism. Conservatism is notoriously hard to grasp conceptually. Conservatives themselves tend to shun rational articulation of the core conservative ideas, because such articulation stands in obvious contradiction to the general conservative interpretation of society as an organic entity. An organic community needs an “organic” ideology, which naturally grows from the depths of the people’s consciousness. Ideology, however, is by definition a rational construct, imposed from above. Consider Michael Oakeshott’s interpretation of conservatism as a systematic preference for practice over theory.31 Or, as suggested by F.G.C. Hearnshaw, “it is commonly sufficient for practical purposes if conservatives, without saying anything, just sit and think, or even if they merely sit.”32 On the basis of this predicament, some scholars have come up with a situational approach to conservatism. From this viewpoint, expressed in Samuel Huntington’s seminal 1957 article “Conservatism as an Ideology,” conservatism is not an ideology at all, but rather a relational method of thinking that consists of defending the status quo, whatever this status quo is.33 In order to resuscitate the situational interpretation, conservative observers claim that one should not adhere to tradition “no matter what”; instead, adherence should be selective and critical: some traditions are worthy of being preserved, others are not.34 However, this perspective makes the situational approach ideational: conservatives still need a system of norms to help them decide which traditions are good and which are not. Hence, our volume rejects a situational approach, but at the same time, authors of the chapters examine a broad variety of conservative moments in contemporary Russia in a “bottom-up” manner. We do not impose a strict conceptual frame on the specific studies, but rather move inductively from a number of perspectives—moral, geopolitical, illiberal, Orthodox, nationalistic, and so on—toward a common understanding of the phenomenon of

31 32 33 34

Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (London: 1962). Quoted from: Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot (Washington, DC: 1985), 3. S.P. Huntington, “Conservatism as an Ideology,” American Political Science Review 51, no. 2 (1957): 454–73. Attila K. Molnár, “Conservatives’ Paradox in Post-Communism,” in The Meanings of Michael Oakeshott’s Conservatism, ed. C. Abel (Exeter, UK: 2010), 268–77.

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Russian conservatism. This design of the volume raises the question: is it at all useful to sum up these iterations under the umbrella term “conservatism”? In our reading, “conservatism” refers to three levels of interpretation: it is a certain ideational phenomenon whose contours we are trying to highlight and describe in the volume; it is an analytical category—an “ideal type,” helpful for a better understanding of this phenomenon; finally, it is a category of self-description. As a phenomenon, conservatism is different from the “right-wing” position in the political spectrum. The “right” is a relational concept. It necessitates a “weighty” left-wing side of the political scene, composed of powerful socialdemocratic forces, which are absent in post-Soviet Russia. Conservatism, by contrast, is not a relational but an ideational concept. It is an ideology and a worldview, different from liberalism, socialism, and other ideologies. It has its own, nationally specific, historical trajectory and specific place in intellectual history, culture, and society. In spite of its variegated manifestations, conservatism as an ideological phenomenon rests upon a certain “lowest common denominator.” When we use the term “conservatism” as an analytical tool we imply that a particular ideologist or a movement complies with this “conservative minimum” and thus can be considered in the volume, even if the authors of these chapters define its purpose, essence, and function in a variety of different ways. Some intellectuals use the term “conservatism” as a method of self-description. For us, self-nomination as a conservative does not automatically put ideologists into the rubric of “conservatism,” but it creates an important precondition for doing so because the term “conservatism” is performatively powerful. To call oneself a “conservative” means to identify one’s position toward an important element of the “conservative minimum”—the relation to change and tradition. So, how do we understand the “conservative minimum” in this volume? Inspired by Michael Freeden’s morphological study of ideologies, we can try to identify the “ineliminable” concepts that distinguish conservatism from other ideologies.35 One of the key themes for conservative-minded thinkers is the embeddedness of people in community and culture, but what distinguishes conservatism from communitarianism is a specific vision of this community as

35

Michael Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory (Oxford: 1998).

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“organic,” naturally growing.36 This understanding shapes a conservative approach to social change, which is not ruled out, but should be “natural,” coming from within society, not imposed on it from outside by a foreign force or domestic political project.37 By extension, conservatism is suspicious of humanity’s ability to comprehend social complexity and to propose a large-scale plan for restructuring society.38 This means that the agency behind changes should be extra-human, rooted in historical tradition or religious belief and not in imperfect and sinful human judgment and willpower. Conservatism thus emerged as an ideology of comprehensive rebuttal to the philosophy and Weltanschauung of the Enlightenment, and more specifically, to the ideas of rationalism, human perfection, and the capacity and necessity to interfere with and initiate social change in a desired direction. 3

Radical or Moderate?

Supporters and ideologists of conservatism in Russia are primarily preoccupied with an attempt to normalize conservatism, making it an all-embracing, maximally inclusive notion and a moderate state ideology of “common sense.” Aleksandr Shchipkov, a notable representative of “social conservatism,” argues that conservatism is not only an effective remedy for fanaticism and radicalism, but also the “most universal and integral ideology,” because its object is the panoply of the nation’s “intellectual tradition,” and not a single idea or principle.39 Stylistically conservatism is defined in the “yes, but” way: we stand for tradition, but we are not against innovation; we support private property, but we also want a social state; we need a strong state, but we also recognize the importance of political rights and freedoms; we will build a new Russia, but we will also take everything good from the Soviet era, and so on. A number of paradoxical epithets are attached to conservatism: “progressive conservatism,”

36

37 38 39

Whether community and liberalism are eternally antagonistic has been explored in Leczek Koczanowicz, Politics of Dialogue, Non-Consensual Democracy and Critical Community (Edinburgh: 2015). See also: Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction (Oxford: 2002). See, among other sources, Ted Honderich, Conservatism: Burke, Nozick, Bush, Blair? (London: 2005), especially ch. 1, pp. 6–31. Anthony Quinton, The Politics of Imperfection: The Religious and Secular Traditions of Conservative Thought in England from Hooker to Oakeshott (London: 1978). Aleksandr Shchipkov, “Neobkhodimaia sotsial’naia terapiia,” Izvestiia, no. 143, 5 August 2014.

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“creative conservatism,”40 “reformist conservatism,”41 “dynamic conser­ va­ tism.”42 Pro-government think tanks have been busily working on a project of non-antagonistic conservatism that the majority of the population and political elite will find attractive.43 In 2014–15, ISEPI promoted the collaborative “Conservatism for Development” project, which would lay the foundation for social consensus in Russia. A few years before, another pro-Kremlin expert institution, the Russian Institute for Strategic Research (RISI), published a report along the same lines.44 This report emphasizes the fact that the Russian leadership has chosen moderate conservative thinkers as their source of ideological inspiration, such as Nikolai Berdiaev and Ivan Ilyin.45 Whether this self-description as a moderate, consolidating “conservatism for development” is accurate is a legitimate question. We know that the right 40

41 42

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45

For example, Boris Gryzlov, the head of the ruling Edinaia Rossiia party, defined conservatism as follows: “This is the ideology of stability and development, the constant creative renovation of society without standstills and revolutions.” S. Brilev, “Gryzlov: Rossiiskii konservatizm—eto stabil’nost’ i razvitie,” Vesti.ru, 21 November 2009, accessed 2 April 2019, . See also: Aleksandr Melikhov, “Tvor­ ches­kii konservatizm,” Izvestiia, 12 January 2011, accessed 28 May 2018, ; V. Shilov, “Partiia ‘Edinaia Rossiia’ i ideologiia konservatizma,” Nauchnye vedomosti Belgorodskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta: Seriia Istoriia, politologiia 72, no. 1 (2010): 210–18. Aleksei Miller, “Reformatorskii konsfervatizm dlia sovremennoi Rossii,” Rossiia v global’noi politike 5 (2017): 12–36. For example, the conservative think tank named the Institute for Dynamic Conservatism, founded in 2009 by Andrei Kobiakov and Vitaly Averianov. The “institute” emerged from the Center for Dynamic Conservatism, which was responsible for one of the central documents in the history of post-Soviet conservatism, The Russian Doctrine (2005). We can, however, doubt whether the Russian population in general has actually embraced “traditional values” since the “conservative turn” was ushered into public life around 2012. See L.G. Byzov, “Conservative Trends in Contemporary Russian Society: Origins, Content, and Prospects,” Sociological Research 56, no. 1 (2017): 1–20. Aleksandr Posadskii, Konservatizm—strategiia razvitiia XXI v. (Moscow: 2013). The author is the vice-chair of the State Duma apparatus. Together with Yuri Shuvalov, one of the highest functionaries of the party Edinaia Rossiia, Posadskii authored another opinion piece: Iu. Shuvalov and A. Posadskii, Rossiiskii konservatizm: Tsennostnye osnovaniia i strategiia razvitiia (Moscow: 2010). For Shuvalov, the importance of conservatism as an ideology of development is precisely its power to consolidate society. See: Shuvalov, “Rossiiskii konservatizm kak ideologiia razvitiia,” Mir nauki 3 (2013): 1–5. Boris Makarenko (ed.), Konservatizm i razvitie: Osnovy obshchestvennogo soglasiia (Moscow: 2016), 9. On the conservative heritage, see 244–51. See also: “28 iiunia sostoialas’ prezentatsiia knigi,” Tsentr politicheskikh tekhnologii, 2015, accessed 30 May 2018, . See also: Anton Barbashin and Hannah Thoburn, “Putin’s Philosopher: Ivan Ilyin and the Ideology of Moscow’s Rule,” Foreign Affairs, September 30, 2015.

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wing of the political spectrum can sustain the most radical views and movements, and this volume documents many instances in which conservatism developed into a radical doctrine and political practice.46 The thread of our argument follows this ever-present danger: for a number of reasons contemporary Russian conservatism is not as consolidating and moderate as it is portrayed by its supporters and ideologists. In fact, Russian conservatism is unstable in its very essence—it is structured around a number of unresolved dilemmas. Instability at the conceptual core of Russian conservatism makes it liable to breakdowns and extreme solutions. This phenomenon requires an explanation, and we believe that a look into the specifics of Russia’s history can give us some clues. These specifics include: (1) Russia’s position as a peripheral empire, struggling for recognition from the constitutive “Other” in the West; (2) the topdown comprehensive and voluntary Westernization that it lived through in the 18th century, earlier than any other peripheral country; (3) its geopolitical modernization, which culminated in the radical rupture of the previous historical tradition during Soviet times; (4) the paradoxical lack of traditional foundation for Russian conservatism as an ideology of traditionalism; (5) the fact that its political subject has always been defined in imperial, rather than in national terms; and (6) the fact that its historical evolution resulted in a postSoviet semi-authoritarian regime under Vladimir Putin. Consequently, there are six key problems/dilemmas specific to Russian conservatism that make it so unstable. 4

Dilemmas of Russian Conservatism

The first of these dilemmas is that Russian conservatism is essentially geopolitical, because it purports to explain a community whose source of identity already lies elsewhere, in the West, which Russia has mimicked with so much diligence since Peter I’s reign. This specificity creates a unique dilemma for Russian conservatism, which oscillates between antagonizing the West and isolating itself from it. It should be noted, however, that there is no good solution to this dilemma: growing anti-Westernism leads to even greater dependence on the “Other,” while an “egoistic” retreat to isolation reinforces “our” difference from the West, and leads to the same anti-Western attitudes that it

46

See, for example, chapter 4 by Dmitry Uzlaner, chapter 7 by Marlene Laruelle, chapter 9 by Ekaterina Grishaeva, and chapter 14 by Victor Shnirelman in this volume.

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tries to escape.47 Geopolitical conservatism only makes sense when relations with the outside world are framed as enemy/friend, which inscribes the idea of violence deep into the conservative grid of values. Of course, there is no causal relation between the most bellicose and irresponsible statements of the spokespersons of Putinism48 and the ideology of conservatism in Russia, but it would be a gross mistake not to notice any relation at all. Second, Russian conservatism has developed as an ideology of authenticity, primarily interested in uncovering Russia’s “true self,” said to have been dimmed by Western influences under Peter I and his followers. When a given community has already been developing inorganically for a century or more in accordance with someone else’s plans, a natural conservative response to the situation is to develop a conservative utopia. Slavophile intellectuals of the 19th and early 20th centuries49 and later supporters of the “Conservative Revolution” represent this trend. This conservative utopia would fight unnaturalness with unnaturalness, that is, it proposes a rationally constructed project of rolling back rationally planned changes to a specific point in the past when changes were still “natural.”50 The dilemma that conservatism faces here is precisely between a revolutionary comeback, complicated by a descent into fascism,51 and an embrace of changes that have already occurred in the concept of status quo: either losing the spirit of conservatism, or the object of conservation. In pursuit of an authentic tradition, post-Soviet conservatives have eagerly jumped at the theory of “Conservative Revolution,” which provides them with the conceptual apparatus for the radical repudiation of modernity.52 47

See chapters 3 by Mikhail Suslov, 8 by Alicja Curanović, and 10 by Irina Karlsohn in this volume. 48 For example, Lidia Kelly, “Russia Can Turn US to Radioactive Ash—Kremlin-Backed Journalist,” Reuters, 2014, accessed 30 May 2018, . 49 Andrzej Walicki, The Slavophile Controversy: History of a Conservative Utopia in Nineteenth-Century Russian Thought (Oxford: 1975). 50 The conservative take on the problem of change and modernity is explored in chapters 5 by Katharina Bluhm, 11 by Kåre Johan Mjør, and 13 by Andrey Shishkov in this volume. 51 On palingenetic ideologies, which propose a radical return to a nation’s imaginary origins in the past, see Andreas Umland, “Zhirinovskii as a Fascist: Palingenetic Ultra-Nationalism and the Emergence of the Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia in 1992–93,” Forum für osteuropäische Ideen- und Zeitgeschichte 14, no. 2 (2010): 189–215; Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (London: 1993). 52 Jacob W. Kipp, “Aleksandr Dugin and the Ideology of National Revival: Geopolitics, Eurasianism and the Conservative Revolution,” European Security 11, no. 3 (2002): 91–125; Leonid Luks, “Der ‘Dritte Weg’ der ‘Neo-Eurasischen’ Zeitschrift ‘Elementy’—Zurück ins Dritte Reich?,” Studies in East European Thought 52, no. 1 (2000): 49–71; Stefan Wiederkehr,

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Besides, the pursuit of authenticity, together with geopolitical isolationism, mark out conservatism as an ideology of Russia’s civilizational uniqueness, messianism, and the “third way.”53 The third key problem results from the previous point: for post-Soviet conservatism the most divisive issue is what to do with the Soviet past. Conservatives are naturally predisposed toward religion, which was persecuted in the Soviet Union; monarchy, which was destroyed in 1917; private property, abolished by the Bolsheviks; and a traditional lifestyle and rural culture, which was supplanted by Soviet urbanization and industrialization. And yet, among large groups of the population, the Soviet period still evokes strong nostalgic feelings of approval for its international status as a superpower and respect for its achievements in science and technology. So the third conservative dilemma is whether to include the Soviet past in its pantheon of Russia’s thousand-year accomplishments (and hence we have all these “dynamic” and “progressive” conservatisms), which runs the risk of diluting the conservative identity, or to exclude it and idealize the pre-1917 past, which runs a different risk—that of being stranded on the political periphery in the company of historical reenactors (rekonstruktory) and monarchists. When conservatives include some degree of “Soviet-ness” in their ideological project, as was the case with the “red-brown” opposition in the late 1980s–90s,54 they tend toward the most radical forms of geopolitical revanchism and anti-Westernism. Fourth, the Soviet past is important for conservatism in yet another respect. Because of the rupture of the tradition, contemporary Russian conservatism is

53

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Die Eurasische Bewegung, Wissenschaft und Politik in der Russischen Emigration der Zwischenkriegszeit und im Postsowjetischen Ruβland (Cologne: 2007); Stefan Wiederkehr, “‘Kontinent Evrasija’—Klassischer Eurasismus und Geopolitik in der Lesart Alexander Dugins,” in Auf der Suche nach Eurasien: Politik, Religion und Alltagskultur zwischen Ruβland und Europa, ed. Markus Kaiser (Bielefeld: 2004), 125–38; Marlene Laruelle, “The Izborsky Club, or the New Conservative Avant-Garde in Russia,” The Russian Review 75, no. 4 (2016): 626–44. The literature here is vast. See, for example: Peter J.S. Duncan, Russian Messianism: Third Rome, Holy Revolution, Communism and After (London: 2000); Fabian Linde, “The Civilizational Turn in Russian Political Discourse: From Pan‐Europeanism to Civilizational Distinctiveness,” The Russian Review 75, no. 4 (2016): 604–25; Jutta Scherrer, Kulturologie: Ruβland auf der Suche Nach Einer Zivilisatorischen Identität, vol. 13 (Göttingen: 2003); Lauri Mälksoo (ed.), Russia and European Human-Rights Law: The Rise of the Civilizational Argument (Leiden: 2014); Andrei Tsygankov, “Crafting the State-Civilization: Vladimir Putin’s Turn to Distinct Values,” Problems of Post-Communism 63, no. 3 (2016): 146–58. A loose alliance between communists (“reds”) and revanchist nationalists (“browns”). See: Yitzhak M. Brudny, Reinventing Russia: Russian Nationalism and the Soviet State, 1953– 1991 (Cambridge, MA: 1998); Alan Ingram, “‘A Nation Split into Fragments’: The Congress of Russian Communities and Russian Nationalist Ideology,” Europe-Asia Studies 51, no. 4 (1999): 687–704.

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an ideological orphan, cut off from its prerevolutionary roots. This means that conservatism is intellectually omnivorous, feeding on conservative ideas of various provenance. The irony of the situation is that conservatism as an ideology of tradition lacks its own tradition in post-Soviet Russia, consisting instead of a number of disconnected authoritative conservatives, many of whom are radical thinkers (for example, ideologists of the “Conservative Revolution”) that ideological “neophytes” find irresistibly attractive. Moreover, as a result of Soviet modernization and the Soviet uprooting of tradition Russia today is a much less traditional country than Europe or the United States.55 This creates a real paradox—Russia aspires to be a country of traditional values and a traditional way of life while its social realities could be better described as postmodern and non-traditional.56 Similarly, while the Russian Orthodox Church plays an important role in promoting conservatism, levels of religiosity in contemporary Russia are unimpressive—even compared to other post-atheist East European countries.57 The absurdist and postmodern character of Russian conservatism stems from this—and is mocked by Russia’s best writers, like Vladimir Sorokin or Viktor Pelevin.58 At best, Russia could be described as a country that reinvents tradition—sometimes in a very clumsy way.59 The anti-gay propaganda law, for example, puts Russia in the fold with African societies.60 At the same time, there are far more traditionalist countries in Europe, although unlike Russia they do not present themselves as paladins of a global conservative backlash. 55 56

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Victoria Smolkin, A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism (Princeton, NJ: 2018); Paul Froese, The Plot to Kill God: Findings from the Soviet Experiment in Secularization (Berkeley, CA: 2008). Lev Gudkov, “Immoralizm posttotalitarnogo obshchestva v Rossii,” Levada-Tsentr, 2016, accessed 30 May 2018, ; “Moral’nykh skrep ne obnaruzheno,” Levada-Tsentr, 2014, accessed 30 May 2018, . See also chapter 15 by Caroline Hill in this volume. See “Religious Belief and National Belonging in Central and Eastern Europe: National and Religious Identities Converge in a Region Once Dominated by Atheist Regimes,” Pew Research Center: Religion and Public Life, 10 May 2017, accessed 18 December 2018, . See Sorokin’s Day of an Oprichnik (2006) and Sugar Kremlin (2008), and Pelevin’s S.N.U.F.F. (2011). Zhanna Kormina, Alexander Panchenko, and Sergei Shtyrkov (eds.), Izobretenie religii: Desekuliarizatsiia v postsovetskom kontekste (Saint Petersburg: 2015); Horvath, “The Reinvention of ‘Traditional Values.’” Alexis Okeowo, “An Anti-Gay Pastor Takes on Uganda and Russia,” The New Yorker, 16 ­August 2013, accessed 20 May 2018, . On the anti-propaganda law, see ­Wilkinson, “Putting ‘Traditional Values’ into Practice,” 363–79.

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Fifth, conservatives are preoccupied with community, its subjectivity and agency. But what kind of political subject do they have in mind when it comes to post-Soviet Russia? On the one hand, an inclusive imperial approach tends to bundle together nations that are not very welcome in the “us”-community from a conservative viewpoint, such as the former Soviet citizens of Muslim background and Central Asian origin, or—since 2014—the Ukrainians. On the other hand, an exclusive Russian nationalist vision would not satisfy those who prefer to see Russia as a universal empire with an internationally prominent status, and who tend to repudiate nationalistic particularism as a certain “scaling down” of Russia and its global mission.61 The alliance between nationalism and conservatism is not predestined in a multinational post-imperial country such as Russia, but if this tendency is gaining momentum, the history of Black Hundreds and anti-Jewish pogroms in late imperial Russia should serve as an ominous warning. Finally, sixth, in today’s Russia, conservatism’s mission is legitimization of the semi-authoritarian regime with very limited rotation in “Politburo 2.0.”62 Conservatism is undoubtedly a favorite ideology of the Russian leadership,63 and it is likely to consolidate its hegemonic position among the elite even more because of its two major ideological facets: the ideal of stability, and—in the Russian context—support of a strong state.64 Resource rent and ideological penetration are interconnected in Russia. The greater the surplus revenue 61 62

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In the long run, however, post-Soviet Russia tends toward an ethno-national understanding of its identity. See on this: Pål Kolstø and Helge Blakkisrud, The New Russian Nationalism: Imperialism, Ethnicity and Authoritarianism, 2000–2015 (Edinburgh: 2016). The “Politburo” (the political bureau) was the highest organ of the Communist Party under Stalin and Brezhnev. Here the term refers to the oligarchic rule of Vladimir Putin. See: ‘“Politbiuro 2.0’ i postkrymskaia Rossiia,” Minchenko Consulting, 2014, accessed 30 May 2018, . Among the most influential studies here are Vladimir Gelman, Authoritarian Russia: Analyzing Post-Soviet Regime Changes (Pittsburgh: 2015); Karen Dawisha, Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia? (New York: 2014); Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (Cambridge: 2010); Alena V. Ledeneva, Can Russia Modernise? Sistema, Power Networks and Informal Governance (Cambridge: 2013); Vladislav Inozemtsev, Nesovremennaia strana: Rossiia v mire XXI veka (Moscow: 2018). Marlene Laruelle, “Conservatism as the Kremlin’s New Toolkit: An Ideology at the Lowest Cost,” Russian Analytical Digest 138 (2013): 2–4; Witold Rodkiewicz and Jadwiga Rodoza, “Potemkin Conservatism: An Ideological Tool of the Kremlin,” Point of View 48 (2015): 1–25, accessed 9 June 2018, . For example, Richard Pipes called support of the strong state and specifically, the autocratic government, the linchpin of prerevolutionary Russian conservatism: R. Pipes, Russian Conservatism and Its Critics: A Study in Political Culture (New Haven, CT: 2005).

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from exploiting Russia’s natural riches that is appropriated by the oligarchic elite, the less this elite is preoccupied with ideological mobilization. If this model is correct, and Russia is a kind of semi-authoritarian regime whose ultimate purpose is self-reproduction and perpetuation, then the resource rent is variable, and conservatism is a function that is likely to go up as natural resources are depleted, the infrastructure deteriorates, population levels stagnate, and international market demand falls. At the same time, conservatism’s instrumental role raises questions: what sort of limits are there to the loyalty that conservative ideologists feel for the present regime? As we know, historically conservatives have developed “love-hate” relations with the state, which has always been the major force for modernization and Westernization in Russia. Shunted to the margins of political life and excluded from the ever-narrowing space of political debate under Putinism, conservatives are likely to become more radical, as happens when the regime is no longer conducive to political participation. All this being said, Russian conservatism should not be considered an isolated phenomenon. There has always been a transfer of conservative ideas from the West, or rather a dialogue between Russian and Western conservative intellectuals.65 This transfer of ideas as well as dialogue still continues.66 But something is changing: a new type of conservatism is gradually emerging. This conservatism—represented, for example, by traditional family values conservatism—is becoming a global transnational ideology that is no longer rooted in particular national contexts. Instead it is rooted in networks of transnational actors who promote the conservative agenda around the globe using common strategies, resources, and a common pool of arguments, for example, arguments in favor of the traditional/natural family or against abortion.67 To a considerable degree, Russia’s traditional values conservatism is just a local manifestation of this new transnational ideology, which itself is a result of a 65

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M. Laruelle (ed.), Entangled Far Rights: A Russian-European Intellectual Romance in the Twentieth Century (Pittsburgh: 2018); Christopher Stroop, “A Christian Solution to International Tension: Nikolai Berdyaev, the American YMCA and Russian Orthodox Influence on Western Christian Anti-Communism,” Journal of Global History 13 (2018): 188–208. More on this in chapter 7 by Marlene Laruelle in this volume. For example, on abortions, see: Susanna Mancini and Kristina Stoeckl, “Transatlantic Conversations: The Emergence of Society-Protective Anti-Abortion Arguments in the United States, Europe and Russia,” in The Conscience Wars: Rethinking the Balance between Religion and Equality, ed. Susanna Mancini and Michel Rosenfeld (Cambridge: 2018), 220–57. See also: Dmitry Uzlaner and Kristina Stoeckl, “The Legacy of Pitirim Sorokin in the Transnational Alliances of Moral Conservatives,” Journal of Classical Sociology 18, no. 2 (2018): 133–53.

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global polarization of values.68 This adds one more dilemma to the ones mentioned above—conservatism, with its emphasis on national sovereignty against globalization, is itself becoming more and more globalized and uprooted from any particular national context.69 Russian conservatism belongs to an extended ideological family, and it is well timed to the global moment, which is characterized by a certain degree of disappointment in liberal democracy and by the proliferation of right-wing populism and geopolitical realism across the globe.70 Moreover, the political and Church elite has been claiming its global ideological influence. Russia’s alleged involvement in the US presidential elections on the side of the conservative populist Donald Trump is just one issue, although very widely debated; but there are other cases of Moscow asserting its status as a leader of the global crusade against the liberal hegemony of the West and the United States in particular. It has done so as the “Third Rome” fighting against the secularized West, which has been emasculated by multiculturalism and immigration.71 The Russian Orthodox Church and its representatives are especially active in this context.72 At the same time, unfamiliar with Russian realities and unaware of the spurious traditionalism of Russian society, conservatives in the West are all too eager to portray Russia as a bastion of tradition. This volume offers a more nuanced vision of Russian conservatism, while it simultaneously shows how the Russian case will contribute to a general understanding of this global phenomenon.

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Clifford Bob, The Global Right Wing and the Clash of World Politics (Cambridge: 2012); Kristina Stoeckl, “Postsecular Conflicts and the Global Struggle for Traditional Values” (lecture), State, Religion and Church 3, no. 2 (2016): 102–16; Kristina Stoeckl, “Aktivisty vne konfessional’nykh granits: ‘Konservativnyi ekumenizm’ Vsemirnogo kongressa semei,” Gosudarstvo, religiia, tserkov’ v Rossii i za rubezhom 36, no. 4 (2018): 58–86. 69 In general, see materials of the Postsecular Conflicts research project, Universität Innsbruck, accessed 29 January 2019, . 70 Fedor Luk’ianov, “Konservatizm dlia epokhi nestabil’nosti,” Rossiia v global’noi politike 5 (2017): 6–11; Mikhail Remizov, “Moskva stala vosprinimat’sia kak stolitsa ‘konservativnogo internatsionala,’” Institut natsional’noi strategii, 2016, accessed 29 May 2018, . 71 Herpen, Putin’s Propaganda Machine; Østbø, “Securitizing ‘Spiritual-Moral Values,’” 200– 216; Shekhovtsov, Russia and the Western Far Right. 72 Stoeckl, “The Russian Orthodox Church,” 132–51; Kristina Stoeckl and Ksenia Medvedeva, “Double Bind at the UN: Western Actors, Russia, and the Traditionalist Agenda,” Global Constitutionalism: Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law 7, no. 3 (2018): 383–421.

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Chapter Overview

The first, introductory part of the book includes the present chapter, which establishes the common theoretical grounds for approaching the phenomenon of conservatism in Russia and briefly reconstructs the historical context of the “conservative turn,” and chapter 2 on the history of conservatism in Russia. Chapter 2 is written by a collective of authors, including Susanna RabowEdling, Mikhail Loukianov, Kåre Johan Mjør, and Mikhail Suslov. This chapter begins with an exploration of 19th-century conservatism by Susanna RabowEdling. Born from the Napoleonic wars, conservatism served to legitimize the Romanov dynasty and hence organized its conceptual universe around the idea of absolute monarchy. Simultaneously, philosophical reflection on Russia’s Westernization helped to crystallize Russia’s romantic nationalism in the ideology of the Slavophiles. The revolution of 1905 ushered in a new Russian constitutional and parliamentary order, in which conservatives were allowed to speak and participate in political processes. At the same time, these reforms introduced the problem of political modernization. This problem turned out to be painful for the majority of conservatives, who saw how the Russian rulers themselves were dismantling their dearest ideals of absolutist monarchy. In the section on the late imperial period, Mikhail Loukianov shows that conservatism’s defense of monarchy and scathing attack on parliamentarism petrified its ideology and political practice and made conservatives unprepared to respond to actual political changes. Kåre Johan Mjør’s section on émigré conservatism analyzes new types of post-revolutionary conservatism. Disconnected from their country and its political processes, and pressed to make sense of the revolution that had altered their entire universe, conservative thinkers developed radical, utopian attitudes. Many of them ended up among the European fascists, but by and large they stuck with anti-Westernism, geopolitics, and mystical Christianity. After the 20th Communist Party Congress in 1956, state pressure on dissenting views decreased, and underground debates resulted in the rise of a new Russian conservatism. Mikhail Suslov’s section discusses how right-wing dissidents in the 1960s–90s assimilated bits and pieces of Slavophilism and Marxism-Leninism in order to design a sweeping criticism of Western liberal hegemony. Their isolationism, nationalism, and concentration on family values creates a bridge to the post-Soviet surge of conservative discourses. Suslov also examines the transitory period of the 1990s, when, on the one hand, conservatism was marginalized, but on the other hand, it was reinforced by the coalescence of traditionalism and nostalgia for the Soviet past. Part 2 of this volume deals with various attempts to conceptualize Russian conservatism and understand its place in the ideological landscape and its role

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in society. This part starts with chapter 3, written by Mikhail Suslov, who argues that the core concept of conservatism is the prime importance of community and culture. The central component of this conservative communitarianism is the assumption that a community is not and should not be externally planned. Suslov argues that the historical experience of thorough top-down Westernization in Russia has molded Russian conservatism in quite a distinctive way, because conservatives had to reflect on a society that had already been externally modeled after the Western example. This imparted a radicalism to Russian conservatism, which tends to theorize a sweeping revolutionary and utopian return to the status quo ante. The chapter, however, dwells on a different intellectual response, which is to reimagine “our” identity as being geopolitically cut off from the rest of the world. This response puts forward isolationism and the logic of multiple civilizations, or Großräume, “large spaces” in Carl Schmitt’s terms. Having laid out this line of thinking, the chapter maintains that the geopolitics of “large spaces” is an unavoidable corollary of any nonradical conservatism in Russia. Geopolitical conservatism is, however, internally paradoxical. When conservatives try to think of an organic community in spatial terms, by framing the difference as geopolitical rivalry, they achieve a relatively homogenous vision of “us-community,” something like the notorious concept of the “Russian World” after 2014. Yet, homogeneity implies a degree of violent repression of internal differences. Dmitry Uzlaner in chapter 4, “The Logic of Scapegoating in Contemporary Russian Moral Conservatism,” points to the inescapable danger of conservative radicalization. The chapter focuses on an interpretative framework for understanding discourses on “traditional values.” The author distances himself from the analysis of conservatism as an ideology or a political instrument, and advances an understanding of conservatism as a reflection of a universal sociocultural phenomenon, leaning upon René Girard’s theory of scapegoating. In order to sustain homogeneity, society develops a mechanism for identifying and repressing innocent “scapegoats,” as well as a mythological narrative to cover up the brazen brutality of scapegoating. From this perspective, the moral panics about sexual and family life that are flaring up in today’s Russia, such as debates about juvenile justice and same-sex relations, are mythological stories of sorts. Their sole purpose is to embellish the naked truth that a society that embarks on the task of ideological consolidation of its identity inevitably triggers the mechanism of scapegoating and the search for internal enemies that symbolize the threat to this consolidated identity. In a country whose development has been characterized by revolutionary upheavals and ruptures during the course of its history, the major challenge of conservatism is to decide which historical period is worth preserving or

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restoring. Is it post-Soviet Russia? And what to do with the Soviet period? Does prerevolutionary Russia present an ideal to follow? Or is pre-Petrine Muscovite Russia such an ideal? Katharina Bluhm’s chapter 5, “Postmodernity and Modernity as Political Terms in Russia’s New Conservatism,” dives head-on into the problem of what kind of changes conservatives find inappropriate and how far into the past they want to roll back the country. The author argues that for contemporary Russian conservatism the “golden age” lies in “classic modernity” as they understand it. This means that conservatism primarily attacks “post-modernity,” which is associated with experimentation with what they consider the natural human condition, West-centric liberal hegemony in international relations, and multiculturalism in social policies. This position allows conservatism to rally a broad coalition of supporters, both among the elite and the grass roots, attracted by the values of progress and social dynamism, nurturing some degree of Soviet nostalgia, and willing to embrace both conservative and left-wing ideas. Part 3 includes two chapters, which examine the Russian conservative tradition in the post-Soviet and international context. Chapter 6 by Alexander Pavlov, “The Great Expectations of Russian Young Conservatism,” reconstructs the history and intellectual evolution of the most seminal group of conservative intellectuals in the 2000s, “the young conservatives” (mladokonservatory). Based on interviews with the members of this circle, the author demonstrates the general move from an imperial to a national and isolationist interpretation of their political ideal. In spite of the regime’s pronounced interest in conservative ideology, it did not hurry to align with the “young conservatives.” The state’s entrenched self-perception as the main agent of modernization in Russia, as well as the shrinking public sphere under Putinism, partially marginalized the “young conservatives,” and partially pushed them into loyalist think tanks. For those observing Russian conservatism from a historical perspective, “the young conservatives” represent an interesting attempt to conceptualize conservative ideas without lapsing into okhranitel’stvo—the retrograde and subservient defense of the status quo—although the outcome is unsurprising. Were “young conservatives” and other right-wing thinkers in Russia conservative at all? This question haunts many students of Russian ideology, who point to the profound conceptual differences between conservatives in Russia and conservatives in the West (in the United States in particular): the former, for example, demand “more state,” whereas the latter’s hallmark is the “less state” slogan. Marlene Laruelle’s chapter 7, “Mirror Games: Ideological Resonances between Russian and US Radical Conservatism,” is one response to this problem. In spite of ideological differences and the inveterate anti-Russian, “Cold War”–era attitudes among many Western conservative thinkers, Russian

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conservatives unequivocally have “selective affinity” with conservatives in Europe and North America. This chapter identifies connections between Russian and American racists and anti-immigrant activists, Aleksandr Dugin’s influence on the Alt-Right movement, and resonances between Russian proponents of Eurasianism and anti-globalist Western supporters of continentalist ideas, as well as the relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Christian Right in the United States based on the same “traditional values” agenda. The author cautions us not to overestimate the scale of mutual borrowing, suggesting instead that we consider common intellectual roots, mostly among the thinkers of the European “Conservative Revolution,” a shared Zeitgeist, and a list of common enemies: liberals, immigrants, secularists, and so forth. Against the background of the debates on Russia’s interference in the US presidential election, this argument means that Russian conservatives do not define the American political agenda, but can amplify certain otherwise barely audible voices. The fourth part of the book consists of essays that explore one of the central conservative issues in today’s Russia: the relationship between geopolitical ideas and style of thinking. Chapter 8 by Alicja Curanović, titled “Russia’s Contemporary Exceptionalism and Geopolitical Conservatism,” looks into the conservative turn in Russian foreign policy. The author develops her argument based on the idea that Russia has always been Europe’s periphery, and thus has constantly craved recognition from the West while painfully suspecting that such recognition was not fully granted. This has naturally shaped Russian conservatism as an ideology that is primarily preoccupied with the country’s geopolitical status. It has also turned conservatism into an ideology of resistance to Western hegemony and grafted an important ideational element to the conservative trunk: an idea of messianic exceptionalism as a tactic of resistance. Geopolitical exceptionalism stands behind Russia’s claims for “great power” status, but it also promotes the idea of multipolarity, the central rhetorical device in contemporary Russian discourses on international relations. What looms large behind all geopolitical constructions on the right side of the Russian political spectrum is, of course, anti-Westernism. Chapter 9, ‘“Making Europe Great Again’: Anti-Western Criticism from Orthodox Conservative Actors Online,” authored by Ekaterina Grishaeva, investigates this problem through the example of discourses circulating among Orthodox intellectuals and high-ranking clerics. The chapter focuses on three digital platforms for expressing religiously motivated anti-Westernism: the website of the Moscow Patriarchate, the World Russian People’s Council site, and the radically nationalistic news aggregator ruskline.ru. Grishaeva identifies several specific discursive frames that stage anti-Westernism. Moral laxity, decline, and secularism in

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the West are central to official Church discourses, while the patriotic “People’s Council” associated with the Church puts forward the idea of geopolitical confrontation between Russia and the West and Russia’s messianic call to rejuvenate rotten Europe. The semi-marginal ruskline.ru has also developed an interest in political argumentation that supports the leftish concept of Russia’s struggle against the capitalist West. Irina Karlsohn’s chapter 10, “From Expansion to Seclusion and Back Again: Boris Mezhuev’s Isolationism and Its Roots in Solzhenitsyn and Tsymbursky,” reflects on the conservative geopolitics of isolationism. The author takes one of the “young conservatives,” Boris Mezhuev, and explores his engagement with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and political analyst Vadim Tsymbursky, who proposed Russia’s withdrawal from costly and dangerous international expansion and suggested concentration on the self and the cultivation of Russia’s own lands instead. In Mezhuev’s rendition, the geopolitics of isolationism presupposes a vision of Russia as one specific civilization among others— “civilizational realism” in international relations, as he dubs it. Paradoxically, geopolitical expansionism in this “civilizational” interpretation may well legitimize expansionism. This happens when a breakaway territory is deemed to belong to “our” civilization. In this case, a retreat from active presence in the life of the West presupposes a simultaneous increase in irredentist activities in the post-Soviet space. Part 5, “History and Memory Narratives in Russian Conservatism,” starts with Kåre Johan Mjør’s chapter 11, ‘“Russia’s Thousand-Year History’: Claiming a Past in Contemporary Russian Conservative Thought.” The author approaches the central problem, discussed in other chapters too, of how Russian conservatives can make sense of the changes in Russia’s turbulent past. Mjør concentrates on the official storyline of Russian history, which is becoming increasingly popular among conservatives. This storyline portrays Russia’s “thousand-year history.” This narrative consists of two important ingredients. The first is the idea of the equal importance of all periods in the history of Russia, each of which contributed to Russia’s territorial growth, cultural achievements, and spiritual progress. The second is an attempt to downplay the importance of revolutions, specifically of the 1917 revolution. The “thousand-year history” narrative is fine-tuned to inscribe the Soviet period not as a negation of imperial Russia, but as an assertion of longer and more profound historical trends, such as the liberation of the country from Western influences and the achievement of great-power status. The chapter picks two ideologists as examples: communist leader Gennady Ziuganov, and a religiously inclined conservative publicist, Nataliia Narochnitskaia. In spite of their obvious ideological dissimilarities, both conservatives advance a similar vision of “total continuity” in Russian history.

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The narrative of the unity of the history of Russia marks the “conservative turn” in the Russian political leadership in the past few years. Russia’s cultural policy and more specifically, the politics of memory, is yet another sign of this turn. Per-Arne Bodin’s chapter 12, “The Monument to Grand Prince Vladimir in Moscow and the Problem of Conservatism,” examines how Prince Vladimir, a central but also divisive figure in Russian history, is framed in Russia’s cultural policies. Vladimir is the ruler who baptized ancient Rus’. He is venerated in the Russian Orthodox Church as a saint, “equal to the apostles” (ravnoapostol’nyi), the founder of “Holy Russia.” At the same time, he is reclaimed as a great ruler in the history of Ukraine, whose image can be found on Ukrainian banknotes. Bodin digs into this controversy by discussing two examples: the opening of a gigantic monument to Vladimir in Moscow in 2016, and the historical blockbuster The Viking (2016), which also depicts Vladimir. The chapter argues that framing of historical narratives in these two cases demonstrates an ideological bent toward a “civilizational” interpretation of Russia as a country belonging to the glorious Byzantine commonwealth, while also promoting a vision of Ukraine’s European choice as a betrayal of Ukraine’s own cultural roots. The Orthodox Church supplies Russian conservatism with a number of important ideological building blocks and acts as a pronouncedly conservative actor in politics. Part 6 consists of chapters that discuss the religious dimension of Russian conservatism. It opens with chapter 13 by Andrey Shishkov, “Eastern Orthodoxy, Conservatism, and (Neo)Palamite Tradition in Post-Soviet Russia.” Shishkov emphasizes that for religious conservatives the concept of tradition plays a key role, and he documents two main iterations of “tradition” in religious usage: the critical and the romantic. The first sees the task of a theologian as uncovering the true core of religious tradition, distilling it from later and less important layers. The second, romantic approach claims that the religious tradition is valuable in its organic wholeness. By extension, the critical approach implies scholarly deliberation, whereas the romantic one is grounded in religious intuition. The author associates the romantic traditionalism in the Church with political conservatism, identifying its most important religious manifestation in Palamism and “political hesychasm,” which bridges Orthodox theology and the political defense of empire, monarchy, and the idea of an “Orthodox civilization.” Political theology is at the center of chapter 14, “Russian Neoconservatism and Apocalyptic Imperialism,” by Victor Shnirelman. This chapter addresses political and religious views of such ideologists on the radical flank of Russian conservatism as Arkady Maler, Aleksandr Prokhanov, and Mikhail Nazarov. Shnirelman observes the importance of eschatology and specifically the concept of the Katechon for these thinkers. Katechon is a religious concept that has

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been applied to geopolitics, and in this case designates a pious country that refuses to cave in to the Antichrist when he comes to power at the end of days. The country implied here is of course Russia, and the concept is honed to criticize the secular West and modernity in its entirety. Marrying religious messianism and geopolitical zero-sum games between Russia and the West, the imagery and ideology of the Katechon is used to support a variety of ideas. These ideas include the “world plot” against Christianity, restoration of the Orthodox monarchy, Eurasianist continentalism, and “atomic Orthodoxy”—resisting the coming of the Antichrist by Russia’s nuclear arms if it comes down to an open conflict with the apostate West. Finally, chapter 15 by Caroline Hill, “Framing ‘Gay Propaganda’: Morality Policy Arguments and the Russian Orthodox Church,” provides an analysis of argumentation among Orthodox clerics regarding the country’s laws banning propaganda of same-sex relationships to minors, based on interviews granted to the author. Hill lays out the two most important frames for speaking about homosexuality among the clerics surveyed: moral and religious arguments on the one hand, and secular arguments portraying public expressions of homosexuality as inappropriate from a rational, scientific point of view on the other. The author’s findings reveal that a large share of responses drew on the second, more secular frame type, according to which homosexuality is interpreted as a mental illness, demographic threat, or genetic predisposition. A tangible number of responses frame the promotion of homosexuality in geopolitical terms, as a risk to children that has been imported from the West. With these contributions we give an overview of the history and current state of Russian conservatism over the last 30 years. But conservatism is not a fixed entity. It will continue to develop—probably even in the directions that could now hardly be imagined. At the same time we strongly believe that any further metamorphoses of Russian conservatism will happen along the lines of those dilemmas and paradoxes that we have discussed above. For that reason we would consider our aim achieved if through this volume the reader acquires a clear understanding of the current landscape of Russian conservatism as well as of the underlying processes that predetermine its inevitable mutations. References “28 iiunia sostoialas’ prezentatsiia knigi” [The book presentation took place on June 28]. Tsentr politicheskikh tekhnologii. 2015. Accessed 30 May 2018, . Aleksashenko, Sergei. Kontrrevoliutsiia: Kak stroilas’ vertikal’ vlasti v sovremennoi Rossii i kak eto vliiaet na ekonomiku [Counterrevolution: How the power vertical in contemporary Russia was created and how it influences the economy]. Moscow: 2019. Allensworth, Wayne. The Russian Question: Nationalism, Modernization, and Post-Com­ munist Russia. Lanham, MD: 1998. Antonov, Mikhail. “Conservatism in Russia and Sovereignty in Human Rights.” Review of Central and East European Law 39, no. 1 (2014): 1–40. Arnold, Richard, and Andreas Umland. “The Radical Right in Post-Soviet Russia.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right, edited by J. Rydgren, 582–607. New York: 2018. Barbashin, Anton, and H. Thoburn. “Putin’s Philosopher: Ivan Ilyin and the Ideology of Moscow’s Rule.” Foreign Affairs. 30 September 2015. Bluhm, Katharina, and Mihai Varga. New Conservatives in Russia and East Central Europe. New York: 2018. Bob, Clifford. The Global Right Wing and the Clash of World Politics. Cambridge: 2012. Brilev, Sergei. “Gryzlov: Rossiiskii konservatizm—eto stabil’nost’ i razvitie” [Gryzlov: Russian conservatism is stability and development]. Vesti.ru. 21 November 2009. Accessed 2 April 2019, . Brudny, Yitzhak M. Reinventing Russia: Russian Nationalism and the Soviet State, 1953– 1991. Cambridge, MA: 1998. Byzov, Leonty G. “Conservative Trends in Contemporary Russian Society: Origins, Content, and Prospects.” Sociological Research 56, no. 1 (2017): 1–20. Dawisha, Karen. Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia? New York: 2014. Duncan, Peter J.S. Russian Messianism: Third Rome, Holy Revolution, Communism and After. London: 2000. “Edinaia Rossiia osvezhila ideologiiu” [United Russia refreshed its ideology]. Kom­ mersant, no. 53, 31 March 2014. Freeden, Michael. Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach. Oxford: 1998. Froese, Paul. The Plot to Kill God: Findings from the Soviet Experiment in Secularization. Berkeley, CA: 2008. Gashkov, Igor’. “Sheikhi rossiiskogo konservatizma” [Sheikhs of Russian conservatism]. NG-Religii. 17 December 2014. Accessed 30 December 2018, . Gelman, Vladimir. Authoritarian Russia: Analyzing Post-Soviet Regime Changes. Pitts­ burgh: 2015. Griffin, Roger. The Nature of Fascism. London: 1993. Gryzlov, Boris. “Sokhranit’ i priumnozhit’” [To maintain and increase]. Izvestiia, 222М/27993, 1 December 2009.

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Luks, Leonid (ed.). Zwei “Sonderwege”? Russisch-deutsche Parallelen und Kontraste, 1917–2014. Stuttgart: 2016. Makarenko, Boris (ed.). Konservatizm i razvitie: Osnovy obshchestvennogo soglasiia [Con­servatism and development: The foundations of social consensus]. Moscow: 2016. Mälksoo, Lauri (ed.). Russia and European Human-Rights Law: The Rise of the Civili­ zational Argument. Leiden: 2014. Mancini, Susanna, and Kristina Stoeckl. “Transatlantic Conversations: The Emergence of Society-Protective Anti-abortion Arguments in the United States, Europe and Russia.” In The Conscience Wars: Rethinking the Balance between Religion and Equality, edited by Susanna Mancini and Michel Rosenfeld, 220–57. Cambridge: 2018. “Medinskii rasskazal o zaprose na konservatizm u 90% rossiian” [Medinskii said that 90% of Russians demand conservatism]. RBK.ru. 16 October 2018. Accessed 3 April 2019, . Melikhov, Aleksandr. “Tvorcheskii konservatizm” [Creative conservatism]. Izvestiia. 12 January 2011. Accessed 28 May 2018, . Melville, Andrei. “A Neoconservative Consensus in Russia? Main Components, Factors of Stability, Potential of Erosion.” Russian Politics & Law 55, nos. 4–5 (2017): 315–35. Mikhalkov, Nikita. “Pravo i pravda” [Law and truth]. Polit.ru. 26 October 2010. Accessed 3 April 2019, . Miller, Aleksei. “Reformatorskii konservatizm dlia sovremennoi Rossii” [Reformative conservatism for today’s Russia]. Rossiia v global’noi politike 5 (2017): 12–36. Mjør, Kåre Johan. “Smuta: Cyclical Visions of History in Contemporary Russian Thought and the Question of Hegemony.” Studies in East European Thought 70, no. 1 (2018): 19–40. Molnár, Attila K. “Conservatives’ Paradox in Post-Communism.” In The Meanings of Michael Oakeshott’s Conservatism, edited by C. Abel, 268–77. Exeter, UK: 2010. Oakeshott, Michael. Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays. London: 1962. Okeowo, Alexis. “An Anti-Gay Pastor Takes on Uganda and Russia.” The New Yorker. 16 August 2013. Accessed 20 May 2018, . “Ol’ga Vasil’eva rasskazala na ‘Tavride’ ob otechestvennoi konservativnoi idee XIX veka” [Ol’ga Vasil’eva talked on Tavrida about the national conservative idea of the 19th century]. Obshcherossiiskii narodnyi front. 18 August 2014. Accessed 3 April 2019, . Østbø, Jardar. “Securitizing ‘Spiritual-Moral Values’ in Russia.” Post-Soviet Affairs 33, no. 3 (2017): 200–216. Pelevin, Viktor. S.N.U.F.F. Moscow: 2011.

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Pipes, Richard. Russian Conservatism and Its Critics: A Study in Political Culture. New Haven, CT: 2005. Podgornyi, Vladimir. “Kakaia ideologiia nuzhna DNR i kak ee realizovat’” [What ideology the DNR needs and how to implement it]. Pravdinform. 14 December 2015. Accessed 30 December 2018, . Poliakov, Leonid. ‘“Conservatism’ in Russia: Political Tool or Historical Choice.” Russie. Nei.Vision 90 (December 2015): 1–20. Accessed 9 June 2018, . ‘“Politbiuro 2.0’ i postkrymskaia Rossiia” [Politburo 2.0 and post-Crimean Russia]. Minchenko Consulting. 2014. Accessed 30 May 2018, . Posadskii, Aleksandr. Konservatizm—strategiia razvitiia XXI v. [Conservatism—strategies of development in the 21st century]. Moscow: 2013. “Prezident vzial kurs na konservatizm” [The president took a course on conservatism]. Nezavisimaia gazeta, 30 December 2013. Putin, Vladimir. “Interv’iu Pervomu kanalu i agentstvu Associated Press” [Interview to the First Channel and Associated Press News Agency]. Website of the President of Russia. 2013. Accessed 20 May 2018, . Putin, Vladimir. “Poslanie Prezidenta Federal’nomu Sobraniiu” [Presidential address to the Federal Assembly]. Website of the President of Russia. 2012. Accessed 18 December 2018, . Putin, Vladimir. “Poslanie Prezidenta Federal’nomu Sobraniiu” [Presidential address to the Federal Assembly]. Website of the President of Russia. 2013. Accessed 28 May 2018, . Quinton, Anthony. The Politics of Imperfection: The Religious and Secular Traditions of Conservative Thought in England from Hooker to Oakeshott. London: 1978. “Religious Belief and National Belonging in Central and Eastern Europe: National and Religious Identities Converge in a Region Once Dominated by Atheist Regimes.” Pew Research Center: Religion and Public Life. 10 May 2017. Accessed 18 December 2018, . Remizov, Mikhail. “Moskva stala vosprinimat’sia kak stolitsa ‘konservativnogo internatsionala’” [Moscow is perceived as the capital of a “conservative international”]. Institut natsional’noi strategii. 2016. Accessed 29 May 2018, . Richters, Katja. The Post-Soviet Russian Orthodox Church: Politics, Culture and Greater Russia. Hoboken, NJ: 2012.

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Roberts, Sean. Putin’s United Russia Party. London: 2012. Rodkiewicz, Witold, and Jadwiga Rodoza. “Potemkin Conservatism: An Ideological Tool of the Kremlin.” Point of View 48 (2015): 1–25. “Rossiia: Sokhranim i priumnozhim” [Russia: We will preserve and increase]. Edinaia Rossiia: Ofitsial’nyi sait partii. 21 November 2009. Accessed 30 December 2018, . Rousselet, Kathy. “The Church in the Service of the Fatherland.” Europe-Asia Studies 67, no. 1 (2015): 49–67. Rydgren, Jens (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right. New York: 2018. Samarina, Aleksandra. “Martovskie tezisy Dmitriia Medvedeva” [The March theses of Dmitry Medvedev]. Nezavisimaia gazeta, 28 March 2013. Scherrer, Jutta. Kulturologie: Ruβland auf der Suche Nach Einer Zivilisatorischen Identität. Vol. 13. Göttingen, 2003. Sedgwick, Mark (ed.). Key Thinkers of the Radical Right: Behind the New Threat to Liberal Democracy. New York: 2019. Sharafutdinova, Gulnaz. “The Pussy Riot Affair and Putin’s Démarche from Sovereign Democracy to Sovereign Morality.” The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity 42, no. 4 (2014): 615–21. Shchipkov, Aleksandr. “Neobkhodimaia sotsial’naia terapiia” [Necessary social therapy]. Izvestiia, no. 143, 5 August 2014. Shekhovtsov, Anton. Russia and the Western Far Right: Tango Noir. New York: 2018. Shilov, Vladimir. “Partiia ‘Edinaia Rossiia’ i ideologiia konservatizma” [The United Russia party and the ideology of conservatism]. Nauchnye vedomosti Belgorodskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta: Seriia: Istoriia, politologiia 72, no. 1 (2010): 210–18. Shuvalov, Iurii. “Rossiiskii konservatizm kak ideologiia razvitiia” [Russian conservatism as an ideology of development]. Mir nauki 3 (2013): 1–5. Shuvalov, Iurii, and A. Posadskii. Rossiiskii konservatizm: Tsennostnye osnovaniia i strategiia razvitiia [Russian conservatism: Value foundations and strategies of development]. Moscow: 2010. Simons, Greg, and David Westerlund. Religion, Politics and Nation-Building in PostCommunist Countries. Farnham, Surrey: 2015. Smolkin, Victoria. A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism. Princeton, NJ: 2018. Sorokin, Vladimir. Day of the Oprichnik: A Novel. Translated into English by Jamey Gambrell. New York: 2011. Sorokin, Vladimir. Sakharnyi Kreml’ [Sugar Kremlin]. Moscow: 2008. Staun, Jørgen, and J.W. Mathiasen. “Russisk strategisk kultur under Putin.” In Kreml i Krig: Ruslands brug af militær magt, edited by Niels Bo Poulsen and Jørgen Staun, 67–102. Copenhagen: 2018.

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Stepanova, Elena. “‘The Spiritual and Moral Foundation of Civilization in Every Nation for Thousands of Years’: The Traditional Values Discourse in Russia.” Politics, Religion & Ideology 16, nos. 2–3 (2015): 119–36. Stoeckl, Kristina. “Aktivisty vne konfessional’nykh granits: ‘Konservativnyi ekumenizm’ Vsemirnogo kongressa semei” [Activists beyond confessional borders: The “conservative ecumenism” of the World Congress of Families]. Gosudarstvo, religiia, tserkov’ v Rossii i za rubezhom 36, no. 4 (2018): 58–86. Stoeckl, Kristina. “Postsecular Conflicts and the Global Struggle for Traditional Values” (lecture). State, Religion and Church 3, no. 2 (2016): 102–16. Stoeckl, Kristina. “The Russian Orthodox Church as Moral Norm Entrepreneur.” Religion, State and Society 44, no. 2 (2016): 132–51. Stoeckl, Kristina, and Ksenia Medvedeva. “Double Bind at the UN: Western Actors, Russia, and the Traditionalist Agenda.” Global Constitutionalism: Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law 7, no. 3 (2018): 383–421. Stroop, Christopher. “A Christian Solution to International Tension: Nikolai Berdyaev, the American YMCA and Russian Orthodox Influence on Western Christian AntiCommunism.” Journal of Global History 13 (2018): 188–208. Suslov, Mikhail. “Conservative Science Fiction in Contemporary Russian Literature and Politics.” In The Post-Soviet Politics of Utopia: Language, Fiction and Fantasy in Modern Russia, edited by Mikhail Suslov and Per-Arne Bodin. London: forthcoming 2019. Suslov, Mikhail. “Noveishaia istoriografiia rossiiskogo konservatizma: Ego issledovateli, kritiki i apologety” [Recent historiography of Russian conservatism: Its researchers, critics, and apologists]. Ab Imperio, no. 1 (2008): 253–88. Suslov, Mikhail. “‘Russian World’ Concept: Post-Soviet Geopolitical Ideology and the Logic of ‘Spheres of Influence.’” Geopolitics 23, no. 2 (2018): 330–53. Trenin, Dmitrii. “Russia’s Conservative Modernization: A Mission Impossible?” SAIS Review of International Affairs 30, no. 1 (2010): 27–37. Tsygankov, Andrei. “Crafting the State-Civilization: Vladimir Putin’s Turn to Distinct Values.” Problems of Post-Communism 63, no. 3 (2016): 146–58. Umland, Andreas. “Zhirinovskii as a Fascist: Palingenetic Ultra-Nationalism and the Emergence of the Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia in 1992–93.” Forum für osteuropäische Ideen- und Zeitgeschichte 14, no. 2 (2010): 189–215. Uzlaner, Dmitry, and Kristina Stoeckl. “The Legacy of Pitirim Sorokin in the Trans­ national Alliances of Moral Conservatives.” Journal of Classical Sociology 18, no. 2 (2018): 133–53. “Vezhlivyi konservatizm vnedriat progressivnymi metodami” [Polite conservatism introduces progressive methods]. Nezavisimaia Gazeta, 19 May 2014. Walicki, Andrzej. The Slavophile Controversy: History of a Conservative Utopia in Nineteenth-Century Russian Thought. Oxford: 1975.

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Wiederkehr, Stefan. Die Eurasische Bewegung, Wissenschaft ind Politik in der Russischen Emigration der Zwischenkriegszeit und im Postsowjetischen Ruβland. Cologne: 2007. Wiederkehr, Stefan. “‘Kontinent Evrasija’—Klassischer Eurasismus und Geopolitik in der Lesart Alexander Dugins.” In Auf der Suche nach Eurasien: Politik, Religion und Alltagskultur zwischen Ruβland und Europa, edited by Markus Kaiser, 125–38. Bielefeld: 2004. Wilkinson, Cai. “Putting ‘Traditional Values’ into Practice: The Rise and Contestation of Anti-Homopropaganda Laws in Russia.” Journal of Human Rights 13, no. 3 (2014): 363–79. Willems, Joachim. Pussy Riots Punk-Gebet: Religion, Recht und Politik in Ruβland. Berlin: 2013.

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Chapter 2

A History of Russian Conservatism, from the 18th Century to the End of the 20th Century  Mikhail Loukianov, Kåre Johan Mjør, Susanna Rabow-Edling and Mikhail Suslov This chapter provides a brief historical survey of Russian conservative ideology over the past two centuries.1 It does not purport to reconstruct Russian conservatism as a narrative of conceptual evolution. To be sure, each new generation of conservatives recycled ideological building blocks from the past in order to provide convincing responses to the historical challenges of the moment. However, this chapter emphasizes the importance of the contextual interpretation of conservatism, and therefore depicts conservatism as an ideology concerned primarily with the problem of change, tradition, and cultural authenticity. 1

Conservative Thought in Prerevolutionary Russia

Russian conservatism has a long tradition, involving a multitude of thinkers, ideas, and movements.2 In this brief historical overview it is not possible to cover them all. Instead, three periods in the history of Russian conservatism will be examined, each dominated by different conservative tendencies. The first period is characterized by a pro-autocratic tendency, which was formulated in the first half of the 18th century by Feofan Prokopovich and further developed by Vasily Tatishchev. However, it received its most influential 1 The first section of this chapter, “Conservative Thought in Prerevolutionary Russia,” is authored by Susanna Rabow-Edling; the second, “Russian Conservatism in the Twilight of the Empire, 1894–1917,” by Mikhail Loukianov; Kåre Johan Mjør wrote the third section, “Conservatism in Exile.” The chapter ends with “Conservatism in the 1960s–90s: From the Underground to the Foreground,” written by Mikhail Suslov. 2 On 19th-century Russian conservative thought, see, for example, Richard Pipes, Russian Conservatism and Its Critics: A Study in Political Culture (New Haven & London, 2005); Arkadii Minakov, A.V. Repnikov, and M.Iu. Chernavskii, “Konservatizm,” in Obshchestvennaia mysl’ Rossii XVIII–nachala XX veka: Entsikolopediia, ed. Valentin V. Shelokhaev et al. (Moscow: 2005), 217–20; “Russkii konservatizm: Problemy, podkhody, mneniia,” Kruglyi stol, Otechestvennaia istoriia, no. 3 (2001): 103–33; Vladislav Grosul (ed.), Russkii konservatizm XIX stoletiia: Ideologiia i praktika (Moscow: 2000); Alexander M. Martin, Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries: Russian Conservative Thought and Politics in the Reign of Alexander I (DeKalb, IL: 1997).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004408005_003

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expression by the writer and historian Nikolai Karamzin (1766–1826), whose Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia conveyed a form of enlightened conservatism. The second period, extending roughly from the 1820s to the 1860s, was heavily influenced by German Romanticism and idealism as well as by cultural nationalism. Romantic conservatism is most clearly expressed in the works of the so-called Slavophiles, foremost the earlier Slavophiles Aleksei Khomiakov (1804–60) and Ivan Kireevsky (1806–56). The decades after the “Great Reforms” of the 1860s and early 1870s constitute the final period. During this time political ideas became more polarized and conservatives assumed a more uncompromising stance. Post-reform conservatism is represented here by one of the most original Russian thinkers, Konstantin Leont’ev (1831–91). These thinkers held divergent views of the state, the people, culture, and history, but were all conservative in the general sense of opposing constitutional government and in favoring tradition in the face of external forces for change. However, like classical Western conservatives, most of them did not reject change per se, only radical social change from without. Social change had to grow organically from within. Hence, they favored institutions and practices that had evolved gradually.3  1.1 Enlightened Conservatism In the early 19th century, there was widespread conservative dissatisfaction with the tsar, Alexander I. This was due both to his foreign policy failures and his support for constitutional reforms. Nikolai Karamzin’s Memoir on ­Ancient and Modern Russia was an expression of this conservative opposition and a reaction to State Secretary Mikhail Speransky’s reform program.4 It was 3 The literature on conservatism as a general political phenomenon is very extensive. Some useful works include Peter Viereck, Conservative Thinkers: From John Adams to Winston Churchill (New Brunswick, NJ: 2006); Larry Eugene Jones and James Retallack (eds.), Between Reform, Reaction, and Resistance: Studies in the History of German Conservatism from 1789 to 1945 (Providence, RI: 1993); John Weiss, Conservatism in Europe, 1770–1945: Traditionalism, Reaction, and Counter-Revolution (New York: 1977); Arthur Aughey, Greta Jones, and W.T.M. Riches, The Conservative Political Tradition in Britain and the United States (Rutherford, NJ: 1992); E.H.H. Green, Ideologies of Conservatism: Conservative Political Ideas in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: 2002); Robert Muccigrosso, Basic History of American Conservatism (Malabar, FL: 2001). 4 For literature on Karamzin, see Karamzin’s Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia: A Translation and Analysis by Richard Pipes (Cambridge, MA: 1959); V.Ia. Grosul, “Zarozhdenie rossiiskogo politicheskogo konservatizma,” in Grosul, Russkii konservatizm; Lars G. Nyberg, Staten i högsta person—rysk självhärskarmakt enligt Nikolaj Karamzin (Stockholm: 2005); Derek Offord, “Nation-Building and Nationalism in Karamzin’s History of the Russian State,” Journal of Modern Russian History and Historiography 3 (2010): 1–50; N.Ia. Eidel’man, Poslednii letopisets, ili dve zhizni Nikolaia Karamzina (Saint Petersburg: 2016). See also Gary M. Hamburg,

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written in the winter of 1810–11 at the request of Grand Duchess Catherine and presented an argument in defense of autocracy in Russia. Against advocates for constitutional government, Karamzin held that Russia needed a strong state to survive and autocracy was the only system that ensured the stability of the state. His pro-autocratic argument was based both on a historical justification and a normative political-theoretical discussion. Karamzin’s studies of Russian history had led him to the conclusion that each country had its own traditions that determined how they would best be governed and organized. He found that every time Russia had departed from the autocratic system it resulted in anarchy and foreign invasion. He wrote: Autocracy has founded and resuscitated Russia. Any change in her political constitution has led in the past and must lead in the future to her perdition, for she consists of very many and very diverse parts, each of which has its own civic needs; what save unlimited monarchy can produce in such a machine the required unity of action?5 Karamzin’s belief in historical continuity meant that he rejected all changes that were not based on national traditions. His defense of autocracy also rested on natural rights philosophy. A central theme in the Memoir was that of a separation between the political and the private sphere. The tsar should take care of state affairs and refrain from interfering in the private concerns of his subjects, an idea that recurs later in the thought of the Slavophiles. On this basis, Karamzin was critical of Peter I, whom he accused of having violated the private sphere when forcing people to Westernize. But he also rejected interference in the political sphere. While the ruler should refrain from encroaching on the personal liberties and lives of the people, he/she should not be restrained in his/her own freedom of action by any law or constitution. This meant that the power of the tsar was absolute and indivisible, but not unlimited. It was restricted to the political sphere, to state affairs. It was also restrained by historical tradition. In this way, Karamzin tried to protect individuals (i.e., the nobility) from arbitrary rule without placing constitutional limits on the power of the monarch. Any constitutional form of government would of course threaten the privileged position of the ­aristocracy. Thus, to Karamzin, the ideal form of state was certainly not a Rechtsstaat, but neither was it despotism. Rather, it may be described as an enlightened Russia’s Path toward Enlightenment: Faith, Politics, and Reason, 1500–1801 (New Haven, CT: 2016), ch. 17. 5 Karamzin’s Memoir, 138–39.

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absolute monarchy. Karamzin’s notion of absolute monarchy was influenced by the theories of Samuel Pufendorf—especially the concepts of civic virtue, lawfulness, and obedience to the authorities. But there are also similarities to Niccolò Machiavelli.6 The ruler’s virtue is described as the only protection against tyranny. On the one hand, imperial virtue meant that absolute rule minimized the danger of tyranny, as well as an omnipotent bureaucracy; on the other hand it was a bulwark against anarchy and the disintegration of the state. The people were merely subjects. Their relationship to the monarch was characterized by submission and obedience. Enlightened conservatism and its pro-autocratic argument went against the current at a time when constitutional movements and ideas were spreading across Europe. In Russia too, secret societies were founded that aimed for liberal reform. This movement culminated in the Decembrist revolt of 1825.  1.2 Romantic Conservatism In the decades after the failed Decembrist revolt, Russian intellectuals turned from politics to philosophy and literature and came under the influence of German Romanticism, idealism, and the cultural nationalism of Johann Gottfried Herder. These new ideas entailed a belief in the organic development of nations: that each nation had a unique character expressed in its culture that allowed it to make its original imprint on world history. This meant that Russia could not continue to imitate the West. Russia’s lack of cultural originality became a sign of backwardness and intellectuals began to raise demands for a unique, national culture. The publication of Peter Chaadaev’s First Philosophical Letter in 1836 revealed the depth of the problem.7 His devastating criticism of Russian backwardness and its tendency to imitate led to an intense debate concerning Russia’s place in the world, which path she should follow, and how she could make an original contribution to world history.8 The most interesting contribution to this discussion was made by a group of intellectuals called the Slavophiles.9 They argued that Russia did in fact have an original culture, but it was unarticulated, hidden among the Russian people, their customs and traditions, and the traditions of the Orthodox Church. 6 Nyberg, Staten i högsta person. 7 Chaadaev’s eight Philosophical Letters were written between 1827 and 1831 and were already circulating in manuscript form by 1830. 8 Peter Chaadaev, Philosophical Letters & Apology of a Madman, trans. and ed. Mary-Barbara Zeldin (Knoxville, TN: 1969), 36–37, 39, 41. 9 The prominent Slavophiles were Aleksei Khomiakov, Ivan Kireevsky, Konstantin Aksakov, and Yuri Samarin.

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Russia was a unique civilization, which, the Slavophiles maintained, should follow its own path of development. The reason that Russia did not yet have an articulated national culture was that the educated elite had been separated from the Russian people when Peter the Great modernized Russia by Westernizing it. Hence, according to the Slavophiles, the solution lay in de-Westernizing the educated elite and its imitative culture and returning to the fundamental principles of the Russian way of life. This did not mean that the Slavophiles wanted Russia to regress. Ancient Russia’s institutions and way of life were supposed to be the inspiration for a new regenerated Russia. Moreover, a regenerated Russia would be able to revitalize the West, which was decaying due to its culture of individualism, materialism, and rationalism.10 By articulating the dormant principles of the Russian way of life a distinctive Russian enlightenment could be formed, based on the national idea. According to the Slavophiles, the essence of this idea in Russia was the spiritual foundation of “true Christianity” expressed in the teachings of the Fathers of the Orthodox Church.11 It was their teaching that had shaped the specific Russian way of life. Thus, religious identity and nationality coincided in Russia. Since the purpose of reviving the national culture was to pull Russia out of its cultural backwardness, an isolated Russian enlightenment, without any connection to the philosophical ideas of Europe, was of no use to the Slavophiles. Instead, they wished to create a union between a unique Russian nationality and the universal findings of Western science by uniting faith, which resided in Russian culture, and reason, which characterized Western culture. As a result of this fusion a distinctive Russian enlightenment would develop and express “living knowledge,” the root from which both culture and learning evolved.12 The Slavophiles argued that rationalism had led Western enlightenment into a blind alley. History now called upon Russia to take the lead in universal enlightenment because of the “comprehensiveness” and “completeness” of its national principles. Eventually Russia would replace Europe as the representative of universal enlightenment. 10

11 12

For literature on the Slavophiles, see Andrzej Walicki, The Slavophile Controversy (Oxford: 1975); Nicholas Riasanovsky, Russia and the West in the Teaching of the Slavophiles (Cambridge, MA: 1952); Abbott Gleason, European and Muscovite: Ivan Kireevsky and the Origins of Slavophilism (Cambridge, MA: 1972); Peter Christoff, An Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Slavophilism, 4 vols. (Princeton, NJ: 1961–91); Nikolai Tsimbaev, Slavianofilstvo: Iz istorii russkoi obshchestvennoi-politicheskoi mysli XIX veka (Moscow: 1986); Elena Dudzinskaia, Slavianofily v poreformennoi Rossii (Moscow: 1994); Susanna RabowEdling, Slavophile Thought and the Politics of Cultural Nationalism (Albany, NY: 2006). Aleksei Khomiakov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Moscow: 1900–1914), vol. 1, 80. Ibid, 26–27; Ivan Kireevskii, Izbrannye stat’i (Moscow: 1984), 77–80.

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Like Karamzin, the Slavophiles wished to limit autocracy by narrowing its sphere of power rather than restraining it by law or by a parliament. Society should be free from state interference, and the people should not have to be involved in the immoral business of government. The Slavophiles legitimized this separation by referring to an ancient division between the state and the land, where the state was confined to the formal business of government and the land pertained to the way of life of the people. Historically, they maintained, the ruler upheld the organic union between state and society, but Peter I had broken this ancient union and replaced it with the domination of the state over the people. With the destruction of Russia’s organic spiritual unity it became necessary to create a physical formal unity.13 By separating the people from politics, they argued, it would be possible to build a new foundation for Russia. However, the Slavophiles’ concept of the people differed from that of Karamzin. They were not merely submissive subjects, but crucial elements of the organic, communal, and spiritual life of the nation. This did not mean that the Slavophiles regarded the people as the source of political sovereignty, or as politically active citizens. On the contrary, the people had to be saved from politics. If they dealt with the corrupt matters of the state, they would be prevented from spiritual development and consequently from realizing their moral and communal freedom.14 “Inner freedom” was much more important than “external liberty,” and people should be allowed liberty in their social and spiritual life. Public opinion and assemblies of the land would constitute the organic link between state and people.15  1.3 Post-reform Conservatism The death of Nicholas I and the Russian defeat in the Crimean War of 1853–56 led to a period of reform in Russia from 1861 to 1874. For a short while, a liberal movement thrived. However, when the Great Reforms did not fulfill the high expectations of the educated elite, Russian society became polarized and positions hardened. On the one side were those who believed the reforms were slow and inadequate, on the other, those who were fearful of revolution and anarchy. A more extreme, xenophobic form of conservatism evolved. This movement consisted of various ideas and thinkers, held together by their opposition to the radical intelligentsia and by their intense anti-Westernism. 13 Kireevskii, Izbrannye stat’i, 123, 126; Konstantin Aksakov, “On the Internal State of Russia,” in Russian Intellectual History: An Anthology, ed. Marc Raeff (New York: 1966), 233, 242–45. 14 Khomiakov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 8, 200–201; Konstantin Aksakov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Moscow: 1861–80), vol. 1, 292; Kireevskii, Izbrannye stati, 123. 15 Aksakov, “On the Internal State of Russia,” 233–39, 248–50; Aleksei Khomiakov, “To the Serbians: A Message from Moscow,” in Christoff, An Introduction, vol. 1, 267.

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Conservatism became more nationalistic in an ethnic and sometimes racial sense, anti-Semitism was rampant, and there was a return to the idea of the strong state. One of the most original conservative thinkers of the post-reform period was Konstantin Leont’ev.16 Contrary to the Slavophiles, he admired both Peter I and Nicholas I. He rejected what he saw as the banality and vulgarity of Western culture and believed that autocratic power protected Russia against European bourgeois philistinism. Like other aristocratic intellectuals before him, albeit perhaps with more contempt, he looked down on the bourgeois middle classes and scoffed at their mediocrity, bad taste, ignorance, and petty ideals. Leont’ev feared liberal egalitarianism, which he believed would destroy mankind and bring history to an end. A democratic constitution would inevitably lead to monotony, uniformity, and homogenization. It would destroy both Russia’s diversity and unity.17 Only autocracy could preserve the diversity of life, its beauty, originality, and greatness. Central to Leont’ev’s thinking was the idea of different civilizations or cultural types that he had adopted from Nikolai Danilevsky (1822–85). Danilevsky criticized the dominant Hegelian concept of a linear world history. Instead, he contended that history consisted of unique cultural-historical types, or civilizations, that lived separate lives. Each civilization followed its own development. Hence, there was not only one (i.e., Western) civilization but several. This meant that the concept of the universal progress of humanity was false.18 Leont’ev made use of Danilevsky’s idea of cultural-historical types and his theory of their separate development. In Byzantinism and Slavdom (1875) he wrote that all cultures go through three phases: (1) primary simplicity, (2) flourishing unity and complexity, (3) secondary compounded simplicity. Contemporary Europe, whose culture was a thousand years old, was in the third phase and had started to decay. Russia too had reached the final stage of cultural development, but in contrast to Europe, Russian cultural heterogeneity could still be saved. Leont’ev held that autocracy through the use of force could “freeze” Russia’s development and thus prevent her degeneration.19 16

For literature on Leont’ev, see, for example, Nikolai Berdiaev, Konstantin Leont’ev: Ocherki iz istorii russkoi religioznoi mysli (Paris: 1926); Iurii Ivask, Konstantin Leont’ev: Zhizn’ i tvorchestvo (Frankfurt: 1974); Olga Volkogonova, Konstantin Leont’ev (Moscow: 2013); ­Sergei Os’machko, “On muchilsia o Rossii”: Ideinye iskaniia K.N. Leont’eva (Yaroslavl: 2011); Roman Gogolev, “Angel’skii doktor” russkoi istorii: Filosofiia istorii K.N. Leont’eva (Moscow: 2007). 17 Konstantin Leont’ev, “Srednii evropeets kak ideal i orudie vsemirnogo razrusheniia,” in Sobranie sochineniia (Moscow: 1912–14), vol. 6. 18 Nikolai Danilevskii, Rossiia i Evropa (Saint Petersburg: 1995). 19 Leont’ev, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 7, 123–26; vol. 6, 187–209.

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Leont’ev used the concept of the decaying West, popularized in Russia by the Slavophiles, but his view of Russia’s relationship to the West was quite different from theirs. While the Slavophiles (like Karamzin before them) wanted Russia to be part of Europe, to be accepted by Europe, Leont’ev wanted Russia to isolate itself from degenerate Western culture. In contrast to the Slavophiles, who believed in the universal progress of humanity and held that Russia could revitalize the decaying West, Leont’ev did not see any common future for Russia and Europe. They were separate civilizations with different paths of development. Finally, Leont’ev’s attitude to the state and to class division differed from that of the Slavophiles. Leont’ev believed in the necessity of state coercion and compulsion, that the people had to be disciplined and controlled.20 Hence, he opposed the granting of civil liberties. Instead, Russia should conquer Constantinople and establish a neo-Byzantine empire. An authoritative, Orthodox regime was to serve as a bulwark against equality, freedom, and democracy. Thus, in contrast to the Slavophiles, Leont’ev promoted state coercion and compulsion rather than separate spheres. But his view of coercive state power went even further than that of Karamzin, who clearly distinguished true autocracy from despotism. Unlike earlier conservatives, Leont’ev believed that Russia could be regenerated through war and violence. To him, cruelty, compulsion, and evil were sometimes justified if they contributed to creating diversity, energy, or originality. Leont’ev’s glorification of violence, power, the authoritarian state, and heroism has led some researchers to consider him an intellectual precursor to 20th-century fascist ideology.21 These proto-fascist leanings, together with his criticism of Western culture, make his ideas popular in contemporary Russia, where conservatism sometimes takes extreme forms expressed in violence, racism, extreme anti-Westernism, and idealization of a strong leader.22 2

Russian Conservatism in the Twilight of the Empire, 1894–1917

Political reform, especially the necessity of popular representation and the possible forms it would take, was the key problem for conservatives of Nicholas II’s reign. At the same time they considered the autocracy to be the cornerstone of the political system, regardless of any changes it might undergo. 20 Leont’iev, Sobranie Sochinenii, vol. 6, 335; vol. 7, 135. 21 Stephen Shenfield, Russian Fascism: Traditions, Tendencies and Movements (London: 2016), 29; Pipes, Russian Conservatism, 150. 22 See, for example, chapter 14 by Victor Shnirelman in this volume.

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For conservatives, the autocrat remained the embodiment of the people and always acted in its interests. They based their vision of Russia’s political organization on the idea that it fundamentally differed from Western democracy, which was only a fiction of popular sovereignty, because it masked the privileged position of the richest and most unprincipled.23 However, the notion of the fundamental superiority of autocracy over democracy did not lead to the conclusion that the Russian political order was ideal. The conservative political position was compatible with a critical attitude to the status quo. The conservatives attributed autocracy’s shortcomings mainly to the bureaucratization of government institutions. They accused officials of substituting their own interests for those of the tsar, and argued that the bureaucracy’s arbitrary rule discredited the autocracy and necessitated serious reform in order to limit its influence in political decisions. The well-known neo-Slavophile journalist Sergei Sharapov elaborated a detailed project of this kind. He stressed the necessity of weakening the bureaucratic machine and transforming it from the de facto master of the state to an obedient instrument in the hands of the tsar. The tsar should unite all branches of power and implement the Slavophile ideal of a monarch who would bring together the state and the people (gosudarstvo i zemlia). In order to have a chance to actually govern the country, the tsar would be released from routine management. For that purpose Sharapov suggested dividing the country into 20 self-governing oblasts, each composed of several provinces, and each headed by a governor-general appointed by the emperor and a regional duma, which would be elected by local zemstvos to pass local laws and the budget.24 Another conservative journalist, Sergei Syromiatnikov, proposed a similar though less detailed scheme. He was disappointed not so much by the gap between the tsar and his loyal people, filled by the irresponsible and selfish bureaucracy, as by the great distance between the common people and the rich and educated upper layers of society. He proposed to fill this gap by spreading the virtues of civil liberties and self-government to all sections of the population. “I believe that Russia must be united and Russian. I think that the selfgovernment now enjoyed by the peasants [muzhiks] might be extended to both nobles and common people [raznochintsy]. I think that the personal freedom and inviolability enjoyed by the privileged elements should be extended 23

24

Konstantin Pobedonostsev characterized democracy as “the great lie of our time.” He used the phrase in the title of an article that set the tone for the author’s Moscow Col­ lection, published in 1896, the year of Nicholas II’s coronation. According to Sergei Ol’denburg, the essential points of Pobedonostsev’s work matched the views of the new tsar (Ol’denburg, Tsarstvovanie Imperatora Nikolaia II [Moscow: 1992], vol. 1, 45). Sergei Sharapov, Opyt russkoi politicheskoi programmy (Moscow: 1905), 9–15.

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to non-privileged citizens as well.”25 Syromiatnikov believed that a constant and permanent connection between the autocrat and the people ought to be established. Adding elected representatives from the population to the State Council might help create that connection. “As is known, the State Council is a consultative body that discusses laws and budgets and presents its opinions to the monarch who can either agree or disagree with them. Consequently the presence of delegates ‘in tail-coats’ in the Council would not limit autocratic authority, but provide the body with a livelier and younger element, which has not yet lost the desire to study [different] questions and fight for their convictions.” As an alternative solution to the problem of establishing a connection between the sovereign and the population, Syromiatnikov also considered including representatives of society in the Council of Ministers.26 Sharapov and Syromiatnikov were the most important representatives of the reformist trend in Russian conservative journalism at the turn of the century. But the leaders of the Russian conservative press, Vladimir Gringmut, who headed the Moscow Gazette, and Vladimir Meshchersky, the editor of the Petersburg-based Citizen, did not share their passion for reform. Gringmut wrote that it was not the reforms and expansion of self-government that ensured the proper organization of Russian life, but the bureaucratic “state mechanism” itself.27 Meshchersky argued that local self-government was fundamentally incompatible with autocracy: “Russia will be strong as long as it holds to historically based autocracy, but it cannot be an autocracy at the top and a republic at the bottom.”28 In this discussion about the uses and abuses of Russian bureaucracy, the conservatives confronted the revolution of 1905.29 Fighting against the revolution became an important factor in the consolidation of the conservative political camp. At the same time, however, the revolution gave impetus to political reform, which deepened disagreement among the conservatives. The debate over de-bureaucratization lost its importance; a discussion over the role and forms of representative institutions in Russian politics took its place. Two diametrically opposed approaches to the problem took shape in the Russian 25 Sergei Syromiatnikov, Opyt russkoi mysli (Saint Petersburg: 1901), 318–19. 26 Syromiatnikov, Opyt russkoi mysli, 294–95. 27 Spectator [Vladimir Gringmut], “Blizhaishaia budushchnost’ Rossii,” Moskovskie vedomosti (1895): 17–18. 28 Sharapov, Opyt russkoi politicheskoi programmy, 85. 29 On the eve of 1905 both the positions were summed up in the polemics between ­Aleksandr Kireev and Fedor Samarin. See Kireev, “Mozhet li zemskii sobor vyvesti nas iz nastoia­ shchego polozheniia? Perepiska A.A. Kireeva s F.D. Samarinym,” in Sochineniia, part 2, Politika i polemika (Saint Petersburg: 1912), 231–61.

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conservative milieu. The far-right followers of Aleksandr Dubrovin, founder of the Union of the Russian People, argued against the representative institution established in accordance with the Fundamental Laws of 23 April 1906. They were deeply disappointed not only by the First and Second Duma, which overtly confronted the government, but by the Third and Fourth as well, despite their readiness to act in concert with it. In 1913, the Dubrovinist Russian Banner named the law-abiding Fourth Duma “a revolutionary institution, which has proven itself to be feckless, dangerous and harmful to the country for the fourth time,” and suggested that it must be eliminated “forever and irrevocably.”30 Naturally, the conservatives could not participate in the work of the representative institutions, and had to do everything possible to destroy them. Mikhail Perovsky-Petrovo-Solovovo, state secretary from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, held an opposite view. He thought that Russian conservatives should take their British counterparts as a model and establish a “Party of Independent Conservatives” to support the reforms, while ensuring political continuity to avoid “great upheaval.” Representative institutions ought to play the most important role in these activities. Perovsky even admitted the possibility of expanding the rights of the Duma and State Council (with the important proviso that this occur “in accordance with the government”).31 Most conservatives combined both approaches. The All-Russian National Union turned out to be the most loyal to the reformist course of the conservative political organizations. The nationalists viewed popular representation as a helpful instrument to express the social and national interests of the population and to pass laws that would satisfy their needs. Member of the State Duma Lev Polovtsov argued that Russia had both autocracy and representative institutions; therefore its political system was “autocratic-representative.”32 The opinion of the rightists, supporters of Vladimir Purishkevich, who in 1908 established the Russian People’s Union of the Archangel Michael, and Nikolai Markov, who began to lead the Union of the Russian People in 1911, differed from the nationalists’ point of view. For them the representative institutions were first and foremost ways of transmitting the aspirations of the faithful population to the monarch and helping him in the process of managing the country. During the 1912 election campaign the leaflet of the Union of the 30 31

32

Russkoe znamia, 3 January 1913, 2. “The Party of Independent Conservatives wishes to see further peaceful, gradual devel­ opment of the rights, assigned to the Council and Duma by the 1906 Laws” (Mikhail Perovs­kii-Petrovo-Solovovo, “Chto takoe ‘Nezavisimye Konservatory?’” Sankt-Peterburgskie vedo­mosti, 28 February 1912, 2). Gosudarstvennaia Duma, Stenograficheskie otchety: Sozyv tretii; Sessiia III; Chast’ 3 (Petrograd: 1910), col. 2496.

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Archangel Michael insisted that the Russian population “participated” in the country’s management through a consultative, not a legislative body. “While the left parties strive for a constitution to limit and despoil the power of the tsar, the right party understands the participation of the people in government in the form of a consultative Duma, following the example of the ancient Assemblies of the Land (Zemskikh Soborov) that were summoned according to the tsars’ will in order to assist him in the joint work of state-building.”33 But as soon as the autocrat initiated political innovations and gave his consent to them, it was the rightist’s duty to take part in the Duma’s work to protect his interests.34 This rightist notion that representative institutions were of secondary importance for the Russian political system was dominant among conservatives. The peak membership of the rightist organizations was 400,000 people, while the All-Russian National Union, whose members held the opinion that the monarchy and representative institutions were of equal importance for Russia, was only 5,000 people strong.35 So conservatives in general were naturally associated with a negative attitude toward political reforms and modernization. They were seen as supporters of autocracy who had been made to agree to the introduction of elements of representative democracy due to the force of circumstance and were ready to discard them at the first opportunity. The First World War presented serious arguments both in favor of rejecting democratic institutions and practices (or at least limiting their influence) and in favor of preserving them. Stanislav Glinka, the editor of Zemshchina, which was close to the Duma’s rightist faction, advised the government to solve financial questions on its own, avoiding convocation of the State Duma and State Council.36 Another prominent rightist, the Duma member Sviatoslav Volodimerov, expressed the hope that the experience of the war would lead Russian society to abandon parliamentarianism and replace it with “the higher moral duty of the Orthodox Russian people and Land Assembly assistance [zemskosobornoi pomoshch’iu] to the Autocratic Tsar in His Sovereign Affairs.”37

33 34 35 36 37

Iurii Kir’ianov, “Predvybornoe vozzvanie k russkomu narodu Russkogo narodnogo soiuza imeni Mikhaila Arkhangela,” in Pravye partii, 1905–1917: Dokumenty i materialy (Moscow: 1998), vol. 2, 217. “Soobshchniki i posobniki Mordki Bogrova,” Priamoi put’ (November 1911), 84. Kir’ianov, “Predvybornoe vozzvanie,” 82; Daniil Kotsiubinskii, Russkii natsionalizm v na­ chale XX stoletiia: Rozhdenie i gibel’ ideologii vserossiiskogo natsional’nogo soiuza (Moscow: 2001), 37. Stanislav Glinka, “Ne opasno li?,” Zemshchina, 25 August 1914, 2. Sviatoslav Volodimerov, “Prosvety,” Zemshchina, 13 August 1914, 3.

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On 19 July 1915 (the opening day for the new session of the Duma), Markov declared that the smaller the role of representative institutions in a country, the more success that country achieved in war. France and Great Britain, with governments controlled by parliaments, proved less prepared for the war than Germany, where “the government is not merely responsible to the Kaiser, but is appointed by him, regardless of the wishes or approval of the German Reichstag.”38 The leader of the rightist group in the State Council, Petr Durnovo, declared on the same day that only by asserting top-down leadership and rejecting concessions and compromises in domestic politics would victory on the front be possible.39 However, the emphatic loyalty of the Duma, State Council, and public organizations during the first year of the war became an important argument in favor of “Sacred Unity”—the politics of liberal-conservative consensus, which reconciled various social and political interests and promoted national consolidation for the sake of victory. The left nationalists (Vladimir Bobrinsky, Anatoly Savenko, Vasily Shul’gin, et al.) became the most fervent adherents of this strategy. After leaving the Duma nationalist faction in August 1915, they organized the Progressive Nationalist Group, which occupied a place on the right flank of the progressive bloc. They suggested forming a “Ministry of Trust,” based on the majority of the Duma, and insisted that its creation would be the main condition for victory in the realm of domestic politics. Vladimir Purishkevich and Ivan Vostorgov, prominent rightist politicians, shared the thrust toward social consolidation, as well. The newspapers Kievlianin, under Shul’gin, and Kolokol, headed by Vasily Skvortsov, actively supported this course in the press. The rapprochement between moderate elements among liberals and conservatives was paralleled by the consolidation of the rightist political groups. In Autumn 1915 two monarchic conventions (in Petrograd and Nizhnii Novgorod) were held. Markov’s and Dubrovin’s followers, who took part in them, developed a common program for the struggle against a liberal-conservative consensus. Throughout 1916 and early 1917 its opponents suggested detailed plans for radical political reorganization, including limits on the franchise and the authority of representative institutions.40 In the final analysis, deep disagreements over problems of political modernization and ways of reconciling it with Russian political tradition led to the 38 39 40

Gosudarstvennaia Duma, Stenograficheskie otchety: Sozyv chetvertyi; Sessiia IV (Petrograd: 1915), col. 48. Gosudarstvennyi Sovet, Stenograficheskie otchety: Sessiia XI (Petrograd: 1915), col. 35. For details, see Mikhail Loukianov, “The First World War and the Polarization of the Russian Right, July 1914–February 1917,” Slavic Review 75, no. 4 (2016): 885–87, 892–94.

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breakup of the conservative camp. Conservatives proved unable either to defend the monarchy or to play an independent role during the revolution and civil war, and they disappeared from the Russian political stage for many years. 3

Conservatism in Exile

Émigré circles tend to be conservative: They share the idea of preserving the homeland and its culture in exile. The vast Russian emigration of the interwar period (the “first wave”) is no exception. Russian émigrés frequently proclaimed that they represented the “true Russia,” in opposition to the Bolshevik regime, which ruled (most of) the former Russian imperial territory. The author Roman Gul, for example, called his memoirs I Carried Russia with Me. To write on the “tasks” and “mission” of the Russian emigration became almost a genre of its own among prominent émigrés, including Ivan Bunin, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Zinaida Gippius, Petr Struve, Fedor Stepun, and Georgy Fedotov.41 3.1 Russia Abroad From the Russian Civil War onward, some émigrés left Russia voluntarily. Others were expelled. However, the distinction between voluntary and involuntary exile is faint in the context of revolution and war. First and foremost, “a Russian émigré was a person who refused to accept the new Bolshevik regime established in the homeland.”42 And the self-imposed task of the Russian emigration was to prepare for a return to Russia—both geographically and ideo­ logically. In fact, most émigrés continued to believe in an imminent return to their homeland, despite the fact that the Soviet Union became less and less likely to collapse. The stated aim of émigré activity was therefore preservation, continuation, and preparation. And as “preparation” felt increasingly groundless, émigré activities became an imaginary return to the homeland through an immersion in Russian national culture.43 For this purpose, Russian émigrés established numerous academic and cultural institutions, including publishing houses. In the 1920s Paris became the “capital” of the Russian emigration, while important hubs also emerged in Berlin, Prague, and in the Balkans. These scattered centers made up the imagined community of Russia Abroad (Zarubezhnaia Rossiia). Politically 41

For an overview, see Kåre Johan Mjør, Reformulating Russia: The Cultural and Intellectual Historiography of Russian First-Wave Émigré Writers (Boston and Leiden: 2011), 27–51. 42 Marc Raeff, Russia Abroad: A Cultural History of the Russian Emigration, 1919–1939 (New York: 1990), 16. 43 Mjør, Reformulating Russia, 48.

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this community was heterogeneous—ranging from Socialist Revolutionaries to Orthodox clerics—and it was never able to unite against the Bolsheviks. However, in firm opposition to the atheist revolutionary utopianism of the early Bolsheviks, most members agreed that “Russia” was identified with Orthodoxy and literature. Russian Orthodoxy, Russian literature (Pushkin), and the Russian language—in its prerevolutionary orthography—played the role of a home in the context of exile.44 3.2 Russian Messianism (Nikolai Berdiaev) One of the most famous events in Russian émigré history was the Bolsheviks’ expulsion of a number of intellectuals in 1922. Although several of them at this point were actually willing to collaborate with the new regime, their teaching activities and promotion of philosophical idealism were not welcomed by the Bolsheviks. Often nicknamed the “philosophical steamship” (filosofskii paro­ khod), the group included the philosophers Sergei Bulgakov, Semon Frank, Lev Karsavin, and Nikolai Lossky, who all became very prominent figures in the Russian diaspora of Western Europe. Another of this group was Nikolai ­Berd­iaev. Berdiaev’s personalism, although it had a strong religious underpinning, can hardly be called conservative. Before the revolution and his own emigration he had developed a philosophy of the creative act based on the Orthodox anthropology of the human being as created in God’s image and likeness. Berdiaev saw creation and creativity in rebellious terms as imperative for the human condition.45 Still, Berdiaev’s reaction to the Bolshevik revolution and its utopianism was hostile. His early post-revolutionary work, The Philosophy of Inequality (written in 1918, published in Berlin in 1923), contained a chapter on “conservatism” that in opposition to the Bolsheviks defended the intrinsic value of past human achievements. While in The Meaning of Creativity (1916) he had described “culture” as a monument to failed efforts, he now began to see it as heritage. And whereas he had earlier opposed “conservatism” to cultural creativity, he would now use the very same concept to name the human experience of historicity, of the continuity of the present with the past, and even of “eternity,” without which creativity would be impossible. Conservatism, according to Berdiaev, is therefore a bulwark against chaos that preserves the achievements and meaning of tradition. He maintained that conservatism and creativity were

44 45

Olga Demidova, Metamorfozy v izgnanii: Literaturnyi byt russkogo zarubezh’ia (Saint Petersburg: 2003), 239. Nikolai Berdiaev, Smysl tvorchestva (Moscow: 1916).

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principles opposed to one another and at the same time dependent on one another.46 This reevaluation of tradition meant that Berdiaev also became intensely preoccupied with community and nation. In his editorial article in the first issue of the émigré journal The Way (1925), Berdiaev understood the Russian emigration in providential terms as taking part in an overall struggle against the Antichrist. Somewhat more concretely, he emphasized the need for strengthening the spiritual bonds between the Russian people at home and abroad. For Berdiaev, culture and religion were more important than politics. In this situation, the otherwise anticlerical Berdiaev even held an attachment to the Orthodox Church to be necessary. “The Russian emigration is called to preserve the continuity of Russian spiritual culture and contribute to its creative development, as far as it is able.”47 This was the mission of the Russian emigration, as Berdiaev saw it. Although he denied that it was first and foremost a political struggle against the Bolsheviks—Bolshevism was for him merely an outer expression of “deeper maladies” such as materialism and secularism—the mission was nevertheless to save Russia spiritually by means of cultural creativity. “Russia” became a key topic in Berdiaev’s writings during the First World War and it remained so ever after. After the revolution, moreover, he gradually shifted from an aristocratic and critical position toward his native culture to a more affirmative one, in which a Slavophile-like belief in the Russian people became prominent.48 Hence a tension between universalist individualism and nationalist collectivism became discernible in Berdiaev’s thought. He would continue to publish critical studies of Russian history as he had done during the First World War, most notably The Origin of Russian Communism (1937), which proclaimed a continuity between the medieval idea of “Moscow the Third Rome” and the “Third International.” However, his post–Second World War work The Russian Idea (1946), which covers much of the same material and many of the same issues as the 1937 book, shows that Berdiaev saw the Russian people’s otherworldly yearnings for the past as a confirmation of its 46 47 48

Berdiaev, “Sud’ba russkogo konservatizma” [1904] and “O konservatizme” [1918, The Philosophy of Inequality], in Konservatizm: Pro et contra, ed. A.Ia. Kozhurin and A.A. Sinitsyn (Saint Petersburg: 2016), 540, 577, 587–88. Berdiaev, “Dukhovnye zadachi russkoi emigratsii (Ot redaktsii),” Put’: Organ russkoi religioznoi mysli 1 (1925): 3. Jane Burbank, Intelligentsia and Revolution: Russian Views of Bolshevism, 1917–1922 (New York: 1986), 193–208; Kåre Johan Mjør, “Nikolai Berdiaev and the ‘Boundless Spaces’ of Russia,” in Russian Space: Concepts, Practices, Representations (=Nordlit 39), ed. Andrei Rogatchevski and Yngvar B. Steinholt (Tromsø: 2017), 4–17.

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messianism, that is, that through history it had become a chosen people destined to pave the way for the “Heavenly Jerusalem.”49 The “Russian Idea” was therefore a fact of the past, and the main intention discernible in this book was to give the reader a true understanding of it. The Russian emigration no longer possessed a specific task as such. Rather, the deep past had become a confirmation of Russia’s historical role.50 3.3 Reinterpreting the Russian Empire (Eurasianism) Another ambiguous combination of conservatism and radicalism among Russian émigrés was Eurasianism. “Eurasianism” refers to a group of thinkers and historians who in exile undertook a reconceptualization of the Russian empire as “Eurasia.” The history of the movement dates back to 1921 when the collection Exodus to the East was published in Sofia. It included contributions by the linguist and ethnographer Nikolai Trubetskoi, the geographer Petr Savitsky, the critic Petr Suvchinsky, and the theologian Georges Florovsky. A year earlier Trubetskoi had published Europe and Humankind, a work that rejected the alleged universality and hegemony of European culture. Other figures associated with Eurasianism were the historian Georgy Vernadsky, the philosopher Lev Karsavin, and the literary scholars Dmitry Sviatopolk-Mirsky and Roman Jakobson. Eurasianism was a so-called post-revolutionary movement in that it acknowledged the importance of the revolution as a “restart.” The revolution had opened up the past to a reinterpretation that might also contribute to further political upheaval, a new religious revolution, at home. The Eurasianists perceived in the revolution the end of the modern, Europeanized Russian empire (the Romanov empire). Thus, they rejected traditional Russian monarchy but also Western democracy. The form for rule should first and foremost be strong, corporative, and religiously based statehood organically linked with the multiethnicity and geography of Eurasia. They called for a return to the genuine Eurasia as it had existed before the Westernization of Peter the Great.51 The Eurasianists were thus anti-Western and emphasized instead the historical bonds on the Eurasian continent between Russians (or Slavs) and the Turkic peoples of the East, most notably the Tatars. Their cooperation in the 49 50 51

For more on messianic ideas in Russian conservatism, see chapter 8 by Alicja Curanović in this volume. Nicholas Berdyaev, The Origin of Russian Communism (London: 1937); Berdiaev, Russkaia ideia: Osnovnye problemy russkoi mysli XIX veka i nachala XX veka (Paris, 1946). Berdiaev’s The Russian Idea is analyzed more in detail in Reformulating Russia, ch. 5. Sergey Glebov, From Empire to Eurasia: Politics, Scholarship, and Ideology in Russian Eurasianism, 1920s–1930s (DeKalb, IL: 2017), 1–8; Marlene Laruelle, Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire (Washington, DC: 2008), 25–31.

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past had created a unique civilization, and yet this collaboration testified to the imperial universality of their past, since it inevitably meant that it was not particularist. The Slavs were in any case historically dependent on the Tatars in the period of Tatar dominance. How truly symbiotic this relationship had been, however, was not clear from the large body of Eurasianist writings by different authors. On the one hand, they saw Orthodoxy as a defining feature of their Eurasia, and they were in fact not particularly well-disposed toward Islam. This suggested a Russocentric bias in their models.52 On the other hand, Vernadsky emphasized the unification of the Eurasian lands as the “legacy of Genghis Khan,” a legacy that was subsequently taken over by Muscovy. And it was the Mongols who had shown the Muscovites the importance of religion. The encounter with the steppe had made the Slavs Eastern (though not Asian).53 Eurasianism was above all a reinterpretation of the empire, with particular emphasis on the impact of physical geography (the forest and the steppe), and hence a defense of it. They sought new ways of justifying the empire, in a new context. And their visions do resonate with the age in which they appeared. On the one hand, Eurasianism reflects the experience of exile. It was, to quote a classic study, “a desperate bid to reestablish vanished Russia, to transmute fragmented and rootless existence in a foreign country into an organic and creative life at home. The scope of the dream corresponded to that of the loss.”54 On the other hand, it was also a reaction to the principle of national self-determination that apparently strongly appealed to the various nationalities of Eurasia (the Russian empire) after the First World War and the 1917 revolutions, when this principle had been confirmed by the Bolsheviks. Eurasianism emerged at a time when the Soviet Union was not yet proclaimed, while the former empire was seemingly disintegrating. Trubetskoi in particular stressed that the various nationalities had to recognize themselves as being part of a broader Eurasian “fraternity.”55 Thus, Eurasianism was both utopian and conservative: It was a new postrevolutionary ideology that rejected the recent past, but with the aim of defending the (very) old, primordial order, or at least an idea of it. It was, to quote 52 Laruelle, Russian Eurasianism, 42–43. 53 Mark Bassin, “Nationhood, National Regions, Mestorazvitie,” in Space, Place, and Power in Modern Russia: Essays in the New Spatial History, ed. Mark Bassin, Christopher Ely, and Melissa K. Stockdale (DeKalb, IL: 2010), 59. 54 Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, “The Emergence of Eurasianism,” California Slavic Studies 4 (1967): 71. Exile as the key context of Eurasianism is also emphasized in Laruelle, Russian Eurasianism, 16. 55 Quoted in Bassin, “Nationhood, National Regions, Mestorazvitie,” 52, a study that emphasizes the disintegrating empire as a crucial context for the Eurasianist movement.

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the title of a more recent study, an “ideology of empire”: the goal was to demonstrate that Russian territory is really Russia’s own and that the appropriate way of ruling it is empire.56 3.4 Defending the Monarchy (Ivan Ilyin) There was one passenger on the philosophical steamship who was not willing to cooperate with the Bolshevik regime at all, and that was Ivan Ilyin. Not even the outcome of the Second World War changed his negative stance toward the Soviet Union. Until his death in 1954 he remained a hardline foe of the Bolsheviks, first while living in Berlin and then in Switzerland. His anti-Bolshevism made him for a while positive toward the fascist movement in Italy as well as toward Hitler’s rise to power, but in Berlin he soon entered into conflict with the Nazi regime.57 Having lost his position and even the right to be active in public, he left Germany in 1938 for Switzerland. A great many of his émigré writings dealt with the future overthrow of Bolshevik power and the gradual restoration of monarchy on Russian soil—which required, as he saw it, a necessary interlude of dictatorship. Initially he had embraced the February Revolution, but in exile he sided with the White movement and made many efforts to defend monarchy philosophically. As a monarchist, Ilyin contrasted the principle of monarchy to that of the republic. Republicanism for Ilyin meant rule according to private, personal interests, the result of which is chaos, disintegration, and collapse. He also understood Bolshevik rule in republican terms. In a republic, the “mechanic” ideals of equality, individual rights, and independence predominate. Monarchy, by contrast, is organic. He compared it to a patriarchal family characterized by solidarity and trust but also by duty and hierarchy. Another pair of contrasts he applied in this connection was tradition (monarchy) versus innovation (republic). The idea of monarchy that he promoted was not constitutional monarchy, an idea that borders on republicanism, but autocratic monarchy.58 56 Glebov, From Empire to Eurasia, 9; Laruelle, Russian Eurasianism, 46. 57 Whether Ilyin’s political theories have a fascist character more generally, and thus his fascination for fascism and Nazism was not a temporary thing, is disputed. Timothy Snyder sees Ilyin as a “philosopher of Russian fascism,” while this interpretation has been questioned by Marlene Laruelle. See Timothy Snyder, “How a Russian Fascist Is Meddling in America’s Election,” The New York Times, 20 September 2016; Marlene Laruelle, “V poiskakh filosofa, vdokhnovivshego Putina,” Intersection Russia/Europe/World, 3 March 2017, ; Timothy Snyder, “Ivan Ilyin, Putin’s Philosopher of Russian Fascism,” The New York Review of Books, 5 April 2018. 58 I.A. Il’in, O monarkhii i respublike (New York: 1979), 262; Philip T. Grier, “The Complex Legacy of Ivan Il’in,” in Russian Thought after Communism: The Recovery of a Philosophical Heritage, ed. James P. Scanlan (Armonk, NY: 1994), 175.

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Nevertheless, Ilyin saw monarchism as an ideology of true freedom. He distinguished between “outer” and “inner freedom.” “Outer freedom” is the “Western” idea of political freedom and participation. Genuine, “inner freedom,” by contrast, is freedom to create. This kind of freedom would be the full realization of natural law. Some scholars have therefore argued that Ilyin is first and foremost a liberal thinker, precisely because he worked out a philosophy enabling human beings to become truly free in the most significant way—in the domain of creativity. In his late writings, the idea of “creative democracy” is opposed to both “formal democracy” and totalitarianism. And according to Ilyin, one of the chief aims of the state is to preserve the inner, creative freedom of the human being. However, his rejection of most kinds of secular art—from François Rabelais to Pablo Picasso—raises the question of how liberal he really was even here.59 Creativity for Ilyin had to be fundamentally religious. His idea of both creativity and political participation was also deeply aristocratic. Similar to a classical conservative like Edmund Burke, Ilyin regarded governance as a matter for cultivated and educated elites who were able to put the interests of the nation above personal interests. Like the early Berdiaev, Ilyin promoted a philosophy of inequality. The key concept in Ilyin’s political thought is “legal consciousness” (pravosoznanie). This form of consciousness is connected to Ilyin’s idea of natural law, and more specifically what he calls “positive law,” or norms. Legal consciousness for Ilyin means “capacity for self-government.” This requires an awareness of rights and obligations, which has to be cultivated. Legal consciousness also has a religious foundation, though it is not exclusively religious—it is also rooted in national culture. However, although Ilyin widely celebrated the ancient traditions of Russian culture in his writings, he held that weak legal consciousness in Russia led to the rise of the Bolsheviks. His monarchism was thus not necessarily a defense of the late Romanov empire. The state is the “positive, legal form of the motherland, while the motherland is its creative, spiritual content,” Ilyin writes in his On the Essence of Legal Consciousness, a work that he began after the revolution but never completed. However, he also defined the state as a “union of people spiritually bound together.”60 The distinction between the formal state and the spiritual, creative domain of culture in Ilyin’s writings is not always clear; rather, the two tend to blend. In fact, a tendency toward circularity is often present in Ilyin’s thought. Likewise, while he did not see the state as an end in itself but as a means to foster and protect legal consciousness, he also held that the state was responsible for developing this consciousness among its citizens, who would be loyal 59 60

Igor’ Evlampiev, Ivan Il’in (Saint Petersburg: 2016), 60, 179–212. Ivan Il’in, O sushchnosti pravosoznaniia (Moscow: 1993), 105, 110.

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to the state and the monarchy as long as it fulfilled its duty to do so. As one Ilyin scholar aptly puts it, “Paradoxically, the ultimate justification of monarchial authority lies in the fulfilment of its obligation to render itself superfluous by the development of pravosoznanie to the point of genuine self-governance by the population.”61 Ilyin was not an anti-capitalist and hence no anti-modern thinker. He discerned a profound potential in Russia’s economic growth on the eve of the First World War. He likewise defended private property, which he argued contributed to private initiative and the emergence of a middle class, which in turn further enabled the evolution of legal consciousness and patriotism. The Bolshevik abolition of private property was another fatal mistake by Lenin and his comrades. Hence Ilyin did not regard Russia as having been fully developed in the domain of what he—in keeping with the German tradition—called “civilization,” and this suggests that he could not avoid measuring it against the West. However, its culture was unique and original, and had a thousand-year history. His vision was therefore not a restoration of old Russia, but a new and flourishing one founded on its traditional religious culture. Ilyin, too, was a post-revolutionary thinker in that he discerned in the revolution a “religious meaning”: it might awaken what he repeatedly referred to as its “national instinct” and lead to the rebirth of Russia.62 Ilyin saw patriotism as a truly Christian value. Russians are obliged to serve the age-old “Russian Idea,” and not the other way around. For Ilyin as for Berd­ iaev, the Russian idea was a fact of the past, and this émigré interpretation contrasts with Vladimir Solov’ev’s utopianism of the late imperial period, for instance.63 Ilyin’s philosophy has been described as a combination of “the most extreme Slavophilism in general with a strongly held commitment to the rule of law as essential to any future Russian state worthy of the name.”64 This meant that the state had to be founded on “legal consciousness.” Thus it was not so much a conservative utopia in the sense of a return to some former golden age, as it was the full realization of a traditional, primordially inherent potential.

61

Philip Grier, “Il’in, Ivan Aleksandrovich (1883–1954),” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1998). 62 I.A. Il’in, Osnovy bor’by za natsional’nuiu Rossiiu (Narva: 1938), 20, 55–56, 62. 63 Il’in, Osnovy, 65; Kåre Johan Mjør, “Budushchee proshlogo: K istorii poniatiia ‘Russkaia ideia,’” in Issledovaniia po istorii russkoi mysli: Ezhegodnik za 2010/2011 gg., ed. Modest Kolerov and Nikolai Plotnikov (Moscow: 2014), 404–40. 64 Grier, “The Complex Legacy of Ivan Il’in,” 167.

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Conservatism in the 1960s–90s: From the Underground to the Foreground

Soviet-era underground right-wing activists constituted a small and marginal fraction of the public debates, yet they represent the most decisive period of ideological ferment in the history of Russian conservatism. Many key issues of today’s conservatism, such as traditional values, geopolitical isolationism, and anti-Westernism, entered the conservative agenda in the 1960s–80s. The very limits and conceptual border zones of conservative ideology were probed and explored at that time. What is the conservative take on the problem of change and the status quo in a society that has been thoroughly rebuilt after the revolution of 1917? Was the revolution of 1917 a popular organic response to the challenges of rapid modernization, and if so, was the Soviet period a natural amplification of Russia’s historical mission, or was it a bloody coup by the ethnically alien Bolsheviks who kept Russia under their iron heel ever after? Did Stalinism implement the most cherished conservative values of statism, nationalism, and great-power status, or did it destroy all things dear to true conservatives: traditions, an agrarian lifestyle, and the “organic” development of the Russian people? How can conservatives relate to the experience of “real socialism” in Russia? How can they approach liberal political rights in a country that consistently neglected them? These questions have still not lost their pertinence for the right side of the ideological spectrum. An especially divisive problem that has continued to plague conservatives is their relationship to the Soviet period in Russian history. At the same time, underground conservatives are firmly embedded in the broader ideological debates of Russian intellectual history, which revolved around the problem of authenticity in a Westernized but non-colonized country. Conservatives under Leonid Brezhnev established the foundations of the entire post-revolutionary tradition of Russian conservatism. This is because they started their ideological pursuits from scratch. Prerevolutionary conservatives, whose ideological universe revolved around the concept of monarchy, became increasingly irrelevant after the February Revolution of 1917, while émigré rightists were tainted by associations with fascism and the Soviet secret services. Besides, for an ordinary Soviet person, access to pre-Soviet and emigrant political writings was limited and subject to repression. Personal connections with representatives of the prerevolutionary and émigré conservatives were severed because of the Iron Curtain. Institutionally, monarchist organizations had not survived the turbulence of the first half of the century and the deadly attention of the repressive organs of Soviet power. By the same token, knowledge about Western conservative movements and ideologies was

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also fragmented and largely irrelevant for the Soviet rightists. This means that those thinkers who were dissatisfied with the official ideology but felt no consolation in the camp of the liberal-democratic dissidents had to reinvent the wheel in some respects, and to blaze a trail through completely uncharted territories in others. Much of the prerevolutionary conservative criticism was preventive: it attacked parliamentary democracy and Western individualistic lifestyles, which were not yet fully fledged in Russia. The same is characteristic of underground Soviet conservatism, but with an important caveat. In the 1960s the country became an urban industrial power with a large middle class, speedily heading toward the most stable—if not to say stagnant—consumerist and bourgeois period in its history, known as the “standstill” (zastoi), which ironically took place during the proclaimed era of “developed socialism.” These tectonic shifts in the social fabric prepared receptive soil for traditionalist ideas and visions, which also catered to the needs of legitimizing the ruling class—the so-called nomenklatura. One of the most articulately conservative reactions to and products of the “standstill” was the “village prose movement” (derevenshchiki), represented by a galaxy of talented writers such as Viktor Astaf’ev, Valentin Rasputin, Vladimir Soloukhin, Sergei Zalygin, and others. These derevenshchiki mourned the bygone Russian rural lifestyle, traditionalism, and patriarchal attitudes, while multiple voices both from the top and from the bottom castigated the creeping “Americanization” of Soviet life, the reckless indulgence in petty bourgeois and materialistic values, and withdrawal into private life and domesticity. The village prose writers, with their canonically Russian, Slavophile-style conservative agenda, constituted a moderate Fronde to socialist “all hands on deck” modernization and the planned violent transformation of society and nature. At the same time, their anti-Westernism powerfully pushed them toward an alliance with the official camp, especially with the Komsomol leadership.65 It might also be true that the political leadership wanted to galvanize the crumbling ideological apparatus by injecting a dose of traditionalism. However, there was never an actual concordat between the state and the conservative underground, which was, at best, grudgingly tolerated, and at worst repressed.66 65 66

See, for example: Anna Razuvaeva, Pisateli-“derevenshchiki”: Literatura i konservativnaia ideologiia 1970-kh godov (Moscow: 2015); Kathleen Parthé, Russian Village Prose: The Radiant Past (Princeton, NJ: 1992). For more, see: Nikolai Mitrokhin, Russkaia partiia: Dvizhenie russkikh natsionalistov v SSSR, 1953–1985 (Moscow: 2003); Alexander Yanov, The Russian New Right: Right-Wing Ideologies in the Contemporary USSR (Berkeley, CA: 1979); John Dunlop, The New Russian

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4.1 Underground Slavophiles Those Soviet people who wanted to find ideological inspiration beyond Marxism-Leninism most often ended up embracing the reputable and politically unsuspect Russian literature of the 19th century, from whence it was only a stone’s throw to the ideological theorizing of the Slavophiles and the religious philosophers of the Silver Age. Slavophilism resonated with the mindset of the underground Soviet conservatives, especially with their patriotism, messianic desires, and anti-Westernism. The samizdat journal Veche, edited by Orthodox dissident Vladimir Osipov in 1971–74, articulated its task as “continu[ing] the guiding line of the Slavophiles and Dostoevsky.”67 In a series of articles authored by Anatoly Skuratov and Mikhail Antonov, Veche pointed to the essence of Slavophilism in its Christian, that is, its inclusive and non-antagonistic take on nationalism, and in its strong expression of the communitarian criticism of “Western” liberal rights. Antonov notes the Slavophile argument about Russia’s servile, semi-colonial relation to the West. He proposes the mind-boggling remedy of marrying Slavophilism and Leninism on the grounds of their “common” faith in the salvific qualities of the Russian communal social order. Antonov also draws on Slavophiles in order to theorize the problem of change, which he aligns with the canonical conservative interpretation: changes should be organic, natural, growing from within, not externally or politically induced.68 With Marxist dialectics conveniently at hand, Antonov advanced an important corollary: a revolution could also be natural and organic (i.e., conservative!), when gradual quantitative accumulation suddenly results in a qualitative leap forward. In the 1970s the nationalist component in conservative ideology was covered up by mystical and religious fundamentalism. On the pages of Veche, for example, the vision of Russia as “Holy Rus’” meant the quintessential religiously based “Russianness” of the saints who resided in the country, even if in each given moment “Holy Rus’” consisted of only three or four righteous people.

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Nationalism (New York: 1985); John Dunlop, The Faces of Contemporary Russian Nationalism (Princeton, NJ: 1983); Yitzhak Brudny, Reinventing Russia: Russian Nationalism and the Soviet State, 1953–1991 (Cambridge, MA: 1998). “Na veche!,” Veche, no. 1 (1971), in Polnyi spisok dokumentov s podrobnym nomernym ­ukazatelem, ed. Albert Boiter (Munich: 1977), AS (Arkhiv samizdata) No. 1013, p. 2. On Osipov and Veche: Darrell Hammer, “Vladimir Osipov and the Veche group (1971–1974): A Page from the History of Political Dissent,” The Russian Review 43, no. 4 (1984): 355–75. Mikhail Antonov, “Uchenie slavianofilov—vyshii vzlet narodnogo samosoznaniia v Rossii v doleninskii period,” Veche, no. 2 (1971): 12–21. See also: Anatolii Skuratov, “U istokov narodnogo samosoznaniia,” Veche, no. 1 (1971). On Slavophile tendencies after the revolution, see Dmitry Pospielovsky, “A Comparative Enquiry into Neo‐Slavophilism and Its Antecedents in the Russian History of Ideas,” Soviet Studies 31, no. 3 (1979): 319–42.

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Elsewhere Osipov insists that without Christianity nationalism turns into pagan devilry. Gennady Shimanov was less adamant on this account but he too argued that the Motherland was not to be idolized: “love it insofar as it is not disgusting to God.”69 In the 1980s nationalism came to the fore of the public debates. In 1980 the society Pamiat’ (Memory) was inaugurated, which soon thereafter became the center of Russian nationalism and anti-Semitism, under the leadership of Dmitry Vasil’ev, the former colleague and disciple of Valery Skurlatov. Disconnected from the parliamentary traditions of the prerevolutionary rightists and ousted from the legal outlets for expressing their opinions, the underground conservatives were prone to develop radical views and to pursue radical ways of action. For example, VSKhSON, the famous underground organization, planned a military coup and called for the creation of a military-religious order that would establish the dominance of Christianity in society and give power to the clerics.70 Likewise, conservative ideologists came up with a number of anti-Semitic, racist proposals. Valery Skurlatov serves as an appropriate illustration of this. He was born in 1938, began his career as a Komsomol functionary, and gained some fame in 1965 as an author of the ultra-radical “Statute of Morals” (“Ustav nravov”), in which he launched a barrage against modernity as a whole, calling for a return to medieval mores and a caste society. Today he accepts that some of his articles were too “grotesque,” but maintains that this only reflected his deep concern about the growing consumerist tendencies in “relaxed post-Stalinist society.” The anti-modernist thrust of the “Statute of Morals” was influenced by Skurlatov’s close familiarity with the ideologists of Nazi Germany.71 During perestroika he joined Pamiat’, and, according to some accounts, worked for the KGB, too.72 In post-Soviet Russia he

69

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71 72

Gennadii Shimanov, “Otryvki iz dnevnika,” Protiv techeniia (Moscow, 1975), in Boiter, Polnyi spisok dokumentov, AS No. 2086, p. 25. See also: Leonid Borodin, “Opyt teleologi­ cheskogo opravdaniia natsii,” Veche 9 (1973): 167; Vladimir Osipov, “K zemle” (translated and published as “Back to Land!” in Dunlop, Faces of Contemporary Russian Nationalism, 297–300). VSKhSON stands for the All-Russian Social-Christian Union for the Liberation of Peoples, established in 1964 by Igor’ Ogurtsov, Evgenii Vagin, Leonid Borodin, and others. It was liquidated by the KGB in 1967. For more on its ideology and history, see Yanov, The Russian New Right; John Dunlop, The New Russian Revolutionaries (Belmont, MA: 1976). Valerii Skurlatov, “Ustav nrava,” SSSR: Vnutrennie protivorechiia, no. 6 (1982). For more on Skurlatov, see Andreas Umland, “Soviet Antisemitism after Stalin,” East European Jewish Affairs 29, nos. 1–2 (1999): 159–68. Leningradskaia pravda, 18 November 1990.

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predictably drifted toward the most nationalistically oriented and radical flank of the communists. It should also be noted that the majority of the dissident conservatives— Vladimir Osipov, Leonid Borodin, the abovementioned Skurlatov, and Gennady Shimanov, to name just a few—came up from non-privileged backgrounds thanks to the education and career possibilities provided by the Soviet regime, and often thoroughly embraced communist ideology in their youth. Given a deficit of ideological construction materials, they recycled what was already at hand. Thus, Marxist positivism became geopolitical conspiracy theory, antibourgeois criticism was reinterpreted as the defense of traditional values, and visions of conservative encirclement were translated into isolationism and anti-Westernism.  4.2 Case Study: Gennady Shimanov Gennady Shimanov’s ideology and life trajectory exemplifies many of the abovementioned points about underground conservatism in the Soviet Union.73 He was born in a peasant family in 1937. After school and his time in the Komsomol and the army, he relocated to Moscow and developed an interest in Russian philosophy and religion. He was sent to a psychiatric asylum because of his religious views. After he was released in the 1970s his worldview evolved from liberalism to conservatism, and he began to collaborate with Vladimir Osipov’s samizdat journal Veche and started a number of his own publishing projects, which he intended for illegal distribution among right-wing dissidents. Like Skurlatov, he was also probably in contact with the official organs in the 1980s.74 After the fall of the Soviet Union he published occasionally on fundamentalist Orthodox webpages. The hallmark of his ideology is the strategic alliance between two concepts: traditional values and Soviet geopolitical power. In order to substantiate this counterintuitive ideological mixture, he develops a consistent communitarian rejection of Enlightenment views on human nature. For him, people are imperfect and sinful, and hence requiring wise guidance from above—be it God, tradition, or the state.75 He actually believed in the importance of all three, but he did not have much to say on theology and concentrated on arguing in favor 73

For more on Shimanov, see: Mikhail Suslov, “Fundamentalist Utopia of Gennady Shimanov, 1970–1980s,” Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization 17, no. 4 (2009): 324–49. 74 Dunlop, The New Russian Nationalism, 13. 75 Gennadii Shimanov, “Vstuplenie v brak,” Mnogaia leta (1981): 108; Shimanov, “O ravenstve i neravenstve v brake,” Zemlia 2 (1974), in Boiter, Polnyi spisok dokumentov, AS no. 2060, p. 16.

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of supplementing strong Soviet power with traditionalism, which he did with a radicalism usual for underground rightists and with some degree of ingenuity, prefiguring the general contours of conservative ideology in contemporary Russia. His main enemy was “Western civilization,” which in its entirety embodied all of the abominable aspects of modernity. From this viewpoint, the Soviet Union represented the alternative world and alternative model of social development. By his specific twist of thought, the real alternativeness of the Soviet Union was not the implementation of Marxism, but—quite paradoxically— the possibility of holding onto traditionalism. This possibility, however, could well be forsaken, if Soviet rulers caved in to Western pressure and allowed the Soviet fortress to dissolve in a caustic sea of consumerism, moral laxity, individualism, a culture of entertainment, “degeneration of moral integrity” (ras­ pad tselomudriia),76 and so on. His railing against the West includes canonical invectives against parliamentary democracy and liberal rights on the grounds that the Western political tradition is formalistic, indifferent to morality, and serves as a smokescreen for the interests of capitalists.77 In order to prevent these vices from coming to his homeland, Shimanov insisted on an even more isolationist and repressive regime than Brezhnev’s USSR. Specifically, he spoke out against marriages to foreigners, against traveling abroad and adopting Western lifestyles, buying Western goods, watching Western films, and so on. Elsewhere he argues: “You have to … shun unnecessary communication with foreigners; national organisms should be consolidated and impenetrable to each other [somknytymi i nepronitsaemymi drug dlia druga].”78 This argument concerns not only the Soviet Union’s relations with the outside world, but also relations among nations inside the state. He decisively condemns all cultural and national hybridization, and maintains that all “‘half-breeds’ [polukrovki] should choose one nation and completely forget about another.”79 Interestingly, the call for retreat inside one’s national self is combined with a belief in the providential mission of the USSR to “spiritually Russify” the entire world. This paradox is central and recurrent in Russian conservatism, whose isolationism is framed as a precondition for future glorious messianic expansion. 76

Gennadii Shimanov, Protiv techeniia (Moscow: 1975), in Boiter, Polnyi spisok dokumentov, AS no. 1086, p. 25; Shimanov, “Lie Abramson,” Mnogala leta (1981): 148. 77 Shimanov, “Otryvki iz dnevnika,” pp. 16, 39; Shimanov, “Ideal’noe gosudarstvo” (1979), in Boiter, Polnyi spisok dokumentov, AS no. 2218, p. 4; Shimanov, “Demokraticheskoe pravosoznaniie,” Mnogaia leta (1980): 68–74. 78 Shimanov, Protiv techeniia, 16. 79 Ibid., 17.

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At the same time, in Shimanov’s view, national isolation within the Soviet state should not prejudice its integrity, because it forges a mystical communion of nations, united by their historical destiny, and because to “speak out against our power means to go against God.”80 Shimanov insists that the Soviet regime is conductive to the spread of religiosity in society, whereas liberal democracy is not. He adamantly rules out the possibility of the restoration of monarchy in Russia because it would mean a revolutionary upheaval and a dramatic and unnecessary step backward. Besides, the Soviet regime is truly a people’s power, enjoying wide legitimacy among the populace. The negative, isolationist part of his program framed his positive ideal. Like Skurlatov in his “Statute of Morals,” Shimanov dreamed of returning to premodern, communal, and patriarchal society, whose hallmarks would be strict observance of family traditions and religious rituals, and restoration of the peasants’ commune. He envisioned and savored every detail of this would-be traditionalist return to a militaristic and heroic spirit, corporal punishment, ascetic education, the submissiveness of wives and children, and the omnipotence of the patriarchs of extended families. This ideal, which he calls “Holy Russia,” implies “ascetic concentration on the self” (asketicheskaia sobrannost’). It resonates with the isolationist proposals of Solzhenitsyn’s Letter to the Soviet Leaders in its withdrawal from expansionist projects, concentration on self-development, and certain amount of deindustrialization. Shimanov, however, is probably better-known for his obsessive fixation on family values and traditions, which makes him so appealing for today’s conservatives.  4.3 Conservatism during Perestroika and the 1990s Perestroika and the first decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union was the constitutive period for the formation of contemporary Russian conservatism. At the same time, this period was fraught with contradictions, which, like birthmarks, were inherited by the conservatives under Putinism. For the first time since the revolution of 1917, conservatives received unlimited access to the public media, and the audience received unlimited access to conservative publishing outlets. Conservative dissidents came out of the shadows, and a number of prerevolutionary and émigré conservative figures were unearthed, reprinted, and consumed by Russian readers, while academics began to reflect on the prominence of the conservative intellectual tradition in

80

Ibid., 23.

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Russia.81 Liberalization of the regime created legal possibilities to institutionalize a variety of conservative movements formed around a few charismatic figures, such as Aleksandr Dugin, Aleksandr Panarin, Metropolitan Ioann (Snychev), Aleksandr Prokhanov, and Dmitry Rogozin.82 However, unimpeded access to the discourse does not guarantee the audience’s attention. Perestroika, with its slogans of “acceleration,” “glasnost,” and “new thinking,” as well as idealization of the West in the public consciousness83 and the “capitalist revolution” of the 1990s, were not propitious for the popularity of conservatism. As a result, conservative intellectuals were consigned not just to the oppositional side of the political spectrum, devoid of the state’s material and immaterial support, but also to the margins of political life. Thus, conservatives turned to an intellectual arsenal consisting of the ideas of “conservative revolution,” nationalism, and messianism.84 The village prose movement, which had the reputation of a moderate Fronde, reigned in the minds of the intelligentsia in the 1970s, whereas in the 1990s, the same renowned writers became associated with the most outlandish and odious conspiracy theories. Thus, for example, in the 1990s the village prose writers also came up with a raft of anti-Semitic publications, exposing the “Jewish conspiracy,” such as Vladimir Soloukhin’s Last Stage (1995) and Vasily Belov’s The Sixth Hour (1998). The same could be said of the underground conservatives, who in the 1960s to early 1980s enjoyed the reputation of victims of the regime and a certain fame both among the Soviet intelligentsia and foreign observers. Because of the deficit of oppositional information, conservatives comfortably occupied a very tangible niche in the Soviet “black market” of alternative ideas. Perestroika gave them a chance to return from the prison camps and freely propagate their views, but it simultaneously pulled them out from their underground and compelled them to compete for public attention with the wide spectrum of political ideas. Conservatives turned out to be badly equipped for such a competition, and were pushed outside of the media mainstream. For example, 81 82

83 84

For example, searching for publications by and about Konstantin Leont’ev in the Russian State Library catalogue returns nearly 3,000 hits for the period between 1991 and 2000; Nikolai Danilevskii—around 2,000 hits (see ). See, for example, their publications: Aleksandr Dugin, Konservativnaia revoliutsiia (Moscow: 1994); Ioann (Snychev), Puti russkogo vozrozhdeniia (Moscow: 1993); Dmitrii Rogozin, Russkii otvet: Istoriko-filosofskii ocherk rossiiskoi gosudarstvennosti (Saint Petersburg: 1996). For example, Dina Khapaeva, Vremia kosmopolitizma: Ocherki intellektual’noi istorii (Saint Petersburg: 2002). Viсtor Shnirelman, Ariiskii mif v sovremennom mire (Moscow: 2015); Mark Sedgwick, Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century (Oxford: 2004).

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Leonid Borodin, one of the members of VSKhSON and a contributor to the journal Veche, was released from his ten-year sentence in 1987, and became a long-term editor-in-chief of the thick journal Moskva (1992–2008). However, during the same period, the print run of Moskva dropped from 775,000 in 1989 to some 20,000 in the 1990s, and to around 3,000 by the end of Borodin’s tenure. This paradoxical tendency toward legalization and institutionalization of conservatism, and at the same time toward its marginalization, had a lasting impact on the post-Soviet history of this ideology. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the conservative Fronde among the village prose writers, “thick journal” publicists, and underground activists merged with the right-wing side of the political establishment on the question of antiWesternism. After the Soviet regime fell, this conservative milieu tended to forget splits and difficulties between themselves and officialdom and to embrace the late Soviet period as a period of prosperity in Russian history. In parallel, those who ridiculed the “idiocy of rural life” and extolled industrial modernization (e.g., Aleksandr Prokhanov) began to reinterpret industrialism as a means for the preservation of Russia’s identity. As a result of this rapprochement between the village prose writers and the great-power statist strand of Russian conservatism, Prokhanov’s newspaper Den’ (from 1993 on—Zavtra) hosted such derevenshchiki as Vladimir Soloukin and Valentin Rasputin. Theoretical debates on the balance between modernization and preservation of traditional identity gradually faded out. In his radical revision of Marxism, Gennady Ziuganov, the head of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, stressed the importance of religion and traditional values as instruments of resistance to global capitalism.85 Geopolitical revanchism was on the banner of the Congress of Russian Communities, spearheaded by Sergei Glaz’ev, Dmitry Rogozin, and Yuri Boldyrev, who epitomized the “red-brown” alliance of the 1990s.86 This alliance, represented also by Konstantin Zatulin, Aleksandr Rutskoi, and others, blended slogans of Russian nationalism and a social agenda in their opposition to the liberal reforms of President Yeltsin. In this milieu, the rehabilitation of Stalinism was brewing, because for many of the “red-browns” Stalin symbolized their desired and paradoxical mixture of geopolitical great power, industrial buildup, tolerance toward religion, Russian nationalism, and socialism. To be sure, Stalinism and the idea of organic 85 86

Gennadii Ziuganov, Rossiia: Rodina moia (Moscow: 1996). Alan Ingram, “‘A Nation Split into Fragments’: The Congress of Russian Communities and Russian Nationalist Ideology,” Europe-Asia Studies 51, no. 4 (1999): 687–704.

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growth—the hallmark of conservatism—have little to do with each other, so the “red-brown” opposition could hardly be classified as conservatism in the strict sense of the word. At the same time, the myth of Stalin’s lenience toward religious faith provided for the absorption of Stalin into the conservative “canon.” As one of the contemporary analysts of conservatism argues, the doctrine and practice of Russian “patriotism” under Stalin reached heights that prerevolutionary conservative thinkers Mikhail Katkov and Konstantin Pobedonos­ tsev could not even dream of.87 This second, equally ironic, tendency consists in the move toward consolidation of the conservative camp, thanks to the discovery of the universal antagonist—the market and liberal reforms and their supporters during Yeltsin’s tenure. At the same time, the Soviet period itself became the object of critical reflection and discord among conservatives. Traditionalists argued that without the socialist experiment, Russia would have built up even greater industrial muscles without sacrificing the Russian nation, the village, and the traditional lifestyle, whereas supporters of modernization pointed to the fact that Russia had never been so powerful and autarchic as under Stalin and his successors. The third observation is the growing clash between universalistic and particularistic tendencies in conservatism, conditioned—among other things— by the rise to national prominence of two actors: neo-Eurasianists and the Russian Orthodox Church. Aleksandr Dugin became the leading proponent of neo-Eurasianism, constructed as a quixotic mixture of the Russian Sonderweg, esoteric traditionalism, realist geopolitics, and the classic Eurasianism of the 1920s.88 Its major selling point became a conspiratorial “brief theory of everything”—a simplified version of classic geopolitics, providing a handy explanation of the whole of Russian history as confrontation with the Atlantic maritime “civilization.” Neo-Eurasianism drove to the extreme the geopolitical and anti-Western slant in Russian conservatism, while at the same time, it modeled the “us”-community as an inclusive imperial entity, relatively indifferent to confessional and national divisions.89 87 88 89

Anton Kozhurin, “Fenomen russkogo konservatizma,” in Kozhurin and Sinitsyn, Konservatizm, 52. Dugin, “Konservativnaia revoliutsiia.” John Dunlop, “Aleksandr Dugin’s Foundations of Geopolitics,” Demokratizatsiya 12, no. 1 (2004): 41–57; Alan Ingram, “Alexander Dugin: Geopolitics and Neo-Fascism in Post-Soviet Russia,” Political Geography 20, no. 8 (2001): 1029–51; Jacob Kipp, “Aleksandr Dugin and the Ideology of National Revival: Geopolitics, Eurasianism and the Conservative Revolution,” European Security 11, no. 3 (2002): 91–125; Marlene Laruelle, “The Two Faces of Contemporary Eurasianism: An Imperial Version of Russian Nationalism,” Nationalities Papers 32, no. 1 (2004): 115–36; Graham Smith, “The Masks of Proteus: Russia, Geopolitical Shift

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The Russian Orthodox Church emerged as another major sponsor of political conservatism in the 1990s,90 employing the more exclusive approach of conflating the concepts of the “Russian nation” and “Orthodox civilization” into what later became the “Russian World” project. To be sure, the intellectual impact of the ROC on post-Soviet society is variegated and complex, but it would be safe to say that it meaningfully contributed to the radicalization of conservatism, nurturing such views as conspiracy theories, anti-Semitism, nationalism, monarchism, and eschatology. For example, Metropolitan Ioann (Snychev) of Saint Petersburg pontificated about global forces “behind the curtain” (mirovaia zakulisa), striving to strike the traditional world order and religion forcefully enough to gather control over the entire planet in a few invisible hands.91 Finally, by the end of the period under the scrutiny, elements of the conservative agenda, such as Russian patriotism and anti-Westernism, had become increasingly appropriated by the Kremlin, while Russian society had developed a larger demand for great-power status, Sonderweg, anti-liberalism, and anti-Western attitudes. This prepared the ground for a smooth transition to the concordat between officials and conservative ideologists under Putin. 5 Conclusion In spite of ruptures in the ideological genealogy of conservatism and dramatically changed social and political contexts, there has always been a core of conservative ideas that, under different names, have persisted over the past two centuries. One part of them is associated with the generic conservative predilection for communal ties among people. For conservatives since Edmund Burke, these ties precede any rationally articulated principles, rights, and rules of the game. On these grounds, Russian conservatives attack liberal democracy, and by extension, its geopolitical embodiment—“the West.” Following this line of thinking, conservatives rule out politically initiated changes, although they tolerate “organic” changes that occur naturally in society. The measure of “organicness,” however, can be quite flexible, stretching from the canonical

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and the New Eurasianism,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 24, no. 4 (1999): 481–94. Anastasia Mitrofanova, The Politicization of Russian Orthodoxy: Actors and Ideas (Stuttgart: 2005). Ioann (Snychev), “Sviashchennoe i strashnoe delo—vlast’,” in Samoderzhavie dukha: Ocherki russkogo samosoznaniia, by Ioann (Snychev) (Saint Petersburg: 1994).

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defense of the “status quo” to accepting a grassroots revolt against violent Wester­nization. Other core conservative ideas are locally specific to the Russian context. These ideas explicate Russia’s unique experience of top-down Westernization relatively early in its history. At the heart of Russian conservatism, there has always been an attempt to combine generic conservative arguments in such a way that the casting away of Western fetters would simultaneously mean a return to an unspoiled community and a negation of planned changes. However, when it comes to practical politics, this argument has important drawbacks. First, the concept of “organic community” is not so straightforward in a multinational empire, which Russia has been for the largest part of its history. Thus, nationalism emerges as a divisive issue for conservatives, many of whom have been reluctant to embrace an exclusive ethno-national interpretation of “Russianness,” but at the same time—understandably—have failed to come up with a similarly convincing vision of who “we” are. Second, the political turbulence of the 20th century raised yet another divisive problem, that of interpreting the Soviet legacy and the revolution of 1917, either as an organic Russian development, or as an evil plot of the external enemy. Finally, Westernization made the attitudes of conservatives toward the state ambivalent. Conservatives can argue either “more state” or “less state,” depending on whether they want to emphasize Russia’s geopolitical strength in the face of the Western threat or to criticize modernist pursuits of the state itself, as opposed to the traditionalism of the populace. The same problems drive wedges into conservative ideology in today’s Russia. References Aksakov, Konstantin. “On the Internal State of Russia.” In Russian Intellectual History: An Anthology, edited by Marc Raeff, 231–51. New York: 1966. Aksakov, Konstantin. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. 3 vols. Moscow: 1861–80. Antonov, Mikhail. “Uchenie slavianofilov—vyshii vzlet narodnogo samosoznaniia v Rossii v doleninskii period” [The teachings of Slavophiles as the highest manifestation of popular self-consciousness in the period of Russian history before Lenin]. Veche, no. 2 (1971): 12–21. Aughey, Arthur, Greta Jones, and W.T.M. Riches. The Conservative Political Tradition in Britain and the United States. Rutherford, NJ: 1992. Bassin, Mark. “Nationhood, National Regions, Mestorazvitie.” In Space, Place, and Power in Modern Russia: Essays in the New Spatial History, edited by Mark Bassin, Christopher Ely, and Melissa K. Stockdale, 49–80. DeKalb, IL: 2010.

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Berdiaev, Nikolai. “Dukhovnye zadachi russkoi emigratsii (Ot redaktsii)” [The spiritual tasks of Russian emigration (Editorial)]. Put’: Organ russkoi religioznoi mysli 1 (1925): 3–8. Berdiaev, Nikolai. Konstantin Leont’ev: Ocherki iz istorii russkoi religioznoi mysli [Kon­ stantin Leont’ev: Remarks about the history of Russian religious thought]. Paris: 1926. Berdiaev, Nikolai. Russkaia ideia: Osnovnye problemy russkoi mysli XIX veka i nachala XX veka [The Russian idea: The key problems of Russian thought of the 19th–early 20th centuries]. Paris, 1946. Berdiaev, Nikolai. Smysl tvorchestva [The purpose of creative work]. Moscow: 1916. Berdiaev, Nikolai. “Sud’ba russkogo konservatizma” [The fate of Russian conservatism] (1904) and “O konservatizme” [On conservatism] (1918, The Philosophy of Inequality), in Konservatizm: Pro et contra, edited by A.Ia. Kozhurin and A.A. Sinitsyn, 531–40, 557–91. Saint Petersburg: 2016. Berdyaev, Nicholas. The Origin of Russian Communism. London: 1937. Boiter, Albert (ed.). Polnyi spisok dokumentov s podrobnym nomernym ukazatelem. Munich: 1977. Borodin, Leonid. “Opyt teleologicheskogo opravdaniia natsii” [An attempt at a theological justification of the nation]. Veche 9 (1973): 163–67. Brudny, Y.M. Reinventing Russia: Russian Nationalism and the Soviet State, 1953–1991. Cambridge, MA: 1998. Burbank, Jane. Intelligentsia and Revolution: Russian Views of Bolshevism, 1917–1922. New York: 1986. Chaadaev, Peter. Philosophical Letters & Apology of a Madman. Translated and edited by Mary-Barbara Zeldin. Knoxville, TN: 1969. Christoff, Peter. An Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Slavophilism. 4 vols. Princeton, NJ: 1961–91. Danilevskii, Nikolai. Rossiia i Evropa [Russia and Europe]. Saint Petersburg, 1995. Demidova, Olga. Metamorfozy v izgnanii: Literaturnyi byt russkogo zarubezh’ia [Meta­ morphoses in exile: The literary way of life of the Russian emigration]. Saint Petersburg: 2003. Dudzinskaia, E.A. Slavianofily v poreformennoi Rossii [Slavophiles in Russia after the reforms]. Moscow: 1994. Dugin, Aleksandr. Konservativnaia revoliutsiia [Conservative revolution]. Moscow: 1994. Dunlop, John. “Aleksandr Dugin’s Foundations of Geopolitics,” Demokratizatsiya 12, no. 1 (2004): 41–57. Dunlop, John. The Faces of Contemporary Russian Nationalism. Princeton, NJ: 1983. Dunlop, John. The New Russian Nationalism. New York: 1985. Dunlop, John. The New Russian Revolutionaries. Belmont, MA: 1976.

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Eidel’man, N.Ia. Poslednii letopisets, ili dve zhizni Nikolaia Karamzina [The last chronicler, or the two lives of Nikolai Karamzin]. Saint Petersburg: 2016. Evlampiev, Igor’. Ivan Il’in. Saint Petersburg: 2016. Gleason, Abbott. European and Muscovite: Ivan Kireevsky and the Origins of Slavophilism. Cambridge, MA: 1972. Glebov, Sergey. From Empire to Eurasia: Politics, Scholarship, and Ideology in Russian Eura­sianism, 1920s–1930s. DeKalb, IL: 2017. Glinka, Stanislav. “Ne opasno li?” [Isn’t this dangerous?]. Zemshchina [Land], 24 August 1914. Gogolev, Roman. “Angel’skii doktor” russkoi istorii: Filosofiia istorii K.N. Leont’eva [The “Doctor angelicus” of Russian history: The philosophy of history of K.N. Leont’ev]. Moscow: 2007. Green, E.H.H. Ideologies of Conservatism: Conservative Political Ideas in the Twentieth Century. Oxford: 2002. Grier, Philip T. “The Complex Legacy of Ivan Il’in.” In Russian Thought after Communism: The Recovery of a Philosophical Heritage, edited by James P. Scanlan, 165–86. Armonk, NY: 1994. Grier, Philip T. “Il’in, Ivan Aleksandrovich (1883–1954).” In Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 1998. Grosul, Vladislav (ed.). Russkii konservatizm XIX stoletiia: Ideologiia i praktika [Russian conservatism in the 19th century: Ideology and practice]. Moscow: 2000. Gosudarstvennaia Duma. Stenograficheskie otchety: Sozyv chetvertyi; Sessiia IV [Steno­ graphic Reports: Fourth Convocation, Session IV]. Petrograd: 1915. Gosudarstvennaia Duma. Stenograficheskie otchety: Sozyv tretii; Sessiia III; Chast’ 3 [Stenographic Reports: Third Convocation, Session III, Part 3]. Petrograd: 1910. Gosudarstvennyi Sovet. Stenograficheskie otchety: Sessiia XI [Stenographic Reports: Session XI]. Petrograd: 1915. Hamburg, Gary M. Russia’s Path toward Enlightenment: Faith, Politics, and Reason, 1500– 1801. New Haven, CT: 2016. Hammer, Darrell. “Vladimir Osipov and the Veche group (1971–1974): A Page from the History of Political Dissent.” The Russian Review 43, no. 4 (1984): 355–75. Il’in, Ivan. O monarkhii i respublike [On monarchy and republic]. New York: 1979. Il’in, Ivan. Osnovy bor’by za natsional’nuiu Rossiiu [The foundations of a struggle for a national Russia]. Narva: 1938. Il’in, Ivan. O sushchnosti pravosoznaniia [On the essence of the sense of justice]. Moscow: 1993. Ingram, Alan. “Alexander Dugin: Geopolitics and Neo-Fascism in Post-Soviet Russia.” Political Geography 20, no. 8 (2001): 1029–51. Ingram, Alan. “‘A Nation Split into Fragments’: The Congress of Russian Communities and Russian Nationalist Ideology.” Europe-Asia Studies 51, no. 4 (1999): 687–704. Ivask, Iurii. Konstantin Leont’ev: Zhizn’ i tvorchestvo [Konstantin Leont’ev: Life and work]. Frankfurt: 1974.

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Jones, Larry Eugene, and James Retallack (eds.). Between Reform, Reaction, and Resis­ tance: Studies in the History of German Conservatism from 1789 to 1945. Provi­dence, RI: 1993.  Karamzin’s Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia: A Translation and Analysis by Richard Pipes. Cambridge, MA: 1959. Khapaeva, Dina. Vremia kosmopolitizma: Ocherki intellektual’noi istorii [A time of cosmo­politanism: Essays on intellectual history]. Saint Petersburg: 2002. Khomiakov, Aleksei. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii [Complete works]. Moscow: 1900– 1914. Kipp, Jacob. “Aleksandr Dugin and the Ideology of National Revival: Geopolitics, Eura­ sia­nism and the Conservative Revolution.” European Security 11, no. 3 (2002): 91–125. Kireev, Aleksandr. “Mozhet li zemskii sobor vyvesti nas iz nastoiashchego polozheniia? Perepiska A.A. Kireeva s F.D. Samarinym” [Can the Assembly of the Land get us out of the current situation? Correspondence between A.A. Kireev and F.D. Samarin]. In Sochineniia [Works]. Part 2, Politika i polemika [Politics and polemics]. Saint Petersburg: 1912. Kireevskii, Ivan. Izbrannye stati [Selected articles]. Moscow: 1984. Kir’ianov, Irii. Pravye partii: Dokumenty i materialy, 1905–1917 [Right parties, 1905–1917: Documents and materials]. 2 vols. Moscow: 1998. Kir’ianov, Irii. Pravye partii v Rossii, 1911–1917. [Right parties in Russia, 1911–1917]. Moscow: 2001. Kir’ianov, Irii. (ed.). “Predvybornoe vozzvanie k russkomu narodu Russkogo narodnogo soiuza imeni Mikhaila Arkhangela” [Pre-election appeal to the Russian people from the Russian People’s Union of the Archangel Michael]. In Pravye partii, 1905–1917: Dokumenty i materialy [Right parties, 1905–1917: Documents and materials], vol. 2, 216–21. Moscow: 1998. Kotsiubinskii, Daniil. Russkii natsionalizm v nachale XX stoletiia: Rozhdenie i gibel’ ideologii vserossiiskogo natsional’nogo soiuza [Russian nationalism at the beginning of the 20th century: The birth and death of the ideology of the All-Russian National Union]. Moscow: 2001. Laruelle, Marlene. Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire. Washington, DC: 2008. Laruelle, Marlene. “The Two Faces of Contemporary Eurasianism: An Imperial Version of Russian Nationalism.” Nationalities Papers 32, no. 1 (2004): 115–36. Laruelle, Marlene. “V poiskakh filosofa, vdokhnovivshego Putina” [In search of the philosopher that inspired Putin]. Intersection Russia/Europe/World. 3 March 2017, . Leont’ev, Konstantin. “Srednii evropeets kak ideal i orudie vsemirnogo razrusheniia” [The average European as an ideal and a weapon of world destruction]. In Sobranie sochineniia. Vol. 6. Moscow: 1912–14.

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Loukianov, Mikhail. “The First World War and the Polarization of the Russian Right, July 1914–February 1917.” Slavic Review 75, no. 4 (2016): 872–95. Martin, Alexander M. Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries: Russian Conservative Thought and Politics in the Reign of Alexander I. DeKalb, IL: 1997. Mitrokhin, Nikolai. Russkaia partiia: Dvizheniie russkikh natsionalistov v SSSR, 1953– 1985 [The Russian party: The movement of Russian nationalists in the USSR, 1953– 1985]. Moscow: 2003. Mjør, Kåre Johan. “Budushchee proshlogo: K istorii poniatiia ‘Russkaia ideia’” [The future of the past: Some remarks on the history of the “Russian idea” concept]. In Issledovaniia po istorii russkoi mysli: Ezhegodnik za 2010/2011 gg. [Studies in the history of Russian thought: Yearbook], edited by Modest Kolerov and Nikolai Plotnikov, 404–40. Moscow: 2014. Mjør, Kåre Johan. “Nikolai Berdiaev and the ‘Boundless Spaces’ of Russia.” In Russian Space: Concepts, Practices, Representations (=Nordlit 39), edited by Andrei Rogat­ chevski and Yngvar B. Steinholt, 4–17. Tromsø: 2017. Mjør, Kåre Johan. Reformulating Russia: The Cultural and Intellectual Historiography of Russian First-Wave Émigré Writers. Boston and Leiden: 2011. Minakov, Arkadii Iu., A.V. Repnikov, and M.Iu. Chernavskii. “Konservatizm.” In Obshchestvennaia mysl’ Rossii XVIII–nachala XX veka: Entsikolopediia [Conservatism. In Social thought in Russia of the 18th–early 20th centuries: Encyclopedia], edited by Valentin V. Shelokhaev et al., 217–20. Moscow: 2005. Mitrofanova, Anastasia. The Politicization of Russian Orthodoxy: Actors and Ideas. Stuttgart: 2005. Muccigrosso, Robert. Basic History of American Conservatism. Malabar, FL: 2001. “Na veche!” Veche, no. 1 (1971). In Boiter, Polnyi spisok dokumentov, AS (Arkhiv Samiz­ data) no. 1013, p. 2. Nyberg, Lars G. Staten i högsta person—rysk självhärskarmakt enligt Nikolaj Karamzin [The state in the highest person: Russian autocracy according to Nikolai Karamzin]. Stockholm: 2005. Offord, Derek. “Nation-Building and Nationalism in Karamzin’s History of the Russian State.” Journal of Modern Russian History and Historiography 3 (2010): 1–50. Ol’denburg, Sergey. Tsarstvovanie Imperatora Nikolaia II [The reign of Emperor Nicholas II]. Vol. 1. Moscow: 1992. Os’machko, Sergey. “On muchilsia o Rossii”: Ideinye iskaniia K.N. Leont’eva [“He tormented himself over Russia”: The intellectual quests of K.N. Leont’ev]. Yaroslavl: 2011. Parthé, Kathleen. Russian Village Prose: The Radiant Past. Princeton, NJ: 1992. Perovskii-Petrovo-Solovovo, Mikhail. “Chto takoe ‘Nezavisimye Konservatory?’” [Who are the “independent conservatives?”]. Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti, 28 February 1912.

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Pipes, Richard. Russian Conservatism and Its Critics: A Study in Political Culture. New Haven, CT: 2005. Pospielovsky, Dmitry. “A Comparative Enquiry into Neo‐Slavophilism and Its Antecedents in the Russian History of Ideas.” Soviet Studies 31, no. 3 (1979): 319–42. Rabow-Edling, Susanna. Slavophile Thought and the Politics of Cultural Nationalism. Albany, NY: 2006. Raeff, Marc. Russia Abroad: A Cultural History of the Russian Emigration, 1919–1939. New York: 1990. Razuvaeva, Anna. Pisateli-“derevenshchiki”: Literatura i konservativnaia ideologiia 1970kh godov [The village prose writers: Literature and conservative ideology in the 1970s]. Moscow: 2015. Riasanovsky, Nicholas V. “The Emergence of Eurasianism.” California Slavic Studies 4 (1967): 39–72. Riasanovsky, Nicholas V. Russia and the West in the Teaching of the Slavophiles. Cam­ bridge, MA: 1952. Rogozin, Dmitrii. Russkii otvet: Istoriko-filosofskii ocherk rossiiskoi gosudarstvennosti [The Russian response: Historical and philosophical sketch of Russian statehood]. Saint Petersburg: 1996. “Russkii konservatizm: Problemy, podkhody, mneniia.” Kruglyi stol [Russian conservatism: Problems, approaches, opinions. Round table]. Otechestvennaia istoriia, no. 3 (2001): 103–33.  Russkoe znamia [Russian banner]. 3 January 1913. Sedgwick, Mark. Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century. Oxford: 2004. Sharapov, S.F. Opyt russkoi politicheskoi programmy [An attempt at a Russian political program]. Moscow: 1905. Shenfield, Stephen. Russian Fascism: Traditions, Tendencies and Movements. London: 2016. Shimanov, Gennadii. “Demokraticheskoe pravosoznaniie” [The democratic sense of justice]. Mnogaia leta (1980): 68–74. Shimanov, Gennadii. “Ideal’noe gosudarstvo” [An ideal state]. 1979. In Boiter, Polnyi spisok dokumentov, AS No. 2218. Shimanov, Gennadii. “Lie Abramson.” Mnogala leta (1981): 148. Shimanov, Gennadii. “O ravenstve i neravenstve v brake” [On equality and inequality in marriage]. Zemlia 2 (1974): 16–22. Shimanov, Gennadii. “Otryvki iz dnevnika” [Excerpts from a diary] (1972). In Shimanov, Zapiski iz krasnogo doma [Notes from the red house], 113–18. Moscow, 2006. Shimanov, Gennadii. Protiv techeniia [Against the current]. Moscow: 1975. In Boiter, Polnyi spisok dokumentov, AS No. 1086. Shimanov, Gennadii. “Vstuplenie v brak” [Entering into marriage]. Mnogaia leta (1981): 108.

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Chapter 3

Russian Conservatism as an Ideology: The Logic of Isolationism  Mikhail Suslov 1 Introduction This chapter puts forward an “ideal type”1 of ideological conservatism in the Russian context, discusses its morphology and its conceptual connection with a geopolitical worldview, and shows various instances when actual theoretical constructions approximate this ideal type. This research decisively rejects any normative analysis. It does not imply that amplification of “genuine conservatism” is in any possible sense better for Russia than any other theorization to the right of the ideological spectrum. It merely argues that there is an ideological vector of development, or rather a certain center of gravity, toward which any sophisticated non-radical right-wing conceptualization tends to gravitate in the Russian cultural cosmos. When I am talking about the vector of development, I mean that the pressure of logic and historical and cultural baggage pushes intellectuals in a particular direction, but I do not imply that there is a chronological storyline, a “history of the concept.” Rather, in this chapter I argue that there have been various context-dependent iterations of the conservative ideal in Russia, each imbued with different meanings.2 However, precisely because of the stability of some contextual elements, various conservative ideologues tend to offer similar or isomorphic conceptual responses. The argument of the chapter unfolds as follows. First, the chapter specifies that the object of the research is conservatism as an ideology, not “conservative discourses.” As an ideology, conservatism has its own internal logic and structure, and can be defined in relation to a specific historical situation, which it attempts to mediate. This chapter dwells on the concept of “mimetic rivalry” as a linchpin of Russia’s relationship to the West in its modern history, and

1 That is, according to Max Weber, a hypothetical analytic construct. 2 Methodologically, the research is inspired by the Cambridge school of intellectual history, specifically, by such works as: James Tully, Meaning and Context : Quentin Skinner and His Critics (Princeton, NJ: 1988); Quentin Skinner, Regarding Method (Cambridge: 2002).

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proceeding from this, identifies conservatism as an ideology that opposes this relation with the West and offers a way out of the mimetic lock.3 Second, the chapter confronts the canonical understanding of conservatism in the West with its Russian counterpart. Here I side with the interpretation of conservatism as conservative communitarianism, leaning upon two core concepts: the embeddedness of the individual into a community, and the purposelessness of this community. The problem with Russian conservatism is that a purposeless community is one defined by persistence of an organic tradition, but in Russia this principle does not work because of its thorough Westernization. A return to the organic tradition would mean the purposeful recreation of such an (imaginary) tradition. Thus, conservatives need to plan a large-scale transformation of society in order to implement the conservative program, which sounds like a horrific heresy from the viewpoint of canonical conservatism. In other words, implementation of conservative premises in Russia paradoxically means negation of these basic premises. Third, this chapter, nevertheless, suggests the hypothesis that there could be a genuine, unambiguous conservatism in Russia, grounded on genuinely conservative principles. In the Russian case this would require a certain ideological adjustment in the concept of the “purposelessness” of a community. Namely, the focus should shift from the idea of authenticity to the idea of difference of the self-sufficient, sovereign (i.e., “purposeless”) community from the Other. The problem with Russia is that restoration of authenticity is impossible simply because Russia lacks authenticity; authenticity is an ideological void in the context of Westernization. Hence, the ideological center of gravity of communitarian-like ideology should be placed elsewhere—namely in the very fact of geopolitical rivalry. This means that in Russia genuine conservatism implies a spatial imagination of sorts, so it is by and large “geo-conservatism.” Finally, the chapter discusses specifically how this withdrawal from mimetic rivalry is possible. It argues that today, the West and the global world have become synonymous, so withdrawal from the West equals withdrawal from the world. This means that consistent anti-Westernism comes down to isolationism—the situation of North Korea vis-à-vis the rest of the globe. This could be an option, but unlike the DPRK Russia lacks a universalist ideology that would make such a juxtaposition to the entire world meaningful. And here we arrive 3 The concept of “mimetic rivalry” is adopted from René Girard. On this, see: René Girard, Battling to the End: Conversations with Benoit Chantre (East Lansing, MI: 2009); Roberto Farneti, Mimetic Politics: Dyadic Patterns in Global Politics (Studies in Violence, Mimesis and Culture) (East Lansing, MI: 2015).

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at a conclusion that I believe any consistent conservative thinker must logically come to: the Russian response should not be isolation from the international world, but de-homogenization of this world, an attempt to frame and brand it as a system of unique civilizations. In the rest of the paper I draw on Carl Schmitt’s conceptualization of “large spaces,” which in my opinion ideally fleshes out the theoretical speculation of the Russian conservatives. One should note the proliferation of conservative discourses in contemporary Russia, which has allowed many researchers to claim the advent of the “conservative turn” in Russian politics.4 Russia has become the exporter of “traditional values” discourses, and the leader of the anti-Western coalition, which reveals other important aspects of Russia’s right-wing ideologies. Because the right of the ideological spectrum has hypertrophically swollen during Vladimir Putin’s third presidential term (2012–18), genuine conservatism has found more outlets to express itself in the media. However, the chapter argues that traditional values per se do not constitute conservative ideology because of their emptiness, their lack of internal structure.5 A systematic ideology is required in order to streamline traditional values into a coherent conservative doctrine, but in addition these values can also inspire revolutionary movements and ideologies: for example, the Islamic revolution in Iran, or the theories of conservative revolution in interwar Germany and Italy, as well as conservative radicals in contemporary Russia. Moreover, the “traditional values” discourses, unlike “conscious,” articulate conservatism, are not necessarily attached to the interests of the hegemonic, propertied class. By contrast, all too often the most dispossessed tend to adopt the rhetoric of traditionalism, which is certainly the case with Russia. The popular understanding of conservatism points to its reactive and negative character: conservatism opposes the progressivist ideologies of Enlightenment and any attempt to change the status quo.6 Hence, its own ideological 4 See, inter alia, Marlene Laruelle, “The Izborsky Club, or the New Conservative Avant‐Garde in Russia,” The Russian Review 75, no. 4 (2016): 626–44; Jardar Østbø, “Securitizing ‘Spiritual-Moral Values’ in Russia,” Post-Soviet Affairs 33, no. 3 (2017): 200–216; Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, “The Pussy Riot Affair and Putin’s Démarche from Sovereign Democracy to Sovereign Morality,” The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity 42, no. 4 (2014): 615–21; Marcel van Herpen, Putin’s Propaganda Machine: Soft Power and Russian Foreign Policy (Lanham, MD: 2016); Elena Stepanova, “‘The Spiritual and Moral Foundation of Civilization in Every Nation for Thousands of Years’: The Traditional Values Discourse in Russia,” Politics, Religion and Ideology 16, nos. 2–3 (2015): 1–18. 5 On traditional values in Russia, see chapter 15 by Caroline Hill in this volume. 6 Samuel Huntington argues that conservatism is a “positional ideology” that is not attached to a specific group interest, but articulates attitudes of various groups toward historically specific challenges. He writes: “The impulse to conservatism comes from the social challenge before

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content is shallow: it resists hegemonic ideologies, and as an ideology of resistance, it has only tactics in its arsenal, not strategies. I claim, however, that conservatism can be in a strategically dominating position in politics, society, and public debates. Today’s Russia is a glaring example of the decisive victory of right-wing and conservative ideas on all fronts. Given that it has an upper hand on the ideological battlefield, conservatism must have a proactive, positive, strategic core. This chapter adopts Michael Freeden’s theorization of conservatism as “not an ideology of the status quo. It is not merely an attempt to forestall change and to arrest the historical process. Rather it is an ideology predominantly concerned with the problem of change.”7 According to Freeden, the ineradicable core concept of conservatism is the principle of the organic growth of a community. This means that conservatives do not necessarily deny the idea of change, but this change, they insist, should be “natural,” free from external influences and artificial design, resembling a growing tree rather than a constructed building. The corollary of this is the rejection of human agency in designing future changes; instead, conservatives demand that there should be some superhuman, external force governing ongoing events, such as God, laws of nature, traditions, and so on. This also implies deep skepticism about the principles proclaimed by the Enlightenment, including the idea of human perfection and perfectibility, the importance of participation and deliberation in politics, the ultimate value of human rights, and so on.8 If we push this interpretation one step further, we will see that “organic growth” presupposes a partially communitarian view on the embeddedness of individuals into a community, and the primacy of collective values over individual will. The principle of organic growth also means that conservatism opposes blueprinting, projecting ambitious plans for social transformation, and theorizing about a better society. Conservatism was famously defined as a “philosophy of imperfection”9 and it contains a deeply seated, religiously based anthropological skepticism of the human capacity to rationally lay out and the theorist, not the intellectual tradition behind him. Men are driven to conservatism by the shock of events, by the horrible feeling that a society or institution which they have approved or taken for granted and with which they have been intimately connected may suddenly cease to exist” (Samuel P. Huntington, “Conservatism as an Ideology,” American Political Science Review 51, no. 2 [1957]: 470). 7 Michael Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (Oxford: 1998), 332. Italics are in the original quotation. See more along the same lines in defining conservatism in Ted Honderich, Conservatism: Burke, Nozick, Bush, Blair? (Ann Arbor, MI: 2005). 8 For example, Noël O’Sullivan, “Conservatism,” in The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies, ed. Michael Freeden and Marc Stears (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 9 Noël O’Sullivan, Conservatism (London: 1976), 12.

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implement massive social projects. In the words of Rutger Claasen, for conservatism, society is “purposeless,”10 or at least its purpose, defined in transcendental categories, could never be grasped by us mortals. The corollary is that to give a society a meaning by imposing a blueprint or a utopian vision upon it amounts to, at best, an utterly senseless attempt to create meaning out of meaningless, or at worst, a violent imposition of external will upon something, characterized as Hegelian “being-for-self.” To recap, what makes conservatism strong is its communitarian argument about individuals’ embeddedness in a community. What makes conservatism conceptually impregnable to liberal argumentation is its “philosophy of imperfection” and “sociology of purposelessness.” The second part of the conservative argument constitutes the focus of this chapter. In the first approximation, the problematic becomes clear through the prism of the abovementioned Hegelian logic of “being-for-self”: a “purposeless” and organic community has no internal difference and expunges “otherness” from itself. The conceptual connection between two claims—being organic and being different—necessarily inscribes a certain spatial logic into the philosophy of conservatism because difference among various organic communities is spatial, geopolitical. 2

Russian Conservatism: Approaches to Understanding

Conservatism is about social changes. However, in the Russian context, the very concept of change is more complex and problematic due to the historical experience of Westernization. For a European-style conservative in Russia, to embrace the idea of “organic growth” means to spiral into a paradox: because Russian “growth” throughout the modern era was inorganic, imitative, to call for “organic growth” is to put forward a revolutionary program of radical return to an imaginary distant past. Let us take Slavophile Ivan Kireevsky’s illustrative analogy of a transplanted European flower, which fades away in Russian soil and at the same time prevents native flora from blossoming.11 In our case, a return to “organic growth” means that we first have to uproot this alien implant—a Western conservative can hardly imagine anything less conservative than this. Andrzej Walicki drew on Karl Mannheim’s concept of a

10 11

Rutger Claasen, “The Conservative Challenge to Liberalism,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 14, no. 4 (2011): 465–85. Ivan Kireevskii, “Obozrenie sovremennogo sostoianiia literatury,” in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Moscow: 1861), vol. 2, 27–33.

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“conservative utopia” to discuss the Russian Slavophile tradition of this kind of radical thinking.12 A “conservative utopia” deals with precisely this discrepancy between the conservative ideal and the actual historical reality. It happens when the speed of social change surpasses the ability of conservative thinkers to adapt to it. When this chasm is yawning, rightists may well contemplate the revolutionary restoration of the utopian golden age, thereby embracing the concept of national regeneration, or palingenesis, which is hardwired into the ideology of fascism.13 Of course, conservative utopia is as far from conservatism as Hitler is from Edmund Burke. To put it bluntly, this chapter explores whether there could be a non-palingenetic, non-utopian, non-revolutionary conservatism in Russia. Conservative ideology avant la lettre began to crystallize at the turn of the 18th century, and it came of age in the 1820s, when it coalesced around the concept of the autocratic power of tsars and expressed itself first in the (in) famous triad—Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality—and afterward in Slavophilism and monarchist movements and parties of the late imperial period. Given that by the end of the 19th century Russia and Montenegro remained the only European countries ruled by absolute monarchs, this was the obvious conceptual content and the symbol of Russia’s difference. Even if we agree with Richard Pipes that in the tsarist period monarchism was the logical focal point of Russian conservatism, we can now see with utmost clarity that Russian conservatism is possible without its monarchist component. This means that monarchism was a secondary addition to the actual ideological bedrock of conservatism in Russia.14 Indeed, in spite of the isolated (mostly Slavophiletinted) attempts to theorize monarchism, a student of Russian conservatism cannot avoid the impression that the ideological defense of absolute tsarist rule was shallow and banal, and that conservatives actually invested far more energy in criticizing parliamentarism and democracy than in legitimizing the autocracy. Russian conservatism is an ideological pseudomorph of sorts, whose shape imitates generic “Western” conservatism but is filled with ideologically inappropriate content. A similar pseudomorph has emerged in front of our eyes, whose fabric is made of “traditional values”—as historically controversial 12 13 14

Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge (London: 1976); Andrzej Walicki, The Slavophile Controversy: History of a Conservative Utopia in Nineteenth-Century Russian Thought (Oxford: 1975). See Roger Griffin, Fascism: Critical Concepts in Political Science (London: 2004), vol. 1. Not to mention Pipes’s inadequate interpretation of monarchism through the prism of a theory of “path-dependency” of sorts. See Richard Pipes, Russian Conservatism and Its Critics: A Study in Political Culture (New Haven, CT: 2005), 109.

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and ideologically shallow as the monarchism of the Russian fin de siècle. So, in order to understand Russian conservatism, we have to get to the bottom of the historical and ideological conditions that recurrently produce these pseudomorphs. In order to resolve this problem, let us home in on the concept of “organic growth.” As I see it, “organic growth” consists of two related ideas: the idea of authenticity, that is unity of one’s identity, and the idea of purposelessness, or in other words, the idea that a community is a goal in itself, and there is no externally imposed purpose for its existence. “Organic growth,” in this case, means that (1) a community evolves but always maintains the unity of its identity, and that (2) its evolution is unfolding according to its own, inner design, and is not planned for someone else’s ends. In contrast to the liberal viewpoint, for example, society is changing not in order to make the life of individuals easier or more meaningful and dignified, but because of its own “sovereign” capacity to evolve. From this, we can see that in the Russian context, the first part of “organic growth”—authenticity—is highly problematic. Discourses about identity and authenticity, in fact, mask the fact that Russia is so thoroughly Westernized that the attempt to contemplate authenticity invariably boils down to antiWesternism—this is all that Russia’s claim of individuality rests on, and besides, this is a false assumption, on which the whole of Russia’s ideologies of authenticity are built: When … difference is defined as pure negativity, there can be no ground for dialogue. It is impossible to accommodate the Other if the Other is defined as pure negation of the Self.… Any compromise can only be temporary because as soon as Russia ceases to antagonise the West, it immediately faces the empty spot in the place where its identity is supposed to be located.15 Kireevsky’s flower metaphor from above could be illustrative for the purpose of the chapter’s argument: if you pull out the Western flower, what you will actually see is a void, a pit in the soil, not a wonderful, but repressed native flower. Here we approach the center of the argument: in spite of the unattainability of authenticity in Russia, conservatism as an ideology is still imaginable if it accentuates the second part of the “organic growth” concept—the idea of the purposelessness of society. This idea emphatically stresses the importance of 15

Viacheslav Morozov, Russia’s Postcolonial Identity: A Subaltern Empire in a Eurocentric World (Basingstoke: 2015), 134.

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the spatial difference between “us” and “them,” thereby inscribing the geopolitical problematic into the ideological fabric of Russian conservatism. The connection between conservatism’s organicist theory of society and the geopolitical logic of difference can be illustrated by conservative theorist Boris Mezhuev’s16 recent musings on Patriarch Kirill’s concept of the “Russian World.” Mezhuev draws on the fundamental principle of John Stuart Mill’s liberalism, extending it onto the collective level and arguing that just as an adult individual should be autonomous in his or her decisions about what constitutes a good life, a collective should likewise be protected from external impingements on its sovereign decision about a good and proper life.17 Further on, Mezhuev explicates his understanding of the difference between a nation and a civilization. For the former, in his view, sovereignty is important as such, it is the central value; this is the position of Mill’s liberalism. For the latter, what is important is not just the right to decide, but the right to differ from others, the right to choose its own, unique project for the future.18 The combination of these two principles—sovereignty and difference—lies at the very heart of conservative communitarianism, and it inevitably shifts the focus from political philosophy onto geopolitical philosophy—into relationships among “civilizations.” Based on this, this chapter claims that the difference between Vladislav Surkov’s “sovereign democracy” and the rhetoric of Russia as a unique civilization is not just a matter of logical development, but a matter of a momentous conceptual shift. Surely, Surkov, the chief ideologist of Putinism until 2012, advanced ideas and policies that have vastly contributed to the conservative wave in Russia, but the ideological foundation on which he developed “sovereign democracy” around 2005 differs from today’s ideological mainstream in its basis. From the viewpoint of “sovereign democracy” “we” are sovereign because “we” are adult, and can well decide for ourselves what constitutes a good life for us.19 It might be that “we” decide on a life that is different from others. This is the liberal way of thinking. From the viewpoint of Mezhuev’s theory of “civilization” “we” are sovereign because we are different from others, unique. 16 17 18 19

On Mezhuev, see chapter 10 by Irina Karlsohn in this volume. Boris Mezhuev, “Suverennoe bessoznatel’noe,” Tetradi po konservatizmu, no. 3 (2016): 33. Available at: , accessed 8 April 2018. “From the national viewpoint, violent imposition of rules and norms is evil in itself, regardless of what is being imposed, whereas from the civilizational viewpoint, rules and norms are important” (Mezhuev, “Suverennoe bessoznatel’noe,” 37). Vladislav Surkov, Suverenitet—eto politicheskii sinonim konkurentosposobnosti (Moscow: 2006).

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Here the causal relationship is reversed: “our” primordial difference makes us sovereign, not the other way around. “We” have not chosen this uniqueness, it just has always been this way, and “we” can only belong, we can only step into this “stream of history,” as he puts it. This chapter claims that in order to understand contemporary Russian conservatism it is necessary to understand this conceptual shift from the 2000s to the 2010s. 3

The Cultural Context of Russian Conservatism

In approaching the cultural foundations of Russian conservatism, it is important to discuss messianism in the Russian context. Anthony Smith distinguished between messianism of covenant and messianism of expansion. The latter aims at limitless expansion outside of its own community, energized by the burning desire to save the entire universe or to deliver on promises of the ultimate solution to social problems. Some versions of Islam and Christianity roughly illustrate this type of messianic belief. The former type, by contrast, turns to the past, toward the initial parameters of the “agreement”—covenant—between the “chosen people” and God. Messianism of covenant is retrospective, fundamentalist, and isolationist. It does not promise a universal redemption of humankind, but focuses on separating “us,” the chosen people, from the others. Judaism could be a useful entry point for comprehending this type of messianism.20 It is easy to see that covenant messianism perfectly illustrates the idea of the “conservative retreat.” In the Russian context, both messianisms have strong footholds in and steady relationships with geopolitical ideologies. The most obvious and wellresearched connection between geopolitics and religion lies in the vision of Russia as Katechon or Retainer, which presupposes Russia’s role as the force that protects the world from the advent of the Antichrist. This entrenches the idea of expansion deep into Russia’s geopolitical culture, because the bigger Russia is, the more people it can save from hell. This kind of thinking sprouted from the ideological trunk of the medieval doctrine of Moscow as the Third Rome. Among many other examples of the appropriation of the idea of the Katechon by geopolitics is the notorious theorization by 19th-century pundit Nikolai Fedorov. Similar messianic visions inform much of today’s so-called “Political Orthodoxy,” including neoconservatives, Aleksandr Dugin’s circle, and members of the Izborsky Club. Just to convey the flavor of this sort of reasoning, let us take one of these ideologists, Egor Kholmogorov, and his idea 20

Anthony Smith, Chosen Peoples (Oxford: 2003), 49.

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that Orthodox geopolitics should aim at the creation of the “infrastructure of salvation”—that is, Russia should establish control over as much territory as possible in order to give people living there a chance for salvation, because when the Antichrist comes into this world, only Russia will be able to provide a place where people can still save their souls.21  Katechon and expansionist messianism naturally remains the focus of scholarly attention.22 However, there is an opposite but dialectically related religious tradition of kenoticism, or self-belittling, self-emptying, which also has its distinctive projection onto the Russian geopolitical worldview. The important caveat is that I am not doing a theological examination of the term, but am focusing rather on the cultural model, which is sometimes christened “secular kenosis,”23 meaning the transfer of kenosis-related phenomena into the secular context. Kenoticism is important for Russian religious, ethical, and philosophical traditions, including the writing of Sergii Bulgakov,24 Nikolai Lossky, and Georges Florovsky. George Fedotov stated that “Kenoticism … is a general and necessary moment in every Christian ethical system and confession. Yet nowhere, perhaps, in such degree as in Russia, did it become the leading trend of the national religious mind.”25 Fedotov identifies kenoticism as an idea and practice different from asceticism, which is an end in itself, not a means of purification. Uncovering the religious roots of Russian Populism (narodnichestvo), Fedotov argues that in Russia kenoticism is social and is oriented toward identification with the common people and the poor. In his view, when Russia started to build an empire in approximately the 15th century, it began to adopt a more earthly and reasonable ethical system. Kenoticism intellectually powers the geopolitical retreat into isolation, legi­ ti­mizes criticism of imperial hubris, and extends a helping hand to natio­nalism. The most obvious example of kenotic geopolitics is Aleksandr Solzhe­nitsyn’s consistent and vocal call for renouncing Russia’s imperial overextension. His Letter to the Soviet Leaders (1973) demands the reorientation of the entire Soviet government “from the outside to the inside” in order to save and develop the Russian nation instead of dissipating its energy in wasteful external projects. 21 22 23 24 25

Egor Kholmogorov, “Religii poslednego vremeni,” Strategicheskii zhurnal: Politicheskoe pravoslavie, no. 2 (2006): 69. For more on this, see chapter 8 by Alicja Curanović in this volume. Nina Wieda, “How the Russian Soul Is Made: Secular Kenosis in Russian Literature” (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 2010). Paul Gavrilyuk, “The Kenotic Theology of Sergius Bulgakov,” Scottish Journal of Theology 58, no. 3 (2005): 251–69. G.P. Fedotov, “The Religious Sources of Russian Populism,” Russian Review 1, no. 2 (1942): 35.

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His later article, “How to Rebuild Russia” (1990), is even more explicit: “We have no stamina for an Empire. But this is good for us. Let it fall down from our shoulders: it crushes us, bleeds us white, quickens our destruction.”26 This line of reasoning was adopted by Vadim Tsymbursky as well. Importantly, kenotic negation of the imperial project does not necessarily exclude certain territorial additions. Boris Mezhuev, for example, muses upon whether Tsymbursky would have supported the annexation of Crimea in 2014, and leans toward a positive response because for Mezhuev Crimea is not an external imperial project, it is part and parcel of the Russian nation.27 The kenotic style of geopolitical thinking can comfortably accommodate such an irredentist agenda. Moreover, the shift toward kenoticism prods conservative ideologues to reinterpret the concept of Russia as Katechon. In the talk between Arkady Maler, the anchor of right-wing Orthodox “Katechon TV” and Aleksandr Rudakov, the head of the group of experts from the Universal Russian People’s Assembly, the Katechon is viewed not as a universal savior, but as a separate, local civilization-state, vested with the lofty mission of maintaining balance on the planet, and not allowing other nations to fall into the hands of the Antichrist.28 The central building block of covenant messianism is a kind of ethical “veil of ignorance.” This means that in order to get rid of the “samsara” of mimetic rivalry, you have to lose interest in the Other, cover up the Other with a veil of moral indifference. Supporters of the “conservative retreat” point to the obsession of today’s Russia with the Other, be it the United States, Europe, or Ukraine. This obsession was parodied in a series of popular Internet memes portraying devastated Russians amidst mud and ruins, who nevertheless stoically disregard mundane misfortunes and keep on asking, “What is happening in Ukraine?”29 One of the early examples of an alternative to this obsession is pictured in Mikhail Iur’ev’s renowned political utopia, The Third Empire. Iur’ev, an MP and 26 27 28

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings, 1947–2005 (Wilmington, DE: 2009). Aleksandr Chalenko, “Boris Mezhuev: Tsymburskii dopuskal otkol Levoberezh’ia, Novorossii i Kryma ot Ukrainy,” Ukraina.ru, 21 February 2015, accessed 21 April 2018, . “Tsivilizatsionnaia identichnost’ Rossii,” Katekhon TV, 30 December 2013, accessed 21 April 2018, . On Arkady Maler and the concept of Katechon, see also chapter 14 by Victor Shnirelman in this volume. Among countless other examples, see: “#Che tam u khokhlov? Novyi mem sotssetei,” Korrespondent.net, 20 April 2015, accessed 21 April 2018, .

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businessman, fantasized about Russia’s decisive role as a world arbiter. The world in this utopia is divided into five super-states: the Russian Empire, the Islamic Caliphate, the Indian Confederation, the American Confederation, and the Celestial Republic (China). After a series of wars and territorial redistributions in the beginning of the 21st century, representatives of these five countries convene in order to establish the new world order. After that, the participants, who nurtured no warm feelings to each other … departed. No global organs … were created.… The principle “I do not care about you, so you care not about me” reigned. Each state was so vast, so radically different from the others, and so powerful, that nobody wanted to deal with anyone else.30 Iur’ev’s utopia gives us a perfect literary representation of the lack of interest in the Other, and the conservative retreat to the “Self.” 4

Spiritual Security and Concepts of Multiple Civilizations

This alliance of conservatism and geopolitics became possible thanks to the intellectual evolution of the “sovereign democracy” concept of the mid-2000s. The name associated with this concept is that of Vladislav Surkov, one of the main architects of the Putin-era illiberal turn in Russian politics. Drawing on the ideas of Carl Schmitt, Surkov theorized sovereignty as the central political value of absolute importance.31 The immediate trigger of this new conceptualization was the so-called “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine in 2004–5. For the Kremlin this was the watershed moment when fear reigned that the West would use civic activism and human rights concerns to foment a mass uprising and to carry out a coup. Emphatically denying the possibility of external control of “our” territory, the “sovereign democracy” concept stipulated adherence to basic democratic and liberal values. This, however, made the concept logically unconvincing and unstable: why would you cling to your sovereignty, if you agree with others on fundamental principles? Vladimir Putin voiced this concern in 2014: “If there is no culture [here: traditional values], then it becomes unclear what sovereignty

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Mikhail Iur’ev, Tret’ia Imperiia: Rossiia, kotoraia dolzhna byt’ (Moscow: 2007). Stefan Auer, “Carl Schmitt in the Kremlin: The Ukrainian Crisis and the Return of Geopolitics,” International Affairs 91, no. 5 (2015): 953–68.

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is and what we are struggling for.”32 The concept of “spiritual sovereignty” further developed the instrumentalization of the conservative agenda in order to ­secure a geopolitical edge in international relations. The similar term “humanitarian sovereignty” emerged during the 16th World Russian Assembly, chaired by Patriarch Kirill. It is understood as the “cluster of cultural, religious, philosophical and socio-psychological factors which provide the state and nation with the possibility to establish their identity and avoid socio-psychological and cultural dependency.” Patriarch Kirill opened the 17th Assembly on 31 ­October 2013 with an exposé on the necessity of “spiritual sovereignty.” For him, spiritual sovereignty is a necessary precondition for the political sovereignty of Russia as a unique civilization.33 “Spiritual sovereignty” means securitization of Russia’s “traditional values,” which are supposedly threatened by alien values and lifestyles.34 For Church leaders, “spiritual sovereignty” implies that Russia should shun Western values simply because they are Western, “not ours.” Of course, in practical and popular geopolitics, the ascendance of the concept of “spiritual sovereignty” does not eliminate confrontational actions and rhetoric. After 2014 the “spiritual sovereignty” concept was reinforced by Patriarch Kirill’s newly developed interpretation of the Ukrainian crisis as a “betrayal” of sorts of Ukraine’s civilizational basis. Since September 2014 he has been increasingly insisting on the necessity of remaining faithful to the cultural foundation of “our” Orthodox civilization. In his words, the expansionist messianic universalism of Christianity has been transformed into a messianism of covenant, into the ideology of conservative retreat to “our” historical and cultural “ground zero.”35 The irony of the situation is that the covenant messianism of retreat may well legitimize irredentist policies (and actually did in the Ukrainian crisis). Another concept supporting the ideology of non-radical conservatism is the “multiple civilizations” concept. It has a weak spot, however: it prioritizes particularism over universalism.36 In a way, this model’s only universal principle is 32 33

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“Zasedanie Prezidiuma Soveta po kul’ture i iskusstvu,” Website of the President of Russia, 3 February 2014, accessed 7 April 2018, . “Slovo Sviateishego Patriarkha Kirilla na XVII Vsemirnom Russkom Narodnom Sobore,” Vsemirnyi Russkii Narodnyi Sobor, 31 October 2013, ; See Mikhail Suslov, “‘Holy Rus’: The Geopolitical Imagination in the Contemporary Russian Orthodox Church,” Russian Politics and Law 52, no. 3 (2014): 67–86. E.g., Kirill (Gundiaev), Preodolenie smuty (Moscow: 2013), 41. Mikhail Suslov, “The Russian Orthodox Church and the Crisis in Ukraine,” in Churches in the Ukrainian Crisis, ed. T. Bremer and A. Krawchuk (New York: 2016), 133–62. Natalia Morozova, “Particularism and Universalism in Russian Post-Soviet Foreign Policy: Russia’s Discourse on Humanitarian Cooperation in the CIS,” Higher School of Economics

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that there can be no universal principles in everyday life and politics because we all belong to different civilizations. If the “multiple civilizations” discourse has a limited universalist agenda, its universalism is shallow and negative, built upon the negation of Western liberalism and upon the shaky foundation of the “Inter-Traditional”—the claim that all traditional religions have essentially the same moral mainstays: when it comes down to family norms, for example, the incommensurability of various religious traditions becomes obvious. The phrase “family values” has no ideological content of its own but is used exclusively to stage anti-LGBT, anti-juvenile justice, and other “anti” agendas. The Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly (an analog of the State of the Union address in the US) of 2013 highlighted the impermissibility of allowing some external, international authority to destroy thousand-year-old tradition: Today, many nations are revising their moral values and ethical norms, eroding ethnic traditions and differences between peoples and cultures.… This destruction of traditional values from above not only leads to negative consequences for society, but is also essentially anti-democratic, since it is carried out on the basis of abstract, speculative ideas, contrary to the will of the majority, which does not accept the changes occurring or the proposed revision of values.37 The Russian political leadership has utilized traditional values discourses to express national security concerns. The National Security Strategy, for example, mentions the threat of “color revolutions” and the threat of destruction of traditional values in one breath. The Strategy specifically dwells on international competition in the sphere of values, implying that a better (here: more traditional, authentic) set of values makes a nation more competitive and truly sovereign.38 Elsewhere President Putin made this thought even more explicit, arguing that “moral codes” belong to the sphere of heated international

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Research Paper No. WP BRP 24 (2015); Lauri Mälksoo, Russia and European Human-Rights Law: The Rise of the Civilizational Argument (Leiden: 2014). “Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly,” Website of the President of Russia, 12 December 2013, accessed 7 April 2018, . See also: Elena Stepanova, ‘“The Spiritual and Moral Foundation of Civilization in Every Nation for Thousands of Years’: The Traditional Values Discourse in Russia,” Politics, Religion and Ideology 16, nos. 2–3 (2015): 119–36. “Strategiia natsional’noi bezopasnosti Rossiiskoi Federatsii,” Rossiiskaia gazeta, 31 December 2015, articles 2.13 and 4.43, accessed 7 April 2018, . See also Østbø, “Securitizing ‘Spiritual-Moral Values.’”

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struggle and even aggression.39 Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky expressed it with utmost clarity: “Help your own culture or you will be feeding someone else’s army.”40 Surely, the Russian leadership and pro-Kremlin intellectuals would be happy to discover a universalist project similar to the project of global communism or liberal democracy.41 Bare anti-Westernism lacks positive content, whereas the idea of the “Inter-Traditional” lacks depth. However, they have found something else, which they are now publicizing abroad, but this project is internally paradoxical: it is a universalist appeal for particularity, a call to fight against universal liberal hegemony by means of a system of sovereign, local civilizations. 5 Großraum: Withdrawal from the Mimetic Rivalry In this section I argue that the conservative retreat to isolation does not necessarily involve geopolitical contraction. Instead, it could mean consolidation of a large space—a Großraum—although the scale of the territorial expanse plays a minor role here. Speaking about Großräume, I rely on Carl Schmitt’s theorization, which enjoys much popularity in today’s Russia thanks to the popularization of geopolitics by people like Aleksandr Dugin. In Schmitt’s understanding, Großraum is not just a “large space,” but a space that is characterized by (1) a geographically specific location; (2) a state of exemption from the global normative order, and by extension—ultimate sovereignty; and (3) relative homogeneity in terms of culture and values. Schmitt’s theoretical analysis began with pointing to the Monroe Doctrine’s geographical realism. The doctrine identified a specific territory—the Western Hemisphere, the Americas— not an indefinite, deterritorialized entity like a protectorate, economic zone, or customs union. By virtue of this precise geographical location, the Monroe Doctrine opposes universalism. It is not about a global world order, applicable to all countries, but a specific political and legal regime in a specific territory. Besides, Schmitt positively assessed the decisionism of the Monroe Doctrine, which lends the supreme sovereign, that is, the United States, the right to act 39 “Vstrecha s predstaviteliami obshchestvennosti po voprosam patrioticheskogo vospitaniia molodezhi,” Website of the President of Russia, 12 September 2012, accessed 7 April 2012, . 40 Vladimir Medinskii, “Kto ne kormit svoiu kul’turu, budet kormit’ chuzhuiu armiiu,” Izvestiia, 17 June 2015, accessed 12 May 2018, . 41 Kristina Stoeckl, The Russian Orthodox Church and Human Rights (New York: 2014).

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on this specific territory and to reinterpret the very meaning of this doctrine according to its own will.42 For Schmitt, the Monroe Doctrine established an exemplary Großraum, which Germany should have conceptually emulated in its pursuit of rebuilding Europe under the auspices of the victorious (in 1941) Deutsches Reich. This thinking, however, was not intellectually isolated. Rudolf Kjellén, the Swedish political scientist, nurtured analogous ideas of a union of states under German leadership.43 It is important to stress that this raft of geopolitical ideas came to the fore as a reaction against “globalization 1.0” by British worldwide trade and the ascendance of the United States as the undisputed economic and political hegemon. Today, “globalization 2.0” evokes a similar intellectual response from the right wing of the political spectrum. A system with a few powerful, relatively isolated, fully autonomous Großräume is seen as the only viable alternative to the liberal hegemonic world order. The Westphalian system of nation-states is considered inadequate to withstand globalization because of the weakness and “liberalism” hardwired into the logic of nation-states. The Großräume system reverberates in Huntington’s famous analysis of the world order as an arena of clashing civilizations, but it is a decisively conservative and isolationist project. It basically proposes the rolling back of modernity, the abolition of the Westphalian system of nation-states, and the galvanizing of the dormant but ever-present specters of the mammoth powers of the medieval period: the Carolingian Empire, the Byzantine Commonwealth, the Abbasid Caliphate, and so on. The vision of Großräume taps into the ideology of conservative communitarianism, which privileges cultural contexts over the rules of the game. An example of the alliance between Großräume-thinking and anti-liberal communitarianism can be found in the book The Politics of Virtue (2016) by John Milbank and Adrian Pabst. In their view, nation-states fail to counter the pervasive but corrosive influences of global liberalism, and therefore leaders of the former empires have embarked on projects of restoring premodern state structures and imperial traditions in Turkey, Iran, China, and Russia. What can arise from this, the authors argue, is the “associationist approach” in international relations. This approach engages with the creation of 42

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Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum (New York: 2004); Schmitt, Völkerrechtliche Großraumordnung: Mit Interven­tions­ verbot für raumfremde Mächte; Ein Beitrag zum Reichsbegriff im Völkerrecht (Berlin: 1941); William Hooker, Carl Schmitt’s International Thought, Order and Orientation (Cambridge: 2009), 126–55. Ola Tunander, “Swedish-German Geopolitics for a New Century: Rudolf Kjellén’s ‘The State as a Living Organism,’” Review of International Studies 27 (2001): 451–63.

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a society of nations and peoples who are bound together by social ties and cultural bonds that are more primary than state-guaranteed rights and market contracts. Up to a point, this is true of the countries that compose the British Commonwealth, members of the Francophonie, or the association of Ibero-American states, or certain parts of the post-Soviet space.44 Edmund Burke, the founder of classic European conservatism, is the explicit source of inspiration for this “associationist” approach. For Burke, cultural and moral ties are more important than formalized procedures in international relations.45 This passage shows the mutual interconnection of conservatism and the logic of Großräume. First, conservatism establishes the primacy of “cultural bonds” over formal norms, and thereby allies with culturally defined large geopolitical communities, or “civilizations.” The vision of the world in terms of multiple civilizations requires a system of Großräume organizing international relations. Second, the logic of Großräume naturally fights against the vision of liberal hegemony. In Russia, this mutual interconnection becomes especially visible against the background of the parallel development of the theory of a multipolar world, promoted by President Putin and the Russian leadership, and the “conservative turn” in Russia’s domestic agenda. Third, the ideological design of the “large space” implies relative cultural homogeneity inside the “us”-community. By extension, the relation with the Other is governed by the logic of difference. On this level of theorization, connections between conservatism and geopolitics become especially visible: cultural homogeneity encourages cultural mechanisms of scapegoating and searching for “fifth columns,”46 whereas rejecting difference in the “us”-community necessarily antagonizes “our” geopolitical enemies. The intellectual evolution of the “Russian World” concept perfectly illustrates my main point here.47 The political need to make sense of the 44 45

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John Milbank and Adrian Pabst, The Politics of Virtue: Post-Liberalism and the Human Future (Lanham, MD: 2016), 334. “Men are not tied to one another by papers and seals. They are led to associate by resemblances, by conformities, by sympathies. It is with nations as with individuals. Nothing is so strong a tie of amity between nation and nation as correspondence in laws, customs, manners, and habits of life” (Edmund Burke, “The First Letter on a Regicide Peace,” in Burke: Revolutionary Writings, ed. Iain Hampsher-Monk [Cambridge: 2014], 316). See the examination of “fifth” and “sixth columns” of traitors in Aleksandr Dugin, Ukraina: Moia voina; Geopoliticheskii dnevnik (Moscow: 2015). This paragraph condenses the findings of Mikhail Suslov, “‘Russian World’ Concept: PostSoviet Geopolitical Ideology and the Logic of ‘Spheres of Influence,’” Geopolitics 23, no. 2 (2018): 330–53.

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25-million-strong Russian-speaking communities outside Russian borders stimulated ideologists to produce a usable concept of the diaspora. In the mid1990s the first attempts were made to conceptualize Russia’s “compatriots” as a deterritorialized, cultural, borderless community. This vision, resembling Milbank and Pabst’s theorization, included both the “global” Russian emigrants in Western Europe, North America, and other parts of the world, and the “postSoviet” Russians, who had not physically moved, although state borders had moved across them in 1991, effectively separating them from Russia proper. The bottom line of this vision of the “Russian World” is the idea that diaspora Russians are natural agents of globalization, so it is a great boon for Russia to have them. With their hybrid identities, linguistic competence, business activities, and access to Western capital and technologies, they would pave a highway for Russia toward a new globalized world. In the 2000s the ideological climate in Russia changed. Reconceptualized by the theory of “sovereign democracy,” the “Russian World” was now understood as an instrument of state, facilitating Russia’s “soft power” abroad. Hopes for alternative “Russianness” waned with the ascension of a realist political worldview, in which Russia uses its compatriots abroad as a competitive edge in its struggle with other global players. Finally, the Ukrainian conflict of 2013–14 and the domestic “conservative turn” prepared the ground for the second conceptual shift in the meaning of the “Russian World.” It is now seen as a civilizational entity with a precise (but debatable, of course) geographical location. This location might well spill over the state borders of the Russian Federation—as happened with the annexation of Crimea—but the new concept ushers in the era of conservative retreat from the global presence of the “Russian World” into the location of “our civilizational platform”—a Russian Groß­ raum of sorts. The difference between the logic of “multiple civilizations” and the Großraum vision lies in the degree of homogeneity. The former fosters the vision of a loose conglomerate of kindred cultures and peoples, revolving around their “civilizational center” and forming its “sphere of influence.” This vision allows inclusiveness and expansionism. It demonstrates an interest in cultural hybridity, in various “shades” of Russianness, interwoven with a million other identities. The latter is different, it envisages internally homogenous, closed bodies, which have removed all difference to outside their geopolitical borders. On the Großraum side of the divide, hybridity is not welcome. There is Russia, its “Limitrophe,” and the Western Other, not fluffy “Russianness.” The evolution of the “Russian World” concept shows precisely this shift from the logic of “multiple civilizations” to the logic of Großraum, which also meant a withdrawal from the inclusive idea of a “larger Russian nation” (Russia proper,

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Ukraine, and Belarus), a movement toward an irredentist interpretation, which powered the annexation of Crimea, and the war in Eastern Ukraine. As I analyze this conceptual change, its move from cultural expansionism toward geopolitical retreat amplifies the logic of non-radical conservatism in Russia. Again, on the discursive level, this shift does not imply a lessening of confrontational rhetoric, but as an ideology, this isolationist conservatism offers a vision of escape from being locked into competition with the West. The “conservative retreat” implies an introspective gaze, concentration on the self, and a certain degree of isolationism.48 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn offered this ideal in his geopolitical theorization, as did Vadim Tsymbursky, who thought of Russia as an island. Theorizing on the painful dilemma between fascist and colonial paths for Russia, Tsymbursky argued in favor of the isolationist way out of this dilemma.49 He intuited that Russia’s geopolitical predicaments stemmed from the “rapture of Europe,” the tendency to become entangled with life in the West, whether the intention was to save it, to demolish it, or to offer it a model of “true Europe.” Instead, after the failure of yet another attempt to engage the West during the time of communism, Russia should try another path, retreat to its civilizational core and partially encapsulate itself within its “island,” strictly observing its borders and differences. Tsymbursky’s proposals sound in tune with Solzhenitsyn’s call for the cultivation and preservation of Russia proper, instead of dangerously stretching its sinews in a futile attempt to project its powers abroad. Vadim Tsymbursky’s theory of Russia as an “island” is a projection of the striving toward authenticity into the language of geopolitics. His analysis is grounded on an insightful foray into the history of Russian-European relations. Tsymbursky identifies five stages of these relations, which tend to repeat again and again. The cycle starts with Russia’s striving to participate actively in European politics, which quickly leads to the Western invasion of Russia in the second stage, and Russia’s reciprocal conquest of Europe in the third stage. Finally, Europe consolidates and repels Russia (stage four), which, then, indulges in what Tsymbursky calls “Eurasian interludes,” when Russia tries its luck in Asia. The “Eurasian interlude” is an apt description of Russia’s recent turn to China, seen by the Russian leadership not as a goal in itself but rather as leverage in its

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Which in turn actuates mechanisms of the internal scapegoating, explored in chapter 4 by Dmitry Uzlaner in this volume. Vadim Tsymburskii, “Poka—ne vkhodit’ v mirovoe tsivilizovannoe … ,” Tetradi po konservatizmu, no. 1 (2015): 39–40.

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game with the West.50 Inevitably, he argues, sooner or later, Russia again jumps at a possibility to participate in European affairs and the vicious cycle repeats. Tsymbursky believes that there is a way out of this cycle, which is for Russia to resist the temptation to be part of Europe and to retreat to its naturally isolated position on the continent. Here Tsymbursky dwells on the argument ad naturum in a way that is very similar to Savitsky’s line of thinking: Russia is naturally situated on a gigantic island of sorts. This island is separated from the rest of the world by icy waters in the north and east and impenetrable mountains and deserts in the south. In the west, he continues, Russia is separated from the European continent by a broad “strait” of small nations, which do not belong fully either to “the Russian core,” or to the Romano-Germanic West. He calls this “strait” the “Great Limitrophe.” It is the obsessive struggle for spheres of influence in the “Great Limitrophe” that powerfully draws Russia into European politics. This means that first and foremost, Russia should withdraw from the Great Limitrophe into its insular retreat. Tsymbursky shapes his vision of Russia as a state-continent in terms of isolationism and autarchy, but he also emphasizes the importance of regaining its “true self,” to stop dissolving “ourselves” into amorphous spaces of Eurasia. He likewise draws on Aleksandr Panarin’s civilizational jargon, arguing that the “[tectonic] plate of Russia” has its own civilizational identity, and as such it is a part of the bigger Eurasian continent.51 As we can see from this, the “island of Russia,” in spite of its polemics with Eurasianism, epitomizes the central traits of continentalist visions, and is actually a restatement of the early Eurasianists’ theory of the “third continent” that rests on the Großraum logic of civilizational exemption from the universal world order. Although Tsymbursky’s worldview was not conservative but rather leftist, his ideas were eagerly assimilated in conservative circles, which have seen in Tsymbursky’s concept powerful opposition to liberal universalism and support for cultural authenticity.52 More broadly speaking, for Tsymbursky all civilizations are lonely, isolated, and sovereign. Juggling the ideas of Carl Schmitt and Tsymbursky, Mezhuev argues that if Russia wants to be a civilization, it should 50

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“If Moscow perceives its interests are being ignored by Washington, a partnership with China, itself a powerful outsider, enhances Moscow’s ability to challenge the legitimacy of an international order based on liberal democracies.” Jeffrey Mankoff, Russian Foreign Policy: The Return of Great Power Politics (Lanham, MD: 2012), 183; see also Bobo Lo, Russia and the New World Disorder (London: 2015). Vadim Tsymburskii, Ostrov Rossiia: Geopoliticheskie i khronopoliticheskie raboty (Moscow: 2007); Tsymburskii, Morfologiia rossiiskoi geopolitiki i dinamika mezhdunarodnykh sistem XVIII–XX vekov (Moscow: 2016), 401–3. Andrei Tsygankov, “‘Ostrovnaia’ geopolitika Vadima Tsymburskogo,” Tetradi po konservatizmu, no. 1 (2015): 14.

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have the sovereign right to choose its friends and enemies, without complying with any external power.53 Similarly, Mikhail Remizov maintains that large, continental-scale economies tend toward quasi-autarky, which means that smaller economies should embark on regionalist projects of creating “worldeconomies” (with reference to Fernand Braudel) in order to better uphold their sovereignty. He suggests that “geo-economic competition obviously shifts from the international level into the level of macro-regions.”54 Vladislav Surkov’s most recent theorizing follows the same line of Großräume-thinking. The former chief ideologist of the Kremlin intimates that after centuries of engaging with either East or West, now it is about time for Russia to remain in isolation and solitude, which well befits such a culturally hybrid and territorially continental state.55 6 Conclusion This chapter has laid out three theoretical linchpins of the geopolitical interpretation of conservative ideology. Firstly, the chapter shows that conservatism in Russia is first and foremost an ideological attempt to make sense of Russia’s mimetic conflict with the West. Conservative intellectuals have pondered the possibility of a retreat from this mimetic rivalry and a return to its authentic cultural self. Secondly, this conservative retreat is facilitated by the geopolitical vision of multiple civilizations, which implies a way of seeing the global world that suggests the use of a conspiratorial prism. Thirdly, the chapter argues that the practical geopolitical structure for sustaining the conser­ vative retreat is the Schmittean “large space”—a territory exempt from international normativity. There is a seeming contradiction between the thrust toward universalism in Russian traditionalist discourses, and the actual particularistic program of Großräume. I think, however, that these two aspects are dialectically interrelated. On the one hand, universalism of “traditional values” lapses into particularism of historically specific traditions. On the other hand, the proposed retreat from liberal hegemony to various “civilizational islands” results in a claim for the future reorganization of the world with a degree of universalism—as was suggested in Mikhail Iur’ev’s utopia, for example. 53 54 55

Boris Mezhuev, “Suverennoe bessoznatel’noe,” Tetradi po konservatizmu, no. 3 (2016): 33. Mikhail Remizov (ed.), Konservatizm kak factor “miagkoi sily” Rossii (Institut natsional’noi strategii, n.d.), 28, accessed 12 May 2018, . Vladislav Surkov, “Odinochestvo polukrovki (14+),” Rossiia v global’noi politike, 9 April 2018, .

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The chapter examined a second aspect of conservatism—the path toward a tighter connection between conservatism and a geopolitical style of thinking with the resultant normative vision of international politics as a system of Großräume. I would stress that this overview of the post-Soviet history of ideas does not correspond with developments in international relations, which have their own dynamics and causal chains, which are only partially contingent upon the world of ideas. The surge of confrontational rhetoric in the media and in the political leadership has little pertinence to the popularity of Großraum conservatism. Its response to the mimetic rivalry with the West is not widely heard, although, as this chapter has attempted to show, in the Russian structural and historical context, only this kind of right-wing ideology is “genuinely” conservative because it offers an ideological response to the focus of Russia’s historical experience in the modern era: thorough Westernization and the subsequent spiral of rivalry with the West. Seen from a different, normative, angle, this drive toward a Großraum, implemented in many of the recent isolationist initiatives of the Russian government, is unsustainable theoretically and counterproductive politically. With­drawal from the struggle for recognition and casting a “veil of ignorance” on the Other limits the possibilities of dialogue but does not exclude the necessity of relating to the Other in order to establish one’s own collective identity. Instead, relations with the Other become more confrontational, exacerbated by the feeling of not being recognized.56 This is exactly what is happening today in Russia’s relations with the West. It should be understood that the conservative retreat is not peaceful cooperation at all. Conservative ideology in the Russian context is an extended commentary on how to resist Western hegemony (imaginary or otherwise) by simply escaping from hegemonic relations. The problem with the conservative response to the issue of modernization lies precisely in the Hegelian Master-Slave dialectic: a fugitive slave undermines his own identity. References Burke, Edmund. “The First Letter on a Regicide Peace.” In Burke: Revolutionary Writings, edited by Iain Hampsher-Monk, 251–334. Cambridge: 2014. 56

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Chapter 4

The Logic of Scapegoating in Contemporary Russian Moral Conservatism  Dmitry Uzlaner  “Human beings are narrative creatures. Narrativity … is at the heart of our identity.” This observation by Robert Bellah1 serves as the point of departure for my research on moral conservatism, which I examine as a particular narrative, tale, or story that people tell each other and into which they interweave concrete arguments with respect to one or another issue. This essay, based on Russian sources, presents the results of reflections concerning the “turn to traditional spiritual-moral values,” which took place in Russian policy in 20122 and which has brought the issues of morals, values, and civilizational distinctiveness to the foreground of sociopolitical discussions. Marlene Laruelle calls this situation the “morality turn.”3 I have already reflected on this issue with respect to the ideas of Jacques Lacan, and this essay constitutes a development of some positions from my previous work.4 My analysis is based on the idea that the Russian storyline is merely a local refraction of a universal and transcultural phenomenon. Its characteristics, for instance, might be traced to the observable rise in conservatism throughout the entire Western world. This conservatism is visible in both Viktor Orbán, the 1 Robert N. Bellah, Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age (Cambridge, MA: 2011), 34. 2 Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, “The Pussy Riot Affair and Putin’s Démarche from Sovereign Democracy to Sovereign Morality,” Nationalities Papers 42, no. 4 (2014): 615–21; Elena Stepanova, “ ‘The Spiritual and Moral Foundation of Civilization in Every Nation for Thousands of Years’: The Traditional Values Discourse in Russia,” Politics, Religion & Ideology 16, nos. 2–3 (2015): 119–36; Alexander Agadjanian, “Tradition, Morality and Community: Elaborating Orthodox Identity in Putin’s Russia,” Religion, State and Society 1 (2017): 39–60; Jardar Østbø, “Securitizing ‘Spiritual-Moral Values’ in Russia,” Post-Soviet Affairs 33, no. 3 (2017): 200–216; Neil Robinson, “Russian Neo-patrimonialism and Putin’s ‘Cultural Turn,”’ Europe-Asia Studies 69, no. 2 (2017): 348–66. 3 Marlene Laruelle, “Beyond Anti-Westernism: The Kremlin’s Narrative about Russia’s European Identity and Mission,” PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo no. 326, Ponars Eurasia: New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia, . 4 Dmitry Uzlaner, “Perverse Conservatism: A Lacanian Interpretation of Russia’s Turn to Traditional Values,” Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society 22, no. 2 (2017): 173–92.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004408005_005

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Hungarian leader who speaks of European wealth and prosperity being threatened by a horde of intruders,5 and Donald Trump, the president of the United States, who enumerated the Western values being threatened by both internal and external enemies during his speech in Poland.6 1

“Raising the Electorate of the Antichrist”: The Fight against Juvenile Justice in Russia

From a narrative standpoint, moral conservatism is not very versatile. One could interpret it as stemming from a single narrative foundation. This narrative’s storyline is rather simple: For any number of reasons, enemies are encircling and hoping to destroy the “beleaguered fortress” of the traditional family, the traditional way of life, “cultural-spiritual distinctiveness,” and “civilizational identity.” Although some of these enemies come from outside, the vast majority of the danger comes particularly from internal enemies who, having opened the gate or having communicated secret entryways, might let in an adversary at any moment. I will call this unsophisticated storyline the “metanarrative of moral conservatism,” by which I mean the narrative’s common canvas onto which specific storylines, dialogues, and dramatic junctures are painted with assorted variations.7 I will illustrate this narrative framework with the concrete example of the opposition by certain individuals in Russia to “juvenile justice” under the guise of the fight for “traditional moral values.” Juvenile justice in and of itself is a complex subject that requires specialized knowledge in the spheres of law, psychology, and other disciplines.8 When moral conservatives in Russia bring it up, they approach it only in its narrowest and most particular sense, with the guiding question: is it really necessary to develop mechanisms for the state to interfere in the life of families by allowing children, for example, the right to 5 See a typical speech: “Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Opening Speech at the Second Budapest Demographic Forum,” About Hungary, 29 May 2017, . 6 Commentary on Trump’s speech in Poland is available here: Christian Davies, Patrick Wintour, and Jamie Grierson, “Trump Says West Is at Risk, during Nationalist Speech in Poland,” The Guardian, 6 July 2017, . 7 For the basic elements of this construction, see Uzlaner, “Perverse Conservatism.” 8 For a history of the juvenile justice system in Russia, see E. Bystrova and M. Tcherni, “Juvenile Justice in Russia,” in The Handbook of Juvenile Delinquency and Juvenile Justice, ed. Marvin D. Krohn and Jodi Lane (Oxford: 2015), 40–48.

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complain to special services about their parents and ultimately to have these children removed from their homes if some kind of danger threatens their lives or well-being? Arguments for and against this question are possible. The question of the public significance of juvenile justice, however, only begins when this specialized discussion fits into a narrative and becomes a captivating story that some people tell others. Elena Bystrova and Maria Tcherni write: Some powerful forces interested in maintaining the status quo stirred up a media campaign against juvenile justice reform in Russia, painting it (in the “best” traditions of Soviet propaganda) as attempts by the West, under the auspices of caring for the rights of children, to break apart Russian families and taint Russian traditions of child‐rearing involving strict discipline (corporal punishment).9 These powers are closely connected with the Russian Orthodox Church, which Bystrova and Tcherni argue “is one of the most vocal opponents of juvenile justice reform” and likely serves as the major institutional authority of this moral conservatism.10 As the result of such a narrative framework, the issue of juvenile justice is expanding to an unbelievable scale.11 It seamlessly combines with other topics—be they LGBT rights, abortion, or euthanasia—and is entwined into the epic storyline about the battle between good and evil and about the approaching end times, the culmination of which must be the coming of the Antichrist. According to this narrative, we are supposedly faced not merely with a series of technical legislative projects designed to secure a child’s rights or to limit domestic abuse; rather, we are faced with a conscious and well-planned campaign for the systematic destruction of society. The purported aim consists of women giving birth to as few children as possible, thus eliminating the multichild family so that the institution of the (traditional) family as such will be irreparably destroyed. Characteristically merging all issues into a single mass, those who fight against the juvenile justice system write:

9 Bystrova and Tcherni, “Juvenile Justice,” 47. 10 Ibid. 11 This narrative is reconstructed on the basis of the materials of primary web-based sources that specialize in the war against juvenile justice, including “Russkaia narodnaia liniia” (The pathway of the Russian people), “Sem’ia, liubov’, otechestvo” (Family, love, fatherland), and the anti-juvenile-justice site of the Ivan-Chai informational agency, along with several others.

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The advancement of LGBT rights, added to the armory of the USA, serves as a powerful weapon for the destruction of culture, morality, the family, and finally, state sovereignty, since the robust, morally healthy family is the bulwark of an independent government. Greed, egoism, and treachery flourish at the very locations where the boundaries of cultural-moral norms are eroded and perverted. And of course, such degenerate people are not fit for defending the interests of the state. In pursuit of pleasures, they even betray and cast aside their own children.12 According to this narrative, the emergence of a totalitarian society of a new type must be the result of this campaign to destroy moral principles: It is a dictatorship of perversion. And this is not only perversion of a sexual nature. Juvenile “care for children” is also a perversion. And the murder of sick people, supposedly for their good, is also a perversion. And all of these theatrics, hypocrisy, and sheep in wolves’ clothing are also perversions. And it could not be otherwise.13 In the logic of this storyline—at least in its religious variant—it is not simply an abstract West that stands behind the efforts to destroy the traditional Russian way of life. No, the West itself has already been destroyed and turned into the kingdom of a “comfortable Sodom” where same-sex marriage is allowed, the rights of “perverts” are acknowledged, women are emancipated, and children are taken from traditional families in order to transfer them into the clutches of “perverts.”14 Behind everything stands a worldwide “Deep State” that is realizing a project to dehumanize humanity with the goal of “constructing the kingdom of the Antichrist” and “raising an electorate for the future Antichrist.”15 The warriors against juvenile justice think of themselves as a 12 13 14

15

Irina Medvedeva and Tat’iana Shishova, “LGBT-spetsoperatsiia ‘Deti,’” Regnum Informatsionnoe Agentstvo, 22 August 2016, . Tat’iana Shishova and Irina Medvedeva, “Politseiskoe gosudarstvo novogo tipa,” Pravoslavie.ru, 16 August 2016, . Irina Medvedeva and Tat’iana Shishova, for example, write: “Before our very eyes stand the Western countries, where perverts have swept into political power and have violently forced the people to submit to their unnatural orientations by means of ‘lawlessness in law.’” Medvedeva and Shishova, “‘Oderzhimye seksom,’ transgendery i pedofily: Iuvenaly vo vlasti protiv sem’i,” Regnum Informatsionnoe Agentstvo, 19 July 2016, . Irina Medvedeva, Globalizatsiia protiv sem’i, part 1 of the film series Sem’ia v sovremennom mire, film project Istina Sem’i, 2007, produced and directed by Sergei Andriushkin, in

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heroic minority of partisans contending with the superior numbers of an opponent that has more money, authority, and power on its side. Of interest here is the figure of the “Source of Abomination,” one who consciously creates such heinous things and contaminates the healthy fabric of the traditional way of life. In the narrative now under consideration, the figure of the “pervert” is adopted as the “Source of Abomination.” A pervert is a certain composite representation of a proponent of “non-traditional sexual relations” and of a “liberal”—a person who supports perversion owing to his or her forfeiture of any notion of sin or of the norms of interpersonal cooperation. On the one hand, this composite representation is endowed with certain completely repugnant, unnatural traits.16 On the other hand, it is acknowledged to have incredible might, for it is within its power to commit nefarious activity on a global scale. Considering the extent of the danger they represent to society, it is not altogether clear what should be done with such perverts. This point in the narrative becomes murky; the storytellers merely confine themselves to hints. Admittedly, it is not difficult to guess at the direction in which such hints will lead, but we will return to that question further below. The narrative described above resembles a conspiracy theory.17 More importantly, it is the narrative of a marginal group, which does not have very much sociopolitical influence. After the “turn to traditional values,” however, the narrative, including its structure, rhetoric, and driving logic, is no longer simply a marginal development disseminated by small groups. Scholars have long noticed the popularity of similar theories in Russia and within the entire post-Soviet space.18 Since 2012, however, such narratives have nearly become

16 17 18

association with Bishop Mark Egor’evskii, . For example, Shishova and Medvedeva (“Politseiskoe gosudarstvo novogo tipa”) state that “perverts’ entire array of thoughts, feelings, and actions grow more and more pathological.” See Mark Fenster, Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture (Minneapolis: 2008). Stephanie Ortmann and John Heathershaw, “Conspiracy Theories in the Post-Soviet Space,” The Russian Review 71, no. 4 (2012): 551–64; Marlene Laruelle, “Conspiracy and Alternate History in Russia: A Nationalist Equation for Success?” The Russian Review 71 (2012): 565–80; Richard Sakwa, “Conspiracy Narratives as a Mode of Engagement in International Politics: The Case of the 2008 Russo-Georgian War,” The Russian Review 71 (2012): 581–609. The change in status of similar narratives can be observed through the fate of one particular personality, Aleksandr Dugin, who underwent a surprising transformation from a marginal conspiracy theorist to a prominent Russian ideologue. See Andreas Umland, “Aleksandr Dugin’s Transformation from a Lunatic Fringe Figure into a Mainstream Political Publicist, 1980–1998: A Case Study in the Rise of Late and Post-Soviet Russian Fascism,” Journal of Eurasian Studies 1, no. 2 (2010): 144–52; Victor Shnirelman, “Aleksandr

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the ideological mainstream in both foreign and domestic policy.19 As Ilya Yablokov rightly observes, they are a means of constructing the nation and national identity in contemporary Russia.20 Narratives of this kind occupy a hegemonic position in the media, which are controlled by the state. This constitutes a new quality of domestic policy, a new stage in sociopolitical dynamics that requires thoughtful reflection. Insights concerning the aforementioned narrative, therefore, no longer pertain to the state of affairs within the confines of a concrete group or subculture, but rather to a much wider context— the society and the Russian nation as a whole. In this context, the grotesqueness of the example selected above conversely becomes an advantage, since it makes the structure of the already-pervasive narrative utterly conspicuous and glaring. Analogous narratives exist around all other points of the “morality turn,” beginning with abortion and ending with a general alarm concerning the “spiritual-cultural identity” of Russian civilization, which powerful enemies are threatening from all sides.21 These narratives may be more secular or more religious. They may place varied stresses on varied threats. They may visualize the “Source of Abomination” in another way. But the common narrative canvas will remain unchanged— a “besieged fortress” teeming with traitors and encircled by enemies, a chaotic world of evil ganging up on a community of the righteous.22 2

Analyzing This Narrative: The Deficiencies of “Instrumentalization” and “Intellectualization”

Stylistically, the very structure of this narrative—essentially leading to a story about powerful enemy forces threatening the nation, the culture, and the lifestyle of millions—strongly resembles paranoia and paranoid fantasy. Here,

19

20 21 22

Dugin: Vozvedenie mosta mezhdu eskhatologiei i konspirologiei,” Gosudarstvo, religiia, tserkov’ v Rossii i za rubezhom 4 (2016): 194–221. Ilya Yablokov, “Pussy Riot as Agent Provocateur: Conspiracy Theories and the Media Construction of Nation in Putin’s Russia,” Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity 42, no. 4 (2014): 622–36; Yablokov, “Conspiracy Theories as a Russian Public Diplomacy Tool: The Case of Russia Today (RT),” Politics 35, nos. 3–4 (2015): 301–15. Yablokov, “Pussy Riot,” 633–34. Compare with Caroline Hill’s chapter in this volume. Bishop Tikhon (Shevkunov)’s 2008 “historical” film Gibel’ imperii: Vizantiiskii urok (The Fall of an Empire: The Lesson of Byzantium) serves as a common example of this. The film recounts the sad fate of the Eastern Roman Empire—which forfeited its spiritual core and fell as a result of a plot of internal and external enemies— and conjectures that Russia will follow. See the film here: .

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one might recall the classic work of Richard Hofstadter (1996), The Paranoid Style in American Politics, which addresses the way similar stylistics constantly replicate themselves in American sociopolitical debate. I will return to the ­issue of the psychological basis of moral conservatism in subsequent sections of this essay. There are essentially two basic approaches to the interpretation of this paranoid narrative in scholarly literature: “intellectualization” and “instrumentalization.” Within the confines of the former approach, efforts are underway to analyze the ideas behind this narrative, along with their subsequent interpolation into the tradition of Russian conservative thought.23 This approach is undoubtedly useful, since it helps scholars to understand the specific imaginative content of this narrative. Why does the West regularly figure as the enemy? And from where do the religious motifs, images, and phrases that give this narrative its specific Russian character derive? Despite its value, however, this approach is unlikely to describe comprehensively that with which we are concerned. This is primarily because it is difficult to consider this specific narrative—any more than all the other conspiracy theories—a part of intellectual history or a continuation of the tradition of Russian Slavophilism, for example.24 Intellectual conservatism exists, but more often than not it remains inside the confines of universities and other academic circles. The particular moral conservatism considered here can hardly have any intellectual depth, for it is difficult to analyze it from the standpoint of its ideational and intellectual content. The “intellectualization” interpretation, however, is not the only existing approach to this narrative. Many scholars are prone to see in such narratives instruments for the achievement of political goals, whether to strengthen a regime’s legitimacy or to consolidate a community in the face of an imminent enemy.25 Such scholars propose that behind these narratives stands a certain rational actor who employs them for his or her own benefit and who is all the while not held captive by these storylines. This seems to be a dominant approach. Elena Stepanova, for example, concludes her work on Russia’s “conservative turn” as follows: 23 24

25

Marlene Laruelle, “The Izborsky Club, or the New Conservative Avant-Garde in Russia,” The Russian Review 75 (2016): 626–44. Andrei Tsygankov draws such parallels (“Crafting the State-Civilization: Vladimir Putin’s Turn to Distinct Values,” Problems of Post-Communism 63, no. 3 [2016]: 146–58), but he conflates “the history of ideas” with other approaches, particularly with the approach of instrumentalization. See Sharafutdinova, “The Pussy Riot Affair,” 615–21; Østbø, “Securitizing ‘Spiritual-Moral Values,’” 200–216.

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the “traditional values” discourse is aimed at cohering the nation around certain meanings that are presented as having both historical and ideological integrity. The question is whether this artificial construction, based on a mythologization of history and opposition to various “enemies,” could be convincing enough for the Russian people.26 Three things are of note here. First, Stepanova uses the phrase “aimed at…,” as if certain elite figures, who are directing this narrative to particular ends, stand behind them. Second, “for the Russian people” suggests that this narrative is created for someone with instrumental objectives. Third, “artificial construction” again suggests that Stepanova is discussing something that has been specially designed. The “instrumentalization” interpretation does allow scholars to understand various important dimensions of the conservative narrative. Despite its value, however, it resembles a conspiracy theory itself. One could regard it as a defense mechanism that is used to protect the researcher from frightening thoughts such as “we are not facing an altogether artificial construct designed by elites; we are facing instead something independent, something organic that is rooted in the very foundations of the social order.” The final hope in such a defensive construction is the certainty that a rational agent stands behind the paranoid narrative, to which he is immune, and will not allow it to develop into its full irrational force. Surprisingly, even those scholars who justifiably place these narratives within the context of the research on conspiracy theories continue to regard them as a result of rational efforts of political actors who are pursuing the strengthening of a regime’s legitimacy while also uniting a “people” against “others” who are threatening that “people.”27 In other words, one conspiracy theory is employed to explain another. In my view, both the “intellectualization” and “instrumentalization” approaches, despite their merits, should be supplemented by an additional analytical dimension. Otherwise, discussion is trivialized within the confines of these approaches. For the “intellectualization” approach, the discussion concerns the space of ideas, where moral conservatism ends up being only one branch on the intellectual tree of Russian conservative thought. For the “instrumentalization” approach, the discussion concerns the space of political machinations, where moral conservatism is derived from the efforts of elites who are pursuing the maintenance of power and the spread of their personal influence. Both approaches neglect the essential fact that we are facing not 26 27

Stepanova, “Spiritual and Moral Foundation,” 135. Yablokov, “Pussy Riot.”

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merely ideas and not merely someone’s strategic plan, but we are also facing a narrative reflection of something more fundamental, a prevailing cultural mechanism. 3

A Cultural Approach to Moral Conservatism

What exactly is the mechanism whose reflection turns out to be the narrative discussed here? The ideas of the French philosopher, René Girard, constitute a point of departure for our analysis. Girard analyzed the mechanism through which a community is capable of overcoming an inner crisis that is connected particularly with accumulating internal hostilities that threaten a descent into an uncontrolled spiral of violence. He called this the “scapegoat mechanism.” The point is simple: at the very moment when a community faces a real threat of chaos and “a war of everyone against everyone,” the logic of “all against one” plays out.28 In this case, the community focuses its anger upon a particular individual whom they have begun to perceive as a guilty party posing a threat of impending danger to the community. The reprisal against the guilty party appeases the community and binds its members together. As a result, a “sacrificial crisis” is overcome, a truce takes place, and solidarity reigns.29 Hostility is directed outward thanks to the victim, who in this case has played the role of a living lightning rod. A cultural approach allows us to understand something that frequently confounds observers. Why do people place so much significance upon seemingly secondary things, such as gender difference, sexual taboo, and the regulation of family relationships?30 In fact, it is precisely here that we advance toward the very heart of a culture; it is here that the community’s experience of crisis becomes sharpest and most unhealthy. According to Girard, cultural order “is nothing more than a regulated system of distinctions in which the differences among individuals are used to establish their ‘identity’ and their mutual relationships.”31 The themes of sexuality and sexual difference are explosive. Entering into this territory ignites an entire cascade of “moral panic” to varying degrees of 28 29 30

René Girard, Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World (London: 1978), 24. René Girard, Violence and the Sacred (Baltimore: 1977), 56. Thomas Frank, the author of a noteworthy work on conservatism in the USA, is particularly concerned with this question. See Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (New York: 2004). 31 Girard, Violence and the Sacred, 49.

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intensity. Stanley Cohen in particular has written about this in his already-classic work: We find it important to point out that many moral panics are about sex. For a variety of reasons, humans are fearful and insecure about their own sexuality and the sexual doings of their neighbors and fellow citizens. Sex is a special and unique sphere in which rules are abundant, and strict, and within which the human drama plays out and the status of wrongdoing and even abnormality is applied.32 In this line of thought, the erasure of differences—whether sexual, moral, or generational—can lead to an outburst of uncontrolled violence. The modern rational consciousness finds it difficult to comprehend this connection between non-differentiation and violence. Yet, as Girard writes: the primitive mind, in contrast, has no difficulty imagining an affiliation between violence and nondifferentiation and, indeed, is often obsessed by the possible consequences of such a union. Natural differences are conceived in terms of cultural differences, and vice versa. Where we would view the loss of a distinctive quality as a wholly natural phenomenon having no bearing on human relationships, the primitive man might well view this occurrence with deep dread. Because there is no real difference between the various modes of differentiation, there is in consequence no difference between the manner in which things fail to differ; the disappearance of natural differences can thus bring to mind the dissolution of regulations pertaining to the individual’s proper place in society—that is, can instigate a sacrificial crisis.33 Rather than understanding the phrase “primitive mind” in the sense of some kind of archaic past, it is better to recognize that the “primitive mind,” with its specific logic and the archaic mechanisms based upon it, has not disappeared, nor will it disappear any time soon. For modern scholars, who are prone to exaggerate not only the degree of secularity in modern societies but also their own rationality, this “mind” is becoming imperceptible. Scholars who are called to understand the processes going on around them are making themselves “sightless” by renouncing the earnest embrace of religion and mythology and designating them as relics of long-defunct traditional societies. 32 Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics (London: 2002), 18. 33 Girard, Violence and the Sacred, 56.

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The threat of chaos that emanates from the erasure of differences leads to a demand for a purge and for the restoration of these eroded distinctions. The logic of purge follows the logic of the scapegoat. Girard writes: The persecutors always convince themselves that a small number of people, or a single individual, despite his relative weakness, is extremely harmful to the whole of society. The stereotypical accusation justifies and facilitates this belief by ostensibly acting the role of mediator. It bridges the gap between the insignificance of the individual and the enormity of the social body.34 Playing the role of the scapegoat in the narration is a figure, person, or group of people who combine physical and moral deformities or, alternatively, certain evidence of invalid membership in the community (for example, terrible or amoral behaviors).35 According to Girard, “The victim is considered a polluted object, whose living presence contaminates everything that comes in contact with it and whose death purges the community of its ills—as the subsequent restoration of public tranquility clearly testifies.”36 By and large, “the crisis is seen as a mysterious illness introduced into the community by an outsider. The cure lies in ridding the community of the sole malignant element.”37 Between the narrative of moral conservatism and the mythological narrative of the scapegoat there is a distinct structural similarity: the totalizing threat hanging over the community that is propelling this community into chaos by way of the erasure of fundamental cultural differences. For what is moral conservatism but fear of the disappearing differences between men and women, between parents and children, between norms and pathologies? What is the dismay over the erosion of cultural-spiritual distinctiveness but fear of the indistinguishability between “us” and “them”? The source and cause of this threat is the cunning evildoer or group of evildoers—“perverts” who are the Antichrist’s lackeys and who inject decay and corruption into the healthy body of the traditional civilizational way of life. Yet, the final element of this structure—reprisal against the evildoer and the restoration of customary order—is absent from the moral conservative narrative. This makes sense, for we are encountering the narrative before its enactment within the historical trajectory of this community. The reflection of the “scapegoat mechanism” stands before us, 34 35 36 37

Ibid., 15. Ibid., 34–35. Ibid., 95. Ibid., 83.

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but only as though it were half suspended, as though it were (temporarily?) deprived of the decisive impulse required for it to swing into action. Thus, we are faced not merely with ideas and not merely with the manipulative tricks of crafty elites, but also with the narrative reflection of a basic cultural process: a community at the moment of the experience of an acute internal crisis that triggers the archaic (but no less vibrant) mechanism, which, according to a very specific logic, is called upon to overcome this crisis. 4

Moral Conservatism and Mythological Logic

The conservative narrative, however, is not simply the reflection of a crisis that has been translated into the language of dramatic storytelling. The very concept of “reflection” assumes a reflection itself and that which it actually reflects. Yet, with respect to the conservative narrative, this is not necessarily the case. Thus, it is not simply about depraved social, political, cultural, and demographic transformations, which in the mirror of human consciousness morph into a story about “the forces of evil” that are tormenting “Russia, with its thousand-year history,” thereby propelling it into chaos. Rather, it is about the translation of this crisis into another dimension in which it begins to take on a life of its own and to subject itself to its own “specific” logic. In fact, Girard himself made note of such a factor. After all, we know about the scapegoat mechanism thanks to mythological storytelling. These tales appear to be a narrative reflection of this mechanism. But it is not merely a reflection; it is also a concealment of the scapegoat mechanism, camouflaging it as something acceptable to members of a given community.38 By means of a mythological transformation, the story of how a community has resolved its internal problems through a reprisal against an innocent person morphs into a tale about a terrifying chaos having engulfed the community and having threatened its complete destruction. Through the lens of the myth, the guilty party appears to be an evildoer who has committed some atrocity. The justifiable reprisal against this person restores order and returns life back to its normal course. This narrative’s curious peculiarity is its invulnerability to rational criticism. For example, it is impossible to bring up statistics that would demonstrate the baselessness of the apprehensions concerning juvenile justice. This is not because such statistics do not exist, but rather because they would not even be taken into consideration. Those who believe this narrative and perpetuate it 38

René Girard, The Scapegoat (Baltimore: 1986), 24–44.

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will simply build these statistics into the narrative as yet one more proof of the wiles of enemies who are attempting to confuse people with numbers and to deprive them of the ability to resist.39 The notion of an “information war” enters the moral conservatives’ tale at this particular point. According to this storyline, a war is being conducted against Russia, one aspect of which is informational. The enemy attempts to discredit us and to indoctrinate us with a false picture of the world. In order to accomplish this, the enemy foists upon us “pseudo-research” and “pseudo-statistics” that we can simply ignore once the enemy’s wicked design has been exposed. The narrative is beyond a rational analysis, for its perpetuators do not allow it to be contrasted with the true state of affairs or to make note of its correct or incorrect elements. As Girard notes, those who are held captive to the logic of the “scapegoat” are not interested in the natural causes of the crisis or in those naturally responsible for what has taken place. Rather, the magical causation of the scapegoat is being played out: “Instead of natural, distant, and inaccessible causes, humanity has always preferred causes that are significant from a social perspective and permit of [sic] corrective intervention—victims.”40 That said, this narrative cannot be deemed completely arbitrary. It unfolds in conjunction with a definite—let’s say “specific”—logic. In other words, the elements of this narrative are not simply stacked one on top of another, but they occur in a specific sequence. Moreover, since we are observing this sequence not only in the particular context of the fight against juvenile justice reform, its emergence is not coincidental, and elements of this tale are interconnected in conjunction with a definite logic. But what exactly is this logic if we cannot deem it rational or classical and if it does not operate according to the laws of logic, argumentation, and factual evidence? It is a logic that I will call “mythological” or, referencing the ideas of Carl Gustav Jung, archetypical.41 By “mythological logic” I mean the constantly encountered interconnections between elements that eventually fall into place in a recognizable mythological storyline.42 In mythological logic, the elements of a certain narrative are interconnected, but not in a rational way. This is not a rational tale where one element logically derives from another, as happens in scholarly texts or in 39

Olga Skopina and Aleksandr Savchenko, “Evropeiskie korni ‘kazhdogo piatogo,’” Krasnaia Vesna, 11 November 2016, . 40 Girard, The Scapegoat, 204. 41 C.G. Jung, Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, 2nd ed., trans. R.C.F. Hull, Bollinger Series 20 (Princeton: 1968). 42 Iakov Golosovker (Logika mifa [Moscow: 1987]) has also written on the logic of myth, albeit in a completely different sense.

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an attempt to get to the bottom of the natural causes of a certain occurrence in a logical way, for example. In mythological logic, elements are not connected to one another in conjunction with any rational bases; rather, it is a matter of course that one element of the tale must follow another, which must then follow another by sheer necessity. Scholars of mythology and scholars of narrative focus their attention on the way these narratives, despite the seemingly unlimited possibilities of human imagination, are extremely sparse, with a very limited repertoire of plot lines. One scholar speaks of only seven basic plots, while another speaks of a single metaplot with thousands of variations.43 Whether considering artistic narratives (in books or films, for example) or political narratives, one and the same sequence of elements, which is subject to mythological logic and mythological necessity, is apparent in all cases. It is here that I must bring up a challenge to Girard—if not a disagreement, then at minimum a misunderstanding of his position. Girard invokes the classic debate about the primacy of myth or ritual. For him, neither one nor the other is primary; rather, the collective reprisal against an innocent scapegoat that establishes or reestablishes a community (i.e., that aspect whose reflection becomes both ritual and myth) is primary.44 Girard writes about the reality of the victims who stand behind mythological storylines. For him, action precedes the symbolization of that action in such storylines. As Girard rhetorically inquires: “If the victims of the medieval witch-hunts are real, why wouldn’t the victims of these myths also be?”45 According to Girard, a myth is a reflection of an event in that it arises after collective violence. For him, the real physical event is primary—the violence of “all against one” that later is enshrouded in myth, morphing into a tale that is acceptable to the persecutors, or that algorithmically recurs in ritual with the observance of all safety measures. Yet, in the context of such an argument, it is not completely clear how narratives of collective violence can exist before the commitment of such violent acts and in some sense independent from them. In my view, and here I am following the Jungian school, the archetypical overtone of mythological narratives is the psychic truth of the scapegoat mechanism and the guarantee of the psychological force of this narrative through which a person or community (as a “collective soul”) lives through particular psychic events that end by way of cathartic experiences. This is the precise reason that mythological narratives exist with such consistency and so 43 44 45

Christopher Booker, The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories (London: 2006); Joseph Camp­bell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (New York: 1949). For a fuller account of Girard’s interpretation of myth, see Richard Golsan, Rene Girard and Myth: An Introduction (London: 2002). René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning (Maryknoll, NY: 2001), 84.

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frequently replicate themselves. They are rooted in “trans-subjective, largely autonomous psychic systems which on that account are only very conditionally under the control of the conscious mind and for the most part escape it altogether.”46 In other words, the mythological narrative as I interpret it does not merely reflect a certain real event, but it is the opposite side of that event— the psychological basis without which the mechanism in question would not come to fruition. It is the preparation of the event, as well as its anticipation and experience in a phantasmic dimension of collective representations. The rotation of mythological logic leads to a renewal of the “collective soul.” It is the psychological dimension of the process of overcoming the crisis. A material rotation of the scapegoat mechanism exists (that is, a physical reduction of tension by way of displacing animosity and hatred onto an innocent victim), but it also resides on the level of the “collective soul” and exists as an archetypical corroborator. The scapegoat and the chaos engendered by it do not exist from the point of view of a positivistic approach to reality, but they are real in mythological logic. In other words, they correspond to the real subjective (and even intersubjective) experiences of a community that imagines itself in the midst of a “sacrificial crisis” and that deploys a mythological drama, the finale and apogee of which must be collective murder. 5

Cultural Mechanisms for Overcoming a Crisis

This is certainly not the first attempt to utilize Girard’s ideas toward an interpretation of moral conservatism and the community that stands behind the production of this ideology. Mark Vasey-Saunders, for example, draws upon Girard to understand the reasons for the extreme hostility toward the subject of homosexuality among British evangelicals in the late 20th century. He points to this religious community’s crisis and two interrelated sources of the crisis—an internal crisis of evangelical identity itself, in connection with the loss of clarity regarding who is a genuine evangelical Christian, and an external crisis due to the general context set forth by the processes of late modernity (particularly secularization).47 Vasey-Saunders demonstrates the way the LGBT “issue” has transformed from a private and inconsequential matter to an issue of symbolic significance—a symbol of resistance to secular culture 46 47

C.G. Jung, Two Essays in Analytical Psychology, 2nd ed., trans. R.C.F. Hull, Bollinger Series 20 (Princeton: 1966), 141–42. Mark Vasey-Saunders, The Scandal of Evangelicals and Homosexuality: English Evangelical Texts, 1960–2010 (London: 2015), 51.

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behind which evangelicals see Satan’s schemes and a liberal and gay conspiracy. The rejection of LGBT rights morphs into a symbol of the preservation of genuine evangelical identity in a rapidly changing world. As Vasey-Saunders argues, “by the mid-1990s … , the consensus position [with respect to gay rights] was functioning as an evangelical shibboleth—a first-order issue of faith that could determine whether someone was a faithful Christian or had been led astray by sinful pride and the machinations of an insidious gay-liberal satanic conspiracy.”48 He continues: “the consensus position on homosexuality was a gospel truth to be defended against a world that did not wish to hear it.”49 The issue was not with homosexuality as such; rather, “homosexuality is simply the presenting issue for a crisis of undifferentiation that has developed around the question of evangelical identity, and which has had a profoundly distorting effect on evangelical spirituality.”50 With respect to conspiracy theories, Emma Jane and Chris Fleming have also utilized Girard’s ideas. In their book Modern Conspiracy, they come to analogous conclusions regarding the logic of the scapegoat in such narratives: As complex as conspiracy theories may sometimes market themselves to be, they invariably furnish causal accounts that allow for simple, monocausal attributions of malevolent actions, carried out by a specific individual or groups of individuals. Conspiracies, in other words, look for scapegoats—allow their subscribers to attribute blame in such a way that it exculpates those who discover the “hidden truth.”51 In the Russian context, Aleksei Zygmont was the first to employ Girard’s ideas for an analysis of the Orthodox subculture.52 In his work, he has focused on the acute form of the “sacrificial crisis” experienced by the so-called “parish milieu.” The author, however, completely ignores the next necessary element of the “sacrificial crisis”—the appearance of the scapegoat. In such logic, which is presumably closer to the true Girard, the scapegoat mechanism is no longer active—after all, the scapegoat has already been exposed! In its stead, 48 Ibid., 100. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid., 219. 51 Emma Jane and Chris Fleming, Modern Conspiracy: The Importance of Being Paranoid (London: 2014), 94. 52 Aleksei Zygmont, “Sovremennaia prikhramovaia sreda kak soobshchestvo v situatsii zhertvennogo krizisa,” Religiovedcheskie issledovaniia 13, no. 1 (2016): 151–89. See also A. Zygmont, “Problematika nasiliia v Russkoi pravoslavnoi tserkvi v postsovetskii period,” Gosudarstvo, religiia, tserkov’ v Rossii i za rubezhom 3 (2014): 117–45.

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proponents of such thinking suggest returning to the late Girard, who in his work Battling to the End directs the reader’s attention to the figure of the enemy, to the “escalation to extremes,” and to the unceasing escalation of opposition that to this day cannot be resolved in the customary manner (i.e., through violence toward an innocent victim). In the introduction to this work, Girard elucidates this aspect: “Learning that we have a scapegoat is to lose it forever and to expose ourselves to mimetic conflicts with no possible resolution. This is the implacable law of the escalation to extremes.”53 To this I must add that even if we had really unlearned something within the scapegoat mechanism, it would have been the subsequent deification of the victim, but in no way would we have unlearned the violence against the innocent! To ignore the scapegoat mechanism is nothing less than excessive “optimism” regarding the overcoming of scapegoat logic. That being said, this approach to the study of moral conservatism has every right to exist. It is particularly cogent in the context of the ongoing research on the transnational culture wars, where both the liberal and conservative sides truly perceive each other as enemies who are constantly scheming against one another and where an unceasing escalation of opposition, incapable of leading to any sort of resolution, is taking place.54 The Russian situation, however, can hardly be regarded as yet another example of such a culture war. The turn to traditional values in Russia is not a repeat scenario of the culture war elsewhere; it is the scenario of a “vulnerable identity,” “ontological insecurity,” and an “illness that is eating away at the body of society.”55 The logic of the cure for this illness (much as for the diagnosis, as the narrative of moral conservatism testifies) moves along the mythological tracks of the scapegoat, and not at all along the tracks of an unceasing escalation of opposition! Wolfgang Palaver, one of the foremost authorities on Girard,

53 54

55

René Girard, Battling to the End (East Lansing, MI: 2007), xiv. For more, see C. Bob, The Global Right Wing and the Clash of World Politics (Cambridge: 2012). See also: Kristina Stoeckl, “Lektsiia: Postsekuliarnye konflikty i global’naia bor’ba za traditsionnye tsennosti,” Gosudarstvo, religiia, tserkov’ v Rossii i za rubezhom 34, no. 4 (2016): 223–41; Andrey Shishkov, “Two Ecumenisms: Conservative Christian Alliances as a New Form of Ecumenical Cooperation,” trans. April L. French, State, Religion and Church 4, no. 2 (2017): 58–87. Tsygankov, “Crafting the State-Civilization.” Alicja Curanović also writes about Russia’s “quest for status” in the global arena (The Guardians of Traditional Values: Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church in the Quest for Status [Washington: 2015]). By and large, however, scholarly analysis of the Russian situation rarely digs deeply into these storylines, concentrating instead on the rational actions of the elite who are determining their political tasks with the assistance of moral conservatism.

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has said, “It is very difficult to have political identity and to avoid scapegoats!”56 Yet, one could similarly say, “It is very difficult to have a traditional way of life … or traditional values … or to be a katechon57 without scapegoats!” Girard himself echoes Palaver’s idea: “We easily see now that scapegoats multiply wherever human groups seek to lock themselves into a given identity—communal, local, national, ideological, racial, religious, and so on.”58 One could also couch this situation in terms of a slightly different conceptual approach without reference to Girard. The distinguishing characteristic of the narrative of moral conservatism is that it begins to be experienced and broadcast on the level of state institutions not as the crisis of a single private subculture or private community (for instance, Orthodox Christians), but as a fundamental crisis that touches the entire society. In other words, the entire nation, the entire people, the entire country is under threat. This totalization is associated with the structural characteristics of conservative ideology, at least in the form in which it is circulated in contemporary Russia. The structural characteristic I have in mind concerns the way this ideology is contingent upon a vision of society and a representation of the social. In the language of social theory, this ideology is marked by the conception of a “social whole” and an “organic unity” as the guiding metaphors for comprehending society. Organic unity is, however, impossible; any society is riddled with hostilities. Hence, the basic tension of the conservative narrative is the externalization of internal hostility and the narrativization of opposition between the harmonious core (“the fortress”) and the hostilities that are personified by internal and external enemies, who threaten this core. And hence, the “paranoid” structure of the entire conservative construction—the obsession with persecution on the part of enemy forces who for some reason seek to enact malicious schemes in order to destroy this precious “social unity.” “Society does not exist” (recalling the well-known aphorism of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe59), since any society is by definition riddled with internal hostilities and contradictions. Yet, the perception of society as a harmonious whole can indeed exist. The essence of ideology is to conceal internal 56

Personal conversation with the author. See also Wolfgang Palaver, René Girard’s Mimetic Theory, Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture (East Lansing, MI: 2013). 57 Katechon refers to St. Paul’s phrase, “the one who withholds” (o katechōn [2 Thessalonians 2:6–7]). In Orthodox theology, katechon signifies the one who restrains or prevents the coming of the Antichrist. 58 Girard, I See Satan, 160. Paul Dumouchel’s book (The Barren Sacrifice: An Essay on Political Violence, Studies in Violence, Mimesis, & Culture [East Lansing, MI: 2015]) also proves useful in the context of my analysis. 59 Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London: 2001), 95–96.

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hostilities. Slavoj Žižek admirably described this mechanism of the ideological concealment of internal hostilities in the name of a holistic vision of society: “‘Society as a corporate Body’ is the fundamental ideological fantasy.” He rightly went on to ask, “How then do we take account of the distance between this corporatist vision and the factual society split by antagonistic struggles?”60 Owing to the work of ideology, the impossibility of “society” appears to have already been written into the very ideological fantasy as that foreign hostile element that does not allow this utopian vision of social harmony to translate into reality. Connected with this, Žižek explores German anti-Semitism, which in this interpretation turns out to be that mechanism that makes the community’s internal wound invisible. It is embodied in the figure of the Jew and externalized. Effectively, as Žižek writes, “The Jew is a point at which social negativity as such assumes positive existence.”61 Girard came out of a completely different theoretical paradigm, yet he was also interested in the mechanism that a community uses to establish or reestablish itself, thereby restoring its unity and unanimity. Girard saw this mechanism in a very similar key—the externalization of internal hostility and internal chaos and its embodiment in the figure of a scapegoat who appears to be that foreign element that injects chaos into the social order. The scapegoat could be called that “point at which social negativity … assumes positive existence.” And after this positive existence has been assumed, social negativity can be eliminated for the good of society. 6

The Uneasiness of Speaking out Fully: Moral Conservatism and the Problem of Violence

I have thus far painstakingly avoided the most important question: the problem of violence. Must this mythological narrative—particularly moral conservatism’s mythological narrative—be resolved through expedient violence against enemies and against embodied “social negativity”? Or are there certain restraining factors that might hinder this enactment of mythological logic? Girard was profoundly alarmed by the anti-ritualistic nature of modern secular society and by the way it ignored the fundamental problem of violence and the critical need for mechanisms that allowed the permissible externalization 60 61

Slavoj Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London: 2009), 142. Ibid., 143. Lee Edelman (No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive [Durham, NC: 2004]) provides a highly interesting analysis along these same lines with respect to the LGBT community.

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of violence. After all, the task of ritual is to excise violence from society and to domesticate that violence, subjecting it to the human will, since “all those aspects of the original act that had escaped man’s control—the choice of time and place, the selection of the victim—are now premeditated and fixed by custom. The ritual process aims at removing all element of chance and seeks to extract from the original violence some technique of cathartic appeasement.”62 But what about an anti-ritualistic community that regards ritual as something archaic, owing to its rationalism and secularity? “The modern shedding of ritual brings to light the psychosocial substratum of ritual phenomena,” writes Girard. In place of well-ordered ritual, we get a “nonritualized collective transference,” which frequently ends up being impossible to control.63 So what should be done with this “psychosocial substratum” and the double bind (sociological and psychological) that is pushing the community toward the customary resolution to the problem of internal hostilities? In the absence of rituals that domesticate these “customary resolutions,” what are the real mitigating mechanisms that can protect Russian society in particular from the enactment of ceremonial phenomena in their de-ritualized form? The French thinker placed great hope in the gospel narrative to overcome scapegoat logic and to redirect humanity toward another line of logic, with the side of the victims (rather than the persecutors) at its heart. The state of the scapegoat mechanism in the situation of modernity becomes unsteady. Yet, the gospel victory over constituent violence is subject to the logic of “almost, but not yet completed.” As Scott Cowdell writes, “the archaic human religious impulse identified by Girard will always attempt to reconstitute this protective sacred, too, which while mortally wounded by the gospel was not killed outright.”64 Pierpaolo Antonello and Paul Gifford argue that Christian cultures “themselves are perfectly capable of regressing to archaic patterns of violence.” They then discuss “Girard’s formula for the violence within medieval Christendom [as] the violence of Crusade and pogrom, Inquisition, and, later, witch-hunting—and of the religious civil wars that marked the ending of ‘Chris­tendom’ and the rise of ‘Europe.’”65 Girard’s somewhat excessive optimism is noticeable when he writes: “It is easier than in the past to observe collective transferences upon a scapegoat 62 Girard, Violence and the Sacred, 102. 63 Girard, I See Satan, 160. 64 Scott Cowdell, René Girard and Secular Modernity: Christ, Culture, and Crisis (Notre Dame, IN: 2013), 10. 65 Pierpaolo Antonello and Paul Gifford, Can We Survive Our Origins?: Readings in René Girard’s Theory of Violence and the Sacred (East Lansing, MI: 2015), xxxvii.

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because they are no longer sanctioned and concealed by religion.”66 If the experience of studying modern moral conservatism testifies to anything, it is to the fact that to this day, this phenomenon of scapegoat logic is beautifully concealed by the very religion that, according to Girard’s logic, should have overcome it. We are observing a gradual return to “archaic patterns of violence” and followers of Christ, who are convinced of their own rectitude and blinded by their moral indignation, are in its vanguard. So what exactly prevents this mythological narrative about “perverts” and their attempts to do away with “spiritual-moral foundations” from “being spoken out fully”? One gets the impression that it is not gospel truths that are holding people back from committing the next logical step, but a certain uneasiness, a certain cowardice to speak out fully that which is silent but is absolutely unambiguously implied by the very logic of the storyline. There is an uneasiness with speaking out fully. The paradox of the situation is that, on the one hand, we are dealing with the eternal logic of the “scapegoat,” thanks to which social negativity acquires positive existence. On the other hand, the usual means of handling this social negativity seemingly depends upon an uneasy indecisiveness. Talk of “monsters” who defile children, destroy the family, and threaten the very existence of millions of people inhabit the storyline of moral conservatism. Yet, to call forth an uncompromising war against such monsters is rather awkward. Or at a minimum, it is not politically correct. And the question of violence simply hangs in the air. Girard did not place hope only in Christianity, but also in the individualism so characteristic of a modern society, an individualism that breaks up closeknit communities. When the community fragments, separate groups and even individuals with their own personal scapegoats appear. In one sense, this insures against the expansion of scapegoat logic in all its totality. Aside from individualism, one could also rely on rationality and on the fact that there are rational agents who are not held captive by mythological logic but only employ it for their own interests. From all appearances, those who see in the ascent of moral conservatism a reflection of certain strategic plans by elites, who are standing behind the construction of these narratives, rely on this very rationality. Taking into account the wide condemnation of individualism at the expense of the glorification of the collective and a common “anti-intellectual” disposition (the distrust of the establishment, including the academic

66 Girard, I See Satan, 157.

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establishment), are these defense mechanisms enough?67 There is no definitive answer to this question. It remains open. 7 Conclusion In my analysis, I have aimed to demonstrate that in the “morality turn,” we are dealing not only with the intellectual cunning of rationally thinking elites who are in pursuit of their own interests in the face of ever new internal and external threats. We are dealing with a process that is subject to its own logic and that risks drawing everyone (including all of the leading bureaucrats) into an unstoppable spiral of violence. The demand of the narratives described above testifies to one thing alone. The milieu that produces and consumes these narratives is pregnant with violence, and it is difficult to conceive of any way out of the acute crisis this milieu is experiencing without a scapegoat. This is not a process specific only to Eastern Christianity;68 it is the foundational mechanism that concerns the very evolutionary source of human communities.69 Despite centuries of rationalization and secularization, civilization is still a thin membrane that hides archaic forces and chthonic energies that are prepared to break out at any moment, plunging people who believe in their own rationality into turmoil. Mythos everywhere triumphs over logos. References Agadjanian, Alexander. “Tradition, Morality and Community: Elaborating Orthodox Identity in Putin’s Russia.” Religion, State and Society 1 (2017): 39–60. Antonello, Pierpaolo, and Paul Gifford (eds.). Can We Survive Our Origins?: Readings in René Girard’s Theory of Violence and the Sacred. East Lansing, MI: 2015.

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Richard Hofstadter (Anti-Intellectualism in American Life [New York: 1966]) wrote much about anti-intellectualism, and Thomas Frank (What’s the Matter with Kansas?) wrote about how this anti-intellectualism has been actualized in modern American moral conservatism. Islamic Chechnya, under the leadership of Ramzan Kadyrov, is at the head of the advance­ ment of moral conservatism into everyday life. See Elena Milashina, “Ubiistvo chesti: Kak ambitsii izvestnogo LGBT-aktivista razbudili v Chechne strashnyi drevnii obychai,” Novaia gazeta, 1 April 2015, ; Anton Chablin, “Kadyrov zapretil chechentsam razvodit’sia,” Svobodnaia pressa, 26 August 2017, . See Antonello and Gifford, Can We Survive Our Origins?

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Bellah, Robert N. Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age. Cambridge, MA: 2011. Bob, Clifford. The Global Right Wing and the Clash of World Politics. Cambridge: 2012. Booker, Christopher. The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories. London: 2006. Bystrova, E., and M. Tcherni. “Juvenile Justice in Russia.” In The Handbook of Juvenile Delinquency and Juvenile Justice, edited by Marvin D. Krohn and Jodi Lane, 40–48. Oxford: 2015. Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New York: 1949. Chablin, Anton. “Kadyrov zapretil chechentsam razvodit’sia” [(Ramzan) Kadyrov forbade Chechens from divorcing]. Svobodnaia pressa. 26 August 2017, . Cohen, Stanley. Folk Devils and Moral Panics. London: 2002. Cowdell, Scott. René Girard and Secular Modernity: Christ, Culture, and Crisis. Notre Dame, IN: 2013. Curanović, Alicja. The Guardians of Traditional Values: Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church in the Quest for Status. Washington: 2015. Dumouchel, Paul. The Barren Sacrifice: An Essay on Political Violence. Studies in Violence, Mimesis, & Culture. East Lansing, MI: 2015. Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Durham, NC: 2004. Fenster, Mark. Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture. Minneapolis: 2008. Frank, Thomas. What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. New York: 2004. Girard, René. Battling to the End. East Lansing, MI: 2007. Girard, René. I See Satan Fall Like Lightning. Maryknoll, NY: 2001. Girard, René. The Scapegoat. Baltimore: 1986. Girard, René. Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World. London: 1978. Girard, René. Violence and the Sacred. Baltimore: 1977. Golosovker, Iakov. Logika mifa [The logic of myth]. Moscow: 1987. Golsan, Richard. Rene Girard and Myth: An Introduction. London: 2002. Hofstadter, Richard. Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. New York: 1966. Hofstadter, Richard. The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays. Cambridge, MA: 1996. Jane, Emma, and Chris Fleming. Modern Conspiracy: The Importance of Being Paranoid. London: 2014. Jung, C.G. Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious. 2nd ed. Translated by R.C.F. Hull. Bollinger Series 20. Princeton: 1968. Jung, C.G. Two Essays in Analytical Psychology. 2nd ed. Translated by R.C.F. Hull. Bollinger Series 20. Princeton: 1966.

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Translated from the Russian by April L. French

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Chapter 5

Postmodernity and Modernity as Political Terms in Russia’s New Conservatism  Katharina Bluhm In his 1995 book on “the invention of Russia,” the philosopher and art theorist Boris Groys ascribes to Russian culture “an extreme sensitivity to the West’s discontent with itself, to the desires and aspirations that the Western political and cultural system cannot satisfy.” At the same time, he posits that Russia has again and again “offered itself as the realization of these Western dreams” and thus sought “simultaneous connection with and opposition to the West.”1 This diagnosis—the interplay of extreme sensitivity, connectivity, and opposition—with which Groys seeks to define the constants of Russian culture, is a good frame of reference for the rise of a new Russian conservatism as a variation of a broader movement that claims to renew conservatism in order to challenge the established European and global order. While Russia’s new conservatives invest much in the reconstruction of their own intellectual history, its core concepts must be understood in the context of recent Western analyses and debates, and in its interactions with the European New Right. Referencing Karl Mannheim, Michael Freeden defines modern conservatism as a counter-ideology and counter-movement to the “progressive ideologies” of the 19th and 20th centuries, liberalism and socialism.2 According to Freeden, modern conservatism constructs and varies its ideological core concepts through argumentation with these two ideologies, which are themselves constantly evolving. (Unlike Marx’s, Freeden’s definition of “ideology” is neutral.) I consider Freeden’s interpretation an appropriate framework for understanding new conservatism, because conservative proponents in Russia and Europe intend to do exactly this: to create and mobilize an international political counter-movement. They embrace the idea of being “conservative” as a self-description while rejecting the labels of “populist” or “right-wing populist.” 1 Boris Groys, Die Erfindung Rußlands (Munich: 1995), 10. 2 Michael Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (Oxford: 1996); Freeden, “Morphological Analysis of Ideology,” in The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies, ed. Michael Freeden, Lyman Tower Sargent, and Marc Stars (Oxford: 2013), 115–37; Karl Mannheim, Konservatismus: Ein Beitrag zur Soziologie des Wissens, ed. David Kettler, Volker Meja, and Nico Stehr (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1984), 94–95.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004408005_006

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Indeed, the populist label is inappropriate, because it underestimates the intellectual endeavor to create a new political ideology that cannot be reduced to a communication strategy with a narrow conceptual core applicable to both the left and the right.3 Representatives of the New Right in Europe have contributed to the core concepts of the new conservatism alongside Russian ideologists. Metaphorically speaking, they have used two mirrors in this process: whereas Russian conservatives (once more) have used their image of Europe and “the West” to sketch a Russian alternative, the European Right’s image of Russia is a significant aspect of its counter-sketch of a “sovereign” Europe. The precise configuration of the core concepts and topics vary in different national contexts, especially when we look at the neonationalist economic agenda of the new conservatives and the radicalism of their rejection of liberalism. Significantly, they embed their critique of the recent appearance of liberalism—understood as global market liberalism and representative democracy—in a wider sociocultural critique of Western “postmodernity” and “postmodernism” in the name of traditional values. In the Russian case, the critique of Western postmodern capitalism that has arisen in Russia since the dissolution of the Soviet Union has fueled the rebirth of the idea that Russia is a civilization with its own unique culture and institutions. However, the conservative reclamation of tradition in the face of the postmodern is not per se anti-modern. A closer look reveals that the new Russian conservatives, like their European counterparts, do not simply name a set of (joint or specific) cultural values, norms, and customs in their conceptualization of tradition. They implicitly or explicitly include images of what Ulrich Beck called “first modernity” and what I call an imagined classical modernity as a kind of normative standard for their critique.4 Since economic development and technological progress is an urgent matter for Russian new conservatives in order to sustain the country’s worldpower status in an era of new global competition, criticism of postmodernity retains the idea of Western decay while at least partly accepting modernity and modernization. However, how classical modernity is conceptualized and accentuated is closely related to the idea of Russia’s identity. In what follows, I will explore this argument by reading select texts by conceptual ideologists of the new Russian conservatism who hold important institutional positions and therefore have privileged possibilities of influencing 3 See Jan-Werner Müller, What Is Populism? (London: 2017). More about the difference between new conservatism and populism in Katharina Bluhm and Mihai Varga, New Conservatives in Russia and East Central Europe (London: 2019). 4 Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, trans. Mark Ritter (London: 1992).

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public and elite discourses in Russia. First, I will very roughly sketch out the discursive field for the production of conservative ideology in Russia.5 Second, I will explore how the ideologists use modernity and postmodernity as political terms in the new illiberal conservatism. Third, I will relate the two major concepts of Russia’s identity as a civilization of its own or as part of Europe to the varying conceptualizations of imagined classical modernity and to the way that Russian conservatives address themselves to Europe. Finally, I will provide a brief summary of my findings. 1

The New Russian Conservatives

With the term “conceptual ideologist,” borrowed from Marx’s German Ideology, I describe intellectuals who contribute to the new conservatism with analytical or programmatic texts and make this work their “chief source of livelihood” thanks to high-profile positions in think tanks, foundations, advisory boards, and the mass media, as well as extensive visibility in print and media.6 Despite their proximity to power, which many Russian conservatives hold because of their offices, it would be wrong to view them as mere “instruments of the Kremlin.”7 Russian conservative ideologists’ actual relationship to political power is more complicated and not without tensions. On the one hand, Putin does not rely solely on political conservatism in his attempt to create Russian “soft power” in the international arena. Although he has strongly supported political conservatism for some time and seems to sympathize with the idea of Moscow as the capital of a new “Conservative Internationale,”8 the Kremlin also exploits other—related but not identical— 5

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For a more detailed analysis, see Katharina Bluhm, “Russia’s Conservative CounterMovement: Genesis, Actors and Core Concepts,” in New Conservatives in Russia and East Central Europe, ed. Katharina Bluhm and Mihai Varga (London: 2019); Katharina Bluhm, “Modernization, Geopolitics and the New Russian Conservatives,” Arbeitsbeitspapiere des Osteuropa-Instituts, Freie Universität Berlin, 2016, . Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology: Critique of Modern German Philosophy According to Its Representatives Feuerbach, B. Bauer and Stirner, and of German Socialism according to Its Various Prophets, in Marx and Engels: Collected Works, ed. Jack Cohen et al. (London: 2010), 60. See Witold Rodkiewicz and Jadwiga Rogoża, “Potemkin Conservatism: An Ideological Tool of the Kremlin,” Point of View, no. 48, Ośrodek Studiów Wschodnich im. Marka Karpia/Centre for Eastern Studies, Warsaw, February 2015, accessed 11 November 2017, . Mikhail Remizov, “Moskva stala vosprinimat’sia kak stolitsa ‘konservativnogo interna­ tsionala,’” RusskaiaIdea: Sait konservativnoi politicheskoi mysli, 2016, accessed 11 April

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concepts and structures for their soft-power ambitions, such as Russkii mir (Russian World) and Russian Orthodoxy, which considers itself “in symphony” with the state once more. Despite the demands of some ideologists and Putin’s own public turn toward conservative values and philosophy in 2011–13, he has not yet fully elevated the new conservatism to the ranks of an official ideology of the state and prefers to stick to political pragmatism. On the other hand, the conservative ideologists comprise a relatively stable circle of people who developed and published their ideas at a time when they were still a minority among Russian elite circles. In light of these intellectual biographies, they would probably not noiselessly leave the stage if one day they were thought to be expendable again. Although the new Russian conservatives also style Putin as a decisive, charismatic leader, they are not concerned with constructing an ideology of “Putinism” that would be tied to the person of the president. Both the universal aspirations of conservatism as a counter-ideology and its latent critique of its own elites—which is not restricted to liberals and also, occasionally, includes Putin—prevent that. New Russian conservatism has several immediate predecessors. The neoEurasians are one of these. Aleksandr Dugin, currently their most well-known representative internationally, has been a political activist since the 1980s and is heavily influenced by the European New Right, and by Italian fascist and German geopolitical thinking.9 He rose from a marginal intellectual to a leading figure of neo-Eurasianism after his book, The Foundation of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia, became a bestseller in 1997. In 2001, Dugin founded the initial Eurasian movement and, a year later, the Eurasian Party, which he transformed into the International Eurasian Movement (IEM) after the party’s failure in the parliamentary election of 2003. At the pinnacle of his academic career, Dugin held a chair in the sociology of international relations at Lomonosov State University in Moscow (2009–14). He also led the Center for Conservative Research at the department of sociology at the same institution. Dugin’s colorful personality and his international presence10 sometimes obscure the fact that the IEM was cofounded by some well-known Russian econo-

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2018, . See Marlene Laruelle, Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire (Washington, DC: 2008); Andreas Umland, The Nature of Russian “Neo-Eurasianism”: Approaches to Aleksandr Dugin’s Post-Soviet Movement of Radical Anti-Americanism (Armonk, NY: 2009); Charles Clover, Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia’s New Nationalism (New Haven, CT: 2016). See Marlene Laruelle (ed.), Eurasianism and the European Far Right: Reshaping the European-Russian Relationship (Lanham, MD: 2015); Anton Shekhovtsov, Russia and the Western Right (London: 2018).

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mists whose investment in neo-Eurasianism did not stem from imperial power fantasies. The main characteristic of their decidedly critical but not principally anti-capitalist stance is the firmness of their opposition to both neoliberalism in Russia (also and particularly under Putin) and the manner of the country’s integration into the contemporary global division of labor.11 Their critique faces both outward and inward—outward against “the West” and the global “financial oligarchy,” which is said to have blocked alternative paths of development for Russia since the beginning of the post-Soviet transformation toward a market economy; and inward against the homegrown elite, which has been long perceived as corrupt and lacking in both courage and ideas, and which thus has merely copied Western models, and to some extent still does. In contrast to the neo-Eurasians, who subordinate conservatism to geopolitical thinking, a second current of younger authors began in the 2000s to establish conservatism as an overarching counter-ideology to liberalism and socialism.12 This second current crystallized around the Institute for Dynamic Conservatism, which considered itself the reservoir of “a new generation of conservative intellectuals in Russia.”13 In 2005, the institute published a more than 800-page treatise entitled Russian Doctrine. Discussed within conservative circles over the course of two years, including with the future Patriarch Kirill, it represents the most comprehensive draft of an alternative road map for state, economy, and society in Russia produced by the conceptual ideologists of that period.14 In 2012, the institute morphed into the Izborsky Club, the broadest alliance thus far of conservatives, nationalists, and Eurasians in Russia, who claim to unify under the umbrella of “social conservatism.”15 Marlene Laruelle point11

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The most well-known among these economists are Mikhail L. Khazin and Andrei B. Kobiakov, who published an influential monograph forecasting the end of the Pax Americana in 2003. See A.B. Kobiakov and M.L. Khazin, Zakat imperii dollara i konets “Pax Ameri­cana” (Moscow: 2003). Despite ideological differences, there are overlaps with Dugin’s Eurasianism. “Ob Institute Dinamicheskogo Konservatizma” at the former website of the club, accessed 11 April 2018, . The founders of the institute are the philosopher Vitaly V. Averianov, who is close to the Orthodox Church, the economist Andrei B. Kobiakov, and the author Vladimir A. Kucherenko, who writes political pamphlets under the pseudonym Maksim Kalashnikov. For more details, see Bluhm, “Modernization”; Marlene Laruelle, “The Izborky Club, or the New Conservative Avant-Garde in Russia,” The Russian Review 75, no. 4 (2016): 626–44. Izborsky klub, “O klube,” 2017, accessed 5 December 2017, . The club was founded by Aleksandr Prokhanov, a well-known writer, nationalist, and editor of the weekly newspaper Den’ with long-lasting connections to the military and intelligence service. Dugin acted as a regular author for Den’ during the 1990s. Other Eurasianists and co-authors of the Russian Doctrine joined the club as well, such as the

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edly characterizes their mix of loyalty to Putin and criticism of the ruling class as “systemic opposition.”16 Even at its creation in September 2012—after the Arab Spring and before the crisis in Ukraine—the Izborsky Club’s members prophesied an impending hot war between Russia and “the West.” To insure victory in this war, they demand nothing less than a radical replacement of the current power elite with patriotic forces and the development of a comprehensive ideology of mobilization. The Izborsky Club has heavily promoted the aggressive turn of Russia’s foreign policy toward the West, especially in the case of Ukraine, and they agitate—with less success—for a state-driven developmental model in the economy.17 A key figure in this regard is the economist and politician Sergei Glaz’ev, who served as a political consultant until 2018 and who used publications to make himself heard in the debate about the future direction of economic policy.18 These caveats notwithstanding, the club occupies a dedicated place in official propaganda with its numerous regional branches, multimedia appearances, and publications.19 Still, its influence in this area is not uncontested. “The Kremlin” does not allow the Izborsky Club and Dugin’s IEM to claim complete sovereignty of interpretation over either conservatism or Eurasianism. Several other think tanks and clubs have been set up. Among them was the Institute for Socio-Economic and Political Research (ISEPR), a think tank founded in 2012 that began issuing the journal Essays on Conservatism two years later. One of the editors of the journal was Mikhail Remizov, who belongs to the younger generation of the new conservatives in Russia and also contributed to the

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economists Mikhail L. Khazin and Andrei B. Kobiakov, and the well-known TV moderator Mikhail V. Leont’ev. With Bishop Tikhon (Georgy Shevkunov), head of the Sretensky monastery and a famous filmmaker, best-selling author, and Putin’s spiritual guide—a prominent figure in the ultraconservative circles of the Russian Orthodox Church entered into the Izborsky Club. For a couple of years the only female member was the historian and politician Nataliia A. Narochnitskaia. She serves as president of the Foundation for the Investigation of Historical Perspectives, established in 2004, and as director of the European Institute for Democracy and Cooperation, founded in Paris in 2008. (Its New York branch was later closed by the United States.) Since 2011, she has delivered official greetings to the annual conferences organized by the German magazine Compact, which opposes the German political “establishment,” the United States, and the European Union. Laruelle, “The Izborsky Club,” 629. Bluhm, “Russia’s Conservative Counter-Movement”; Elena Chebankova, “Contemporary Russian Conservatism,” Post-Soviet Affairs 32, no. 1 (2016): 28–54. See, among many others, Sergei Glaz’ev, Ekonomika Budushchego: Est’ li u Rossii Shans? (Moscow: 2016). It now claims to have almost 30 regional offices, among others in Serbia, Moldova, in the Baltic states, and in the Donbass region. See Aleksandr A. Prokhanov, “Simfoniia Russkogo Mira,” in Doktrina Russkogo Mira, ed. Prokhnanov et al. (Moscow: 2016), 7–14, at 11.

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Russian Doctrine, but opposes many positions of the Izborsky Club.20 He is attempting to establish a Russian conservatism that does not embrace the civilization discourse and appears more moderate at first glance.21 In the context of the creation of the Eurasian Union, the Russian government established its own Eurasian Movement of the Russian Federation (EMRF) in 2015.22 Although this “loyal” civil society organization has institutional partners in several bodies of the Eurasian Union, it is quite obviously first and foremost a competitor to Dugin’s IEM. The chairperson of the new movement is a young German Russian, Yuri Kofner. In the same year he also founded the movement’s Center for Continental Cooperation (CCC), with offices in Munich and Moscow and strong links to the European Right. This pro­ ject seems to have failed, and Kofner now has an academic position at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.23 Kofner takes pains to distinguish himself and his organization semantically from Dugin’s IEM. He rejects IEM’s imperial ambition and radical anti-liberalism.24 2

Conservatism as Counter-ideology to Postmodernity

Several processes contributed to the genesis of the new conservatism in Russia in the 2000s, which can only be sketched out briefly. Among them are the turning away of a large part of the Russian elite from the failed liberal project of transformation; the accompanying search for an alternative model of socioeconomic development beyond the principles of the Washington Consensus; disappointment in the fact that the “the West” and Europe fail to understand the need for this search; and the aspirations of the Russian government and its strategists to consolidate their power base by increasing the ideological 20

Remizov works as political advisor and runs an independent think tank, the Institute of National Strategy (INS). The Essays ceased its regular publication at the end of 2018. 21 See Bluhm, “Russia’s Conservative Counter-Movement”; Andrei Melville, “Russian Political Ideology,” in Russia: Strategy, Policy, and Administration, ed. Irvin Studin (London: 2018), 31–42. 22 See Evraziiskoe dvizhenie Rossiiskoi Federatsii, . 23 The CCC counted as partners on their expensive website the magazine Compact: Magazin für Soveränität, which is close to the Alternative for Germany party (AfD), and numbers the Austrian Identitarian Movement among its institutional partners. The Center for Continental Cooperation was also explicitly open to the “left.” See their list of members at , accessed 20 October 2016. 24 Iurii Kofner, “Chetvertaia politicheskaia teoriia: Bol’she, chem prosto anti-liberalizm?,” Evraziiskoe dvizhenie Rossiiskoi Federatsii, 27 December 2015, accessed 11 April 2018, .

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coherence of the United Russia party.25 As far as economic policy was concerned, from the beginning the new Russian conservatives have advocated for a Keynesian support for domestic demand, moderate protectionism, and a state-led industrial and innovation policy. They base these ideas on the conviction that if Russia attempted a catch-up process of modernization again, it could only succeed alongside a radical transformation of the current global economic order toward a multipolar world—a conviction massively reinforced by the global financial crisis of 2007–9. They see Russia’s world-historical mission in this context: Russia, the country that connects Europe and Asia, needs to take a leadership role in creating and balancing this multipolar world order. Thus it was liberalism, particularly in its neoliberal variant, that long served as the ideology against which the contours of the new conservatism in Russia were developed. The notion of an unfair, asymmetrical integration into the Western-dominated “world system”26 led to the expression of common interests with the “Global South,” while at the same time overlapping in important areas with the agendas of Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz in Hungary and Jarosław Kaczyński’s PiS in Poland.27 In their search for allies, the Russian conservatives became increasingly interested in the aforementioned “dissatisfaction of the West with itself.” “Postmodern” has become a signal word especially for those Russian conservatives building bridges to Western right-wing discourse.28 The term is used in two ways. On the one hand, “postmodernity” describes a “transformation of modern Western civilization,” that is to say, societal processes unleashed by the liberalization of capital markets and the cultural revolution of 1968; on the other, 25

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Many people in Russia have turned away from the Western model and are taking part in the attending renaissance of conservative thought, not just the conceptual ideologists discussed here. A good example is the well-known Russian sociologist Leonid Ionin, who takes conditions in Russia as much to task as those in “the West” in his 2010 monograph Apdeit konservatizma (Moscow: 2010). Although he explicitly refuses to endorse conservatism as a political ideology, he considers a renaissance of conservative thinking in the mold of Karl Mannheim necessary to overcome the deep crisis in Russia and “the West.” The writings of Immanuel Wallerstein, one of the most prominent representatives of world-systems theory, were read by Russian conservatives early on, but they were of course not the only point of reference for this line of argument. See Bluhm and Varga, New Conservatives. See Vitalii V. Aver’ianov, Marina Voskanian, and Leonid Ivashov, “Drugaia, kholodnaia voina: Strategiia dlia Rossii,” 2014, accessed 11 April 2018, ; Aver’ianov et al., “Barbekiu na grani bezdny: Tendentsii global’noi degradatsii,” Izborskii klub, 2015, accessed 11 April 2018, ; Mikhail V. Remizov et al., “Konservatizm kak faktor ‘miagkoi sily’ Rossii,” Institut natsional’noi strategii, 2014, accessed 11 November 2017, . For Poland and Hungary, see Bluhm and Varga, New Conservatives.

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postmodernism represents the accompanying ideology, which relies especially on French poststructuralism and the sociology of knowledge with its key concept, “the social construction of reality.” The way postmodernity and postmodernism are used by new conservatives in Russia and Europe shows clear links to the French New Right,29 where postmodernist philosophy has been an enemy for a long time. From there the merger of liberalism and postmodernism into a new “totalitarian” ideology (enforced by the transnational class of financial capitalists, large corporations, and transnational organizations) has become a major frame in the fight of the new illiberal conservatives against two sides: the market liberals and the post-1968 Left. It can be assumed that Dugin translated many of these ideas into the Russian context. But as Mark Lipovetsky and Boris Noordenbos point out, the experience of failed liberalization, state decline, and the broader consumption of postmodernist culture, philosophy, and lifestyle in the 1990s provided the background for a specific twist in the marriage of liberalism and postmodernism. The new Russian conservatives use postmodernism not only as a political term but enter this fight with postmodern tools. They present their anti-liberal propaganda in a “quasi-ironic form,” postmodern fashion, which amalgamates “postmodern irony and ideological enthusiasm.”30 Lipovetsky and Noordenbos have analyzed recent Russian patriotic literature for these elements, but their observation also applies to many of the analytical texts of the conceptual ideologists. The Russian critique of the postmodern West, post-Europe, and so on, has also merged quickly with the critical topos of decadence—the decadence of the West—that has accompanied Russian thought since the 19th century. Characterized as postmodern, the contemporary state of Western civilization thus becomes the result of a malformation of modernity since 1968 on both levels—the level of real societal processes of transformation and the level of ideology. By labeling postmodernity “totalitarian,” they associate it, at least semantically, with the Soviet Union. Yet, while parts of the European New Right reject both postmodernity and modernity, the attitude of the new illiberal conservatives in Europe and Russia toward modernity is more complicated. A closer look reveals that they often do 29 30

In the right-wing construction of postmodernity, Alain de Benoist probably plays a key intellectual role. Mark Lipovetskii, Paralogii: Transformatsii (post)modernistskogo diskursa v russkoi kul’ture 1920–2000-kh godov (Moscow: 2008), 503; Boris Noordenbos, “Ironic Imperialism: How Russian Patriots are Reclaiming Postmodernism,” Studies in European Thought 63 (2011): 147–58, at 154–55.

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not (completely) reject modernity and European Enlightenment.31 Instead of a continuum of aberration or even decay from modernity to postmodernity, conservatives often turn the second against the “first” or “organized” modernity of industrial societies. This conceptualization has two major advantages. First, it makes it possible to extend the concept of “tradition” by incorporating at least some of those values, structures, and institutions that Ulrich Beck refers to as “components of a traditionality inherent in industrialism” or “counter-modernity” into the “first modernity,” such as the ideal of a standardized nuclear family consisting of man and wife, a strong identification with large collectives (classes, nations), and an unbroken relationship toward scientifictechnological progress.32 As a core concept of modern conservatism, tradition does not mean a yearning for a unreachable state in the past but a reference point for assessing current states in politics and societies in order to change them.33 In this sense, the new conservatives confront post-1968 Western societies (and the institutional and cultural transfers to post-Soviet Russia) with an imagined classical modernity as a normative standard. Second, the integration of modernity into the concept of “tradition” allows the new conservatism to distinguish itself both from modern variants of fundamentalist traditionalism34 and from the renunciation of the Enlightenment by more radical right-wing thinking—a position presented in Russia by Aleksandr Dugin and his adherents.35 Other Russian conservatives explicitly stress the need for a new “successful synthesis of conservatism and Enlightenment,” as in a programmatic study on “conservatism as Russia’s ‘soft power,’” compiled under Remizov’s direction at the National Strategy Institute together with the Izborsky member Andrei Kobiakov.36 The study was commissioned by the ISEPR. Oleg Avdeev, who conducted a research project on Russia’s conservatism at Moscow State University, argues in a similar vein for a “progressive 31

But this complication is also not new. In his studies on the Conservative Revolution in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, Stefan Breuer points to a similar phenomenon: the representatives of the New Right of that era, too, whom the new Russian conservatives read with some interest, “affirmed” a “first modernity.” See Stefan Breuer, Anatomie der konservativen Revolution (Darmstadt: 1993); Breuer, Die radikale Rechte in Deutschland 1871–1945: Eine politische Ideengeschichte (Stuttgart: 2010), 23. 32 Beck, Risk Society, 14. 33 See Freeden, “Morpohological Analysis of Ideology,” 125. 34 See Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, Die Antinomien der Moderne: Die jakobinischen Grundzüge der Moderne und des Fundamentalismus; Heterodoxien, Utopismus und Jakobinismus in der Konstitution fundamentalistischer Bewegungen, trans. Georg Stauth (Frankfurt: 1998). 35 See Aleksandr Dugin, Chetvertaia politicheskaia teoriia: Rossiia i politicheskie idei XXI veka (Moscow: 2009). 36 Remizov et al., “Konservatizm,” 8.

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conservatism.”37 In a different way but still clearly in this line the Eurasianist Aleksandr Panarin envisaged the return to “Enlightenment on a new basis” that interprets humanity as “creative producer.”38 The critique of postmodernity from the new Russian conservatives is usually an intellectual amalgam combining older concepts and motifs of European and Russian conservative thought, such as respect for the authority of parents, “traditional” religiosity, a collective concept of freedom rather than “abstract” individualism and individual rights, the ideal of a strong state and leader combined with an anti-institutionalist attitude, and so on, with references to an imagined classical modernity. Although Russian critics of postmodernism mainly refer to French poststructuralism, they also advance arguments more reminiscent of the sociological works of Zygmunt Bauman or the cultural pessimism of Daniel Bell. Remizov refers to Bell explicitly when he bemoans the loss of “the ethics of labor and the family.”39 Even Dugin, when he thunders against mass consumption and mass education, appreciates the (bourgeois) high culture of classical modernity.40 In this sense, anti-liberalism transforms into a critique of a liberalism pushed too far (which flips into its opposite), postmodernity becomes an “exaggerated modernity” (which betrays its foundations), and it represents an “overly open society” (which loses its national identity), and a hyper-individualism (which has forgotten the serious social issues of the vast majority of people). Russian conservatives in particular argue that this blocks the catch-up development of less advanced societies. Remizov states that the modernization of the economy and society has never succeeded anywhere within the

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Oleg Avdeev, “Konservatizm kak faktor miagkoi sily Rossii,” Tetradi po Konservatizmu 2, no. 1 (2014): 66–77. Aleksandr Panarin, Pravoslavnaia tsivilizatsiia (Moscow: 2014), 1095. Bauman, however, is not cited. Mikhail Remizov, Russkie i gosudarstvo (Moscow: 2016), 10. In this sense, even Aleksandr Dugin argues for the classic humanistic “Hochkultur”: “The spectator of postmodernism basically understands nothing of what happens; there is just a stream of pictures, which amuse.… The only channel that works according to a different rhythm is that dedicated to ‘culture,’ because there one can still find unhurried histories of composers, artists, scholars, theatre—that is, the remnants of modernity.” Dugin, Fourth Political Theory, trans. Mark Sloboda and Michael Millerman (London: 2012), 84. Postmodernism and mass culture are also a repeated topic of the official new Eurasian Movement, ERMF. See, for example, Il’ia Kolodiazhnyi, “Pod piatoi postmoderna i masskul’ta,” Evraziiskoe dvizhenie Rossiiskoi Federatsii, 5 March 2017, (first published in the newspaper Literary Russia, Saint Petersburg, 20 February 2017).

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context of a completely open domestic market, political system, and cultural sphere.41 The abovementioned programmatic study on “conservatism as Russia’s ‘soft power,’” compiled under Remizov and others, is an excellent example of how the concept of an imagined classical modernity blends with current conservative criticism of postmodern liberalism.42 The study identifies three transformative processes of modernity: dehumanization, de-sovereigntization, and desocialization. Since these processes summarize the new Russian conservatives’ critique of postmodernity very well, I will briefly explain them.  2.1 Dehumanization The thesis of postmodern dehumanization revolves around the concept of “deconstruction,” which conservatives by and large understand as unlimited relativism and dissolution of all boundaries that, in their eyes, make up human personality, from boundaries of gender to the psychophysical barriers of the biological transformation of human beings. In one breath, the study lists reproductive and biotechnologies, euthanasia and abortion, LGBT rights and gender equality to prove that there is no limit to postmodernity’s molding of human beings. Its authors stress that they do not oppose “women’s healthy and rational struggle for equal rights”; rather, they reject a “hypertrophied feminism” as an “ideology” that allies with the LGBT movement and human rights lobby and promotes “absurd ideas of gender equality” that advocate the blurring of gender identities and establish totalitarian language rules. They also critique forced postmodern creativity and self-actualization, which they consider to be nothing but an extended commodification of human labor. In the end, they posit that recurring references to purportedly universal rules and values serve only to safeguard Western claims to hegemony.43 Another topic the new conservative thinkers debate under the heading of “dehumanization” is the ideology of “ecologism” or “environmentalism,”44 which they explicitly separate from an acknowledgement that natural 41 Remizov, Russkie i gosudarstvo. 42 Remizov et al., “Konservatizm.” Like so many of the conceptual ideologists’ texts, it has several authors. Among them are the economist Andrei Kobiakov, already mentioned earlier, who is a permanent member of the Izborsky Club and was a cofounder of Dugin’s IEM. Even though Remizov does not belong to the Izborsky Club himself, his programmatic statements on postmodernity show strong similarities to those of the Izborsky authors collective. See Aver’ianov et al., “Barbekiu.” 43 Remizov et al., “Konservatizm,” 11–16. 44 Ibid., 13–14. See also Mathew Humphrey, “Green Ideology,” in Freeden et al., The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies, 422–38, at 424.

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resources need to be used with care.45 They consider ecologism anti-human because its central “doctrine” of “the equality or even priority of the rights of nature over the rights of man” runs counter to the ethical anthropocentrism of modernity. Moreover, it discredits technological progress and economic growth and thus delegitimizes two central aims of Russian policy, (re)industrialization and population growth. Indeed, the conservative ideologists suspect that tangible geopolitical interests are behind the discourse of alleged “global problems” that “the West” foists upon the rest of the world. In reality, they suspect, “the West” is less invested in environmental protection than in securing its economic superiority.46 One last point should also be mentioned, which falls under the “dehumanization” heading but also undergirds the idea of de-sovereigntization: the critique of the “destruction of the citizens’ right to private life.” This bellicose turn of phrase is simply another form of cultural media criticism claiming that the omnipresence of the Internet and of social networks controlled by global corporations ultimately lead to the loss of the “sovereignty of the person” and to “total control” of the individual.47 2.2 De-sovereigntization First and foremost, the de-sovereigntization thesis takes aim at the interventionist foreign policy of the United States, which throws its “conquered territories” into chaos because it cannot really control them. Beyond that, it also critiques all global economic, environmental, and social standards and norms created by (Western-dominated) international organizations and structures of civil society, as well as the global financial system shaped by the US dollar as lead currency and the influence of large Western corporations.48 Since “the 45

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Nevertheless, the text calls for an expansion of renewable energy—a characteristic of ecologism as an ideology. See Remizov et al., “Konservatizm,” 13–14; Aver’ianov et al., “Barbekiu.” It is no accident that the idea of the decadence of postmodernity obscures the view of the ecological aspects of what Beck called “reflexive modernization” or the risk society. Beck, Risk Society. After all, the authors call for a “return to the major projects of modernity”—space exploration and nuclear energy. They thus name the projects with which the Soviet Union propelled its catch-up modernization forward—not because they want to perpetuate exactly these “key technologies,” but because they want to highlight that a national model of development, which they see threatened by ecologism, depends on a deliberately planned establishment and expansion of key technologies. In a similar vein, other authors criticize the idea of zero growth as a neo-Malthusian ideology that “the West” is trying to force upon all other countries by way of transnational institutions and environmental activists. See Aver’ianov et al., “Barbekiu.” Remizov et al., “Konservatizm,” 14. Ibid., 17.

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West” no longer drives the modernization of the rest of the world, Russian conservatives propose refuting “the right to intervene” and returning to the classic concept of nation-state sovereignty, that is, to the concept of state responsibility within clearly defined borders. This refutation of global governance is linked to the return of a “national model of development” and a general critique of Western democracy’s failure, mostly discussed under the labels “postliberalism” and “post-democracy.”49  2.3 De-socialization Finally, the desocialization thesis deals with the neglect of the social question, that is, of the “old” versus the “new” inequality, to reference a central distinction in the sociology of inequality.50 The study’s authors concentrate exclusively on the situation in Western countries. In the face of massive inequality in Russia, which Russian conservatives do problematize, this can only mean one thing: it is possible to reject the United States and especially Europe as social models because they fail to deliver on what they once promised. Among the symptoms of crisis, the authors mention the decline of the middle class and the accompanying inability to absorb social conflict, as well as the relative decline in wages compared to capital income, which is caused by the uncoupling of the financial markets from the real economy, the increase of executive salaries, and the movement of jobs to developing countries. The negative image is complemented by hints at “active immigration” from the Global South, which only exacerbates pressures on the social infrastructure of Western countries. The study’s reference to the increasing fragmentation of society in the name of group rights closes the circle back to the dehumanization thesis. This interpretation of postmodernity contains relevant concepts, motifs, and themes of the new illiberal counter-movement that one can find also in other countries and contexts in which such claims are articulated. The specific combination varies to some extent. For example, the concept of postmodernity is rarely used in the fight over Russia’s economic developmental model between the conservative and liberal camp in the Russian elite. But Russian conservative ideologists seem to be well aware that their critique of postmodernity and postmodernism resonates with Western audiences.51 At the same time, many new conservatives in Europe (and to some extent also in Russia) do 49 50 51

In this context, one text of influence is Colin Crouch, Post-Democracy (Cambridge: 2004). Remizov et al., “Konservatizm,” 18–19. This is evident from the English and German translations of Dugin’s Fourth Political Theory, which omit long passages on the transformation of the Russian Empire, apparently because the editors deemed them unsuitable for a Western audience. The editions by the right-wing publisher Arktos compensate for this by adding a special appendix that

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not perceive themselves to be as completely antagonistic to liberalism as most of the members of the Izborsky Club claim to be. The suggestion by illiberal conservatives in the West that the old liberalism of the 19th century has to be saved seems to find little backing in Russia’s conservative circles at the moment.52 German author Dimitrios Kisoudis gives an idea of the conservative attempt to rescue liberalism from its current totalitarian merger with postmodernity when he states that Regardless of the smart palaver about it, postmodernity is exactly what Konstantin Leontev calls a “secondary simplifying mixture.” After the highest complexity was reached in Western Europe during the modern age, we witness today a mixture of things that used to be properly separate: genders, peoples, religions. This mixture is accomplished through “anti-discrimination” and through bans on distinctions, which the state transposes from public law to private life.…  These policies are anything but liberal, and they are the opposite of anarchy. They replace liberty of contract, which derives directly from private property as one of the highest principles of liberalism. I can decide for myself whom I hire, whom I marry, with whom I enter into a contract. Bans on discrimination in private life are illegitimate, female quotas on corporate boards are totalitarian because they tear down the boundary between private and public.53 3

Russia as Its Own Civilization or as the “Other Europe”

For the conservative ideological critique of neoliberalism and postmodernity, the differentiation between “the West” and Europe or between Western and Eastern Europe is not so important. Sometimes “the West” includes (Western) Europe, sometimes it focuses primarily on the United States as its current

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contains statements by Dugin on postmodernity and post-liberalism. The publisher did not clearly mark these changes. See Bluhm, “Russia’s Conservative Counter-Movement.” Dimitrios Kisoudis, Goldgrund Eurasien: Der neue kalte Krieg und das Dritte Rom (Waltrop: 2015), 80–93. Kisoudis describes Putin’s practice of government as a “liberal authoritarianism,” which combines the state’s assertiveness toward internal and external enemies with respect for the independence of business. This is not the place to discuss in detail the specifically Russian combination of liberal elements with state and network capitalism. Nonetheless, Kisoudis’s preference for the Russian flat tax and his rejection of progressive taxation as a “socialist” concept is clearly not in line with the statism of the Russian new conservatives. See Bluhm, “Russia’s Conservative Counter-Movement.”

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power center and as the carrier of Anglo-Saxon liberal culture. The concept of modernity, however, is different. In this context, the differentiation between “the West” and Europe remains important because it is the basis of positively connoting Europe, or more precisely, continental Europe as the origin and carrier of classical modernity, and thus separating it from the postmodern “West.” Broadly speaking, the conceptual ideologists of the new Russian conservatism use Europe as a mirror for Russia in two ways, and both draw on examples from Russian philosophy and literature. The first variant, emphatically represented by the Izborsky Club, builds on Russia’s identity as an multiethnic empire—be it as Russkii mir (Russian World, including large parts of Eastern Europe) or be it as Eurasia—which has always been a unique civilization based on Russian Orthodoxy with a culture distinct from Europe.54 These concepts create conceptual tensions when it comes to countries that border the civilizational core, given the high value the new conservatives place on national sovereignty. The suggested solution is simple: when these countries correctly understand their interests and display cultural affinity with the core, their integration by the core does not damage their national sovereignty. By contrast, the second variant draws on descriptions of Russia as a part of a united European civilization—a position that has become increasingly marginalized over the years but is still represented in the abovementioned study on Russia’s conservative soft power.55 The proponents of this perspective explicitly caution against letting the critique of “post-Europe” lead to a definition of Russia as a part of Asia or as “non-Europe,” as is increasingly the case. In their view, the country is in danger of losing not only potential allies in the West, but also its own European roots, which is why they conceptualize Russia as “the other Europe.”56 Conservative ideologists who advocate the thesis of the distinctiveness of Russian civilization like to add that the fundamental institutions of modernity (for example, strong protections for private property and representative—as

54 Kofner’s EMRF tries to promote a softer version of Eurasian conservatism as an alternative to Western postmodernism and postliberalism. See, for example, Aleksei Toma, “V poiskakh evraziiskogo konservatizma,” Evraziiskoe dvizhenie Rossiiskoi Federatsii (first published 2013), posted 16 July 2016, accessed 11 April 2018, at . 55 Remizov et al., “Konservatizm,” 32–35. See also Adeev, “Konservatizm kak faktor.” 56 Remizov et al., “Konservatizm,” 32. The authors of the study count Euroskeptics among these potential allies and dialogue partners, particularly “sovereignty-ists,” the “patriots” of European nation-states, as well as pragmatists among European business leaders (ibid., 41–42).

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opposed to direct—democracy) are alien to Russian culture.57 A non-antithetical incorporation of classical modernity into the “tradition” can thus only be conceptualized with the help of Eisenstadt’s theory of multiple modernities, which posits that non-Western countries do not adopt the whole cultural and institutional program of Western modernity yet still belong to modernity. The Izborsky “imperialists” can therefore reject “alien influences of individualism, rationalism and amorality” on the one hand and embrace the Soviet project of modernization as a part of Russia’s tradition, which supposedly worked together smoothly with Orthodoxy, on the other.58 Authors who are inclined to assume a common European civilization, in contrast, struggle much less with accepting liberal fundamental institutions as part of imagined classical modernity. This difference in the identity construction of Russia has consequences for attitudes toward Europe. For those who consider Russia a distinct civilization, European civilization becomes a tolerated out-group. The neo-Eurasians have made an offer of strategic cooperation to the European New Right: once the American hegemon has been expelled from Europe and its transatlantic instrument of power, the European Union, has been dissolved, Europe can, in cooperation with Eurasia, gain new significance in world politics—or at least protect itself from further marginalization.59 The competing interpretation of Russia as the “other Europe,” by contrast, foregrounds the argument that the “American project of a great West” divides Europe because it excludes Russia.60 As the other—and better—Europe, Russia has another mission in this context: it carries the true and common European values and becomes the guardian of classical modernity. In this role, its task is to contribute to Europe finding itself again, both politically and culturally. This Europe is envisioned as a “Europe of (sovereign) nations,” as a “Eu57 58 59

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See, for example, Andrei Kobiakov, Vitalii Aver’ianov, and Vladimir Kucherenko (eds.), Russkaia Doktrina, Moscow 2005, accessed 21 April 2018, . See, for example, Novorossii: “Izborskii klub Patrioty vseia Rusi, ob”ediniaites’!,” Izborskii klub, 11 November 2017, . Dugin is the frontman for this position. Kisoudis joins him when he argues that even if Russia became a new hegemon in Europe, it would still be preferable to its transatlantic counterpart because Russia (like China) does not aim for cultural convergence but would allow Europe to be an independent pole that attracts friends and repels foes. Kisoudis, Goldgrund, 101. See Remizov et al., “Konservatizm,” 42–43. See also Adeev, “Konservatizm kak faktor.” A good overview of the long and complex Russian debate about the concept of a “Great Europe” is provided in Aleksei A. Gromyko et al., Bolshaia Evropa: Idei, real’nost’, per­ spektivy (Moscow: 2014).

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rope of fatherlands,” including Russia—a “great and ambitious Europe con­scious of its historical roots.”61 It is this conception, in particular, that the “continentalism” of the European New Right relates to.62 How, one might wonder, would Russia be able to help continental Europe to overcome its state of postmodern decadence? According to the conceptual ideologists, the Soviet Union was excluded from all those developments that have shaped “the West” since the late 1960s. Precisely because Russia and Eastern Europe were spared the effects of postmodern transformation during the Cold War, they were better able to preserve the values of classical modernity and could thus contribute to stopping and reversing changes in European values. 4 Conclusion In his broad morphological approach, Freeden emphasizes that ideologies emerge from “all levels of social articulation.”63 The conceptual ideologists discussed here belong to the wider circles of the ruling elite or to the potential counter-elite. Their ideas can neither be equated with Russian official policy nor provide insights into the actual dissemination of conservative ideologemes among the Russian population. That said, it appears there is much truth in Andrei Melville’s argument that the new Russian conservatism rests on a broad consensus of the government, much of the Russian elite, and a majority in the population, which does not mean, however, that they all embrace it fully.64 Aside from the dominant elite’s desire to maintain their power, Melville attributes the rise of conservatism in the population to an increasingly pervasive bureaucracy, the lack of an independent middle class, and nostalgia for a lost empire, which is reinforced by state mass media. Yet, the still reverberating shock of Russia’s transition to capitalism, which has discredited liberalism as an ideology as well as “the West” as a model, and disappointment about “the West’s” lack of interest in serious cooperation with Russia should also not be underestimated. This analysis has focused on the conceptualization of postmodernity and modernity in interaction with Western illiberal conservative thought. This 61 62 63 64

Remizov et al., “Konservatizm,” 43. Aligis Klimaitis, Europäischer Kontinentalismus: Wo steht Europa im fragwürdig gewordenen Transatlantismus? (Vienna: 2015), is a key text here. Freeden, “Morphological Analysis,” 116. Melville, “Russian Political Ideology.” The author finds that this consensus also and particularly appeals to young people.

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connection is crucial for the combination of tradition and development in Russia’s new conservative thinking, which aims at a thorough change of the post-communist as well as the global order. Therefore, the new Russian conservatism does not just stress the particularity or uniqueness of Russia’s values and culture but combines this with the rebirth of a Russian mission to participate in or even lead a new “Conservative International” (including the despised West). Translated from the German by Daniel Becker65 References Avdeev, Oleg. “Konservatizm kak faktor miagkoi sily Rossii” [Conservatism as a factor in Russian soft power]. Tetradi po Konservatizmu 2, no. 1 (2014): 66–77. Aver’ianov, Vitalii, Aleksandr Eliseev, Maksim Kalashnikov, Aleksei Komogortsev, Shamil’ Sultanov, and Konstantin Cheremnykh. “Barbekiu na grani bezdny: Ten­ dentsii global’noi degradatsii” [Barbecue at the edge of the abyss: Tendencies toward global degradation]. Izborskii klub. 2015. Accessed 11 April 2018, . Aver’ianov, Vitalii, Marina Voskanian, and Leonid Ivashov. “Drugaia kholodnaia voina” [Another cold war]. Izborskii klub. Accessed 11 April 2018, . Beck, Ulrich. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: 1992. Bluhm, Katharina. “Modernization, Geopolitics and the New Russian Conservatives.” Arbeitsbeitspapiere des Osteuropa-Instituts. Freie Universität Berlin. 2016. . Bluhm, Katharina. “Russia’s Conservative Counter-Movement: Genesis, Actors and Core Concepts.” In New Conservatives in Russia and East Central Europe, edited by Katharina Bluhm and Mihai Varga, 25–53. London: 2018. Bluhm, Katharina, and Mihai Varga. “Introduction: Towards a New Illiberal Conser­ vatism in Russia and Central Eastern Europe.” In New Conservatives in Russia and East Central Europe, edited by Katharina Bluhm and Mihai Varga, 1–23. London: 2018. Breuer, Stefan. Anatomie der konservativen Revolution. Darmstadt: 1993.

65 The text is a thoroughly revised and updated version of a previous article published in German under the title “Machtgedanken: Ideologische Schlüsselkonzepte der neuen russischen Konservativen,” in Mittelweg 36 (December 2016): 56–75.

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Breuer, Stefan. Die radikale Rechte in Deutschland 1871–1945: Eine politische Ideenge­ schichte. Stuttgart: 2010. Chebankova, Elena. “Contemporary Russian Conservatism.” Post-Soviet Affairs 32, no. 1 (2016): 28–54. Clover, Charles. Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia’s New Nationalism. New Haven, CT: 2016. Crouch, Colin. Post-Democracy. Cambridge: 2004. Dugin, Aleksandr. Chetvertaia politicheskaia teoriia: Rossiia i politicheskie idei XXI veka [The fourth political theory: Russia and political ideas of the 21st century]. Moscow: 2009. Dugin, Aleksandr. Fourth Political Theory. Translated by Mark Sloboda and Michael Millerman. London: 2012. Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. Die Antinomien der Moderne: Die jakobinischen Grundzüge der Moderne und des Fundamentalismus; Heterodoxien, Utopismus und Jakobinismus in der Konstitution fundamentalistischer Bewegungen. Translated by Georg Stauth. Frankfurt am Main: 1998. Freeden, Michael. Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach. Oxford: 1996. Freeden, Michael. “Morphological Analysis of Ideology.” In The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies, edited by Michael Freeden, Lyman Tower Sargent, and Marc Stears, 115–37. Oxford: 2013. Glaz’ev, Sergei. Ekonomika Budushchego: Est’ li u Rossii Shans? Moscow: 2016. Gromyko, Aleksei A., et al. Bol’shaia Evropa: Idei, real’nost’, perspektivy [Great Europe: Idea, reality, prospects]. Moscow: 2014. Groys, Boris. Die Erfindung Rußlands. Munich: 1995. Humphrey, Mathew. “Green Ideology.” In The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies, edited by Michael Freeden, Lyman Tower Sargent, and Marc Stears, 422–38. Oxford: 2013. Ionin, Leonid. Apdeit konservatizma [Update of conservatism]. Moscow: 2010. “Novorossii: Patrioty vsea Rusi, ob”ediniaites’!” Izborsky klub. 1 November 2017. . Kisoudis, Dimitrios. Goldgrund Eurasien: Der neue kalte Krieg und das Dritte Rom. 2nd ed. Waltrop: 2015. Klimaitis, Aligis. Europäischer Kontinentalismus: Wo steht Europa im fragwürdig gewordenen Transatlantismus? Vienna: 2014. Kobiakov, Andrei B., and Mikhail L. Khazin. Zakat imperii dollara i konets “Pax Ameri­ cana” [The decline of the empire of the dollar and the end of the “Pax Americana”]. Moscow: 2003. Kobiakov, Andrei, Vitalii Aver’ianov, and Vladimir Kucherenko (eds.), Russkaia Doktrina [Russian doctrine]. Moscow 2005. Accessed 21 April 2018, .

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Kofner, Iurii. “Chetvertaia politicheskaia teoriia: Bol’she, chem prosto anti-liberalizm?” [The fourth political theory: More than just anti-liberalism?]. Evraziiskoe dvizhenie Rossiiskoi Federatsii. 27 December 2015. Accessed 11 April 2018, . Kolodiazhnyi, Il’ia. 2017. “Pod piatoi postmoderna i masskul’ta” [Under the heel of postmodernity and mass culture]. Evraziiskoe dvizhenie Rossiiskoi Federatsii. 5 March 2017, (first published in the newspaper Literary Russia, Saint Petersburg, 20 February 2017). Laruelle, Marlene (ed.). Eurasianism and the European Far Right: Reshaping the Euro­ pean-Russian Relationship. Lanham, MD: 2015. Laruelle, Marlene. “The Izborsky Club, or the New Conservative Avant-Garde in Russia.” The Russian Review 75, no. 4 (2016): 626–44. Laruelle, Marlene. Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire. Baltimore: 2008. Lipovetskii, Mark. Paralogii: Transformatsii (post)modernistskogo diskursa v russkoi kul’ture 1920–2000-kh godov [Paralogies: The transformation of postmodern discourse in Russian culture 1920s–2000s]. Moscow: 2008. Mannheim, Karl, Volker Meja, and Nico Stehr. Konservatismus: Ein Beitrag zur Soziologie des Wissens. Vol. 478. Frankfurt am Main: 1984. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The German Ideology: Critique of Modern German Philosophy according to Its Representatives Feuerbach, B. Bauer and Stirner, and of German Socialism according to Its Various Prophets. In Marx and Engels: Collected Works, edited by Jack Cohen, Maurice Cornforth, Maurice Dobb, Eric J. Hobsbawm, James Klugmann, and Margaret Mynatt, 19–93. London: 2010. Müller, Jan-Werner. What Is Populism? London: 2017. Noordenbos, Boris. “Ironic Imperialism: How Russian Patriots Are Reclaiming Post­ modernism.” Studies in European Thought 63 (2011): 147–58. Panarin, Aleksandr. Pravoslavnaia tsivilizatsiia. Moscow: 2014. Prokhanov, Aleksandr. “Simfoniia Russkogo Mira” [Symphony of the Russian world]. In Doktrina Russkogo Mira [Doctrine of the Russian world], edited by A. Prokhanov, V. Aver’ianov, A. Dugin, and A. Kobiakov, 7–14. Moscow: 2016. Remizov, Mikhail. “Moskva stala vosprinimat’sia kak stolitsa ‘konservativnogo internatsionala’” [Moscow began to be perceived as the capital of a “Conservative International”]. RusskaiaIdea: Sait konservativnoi politicheskoi mysli. 2016. Ac­ cessed 20 November 2017, . Remizov, Mikhail. Russkie i gosudarstvo [Russians and the state]. Moscow: 2016. Remizov, Mikhail, Marina Voskanian, Andrei Kobiakov, and Aleksandr Kostin. “Kon­ servatizm kak faktor ‘miagkoi sily’ Rossii.” Institut natsional’noi strategii. 2014. Accessed 20 November 2017, . Shekhovtsov, Anton. Russia and the Western Right. London: 2018.

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Toma, Aleksei. 2013. “V poiskakh evraziiskogo konservatizma” [In search of Eurasian conservatism]. Evraziiskoe dvizhenie Rossiiskoi Federatsii. (First published 2013.) Posted 16 July 2016. Accessed 11 April 2018, . Umland, Andreas. The Nature of Russian “Neo-Eurasianism”: Approaches to Aleksandr Dugin’s Post-Soviet Movement of Radical Anti-Americanism. Armonk, NY: 2009.

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Chapter 6

The Great Expectations of Russian Young Conservatism  Alexander Pavlov 1

Ideas and Politics

“Russian Young Conservatism” (mladokonservatizm) was an intellectual and political movement that united young people on the right wing who wanted to take an active part in the social and political life of their country in the first decades of the 21st century. Although participants in the movement did not use the prefix “Russian,” this is necessary to distinguish it from the German “Young Conservatism” of the 1910s–20s. The fact that Russian publicists intuitively used the German term from the early 20th century is quite suggestive, since the two movements do have something in common. The first thing that unites them is their response to revolution. The Young Conservative movement in Russia experienced two pivotal moments—the Orange Revolution of 2005 and Ukraine’s subsequent revolution of 2013 and the ensuing “Russian Spring”1 in 2014. In addition, both movements were formed as a circle of right-wing intellectuals; both espoused a nationalist platform (in fact, the foundation on which Russian Young Conservatism was built); and both criticized liberalism— of course, in its differing (Russian and German) local versions. Russian Young Conservatives were dissatisfied with the liberal reforms of the 1990s, which they perceived as the basis of the dominant ideology they were trying to resist. But here, perhaps, is where the similarities end and the differences begin. The Russian Young Conservatives were overly ambitious. First of all, they were strongly opposed to Boris Yeltsin, and they hoped that after Vladimir Putin came to power he would free himself from Yeltsin’s legacy and begin to pursue domestic and foreign policies that they believed better accorded with Russia’s national interests. From the start, they rejected globalization and advocated the preservation of the national culture and economy. The Young Conservatives expected that the early Vladimir Putin, after making a smooth transition from Yeltsin’s policies, would mature, and they prepared an entire ideological program for him; Putin had only to take their ideas and put them 1 Triggered by Russia’s absorption of Crimea. (Translator’s note)

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004408005_007

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into practice. The tragedy of Young Conservatism was that this did not happen. Realizing that their expectations did not come to fruition, participants in the movement dispersed in various directions. The Young Conservatives were not cynics. Despite the fact that in the 1990s there were many competing ideological and political currents in Russia, it was difficult to be truly ideological in an era when big ideologies had died out. Following their decline, ideological language disappeared and was replaced by the language of “political PR,” for which ideas merely served as a tool for manipulation. Viktor Pelevin’s novel Generation P2 perfectly conveys this atmosphere of political PR’s dominance in 1990s Russia. Generally speaking, the Young Conservatives were those who replaced “generation P”—they replaced cynics who relied on political advertising and did not view ideas as important. Before Young Conservatism, ideas as such—not to be confused with political positions on this or that issue—were of little moment. Young Conservatives believed that ideas matter and wanted to torpedo the language of political PR using ideological discourse. Therefore, they tried to get a jump on defining Russia’s political agenda. When in March 2004 Vladislav Surkov replaced the first deputy of the presidential administration, Aleksandr Voloshin, who personified the epoch of “political PR,” the intellectual climate changed. Surkov understood that PR cannot be a substitute for political life and he tried to cultivate Russian intellectual life, of course, in accordance with his views and preferences. Had he supported the Young Conservatives, the history of Russia might very well have developed differently. But he did not do so. The Young Conservatives’ basic set of ideologems may seem banal today. Initially, opposing the chaos of the 1990s, they advocated nationalism and empire. They believed that the Russian nation was of exceptional value, and therefore that Russia’s goal should be to create a state in which the Russian people would play the decisive role. In fact, there was little of traditional conservatism in this ideology: the only thing that united the young rightists with the values of conservatism was the rejection of radical change (such as that which took place in the 1990s) and an orientation toward cautious reform. Only later, in the mid-2000s, when imperial discourse began to be associated with US foreign policy, did they abandon the idea of “empire” and move to a more rigid version of nationalism, in which the slogan “Russia for the Russians” began to appear. What was new about this compared to Russian nationalism of previous years was that the Young Conservatives advocated a civil, rather than ethnic, nationalism. At the same time, they articulated the idea that social 2 Viktor Pelevin, Generation “P” (Moscow: 2009).

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change should come “from below” and not from the top down.3 In fact, this idea is the only thing that unites this group in an intellectual rather than institutional way. In their individual capacities, participants in the movement (Konstantin Krylov, Egor Kholmogorov, Mikhail Remizov, Pavel Sviatenkov, Boris Mezhuev) introduced something of their own ideas, thereby creating the synergistic effect of a real ideology. What sort of ideas were they? Konstantin Krylov (b. 1967) brought to Young Conservatism the notion of Russians as a small ethnic group that requires political compensation for years of oppression and that should ultimately become dominant in Russia’s new political organization. Egor Kholmogorov (b. 1975) was originally oriented toward empire, but later, in choosing between imperialism and nationalism, he chose nationalism, which, however, he always tried to combine with the cult of a large and powerful state. In addition, for him Orthodoxy always served as the cornerstone of the Russian ethnic project. Mikhail Remizov (b. 1978) came up with the concept of “left conservatism,” trying to link it with a leftleaning national project, and he instilled Young Conservatives with an appreciation for the German legal philosopher Carl Schmitt. He also appealed to the ideas of the French New Right—to the spirit of the soil (though in a mild form) and the unity of cultural values. Ultimately, Remizov joined the ranks of the pro-Russian lobby in state structures. Pavel Sviatenkov (b. 1975) formulated the concept of a “nation” as such. According to him, the nation consists of one or several peoples (ethnoses) who jointly throw off the supremacy of a sovereign and appropriate sovereignty for themselves. It is thanks to this act of overthrowing the sovereign that a people gains the status of a nation, that is, a political community that has a particular set of rights. This set of rights differs for each nation and is determined by the specific historical circumstances of the sovereign’s overthrow. According to Sviatenkov, the rights of a citizen in the usual sense of the word arise from this set of rights. At the same time, just as several peoples can form one nation, so too can several nations arise based on a single people. Finally, Boris Mezhuev (b. 1970) meditated on the legacy of the Young Conservatives. He felt it was important to describe their aspirations and hopes as a generational experience and not as a movement. He tried to describe how “political experience” penetrated into modern Russian life. The ethnic component interested him least of all. In the best case, this interested him more as a fact testifying to the emergence of nationalism as a political force— when a feeling of ethnic identity arises independent of external influences, when a political nation becomes independent, and when this becomes its 3 Konstantin Krylov, “Kontrreformatsiia,” 31 March 2005, .

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main idea. From Mezhuev’s point of view, sooner or later this ethnic experience must be superseded by another experience. Young Conservatism became known at least to some degree due to the serious efforts by several of its members to expound a history of “ideology” post factum. That is, the development of their ideology became possible through several retroactive and relatively successful attempts at self-description. Boris Mezhuev played a key role in this process of constructing a “movement.” As a professional historian of Russian philosophy, he understood better than others that ideological and political movements can be created only by considering them as a single whole. It was through his efforts that Young Conservatism became known as a full-fledged, unique ideology. Mezhuev organized two relatively large online discussions of the subject.4 The journalist and political scientist Nataliia Androsenko has written a lot in a scholarly vein.5 In the name of full disclosure, we should mention that she is the wife of one of the leading Young Conservatives—Egor Kholmogorov—and that she also concurrently serves as chief editor of the website that he heads.6 Although Androsenko tries to be objective as a scholar, she obviously sympathizes with the movement, and on the whole may describe it as too influential. This study attempts to be the first objective work on the history of the Young Conservative movement in Russia. It is my goal to reconstruct the history of its origin, development, blossoming, and speaking provisionally, its decline, based on rich data including online publications and interviews with participants in the movement as well as their opponents. I propose an approach that I call

4 The first is a discussion of the late 2000s, in which ideology was presented as a “generational choice”: Aleksandr Eliseev, Dmitrii Volodikhin, Arkadii Maler, Iurii Solozobov, and Mikhail Diunov, “Tema: Mladokonservatizm—vybor pokoleniia,” Russkii zhurnal, . The second is a collection of materials timed to coincide with the anniversary (2015) of the main official document of the movement (“Counter-Reformation” [Kontrreformatsiia, 2005], see below): Russkaia Idea: Sait konservativnoi politicheskoi mysli, . 5 Nataliia Androsenko, “Konservatizm: Ot ideologii k epistemologii,” Prepodavanie istorii v shkole 1 (2013): 41–45; Androsenko, “Mladokonservatizm kak politicheskaia ideologiia,” Sotsial’no-gumanitarnye znaniia 5 (2014): 210–17; Androsenko, “Rossiiskii konservativnyi tranzit 2000-kh gg.: Ot mladokonservatizma k natsional’noi demokratii,” Vestnik Moskovskogo gosudarstvennogo oblastnogo universiteta, Seriia: Istoriia i politicheskie nauki 4 (2014): 120–27; Androsenko, “Publitsistika mladokonservatorov v sovremennom kommunikativnom prostranstve Rossii,” Kommunikologiia 4 (2016): 160–72; Androsenko, “Rol’ mladokonservativnoi publitsistiki v preodolenii rusofobii v 2000-kh gg.: Vozvrashchenie slova ‘russkii,’” in Russkii universum v usloviiakh globalizatsii: Sbornik statei uchastnikov Vserossiiskoi nauchno-prakticheskoi konferentsii, ed. E.V. Valeeva (Arzamas: 2016): 275–84. 6 See Russkii obozrevatel’, .

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realism—to describe the history of the movement as it really was rather than trying to situate Young Conservatism on the “ideological map” of Russia. 2

At the Origins of “Ideology”

The ideological sources of the movement were the publicist Sergei Kiziakov, who due to his position as a government official wrote under the pseudonym “Vadim Nifontov” (“Russian Hoopoe”); the philosopher Dmitry Galkovsky; and the geopolitician Vadim Tsymbursky. All three played different roles in the movement, and each performed a special function. Galkovsky turned out to be an influential thinker and author, able to expound philosophical ideas in a vivid literary form. It is not my intention to recount his numerous theories in detail; it suffices to point out that his philosophical novel The Infinite Dead End (first edition—1997),7 which, by the way, earned an Anti-Booker Prize,8 became an event in the second half of the 1990s. Galkovsky turned back to early 20thcentury Russian philosophy, rehabilitating the ideas and even the style of Vasily Rozanov, but at the same time he broke with the legacy of classical Russian writers such as Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, and so on. Perhaps this was his main importance for future publicists—to overcome the pressure of the Russian classics and their “accursed questions,” which in Russia’s new social conditions were no longer relevant. In a personal interview with the author of this article, the political scientist Viacheslav Danilov described the impact of Galkovsky on the young right: Dmitry Galkovsky has had a tremendous impact on conservative discourse in Russia. First of all, on its language. The problem of Russian conservatism was that it could not find an adequate language for itself. Naive attempts to return to the language of the 19th to early 20th century looked extremely ridiculous. And then a miracle happened—the phenomenon of Galkovsky with his frankly postmodern novel The Infinite Dead End, which, on the rhetorical basis of the prerevolutionary Russian conservative philosopher and publicist Vasily Rozanov, managed to synthesize a new misanthropic type of language reflecting the residue of Soviet trauma and a mistrust of progress in all its forms. In The Infinite Dead End, 7 Dmitrii Galkovskii, Beskonechnyi tupik (Moscow: 2008). 8 The newspaper Nezavisimaia gazeta gave out the Anti-Booker Prize from 1995 to 2001. The oligarch Boris Berezovsky funded it as an obvious rebuke to the British prize. Galkovsky declined the award. (Translator’s note)

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Galkovsky did a brilliant job on Soviet trauma, and its language is a product of overcoming this trauma; through it he was able to deconstruct the Soviet subject. Everything Soviet becomes the enemy of Russian conservatism, but this is quite different from left-liberal ideology. The enemy that Russian conservatism rejects, calling it a “sovok” [slang for Soviet citizen], is simultaneously what holds it hostage, insofar as virtually all aspects of Russian Young Conservatism turn out to be the negation of the Soviet conceptual universe. Galkovsky’s literary influence cannot be overestimated. He shaped conservative discourse on a very wide scale, from immediate epigones like Konstantin Krylov to academic authors like Fedor Girenok.9 Danilov’s statement requires serious amendment. The fact is that Galkovsky was the first to formulate in words the feelings that Young Conservatives were experiencing at that time, but his influence on language was minimal. Where he did have an impact was more in his publicism than his novel, and in particular, in his lucid criticism of classical Russian culture from the standpoint of nationalism. For Galkovsky, Russia is an absolutely European country, treacherously rejected as part of Asia. Galkovsky’s “myth about the Russian Revolution” alleged that it was organized by the English as a way to throw Russia out of Europe. It was from here that the Young Conservatives could derive their resentment toward Europe and dislike of Asia. Thinkers adopted a posture from Galkovsky that we may briefly formulate as “antiaziia” (anti-Asia). It is of fundamental importance that Galkovsky was one of the first public intellectuals to start using “Live Journal” (LJ), which he used to actively communicate with his readers. While LJ today is widely recognized as an anachronism, Galkovsky’s blog is still functioning, and the author does not seem to have made use of other social media, as almost all of the other publicists discussed here have done. Danilov comments: Together with his language, Galkovsky introduced an ability to think piecemeal and to collect texts from different blocks. This later found an ideal forum in the “Live Journal,” the most popular social network and blogging platform in Russia at the turn of the 90s to the 00s. Galkovsky invented blogs before they become technically possible and he invented the literary style in which the Young Conservatives later composed their writings. His influence was strong but short-lived.10 9 Viacheslav Danilov, interview by author, 2 October 2017. 10 Ibid.

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Another ideological source of Young Conservatism was the conservative-nationalist online magazine The Russian Hoopoe. The first issue was published in November 1999, the remaining 18 from January 2000 to December 2003. The main authors of the magazine were Sergei Kiziakov (editor-in-chief) and the historians Dmitry Volodikhin and Gleb Eliseev, people of deep religious conviction and at the same time fond of science fiction. Subsequently, the authors, who had started the journal in a playful and satirical way, became active writers for the leading Young Conservative publication, the Agency for Political News (APN, ). Before then the authors composed sociopolitical commentaries that they posted on the pages of the LJ. The writing in The Russian Hoopoe soon became more serious, and the authors formulated a political credo that the historian Mikhail Diunov formulates in this way: “The group directly bet on the evolutionary development of the Yeltsin era, on the idea that in the course of time moderate authoritarianism would necessarily be established, and they offered this hypothetical regime the slogans and ideological notions that it had worked out. In fact, this was in significant degree a ‘premonition of Putin’ and his ideology.”11 The connection between Young Conservatism and Putinism only became apparent in retrospect. In addition, in 1999 Dmitry Volodikhin organized the literary and philosophical group “Bastion.” This was a circle of “Russian conservative science fiction writers” who used nationalistic and imperial ideas as the basis of their literary work. Kiziakov was ideologically close to the Young Conservatives and in fact paved the way for them with his writing, again, having formulated in words what they had only been feeling. He could not have been a “Young Conservative” because he was older and already well established as a career diplomat. However, his passion for journalism was stronger than his career aspirations, and he invested a lot of energy in writing and in publishing like-minded people. While Galkovsky reconsidered the past, Kiziakov fixed his attention on the future. He was perhaps the first to translate political discourse from an imperial to a national framework; at first the Young Conservatives actively promoted the theme of empire. Kiziakov formulated this idea in the following way: one should dream not so much about the revival of the USSR, but rather about the country in which we actually live and in which we still have to live. If antiSemitism had been an important element in the program of old conservatives, for Kiziakov and his followers it was very muted, if it existed at all. The author presented all of his ideas in gentle and elegant form, so that his nationalism did not seem vulgar. This might not always have been true; some of his ideas could 11

Mikhail Diunov, “Mladokonservatizm: Ego istoriia, ego znachenie,” Russkii zhurnal, 12 May 2009, .

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frankly be called controversial because they contained a strong “anti-Eastern element.” Kiziakov also asserted that Russians were in principle unfit for a market economy and that for this reason many disparate ethnic groups in Russia could adapt to the system of market relations faster than they. Of course, from today’s perspective this seems like a rather strange statement, but at the time this view seemed very convincing to many. When talking about the origins of Young Conservatism, the main thing to understand is that it was formed from below. In fact, it was the first such movement created by means of a social network. As the Young Conservative Pavel Sviatenkov recalls: For me it all began with the Live Journal. It was there, in the communal kitchen of Russian intellectuals of the early 2000s, that the first ideological circles arose, and from which the Young Conservative movement emerged. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, social ties collapsed, and it was the Internet that created them all over again. It was there that the conversation arose, the consolidation around the LJ of Krylov, Kholmogorov, and in part Dmitry Olshansky (he was incredibly popular as the enfant terrible of the liberal public). The Live Journal was a real republic of philosophers, as I now understand. It was a new technology; everyone had the opportunity to create their own personal MMI [Means of Mass Information, Russian “SMI”]. Among the “live journals” a competition for the number of subscriber-friends sprang up. It was a kind of Masonic lodge—a closed prestigious community where everyone knew one another and it was possible to become acquainted with many influential people simply by scribbling a couple of lines in one’s diary. The popularity of Live Journal was such that the stories that were spun there began to determine the policy of the mainstream media.… Thanks to LJ I got to know Krylov and Kholmogorov.12 Thus initially it was the democratic nature of LJ that made it possible for ideologically close authors to find one another, including the people who would eventually become key participants in the Young Conservatism movement. Unlike Galkovsky and Kiziakov, who influenced young thinkers through the LJ, the influence of geopolitician, political scientist, and literary critic Vadim Tsymbursky on the movement turned out to be more complex and less apparent. By the beginning of 2000 Tsymbursky was already a well-known publicist and had formulated the basic postulates of his political philosophy, based, 12

Pavel Sviatenkov, interview by author, 9 October 2017.

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inter alia, on his own political beliefs. Even before 2001, he came up with the idea of an alliance between Russia, China, and India, the unification of which would ensure stability in Central Asia and which would prevent US influence on Afghanistan and Central Asia. In addition, Tsymbursky was critical of attempts to bring Russia closer to the United States under the flag of the fight against world terrorism, which led to America’s penetration into Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Conceptually, Tsymbursky formalized these thoughts in the expression “Island Russia,” which symbolized the isolationist position. This view suggested a cautious attitude to Putin’s regime, which was fully shared by his friend and biographer Boris Mezhuev. When Tsymbursky was invited to cooperate with the newspaper The Conservative (Konservator), which will be discussed below, he rejected the proposal because he was not ready to enter into an alliance with writers who, although advocating an anti-liberal position, nevertheless defended the existing regime. Tsymbursky took part in the Young Conservative political project only when the Young Conservatives as a group joined the oppositional APN (Agency for Political News) project in 2004. In 2005, Boris Mezhuev became the editor-in-chief of the APN and began to promote Tsymbursky’s ideas that accorded with Young Conservative opinion. As Mezhuev himself writes: Basing myself on Vadim Leonidovich’s geopolitical ideas and on the change expressed in his writings of 2001, I put forward the slogan of “isolationism” in opposition to the official policy of rapprochement with the United States within the framework of a common struggle against world terrorism, and called first of all for non-involvement both in Washington’s imperial and later global-democratic plans.13 Thus Tsymbursky turned out to be Young Conservatism’s ideologist mainly thanks to the efforts of Mezhuev, who did everything he could to inscribe this political scientist into the history of this movement. The movement needed a solid intellectual source to which one could respectfully refer. This turned out to be Tsymbursky.14 In 2007 the National Strategy Institute, on whose basis the APN conducted its activity, sponsored the publication of the philosopher’s work, Island Russia,15 the preface to which was written by another Young Conservative, Mikhail 13 14 15

Boris Mezhuev, Politicheskaia kritika Vadima Tsymburskogo (Moscow: 2012), 138–39. On Tsymbursky’s and Mezhuev’s geopolitical ideas, see also chapters 3 by Mikhail Suslov and 10 by Irina Karlsohn in the present volume. Vadim Tsymburskii, Ostrov Rossiia: Geopoliticheskie i khronopoliticheskie raboty (Moscow: 2007).

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Remizov. In this foreword, Remizov acknowledged that the idea of isolationism formulated by Tsymbursky had become a foreign policy program for many Young Conservatives.16 However, as Pavel Sviatenkov notes: “Vadim Tsymbursky was a respected senior comrade, but one can’t be certain about his ideas’ influence. At least, I am uncertain. Their nature, of course, is quite academic.” In turn, in a personal interview with the author, Egor Kholmogorov described the importance of Tsymbursky’s ideas for the Young Conservatives: Tsymbursky was influential with his civilizational and isolationist geopolitics: (1) Every civilization possesses a special humanity; (2) Russia is the space of civilization of the Russian ethnos; (3) what is Russian should not be put in a subordinate position to imperial projects, to a liberal or an Orthodox mission, but has a value of its own. Actually, Tsymbursky’s central thesis is that Russian civilization is original and valuable in itself and that it is not necessary to erect designs of a higher order upon it, forcing us to take resources away from our own development.17 As one might suppose, Kholmogorov is not presenting Tsymbursky’s ideas but offering his own in lapidary form as those of Tsymbursky. This does not mean that Kholmogorov is being disingenuous, but it perfectly illustrates that for the Young Conservatives Tsymbursky was at best what they wanted to see in him. No one paid any real attention to his ideas except perhaps Mezhuev himself. 3

The Institutionalization of the Movement

Before the movement began to acquire its distinct features, every Young Conservative moved along his own trajectory. What is important is that one way or another, many Young Conservatives gravitated toward philosophy in general and to the history of Russian philosophy in particular. Thus Egor Kholmogorov and Konstantin Krylov met in the fall of 1997 at a philosophical circle. By that time, Krylov had already gained some renown. In 1997 his book Behavior was published,18 a philosophical treatise in which human behavior was considered from the standpoint of four particular ethical positions that accord with four “civilizational imperatives.” There was little that could be 16 17 18

Mikhail Remizov, “Predislovie,” in Ostrov Rossiia: Geopoliticheskie i khronopoliticheskie raboty, by Vadim Tsymburskii (Moscow: 2007), 3. Egor Kholmogorov, interview by author, 9 October 2017. Konstantin Krylov, Povedenie (Moscow: 1997).

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called conservative in the book, which was scholarly and philosophical. Its style was its most important feature, but it was some time before the author was recognized as an outstanding stylist and independent thinker. Before his meeting with Krylov, Kholmogorov had been a Christian writer and publicist, actively participating in various events such as seminars and circles. It was apparent that in public intellectual life it was difficult to make a name for oneself, and so both authors first actively began to master the Russian Internet and then the aforementioned Live Journal site, which at first became their main outlet. Even before coming to the LJ, Kholmogorov and Krylov had created the site “Russian Doctrine” (www.rusdoctrina.ru), where they posted their writings. Unfortunately, today there is nothing left of the site except the domain name. However, a detailed examination of the evolution of the views of individual participants in Young Conservatism is not part of our present task. Moreover, Kholmogorov and Krylov’s early views underwent changes and only became “conservative” later. By and large, the ideology of the Young Conservatives had not yet formed, and had not even become conservatism. Initially, the core of what would become known as Young Conservatism was ethnic nationalism (Krylov) and religion (Kholmogorov). In his programmatic text of 2005, The Restoration of the Future,19 Kholmogorov described the sources of conservative political thought, and although this work concerned the future, in many ways it serves to explain the author’s intellectual efforts in the late 1990s and first half of the 2000s. The chroniclers of the movement believe that Young Conservatism had no economic program.20 This is true only to a certain extent because, in the first place, the writers were opposed to the liberalism of the 1990s, which had an economic foundation, and, secondly, because they did sometimes express themselves on the subject of economics, albeit in an extremely vague way. Thus Kholmogorov wrote in The Restoration of the Future: However, Russian entrepreneurialism, the ability to organize activities on a large scale and the ability to seek personal enrichment, is quite obvious, [but] its features do not come together as a total capitalist system, as rationally organized exploitation of man by man for the sake of personal gain. There is a rift between collective organization and individual enrichment, and their capitalist linkage is seen as unfair. The 19 20

Egor Kholmogorov, “Restavratsiia budushchego,” Pravaia.ru, 16 June 2005, . Androsenko, “Mladokonservatizm”; Diunov, “Mladokonservatizm.”

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organization and even cruel exploitation [of labor] for a supra-individual purpose (for society, the state, religion) is considered morally acceptable. If we are speaking about personal enrichment as a goal, then the acquisition of wealth is perceived as an individual adventure, as a contest with destiny. The wealth acquired in the course of such a contest is considered much more pure than that obtained from rational exploitation. That is why successful and productive “capitalist” enterprises in modern Russia combine an element of adventurism on the part of their entrepreneurial organizers with Soviet service ethics in the organization of the work collective, in which work is perceived not so much as a personal choice, not as putting oneself on the labor market, but rather as the realization of a sacred and supra-individual duty to work. Any degree of the rational exploitation of a large number of people is possible only when packaged in a non-capitalist ideology.21 Mikhail Remizov also graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University, specializing in the Department of Social Philosophy. Subsequently he defended his dissertation on the political philosophy of the French New Right. In the early 2000s Remizov served as political editor of the Russian Journal, a network resource published by the Fund for Effective Politics, at that time the Kremlin’s main think tank. The editor-in-chief of the publication (and the head of the Fund) was Gleb Pavlovsky, then reaping laurels as the country’s chief political strategist who had ensured Vladimir Putin’s election victory. As a professional historian and someone not indifferent to the fate of the country, Pavlovsky was dissatisfied with the weakness of Russian ideological and political debate and therefore encouraged young and talented people whose political values he shared. At the very beginning of the 2000s Pavlovsky enthusiastically welcomed Remizov as the fledgling editor of the political department of Pavlovsky’s “Russian journal” (Russkii zhurnal) (RJ, ) and in some sense became the patron of the Conservative Press Club that Remizov organized. This club became a discussion platform for people who shared conservative beliefs, including Krylov and Kholmogorov. Another member of the emerging movement was the young political analyst Pavel Sviatenkov. Sviatenkov was also associated with the Philosophy Faculty of Moscow State University. Having received the diploma of a political scientist at the International Independent Environmental and Political University (MNEPU), he entered the Department of Political Science of the Faculty of Philosophy at Moscow State University, which was obviously much more 21

Kholmogorov, “Restavratsiia budushchego.”

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philosophically grounded than in his former institute, which was focused on ecology and globalism. As mentioned, Sviatenkov met Krylov and Kholmogorov on the Live Journal site and in 2003 he joined the first officially recognized Young Conservatives institution, the newspaper The Conservative.22 In the early 2000s Viacheslav Leibman bought The General Newspaper (Obshchaia gazeta) from Egor Yakovlev, closed it, and opened The Conservative. The first issue was written by writer Tatiana Tolstaia and publicist Aleksandr Timofeevsky. This editorial board seemed ineffective to Leibman and he fired all of the staff, after which he invited the critic Dmitry Olshansky (aka “Mitya Olshansky”) to take part in the publication, and he in turn invited the writer Dmitry Bykov as well as Konstantin Krylov and Egor Kholmogorov; Krylov invited Sviatenkov to join. Note that the newspaper with the name The Conservative was headed by two popular Russian liberals—Olshansky and Bykov. But if Olshansky was always perceived as a troublemaker, the participation of Bykov, the leading columnist of the main opposition newspaper Novaia gazeta, may surprise. In fact, at that time, Bykov was only beginning his career and did not enjoy his current popularity, so that editorial experience in a major media outlet offered him a good opportunity for career advancement, especially since at that time few people in Russia had heard of a respectable (non-extremist) conservatism. To understand how the presence of Bykov and Olshansky could have stirred interest, we may quote an excerpt from a 2005 encyclopedia article: [Young Conservatism] includes publicists, writers and critics of quite disparate ideological stripes: the defector from the liberal camp Dmitry Olshansky, whose article-manifestos such as “How I Became a Black Hundred” made a lot of noise; the supporter of “total mobilization” Egor Kholmogorov; and the moderate “left-conservative” Dmitry Bykov, whose measured position legitimized Y[oung] C[onservatism] in broader circles.23 22

23

However, the story is more complicated. Before The Conservative there was the publication Russian Special Forces, a publication of the veterans of the FSB Alpha group. Konstantin Krylov was Russian Special Forces’ editor-in-chief and gained invaluable journalistic experience there, as well as preparing the ground for a future conservative publication. In fact, in Moscow in the late 1990s and early 2000s, this newspaper was one of the few patriotic publications whose policies did not boil down to the expression “cabbage in the beard.” “Cabbage in the beard”—a phrase which is aimed at mocking old-style Russian conservatism. It refers to the traditional satiric image of a Russian man who has a long beard and who eats cabbage while probably also drinking vodka. (Translator’s note) Dmitrii Desiaterik, Al’ternativnaia kul’tura: Entsiklopediia (Moscow: 2005).

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As Pavel Sviatenkov recalled in a personal interview:  The Conservative became a sensation, as it was the only non-liberal newspaper in the country. The mere fact that an illiberal newspaper was possible aroused horror. The previous staff almost seriously believed that we carried axes in the cuffs of our boots and took part in pogroms at night. Moreover, the sensation was not from the materials it published, but from the very possibility of thinking outside the liberal box in the mainstream media.24 Before this, criticism of liberalism as it then existed fell to the lot of extremists at the odious newspaper Tomorrow (Zavtra) who criticized liberalism from marginal positions (arguing for the need for a strong hand, expressing nostalgia for the USSR, etc.). Sviatenkov concludes: “And when the newspaper began to offer hope, Leibman closed it three months before the 2003 State Duma elections. And nothing came of it.”25 Thus in the early 2000s two trends of the future Young Conservatism merged—on the one hand, the organizational one, represented by Mikhail Remizov’s Conservative Press Club; and, on the other, the journalistic one, represented by Egor Kholmogorov, Konstantin Krylov, and Pavel Sviatenkov. These latter three took an active part in meetings of the Conservative Press Club, which took place at the Russian Journal. It was there, on the site of the Russian Journal, that the term “Young Conservatism” first appeared. None of the few historians of the movement and even of its members know where the term came from. In personal interviews none of them would take credit for it, assigning it to others. However, as might be expected, the term was actually first employed by pure chance, and was not used by the Young Conservatives themselves. After one of the meetings of the Conservative Press Club, an article by one of the editors of Russian Journal entitled “The Young Conservatives Leave the Underground” appeared on its website.26 It could be said that Russian Young Conservatism was born on 16 January 2003, when this survey of material from a roundtable was published. The phrase was not even mentioned in the article, but it was clear that the new collective of thinkers was not only trying to address old issues but also to distinguish themselves from already existing ideological and political trends. On the one hand, Aleksandr Dugin’s 24 Pavel Sviatenkov, interview by author, 9 October 2017. 25 Ibid. 26 Kirill Iakimets, “Mladokonservatory vykhodiat iz podpol’ia,” Russkii zhurnal, 16 January 2003, .

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Eurasianism greatly disturbed the young rightists. First of all, they were unhappy with the fact that in this ideology the national was dissolved in the “Asiatic,” which, as mentioned earlier, offended the nationally oriented publicists. Secondly, Eurasianism’s traditionalism, which was very exotic and eccentric in Aleksandr Dugin’s writings, annoyed the Russian “new right.” In addition, Dugin had already appropriated ideologemes such as “Conservative Revolution,” and so it was necessary to seek something of their own rather than turn to already existing notions. On the other hand, a group of old conservatives, represented by established writers and journalists of the older generation— Mikhail Leont’ev, Maksim Sokolov, and Valery Fadeev—had already come together, but it was felt that they simply did not give the issue of nationalism due attention. The name “Young Conservatism” was a stroke of luck. Why? The Young Conservatives risked getting pigeonholed into the relatively marginal niche of nationalism and remaining on the margins of social and political life. Nation­ alism in Russia was still perceived as a fairly radical and aggressive ideology, and because of this it was difficult to enter the political mainstream. Ultimately, the newspaper The Conservative did not receive the name The Nationalist, and the question naturally arises whether or not Young Con­servatism was simply ordinary nationalism. On a grand scale it was ordinary nationalism, but with significant nuances. The new conservatives had to free themselves from the traditions of Russian culture, first of all from the historical role of the intel­li­ gentsia. When classical Russian thinkers wrote their works social reality was completely different. Even the Slavophiles, seemingly the first Russian na­ tionalists, were more anti-imperial than pro-national. A new social reality emerged in Russia at the turn of the 21st century: ethnic self-consciousness, which formed the backbone of the new political self-awareness, was previously unknown in Russian culture. Moreover, when Viacheslav Danilov, quoted above, claimed that the Young Conservatives opposed all Soviet conservatives, it turns out he was wrong. The new right was writing precisely at the time when the big ideologies disappeared, but the experience on which these ideologies were usually based remained. Thus while Soviet ideology in the sense of a metanarrative ended, Soviet scholarship and science remained, just like many other achievements of the USSR (literature, tech­nocracy, etc.). The conservatives themselves did not think this way at the time, but their main question was unconsciously formulated as: how can we salvage the best potential of the previous era while understanding that the old ideology on whose basis it was created cannot be revived? They said: we are the heirs of a huge vanished civilization, but we want to save that civilization. In fact, in their writing there was a kind of re-idealization of the past. That is why nationalism became the

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core of this ideology: only nationalism could preserve the best of what remained after the demise of Soviet civilization, which turned out to be the heir to earlier Russian civilization. It was only with the appearance of their name that the nationalism of the Young Conservatives began to acquire a true conservative flavor. The main credit for making the movement respectable belonged to a person who formally joined it later than everyone else. Like other Young Conservatives, Boris Mezhuev graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow University. However, unlike the others, he built an academic career; he taught in the field of the history of Russian philosophy and edited the journal of political science, Polis. He participated in almost all of the Conservative Press Club’s activities, though formally he was not part of the movement at that time. Actually, to fully enter public life is not so much a big risk for a scholar as it is an informed choice, an understanding that in some circumstances it is difficult to make an academic career. Mezhuev himself later commented: Meanwhile, to remain in the academic underground, confining ourselves to politically ineffectual scientific compositions, was also stupid. It was necessary to get out of this underground into God’s daylight, to leave the limitations of academic science and seek rapprochement with possible allies and like-minded people, even in the camp of those loyal to the regime.27 Mezhuev’s doubts were tied to the fact that in the mid-2000s he considered himself in the opposition. Almost all the Young Conservatives had already decided that they would go mainstream, and the authorities, tired of the fact that ideological and political life in Russia was a wasteland, only populated by Eurasianism and other marginal currents, and realizing that it needed an ideological foundation, promoted the young activists to the political Olympus and gave them a platform. Still, the Young Conservatives did not treat Putin with blind veneration, but were only moderately positive, tying their expectations to him. 4

Rise and Fall

Until now, we have discussed the five main participants of the movement, but there was one more person—Viktor Militarev (b. 1955)—who had a noteworthy 27 Mezhuev, Politicheskaia kritika, 134.

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relationship with the Young Conservatives. Until the early 2000s, Militarev had built a career as a political operative. In a personal interview with the author of this article Militarev claimed that it was he and not Remizov who organized the movement: I started bringing together all of these people in the сlub Tovarishch [Comrade] in 2003, where the ideas that laid the foundation of Young Conservatism were debated—a combination of social justice, patriotism, and conservative cultural values. First it was in the restaurant Tovarishch and then in the office of the INS [the Institute of National Strategy] when I began to work there. Remizov organized this type of meeting literally two or three times (I emphasize: only two or three times) within the framework of the Conservative Press Club. These were held in the office of Gleb [Pavlovsky, in the editorial office of RJ]. In 2005 [Egor] Kholmo­ gorov suddenly announced that he was calling a meeting of conservatives and he did not invite me to it. All this happened a few weeks after my personal meeting with Egor. So I was sidelined. Of course, I’m not saying that they used my ideas, but he and the others used the ideas that had been discussed at the meetings I organized.28 Although Militarev was pushed out of the movement for reasons I will not go into here, he figures in the memoirs of many participants. Militarev believes that he created Young Conservatism, while other participants express skepticism about this, either politely or in an extremely disrespectful way. At any rate, Militarev was a living witness to the movement’s ideological development. In 2004, Remizov came to work at the Institute of National Strategy, created by the political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky, and he became the editor-in-chief of the Agency for Political News (APN). Pavel Sviatenkov and Viktor Militarev, who was at that time a good friend of Belkovsky, also came to work there. They began to work together with Krylov, Kholmogorov, and many authors close to the movement, including Sergei Kiziakov, Dmitry Volodikhin, and Mezhuev. Belkovsky’s goals coincided with those of the Young Conservatives as they all tended toward the opposition and began to seriously work out nationalist ideas. In the first half of 2005, Mezhuev headed APN, as the Young Conservatives’ position finally concurred with his own personal convictions. At the same time, he was the least nationalist in the whole group and mainly focused on foreign policy, and he also tried to diversify nationalist journalism with more generally accepted topics, arranging real intellectual discussions on the 28

Viktor Militarev, interview by author, 8 October 2017.

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APN website about Solzhenitsyn, Russian political science, and so on. The site’s attendance increased sharply and things went so far that the APN became more popular than Pavlovsky’s RJ; Pavlovsky not only closely followed those whom he had recently welcomed, but also happily participated in their online discussions, thereby demonstrating how much more interesting the competing site had become. The movement’s most important event was the publication of the report entitled “Counter-Reformation” (Kontrreformatsiia) (2005), which reflected the ideas of those members who took part in Kholmogorov’s “Conservative Meeting” (Konservativnoe soveshchanie) that produced the document. It was signed by Vitaly Averianov, Armen Asriian, Ilya Brazhnikov, Mikhail Golovanov, Vladimir Golyshev, Pavel Danilin, Andrei Kobiakov, Konstantin Krylov, Arkady Maler, Boris Mezhuev, Mikhail Remizov, Pavel Sviatenkov, Kirill Frolov, Egor Kholmogorov, and Viktor Militarev. In many ways, the report was a response to the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. Mikhail Diunov comments that: In 2005 the Young Conservatives met in anticipation of an “Orange Revolution” that had already shown the weakness of state institutions in Ukraine and the readiness of the ruling stratum to surrender to Western pressure and, as a result, brought to power a new political elite. In reply the Young Conservatives tried to create an ideological platform that would not be seen as unconditional support for the activities of the Russian Federation’s ruling circles, which were carrying out social reforms that the Young Conservatives considered dangerous, but which at the same time would not be considered cooperation with the anti-Russian “orange” opposition.29 The key idea that all participants shared was that Russia must change the nature of its legitimization, seeking it not from reform, that is, from ill-conceived and often disastrous changes that lead farther and farther away from national identity, but it should move toward counter-reformation, that is, toward a carefully considered, rational practice of restraining and formalizing changes that are actually occurring, bringing these changes closer into line with the national image of the world and strengthening Russia’s external sovereignty and its internal identity as a Russian national state.30 29 30

Diunov, “Mladokonservatizm.” Krylov, “Kontrreformatsiia.”

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Along with the success of the report, which proved that the Young Conservatives could act as a single force, the group experienced its first major crisis, because the participants began to quarrel about who wrote the main text, who should be credited as its authors, and finally, who had the right to speak for it. The movement began to experience schisms and its members became increasingly divided into factions that disagreed, among other things, about the issue of whether or not to cooperate with the regime. Viacheslav Danilov recalls that Among them a series of scandals, sometimes frankly comical, began to occur, such as the clash between Egor Kholmogorov and Victor Militarev over a hundred dollars that the former borrowed from the latter [in 2005– A.P.]. As usual, the “Live Journal” accelerated the scandal. Kholmogorov was mocked by readers; he basically said that the Virgin Mary had ordered him not to return the money to Militarev. The scandal was aggravated by an unsuccessful campaign by part of the “Conservative Meeting” to “sell” themselves to the president’s administration. Vladislav Surkov [at that time the first deputy head of the administration, who oversaw domestic public policy] refused to “buy” all conservatives wholesale, preferring to work with them through interme­diaries in think tanks like the APN or FEP.31 Basically, everything was over at the moment when the leading Young Conservatives began to go their separate ways. In the fall of 2007, Boris Mezhuev left his post as editor-in-chief of APN and in January 2008 he began to work in the FEP with Gleb Pavlovsky. After a couple of years Mikhail Remizov made peace with the regime and headed a fund within the party apparatus of “United Russia” that proclaimed conservatism as its ideological platform. Egor Kholmogorov also began to cooperate one way or another with institutes and publications close to the authorities. Konstantin Krylov and Pavel Sviatenkov remained in the opposition and worked at the APN full time. With the beginning of Medvedev’s presidency (2008), almost all of the Young Conservatives became disenchanted with their former ideals. As ­Sviatenkov puts it: “It’s simply that two things became clear at that stage: (1) The regime has no need of intellectuals, either conservatives or any other kind;

31

FEP—the Foundation for Effective Politics, a Moscow-based organization (1995–2011) that organized political campaigns and public-service information websites, including the Russian Journal (RJ).

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(2) there will not be any attempt to democratize or to create a national state.”32 Therefore the radical wing of the Young Conservatives took part in the protests of 2011–12, and Krylov even joined the Coordinating Council of the Opposition (CSR), which initially inspired great political hopes. Thus there was a split between intellectuals who chose to cooperate with the authorities (Remizov, Mezhuev) and those who became political activists (Krylov, Sviatenkov). As I mentioned at the outset, Boris Mezhuev sincerely believed that Young Conservatism represented a generation, but he came to the conclusion in the end that it had not been able to achieve anything. Using the Russian Journal website that he edited, he began to chronicle the history of the movement. Had he not done so, most likely no one would remember Young Conservatism today. 5 Aftermath Despite the fact that the movement as such has disappeared, its representatives are still active. In 2014 Boris Mezhuev, unexpectedly even for himself, revived the “Young Conservative project” for a while. In 2013 he had become deputy editor-in-chief of the newspaper Izvestiia, the respected federal media outlet that at the time was part of Aram Gabrelianov’s holdings.33 From January 2014 until early 2016, Mezhuev edited the opinion pages, and in the spring of 2014, as we know, there was a “Russian Spring.” Among the columnists were people of different political views (the National-Bolshevik Eduard Limonov, the patriot metaphysician Aleksandr Prokhanov, the old conservative and quasi-monarchist Maksim Sokolov), and Mezhuev recruited many of the authors he worked with at APN—Kholmogorov, Militarev, Sviatenkov. While the last two wrote mostly on other topics, Kholmogorov happily welcomed the “Russian Spring” and in general proved to be an extremely popular writer, firing Russians up with his patriotism. Konstantin Krylov also wrote one column. Mikhail Remizov contributed a very vivid article in which he supported the annexation of Crimea, even stating that Russia had no other choice. He waxed ironic: “[What would you have us do?] Make some indignant statements, refer to international principles? Drown our shame on Urgant and Petrosian [Russian TV shows]? Continue to take pride in the Sochi Olympics? Begin preparations for the football World Cup 2018, anticipating new patriotic celebrations?”34 32 33 34

Pavel Sviatenkov, interview by author, 9 October 2017. Aram Gabrelianov was a well-known and successful media manager who created Life.ru. Mikhail Remizov, “Zhertva krymskoi kampanii,” Izvestiia, 14 March 2014, . Diunov, “Mladokonservatizm.” Egor Kholmogorov, interview by author, 9 October 2017.

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Finally, another RJ employee, Kirill Martynov, now the editor of Novaia gazeta’s department of politics and economics, assesses the results of the movement as follows: It seems to me that what happened with the so-called Young Con­­ servatives was approximately the following: they were a kind of re-­ constructors of Russian conservatism, experiencing their position as simultaneously marginal and authentic. Their isolation from the main Russian political process, from the so-called “liberals in the government,” the consolidation of the vertical of power, etc., proved their radical correctness in their own eyes. “The world was mired in evil,” and the last loyal sons from the newspaper The Conservative and the blogs in Live Journal were witnessing the destruction of the fatherland. Then a conservative ideological turn took place in Russian politics against the background of increasing authoritarianism, which at first sight looked like a victory for the Young Conservative line. But in reality they seem to have suffered a radical defeat; they did not lead this ideological turnabout, which took final shape after 2011, but all their slogans were, in the first place, appropriated by official propaganda that did it “in the American style” (and by Americanized young nationalists like Egor Prosvirnin); and secondly, the Young Conservatives’ agenda, having gone mainstream, ceased to be perceived as authentic and genuine. The Young Conservatives were punks whose music was sold to the market, the revenue from which went to the [big music] labels, and who themselves lost their special status. And further, in my opinion, a mechanism of competition was set in motion in which people fought over who was the greater patriot and conservative. In this competition almost all of the members of the old Live Journal cohort lost out to structures and personalities like Dmitry Enteo, the National Liberation Movement, or Nataliia Poklonskaia. In general, I think that the victory of the Young Conservatives’ agenda destroyed their ecological niche—just as the victory of Stalinism would have destroyed marginal Stalinists from the underground.37 Young Conservatism began as a movement of young idealists who wanted to change the world for the better. However, as often happens, idealism disappeared as they grew up and when it became clear that the utopian picture that the young people were building in their imaginations was impossible, sobriety set in. At best, people become realists, at worst cynics, and only a few remained 37

Kirill Martynov, interview by author, 10 October 2017.

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true to their ideals. Today, Remizov collaborates with Dmitry Rogozin, deputy prime minister in charge of the Russian defense industry (2011–18). Thus some of the Young Conservatives finally achieved real political clout. Krylov and Sviatenkov are still involved with the APN website, which became a niche for nationalists. Militarev does not have a permanent position but occasionally publishes columns on various sites. Kholmogorov continues his career as a publicist and commentator, and also moderates a program about cinema on Tsargrad, not the most popular television channel. Mezhuev continues to work with a pro-Putin think tank, but now he has the opportunity to engage in academic matters and to continue to publish Vadim Tsymbursky’s writings. To my question of what results the Young Conservative movement ultimately achieved, he confidently replied: “Well, in general, none at all.”38 In the final analysis, this is also a result. References   Interviews

Viacheslav Danilov, 2 October 2017. Egor Kholmogorov, 9 October 2017. Kirill Martynov, 10 October 2017. Boris Mezhuev, 5 October 2017. Viktor Militarev, 8 October 2017. Pavel Sviatenkov, 9 October 2017.

Literature

Androsenko, Nataliia. “Konservatizm: Ot ideologii k epistemologii” [Conservatism: From ideology to epistemology]. Prepodavanie istorii v shkole 1 (2013): 41–45. Androsenko, Nataliia. “Mladokonservatizm kak politicheskaia ideologiia” [Young Conser­vatism as a political ideology]. Sotsial’no-gumanitarnye znaniia 5 (2014): 210–17. Androsenko, Nataliia. “Publitsistika mladokonservatorov v sovremennom kommunikativnom prostranstve Rossii” [Young Conservative political journalism in Russia’s contemporary communicative space]. Kommunikologiia 4 (2016): 160–72. Androsenko, Nataliia. “Rol’ mladokonservativnoi publitsistiki v preodolenii rusofobii v 2000-kh gg. Vozvrashchenie slova ‘russkii’” [The role of Young Conservative journalism in overcoming Russophobia in the 2000s: The return of the word “Russian”]. In Russkii universum v usloviiakh globalizatsii: Sbornik statei uchastnikov Vserossiiskoi nauchno-prakticheskoi konferentsii, edited by E.V. Valeeva, 275–84. Arzamas: 2016. 38

Boris Mezhuev, interview by author, 5 October 2017.

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Androsenko, Nataliia. “Rossiiskii konservativnyi tranzit 2000-kh gg.: Ot mladokonservatizma k natsional’noi demokratii” [The Russian conservative transition of the 2000s: From Young conservatism to national democracy].” Vestnik Moskovskogo gosudarstvennogo oblastnogo universiteta. Seriia: Istoriia i politicheskie nauki 4 (2014): 120–27. Desiaterik, Dmitrii. Al’ternativnaia kul’tura: Entsiklopediia [Alternative culture: An ­encyclopedia]. Moscow: 2005. Diunov, Mikhail. “Mladokonservatizm: Ego istoriia, ego znachenie” [Young Con­ servatism: Its history, its significance]. Russkii zhurnal. 12 May 2009, . Galkovskii, Dmitrii. Beskonechnyi tupik [Infinite dead end]. Moscow: 2008. Iakimets Kirill. “Mladokonservatory vykhodiat iz podpol’ia” [Young Conservatives come out of hiding]. Russkii zhurnal. 16 January 2003, . Kholmogorov, Egor. 2005. “Restavratsiia budushchego” [Restoration of the future]. Pravaia.ru. 16 June 2005, . Krylov, Konstantin. “Kontrreformatsiia” [Counter-reformation]. 31 March 2005, . Krylov, Konstantin. Povedenie [Behavior]. Moscow: 1997. Mezhuev, Boris. Politicheskaia kritika Vadima Tsymburskogo [The political criticism of Vadim Tsymbursky]. Moscow: 2012. Pelevin, Viktor. Generation “P”. Moscow: 2009. Remizov, Mikhail. “Predislovie” [Foreword]. In Ostrov Rossiia: Geopoliticheskie i khronopo­liticheskie raboty, by Vadim Tsymburskii, 3–4. Moscow: 2007. Remizov, Mikhail. “Zhertva krymskoi kampanii” [The price of the Crimean campaign]. Izvestiia. 14 March 2014, . Tsymburskii, Vadim. Ostrov Rossiia: Geopoliticheskie i khronopoliticheskie raboty [Island of Russia: Geopolitical and chronopolitical works]. Moscow: 2007.

Translated from the Russian by Marcus C. Levitt

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Chapter 7

Mirror Games? Ideological Resonances between Russian and US Radical Conservatism  Marlene Laruelle In 2015, Aleksandr Prokhanov (b. 1938), one of Russia’s oldest and most famous conservative ideologists, who has been writing since the 1970s, described the United States as an example to follow. He indicated that Russia should reconcile its “Red” and “White” factions the same way that the United States has united competing Northern and Southern narratives inherited from the Civil War under a metanarrative on American values.1 Such an invitation to Russian citizens and leaders to look at the American model as worthy of emulation— even if only in this one respect—is rare enough to be noteworthy. From the other side, in summer 2017, American white supremacists were heard singing, “Russia is our friend” during the racist violence in Charlottesville,2 an equally rare stance in American culture. There are other, similarly unexpected cases: Aleksandr Torshin (b. 1953), a former Russian senator and deputy speaker of the Russian parliament for more than a decade, is, for instance, a lifetime member of the US National Rifle Association (NRA), the ultrapowerful American gun lobby, and was an international election observer in Tennessee during the Obama-Romney presidential contest in 2012.3 These anecdotes point to the fact that there have been more resonances than one might expect between US and Russian conservative narratives. Some of these resonances have no direct links to each other but appear as two parallel discourses inspired by the same Zeitgeist. As Mark Bassin has noted, this was the case for Soviet semi-dissident figure Lev Gumilev (1912–92) and the European New Right, who found common ground on topics such as ethnopluralism and the rejection of an individual-centric liberalism, without engaging 1 Aleksandr Prokhanov, “Vvedenie,” Izborskii klub: Russkie strategii 3 (2013): 53. 2 “Video: Neo-Nazis Chant ‘Russia Is Our Friend! The South Will Rise Again!’ and ‘We Will Be Back!’ in Cville,” Blue Virginia, 8 October 2017, accessed 13 March 2018, . 3 “Depth of Russian Politician’s Cultivation of NRA Ties Revealed,” NPR, 1 March 2018, accessed 13 March 2018, .

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004408005_008

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in any direct contacts.4 Other resonances can be explained by the shared inspiration that the US and Russia draw from European New Right thinking in all its permutations. Last but not least, some are founded on genuine mutual readings and cross-fertilization, sometimes followed by personal contacts. Prokhanov’s reference to US history is quite unique for a proponent of Russia’s Sonderweg and messianic destiny who sees Russia as a fortress resisting assaults from the West. Yet his discourse harks back to an old framing of Russia’s identity that positions Russia at the crossroads of East and West and identifies the West as the main threat to Russia’s national uniqueness. This paradigm has been competing with a rising trend that calls for a European-style nationalism, and for Russia to lead the new wave of conservatism in the West. To supporters of the latter trend, a profound identity shift toward a pan-European/ pan-Western identity is the only path to credible political solutions for Russia. This move from a nationalism centered on the country’s uniqueness to a more pan-European one can be explained by the deep societal transformations that have been taking place since the collapse of the Soviet Union and Russia’s encounter with “globalization.” For the new waves of nationalists, reinventing a new Russia means diminishing the country’s uniqueness and promoting the export of new values allowing for unprecedented dialogue between Russian, European, and American conservative groups. This dialogue with Europe/the West can take several forms. One has been so-called “young conservatism” (mladokonservatizm), an intellectual movement including such key figures such as Boris Mezhuev (b. 1970) that emerged in the 2000s and deeply influenced the Russian leadership.5 Young conservatives have not only rediscovered and rehabilitated Russia’s own conservative traditions—Konstantin Pobedonostsev, Konstantin Leont’ev, Lev Tikhomirov, the neo-Slavophiles—but have also crafted new forms of conservatism inspired by European and American narratives and adapted to the experiences of post-Soviet Russia. Some of these ideological experiments, such as the Russian Doctrine (Russkaia doktrina)—which presents itself as the successor to the famous Vekhi (Signposts) of 1909, a manifesto against the ideology of the radical intelligentsia of the early 20th century, but which could equally well be compared to American neoconservatives’ New American Century project— are insightful examples of this blending. An ideologically close yet independent phenomenon is the move by the Russian Orthodox Church to position itself as the leader of a new “moralist International” and therefore develop con4 Mark Bassin, “Lev Gumilev and the European New Right,” Nationalities Papers 43, no. 6 (2015): 840–65. 5 See more on “young conservatism” in chapter 6 by Alexander Pavlov in this volume.

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tacts with Catholic and Protestant movements in Europe and in the United States. Another trend has been for the radical right or far right to look to the West for inspiration. One may question whether the radical right belongs to conservative trends: it refuses the status quo and advocates a revolution against the old world order. Despite this deep contradiction in goals, it makes sense to look at today’s far right as part of conservatism more broadly: new ideologues in the 1990s and 2000s have made “radical thinking” quite innovative and brought it into line with the Zeitgeist, creating an increased tolerance that has allowed some ideas that originated at the radical fringes to integrate into the conservative mainstream. I label this trend, which has accelerated ideological permeability between the radical and classical rights, “radical conservatism.” Since the connections between Russian and European conservatisms have been quite well studied, this chapter focuses on the lesser-known realm of conservative US-Russian mutual inspiration. Although Russia is not part of the European Union and does not aspire to be, Russian culture has been built on its intimate relation to Europe and, since the Slavophiles, on presenting itself as the herald of authentic Europe.6 Its relationship to the US is far more distant and the “West”—in the sense of transatlantic institutions and liberal values— embodies what many Russian conservatives despise. Yet certain figures among them have gradually been breaking the taboo of looking at the US, reminding their readers that there is a conservative America that could serve as a model or at least an ally. In this chapter, I look at Russian and American conservatism’s mutual resonances, from the most extreme factions of “radical conservatism” that justify racist violence to more intellectual ones in pursuit of respectability, such as the Identitarians and the Alt-Right. I also include two groups that are representative of a more mainstream conservatism: the proponents of an economic “Third Way” and the Christian Right. I exclude the case of “young conservatism,” which deserves its own study. I use conservatism in the broad sense of a political doctrine that emphasizes the value of traditional institutions and practices and rejects “progressism.” This is an etic definition (defined by an external actor, myself), and not an emic definition (from the perspective of the subject); some groups mentioned in this chapter may not recognize themselves as conservative and may use other self-definitions.

6 See Andrzej Walicki, The Slavophile Controversy: History of a Conservative Utopia in NineteenthCentury Russian Thought (South Bend, IN: 1989) and Iver Neuman, Russia and the Idea of Europe (London: 2017).

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Russian and American White Supremacists

The most extreme segment of the radical conservative kaleidoscope is composed of white supremacists. This tradition, which is rooted in US history and was long absent from Russia, insists on the need for segregationist policies that, though they sometimes refer to Nazi racial extermination policies, are typically more inspired by American slavery and segregation and South African apartheid. On the contemporary American political scene, white supremacy is a marginal movement, visible primarily in southern states. For more than a decade it has been reinventing itself as a “nativist” movement in order to capture a bigger ideological market; the enemy is no longer solely the African American population, but also the Hispanic one, and all non-white migrants trying to assimilate with American “white natives.”7 In Russia, the room for such an agenda is quite limited: if xenophobia has been one of the most striking consensual elements of the 2000s8—though it diminished with the 2014 Ukrainian crisis, which reframed the West (rather than migrants) as the enemy9—a straightforwardly racialist and segregationist narrative is not widely accepted. In the 1990s, the American white supremacy movement, searching for renewed inspiration, interpreted the Soviet collapse and the “rebirth” of Russia as a sign of the vitality of the “white race,” which had been able to defeat communism. Interviewed for Prokhanov’s newspaper Den’, former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan (and former Republican Louisiana state representative) David Duke (b. 1950) affirmed: “In my opinion, the destruction of White Russia would be a great explosion for all of Europe. It would be the end of the European blood heritage. If Russia is destroyed, all of us—including Americans— will be destroyed.”10 Duke made Russia his new darling, visiting the country at least three times between 1999 and 2001 to promote the Russian translation of 7 8

9 10

Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, NJ: 2002); Philip Lamy, Millennium Rage: Survivalists, White Supremacists, and the Doomsday Prophecy (New York: 1996). Yoshiko M. Herrera and Nicole M. Butkovich Kraus, “Pride versus Prejudice: Ethnicity, National Identity, and Xenophobia in Russia,” Comparative Politics 48, no. 3 (2016): 293– 312; Mikhail A. Alexseev, “Majority and Minority Xenophobia in Russia: The Importance of Being Titulars,” Post-Soviet Affairs 26, no. 2 (2010): 89–120. On post-Crimea trends, read Pål Kolstø and Helge Blakkisrud (eds.), The New Russian Nationalism: Between Imperial and Ethnic (Edinburgh: 2016); Kolstø and Blakkisrud (eds.), Russia before and after Crimea: Nationalism and Identity, 2010–17 (Edinburgh: 2018). Fen Montaigne, “David Duke Says He Backs a Powerful ‘White Russia,’” Philadelphia Inquirer, 15 October 1992, last time accessed 12 March 2018 (link no longer available), .

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his book My Awakening: A Path to Racial Understanding (translated into Russian as Evreiskii vopros glazami amerikantsa [The Jewish question through the eyes of an American]). In it, he claimed: “Russia is a white nation! ... In my opinion, Russia and other Eastern countries have the greatest chance of having racially aware parties achiev[e] political power.”11 Duke’s book was reportedly available at the State Duma bookstore at a very affordable price, and the first printing of 5000 copies quickly sold out.12 He also developed contacts with some skinhead groups. In 2004, Duke reiterated his belief that “Russia has a greater sense of racial understanding among its population than does any other predominantly White nation.”13 In addition, he visited Ukraine several times in the mid-2000s on the invitation of the Interregional Academy of Personnel Management, a private higher educational institution that is known for hosting anti-Semitic personalities.14 The Russophile positioning of the former Ku Klux Klan leader, as well as of some other American white supremacy groups, allowed for a dialogue with their Russian counterparts. In the 1990s, only small radical groups such as Aleksei Vdovin (b. 1958) and Konstantin Kasimovsky (b. 1974)’s Russian National Union or Aleksandr Barkashov (b. 1953)’s more powerful Russian National Unity group were attracted to a racist narrative, but they referred to it more through the Nazi prism of Aryanism than through American White Power. In the second half of the 1990s, the structuring of a Russian skinhead movement that combined White Power ideology with provocative lifestyles and fashions and violent street actions opened the first direct dialogue with American groups.15 Though initially informal and decentralized, Russian skinheads organized themselves around three powerful associations: the Moscow Skin Legion, the Russian section of Blood and Honor, and 88 United Brigades (OB 88),16 which was born of the unification of several small movements in the Russian section 11 12 13 14 15

16

“David Duke, ‘To Russia With Hate,’” CBS News, 2 February 2001, accessed 12 March 2018, . “David Duke in Russia,” Anti-Defamation League, 2001, last time accessed 12 March 2018, . David Duke, “Is Russia the Key to White Survival?,” DavidDuke.com, 23 October 2004, accessed 12 March 2018, . Nathaniel Popper, “David Duke Offers ‘Antisemitism 101’ at a Ukrainian University,” The Forward, 3 November 2006, accessed 12 March 2018, . For example, skinhead groups in Moscow have, with the support of Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, served to make immigrants flee. See Nikolai Mitrokhin, “Ot Pamiati k skinkhedam Luzhkova: Ideologiia russkogo natsionalizma v 1987–2003 gg.,” Neprikosnovennyi zapas 31 (2003): 37–43. The number 88 is code for “Heil Hitler,” since “h” is the eighth letter of the alphabet.

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of the international Hammerskin Organization. Each of these had links with some US and German counterparts. In the 2000s, Russia had more skinheads than any other European country (at around 50,000) and correspondingly high rates of hate speech and violence against migrants.17 Yet the movement faltered at the turn of the 2010s, for several internal reasons as well as a more repressive government policy.18 The skinheads, as well as the main institution trying to represent them and normalize them politically, the Movement against Illegal Immigration (DNPI, dismantled in 2011), led by Aleksandr Belov (b. 1976), contributed to spreading a vision of Russia as a white country fighting for its racial survival in the face of “migrant invasion.”19 The feeling of having common cause with the American radical right was illustrated by the presence of American White Power representatives in cowboy hats at the Russian March, a nationalist demonstration held on November 4 for the Day of National Unity.20 With the help of David Duke, the American White Power activist Preston Wiginton (b. 1965) has been developing contacts with Russian skinheads since the 2000s, attending several DNPI meetings and Russian Marches, and organizing American hate rock bands in Russia in 2017.21 Contacts between American white supremacists and their Russian counterparts accelerated following the Ukrainian crisis of 2014, in which Putin was seen as the leader of global resistance to liberalism. Well-acquainted with Belov, Wiginton invited the geopolitician Aleksandr Dugin (b. 1962) to give a Skype lecture at Texas A&M University in 2015, although very few people showed

17 18 19

20 21

On skinheads, see Sergei Belikov, Skinkhedy v Rossii (Moscow: 2005); Victor Shnirelman, “Chistil’shchiki moskovskikh ulits”: Skinkhedy, SMI i obshchestvennoe mnenie (Moscow: 2007). Aleksandr Verkhovskii, “Dinamika nasiliia v russkom natsionalizme,” in Rossiia—ne Ukrai­na: Sovremennye aspekty natsionalizma, ed. Aleksandr Verkhovskii (Moscow: 2014), 32–61. Dennis Zuev, “The Movement against Illegal Immigration: Analysis of the Central Node in the Russian Extreme‐Right Movement,” Nations and Nationalism 16, no. 2 (2010): 261–84; Sofia Tipaldou and Katrin Uba, “The Russian Radical Right Movement and Immigration Policy: Do They Just Make Noise or Have an Impact as Well?,” Europe-Asia Studies 66, no. 7 (2014): 1080–1101. Dennis Zuev, “A Visual Dimension of Protest: An Analysis of Interactions during the Russian March,” Visual Anthropology 23, no. 3 (2010): 221–53. David Holthouse, “Preston Wiginton Emerges in Russia Promoting Race Hate,” Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report, Summer 2008 (20 May 2008), accessed 4 March 2018, .

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up.22 Another example is Matthew Heimbach (b. 1991), leader of the self-proclaimed Traditionalist Worker Party, who has originated hashtags such as #HailPutin and #PutinForTsar. He stated: “I really believe that Russia is the leader of the free world right now. ... Putin is supporting nationalists around the world and building an anti-globalist alliance, while promoting traditional values and self-determination.”23 Heimbach is said to have converted to Orthodoxy24 and, at a conference in California in 2018, broadcast a video in which Dugin emphasized the “common struggle” of Americans and Russians.25 2

Western Identitarians and Russian Raciologists

White supremacy is both a doctrinal trend and an organized grassroots movement that promotes racist violence. Connected to it yet independent from it are more intellectual trends such as the Identitarians. The Identitarians emerged in France in the 2000s as a way to reformulate a white nationalism focused primarily on fighting what its supporters see as a “Muslim invasion” and the “genocide” of the native population of Europe. Close to the European New Right, the Identitarians—who primarily target young people—developed in France and Belgium, then spread to Germany and Scandinavian countries. The movement is inspired by Guillaume Faye (1949–2019), a former member of the GRECE—the European New Right’s main school for cadres—who moved away from the French New Right, deemed too leftist, to go back to a more traditional narrative based on the notion of Blut und Boden (Blood and Soil).26 Faye crafted the concept of a Eurosiberia spanning from Dublin to 22 23

24 25 26

Matthew Watkins, “‘Strongest Skinhead’ Is behind White Nationalist’s Speech at Texas A&M,” The Texas Tribune, 1 December 2016, accessed 4 March 2018, . Natasha Bertrand, “‘A Model for Civilization’: Putin’s Russia Has Emerged as ‘a Beacon for Nationalists’ and the American Alt-Right,” Business Insider, 10 December 2016, accessed 4 March 2018, . Ryan Hunter, “My Interview with Matthew Heimbach,” Orthodox in the District (blog), 26 June 2015, accessed 4 March 2018, . Justin Salhani, “The White Nationalist Movement’s Favorite Philosopher,” ThinkProgress, 19 December 2016, accessed 4 March 2018, . Stéphane François, “Les paganismes de la Nouvelle Droite (1980–2004)” (PhD diss., University of Lille, 2005), accessed 26 February 2018, ; Nicolas Lebourg, Le Monde vu de la plus extrême droite: Du fascisme au nationalisme-révolutionnaire (Perpignan: 2010).

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Vladivostok, that is, “the destiny space of European peoples eventually regrouped from the Atlantic to the Pacific, sealing the historical alliance of peninsular Europe, Central Europe and Russia.”27 This white Eurosiberia excludes the non-Slavic regions of Russia and the former Soviet Union, and heavily criticizes the US and its supposedly pro-Muslim policy. Two of Faye’s books, The Colonization of Europe (2000) and Why Do We Fight? Manifesto of European Resistance (2001),28 became classic references for the Identitarian movement and were echoed politically on a larger stage by the Flemish nationalist Vlaams Blok. The Identitarians emerged in the US under that label relatively late, around 2016, with Identity Evropa and the Traditionalist Youth Network.29 Yet in many respects Jared Taylor (b. 1951) and his American Renaissance (published as a journal since 1990 and a daily webzine since 2012) have long represented the American equivalent. For the past three decades, Taylor has been working to move white supremacy theories away from Klansmen by offering a more intellectual construction that could help normalize white supremacy. Some of his theses penetrated Tea Party discourse through former leftist David Horowitz’s Frontpage, among other avenues.30 Taylor’s Council of Conservative Citizens (CoCC) remains among the most important “respectable racist” faces of the modern white nationalist movement. Referring to some controversial theories in evolutionary biology, Taylor states that races have different qualities that are based both on genes and on adaptation to climatic conditions, and that whites and Asians represent the higher orders. Author of the seminal tract White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 20th Century (2011), he believes that states can prosper only if they are based on a racially homogenous population, and sees Japan, the country in which he spent his childhood, as the best example of a successful society based on racial homogeneity. According to him, the Confederate states were promoting race realism, a trend that has been destroyed by the egalitarianism and cosmopolitanism of American elites.31 He therefore considers it normal for whites to fight for their rights in the same way as blacks and Hispanics do. Taylor’s pro-Asian stance and his rejection of anti-Semitism 27

Guillaume Faye, Pourquoi nous combattons: Manifeste de la Résistance européenne (Paris: 2001), 123. 28 Ibid. 29 Eric D. Knowles and Linda R. Tropp, “Donald Trump and the Rise of White Identity in Politics,” The Conversation, 21 October 2016, accessed 4 March 2018, . 30 More in Alexander Reid Ross, Against the Fascist Creep (Oakland, CA: 2017). 31 Russell Nieli, “Jared Taylor and White Identity,” in Key Thinkers of the Resurgent Right, ed. Mark Sedgwick (Oxford: 2019).

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place him, like Aleksandr Dugin, in quite a sophisticated position among white supremacist theorists. Identitarians are represented in Russia by the “raciology” (rasologiia) group.32 The founders of this racialist movement include Aleksandr Sevastianov (b. 1954), a well-known neo-pagan, publicist, and chairman of the National Power Party of Russia; Pavel Tulaev (b. 1959), a journalist and advocate for a “Vedic Slavic-Russian civilization”; Vladimir Avdeev (b. 1962), a member of the pagan community in Moscow;33 and Anatoly Ivanov, a member of the editorial committee of the nationalist weekly Russkii vestnik. They have been organized around the website Belyi Mir (white world) and have participated in Slavophile literary circles, particularly the International Fund for Writing and Slavic Culture34 and the Writers’ Union of Russia.35 In 1999, the raciology group launched a book series, the Library of Racial Thought (Biblioteka rasovoi mysli), which publishes the works of some contemporary Russian authors but focuses on 19th- and 20th-century Western authors who sought to use physical characteristics (craniology, phrenology, odontology, and serology) to typologize races.36 The raciology group gained political visibility in the mid-2000s through one of its members, Andrei Savel’ev (b. 1962), vice-president of the Rodina party, who was a member of the Duma Committee for Constitutional Legislation and State-Building and vice-chairman of the Duma Committee for CIS Affairs and Compatriot Relations.37 Many of the ideological references of the raciology group are to Nazi Germany and the European racialist and eugenicist tradition. One of its first publications was the newspaper Nasledie predkov (The heritage of ancestors), a name that evoked Heinrich Himmler’s Ahnenerbe. It took very limited inspiration from American doctrines. Yet the movement developed international contacts with Guillaume Faye (even establishing a small Russian branch of his movement European Synergies), as well as with Terre et Peuple, led by Pierre Vial (b. 1942). In 2006, Guillaume Faye presented a paper on Russia’s major 32

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Victor Shnirelman, “Rasologiia v deistvii: Mechty deputata Savel’evam,” in Verkhi i nizy russkogo natsionalizma, ed. Aleksandr Verkhovskii (Moscow: 2007), 162–87. See also Victor Shnirelman, “Porog tolerantnosti”: Ideologiia i praktika novogo rasizma (Moscow: 2011) and Shnirel’man, Ariiskii mif v sovremennom mire (Moscow: 2015). “Krov’ i pochva Vladimira Avdeeva,” Spetsnaz 3, no. 14 (March 2006), accessed 4 March 2018, . See the website Obshchestvennyi Mezhdunarodnyi Fond Slavianskoi Pis’mennosti i Kul’­tury, accessed 4 March 2018, . See the website Soiuz Pisatelei, accessed 4 March 2018, . See Vladimir Avdeev (ed.), Russkaia rasovaia teoriia do 1917 g. (Moscow: 2002). More on Rodina and Savel’ev in Marlene Laruelle, In the Name of the Nation: Nationalism and Politics in Contemporary Russia (New York: 2009).

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historical role in the Eurosiberian future at a conference organized by the White World association and website in Moscow.38 In 2015, it was Jared Taylor’s turn: he attended the Russian International Conservative Forum in Saint Petersburg, which brought together many leaders of European far-right parties. Faye was also invited to speak at American Renaissance in 2016.39 As we can see, in the case of the Identitarians, direct connections between Russians and Americans are minimal; shared resonances are made possible because both sides read some of the same European thinkers. 3

The Alt-Right and Its Celebration of Russia

A new trend within radical conservatism took shape at the end of the 2000s: the Alt-Right, or alternative right (a term coined in 2008).40 The term refers to a loose aggregation of white supremacists who are trying to refresh the movement’s image in order to seem like a credible alternative to the Republican Party. The Alt-Right movement is embodied by websites such as Breitbart News and AlternativeRight.com, which have become the intellectual centers revamping white supremacy theories under more politically correct labels. Richard Spencer (b. 1978), the author of the Alt-Right Manifesto and of an edited volume, The Uprooting of European Identity (2016),41 personifies this trend. He has partly renewed the doctrinal stock of American white supremacism by moving away from the Klan’s WASP-centric narrative to call for the defense of all white Americans (including Catholics) and by adding migrants and Muslims to the list of enemies. He invites white Americans to return to their ancestral identities and demonstrate racial solidarity by developing a “peaceful ethnic cleansing.”42 Unlike Taylor, Spencer displays a virulent anti-Semitism

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Guillaume Faye, “De la géopolitique à l’ethnopolitique: Le nouveau concept d’Eurosibérie; Le rôle historique majeur de la Russie,” proceedings of the conference “The White World Future,” Moscow, June 8–10, 2006, accessed 4 March 2018, . “Guillaume Faye—‘America and Europe: Brothers in Arms’ (American Renaissance Conference, 2012),” YouTube video, 55:41, posted by “Jamal Jackson,” 19 June 2016, accessed 4 March 2018, . “Radix Journal,” AltRight.com, accessed 1 October 2017, . Richard B. Spencer (ed.), The Uprooting of European Identity (Arlington, VA: 2016). Tamir Bar-On, “Richard B. Spencer and the Alt Right,” in Key Thinkers of the Resurgent Right, ed. Mark Sedgwick (Oxford: 2019).

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and has been more open to other attempts to renew classic American conservatism, such as Pat Buchanan’s paleo-conservatism.43 Spencer leads the National Policy Institute (NPI), an organization launched in 2005 and is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “a suit-and-tie version of the white supremacists of old,” a kind of “professional racist in khakis.”44 Largely inspired by the French New Right, Spencer believes in metapolitics and therefore considers Klan-like traditional white supremacism to be outdated: the conquest of politics happens not on the street but in the cultural realm and the marketplace of ideas. Trump’s victory in the 2016 elections put wind in the sails of the Alt-Right, but its main public figure, Steve Bannon (b. 1953), former executive chairman of Breitbart News, rapidly resigned from his position as White House chief strategist, a departure that heralded the White House’s turn toward a more classical Republican framing of domestic and foreign policy issues.45 Many Alt-Right figures are big fans of Putin, whom they see as a beacon for the white world.46 They are attracted to his rejection of “decadent” American liberalism and multiculturalism, hard line against Islamic radicalism, upholding of Christian values, criticism of Western political correctness, and support for the idea that global elites conspire against ordinary people. Steve Bannon, for instance, declared in 2014, “We, the Judeo-Christian West, really have to look at what [Putin] is talking about as far as traditionalism goes, particularly the sense of where it supports the underpinnings of nationalism.”47 Yet the honeymoon with Russia is far from total: though Bannon has referred to Dugin and Putin positively, he considers the Putin regime kleptocratic and Dugin too

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Paleo-conservatism blends several trends of American conservatism: the “Old Right” opposed to the New Deal, and a social conservatism that includes not only conservative WASPs but also conservative Catholics. Paleo-conservatism opposes immigration, multiculturalism, and the power of the federal government, but advances an isolationist, or at least a non-interventionist stance in foreign policy, contrary to some other trends of American conservatism that are more messianist and interventionist. Hannah Gais, “White Power Meets Business Casual: Inside the Effort to ‘Make White Nationalism Great Again,’” The Washington Spectator, 2 May 2016, accessed 4 March 2018, . David A. Graham, “Why Trump Turned on Steve Bannon,” The Atlantic, 3 January 2018, accessed 26 February 2018, . Bertrand, “‘A Model for Civilization.’” J. Lester Feder, “This Is How Steve Bannon Sees the Entire World,” BuzzFeed, 16 November 2016, accessed 26 February 2018, .

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open to the Islamic world.48 He has also denounced “Putin’s cynical denial of responsibility” for the actions of his proxies in Crimea.49 Very often, he mentions Dugin only to say that the Russian thinker has quoted Julius Evola (1898– 1974), the Italian fascist ideologue who is one of Bannon’s key references.50 For his part, Dugin was among the most vocal Russians in expressing support for Donald Trump, going so far as to call on him to take the lead on a “Nuremberg of liberalism.”51 Dugin’s Fourth Political Theory (Chetvertaia politicheskaia teoriia), quickly translated into several languages, including English and French, is probably the foreign doctrine that most influences American Alt-Right general thinking.52 In a 2014 interview, Dugin stated that he had definitively renounced what he calls the second and third political theories (communism and nationalism/ fascism, the first one being liberalism) and announced that the fourth theory requires a full break with the first three because it no longer seeks to accommodate modernity, but rather denies it entirely. Whereas in the early 1990s, he claimed that Russia had tested liberalism and communism and had to turn to a third choice, fascism/nationalism, 20 years later he proclaimed, “Liberalism, communism, and fascism—ideologies of the twentieth century—have finished. That is why it is necessary to create a new, fourth political theory.”53 Several Alt-Right websites—such as Open Revolt, Green Star, New Resistance, and AlternativeRight.com—regularly publish Dugin’s main texts in English for American audiences. This is the most dissemination a Russian thinker can hope for in the United States. Spencer’s Russian ex-wife, Nina Kouprianova, who published under the nom de plume Nina Byzantina, has translated Dugin’s two books on Martin Heidegger into English and published a blog on “meta- and geopolitics” inspired by him. An apologist of the Putin regime, she

48

Justin Salhani, “The Frightening Common Ground between a Trump Adviser and White Nationalism’s Favorite Philosopher,” ThinkProgress, 20 December 2016, accessed 26 February 2018, . 49 “Russian Anti-Liberals Love Donald Trump but It May Not Be Entirely Mutual,” The Economist, 20 November 2016, accessed 26 February 2018, . 50 Jason Horowitz, “Steve Bannon Cited Italian Thinker Who Inspired Fascists,” The New York Times, 10 February 2017, ; Joshua Green, Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Nationalist Uprising (New York: 2017), 204–7. 51 “Donald Trump: The Swamp and Fire,” Katehon, 14 November 2016, accessed 26 February 2018, . 52 See the website The Fourth Political Theory, accessed 26 February 2018, . 53 Dugin, Chetvertaia politicheskaia teoriia (Moscow: 2009), cover blurb.

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has distanced herself from her husband’s racist theories.54 Spencer himself published a pro-Trump text celebrating the approaching new world order on the Katehon website, of which Dugin is one of the main editors.55 Dugin was also interviewed by American conspiracist Alex Jones (b. 1974) for his website Infowars in February 2017,56 just a few months after Dugin interviewed Jones.57 Lee Stranahan (b. 1965), a former journalist at Breibart, began working for Sputnik’s Washington, DC, bureau in early 2017.58 To give a final example, Charles Bausman, editor of Russia Insider, which launched in 2014 during the Ukrainian crisis, is close to some pro-Church and anti-abortion networks in Russia and recently published an anti-Semitic manifesto accusing Jews of funding hostility toward Russia, an ideological move that won him the sympathies of the Alt-Right.59 The Alt-Right has thus some direct, personal connections with Russia, mostly with Aleksandr Dugin, but they remain minimal. 4

The Economic “Third Way”: The Glaz’ev-LaRouche Connections

Another, quite obscure US-Russia conservative “resonance” is the long friendship between Sergei Glaz’ev (b. 1961) and Lyndon LaRouche (1922–2019). 54

55 56 57 58

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Casey Michel, “Meet the Moscow Mouthpiece Married to a Racist Alt-Right Boss,” The Daily Beast, 20 December 2016, accessed 28 February 2018, See her interview at Diana Bruk, “Richard Spencer’s Russian Wife Talks Trump, Utopia: Full Interview,” The Observer, 19 September 2017, accessed 28 February 2018, . “Ustanovit li Tramp novyi mirovoi poriadok?,” Katehon, 14 December 2016, accessed 4 February 2018, . “Dr. Aleksandr Dugin Interview with Alex Jones—Putin Advisor,” YouTube video, 56:22, posted by “The INFOWAR Armory,” 8 February 2017, accessed 4 February 2018, . “Alexander Dugin Interviews Alex Zionist Jones on Russian Television,” YouTube video, 55:47, posted by “Hamza—Slay Your Dragon,” 28 December 2016, accessed 4 February 2018, . Justin Wm. Moyer, “From the Kremlin to K Street: Russia-Funded Radio Broadcasts Blocks from the White House,” Washington Post, 12 July 2017, accessed 4 February 2018, . Anton Shekhovtsov, “How Vicious Anti-Semitism Quietly Aids Moscow’s Covert Influence Campaign in the U.S,” Haaretz, 29 January 2018, accessed 4 February 2018, .

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Glaz’ev, an economist by training, backed then—prime minister Egor Gaidar’s shock therapy in the 1990s. He subsequently reneged on his liberal principles, advocating interventionist economic policies that moved him closer to the communists. He has also long been a vocal supporter of the Orthodox Church—he was once vice-president of the Union of Orthodox Citizens. He progressively cemented his place in Putin’s inner circle in the early 2010s as the leading advocate of the Eurasian Economic Union and has since been the president’s advisor for regional integration issues. LaRouche was the founder of an eponymous conservative movement that denounces the “world oligarchy” that allegedly controls state decisions and promotes neoliberal values in order to destroy world cultures. During the Cold War, the LaRouchites were highly critical of the Soviet Union, but they quickly rallied to the new Russia, seeing it as the bulwark against the American unilateral order. In 1992, LaRouche and his wife, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, established a Moscow branch of their Schiller Institute for Science and Culture, which started publishing Russian translations of LaRouche’s essays.60 They met Glaz’ev in 1994 and began promoting his economic theories in their weekly Executive Intelligence Review. They also translated Glaz’ev’s book Genocide (Genotsid, 1999), which denounced the world oligarchy’s policy of destroying Russia, into English. The long-lasting Glaz’ev-LaRouche friendship is today founded on promoting Russia’s “Eurasian” policy, that is, positioning Russia as a continental land bridge between a rising Asia and a declining Europe. Glaz’ev insists on a classic definition of Russia as the pivotal state of Eurasia, which gives it a say in the affairs of its “near abroad,” while LaRouche combines this pro-Russian approach with admiration for China’s new Silk Road initiative.61 Both advocate an agenda of “continentalism” between Europe-Russia/Eurasia-Asia that largely excludes the US, which is seen as the homeland of a destructive world oligarchy—with implicit anti-Semitic statements. 5

The Christian Right and the Russian Orthodox Church

Away from this radical conservative nebula and closer to mainstream conservatism are the resonances between the American Christian Right and the 60 61

Anton Shekhovtsov, “Sergey Glazyev and the American Fascist Cult,” The Interpreter, 8 June 2015, accessed 4 February 2018, . Michael Billington, Rachel Douglas, and Helga Zepp-LaRouche, The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge (Leesburg, VA: 2014).

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Moscow Patriarchate. Although the Christian Right, a bastion of American messianism, the free market, and neoliberalism, has historically perceived Russia as the enemy, this attitude progressively began to change in the 2000s. This shift is due not only to Russia’s new branding as a conservative power, but also—and more importantly—to changes on the American domestic political scene, with presidents Bill Clinton and then Barack Obama promoting social liberalism and particularly the recognition of sexual minorities’ rights. The growing importance of LGBTQ+ issues in the American public space pushed the Christian Right to search for new allies with the same conservative reading of Christian values. The Kremlin’s “morality turn” took form in the first half of the 2000s, with prominent figures in the Moscow Patriarchate—such as Patriarch Kirill (b. 1946), Vsevolod Chaplin (b. 1968), and Hilarion (Alfeev) (b. 1966)—the driving force behind it. In a September 2013 Valdai Club speech, Russian president Vladimir Putin solemnly declared: “We can see how many of the Euro-Atlantic countries are actually rejecting their roots, including the Christian values that constitute the basis of Western civilization. They are denying moral principles and all traditional identities: national, cultural, religious, and even sexual.”62 This official statement reached its full political expression with the Pussy Riot trials in 201263 and several legislative moves on social questions: anti-homosexuality laws, the reintroduction of the notion of “causing offense to religious feelings” into the penal code, debates on juvenile justice, attempts to reduce rights to divorce and abortion, and so on.64 Russia’s strategy to pose as the herald of the traditional family, warmly received by Catholic churches and the Holy See, also opened up new channels of communication with the United States. Former Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan (b. 1938), The Family Leader head Bob Vander Plaats (b. 1963), and spokesmen for such associations as Concerned Women for America, the American Family Association, Vision America, and Liberty Counsel have all loudly praised Putin for his stance on family values and invited the United States to follow his example.65 The American Family Association’s Bryan 62 63 64 65

See the transcript of the speech: “Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club,” Website of the President of Russia, 19 September 2013, accessed 18 March 2018, . Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, “The Pussy Riot Affair and Putin’s Démarche from Sovereign Democracy to Sovereign Morality,” Nationalities Papers 42, no. 4 (2014): 615–21. More on this can be found in chapters 4 by Dmitry Uzlaner and 15 by Caroline Hill in the present volume. Miranda Blue, “Globalizing Homophobia, Part 1: How the American Right Came to Embrace Russia’s Anti-Gay Crackdown,” Right Wing Watch, 3 October 2013, accessed 18

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Fischer called Putin a “Lion of Christianity,”66 while National Organization for Marriage president Brian Brown went to Moscow to build support for anti-gay legislation.67 Hilarion (Alfeev), chairman of External Church Relations of the Holy Synod of the Moscow Patriarchate, met with representatives of American evangelists during a trip to Washington, DC, in 2010. He addressed thousands of members of the Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Dallas, putting forward the idea of “a strategic alliance of Orthodox Christians, Catholics, and traditional Protestants, of all those who defend the true Christian values,”68 and had an hour-long meeting with former US president George W. Bush.69 A key power broker between the Russian Orthodox Church and the American Christian Right is the World Congress of Families (WCF). Founded in 1997 in the US by activist from the religious right (and former Reagan National Commission on Children appointee) Allan Carlson, it presents itself as a multifaith, multinational coalition that endorses the militant defense of the “natural family,” combats legislation that normalizes same-sex marriage, and supports countries with anti-gay agendas. The World Congress of Families claims that its 2011 Moscow Demographic Summit “helped pass the first Russian laws to restrict abortion in modern history,”70 referring to the 2011 law signed by thenpresident Dmitry Medvedev that requires abortion providers to devote 10 per cent of any advertising to describing the dangers of abortion to a woman’s health and makes it illegal to describe abortion as a safe medical procedure. Some consider this legislation the first step taken toward pro-life legislation in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union. The World Congress of Families was planning to organize its 2014 annual meeting, presented as the “Olympics of March 2018, . 66 Miranda Blue, “Fischer Praises Putin, Calls Him a ‘Lion of Christianity,” Right Wing Watch, 10 October 2013, accessed 18 March 2018, . 67 Miranda Blue, “Globalizing Homophobia, Part 2: Today the Whole World Is Looking at Russia,” Right Wing Watch, 3 October 2013, accessed 18 March 2018, . 68 Gillian Kane, “What Does the ‘Traditional Family’ Have to Do with Pussy Riot?,” Religion Dispatches, 12 August 2012, accessed 18 March 2018, . 37 “Poroshenko nazval Kreshchenie Rusi evropeiskim vyborom kniazia Vladimira,” Mir24, accessed 1 March 2017, .

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calling it a heresy, lzheuchenie.38 The civilizational choice is now the Byzantine one. The conservatism expressed is not strictly nationalistic, but multinational in the sense that it was understood by Uvarov or Stalin, with Russian culture, Russian language, and Orthodoxy as the main or guiding elements, although they do not turn into official ideologies in any strict sense.39 Architectural historian Kirk Savage maintains that monuments are the most conservative of commemorative forms “because they are meant to last, unchanged, forever.”40 Mark Lipovetsky has connected the cultural situation in present-day Moscow with Vladimir Papernyi’s definition of culture 2 in the Soviet Union. Papernyi distinguishes between a first avant-gardist period with a horizontal dominant and a Stalinist vertical culture of monumentalism.41 Today culture 2 has returned but only as quotations and empty signs.42 This is the sort of conservative culture that the grand prince is an expression of. What is left and must be taken seriously in all ways is the verticality of power, which is the very political side of culture 2, and one of the founding ideas of Vladimir Putin’s politics, as well as part of the political and statist conservative turn. The event of the dedication thus demonstrates a moral conservatism that has some diffuse popular support, a conservatism based on etatism, a political statement against Ukraine, and a monument as an empty sign in a postmodern world. References “Budem posil’nee, stolitsu, mozhet, v Kiev perenesem” [When we are stronger perhaps we will move the capital to Kiev]. Novosti express, 18 October 2017, accessed 1 October 2017, . Butler, Francis. Enlightener of Rus’: The Image of Vladimir Sviatoslavich across the Centu­ ries. Bloomington, IN: 2002.

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“Slovo Sviateishego Patriarkha Kirilla na otkrytii mezhdunarodnoi nauchno-prakticheskoi konferentsii “Kniaz’ Vladimir: Tsivilizatsionnyi vybor,” Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov’, 18 November 2015, accessed 1 March 2017, . The intricate relationship between Russian conservatism and nationalism are also explored in chapter 14 by Viсtor Shnirelman in this volume. Kirk Savage, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in NineteenthCentury America (Princeton, NJ: 1997), 4. Vladimir Papernyi, “Kul’tura Dva” (Ann Arbor, MI: 1985). Mark Lipovetskii, Paralogii: Transformtsii (post)modernistskogo diskursa v russkoi kulʹture 1920–2000-kh godov (Moscow: 2008).

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Chebankova, Elena. “Contemporary Russian Conservatism.” Post-Soviet Affairs 32, no. 1 (2016): 28–54. Iakovleva, Elena. “Krasno solnyshko v kamne” [The red sun in stone]. Rossiiskaia gazeta. 2 November 2016. Accessed 1 October 2017, . Iazykova, Irina. “Nuzhny li pamiatniki sviatym? Negozhe ustanavlivat’ idola v pamiat’ o tom, kto sam nizvergal idoly” [Are monuments to the saints necessary? It is not good to set up an idol in memory of one who overthrew idols]. Neskuchnyi sad. 22 November 2012. Accessed 1 October 2017, . Jakobson, Roman. Pushkin and His Sculptural Myth. The Hague: 1975. “Kniaz’ Vladimir, Tsivilizatsionnyi vybor” [Prince Vladimir, civilizational choice]. Infor­ matsionno-analiticheskoe agentstvo. Accessed 1 October 2017, . Laruelle, Marlene. “Conservatism as the Kremlin’s New Toolkit: An Ideology at the Lowest Cost.” Russian Analytical Digest 138 (2013): 2–4. Likhachev, Dmitrii. “Kreshchenie Rusi i gosudarstvo Rus’.” Novyi mir, no. 6 (1988): 249–58. Lipovetskii, Mark. Paralogii: Transformatsii (post)modernistskogo diskursa v russkoi kul’ture 1920–2000-kh godov. Moscow: 2008. “Monument to Vladimir the Great Opened in Moscow on Unity Day.” Website of the President of Russia. 4 November 2016. Accessed 1 October 2017, . Musil, Robert. “Monuments.” In Posthumous Papers of a Living Author, translated by Peter Wortsman, 64–68. Hygiene, CO: 1987. “Na meste pamiatnika Dzerzhinskomu reshili vmesto fontana polozhit’ plitku” [In place of the monument to Dzerzhinsky they decided to build a traffic island instead of a fountain]. RBK. 22 May 1917. Accessed 1 March 2018, . “Pamiatnik kniaziu Vladimiru Sviatomu v Moskve: Dos’e” [Monument to Holy Prince Vladimir in Moscow: Dossier]. TASS. 13 July 2015. Accessed 1 October 2017, . Papernyi, Vladimir. Kul’tura “Dva” [Culture 2]. Ann Arbor, MI: 1985. “Poroshenko nazval Kreshchenie Rusi evropeiskim vyborom kniazia Vladimira” [Poroshenko called the baptism of Rus’ Prince Vladimir’s European choice]. Mir24. Accessed 1 March 2017, . “Poroshenko on Volodymyr’s Monument in Russia: ‘Attempt of Hybrid Appropriation of History.’” 112UA. 8 November 2016. Accessed 1 October 2017, . Rodell, Magnus. Att gjuta en nation: Statyinvigningar och nationsformering i Sverige vid 1800-talets mitt. Stockholm: 2002. “Rossiia uzhe ne khochet Krym, a planiruet imperiiu so stolitsei v Kieve” [Russia doesn’t want Crimea, and plans an empire with a capital in Kiev]. TCH Ukraina. 5 November 2010. Accessed 1 October 2017, . Savage, Kirk. Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in NineteenthCentury America. Princeton, NJ: 1997. “Sviatoi ravnoapostol’nyi velikii kniaz’ Vladimir” [Holy Grand Prince Vladimir, Equalto-the-Apostles]. Pravoslavnyi kalendar’. 1 October 2017, . “V Moskve nachali ustanavlivat’ pamiatnik kniaziu Vladimiru” [In Moscow they have begun to erect a monument to St. Vladimir]. Ria Novosti. Accessed 31 March 2018, . Vusik, Nadezhda. “V Kieve vandaly oblili krasnoi kraskoi pamiatnik kniaziu Vladimiru” [In Kiev, vandals poured red paint onto the monument to Vladimir]. 112UA. 18 March 2017. Accessed 1 October 2017, . Ware, Kallistos, and Mother Mary (eds.). The Lenten Triodion. London: 1978.

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Part 6 Religion and Traditional Values

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Eastern Orthodoxy, Conservatism, and (Neo)Palamite Tradition

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Chapter 13

Eastern Orthodoxy, Conservatism, and (Neo)Palamite Tradition in Post-Soviet Russia  Andrey Shishkov 1

Conservatism and Tradition

The post-Soviet social consciousness, by default, views the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) as a conservative force that protects the traditional values of Russian society. In 2014–15, the Center for Political Technologies, led by Igor Bunin, conducted a study on the state of contemporary foreign and Russian conservatism. Researchers came to the conclusion that one of the main features of post-Soviet Russian conservatism is “the recognition of Orthodoxy’s highly important role in the formation of value systems and social life in the country.”1 The Center’s study states: “Orthodoxy traditionally plays a large and multifaceted role in Russian conservatism … the Church is recognized as one of the pillars of the state system, the most important element of national identity, and the main system of moral values and family life.”2 Yet the Church itself is in no hurry to identify with conservatism. The Encyclical of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, held in June 2016 on the island of Crete with the participation of delegates from 10 of the 15 Orthodox autocephalous churches, explicitly states: “The identification of the [Orthodox] Church with conservatism, incompatible with the advancement of civilization, is arbitrary and improper.”3 The Church prefers to talk about itself in terms of tradition, not of conservatism. The concept of tradition plays a fundamental role in the Orthodox Church. Orthodoxy regards Holy Tradition, along with Holy Scripture, as the source of

1 Boris Makarenko (ed.), Konservatizm i razvitie (Moscow: 2016), 253. 2 Ibid., 257. 3 “Encyclical of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church,” Official Site of HGCOC, accessed 14 December 2017, . The Russian Orthodox Church did not participate in the Council of Crete and, therefore, did not ratify the document quoted above. However, this does not mean that its representatives would have protested such a formulation, had they been participants in the Council.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004408005_014

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doctrine, morality, and the structure of all church life. One could even say that the Orthodox Church is the church of tradition per se. A study on post-Soviet Russian conservatism, conducted by the Center for Political Technologies, includes a quote from one of the conservative experts close to the Russian Orthodox Church: “The Church itself cannot be characterized in terms of liberalism or conservatism … for the Church … you can use the word tradition.”4 “The Church is not so much conservative … as it is traditional,” writes Vladimir Legoida, the official spokesperson of the ROC.5 “The relationship between conservatism and tradition is not a game of synonyms, but an opposition that is full of meaning.”6 Vladimir Legoida and the expert from the Center for Political Technologies are right, if by conservatism we mean a concrete political philosophy or theory that was formulated in the modern era as a response to the ideas of the Enlightenment or progress. Conservatism, so understood, is not traditional for the Church, because a significant portion of Church tradition does not know what it is. As British theologian John Milbank correctly notes, “Conservatism … is just as modern a category as progressivism. Pre-modernity knew of neither.”7 However, if we understand conservatism more broadly: not only as a theory, but also as a style of thought that precedes theoretical work, as suggested by the German philosopher Karl Mannheim (1893–1947), then the opposition between conservative and traditional begins to fall apart. In his famous essay “Conservative Thought,” Mannheim identifies two types of conservatism: “on the one hand, there is the sort that is more or less universal, and, on the other hand, there is the definitely modern sort which is the product of particular historical and social circumstances, and which has its own peculiar traditions, form and structure.”8 He calls the first type of conservatism “natural conservatism” or “traditionalism,” and the second “modern conservatism.” Mannheim defines traditionalism as “a tendency to cling to vegetative patterns, to old ways of life which we may well consider as fairly ubiquitous and 4 Makarenko, Konservatizm i razvitie, 257. 5 Vladimir Legoida is the editor-in-chief of the Orthodox magazine Foma, from 2009–2015 he was chairman of the Synodal Information Department of the Russian Orthodox Church, and since 2015 he has been the chairman of the Synodal Department for Church Relations with Society and Mass Media. 6 Vladimir Legoida, “Tserkov’ i kul’tura: Traditsiia i konservatizm,” Pravoslavie i mir, accessed 14 December 2017, . 7 John Milbank, Beyond Secular Order: The Representation of Being and the Representation of People (Malden, MA: 2013), 9. 8 Karl Mannheim, “Conservative Thought,” in From Karl Mannheim, ed. Kurt H. Wolff (New York: 2017), 280.

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universal.”9 He also adds that traditionalism may be seen as “the original reaction to deliberate reforming tendencies.”10 Mannheim says that traditionalism is “a formal psychological characteristic of every individual’s mind.”11 He also argues that “traditionalism is a general psychological attitude which expresses itself in different individuals as a tendency to cling to the past and a fear of innovation.”12 From his point of view, “traditionalist behavior is almost purely reactive.”13 In this way, the philosopher strongly emphasizes the pre-reflective character of “traditionalism” as a mental attitude. In contrast, “modern conservatism,” which the philosopher puts forward as conservatism proper, should not be understood in the psychological sense.14 This conservatism, according to Mannheim, constitutes an “objective mental structure.” The idea of preserving the status quo and resisting radical changes is the foundation of this structure (see details below). Defining this concept, the philosopher writes: an objective mental structure in this sense is a peculiar agglomeration of spiritual and intellectual elements which cannot be regarded as at all independent of the individuals who are its carriers since its production, reproduction and further development depend entirely on the fate and spontaneous development of these latter.15 He adds that the objectivity of the structure can explain the fact that “it [the structure] always outlives its individual carriers.”16 As opposed to the pre-reflective attitude that Mannheim calls “traditionalism,” “modern conservatism” is, by contrast, a reflective attitude toward the past and innovation. “Conservative behavior is meaningful, and moreover is meaningful in relation to circumstances which change from epoch to epoch,” he writes.17 Even as he contrasts the two types of conservatism, Mannheim indicates a relationship between them. For him, “traditionalism” is the inner core of conservative thought and the source of its actions.18 The philosopher writes: 9 Ibid., 281. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid., 285. 13 Ibid., 284. 14 Ibid., 281–82. 15 Ibid., 282. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid., 284. 18 Ibid., 288.

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Conservatism in a certain sense grew out of traditionalism: indeed, it is after all primarily nothing more than traditionalism become conscious. Nevertheless, the two are not synonymous, since traditionalism only takes on its specifically conservative features when it becomes the expression of a very definite, consistently maintained way of life and thought (which first develops in opposition to the revolutionary attitude), and when it functions as such, as a relatively autonomous movement in the social process.19 In this way, the two types of conservatism are firmly connected, and their difference is largely analytical in nature. The pre-reflective conservative attitude, which Mannheim calls “traditionalism,” is primary. It consists of sensitivity to change and a desire to protect the status quo, while what he calls “modern conservatism” is a reasoned (arising from reflection) reaction to changes in specific historical conditions. I should mention that I have reservations about the relevance of Mannheim’s use of the word “traditionalism.” To begin with, in his analysis, the term “traditionalism” is not connected with the concept of tradition in any way. Secondly, the use of the term “traditionalism,” by default, causes one to associate everything that concerns tradition with this type of conservatism and not with the second type. In reality, as we will see below, work with tradition can include both pre-reflective and reflective elements. However, my observation concerns only the term; the analytical distinction of two elements making up conservatism, in my opinion, is valid. Mannheim observes that the conservative structure of thought is dynamic and historically conditioned, that is, at each particular historic stage, conservatism supports the preservation of the status quo established by that time. However, this does not mean that, over time, what conservatism protects does not change. He writes: each step in the process of change is intimately connected with the one before, since each new step makes a change in the internal order and relationships of the structure as it existed at the stage immediately before, and is not therefore entirely “out of the blue” and unconnected with the past. Thus we can speak of a growth, of a development. It is a development the inner meaning of which, however, can only subsequently be grasped.20 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid., 283.

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The inner meaning changes, but the impulse to protect the status quo and reject change remains constant.21 Given what has been said, as well as the aforementioned attention to the past and desire to preserve achievements on the part of conservative thought, it can be said that what Mannheim describes is nothing more than tradition. The concept of tradition (from the Latin verb tradere—to transmit) in the most general sense means the transfer of knowledge, experience, and behavioral norms from generation to generation. The key point here is the idea of the continuity of tradition. The carrier, immersed in the continuous stream of tradition, as a rule, does not see its source (although he may know about it) and does not notice the changes, which occur over large stretches of time, although he has the feeling of participating in the stream. From the point of view of this position, the experience of the immediately preceding historical period is usually considered traditional. We might call this relationship to tradition unreflective. In an effort to follow tradition, its carrier demonstrates conservative behavior as Mannheim describes it. The conceptualization of tradition requires its immersion in the historical flow of time, the relationship of tradition, to speak in the language of Mannheim, with circumstances that change from epoch to epoch. Such intellectual work is also conservative and can be expressed in the creation of various concepts of tradition, which are also inherently conservative. In this way, the assertion that the traditional is opposed to the conservative is not, in my opinion, fully justified. Rather, it should be said that tradition is one of the elements of conservative thought. 2

The Two Concepts of Tradition in Russian Orthodox Theology

The conceptualization of the notion of traditionalism in Orthodoxy is a reaction to the modern appearance of historical criticism and historicism. Only in the context of modernity did various concepts of tradition arise, which appeared as methods of connecting the historic with the catholic.22 The task of 21 22

Cf. an alternative interpretation of the problem of change in conservatism in chapter 11 by Kåre Johan Mjør in this volume. In antiquity and in the Middle Ages, theologians worked with all available sources without distinguishing any historical stages of development. Of course, Holy Scripture always had a special status, but the writings of the Holy Fathers were read as if they were all “contemporaries.” Here one might recall the well-known formula of St. Vincent of Lerins defining the catholicity of the Church: Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est (“what was believed always, everywhere, by everyone”). With the appearance in

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theologians became the search for the “living and mysterious thread binding the whole historical fullness of Church life into one catholic whole.”23 In Orthodox theology, it is customary to distinguish between Holy Tradition and the specific church traditions that have appeared throughout history.24 Thus, all concepts of tradition primarily address the question of the relationship between Tradition and tradition. According to Archpriest Georges Florovsky, Holy Tradition is “a concrete expression of the catholic identity of the Church,”25 and, in addition, “the Christian faith is essentially historical, historically concrete.”26 Attempts made by Russian theologians since the 19th century to conceptualize the notion of tradition follow two main tendencies: the critical and the romantic.27 The critical conception of tradition distinguishes between a core of unchanging content, which expresses the very essence of the Christian faith, and temporal, historically conditioned layers, resulting from the historic context, which often obscure that core. The immutable core is the true church tradition, to which it is necessary to return. This approach proposes an unfettered, critical rethinking of church tradition: first, the discernment and description of the core of Christian faith; second, its purification from obscuring elements; and third, a return to the true foundations of faith through a renewal of that immutable core in the modern world.28

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the modern era of historical consciousness, historical criticism was developed, which deconstructed the medieval understanding of tradition. By placing doctrinal and theological sources in their historical context, it was possible to identify gaps and contradictions in the course of the historical development of ecclesiastical thought, which called into question the very question of catholicity. “What was believed always, everywhere, by everyone” lost its integrity, a necessary sign of catholicity, under the influence of historical criticism. Georges Florovsky, “The Catholicity of the Church,” in The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky, ed. Richard S. Haugh (Vaduz: 1987), vol. 1, 45. See, for example, Vladimir Lossky, “Tradition and Traditions,” in In the Image and Likeness of God (Crestwood, NY: 1974), 141–68. Georgii Florovskii, “Bogoslovskie otryvki,” Put’ 31 (1931): 23. Georgii Florovskii, “Dom Otchii,” Put’ 7 (1927): 65. In an earlier text, I call these concepts liberal and conservative. At the same time, “liberalism and conservatism should be understood relatively: they are liberal or conservative only in relation to each other” (Andrei Shishkov, “Dva ponimaniia traditsii v russkom pravoslavnom bogoslovii,” Vestnik RHGA 3, no. 18 [2017]: 24). However, in the context of a study on conservatism, naming them in this way can cause confusion, as both concepts of tradition are related to a conservative way of thinking, as we saw above. Therefore, here I propose a different terminology. The logical question arises: is this approach not fundamentalist? The answer is beyond the scope of the present article, and would require a separate study.

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Here, theological reason, which has the task of identifying the immutable core of faith, comparing various elements of church tradition with it, and understanding the present state of the Church from this perspective, is the instrument of the construction of tradition. It is important to note that the critical approach to tradition requires unfettered theological speculation that takes into account the results of historical criticism. As the Russian theologian and social thinker, George Fedotov (1886–1951) writes: The Holy Tradition of the Church is included in the collective stream of historical tradition, always complex, always muddy, weaving together truth and lies in the human way. As sin lives in human righteousness (holiness), so do lies live in human, even church, tradition. The task of moral asceticism is to cut out sin in the process of sanctifying the person. The task of theology is to liberate the pure foundation of Holy Tradition from the dross of history, which has grown over time, alongside religious gains.29 Such influential theological projects as the Eucharistic Ecclesiology of Fr. Nikolai Afanas’ev (1893–1966) or the liturgical theology of Fr. Aleksandr Schmemann (1921–83) are examples of the critical approach to tradition. In both the first and second cases, the abovementioned theologians attempt to distinguish the core of Christian faith and separate it from historically conditioned layers that they characterize as the distortion of tradition. At the foundation of their approach is the proposal to return to this core—to a true understanding of church tradition. Schmemann, for example, views the Christian liturgy as the source of theological thought. However, he says that it is necessary to return to a true (traditional) understanding of the liturgy as an eschatological event. He writes: The church service should be reinterpreted as the leitourgia of the Church, and this is the task of the theologian. But to solve it you need to regain the true liturgical tradition, and this is the task of the liturgist. If the work of theology is to purify worship, then the point of the liturgy is to return theology to that eschatological fullness, which only the church service can “actualize.”30 29 30

Georgii Fedotov, “Pravoslavie i istoricheskaia kritika,” Put’ 33 (1932): 4. Aleksandr Schmemann, “Bogoslovie i liturgicheskoe predanie,” in Sobranie statei, 1947– 1983 (Moscow: 2009), 230.

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Here we see a combination of the work of the theologian and the historian (liturgist). The romantic approach is named thus because it was formed under the influence of the intellectual current of romanticism on theology. Romantic theology views the Church and tradition in terms of an organic wholeness.31 The first major theologian of this branch in Russian theology was Aleksei Khomiakov (1804–60), however, Archpriest Georges Florovsky (1893–1979) produced the most developed concept of tradition within the framework of the romantic approach. This approach views tradition as the totality of all accumulated church heritage. From this point of view, tradition itself may be represented as a cloud (cloud storage), in which, alongside the fundamental truths of faith, there are private theological opinions, practices, and traditions with a lowercase “t.” The romantic conception of tradition does not admit the existence of any external criterion that would determine what does and does not belong to sacred tradition. The criterion is personal religious-mystical experience, in which the content of tradition is contemplated “through the spiritual labor [podvig] of prayer, through the spiritual formation of a believer, through living communion with the eternal experience of the Church.”32 “The identity of experience is loyalty to Tradition,” writes Florovsky.33 In other words, the comprehension of church tradition does not take place through the analysis of tradition and the subsequent synthesis of a theological position, but through grasping an experience that is identical to the experience of the Holy Fathers. If, in the critical approach, the primary tool for working with tradition was theological reason, then, in the romantic approach, it is religious intuition or feeling.34 It is this intuition that allows one to understand whether a certain theological opinion relates to tradition or not. The task of the theologian in this approach is to protect. The theologian monitors the edges of the cloud and is engaged in cutting off any heterodox elements that suddenly appear on the surface. By virtue of this arrangement, protective theology is more concerned with the search for and exposure of heresies than with unfettered theology and the synthesis of theological concepts. Florovsky writes:

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Cyril Hovorun, Meta-Ecclesiology: Chronicles on Church Awareness (New York: 2015), 81– 86. Florovskii, “Dom Otchii,” 82. Florovsky, “The Catholicity of the Church,” 49. This, of course, does not mean that the theologians of the critical paradigm deny the value of religious feeling or intuition, or that the theologians of the romantic paradigm deny the value of reason. In this case, we are talking about the main tools of theological work with tradition.

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Living theological speculation should be intuitive in its roots and foundation, determined by the experience of faith, vision, and not by the selfsufficient dialectical movement of inert, abstract concepts. For, in general, the dogmas of faith are the truths of experience, the truths of life, and they cannot and should not be revealed through logical synthesis or analysis, but only through spiritual life, through the availability of experiences verified by doctrinal definitions. The basis for Orthodox and legitimate “theological opinions” and judgments should be direct vision and contemplation, rather than deduction.35 He directly attacks the approach to tradition that above I called ­critical: Mistaken and untrue is that theological minimalism, which wants to choose and set apart the “most important, most certain, and most binding” of all the experience and teachings of the Church. This is a false path, and a false statement of the question. Of course, not everything in the historical institutions of the Church is equally important and venerable; not everything in the empirical actions of the Church has even been sanctioned. There is much that is only historical. However, we have no outward criterion to discriminate between the two. The methods of outward historical criticism are inadequate and insufficient. Only from within the Church can we discern the sacred from the historical. From within we see what is catholic and belongs to all time, and what is only “theological opinion,” or even a simple casual historical accident.36 The theological project of neo-patristic synthesis, which will be discussed below, is an example of the romantic approach to tradition. As can be seen, the romantic conception of tradition tends toward what Mannheim calls “traditionalism”; in it, the pre-reflective attitudes of feeling and intuition play a leading role. A critical conception of tradition tends toward that which he calls “modern conservatism.” In it, the work of the intellect, which relates the core of faith to the historical conditions of its existence, plays the important role. It is worth noting that, today, theologians who work with tradition in the critical paradigm are often labeled “liberals,” “modernists,” or “progressives” in the church environment, even though these labels do not always correspond to their cultural or political convictions.37 And those who work within the 35 36 37

Florovskii, “Dom Otchii,” 82. Florovsky, “The Catholicity of the Church,” 50. For example, Aleksandr Schmemann was one of the participants in “An Appeal for Theological Affirmation”—a conservative Christian manifesto, directed against the subjugation of religion to the secular influence of modernity. For details, see Andrey Shishkov,

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framework of the romantic approach are automatically marked as “conservatives.” However, both ways of working with tradition are a manifestation of conservative thinking as Karl Mannheim describes it. Thus, affiliation with church “liberals” or “conservatives” is fairly conditional and is determined by one’s way of understanding and working with tradition. To find the opposite of conservatism in Orthodoxy, it is necessary to go beyond approaches that consider tradition a value. Membership in this camp (the opposite of the conservative) is defined by a turn not toward the past (to tradition), but toward the future. In Russian theology, Fr. Aleksandr Men’ (1935–90), who argued that Christianity was just beginning, was one of the exponents of this theological view. In the lecture, that was his last public appearance in his lifetime, the theologian said: Only shortsighted people can imagine that Christianity was already realized in the 13th century, in the 4th century, or at some other time. It has made only the first, I would say, timid steps in the history of the human race. Many of the words of Christ are still incomprehensible to us, because we are still Neanderthals of the spirit and morality, because the evangelical arrow is directed into eternity, because the history of Christianity is only just beginning, and what was before, what we now historically call the history of Christianity, are half-inept and unsuccessful attempts to realize it.38 If the opposite of conservatism is progressivism, then specifically this view of Christian tradition, which Men’ formulated, is truly progressive, as opposed to what I described earlier as the critical concept of tradition. It should be said that Aleksandr Men’s position remains marginal today and has practically no influence on contemporary Russian Orthodoxy. 3 Palamism The mainstream identity of modern Russian Orthodoxy was formed by the tradition of Palamism, which is a complex of theological ideas and the church practices derived from them. It includes doctrinal elements connected to

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“Two Ecumenisms: Conservative Christian Alliances as a New Form of Ecumenical Cooperation,” State, Religion and Church 4, no. 2 (2017): 58–87. Aleksandr Men’, “Khristianstvo (Lektsiia 8 sentiabria 1990),” in Byt’ kristianinom, ed. Mark Makarov (Moscow: 1994), 22.

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teachings about God and his actions in the world, ascetic practices, and also historiosophical and sociopolitical concepts. The term “Palamism” is associated with the name of an Orthodox saint and theologian of the 14th century, Gregory Palamas, and his disciples, the Palamites. Palamas was an Athonite monk, and by the end of his life he had become the bishop of the city of Thessaloniki. He was an active participant in the theological debates on the possibility of contemplating Uncreated Divine Light (also called Tabor Light), which raged in Byzantium in the middle of the 14th century. The practices of the Athonite monk-hesychasts were the subject of the dispute. Defending the hesychasts, Palamas proposed a theological doctrine that affirmed the knowability of God in his actions in the world, and consequently the possibility of a real communion of divine grace and the contemplation of Uncreated Light. Palamas’s main opponent was Barlaam of Calabria, a Byzantine theologian, who later converted to Catholicism and became a bishop. In Palamite tradition, Gregory Palamas is the main defender of true Orthodoxy and Barlaam embodies, at the same time, Latinism (Catholicism), Western scholasticism, renewed pagan philosophy, and the emerging secular humanism, that had entered the Byzantine intellectual environment.39 The hesychast debates resonated loudly in society and engendered a wave of spiritual renewal, led by the monastics in Byzantium, the Balkan countries, and in Rus’ (the so-called “hesychast movement”). Monasteries associated with the Athonite hesychast tradition became major cultural and political centers of the medieval Orthodox ecumene.40 However, after the fall of Constantinople, the influence of Palamism and the hesychast movement declined. Up until the beginning of the 20th century it was as good as forgotten.41 For example, in a Handbook for the Clergy of 1913, hesychasts are mentioned in the chapter, “Schisms, heresies, sects, etc.”42 And the first study devoted to Palamas was not published until 1911.43

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For more about St. Gregory Palamas: John Meyendorff, A Study of Gregory Palamas (London: 1964). John Meyendorff, “O vizantiiskom isikhazme i ego roli i istoricheskom razvitii Vostochnoi Evropy v XIV v.,” Trudy otdela drevnerusskoi literatury 29 (1974): 291–305. On the topic of how well Palamas was remembered in Russia and Greece in the 17th to 19th centuries, see: Basil Lourié, “Posleslovie,” in Zhizn’ i trudy sviatogo Grigoriia Palamy: Vvedenie v izuchenie by John Meyendorff (Saint Petersburg: 1997), 327–32. Sergii Bulgakov, Nastol’naia kniga dlia sviashchenno-tserkovno-sluzhitelei, reprint edition (Moscow: 1993), 1622. Nikolai Gavriushin, Russkoe bogoslovie: Ocherki i portrety (Nizhnii Novgorod: 2011), 547; Lourié, “Posleslovie,” 331.

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A growing interest in Palamism arose among Orthodox theologians in the context of the Imiaslavie (onomatodoxy) debates in a Russian monastery on Athos in the 1910s. Although both the patriarch of Constantinople (whose jurisdiction includes Athos) and the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church officially condemned Imiaslavie, a number of outstanding Church intellectuals of the early 20th century (most notably, Pavel Florensky and Sergii Bulgakov, who rediscovered Palamas for Orthodox theology) developed its ideas in their works. Palamism was revived in the middle of the 20th century within the framework of the theological project of neo-patristic synthesis, the main proponents of which were the Russian émigré theologians, Archpriest Georges Florovsky and Vladimir Lossky (1903–58). John Meyendorff (1926–92) played a leading role in the development of the Palamite tradition in modern times, with the publication of his work A Study of Gregory Palamas (French ed., 1959; English ed., 1964).44 4

The Dominant Theological Paradigm

When discussing the theological project of neo-patristic synthesis, Fr. Georges Florovsky’s famous formula, “forward to the Fathers!” comes to mind first. This paradoxical phrase expresses a conservative view on the development of Orthodox theology, associating it with a movement toward a patristic theological tradition that is “unspoiled” by modernity. As Archpriest Andrew Louth, a contemporary Orthodox theologian and historian of the Church, writes, the neo-patristic synthesis set two goals for itself: First it sought a redirection of Orthodoxy from the tradition represented by Vladimir Solov’ev, Pavel Florensky and Sergii Bulgakov, which in the eyes of Florovsky was far too much in hock to the philosophy of the West, especially German Idealism; second, however, it sought to define the nature of Orthodox theology against the Catholic theology of the West, which the Russian émigrés had encountered in Paris.45 In addition to attention to the Fathers, an important position of neo-patristics, introduced by Florovsky, is the idea of the Western captivity of Orthodox theology from the 15th to the 19th centuries, and the emergence as a result of 44 45

Lourié, “Posleslovie,” 339–47. Andrew Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Present (Downers Grove, IL: 2015), 178.

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“pseudomorphosis” (Florovsky’s term, meaning corrupted tradition).46 Thus, Palamism, from the point of view of neo-patristic synthesis, is the peak of Orthodox theology.47 By the middle of the 20th century, the neo-patristic approach to theology, originating with the Russian émigré-theologians Georges Florovsky and Vladimir Lossky, was widespread in the Orthodox Church, and, by the end of the century, it occupied a dominant position in Orthodox theology. The majority of leading Orthodox theologians of the middle and second half of the 20th century worked in this paradigm (including many of Florovsky’s personal disciples). Neo-patristic theologians included: in Greece—John Romanides (1928–2001) and John Zizioulas (b. 1931); in Romania—Dumitru Staniloae (1903–93); in Serbia—Justin Popovic (1894–1979); in England—Sophrony Sakharov (1896–1993) and Kallistos Ware (b. 1934); in the United States—John Meyendorff and others.48 Ivana Noble and her coauthors note that after the first Congress of Orthodox Theological Schools, which took place in Athens in 1936, neo-patristics occupied “the major position for determining Orthodox iden­tity.”49 The condemnation by the Moscow Patriarchate and, independently of it, the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church outside of Russia in 1935 of the alternative theological project of Sophiology, mentioned by Louth and associated with the names of Solov’ev, Florensky, and Bulgakov, played a significant role in this. Vladimir Lossky played a key role in the preparation of the decision of the Moscow Patriarchate.50 Neo-patristic synthesis also came to dominate in Western seminaries,51 which set the tone for Orthodox theology in the second half of the 20th century (the majority of traditionally Orthodox countries were under communist regimes and could not develop their own theology). Under the influence of neo-patristics, patrology, the theological discipline of studying the heritage of the Holy Fathers of the Church, took a prominent position in contemporary Orthodox theology. Additionally, neo-patristic theology became popular in the 46

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Andrew Louth writes: “When the Russians encountered Latin theology [in the 16th to 17th century], they had no resources of their own, so that, instead, Latin ideas took root in Russian soil, leading to ‘pseudomorphosis’ (a term originally botanical, which would fit well here, though Florovsky had in mind Spengler’s mineralogical, or geological, use). ... This corrupt tradition, Florovsky believed, had to be uprooted and destroyed, and Russian theology had to return to its true Christian roots in Christian Hellenism of the Fathers.” Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 83. See, for example, Vladimir Lossky, The Vision of God (Yonkers, NY: 1983). About each of these, see Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers. Ivana Noble et al., The Ways of Orthodox Theology in the West (Yonkers, NY: 2014), 328. For more about the dispute between Sophiology and neo-patristics, see ibid., 263–71. Ibid., 328.

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monastic sphere. In this way, neo-patristic synthesis itself was transformed, and thanks to the influence of patrology, it moved from the enthusiasm of “forward to the Fathers” and began to work in the paradigm of “back to the Fathers.” The task of the theologian now came to be perceived, not as unfettered theological speculation, but as the extraction of theology from patristic sources, since modernity (and postmodernity more so) was a time of apostasy. As was mentioned earlier, Palamism, in the paradigm of neo-patristic synthesis, began to be considered the peak of Orthodox theology, as well as of the “consecrated” struggle with heterodoxy and the influence of the West. Therefore, having reached its peak, theological development should have stopped. In the Soviet Union, where the Orthodox Church was under powerful pressure from the state, theology was in decline, and its active development began only in the post-Soviet era. One of the paths to restoring Russian theological thought was the study and circulation of the legacy of the Russian theologians of the Orthodox diaspora, among which the works of Florovsky, Lossky, and Meyendorff occupied a key place. In contrast, a stream of monastic literature, which was also imbued with “the spirit of the Fathers,” came from Greece. The works of theologians devoted to neo-patristic synthesis fairly quickly began to play a major role in the educational process of religious schools and gradually replaced the prerevolutionary scholastic textbooks.52 The leading religious academies and Orthodox universities became the guides and popularizers of neo-patristics. This method also began to take precedence in theological examinations and in the preparation of official church documents.53 The identity formulated by neo-patristics and Palamism is built on opposition to modernism, Western influence, heterodoxy, and so on. It is noteworthy that in neo-patristics, the source of ecclesiastical authority shifts from the present into the past. In consequence of this, the acting church hierarchy ceases to be perceived as the source of doctrinal authority, which is now located in the writings of the Holy Fathers. Thus, this distance to the source of doctrinal authority allows any believer, while relying on the Fathers, to interpret the doctrine independently. Each believer can judge what is heresy and what is not. 52

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See, for example, Tigrii Khachatrian, “Neopatristicheskii sintez prot. G. Florovskogo kak kontseptual’naia osnova nauchno-issledovatel’skoi raboty v dukhovnykh shkolakh Russkoi Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi,” Bogoslov.ru, last time accessed 17 October 2017, . In the draft of the new cathechism of the Russian Orthodox Church, which is now published for church-wide discussion, the strong influence of the neo-patristic approach can be seen. “Sinodal’naia bibleisko-bogoslovskaia komissiia publikuet proekt Katekhizisa dlia obshchetserkovnogo obsuzhdeniia,” Sinodal’naia bibleisko-bogoslovskaia komissiia, 2017, .

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This is similar to the Protestant principle of “only Scripture,” but in the Orthodox variant it should be called “only the Fathers.” The latter, in combination with an anti-modernist attitude, from the point of view of some researchers, becomes fertile ground for “Orthodox fundamentalism.”54 It should be noted that Palamism is constantly reaffirmed in church life through the liturgical calendar. The second Sunday of Great Lent is dedicated to the memory of St. Gregory Palamas. Often this commemoration is seen as a continuation of the holiday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy (a symbolic commemoration of the victory of the Orthodox faith over all heresies), which is celebrated on the previous Sunday. The fact that the name of Gregory Palamas is associated with dogmatic debates only strengthens the connection between these two commemorations. Accordingly, on the second Sunday of Lent, it is not uncommon to hear a sermon about the victory over “Latins” (Catholics) and “secular humanists,” theosis as the goal of an Orthodox Christian’s life, and so on. Through this holiday, the widespread Orthodox identity formed by Palamism is renewed again and again. 5

The Conflict of Conservative Attitudes

By the end of the 20th century, a paradoxical situation had developed in Russian Orthodoxy. On the one hand, Palamism in its various manifestations occupied a dominant position and claimed to be the true Orthodox tradition. On the other hand, there was a simultaneous desire to restore “prerevolutionary tradition” (before the Russian Revolution of 1917), which was almost considered the spiritual “heart” of Russian Orthodoxy. The paradox is that in “prerevolutionary Orthodoxy” there is no Palamism at all (recall the “heresy of the hesychasts”), and neo-patristics views this theology as “pseudomorphosis” and “spiritual collaborationism” with the enemy—the heterodox and the secular West. Florovsky, in his book Ways of Russian Theology, criticizes any Russian theological thought that was not influenced by Byzantine theology. For him, the theological tradition that developed in the 17th through the 19th centuries is completely irrelevant. He calls it Western captivity and pseudomorphosis— distortion, perversion. And this position is completely in keeping with a 54

George Demacopoulos, “Orthodox Fundamentalism,” Blogs of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, accessed 17 October 2017, ; Vasileos N. Makrides, “Orthodox Christian Rigorism: A Multifaceted Phenomenon,” Public Orthodoxy, accessed 17 October 2017, .

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conservative approach to tradition. Since belonging to tradition is determined by religious feeling, Florovsky feels that Russian theology of the 17th through the 19th centuries does not reflect the Tradition of the Church: The crisis of Russian Byzantinism in the 16th century was also a departure of Russian thought from the patristic tradition.… In theology, the patristic style and method were lost.… It is not enough to be acquainted with the texts and to know how to draw from them quotes and arguments. One must possess the theology of the Fathers from within. Intuition is perhaps more important for this than erudition, for intuition alone revives their writings and makes them a witness.55 Florovsky excludes Russian theological thought of this period from ecclesiastical tradition. Pseudomorphosis cannot be part of the Holy Tradition, and this means it should be removed, like other heresies and distortions. However, the fact is many Russian theologians of the imperial period, who Florovsky criticized mercilessly in Ways of Russian Theology in 1937, were glorified as saints by the Orthodox Church by the end of the 20th century. Accordingly, theologians of neo-patristics faced the task of “legitimizing” the new Holy Fathers in the neo-patristic paradigm. Their solution was to reinterpret the theological heritage of the 17th through the 19th centuries in Palamite categories. This approach to the legacy of Russian theology has its beginnings in the work of Fr. John Meyendorff.56 A contemporary example of such reinterpretation can be found in the works of Archpriest Pavel Khondzinsky, the dean of the theological faculty of St. Tikhon Orthodox University.57 The theologian, on the one hand, confirms that St. Filaret of Moscow (1783–1867) formulated his doctrine about the glory of God without knowledge Palamas’s work, and on the other, says that it is comparable to the doctrine of St. Gregory Palamas on the energies. Despite the fact that the author shows that the two Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church use different theological terminology and methodology, he still concludes that the doctrine of St. Filaret is “a fact of the theology of hesychasm.” In the last lines of the article, Khondzinsky reveals why he needed 55 56

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Georgii Florovskii, Puti russkogo bogosloviia (Minsk: 2006), 495–96. For example, Meyendorff writes about a passage from a sermon of St. Filaret of Moscow (1783–1867): “His expressions are very close to the words of the teacher of hesychasm [Gregory Palamas], and this demonstrates the constant presence of this theology in the Eastern Church.” John Meyendorff, Istoriia Tserkvi i vostochno-khristianskaia mistika (Moscow: 2000), 315. Pavel Khondzinskii, “Sviatitel’ Filaret Moskovskii i sviatitel’ Grigorii Palama,” Filaretovskii al’manakh 5 (2009): 61–89.

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to relate the theology of a Holy Father of the 19th century to Palamite tradition: this connection grants the “views” of the greatest theologian of the 19th century “the significance of Church Tradition.”58 In other words, neo-patristics and Palamism are gradually absorbing the alternative attitude. 6

Monastic Ideology

If, in theology, Palamism occupies the dominant position as a part of neo-patristic synthesis, then, in the spheres of church life that are distant from theological reflection, it is represented primarily by monastic ascetic practices. Today monastic ascetics have ceased to be the purview of monks alone and have become a mass phenomenon. In Russian Orthodoxy, an interest in asceticism among the laity appeared as early as the 19th century (the Optina Elders, Theophan the Recluse, Ignatius Brianchaninov). However, interest really began to grow in the 20th century. The neo-patristic synthesis “brought back” to Orthodoxy not only the father-theologians, but also the father-ascetics, whose instructions and spiritual guides began to be translated and published for a wide audience. Here, Palamism became the peak, this time of Orthodox ascetics. Firstly, the ascetic teachings of Palamas himself and of the Athonite hesychast-palamites appeared in the fifth (last) volume of the Philokalia (Dobrotoliubiia)—the main Orthodox ascetic collection, which was compiled in the 18th century.59 The fifth volume has a special, one could even say esoteric, aura. Traditionally, it is considered to be only for “advanced” practitioners. Secondly, Palamas’s name is associated with the theological doctrine of theosis (obozhenie), according to which the ultimate goal of man’s salvation is found in union with God by means of communion with the Uncreated Divine Grace.60 Grace is acquired with the help of ascetic practices. An important role in this process is played by spiritual guidance, which should be carried out by an experienced spiritual father-elder, preferably a monk. The spread of monastic ascetic practices throughout the world gave birth to the phenomenon of “young elders” (mladostarchestvo), an abuse of power by clergy in relation to the spiritual guidance of the laity, which has been condemned multiple times by Church authorities.61 58 59 60 61

Ibid., 89. About the Philokalia, see Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 1–6. For more, see Meyendorff, A Study of Gregory Palamas, 157–84. For example, Aleksii II, the patriarch of Moscow and all Rus’, said the following about the problem of “young elders” (mladostarchestvo) at the Moscow Diocesan Assembly in

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Teachings on theosis emphasize individual practice under the guidance of an “elder filled with the Holy Spirit.” If, in neo-patristic theology the source of church authority is the past, then in the spiritual practice of Palamism it belongs to the confessor-fathers. This practically overturns the whole ecclesiastical hierarchy. The bishop loses not only doctrinal authority, but also his authority as a spiritual leader. Thus, for supporters of Palamism, he ceases to be a teacher and becomes only an administrator, which role, however, cannot be denied, as the bishop is a “channel of grace”: he performs sacraments, and most importantly, ordains others who perform sacraments—the clergy (and he also participates in the ordination of other bishops). The spiritual father becomes a more important figure than the bishop. Under the influence of ascetic practices, a transformation took place in the understanding of the idea of a spiritual life in Orthodoxy—from the moral imperative of fulfilling God’s commandments to the ascetic practice of attaining grace. In other words, asceticism replaced ethics. Monastic ascetic practices are predicated on a particular way of life, which requires separation from the world (especially, in the case of the practices of the hermit-hesychasts). However, due to their popularity, they are beginning to be presented as normative for laypeople as well. In the ascetic struggle with temptation there are no moral problems, the category of moral choice does not exist. For the ascetic there is no question of what to do, so moral problems are removed. Ideally, the ascetic should not think at all. Today, asceticism is the dominant social behavior of the Orthodox believer. In my opinion, this ascetic attitude toward the struggle with temptation lies at the heart of contemporary Russian discourse about insulting believers’ feelings. Unfortunately, there are currently no works that summarize specific 1998: “Criticizing the hierarchy, they [the young elders], in contrast to the Holy Fathers of past and present, by means of this criticism attempt to attract attention to themselves and, in this way, to create their own authority. As a rule, they declare utmost submission to themselves as the indispensable and only condition of salvation for those who resort to their leadership, turning them into robots of some kind, unable to accomplish any work, no matter how insignificant, without the blessing of such an ‘elder [starets].’ Man is thus deprived of that blessed freedom of will, which was bestowed upon him by God. In order to confirm the accuracy of their views, they invoke, without authority, the works of the Holy Fathers, profaning their great work and distorting the very notions of eldership [starchestvo].” Speech published in: Patriarkh Aleksii of Moscow, “Podlinnyi starets ­berezhno otnositsia k kazhdomu cheloveku,” Tserkov’ i vremia 2, no. 9 (1999): 8. Patriarkh Aleksii II mentions that the “young elders” criticize the hierarchy and justify their righteousness “referring to the works of the Holy Fathers,” that is, using the methods of neo-patristics. Thus, the Holy Fathers of the past, and not their contemporary church hierarchs, are the source of authority for them.

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declarations about offense to believers’ feelings and that analyze the arguments of those declaring their feelings offended. In posing such a research task, I would suggest examining the ascetic character of the arguments. 7

“Political Hesychasm”

Palamism also has a certain sociopolitical perspective, which is called “political hesychasm.” The Soviet Byzantologist, Gelian Prokhorov, first proposed this term in the mid-1960s.62 Archpriest John Meyendorff, who was, at the time, the preeminent scholar of Gregory Palamas and Palamism, introduced the term to the West.63 Meyendorff uses “political hesychasm” to refer to a social, cultural, and political program carried out in the 14th century by prominent Byzantine leaders, which had widespread influence in Slavic countries.64 The context for the appearance of “political hesychasm,” as Prokhorov and Meyendorff describe it, was a political struggle in Byzantium in the middle of the 14th century. The leaders of “hesychasm in politics” (Prokhorov’s term) were Emperor John Cantacuzene (who, after his deposition, was tonsured as a monk, but did not abandon his political activities), and the disciple of Palamas, Philotheus Kokkin (patriarch of Constantinople). The opponents of the “political hesy­ chasts” were emperors from the Palaiologos dynasty, which sought to conclude a union with Rome. In the 2000s, the concept of “political hesychasm” was reinterpreted and updated for the present. Here we should pay attention to Vladimir Petrunin’s book Political Hesychasm.65 Supporters of “political hesychasm” see it as a program that forms a special Russian Orthodox identity, inherited from Byzantium. Petrunin sees a continuity of the idea of political hesychasm in “The Basis of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church,” a document adopted by the Bishops’ Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000. In particular, he is concerned with the point about the possibility of disobedience to the authorities.66 The discrepancy between the name “political hesychasm” and the phenomenon itself is striking. Moreover, the term “political hesychasm” is more misleading than the explanation of the phenomenon that it describes. In the first 62 63 64 65 66

Gelian Prokhorov, “Isikhazm i obshchestvennaia mysl’ v Vostochnoi Evrope v XIV v.,” Trudy otdela drevnerusskoi literatury 23 (1968): 86–108. Meyendorff, “O vizantiiskom isikhazme,” 291–305. Ibid., 294. Vladimir Petrunin, Politicheskii isikhazm (Saint Petersburg: 2009). Ibid., 123–28, 130.

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place, hesychasm is a monastic practice that entails solitude and quiet (from the Greek word ēsychia—silence, quiet, solitude), while “political hesychasm” is associated with an active sociopolitical struggle, which is the opposite of monastic solitude. Secondly, “political hesychasm” does not proffer any theory of the political or social structure of society or a theological understanding of politics—a political theology. Rather, “political hesychasm” is a historiosophical project, based on the idea of Russia’s succession from Byzantium—the Third Rome from New Rome. The main points of “political hesychasm’s” program (both medieval and contemporary) are as follows: ‒ The priority of the Church over the state (the spiritual over the earthly); ‒ The autonomy of Church authority, especially in matters of faith; ‒ Maintaining the jurisdictional unity of the Patriarchate of Constantinople (in the middle ages), and the Patriarchate of Moscow (today); ‒ Active missionary activity, including proselytizing; ‒ The priority of imperial ideology over nationalism; ‒ The requirement of the state to assist the Church in its activities; ‒ Recognition of the possibility of state support only in the case that the state is faithful to Orthodoxy. ‒ A consistent anti-Latin (Catholic) and anti-Uniate stance (today anti-Ecumenism can be added to this).67 The basis of this program in Russian Orthodoxy is the cultural and political myth of the decisive influence of the late Byzantine hesychast movement on the formation of a centralized Russian state under the rule of Moscow. The hesychast movement (which includes, for example, St. Sergius of Radonezh) laid the foundations of “Holy Rus’.” According to this myth, St. Joseph of Volotsk and his disciples continued the work of political hesychasm after the fall of Constantinople. The idea of Moscow as the Third Rome also becomes “hesychast.” A particular feature of political hesychasm is its anti-Westernism and anti-Latinism (to which anti-Ecumenism is now added). A likewise important feature of this cultural and political myth is the criticism of humanism, which in Byzantium was associated with the so-called Palaiologos renaissance, and, in its application to modernity, with secular humanism and liberalism.68 The most vivid manifestation of Palamite historiosophy in post-Soviet Russia is the documentary film of Archimandrite (now Bishop) Tikhon Shevkunov, The Fall of an Empire: The Lesson of Byzantium (2008). Father Tikhon himself acted as the screenwriter and narrator for the film. Although the terms 67 68

See ibid., 130. Ibid., 46–80.

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“Palamism” and “hesychasm” are never directly stated in the film, the key positions of the Palamite historiosophical project can be detected in it: antiWesternism and anti-Latinism, the priority of the imperial over the national, Orthodoxy as the highest value (priority of the spiritual over the earthly), and others.69 The fall of Byzantium, according to the film’s author, occurred as a consequence of the Byzantine political elite’s orientation toward the West and Western values. In the film, Russia is directly named as the successor to Byzantium. In addition, The Fall of an Empire introduces bold parallels between late Byzantium and modern Russia. The main goal of the film is a warning against “mistakes of the past.” In one interview, Tikhon Shevkunov explains his main motive thus: I wanted to warn in the form of a parable, to show what could happen in Russia if the appropriate measures are not taken in time. I do not flatter myself with the hope that the film had such a strong influence, but still something has been done. At the same time, much of what was said in The Fall of an Empire is still relevant for us.70 The film The Fall of an Empire: The Lesson of Byzantium aired on the federal chan­nel, Rossiia, and spurred wide discussion. In the same year, the film’s script was published as a book with the same name.71 We find another example of the Palamite historiosophical view in the interpretation by Arkady Maler, Orthodox publicist and leader of the club Katechon, of the annexation of Crimea by Russia. He writes in his blog: When the hesychast doctrine was established, Byzantium experienced the era of its decline, and Muscovite Rus’, on the other hand, began to rise. ... At the same time, St. Sergius of Radonezh founded the Trinity Monastery near Moscow, and the Kiev metropolitanate finally ceased to have the name of Kiev and became the Moscow metropolitanate, in the time of Metropolitan Alexy (1354–78). The triumph of hesychasm occurred in the rise of Muscovite Rus’, the last stronghold of independent Orthodoxy. And today, the return of Tavria72 to Russia frees her from all 69 70 71 72

For the script of the film Gibel’ Imperii: Vizantiiskii urok, see Tikhon Shevkunov, “The Text of the Film ‘The Fall of an Empire: The Lesson of Byzantium,” Stsenarii, 11 February 2008, . Aleksandr Danilov, “Gibel’ Imperii: Urok eshche ne okonchen,” Pravoslavie.ru, accessed 14 December 2017, . Tikhon Shevkunov, Gibel’ Imperii: Vizantiiskii urok (Moscow: 2008). The ancient Greek name of Crimea.

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the threats to canonical Orthodoxy in Ukraine—both Uniate influence and autocephalist schism. For those who care about which church they join and which priest they confess to, this liberation is of absolute importance.73 Here we find the history of Moscow’s rise and the idea of Russia’s succession from Byzantium. The annexing of Crimea to Russia becomes a symbolic restoration of this succession in modern times. Thus, Ukraine becomes the territory where the clash between the New Byzantium and the West occurs. Palamite historiosophy was in demand among Orthodox monarchists and supporters of imperial ideology. However, Orthodox ideologists of Russian nationalism also appeal to it (although, as we saw above, in the Palamite project, priority is given to the imperial and not the national). Egor Kholmogorov lays bare the theologian-hesychasts’ idea of nation: Did the hesychasts have, at the same time, their own idea of nation, which could be opposed to pagan nationalism? Without a doubt, they did. It was the conception of the “holy nation [narod],” animated by zeal for Orthodoxy, who arranged their lives according to God’s Law, and in return, receive God’s special blessing and special powers of grace in all their being.74 In this case, Kholmogorov of course assigns the role of the “holy nation” to the Russians: “The greatest of the hesychast patriarchs, Philotheus Kokkin, the disciple of Palamas, saw in the role of such a holy nation ... Russians.”75 He writes: “The Byzantine-hesychasts quite consciously singled out the Russians for their outstanding spiritual qualities, for the unusual intensity of their spiritual life, and began the process of transferring the spiritual and ideological contents of the ‘Byzantine inheritance.’”76 In this way, the Palamite historiosophical project becomes the basis for the nationalist ideology of the chosenness of the Russian people.77

73

Arkadii Maler, “Palamizm i vozvrashchenie Tavrii,” Personal blog of Arkady Maler, accessed 14 December 2017, . 74 Egor Kholmogorov, “Vizantizm kak ideia,” APN, accessed 14 December 2017, . 75 Ibid. 76 Ibid. 77 See also chapter 8 by Alicja Curanović and chapter 14 by Viсtor Shnirelman in this volume.

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8 Conclusion Today, Palamism is the dominant church tradition in Orthodoxy (not only in Russian Orthodoxy, but worldwide), and, as we saw earlier, approaches to it within the framework of the theological paradigm of neo-patristic synthesis, on the whole, correspond to the romantic approach, which is oriented toward preserving accumulated heritage. This approach contributes to the reproduction and reconstruction of theological strategies relating to the past, and not to a critical rethinking of this heritage in the present. This is the source of the main elements of Palamism: Byzantinism as a cultural-historical ideal, the empire as the paradigm of power, monastic asceticism as a behavioral norm. Therefore, this tradition attracts supporters of the monarchy, of the empire, of the exclusivity of Orthodox civilization, and of the special path of the Russian people. However, this reading of the tradition of Palamism is not the only one. Another conservative mode of working with this tradition is possible, which corresponds to the critical approach described earlier. The American Orthodox theologian Aristotle Papanikolaou’s book, The Mystical as Political, is a vivid example of such a reading of Palamism. Papanikolaou begins by redefining the key theological concept of Palamism—theosis. From his point of view, this term should not be translated as deification, but as divine-human communion. Papanikolaou believes that the first meaning “conjures up images of individual striving toward some sort of superhuman, godlike transformation.”78 This is the understanding of theosis that we saw earlier in the section about ascetics. Papanikolaou suggests rethinking theosis in order to discover its communitarian dimension, and to reveal in ascetics, respectively, an ethical dimension. He writes: Asceticism is a tradition of thinking on how to fulfill this commandment [to love God], which is theosis. Divine-human communion is to love God with all of one’s heart, soul, strength, and mind, that is singularly, and to love neighbor as self.79 Papanikolaou’s project shows that a critically reinterpreted tradition of Palamism could be the groundwork for protecting democracy and human rights from theological positions. At the same time, this strategy of working with the 78 79

Aristotle Papanikolaou, The Mystical as Political: Democracy and Non-Radical Orthodoxy (Notre Dame, IN: 2012), 1. Ibid., 2.

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Palamite tradition does not cease to be conservative: it is the comprehension of tradition, as Mannheim would say, in relation to circumstances that change from epoch to epoch. Of course for now, Papanikolaou’s project is known in Russia only by a narrow circle of specialists in the field of political theology. However, this does not mean that such a project, based not on a romantic, but on a critical approach to working with tradition, could not appear in the Russian context to justify, for example, the compatibility of Orthodoxy with democracy. References Aleksii II, Patriarkh of Moscow. “Podlinnyi starets berezhno otnositsia k kazhdomu cheloveku” [A true elder cares for each person]. Tserkov’ i vremia 2, no. 9 (1999): 7–15. Bulgakov, S.V. Nastol’naia kniga dlia sviashchenno-tserkovno-sluzhitelei [Handbook for the clergy]. Reprint edition. Moscow: 1993. Danilov, Aleksandr. “Gibel’ Imperii: Urok esche ne okonchen” [The fall of an empire: The lesson is not over yet]. Pravoslavie.ru. 10 December 2012. Accessed 14 December 2017, . Demacopoulos, George. “Orthodox Fundamentalism.” Blogs of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. 29 January 2015. Accessed 17 October 2017, . Fedotov, Georgii. “Pravoslavie i istoricheskaia kritika” [Orthodoxy and historical criticism]. Put’ 33 (1932): 3–17. Florovskii, Georgii. “Bogoslovskie otryvki” [Theological fragments]. Put’ 31 (1931): 3–29. Florovskii, Georgii. “Dom Otchii” [The house of the father]. Put’ 7 (1927): 63–86. Florovskii, Georgii. Puti russkogo bogosloviia [Ways of Russian theology]. Minsk: 2006. Florovsky, Georges. “The Catholicity of the Church.” In The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky, vol. 1, edited by Richard S. Haugh, 37–55. Vaduz: 1987. Gavriushin, Nikolai. Russkoe bogoslovie: Ocherki i portrety [Russian theology: Essays and portraits]. Nizhnii Novgorod: 2011. Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church. “Encyclical of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church.” Accessed 14 December 2017, . Hovorun, Cyril. Meta-Ecclesiology: Chronicles on Church Awareness. New York: 2015. Khachatrian, Tigrii. “Neopatristicheskii sintez prot. G. Florovskogo kak kontseptual’naia osnova nauchno-issledovatel’skoi raboty v dukhovnykh shkolakh Russkoi Pra­ voslavnoi Tserkvi” [Neopatristic synthesis of Archpriest G. Florovsky as a concep-

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Noble, Ivana, Katerina Bauerová, Tim Noble, and Parush Parushev. The Ways of Ortho­ dox Theology in the West. Yonkers, NY: 2014. Papanikolaou, Aristotle. The Mystical as Political: Democracy and Non-Radical Ortho­ doxy. Notre Dame, IN: 2012. Petrunin, Vladimir. Politicheskii isikhazm [Political hesychasm]. Saint Petersburg: 2009. Prokhorov, Gelian. “Isikhazm i obshchestvennaia mysl’ v Vostochnoi Evrope v XIV v.” [Hesychasm and public thought in Eastern Europe in the 14th c.]. Trudy otdela drev­ nerusskoi literatury 23 (1968): 86–108. Russian Orthodox Church. “Postanovleniia Osviaschennogo Arkhiereiskogo Sobora Russkoi Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi (29 noiabria–2 dekabria 2017 goda)” [Decisions of the Bishop’s Council of the Russian Orthodox Church (29 November–2 December 2017)]. Accessed 14 December 2017, . Schmemann, Aleksandr. “Bogoslovie i liturgicheskoe predanie” [Theology and liturgical tradition]. In Sobranie statei, 1947–1983, 224–230. Moscow: 2009. Shevkunov, Tikhon. Gibel’ Imperii: Vizantiiskii urok [The fall of an empire: The lesson of Byzantium]. Moscow: 2008. Shishkov, Andrei. “Dva ponimaniia traditsii v russkom pravoslavnom bogoslovii” [Two understandings of tradition in Russian Orthodox theology]. Vestnik RHGA 3, no. 18 (2017): 22–29. Shishkov, Andrey. “Two Ecumenisms: Conservative Christian Alliances as a New Form of Ecumenical Cooperation.” State, Religion and Church 4, no. 2 (2017): 58–87.

 Translated from the Russian by Megan Barickman

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Chapter 14

Russian Neoconservatism and Apocalyptic Imperialism  Victor Shnirelman 1

Introduction: Russia and a Conservative Twist

The climax of Putin’s rule is characterized by a neoconservative trend promoted by numerous advocates of the contemporary political regime in Russia. However, there are difficulties in analyzing conservatism as an ideology. Many experts agree that conservatism is characterized by pure pragmatism and opportunism, which is often a response to external challenges. Some scholars view it as anti-ideological.1 Nonetheless, there are some basic principles that are inherent in conservatism. A belief in the basic role of religion (presented as “tradition”), which legitimizes the current social order with reference to God’s will, is one of them.2 Others are traditionalism, organicism, moral order, and an emphasis on human nature. At the same time, as Ted Honderich points out, “the tradition of conservatism has not often tried to sum itself up in an orderly and explicit way.”3 And Reba Soffer adds that “conservatism had historically been a reaction to circumstances that conservatives believed threatened their traditions and values.”4 According to Samuel Huntington, men are driven to conservatism by the shock of events, by the horrible feeling that a society or institution which they have approved or taken for

1 Susan M. Yohn, “Will the Real Conservative Please Stand Up? Or the Pitfalls Involved in Examining Ideological Sympathies,” The American Historical Review 99, no. 2 (1994): 430–37; Ted Honderich, Conservatism: Burke, Nozick, Bush, Blair? (London: 2005); Reba N. Soffer, History, Historians, and Conservatism in Britain and America (Oxford: 2009), 30. 2 Samuel Huntington, “Conservatism as an Ideology,” The American Political Science Review 51 (1957): 454–73; S.P. Peregudov and V.A. Skorokhodov (eds.), Sovremennyi konservatizm (Moscow: 1992), 71, 77; V. Krasheninnikova, Amerika-Rossiia: Kholodnaia voina kul’tur; Kak amerikanskie tsennosti prelomliaiut videnie Rossii (Moscow: 2007), 40–45; Honderich, Conservatism, 203. 3 Honderich, Conservatism, 3. 4 Soffer, History, Historians, and Conservatism, 224.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004408005_015

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granted and with which they have been intimately connected may suddenly cease to exist.5 This is exactly what happened in Russia after the collapse of the USSR. At the same time, conservative politicians usually distance themselves from any specific doctrines and point out that they base their actions on a “spirit” and an “observation of life” rather than on any well-developed ideology. They also tend to believe in the limited role of rationalism in politics and are skeptical of abstract reasoning. Instead, there is a reliance on the “wisdom of tradition.”6 Huntington underlined the “reactive nature” of conservatism, its dependence on current events and, thus, an ideological discontinuity between conservatives of different generations. He warned that in case of failure the conservative ideal “becomes less and less related to any actual society of the past. The past is romanticized, and, in the end, the reactionary comes to support a return to an idealized ‘Golden Age’ which never in fact existed.”7 He was nevertheless surprised by American conservatives’ ambition “to conserve an intellectual tradition which does not exist rather than institutions which do exist.”8 Having discovered this trend within Russian conservatism, Aleksandr Kustarev called it “anti-systemic conservatism.”9 Whereas Huntington argued that the main goal of American conservatives of the 1950s was to secure liberal democracy from communism, contemporary Russian conservatives want to protect authoritarianism from liberal values, yet an “intellectual tradition” seems more important to them than institutions. This creates the background for a political theology that was initially closely linked with Orthodox fundamentalism.10 Ewen Green pointed out that a universal uniform conservatism is a myth; instead, there are many different conservatisms as, for example, British traditionalism and American “anti-progressivism” (also known as “constitutional 5 6 7 8 9 10

Huntington, “Conservatism as an Ideology,” 470. Ewen H.H. Green, Ideologies of Conservatism: Conservative Political Ideas in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: 2002), 3, 282–86. Huntington, “Conservatism as an Ideology,” 460. Ibid., 472. Aleksandr Kustarev, “Konservatizm i … konservatizm,” Neprikosnovennyi zapas 1 (2010): 12–18. Konstantin Kostiuk, “Pravoslavnyi fundamentalizm,” Polis 5 (2000): 133–54; Aleksandr Verkhovsky, “The Role of the Russian Orthodox Church in Nationalist, Xenophobic and Anti-Western Tendencies in Russia Today: Not Nationalism, but Fundamentalism,” Religion, State and Society 30 (2002): 333–45; Verkhovskii, Politicheskoe pravoslavie (Moscow: 2003); Anastasia Mitrofanova, Politizatsiia “pravoslavnogo mira” (Moscow: 2004); V.I. Chelish­ chev, Funda­mentalizm i fundamentalisty (Moscow: 2010), 162–73.

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conservatism”) with its evident racist legacy.11 An additional type is the Orthodox political theology developed by fundamentalists (ultraconservatives) in post-Soviet Russia, which could be called eschatologism and which is the focus of this article. Nowadays, Western conservatives shocked by the crisis of the welfare state stand against the liberal establishment and democratic political life,12 and their Russian counterparts fit perfectly well into this pattern. Moreover, it is well known that Christian activists have made a valuable contribution to the establishment of neoconservatism in the United States and even managed to involve Ronald Reagan in apocalyptic millennialism.13 Conservative efforts to instill a religious agenda into politics has continued until the present day, with President Trump’s administration. So, it is by no means a surprise that their Russian counterparts have wanted to do the same.14 The contemporary Russian Orthodox landscape is occupied by three groups with their own ideologies and intentions: a small but influential liberal group, a dominant group of traditionalists-conservatives, and a noisy group of fundamentalists and radicals.15 The current article analyzes the third group’s political ideas and their inventors and adherents.16 It is no accident that at the international conference “The Eschatological Teaching of the Church,” held by the Moscow Patriarchate on 14–17 November 2005, only one out of more than 50 papers focused on political Orthodoxy. This talk was given by the Russian

11 Green, Ideologies of Conservatism; Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900–1916 (New York: 1963); Joseph Postell and Johnathan O’Neil (eds.), Toward an American Conservatism: Constitutional Conservatism during the Progressive Era (New York: 2013); Joseph E. Lowndes, From the New Deal to the New Right: Race and the Southern Origins of Modern Conservatism (New Haven, CT: 2008). 12 Michael J. Thompson (ed.), Confronting the New Conservatism: The Rise of the Right in America (New York: 2007). 13 Chip Berlet, “The New Political Right in the United States: Reaction, Rollback, and Resentment,” in Thompson, Confronting the New Conservatism, 84–86, 89–90. Also see: Diana M. Judd, “Tearing down the Wall: Conservative Use and Abuse of Religion in Politics,” in Thompson, Confronting the New Conservatism, 125–43. 14 For more on the connections between Russian and Western conservatives, see chapter 7 by Marlene Laruelle in this volume. 15 Konstantin Kostiuk, “Tri portreta: Sotsial’no-eticheskie vozzrenia v Russkoi pravoslavnoi tserkvi kontsa 20 veka,” Kontinent 113 (2002): 252–87; N. Mitrokhin, Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov’: Sovremennoe sostoianie i aktual’nye problemy (Moscow: 2006), 184–86; I. Papkova, The Orthodox Church and Russian Politics (Washington, DC: 2011). 16 For Russian Orthodox radicals, also see: Nikolai Simakov, “Soblazn radikalizma,” Fond imperskogo vozrozhdeniia, 10 December 2007, ; Victor Shnirel­man, Koleno Danovo: Eskhatologiia i antisemitizm v sovremennoi Rossii (Moscow: 2017).

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radical nationalist Egor Kholmogorov, whose ideas will be discussed below.17 And it is also no accident that it was Ioann, the late ultraconservative metropolitan of Saint Petersburg and Ladoga, who, according to Konstantin Kostiuk, “has developed the Orthodox version of political theology.”18 It is worth noting that Ioann disagreed with many Russian Orthodox higher priests who wanted the Church to be out of or above politics. Nonetheless, 10 to 15 years ago certain experts were already noticing a growth of radical nationalism and extremism among the Russian Orthodox people.19 My questions are: to what extent is there a continuation of the prerevolutionary and in general the Christian tradition, and what is new, introduced by contemporary ultra-Orthodox thinkers? How do their ideas fit into an “end of times” agenda and apocalyptic stance? How are Russia’s destiny and its relationships with the outside world imagined within this paradigm? Do the political theologians in question offer any political agenda to the authorities, and if so, what? 2

Eschatology as a Background for Orthodox Political Theology

As noted above, the original Orthodox version of political theology was developed by Ioann, the late metropolitan of Saint Petersburg and Ladoga, who was an ardent proponent of “Orthodox great power” (derzhavnost’).20 While rejecting nationalism in his rhetoric, Ioann was a passionate advocate of a strong state and of consolidating the patriotism of the “Orthodox people.” In his view, only a strong state could secure the Church from numerous external enemies, especially the Jews, Freemasons, and the West. Moreover, he emphasized the 17

Egor Kholmogorov, “Politicheskaia eskhatologiia pravoslaviia v eskhatologicheskoi poli­ tike,” in Eskhatologicheskoe uchenie Tserkvi (Moscow: 2005), 584–75. 18 Kostiuk, “Tri portreta.” 19 Verkhovskii, Politicheskoe pravoslavie; “O ‘pravoslavnom extremizme,’” Tsentr Sova, 6 December 2004, ; A. Makarkin, “Pravoslavnyi stalinizm,” Ezhednevnyi zhurnal, 5 September 2007, ; K.V. Kuznetsov, “Poniatie i osnovnye priznaki religioznogo extremizma—neobkhodimoe znanie dlia formirovaniia umenii antipropagandy religioz­ nogo extremizma u studentov gumanitarnykh vuzov,” Gumanitarnye nauchnye issledova­ niia 6 (2012), . 20 For Metropolitan Ioann, see: Juhani Ihanus, Swaddling, Shame and Society: On Psycho­ history and Russia (Helsinki: 2001), 84–85; John Garrard and Carol Garrard, Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent: Faith and Power in the New Russia (Princeton, NJ: 2008), 114–16. Wellinformed people claim that Ioann did not write books that were published in his name. See: Georgii Mitrofanov, Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov’ na istoricheskom pereput’e 20 veka (Moscow: 2011), 266. Also see Shnirelman, Koleno Danovo, 279–80.

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cosmic mission of the Orthodox (i.e., Russian) people, whose duty was to rescue the world from the arrival of the Antichrist.21 Despite the fact that Metropolitan Ioann’s views were called reactionary and even “fascist” in the 1990s, he has many followers in contemporary Russia, who make up a neoconservative and Orthodox fundamentalist wing.22 It is worth noting that they employ not only Metropolitan Ioann’s ideas, but also those of Western Christian, mostly American, fundamentalism.23 It is in this milieu that one finds room for a political Orthodoxy that attempts to use the myth of the “end of time” to shape a political agenda for the authorities.24 This agenda is based on Christian eschatology, which refers to certain ideas rooted in the Church Fathers’ views modified by Russian Orthodox thinkers. Firstly, Christian eschatology focuses on an idea of involution that depicts world history as a movement from the Golden Age to a decline, which would end with the arrival of the Antichrist and the Apocalypse. Secondly, this pattern is characterized by an eternal struggle between Good and Evil, God and Satan. Thirdly, Satan’s plans are implemented by the Antichrist and his numerous comrades-in-arms, especially the Jews and Freemasons. It is they who spin the threads of a plot against humanity to hasten the arrival of the Antichrist; through this idea eschatology becomes the background for modern conspi­ racy. Fourthly, the epoch of modernity is viewed as a product of Jewish activity, and, hence, the West is depicted as allegedly “Judaized” and is thus integrated into the kingdom of the Antichrist. From this perspective, Russia does not look like a less developed country, but one that is moving along its own path—it is the Third Rome that has inherited a “genuine faith” directly from Byzantium. On the one hand, this provides Russia with a mission to rescue the world from the Antichrist, yet on the other hand, it makes her the main target of the evil forces aimed at doing away with her to establish the kingdom of evil ruled by Satan. 21 22

23 24

Ioann, Mitropolit S.-Peterburgskii i Ladozhskii, Samoderzhavie dukha (Moscow: 1994), 247–76; Ioann, Odolenie smuty (Moscow: 1995), 23–25, 63–74, 170, 177, and 198–99. For these ideas see: Kostiuk, “Tri portreta.” A. Verkhovskii, V. Pribylovskii, and E. Mikhailovskaia, Natsionalizm i ksenofobiia v rossiiskom obshchestve (Moscow: 1998), 172; A. De Lazari, “Skąd nadchodzi Antychryst? Kategoria Zachodu w nacjonalistycznej myśli rosyjskiej (szkic),” in Skąd przychodzi Anty­ chryst? Kontakty i konflikty etniczne w Europie Środkowej i Południowej, ed. T. Falęcki (Kracow: 2004), 139–44. Boris Mezhuev, “Amerikanskii fundamentalizm i russkaia ‘konservativnaia revoliutsiia,’” Logos 1 (2003): 105–11. Maria Engström, “Contemporary Russian Messianism and New Russian Foreign Policy,” Contemporary Security Policy 35 (2014): 356–79.

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This myth lays a special emphasis on “he who now restrains” (Katechon), once mentioned by the Apostle Paul (2 Thess. 2:7). Although there is no unanimity among theologians on the meaning of the term, the popular view in imperial Russia identified “he who now restrains” with the Russian tsar. That is why Orthodox fundamentalists view the tragic fate of the tsar’s family as a “ritual murder” allegedly committed by the Jews. To be sure, no matter how dreadful the events in Russia that followed were, neither has the Antichrist come, nor has the Apocalypse happened. Orthodox fundamentalists explain this with a reference to “he who now restrains,” whose function was apparently picked up either by the Mother of God, by the Russian people, or by Russia itself. In any case they present Russia as the last fortress of holiness suffering endless assaults from the outside world, which has already been seized by the Antichrist. They primarily denounce the West’s contemporary values (liberalism, pluralism, tolerance, secularism, feminism, multiculturalism, and the like) as a harmful shift away from the invaluable tradition that should be secured. Allegedly, security is provided only by Russia that actually looks as “him who now restrains” in this context. Hence, a conflict with the West, even a military clash, is unavoidable. Evidently this eschatological myth explains the contemporary deterioration of the relationships between Russia and the West perfectly well and sounds convincing to the Orthodox fundamentalists.25 Political Orthodoxy is shaping its agenda upon this foundation. Yet, the constructions of various ideologues differ depending on generation, as Huntington pointed out. While older authors emphasize the image of the enemy represented by the Jews and Freemasons, the younger ones identify the enemy with the hated West, although Russia’s eschatological mission seems more important to them than the image of their enemies. 3

Mikhail Nazarov and Political Theology

The former group is represented by confirmed monarchist Mikhail Nazarov, who is obsessed with the idea of marrying politics with Orthodox eschatology.26 He fled Russia in 1975 and was in close contact with right-wing Russian émigrés in Germany for about 20 years. He returned to Russia in the early 1990s hoping 25 26

Political Orthodoxy is also examined in chapter 13 by Andrey Shishkov in this volume. On Nazarov, see Victor Shnirelman, “Teoriia zagovora i politika ‘poslednikh vremen’: Sluchai Nazarova,” in Kontakty i konflikty v slavianskoi i evreiskoi kul’turnoi traditsii, ed. O.V. Belova (Moscow: 2017), 258–81.

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to become a leader of the Russian nationalist movement. He relied on antiSemitism to gain mass support but failed. Ever since, he has been well known as a schismatic and his only successful project has been a publishing house named “Russian Idea” that helps him to disseminate his xenophobic views online. Firstly, Nazarov romanticizes imperial Russia; secondly, he believes that since the collapse of Byzantium, Orthodox Russia as “he who now restrains” has taken responsibility for the destiny of the world; thirdly, he accuses the Jews of the revolution of 1917 and argues that the Bolsheviks’ ambition was the “ritual murder of Russian Orthodoxy”; fourthly, he views them as a “precursor of the Antichrist” as well as the “Godless Jewish yoke” allegedly predicted long ago. He despises post-Soviet Russia as a “Jewish-democratic yoke” that is heir to the Bolsheviks, and is frightened by it as a “pre-Apocalyptic omen.” He identifies the essence of contemporary life as a conflict between the “New World Order” and the “Russian Idea,” or to put it differently, the “Kingdom of the Antichrist” and Russia’s “he who now restrains,” that is, a “refraining monarchy” that is undergoing a restoration. Nazarov reproduced or developed many of these ideas further in his major work with the telling title, To the Leader of the Third Rome: Towards Understanding the Russian Idea in an Apocalyptic Time.27 In contrast to his previous works, which aimed at propaganda, this book gives advice to politicians based on the Russian Orthodox truth. Nazarov arrived at the idea of an unavoidable clash between the “restraining” Russian Orthodox imperial state and “apostate” Western civilization. While he ardently condemned any other imperial expansion, he glorified Russian Orthodox expansion because allegedly it perfectly fits into Holy Scripture and the role of “he who now restrains.” It is in this way that holy history justifies imperialism and the Katechon, who fulfills a holy mission and is immune from any prosecution. While calling Soviet power “Jewish,” Nazarov scrupulously counted Soviet functionaries of Jewish origin because, for him, this proved their ambition to prepare for the Antichrist’s arrival. And he discovered a “history-rupturing meaning [istoricheski-perelomnyi smysl] for all humanity” in the murder of the royal family as the elimination of “he who now restrains” by the Freemasons and Jews.28 Nazarov devoted one of his major chapters to globalization as a manifestation of the World Evil arriving from the “world backstage,” that is, from world 27 28

Mikhail Nazarov, Vozhdiu Tret’ego Rima: K poznaniiu russkoi idei v apokalipticheskoe vremia, 2nd expanded ed. (Moscow: 2005). Ibid., 213.

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Masonry, which was building up a “New World Order” with evident attributes of the kingdom of the Antichrist. To avoid this, he advised introducing autarchy and building a closed society, actually isolating oneself from the outer world. However, Nazarov would not object to globalization if it was based on Russian Orthodoxy and led by the Orthodox empire represented by Moscow, or the Third Rome. He views this as the “most Christian state in the human history,” and destined for global expansion. By contrast, he imagines democracy as the product of harmful Masonic activity, of a “union of reformed Christianity and Judaism,” and claims that it would result in the “Judaization of the world,” in other words, apostasy, the United States being a case in point. In this way, he justifies an unavoidable clash between Russia and the United States as a result of the eternal struggle between good and evil. To put it another way, his argument that Russia is the Katechon puts religion in the position of controlling politics, which inevitably leads to the idea of the “world plot.” Indeed, Nazarov points to a secret force that used financial machinations and other immoral actions to achieve world rule and to enslave all the world’s peoples. Only the Devil and his “children” in the shape of “God’s chosen people” could be behind this. That is why Nazarov reproduced all the mudslinging induced by fears of the arrival of the “Jewish Messiah.” For Nazarov, the Orthodox truth means a restoration of a Russian empire with the Russian Orthodox monarchy and Orthodox ideology. For a transitional period, Russia will need a leader (vozhd’) elected by the “best people” as the basis of a “corporative principle of social organization.” It is this truth that Nazarov wants to teach the future “leader of the Third Rome,” whom he urges to establish autarchy to secure Russia from the “external evil.” Indeed, nothing but the “mystery of lawlessness” is found beyond Russian borders. Therefore, Nazarov urges the return of a totalitarian regime with strict state control and a mobilized economy, yet in this case on the basis of Russian Orthodoxy. Is it necessary to argue that this “Orthodox dictatorship” justifies nationalism and imperial expansion? Indeed, Nazarov dreams of the “world empire of the Third Rome” and of the “last mission of the Third Rome before the end of time,” which is to become the “last beacon of Truth.” He arrives at the conclusion that this “beacon” has to struggle with the Jews. For this he suggests restoring the post-Byzantium space of the Orthodox countries, which understood the disposition of world forces and the meaning of history: Russia,

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Greece, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Georgia as well as old Christian Armenia. To be sure, Belorussia and Eastern Ukraine are also included.29 In his view, one has to “aspire to restore all of the Third Rome within its historically justified borders,” in other words, to restore the borders of the Russian empire with the addition of what was appropriated in the Soviet period. He calls this a “performance of God’s Truth,” which Russians must carry out as the “chosen people of Israel,” the only “true Christians.” In this context, the Jews appear as “Satanic people.” Nazarov is aware that an attempt to restore such an empire could result in world war, and that Russia would clash mainly with the United States and Israel. This does not frighten him, as it would be the final destination of history described by Revelation. To put it differently, this Russian “rescue mission” would bring about the death of the entire world. 4

Orthodox Political Theology as Anti-Western Stance

It is noteworthy that Nazarov is not the only one to think this way. There are younger ideologues who develop their ideas along the same line, namely Vitaly Averianov, Egor Kholmogorov, and Arkady Maler. Yet unlike Nazarov, they do not stick to the “Jewish issue.”30 In their constructs the “Jews” and “Jews-Masons” are replaced by the hated “West,” and a description of Russia’s eschatological mission proves more important than an image of the enemy. As Boris Mezhuev noted, “an outlook in the spirit of ‘conservative revolution’ aims at the liberal creed rather than at any metaphysical ‘enemies.’”31 Indeed, while it still survives in the Church environment, anti-Semitism has recently become less important than Western liberalism, which is furiously attacked.32 Averianov is closely connected to the imperial-minded milieu comprising both the clergy and military. In the very early 2000s he predicted rapid changes in the political mood and a shift to the ideology of “dynamic conservatism.” While rejecting “liberal conservatism,”33 he called for getting rid of the protectionist agenda and for accepting positive alterations, providing that close links with tradition would be secured. He viewed a “tradition-civilization” as a well29 Nazarov, Vozhdiu Tret’ego Rima, 832. 30 Oleg Platonov (ed.), Russkaia doktrina (Moscow: 2016), 969–70. 31 Mezhuev, “Amerikanskii fundamentalizm.” 32 Andrei Desnitskii, “Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov’ i natsionalizm,” Kontrapunkt 2 (2015): 2. 33 Vitalii Aver’ianov, “Raznye konservatizmy, raznye traditsionalizmy,” Pravoslavie.ru, 4 Septem­ber 2001, .

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integrated organic body with a definite set of attributes and well-established borders. He claimed that Russia had to present its own system for a world order as an alternative to the Western universalist project. The cornerstones of this alternative view were described as “Tradition, Humanism, Truth.”34 Averianov avoided directly addressing the Apocalypse, but kept it in mind while pointing out Catholic and Protestant contacts with the “Prince of this World.” He conjured an image of “he who now restrains,” yet imagined its role as “holding the [driving] forces of the world within the Tradition.”35 In his view, Russia was the “center of history,” and instead of struggling against globalization, he suggested building up the “world supranational system,” in which Moscow was seen as the Highest Rome rather than the Third Rome, because, he claimed, “Russia was not from this World.”36 This agenda suggested an original messianism and “Russian expansion,” the unquestionable superiority of Russian Orthodoxy as the true faith, and the system-forming and seminal role of “Russian civilization” in the world. ­Averianov called “great power [derzhavnyi] imperialism” one of the constant attributes of this civilization. To put it other way, he dreamed of “Russian Orthodox globalization” under the aegis of Russia and the Orthodox Church, which proved to be close to the ideas of then-metropolitan Kirill (the patriarch since 2009). Similar ideas have been developed by the Orthodox publicist and journalist Egor Kholmogorov, an admirer of conservatism, nationalism, imperialism, great power, and patriotism.37 He viewed Russia as a “country of the last day,” where all world events would come to an end. This is allegedly confirmed by the formula “Moscow the Third Rome.” He argued that the Byzantine idea of the Katechon was deeply embedded in Russian “imperial consciousness,” and global Apocalypse would immediately arrive after Russia experienced a decline.38 Kholmogorov divided history into two periods—before 1917 and afterward, as though humanity had lost “he who now restrains,” represented by the Russian emperor, and this role was then inherited by Russia—not by the entire Russian people but by the “best people” of Holy Rus’, who should not let the “Satanocratic kingdom of the Antichrist” arrive.39 Kholmogorov viewed this as a “joyful change in the fate of Russia.” Thus, he was ready to discard rationality 34 35 36 37 38 39

Vitalii Aver’ianov, Traditsiia i dinamicheskii konservatizm (Moscow: 2012). Vitalii Aver’ianov, Priroda russkoi ekspansii (Moscow: 2003), 351. Ibid., 403–4. Egor Kholmogorov, Russkii proekt: Restavratsiia budushchego (Moscow: 2005), 20. Ibid., 18–19, and 46. Ibid., 181.

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in favor of a consolidation of authoritarian rule in Russia that was based on the national elite, in which he evidently wanted to see himself. Kholmogorov viewed Russia’s mission as the maintenance of the “right world order” against the kingdom of the Antichrist. Obviously, to fulfill this mission Russia had to be “reactionary and revanchist”40 and to return to the methods of 1937.41 Kholmogorov assumed that Russia would soon bring prosperity to the world, the Orthodox kingdom would be restored, and the “second baptism of Russia” would occur. While imagining all this in light of eschatological teaching, he believed this global grace would not last for long. He foresaw world war, in which Russia would be victorious, and Russian Orthodoxy would spread throughout the world. Then the Antichrist would arrive, and lawlessness would reign. Therefore, Russia has to resist the New World Order by all means and to protect the world from the arrival of the Antichrist.42 Kholmogorov predicted a hard and bloody war rather than a “spiritual battle.” Thus he advocated an “atomic Orthodoxy” as a restraining force, which would secure Russia’s continuous existence until the Second Coming. He drew on President Putin’s claim that Russia’s security came from both Russian Orthodoxy and a nuclear shield.43 He assumed this belief to be Russia’s official ideology and argued that advances in weapons technology were the basis of historic progress, while a “struggle between nations” made up an essence of human history.44 Thus, in his view, an “approach toward God” and the “Russian witness of Christ” were impossible without nuclear weapons. For Kholmogorov, the main enemy was the West, which allegedly feared Russia as a strong competitor. He argued that although a “full-fledged Russian world” would emerge, it would not last for long before the “final eschatological events” would begin. As a result, the Russian kingdom would fall in a struggle with the Antichrist.45 Thus, on the one hand, Kholmogorov presented himself as a supporter and an advocate of empire, but on the other hand, he believed that its fate would be miserable. Yet, it was hard for him to come to terms with the “end of Russia,” and thus he imagined this as the “end of the world,” where the destruction of Russia meant global destruction. 40 41 42 43

Ibid., 52. Ibid., 249. Ibid., 178–97. “Bol’shaia press-konferentsiia V. Putina,” lenta.ru, 1 February 2007, ; E.S. Kholmogorov, “Putin i atomnoe pravoslavie,” Russkaia narodnaia liniia, 2 February 2007, . 44 Egor Kholmogorov, “Atomnoe pravoslavie: Sarovskaia lektsiia,” Russkii obozrevatel’, 31 August 2008, . 45 Kholmogorov, Russkii proekt, 155, 172.

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A few years later, Kholmogorov acknowledged that he had overestimated and romanticized contemporary Russia. He began to see Russia as an “archaic Asiatic social system based on slavery” and discarded the concept of “atomic Orthodoxy” as irrelevant.46 However, the idea did not vanish. It was revived by the priest-showman Ivan Okhlobystin, who acknowledged his ideological links with the late metropolitan Ioann. He presented his “Doctrine-77” in September 2011 at the Olympic (Luzhniki) stadium in Moscow where he addressed several thousand people.47 His “aristocratic national-patriotic” doctrine called for the building of empire as the only political form appropriate for Russia. A singleminded people and an emperor’s power were the only way to overcome a crisis. The empire had to protect the eternal truth and everlasting morals. Allegedly, the Russian people could survive only under a monarchy, and only this political regime could open the way to an ideal society and rescue the world from collapse. To this end, one had to resist a society of “global consumption and spiritual indifference.” Okhlobystin claimed that the “Slavs could not follow the route of the rest of the world.” They were harmed by economic prosperity, and Russians felt comfortable only in wartime. They were driven only by the idea of the “great Third Rome followed by endless military conflicts and bloody clashes.” He presented war and prayer as the main national values, and associated Russia’s destiny with war and an engagement in the military-industrial complex—anything else proved useless. One had to struggle for the Orthodox faith, especially militarily, otherwise the Russian people would die off. Moreover, Russia’s mission was to protect West and East from mutual extermination, thus children should be indoctrinated with “Apocalyptic maximalism.” Nonetheless, Europe would inevitably be invaded from the East, the “strangers” would appropriate nuclear weapons and unleash the final war, and the Russian people would perish. Instead of “nuclear Orthodoxy,” Okhlobystin mentioned the “nuclear shield” as the last protection from “advocates of Western liberal values,” as though they tirelessly attacked Russia in order to implement Allen Dulles’s plan. Okhlobystin relied on the noble and selfless people to implement his doctrine. Instead of inevitable destruction, he claimed that Russians alone would rescue humanity. 46

47

“Egor Kholmogorov ob’iavil sebia ‘intellektual’nym bankrotom’ i otreksia ot kontseptsii ‘atomnogo pravoslaviia,’” Lenta novostei, 29 July 2011, . Yet, he did not stop dreaming of the annexation of Ukraine and Kazakhstan. See: Kholmogorov, “Vernuv Ukrainu i vossoedinivshis’ s Kazakhstanom, Rossiia stanet zernovym monopolistom planety,” Tsargrad.tv, 8 September 2017, . Boris Knorre, “Rossiiskoe pravoslavie: Postsekuliarnaia institutsionalizatsiia v prostranstve vlasti, politiki i prava,” in Montazh i demontazh sekuliarnogo prostranstva, ed. A. Mala­ shenko and S. Filatov (Moscow: 2014), 65–67.

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And while having evidently forgotten his own calls to war, he spoke against genocide and called for universal love.48 This doctrine encountered an ambivalent response from the Church, but Okhlobystin was supported by Archpriest Dimitrii Smirnov.49 And quite recently Okhlobystin predicted a coming nuclear war between Russia and the United States.50 The idea of “atomic Orthodoxy” was also picked up by Aleksandr Prokhanov who visited Yekaterinburg and Snezhinsk in 2012, where he dreamed of reconciliation between the “Whites” and the “Reds” and was fascinated with a synthesis of Orthodox prayer and nuclear weapons.51 He revealed a symbol of the “Whites” in the prayers and songs in the Church on the Blood in Yekaterinburg, and a symbol of the “Reds”—in the physical laboratory where nuclear weapons were made and where he was touched by seeing an “artillery nuclear cartridge.” Thus, for him, the Church on the Blood and the nuclear center proved to be “symbols of Russian history of the last hundred years.” He was also moved by the singers, who “blended spiritual Church music with victorious war songs.” And he viewed the laboratory as a temple in which the activity of those making armaments and holy healers mixed together, allegedly by God’s will, in the shape of a “Eucharist of contemporary science” to serve the Motherland.52 In December 2017 Konstantin Ilyin, the head of the Kaliazin administration, reproduced the idea that Russia’s two major milestones were the idea of ­Russian Orthodoxy and nuclear weapons, at an educational conference held by the ROC in the city of Kimry.53 Thus, the idea of “atomic Orthodoxy” is still very much alive.

48 “Doktrina-77 Ivana Okhlobystina: Polnyi tekst,” 11 September 2011, . 49 “Protoierei Dimitrii Smirnov: Kak tol’ko zagovoriat o natsional’noi idee, srazu v otvet kriki: ‘Fashisty,’” Pravoslavie i mir, 13 September 2011, . 50 “Ivan Okhlobystin: Raiskii podarok,” RT na russkom, 9 April 2017, . Also see, “Ivan Okhlobystin: Voina budet obia­ zatel’no,” Izborskii klub, 27 February 2018, . 51 Aleksandr Prokhanov, “Prekrashchenie gubitel’noi raspri,” Izborskii klub 3 (2013): 16–21. For his inclination toward imperialism and Stalinism, see I. Kukulin and M. Lipovetskii, “Postsovietskaia kritika i novyi status literatury v Rossii,” in Istoriia russkoi literaturnoi kritiki sovetskoi i postsovetskoi epokh, ed. E. Dobrenko and G. Tikhonova (Moscow: 2011), 708–11; S.L. Firsov, Ot kommunisticheskoi religii k “sviatym” postkommunisticheskoi Rossii (Saint Petersburg: 2011), 388–93. 52 Prokhanov, “Prekrashchenie gubitel’noi raspri.” 53 “Konstantin Il’in o ‘nashei moral’no-nravstvennoi pravde,’” Russkaia narodnaia liniia, 8 December 2017, .

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Finally, Arkady Maler discussed the concept of the Katechon and its relationships with Russia somewhat differently. His career began under the tutorship of Aleksandr Dugin, although he broke with him in 2005. He reoriented himself from Neo-Eurasianism to Neo-Byzantinism,54 presented himself as a supporter of Christian European civilization and began to criticize Eurasianism. Although Maler sticks to the conservative agenda as well, he claims that his conservatism is a “liberal one.” He imagines Russian Orthodoxy as the universal church and views the entire world as its canonical territory. This is how he legitimizes Russia’s imperial nature and its universal mission. In practical terms, this justifies territorial expansion in the name of Russian Orthodoxy, which allegedly has a right to struggle against the “mystery of lawlessness”55 wherever the latter manifests itself. Moreover, while objecting to the possibility that Russia might become a “national state,” which would not allow it to fulfill its heaven-sent mission, Maler still provides room for a contemporary political, rather than Christian, notion of a “titled nation.” He identifies the Katechon with imperial power, and in his view, Russia rather than the Roman Empire is the “last kingdom” mentioned by the prophet Daniel.56 It is noteworthy that an Orthodox philosopher does not restrict himself to references to scripture and arguments within the Christian system of thought. To justify geopolitical expansion he claims the non-Christian heritage of the “Scythian-Mongol world” as though it legitimizes the right to unify the Eurasian continent.57 Following Dugin, Maler entirely erases borders between Russian Orthodoxy and geopolitics. Thus, Orthodox Russia turns out to be a “leading tellurocratic Eurasian state,” and a struggle between God and Satan becomes a geopolitical confrontation of Russia with the “thalassocratic Atlantic state of the USA.”58 It is w ­ ithin this paradigm that religious dogma becomes the basis of real policy, and Maler argues that Russia’s territorial expansion is but a fulfillment of her mission as Katechon. Allegedly, she has first to unite with the Ukraine, Belorussia, and Kazakhstan, then to include all the Orthodox territories of Eurasia in the Balkans, Eastern Mediterranean, and Caucasus, and finally to annex those neighboring 54

For Neo-Byzantinism, see: Michael Hagemeister, “‘Bereit für die Endzeit’: Neobyzantinismus im postsowjetischen Russland,” Osteuropa 66 (2016): 15–43. 55 A theological term borrowed from 2 Thessalonians. 56 See also chapter 8 by Alicja Curanović in this volume. 57 Arkadii Maler, Dukhovnaia missiia Tret’ego Rima (Moscow: 2005), 132–37. The main argu­ ments of this concept, except for the discussion of a political arrangement, were very close to what Nazarov suggested. Cf. Nazarov, Vozhdiu Tret’ego Rima. 58 Maler, Dukhovnaia missiia, 165.

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countries that “impede the geopolitical perfection of empire.” Afterward, Russia will have to negotiate spheres of influence with Germany, Iran, and Japan.59 As far as the United States is concerned, they are identified with the Antichrist who is striving to destroy the Third Rome. Thus, Russia and the United States are doomed to a dreadful battle as the opposing forces of Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, Church and Antichrist.60 Being imagined as the Katechon, Russia is depicted as the holy center of the world, “the last fifth kingdom,” a guarantee of human well-being, a shield against Satanic forces. That is why she has to dominate, and her destruction would result in the end of the world. Maler calls this concept Russian neoconservatism, and ascribes to it messianism, expansionism, political pragmatism, and elitism.61 It should be noted that while fascinated with geopolitics, the Orthodox philosopher has forgotten about the “planetary mission of Russia” and does his best to provide an academic flavor to the same imperialist agenda that amateur thinker Kholmogorov developed in his own way. While calling for deeper inquiry into the meaning of history, Maler emphasizes its “Russian meaning.”62 It is in this way that a proclaimed cosmopolitanism turns into a banal nationalism and imperialism. Thus, he offers an armchair speculative scheme based on medieval scholasticism to contemporary politicians and instructs them as to its implementation.63 This scheme currently attracts certain historians. For example, military historian Boris Galenin argues that the essence of military as well as general history is in continuous wars that were waged by the “world community” against the “last Rome,” that is, Russia, which functions as “he who now restrains.” He argues that the Russian people have always imagined themselves as the “restrainer of the Universe,” and that is why the territorial expansion of the Russian empire was carried out by the Lord’s will to rescue humanity rather than for any political or economic benefit. In this respect, the destruction of Russia would be a “withdrawal of he ‘who now restrains’ from the milieu” that would open the door for the Antichrist and cause the end of the world.64 59

Ibid., 166–69. It is worth noting that he suggests a separation of Ukraine through its federalization. Ibid., 312–13. 60 Ibid., 176–77. 61 Maler, “Prishestvie rossiiskikh neokonov,” in Apologiia klerikalizma: Sbornik statei ob aktual’nykh problemakh dialoga Tserkvi, obshchestva i gosudarstva (Moscow: 2008). 62 Maler, Dukhovnaia missiia, 6–7. 63 See Thomas Parland, The Extreme Nationalist Threat in Russia (New York, 2005), 96–97. 64 Boris Galenin, “Osmyslenie russkoi istorii v svete pravoslaviia kak protivostoianie eyo fal’sifikatsii,” in Nauchnyi pravoslavnyi vzgliad na lozhnye istoricheskie ucheniia: Materialy sovmestnoi konferentsii Russkogo kul’turno-prosvetitel’skogo fonda imeni Sviatogo Vasiliia Velikogo i Instituta otechestvennoi istorii RAN (Moscow: 2011), 46–68.

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Archpriest A. Novikov, a former secretary of the Odessa eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, also identifies Russia with the Katechon. While opposing recent political transformation in the Ukraine, he arrived in Moscow in April 2014.65 Following Patriarch Kirill, he imagines Rus’ (historical Russia) as a distinct “civilization,” its Katechon function inherited from Byzantium. In his view, it has to protect not only Orthodoxy but the “normal existence of humanity” against lawlessness and anomie. And Russia has now “got[ten] up from its knees” to become the sole “world civilizational center,” without which miserable humanity would be destined to be ruled by the Antichrist. This, he argues, has been Russia’s persistent mission, which it fulfilled not only through victory over German fascism in 1945, but also by defending Ossetians from Orthodox Georgia in 2008. Novikov went so far as to claim that while waging war with Georgia, Russia was opposing an “anti-Orthodox civilization.”66 To put it other way, a notorious “conflict of civilizations” was at stake, and evidently Novikov has forgotten the security of “humanity’s normal existence.” As he has suggested separating “anti-Orthodox civilization” from the rest of humanity, one has to interpret his argument as identifying humanity with Russia and any population under its protection. Indeed, his imagination evidently separated a “heretic West” and “militant Muslim East” from the “humanity” that was fated to follow Russia. Moreover, in contrast to Christian teaching, a military struggle had to be waged with the help of state rather than only spiritual power. Another of Novikov’s important points was that the mission could be effectively fulfilled only providing Russia, Ukraine, and Belorussia were united. Should one conclude that developments in Ukraine since 2014 have undermined not only this project but also the unity of the Russian Orthodox Church, depriving Russia of its mission? And is it any wonder that Novikov revealed the Vatican’s intrigues behind these events? At any rate, the Katechon becomes a political rather than only a spiritual project. Moreover, the name of Katechon has been appropriated by Russian-oriented Orthodox storm troopers in the Ukraine. These are former sportsmen who earlier supported Viktor Yanukovich and now are affiliated with the Ukrainian

65

66

“Protoierei Andrei Novikov: ‘Russkaia pravoslavnaia tserkov’ etim liudiam kak kost’ v gorle,’” Russkaia narodnaia liniia, 12 November 2014, . “Protoierei Andrei Novikov: ‘Edinstvo russkoi tsivilizatsii i edinstvo Russkoi pravoslavnoi tserkvi,’” Ukraina pravoslavnaia, 1 December 2009, .

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Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. They stand against “insults to religious sentiments” and persecute LGBT people.67 It is important to note that while one can view Nazarov as schismatic and marginal, the younger like-minded authors enjoy a certain respect in Church circles: Averianov, the chief editor of the popular Pravoslavie.ru website, took part in the first Inter-Sobor Assembly of the ROC in 2009–2014, and Maler has been a member of the Synodal Biblical-Theological Commission since 2009. Kholmogorov also has close relationships with priests, and from time to time he publishes on the development in the Orthodox world, persistently defending the church from liberals.  5

The “Russian Doctrine” and Eschatology

The aforementioned three authors took part in compiling the Russian Doctrine, introduced in 2005 by Russian conservative-minded intellectuals. This document, written with an eschatological perspective, was based on “dynamic conservatism” and included a concept of the Katechon presented in a secular way. In fact, the document drew on Metropolitan Ioann’s ideas,68 which were viewed as “reactionary” in the 1990s, but had become mainstream by the 2010s. The “doctrine” was viewed positively by then-metropolitan (a patriarch since 2009) Kirill,69 and attracted the attention of the Russian presidential administration.70 The doctrine argued that “if Russia as a power receded from the strained architecture of the world, all this architecture would begin to splinter, having lost its footing.” Russia was imagined as the “systemic rafters supporting a dome over all peoples of the world that has provided the international community with balance and stability.”71 Finally, the “historical mission of RussiaUSSR was to maintain the world balance.”72 That is why all of Russian history was viewed as the activity of the Katechon, identified either as some “spiritual construction,” “kingdom,” “Orthodox power,” “genuine empire,” or as the 67

Renat Davletgil’deev, “‘Piataia kolonka’: Iz titushek v boevye otriady Ukrainskoi tserkvi,” Nastoiashchee vremia, 9 January 2018, . 68 See Ioann, Odolenie smuty. 69 Platonov, Russkaia doktrina, 8–9, 20. With respect to its main ideas the document followed Metropolitan Ioann’s teaching of the early 1990s. It is no accident that he was named first among the “founding fathers.” See ibid., 1002. 70 Ibid., 8–9, 20. 71 Ibid., 24. 72 Ibid., 27.

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“Russian Tsar.”73 Russia was depicted as a “demiurge of harmony,” in contrast to the West, which was a “demiurge of destruction.”74 Moreover, the only religious term in the attached vocabulary was Katechon in its Christian meaning. Following Metropolitan Ioann, the authors derived the term “great power” from it: a Katechon’s external function was presented as the containment of barbarians and inhibiting any other state from attaining world supremacy, and its internal function as preventing various cultural traditions and modes of life throughout the world from mixing with each other.75 To put it another way, the authors avoided referring to the Antichrist.76 Having identified the “son of death” with the “barbarians” (the biblical Gog and Magog), they emphasized the defense of civilization from barbarism. Thus, the Third Rome came to be a guarantee of peace and security, and in particular, a savior from invasions and revolutions, rather than a fighter against Satan.77 Its current mission is to give battle to the “neo-paganism” of the West and the “new barbarism” of the South.78 The ROC must play a special role in this as the main symbol and mechanism of national consolidation (the “backbone of Russia”).79 In their hopes for future, these authors discarded the Christian idea of linear time. They claimed that the world had entered an epoch of “total crisis” and a “great turning point” (i.e., the “end of time”), and a bloody “dark age” was ahead. Nonetheless, they believed in the birth of a new world order under Russian hegemony.80 They expected that in the new age “Russia would demonstrate the objective roots of the world evil and teach the international community how to resist together.”81 In other words, they made concessions to esotericism, which referred to cyclical time and expected the arrival of the “New Age.” Yet, to gain the victory people had to display hardness, cruelty, and perseverance. Only in this way could Russia become a “leader of the healthy forces of humanity.”82 All this should be achieved by restraining disturbance and emphasizing “self-renewing tradition,” rather than revolution.83 At the same time 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83

Ibid., 68–88, 110–51. Ibid., 366–67. Ibid., 1034. Cf.: Ioann, Odolenie smuty, 164; Platonov, Russkaia doktrina, 80, 995–97. He “who now restrains” has been mentioned only once as the force that blocked the Antichrist’s arrival. See Platonov, Russkaia doktrina, 138. Ibid., 70–71, 75, and 79. Ibid., 78. Ibid., 152–56. Ibid., 25–29. Ibid., 40. Ibid., 29–31. Ibid., 39.

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the doctrine claimed that “Russia has been established by the Lord and cannot be reestablished by anyone else.”84 It is difficult to overlook the fact that behind this Christian doctrine there is a nationalist blueprint aimed at the Russian nation, which is viewed in essentialist terms with the addition of a certain mystique.85 One of the main features of this nation was an endless “expansion” based on “folk instinct,” and the authors justified making war providing it was waged for “fair values.”86 They also demanded a tough power vertical, the abolition of ethnic-based political autonomies for the sake of a unitary state, the periodic replacement of elites (including by means of repressions), the incorporation of a new, uncorrupted patriotic elite into the power structures, and an uncompromising struggle against the “fifth column.” It is noteworthy that there is a call for world stability combined with an ambition to restore Russia to its “historical borders.” For the authors, the declaration against a “unipolar world” did not contradict Russia’s transformation into the “center of the new world order.”87 6

Neoconservatism in Russia, Its Orthodox Background and Its Perspectives

The data disprove the argument that Russian neoconservatism lacks any political program and merely concerns itself with futurist manifestos.88 Like British neoconservatives who developed the ideology of Thatcherism from the mid-1970s on,89 Russian Orthodox fundamentalists were elaborating their ideology in the early 2000s. All the abovementioned thinkers share certain ideas about a deserved state arrangement (empire), political regime (monarchy or authoritarianism), economy (autarchy), social basis (“an enlightened and patriotic elite”), and social organization (corporative); they call for tough measures toward internal enemies (a new 1937), close relationships between the Church, state, and military, and specific foreign policies toward the NearAbroad (geopolitics and military expansion) and the West (confrontation and, finally, war). In addition, in contrast to Cold-War America, there is fascination with destructive nuclear war rather than a great fear. 84 85 86 87

Ibid., 915. Ibid., 49–53, 59, and 1019–20. Ibid., 54, 61–62, and 158; ibid., 169. Ibid., 388. The whole chapter (pt. 3, ch. 6) was devoted to the military doctrine, a restoration of the army, and the military-industrial complex. 88 Cf. Engström, “Contemporary Russian Messianism,” 358. 89 Green, Ideologies of Conservatism.

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This agenda is in many ways similar to its Western counterpart, which also calls for a “strong state,” less democracy, imperialism, militarism, and the like.90 However, the Russian vision analyzed here is based on religious metaphysical ideas shaped in the early medieval period rather than on contemporary economic or political analysis.91 These ideas are presented in pseudoscientific form as some sort of “dynamic conservatism.” Their authors reject the contemporary world together with its striving for freedom, liberalism, and democracy, which they view as a movement toward the kingdom of the Antichrist. In addition, their conceptualizations include conspiracy and are overloaded with concerns and fears about various plots allegedly hatched against Russia both by external Western villains and an internal “fifth column.”92 While unable to arrest this trend, these radicals are ready to destroy the contemporary world because it contradicts their vision of what it should be. To be precise, the Russian Doctrine discusses the destruction of the “Old World” and the construction of a new one under Russian hegemony rather than of any absolute destruction.93 In fact, all this rhetoric is reminiscent of the German “conservative revolution” of the 1920s that aimed to destroy the world in protest against Weimar liberalism. With respect to this political current, Leonid Luks talked of “moralizing amoralism” that combines a mania of greatness with a feeling of a national trauma, and this definition perfectly describes the thinking of Russian 90 91 92

Cf. Honderich, Conservatism. Kustarev, “Konservatizm i … konservatizm.” For the long tradition of conspiracy in Russia and its current popularity, see, for example: Ia.A. Gordin, Mistiki i okhraniteli: Delo o masonskom zagovore (Saint Petersburg: 1999); V.E. Bagdasarian, “Teoriia zagovora” v otechestvennoi istoriographii vtoroi poloviny 19–20 vv. (Moscow: 1999); M. Hagemeister, “Mif o zagovore protiv Rossii,” in Mify i mifologiia v sovremennoi Rossii, ed. K. Eimermacher, F. Bomsdorf, and G. Bordiugov (Moscow: 2003), 83–100; Hagemeister, “Anti-Semitism, Occultism, and Theories of Conspiracy in Con­ temporary Russia—The Case of Ilya Glazunov,” in Anti-Semitism and Philo-Semitism in the Slavic World and Western Europe, ed. V. Paperni and W. Moskovich (Jerusalem: 2004), 235–41; K. Livers, “The Tower or the Labyrinth: Conspiracy, Occult, and Empire-Nostalgia in the Work of Viktor Pelevin and Aleksandr Prokhanov,” The Russian Review 69, no. 3 (2010), 477–503; M.V. Khlebnikov, “Teoria zagovora”: Opyt sotsiokul’turnogo issledovaniia (Moscow: 2012); Marlene Laruelle, “Conspiracy and Alternate History in Russia: A Nationalist Equation for Success?,” The Russian Review 71, no. 4 (2012), 565–80; I. Yablokov, “Conspiracy Theories as a Russian Public Diplomacy Tool: The Case of Russia Today (RT),” Politics 35, nos. 3–4 (2015), 301–15; Victor Shnirelman, “Aleksandr Dugin: Vozvedenie mosta mezhdu eskhatologiei i konspirologiei,” Gosudarstvo, religia, tserkov’ v Rossii i za rubezhom 34, no. 4 (2016), 194–221; Shnirelman, Tri mifa o zagovore: Antisemitskaia propaganda v sovremennoi Rossii (Moscow: 2017). 93 Platonov, Russkaia doktrina, 40.

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Orthodox fundamentalists.94 Luks notes the analysis of the German case by Hermann Rauschning who pointed to the mass madness caused by both a defeat in the First World War and an economic crisis.95 German conservative revolutionaries called for war as the normal state of society, and contemporary Russian neoconservatives manifest the same stance. For his part, Kirill Govorun points to the similarities between the ideas in question and the development of the German militarism and imperialism of the 19th century.96 It is worth noting that all the ideas discussed above were shaped ten years before President Putin’s third term, which witnessed Russia’s “conservative turn” and the annexation of the Crimea. This does not mean that Putin followed the ideas of the aforementioned thinkers, but it does mean that their views assimilated and manifested the main trends shaped within the neoconservative milieu, which embraced the military, the secret services, certain rich businessmen, as well as some intellectuals and clergy in the early 2000s.97 In the very early 2000s the revolutionary demands to finish with the contemporary world attracted certain radical young people who developed a “culture of the Russian Apocalypse.” Some of them were surprised that their evidently marginal and “crazy” agenda had become mainstream by 2016 and manifested itself not only in TV talk shows but also in the actions of the Russian authorities.98 Indeed, according to the authors of the Russian Doctrine, it attracted officials from the presidential administration, and some of its arguments were used in Putin’s speeches, after which it made up the ideological core of the Izborsky Club established by national-patriots in the fall of 2012.99 It is worth noting that Putin’s view of Russia as a distinct civilization with a mission to maintain not only the current political order but also ethno-cultural, religious, and moral traditions throughout the world reveals the meaning inherent in the doctrine of the Katechon. A relationship can even be seen between the idea of “sovereign democracy” picked up by the Russian elite in late 2005 and the ideas 94

Leonid Luks, “Evraziistvo i konservativnaia revoliutsiia: Soblazn antizapadnichestva v Rossii i Germanii,” Voprosy filosofii 3 (1996): 57–69. 95 Hermann Rauschning, The Conservative Revolution (New York: 1941). 96 Kirill Govorun, “Interpretiruia Russkii mir,” Russkii zhurnal, 9 February 2015, . 97 The millennial nature of contemporary Russian neoconservatism was first underlined by Kustarev. See: Kustarev, “Konservatizm i … konservatizm.” Cf. K. Livers, “The Tower or the Labyrinth,” 479. 98 “Desiat’ let Russkogo Apokalipsisa,” June 6, 2016, . 99 Platonov, Russkaia doktrina, 10–11, 19; Marlene Laruelle, “The Izborsky Club, or the New Conservative Avant-Garde in Russia,” The Russian Review 75, no. 4 (2016): 626–44.

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of the Russian Doctrine.100 Thus it seems clear that Maria Engström is correct in arguing that the Russian authorities have recently begun to think, at least in some respect, in accordance with apocalyptic doctrine, although presented in secular terms. At the same time, this is a manifestation of “geopolitical culture” described by Gerard Toal.101 Whereas even in 2010 Aleksandr Kustarev treated all this as a “radical opposition,” the situation has drastically changed since 2012, and neoconservatism has turned into a mainstream ideology. Although certainly imperialist, contemporary official Russian policy does not go as far as the aforementioned radicals would like it to. In comparison to the ideas discussed in this article, Russian policy is moderately right-wing. Radical Apocalypticism still occupies a fringe, although presently its admirers and their dreams are by no means strangers in the hybrid ideological establishment. It is worth noting that on 25 February 2018 President Putin congratulated the writer Prokhanov on his 80th birthday.102 This demonstrates that what Putin values most is “patriotism,” regardless of the radicalism and xenophobia embedded within it. All the aforementioned radical ideas are alive today and are shared by at least some priests. For example, in response to the political murder of the North Korean leader’s brother in March 2017, the extravagant archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, who identified Russia with “true Christian civilization,” called for persecution of the “enemies of the people.” He suggested that special forces should be trained for the extermination of the “traitors” and that treacherous émigrés should be struck by missiles.103 The ideas in question represent only a segment of the eclectic ideological market in contemporary Russia, and are generally met with ambivalence.104 According to an opinion poll in March 2017, the majority (68 per cent) were 100

For example, see Vitalii Tretiakov, “Suverennaia demokratiia,” Rossiiskaia gazeta, 28 April 2006; V.Iu. Surkov, “Nasha rossiiskaia model’ demokratii nazyvaetsia ‘suverennoi demo­ kratiei,’” Sait partii “Edinaia Rossia,” 28 June 2006; Surkov, “Natsionalizatsiia budushchego,” Ekspert 43 (20 November 2006); Platonov, Russkaia doktrina, 76, 124. 101 Gerard Toal, Near Abroad: Putin, the West and the Contest over Ukraine and the Caucasus (New York: 2017). 102 “Putin pozdravil Prokhanova s 80-letiem,” MK, 26 February 2018, . 103 “Protoierei Vsevolod Chaplin prizval ubivat’ raketnymi udarami uekhavshikh iz strany predatelei,” Vazhno, 10 March 2017, last time accessed 11 March 2017, . 104 Marlene Laruelle, “Review: Charles Clover, Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia’s New Nationalism, New Haven (CT): Yale University Press, 2016,” Kontrapunkt 5 (2016), .

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against monarchy, and 88 per cent preferred a republican system; this attitude had grown over the prior 10 to 15 years. However, a monarchic regime gains unexpectedly high support among young people (34 per cent), as well as in Moscow and Saint Petersburg (37 per cent), which causes some to predict a monarchic turn in future.105 At the same time, many priests show no enthusiasm toward the idea of monarchy.106 Nevertheless, recent opinion polls have revealed a growth in the demand for a strong leader in Russia—up to 40 per cent by the end of 2017. Trust in military and security bodies has also grown greatly over the last four years.107 An imperial stance dominates, manifested in mass support for the annexation of the Crimea; the number of those who do not share this view has drastically fallen over time.108 Yet, skepticism about annexation is gradually growing as well, and people begin to accuse Russia of violating international treaties. About half of respondents are already aware that annexation has caused a reduction in social programs and feel uncomfortable about that.109 In early 2017 a third of respondents declined to intervene to Eastern Ukraine, while the share of those who wanted the breakaway republics to rejoin Russia was diminishing, and support of their reintegration into the Ukraine was growing.110 Yet under mass media indoctrination the social attitude toward war is shifting, and it is perceived in apocalyptic terms as the unavoidable “end of modernity.”111 Opinion polls show that Russians are currently most afraid of illnesses and war.112

105 “Monarkhiia dlia Rossii: Sto let spustia,” VTsIOM, Press-vypusk 3334, 23 March 2017, . 106 “Monarkhiia i diktatura: Mneniia sviashchennosluzhitelei,” Regions.ru, 11 December 2017, . 107 “Otvetstvennost’ za uspekhi i problemy,” Levada-Tsentr, December 11, 2017, ; “Institutsional’noe doverie,” Levada-Tsentr, 12 October 2017, . 108 M. Ivanov and V. Nikiforov, “‘Krymnash’—zvuchit gordo,” Kommersant, 23 November 2015, 3; “Krym i Sevastopol’: Tri goda s Rossiei,” VTsIOM, Press-vypusk 3328, 6 March 2017, . 109 “Prisoedinenie Kryma k Rossii,” Levada-Tsentr, 18 April 2017, . 110 Ibid.; “Chetvert’ rossiian vystupili za priznanie DNR i LNR,” RBK, 29 March 2017, ; “Bolee treti rossiian vystupili za neitralitet Moskvy k DNR i LNR,” RBK, 21 July 2017, . 111 Aleksei Levinson, “Goditsia liubaia voina,” Neprikosnovennyi zapas 1 (2016): 51. 112 “Strakhi,” Levada-Tsentr, 28 November 2017, .

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In fall 2017 the deputies of the Russian Parliament began discussing a draft of the new law on the patriotic-military upbringing of young people (no. 315234-7), which focused on the “defense of the Fatherland.”113 Basically, this was the outcome of moral panic caused by public discussions by a number of Russian experts of the chances for a great war, especially in the fall and winter of 2017–2018, when the Russian elite worried over the expected new American sanctions based on the “Kremlin report.” Suffice it to say that in December 2017 the head of the Russian intelligence service, Sergei Naryshkin, interpreted sanctions as a Western “hybrid war” against Russia, and in January 2018 the influential Russian banker Andrei Kostin claimed in Davos that the “war” (although economic) of the West against Russia had already begun.114 The well-known political scientist Dmitry Trenin has confirmed that the real “Russian-American war” has been waged since 2014.115 The military rhetoric is heating up, and recently Russian ex-general Evgeny Buzhinsky warned of the coming “last war.”116 And recently other experts have warned that the danger of a world war is growing. For example, the well-known Russian intellectual Aleksandr Tsypko acknowledged that there is already a new Cold War, which creates the danger of a shift to real nuclear war.117 At the same time, the share of those who support Church participation in policy-making has dropped down from 42 to 28 per cent over the last ten years, and the number of those who do not support the Church’s impact on state policy is growing.118 Nonetheless, there is an evident rightward trend that encompasses both the West and Russia. As an American scholar pointed out with respect to develop­ ments since the mid-70s, “what was marginal, has become central,” including 113 114

115 116 117 118

“Zakonoproekt ‘O patrioticheskom vospitanii v Rossiiskoi Federatsii,’” SOZD, 15 November 2017, ; “Malo detei—ne patriot,” Gazeta.ru, 15 November 2017, . “Naryshkin obvinil SShA v vedenii neob’iavlennoi gibridnoi voiny protiv stran SNG,” Interfax, 19 December 2017, ; “Kostin zaiavil o nachatoi Zapadom ‘voine’ dlia smeny prezidenta Rossii,” RBK, January 24, 2018, . Dmitrii Trenin, “Smiagchenie konflikta v usloviiakh gibridnoi voiny,” Moskovskii tsentr Karnegi, 25 January 2018, . Chris Pleasance, “The World Is on the Brink of ‘the Last War in the History of Mankind,” ­DailyMail.com,, 3 April 2018, . Aleksandr Tsypko, “Khochet li Rossia unichtozhit’ chelovecheskuiu tsivilizatsiu,” Neza­ visimaia gazeta, 5 April 2018, . Ekaterina Kochergina, “Religioznost’,” Levada-Tsentr, 18 July 2017, .

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the recovery of traditional Christianity and militarized nationalism.119 This exact trend has also been observed in Russia over the last twenty years, particularly in the most recent decade. A research for this article was supported by NIR (Scientific-research works) no. 0177-2019-0003 “Ethnic relationships and conflicts in Russia and in the outer world.” It is published in accordance with the research plan of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology RAS. References Aver’ianov, Vitalii. Priroda russkoi ekspansii [The nature of Russian expansion]. Moscow: 2003. Aver’ianov, Vitalii. “Raznye konservatizmy, raznye traditsionalizmy” [Different conservatisms, different traditionalisms]. Pravoslavie.ru, 4 September 2001, . Aver’ianov, Vitalii. Traditsiia i dinamicheskii konservatizm [Tradition and dynamic conservatism]. Moscow: 2012. Bagdasarian, Vardan. “Teoriia zagovora” v otechestvennoi istoriographii vtoroi poloviny 19–20 vv. [“Conspiracy theory” in national historiography of the second half of the 19th to the 20th centuries]. Moscow: 1999. Berlet, Chip. “The New Political Right in the United States: Reaction, Rollback, and Resentment.” In Confronting the New Conservatism: The Rise of the Right in America, edited by Michael J. Thompson, 71–107. New York: 2007. “Bolee treti rossiian vystupili za neitralitet Moskvy k DNR i LNR” [More than a third of Russians support Moscow’s neutrality toward the Donets People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic]. RBK. 21 July 2017, . “Bol’shaia press-konferentsiia V. Putina” [Putin’s major press conference]. Lenta.ru. 1 February 2007, . Chelishchev, V.I. Fundamentalizm i fundamentalisty [Fundamentalism and fundamentalists]. Moscow: 2010. “Chetvert’ rossiian vystupili za priznanie DNR i LNR” [A quarter of Russians support the recognition of the Donets People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic]. RBK. 29 March 2017, . 119

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Framing “Gay Propaganda”: Morality Policy Arguments and the Russian Orthodox Church  Caroline Hill 1 Introduction In the years following the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian Orthodox Church (also referred to as the “ROC”) has enjoyed a rebirth in terms of numbers of adherents, reclaimed property, and increased its public profile as an institution promoting moral conservatism, including participation in political debates. Church clerics played a prominent role in discussions of laws banning the propagandizing of “homosexualism,” or muzhelozhstvo (literally, “man lying with mankind”), and “non-traditional sexual relationships” at the regional and federal levels from 2006 through 2013. This chapter examines the framing employed by Russian Orthodox Church clerics when discussing the anti-propaganda legislation three years after the passage of the federal law. Morality policy typologies that Gary Mucciaroni1 has previously applied to argumentation by conservative actors in the United States will be adapted to the Russian context, in an attempt to pinpoint common framing strategies and compare them with the results of Mucciaroni’s seminal work. In doing so, this chapter serves as a first step in the extension of morality policy research eastward to a geographical area and religious group neglected in previous studies, and situates Russian Orthodox actors in the greater discursive constellation of global conservatism. 2 Background The mid-2000s marked the beginning of a series of showdowns between the liberal views of a small contingent of openly gay LGBT rights activists on the one hand, and the conservative views of the majority of the Russian population, the Orthodox Church, and state authorities, on the other. In May 2006, LGBT activist Nikolai Alekseev called for the country’s first gay Pride parade in 1 Gary Mucciaroni, “Are Debates about ‘Morality Policy’ Really about Morality? Framing Opposition to Gay and Lesbian Rights,” The Policy Studies Journal 39, no. 2 (2011): 211.

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Moscow.2 Although the Moscow City authorities banned the proposed march and approximately 1,000 riot police were deployed to prevent violence, 50 gay rights protestors and 20 counter-demonstrators were arrested following fisticuffs in close proximity to the Kremlin.3 Three days before the first attempt at a Moscow Pride parade, the first regional-level law prohibiting “public activities directed at propagandizing homosexualism (muzhelozhstvo and lesbianism) among minors” was adopted by the Riazan’ Oblast Duma (legislative assembly).4 It would be five years before the next law, under which an article stating that “public activities directed at propagandizing homosexualism among minors will not be allowed” was added to existing legislation on the “protection of child morality and health” in Arkhangel’sk Oblast.5 The Arkhangel’sk Oblast law kicked off the adoption of similar legislation in a total of ten regions of Russia, including the city of Saint Petersburg, between 2011 and 2013.6 In Saint Petersburg, the law “On Amendments to the Law of Saint Petersburg ‘On Administrative Offenses in Saint Petersburg’” was unusual in that its author, Legislative Assembly Deputy Vitaly Milonov, was a Russian Orthodox ponomar’ (altar server) at the time.7 Under the law, bans on the propagandizing of both homosexuality and pedophilia to minors were added to an existing law on administrative offenses: Article 7.1.… Public actions directed at propagandizing muzhelozhstvo, lesbianism, bisexuality, and transgenderism among minors will be subject to application of an administrative fine.… Note: This article considers public actions directed at propagandizing muzhelozhstvo, lesbianism, 2 Igor’ Kon, “Homophobia as a Litmus Test of Russian Democracy,” Sociological Research 48, no. 2 (2009): 55. 3 “Banned Moscow Gay Rally Broken Up,” BBC News, 27 May 2006, accessed 8 October 2016, . 4 Zakon Riazanskoi Oblasti o vnesenii izmenenii v Zakon Riazanskoi Oblasti “Ob administrativnykh pravonarusheniiakh,” adopted by the Riazan’ Oblast Duma on 24 May 2006, signed 15 June 2006, accessed 11 September 2016, . 5 Oblastnoi Zakon o vnesenii izmenenii i dopolneniia v Oblastnoi Zakon “Ob otdel’nykh merakh po zashchite nravstvennosti i zdorov’ia detei v Arkhangel’skoi Oblasti,” adopted by the Arkhangel’sk Oblast Assembly of Deputies on 28 September 2011, signed 30 September 2011, accessed 11 September 2016, . 6 “License to Harm,” Human Rights Watch, 15 December 2014, accessed 11 September 2016, . 7 By the time that my research was conducted, Milonov had been promoted to ipodiakon (subdeacon), and was serving as a federal-level deputy in the Russian State Duma.

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bisexuality, [and] transgenderism among minors to be understood as follows: activities for deliberate and uncontrolled distribution of information through public means that is capable of causing harm to the health [and] moral and spiritual development of minors, including the formation thereby of a distorted view of the social equality of traditional and non-traditional marital relations …  Article 7.2.… Public actions directed at propagandizing pedophilia will be subject to application of an administrative fine.… Note: This article considers public actions directed at propagandizing pedophilia to be understood as follows: activities for the deliberate and uncontrolled distribution of information through public means that is committed with the goal of creating distorted views of the conformity of intimate relationships between adults and minors with social norms.8 The process of adopting the Saint Petersburg law was also notable in terms of the presence of ROC clerics at hearings. Participants in the public hearing on 24 February 2012, prior to the adoption of the Saint Petersburg law, included Hieromonk Dimitry Pershin of Moscow; archpriest and psychologist Aleksy Moroz, head of an alcohol and drug treatment program in Saint Petersburg; and Archpriest Igor Aksenov, superior of the Church of the Prophet Elijah in the Leningrad Oblast town of Vyborg.9 Moroz and Archpriest Nikolai Golovkin of Saint Petersburg testified at an additional hearing on 22 June of the same year regarding practical applications of the law.10 The final step was adoption in 2013 of an amendment to federal law “with the goal of protection of children from information propagandizing rejection of traditional family values” that added an article in which Propagandizing non-traditional sexual relations among minors, in the form of distribution of information directed at creation of non-traditional sexual arrangements, attractiveness of non-traditional sexual relationships, a perverted image of the social equality of traditional and 8

9 10

Zakon Sankt-Peterburga ot 7 marta 2012 goda No. 108-18 “O vnesenii izmenenii v Zakon Sankt-Peterburga ‘Ob administrativnykh pravonarusheniiakh v Sankt-Peterburge,’” adopted by the Legislative Assembly of Saint Petersburg on 29 February 2012, signed 7 March 2012, accessed 21 June 2019, ; my emphasis. “Ne govori gei! 24.2.2012,” YouTube.com, 2 March 2012, accessed 12 December 2016, . “Zakon o propagande SPb-Regiony: Chast’ 3,” YouTube.com, 3 July 2012, accessed 12 December 2016, .

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non-traditional sexual relationships, or the imposition of information about non-traditional sexual relationships and creation of interest in such relationships among minors11 would be added to a list of administrative offenses and made punishable by fines for Russian citizens, fines and temporary shutdowns of activities for organizations, and fines of up to 15 days in jail followed by “removal” from the country for foreigners and stateless persons. 3

Framing and Morality Policy

In order to examine the role of the Russian Orthodox Church in promoting conservative values, the case of the anti-propaganda laws was selected, and a micro-level analysis was conducted of the ways in which individual clerics framed issues deemed salient. While Ryan and Gamson isolated the “frame” as “a thought organizer, highlighting certain events and facts as important and rendering others invisible,”12 Entman defined framing as the act of making certain elements of an issue “more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation.”13 In order to understand how framing was employed in this case, however, one must first delve into the concept of morality policy. “Morality policy” as a scholarly concept has evolved over the past two decades from a substantive category of policy to a type of framing used by actors. Mooney and Lee defined morality policy as separate from other “classes” of policy in that it “regulates social norms or evokes strong moral responses for other reasons.”14 Depending on the country or region being studied, morality 11

12 13 14

Federal’nyi Zakon Rossiiskoi Federatsii ot 29 iuniia 2013 g. N 135-FZ g. Moskva “O vnesenii izmenenii v stat’iu 5 Federal’nogo Zakona ‘O zashchite detei ot informatsii, prichiniaiushei vred ikh zdorov’iu i razvitiiu’ i otdel’nye zakonodatel’nye akty Rossiiskoi Federatsii v tseliakh zashchity detei ot informatsii, propagandiruiushchei otritsanie traditsionnykh semeinykh tsennostei,” adopted by the State Duma on 11 June 2013, approved by the Federation Council 26 June 2013, published 2 July 2013, accessed 11 September 2016, ; Charlotte Ryan and William A. Gamson, “The Art of Reframing Political Debates,” Contexts 5, no. 1 (2006), 13. Robert M. Entman, “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm,” Journal of Communication 43, no. 4 (1993), 52; original emphasis. Christopher Z. Mooney and Mei-Hsien Lee, “Morality Policy Reinvention: State Death Penalties,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 566, no. 1 (1999), 81, 82.

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policy may include policies governing abortion rights, alcohol and drugs, pornography, homosexuality, prostitution, gambling, school prayer, euthanasia, gun control, and the death penalty. However, it is not so much the policy outcome as the subject of conflict that typifies morality policy. Morality policy debates have been characterized as centering around so-called “first principles,” or the basic values surrounding life, death, sex, and other topics.15 Because of the emotions involved in morality policy debates, redistribution efforts and other “compromise solutions rarely attract any support” or are merely unfathomable, as the characterization of a certain practice as “sinful” or “evil” leads to zero-sum thinking.16 As a result, morality policy frames entail a heightened sense of threat, including that posed by those who can be “widely regarded as sinful and reprehensible” and may be targeted for prosecution under new laws.17 In the West, religious groups “are frequently significant players in morality politics” due to their belief in “explicit moral codes” that they may promote both to politicians and the general public in defense of conservative values.18 As scholars have focused on the types of arguments made in morality policy debates, they have raised questions as to how “moral” these discussions truly are. Studlar floated the concept of “blended issues” that “take on different dimensions” depending on how they are framed, concluding that “morality policy appears to be more of a continuum” than a static policy category.19 When examining gay rights debates, Mucciaroni took exception to the fact that “the morality politics perspective assumes that moral arguments are of paramount importance … without undertaking a systematic examination of 15

16 17

18 19

Ibid., 80–92; Christopher Z. Mooney and Mei-Hsien Lee, “The Temporal Diffusion of Morality Policy: The Case of Death Penalty Legislation in the American States,” Policy Studies Journal 27, no. 4 (1999), 766–80; Christopher Z. Mooney and Richard G. Schuldt, “Does Morality Policy Exist? Testing a Basic Assumption,” Policy Studies Journal 36, no. 2 (2008), 199–218; Gary Mucciaroni, Same Sex, Different Politics: Success and Failure in the Struggles over Gay Rights (Chicago: 2009); Christoph Knill, “The Study of Morality Policy: Analytical Implications from a Public Policy Perspective,” Journal of European Public Policy 20, no. 3 (2013), 309–17. See also chapter 4 by Dmitry Uzlaner in this volume. Donald P. Haider-Markel and Kenneth J. Meier, “The Politics of Gay and Lesbian Rights: Expanding the Scope of the Conflict,” The Journal of Politics 58, no. 2 (1996), 334. Eva-Maria Euchner, Stephan Heichel, Kerstin Nebel, and Andreas Raschzok, “From ‘Morality’ Policy to ‘Normal’ Policy: Framing of Drug Consumption and Gambling in Germany and the Netherlands and Their Regulatory Consequences,” Journal of European Public Policy 20, no. 3 (2013), 372. Haider-Markel and Meier, “The Politics of Gay and Lesbian Rights,” 337–38. Donley T. Studlar, “U.S. Tobacco Control: Public Health, Political Economy, or Morality Policy?,” Review of Policy Research 25, no. 5 (2008), 393, 406–7.

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the arguments that advocates actually put forward.”20 In response, he divided morality politics issues into those defined by “deontological principles,” “social consequences,” and “procedures,” depending on whether they involved “intrinsically wrong” behaviors, a negative impact on society, or calls for state authorities to intervene, respectively.21 Morality policy thus becomes a matter of strategy, in which conservative actors “choose how to define issues” and “may perceive morality definitions as less effective politically than consequence-based or procedural definitions”; Mucciaroni ultimately found that opponents of LGBT rights put more emphasis on “consequences and the procedural aspects of issues” than on religious arguments.22 While Mucciaroni claimed that it might be easier to reach compromises if one chose to “deemphasize” morality frames based on deontological principles in favor of social consequences or procedural frames, I argue that this is not necessarily the case, especially if said “consequences” are framed as harming children or society at large.23 Mucciaroni’s analysis of political actors’ framing of LGBT rights in federal and state-level debates in the United States24 is seminal in the field of morality policy framing due to his expansion upon his previous concepts of deontological, consequence-based, and procedural frames. He declared that “morality policy is not so much a policy as a strategic approach to framing public policy issues” in which “different types of morality policy frames exist, depending on what kind of behavior—private, social, or governmental—is the target of moral judgement.”25 While LGBT rights are often seen as an ideal type of morality policy issue, “gay rights opponents typically do not frame the issues in terms of the immorality of homosexuality or religious proscriptions against it at the federal and state levels of government.”26 Instead, Mucciaroni’s findings indicated that conservative gay rights opponents in the US employed so-called “rational-instrumental” frames “calling attention to the negative consequences for society, or some important part of it” (such as children and families), or “procedural terms” regarding “how policy makers should make decisions.”27 Mucciaroni was quick to state that “when we say that opponents are ‘strategic’ in how they frame issues, we do not mean that they are being disingenuous 20 Mucciaroni, Same Sex, Different Politics, 13. 21 Ibid., 13–14. 22 Ibid., 14, 49. 23 Ibid., 52. 24 Mucciaroni, “Are Debates,” 187–216. 25 Ibid., 211. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid.

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about the arguments that they give for opposing gay rights.”28 While rationalinstrumental or procedural frames “have the best chance of persuading a crucial mass of audience members,” there should be no conflict of interest between secular frames used strategically and a group’s “deep-seated beliefs.”29 In the field of morality policy, while others30 have applied Mucciaroni’s31 morality policy frame typology, their case studies and Mucciaroni’s work are confined to the West, and the United States in particular. This chapter seeks to extend the study of morality policy eastward and apply Mucciaroni’s framing definitions to the promotion of conservative values in a country where the Soviet legacy of forced secularization continues to impact even religious figures’ framing strategies. 4 Methodology In order to determine which frames figure prominently in Russian Orthodox clerics’ views on issues of morality policy, this study utilized both qualitative content analysis and quantitative calculation of the frequency with which morality policy frames were employed during in-person interviews conducted in Russia in October 2016 with 17 clerics of the Moscow Patriarchate. Those interviewed served in churches, monasteries, or ROC institutions in the cities of Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and Ivanovo, and the regions of Moscow Oblast and Leningrad Oblast. The semi-structured interviews included open-ended questions about the nature of homosexuality and definitions of “propagandizing homosexualism and non-traditional sexual relationships,” the role of the Russian Orthodox Church, the responsibilities of state authorities before the Russian people, and future goals for Russian society, and both open- and closed-ended questions regarding the respondents’ levels of satisfaction with and opinions of the anti-propaganda laws.

28 29 30

31

Ibid., 211–12. Ibid., 212, 209. Knill, “The Study of Morality Policy,” 309–17; Euchner et al., “From ‘Morality’ Policy to ‘Normal’ Policy,” 372–89; Kathleen Ferraiolo, “Is State Gambling Policy ‘Morality Policy’? Framing Debates over State Lotteries,” The Policy Studies Journal 41, no. 2 (2013): 217–42; Ferraiolo, “Morality Framing in U.S. Drug Control Policy: An Example from Marijuana Decriminalization,” World Medical and Health Policy 6, no. 4 (2014): 347–74; Ferraiolo, “A New Frontier in Gambling Policy: Internet Wagering as Morality Policy,” Policy & Internet 8, no. 2 (2016): 110–30. Mucciaroni, “Are Debates,” 187–216.

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Following in the steps of Euchner et al.32 and Ferraiolo,33 an inductive, qualitative approach was used for the initial coding of morality policy frames in which the interview transcripts were searched for text indicating modified versions of the moral, rational-instrumental, and procedural framing strategies put forth by Mucciaroni.34 Although Mucciaroni sees “rational-instrumental” frames as “emphasizing the effects of public policy for society” and thus separate from the “private” realm covered by pure “morality” frames, this study views both religious-moral and rational-instrumental framing as crossing the public-private divide.35 Thus religious-moral frames can apply to religious and moral strictures on the private lives of individuals and on public spaces and social life, expressed through references to biblical and other religious themes, individual sin, and standards of public morality. Meanwhile, rational-instrumental frames addressed material issues facing not only Russia as a country and society at large (public safety and health, protection of children), but also affecting individuals’ private lives—for example, arguments regarding genetics, psychology, and medicine in the context of homosexuality. Calls for action on the part of state officials were considered “legislative responsibility” arguments36 and placed within the “procedural” frame category along with commentary regarding the quality of state officials’ work and calls for future legislative action. Frame types employed by each respondent were tallied; those used most frequently in each interview are referred to as “dominant frames,” while specific arguments made are referred to as “subframes” for the purpose of this analysis. 5

Results: Morality Policy Framing

When tallied, the majority of dominant frames employed by the clerics interviewed were rational-instrumental. Religious-moral dominant frames were in second place, and no dominant procedural frames were found. Of the 17 interviewees, four used predominantly religious-moral frames,37 nine used mostly 32 33 34 35 36 37

Euchner et al., “From ‘Morality’ Policy to ‘Normal’ Policy,” 372–89. Ferraiolo, “Is State Gambling,” 217–42; Ferraiolo, “Morality Framing,” 347–74. Mucciaroni, “Are Debates,” 187–216. Ibid., 195. Ferraiolo, “Is State Gambling,” 228. Anonymous Interview Subject 9, interview by Caroline Hill, 23 October 2016; Anonymous Interview Subject 10, interview by Caroline Hill, 25 October 2016; Anonymous Interview Subject 11, interview by Caroline Hill, 25 October 2016; Anonymous Interview Subject 16, interview by Caroline Hill, 27 October 2016.

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rational-instrumental frames,38 and the remaining four respondents used religious-moral and rational-instrumental frames in equal measure.39 One of the instances in which religious-moral and rational-instrumental frames were paired was when homosexuality was described as a phenomenon. Fourteen of the 17 respondents described homosexuality as a sin (a religiousmoral frame), while those describing homosexuality as a genetic predisposition (a rational-instrumental frame) were a distant second with seven responses. When combined, rational-instrumental frames of homosexuality (describing it as a genetic predisposition, illness, result of trauma or molestation, product of external influences, or form of addiction) outnumbered the religious-moral frame of “sin” with a total of 19 individual frames. Only four of the respondents identified homosexuality solely in religious-moral terms.40 One aspect of morality policy framing that both Mucciaroni41 and the interview respondents touched upon was the difference between private and public behavior. Even in cases where respondents felt that genetic predisposition was a root cause of homosexuality (or suspected that this was the case), they were nonetheless against public promotion or discussions of LGBT identity, particularly when children were present. One respondent identified homosexuality as having a “biological, genetic component” but went on to state that such an orientation was “something that should not be declared, broadcast, and so on … it must stay a secret between this person, their spiritual father [dukhovnik], and God.”42 Another opined that while homosexuality was the result of congenital or external factors for which homosexual individuals were “not to blame,” 38

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41 42

Anonymous Interview Subject 2, interview by Caroline Hill, 18 October 2016; Anonymous Interview Subject 4, interview by Caroline Hill, 21 October 2016; Anonymous Interview Subject 5, interview by Caroline Hill, 22 October 2016; Anonymous Interview Subject 6, interview by Caroline Hill, 22 October 2016; Anonymous Interview Subject 8, interview by Caroline Hill, 23 October 2016; Anonymous Interview Subject 13, interview by Caroline Hill, 26 October 2016; Anonymous Interview Subject 14, interview by Caroline Hill, 27 October 2016; Anonymous Interview Subject 15, interview by Caroline Hill, 27 October 2016; Anonymous Interview Subject 17, interview by Caroline Hill, 29 October 2016. Anonymous Interview Subject 1, interview by Caroline Hill, 18 October 2016; Anonymous Interview Subject 3, interview by Caroline Hill, 19 October 2016; Anonymous Interview Subject 7, interview by Caroline Hill, 22 October 2016; Anonymous Interview Subject 12, interview by Caroline Hill, 26 October 2016. Anonymous Interview Subject 1, interview by Caroline Hill, 18 October 2016; Anonymous Interview Subject 2, interview by Caroline Hill, 18 October 2016; Anonymous Interview Subject 3, interview by Caroline Hill, 19 October 2016; Anonymous Interview Subject 16, interview by Caroline Hill, 27 October 2016. Mucciaroni, “Are Debates,” 187–216. Anonymous Interview Subject 9, interview by Caroline Hill, 23 October 2016.

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Figure 1 Interviews, total dominant frames employed (number of times)

Figure 2 Framing of homosexuality as phenomenon (number of times)

nevertheless, “this cannot be considered a norm.”43 This respondent was unique in that he stated that “homosexuals must have the ability to gather”; however, he also argued that this should not happen via gay pride parades and other initiatives visible to the general public, as “they should not impose their orientation on those around them.”44 Empathy for the feelings of LGBT individuals in Russia did not generate support for public displays of LGBT identity; one respondent acknowledged that homosexuals in Russian society were open to “mockery” if they declared their orientation, but stated that “this situation cannot be resolved through a counter-movement, that is, open propagandizing of homosexuality in magazines, books, television.”45 43 Anonymous Interview Subject 5, interview by Caroline Hill, 22 October 2016. 44 Ibid. 45 Anonymous Interview Subject 15, interview by Caroline Hill, 27 October 2016.

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Moral-religious sub-frames and rational-instrumental sub-frames that cited secular science and the material threats posed to the public by exposure to dangerous information came together in discussions of the concept of homosexuality as an illness. Again, in the opinion of the respondents, the belief that homosexuality was or might be an organic trait did not justify its promotion to minors. One archpriest worried that the propagandizing of homosexuality would “lead to its spread among those who do not have this type of psychological problem or predisposition.”46 Two of the respondents47 compared homosexuality to physical illnesses such as tuberculosis—conditions subject to treatment, not promotion as natural or virtuous. One declared that “we must relate to those who are ill with forgiveness, but … we need to look for ways to treat this ailment, and not justification thereof,” as “propagandizing homosexualism paves the road into society for this sinful illness.”48 A similar rational-instrumental frame pointed to mental health issues among members of the LGBT community; one respondent stated that the Church and Orthodox believers were collectively responsible for warning the greater public and state authorities about the potential impact of homosex­ uality: We have to speak the truth about the homosexual community.… And the truth is that these people are deeply unhappy, and often completely broken by 35–40 years of age. People who often feel that they have reached a dead end in life, prone to suicide, alcohol, and drug abuse. This truth is carefully concealed in the politically correct West under the influence of a state lobby, but we need to state this truth in cultural spaces, schools, and mass media sources.49 A related rational-instrumental sub-frame linked homosexuality and the country’s demographic situation. One respondent approached this question from an anatomical perspective: “[For] the human body, by its very nature, these relationships [are for] biological reproduction. If there is no [reproduction], this is an aberration, abnormal, a form of illness.”50 For another, propagandizing of same-sex relationships posed a larger-scale, existential threat: “this is the ruin of man, because homosexualism does not presuppose giving birth to 46 47 48 49 50

Anonymous Interview Subject 4, interview by Caroline Hill, 21 October 2016. Anonymous Interview Subject 12, interview by Caroline Hill, 26 October 2016; Anonymous Interview Subject 14, interview by Caroline Hill, 27 October 2016. Anonymous Interview Subject 12, interview by Caroline Hill, 26 October 2016. Anonymous Interview Subject 13, interview by Caroline Hill, 26 October 2016. Anonymous Interview Subject 9, interview by Caroline Hill, 23 October 2016.

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children, and it also provides a negative example to other people.… Propagandizing homosexualism only contributes to the problem of a fall in the birth rate.”51 A rational-instrumental child protection sub-frame utilized on multiple occasions52 promoted the right of minors to a childhood without certain influences, citing the vulnerability of children and youth to harmful influences. One respondent opined that “I feel that one must first give a child the chance to grow up, then give them complete freedom,”53 while another stated that “children are not yet formed and are in a stage of development, and for this reason, to point them in a direction that is not the norm would be incorrect.”54 Another saw propagandizing homosexuality as one part of a cycle of abuse, “emotional violence toward a child at a young age, when such homosexuals enlighten him, and sometimes pervert or molest him”—a cycle then repeated by victims in adulthood.55 Among the majority of respondents who supported the anti-propaganda legislation, one prominent rational-instrumental and procedural frame was that of representative democracy and the necessity of acknowledging the rights of a conservative majority of Russians opposed to homosexual propaganda. One respondent noted that “our country is a democracy, and democracy is the power of the majority,” and called for taking “into account that the majority in Russia think sufficiently negatively of this type of lifestyle and behavior.”56 Another respondent saw the law as “a sign of the government’s and society’s position,” and a case where “the state directly perform[ed] its role as an instrument of the moral majority,” arguing that “when the overwhelming majority of citizens speak out against [homosexual propaganda] … collective rights have priority.”57 Connections between democracy and the loosening of moral restrictions were deemed spurious, as “free societies do not necessarily mean the dominance of liberalism and liberal paradigms.”58 A rational-instrumental frame that was reflected in the text of the federal anti-propaganda law (with its separate penalties for foreign citizens) as well as 51 52

Anonymous Interview Subject 12, interview by Caroline Hill, 26 October 2016. Anonymous Interview Subject 6, interview by Caroline Hill, 22 October 2016; Anonymous Interview Subject 9, interview by Caroline Hill, 23 October 2016; Anonymous Interview Subject 10, interview by Caroline Hill, 25 October 2016; Anonymous Interview Subject 15, interview by Caroline Hill, 27 October 2016. 53 Anonymous Interview Subject 6, interview by Caroline Hill, 22 October 2016. 54 Anonymous Interview Subject 9, interview by Caroline Hill, 23 October 2016. 55 Anonymous Interview Subject 8, interview by Caroline Hill, 23 October 2016. 56 Anonymous Interview Subject 8, interview by Caroline Hill, 23 October 2016. 57 Anonymous Interview Subject 15, interview by Caroline Hill, 27 October 2016. 58 Ibid.

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in the interviews, consisted of arguments against foreign influence via LGBT activist groups. According to one respondent, disputes surrounding gay pride rallies were “an issue brought to Russia from the outside. If we look at who speaks about this more than anyone, it’s the Council of Europe … and the United States of America.”59 Although Western actors such as American Evangelical Christian and anti-LGBT rights activist Scott Lively60 and the US-based World Congress of Families61 have been publicly supportive of Russia’s antipropaganda legislation (a fact that has not been lost upon Orthodox Internet portals), respondents mentioned the West only in connection with the LGBT rights movement and interference in Russia’s internal affairs. The experiences of countries where LGBT activism has become a part of mainstream society were also held up as a rational-instrumental cautionary tale in which excessive political correctness stifled freedom of speech in the West and infringed upon the sovereignty of Eastern states: “the pendulum has swung too far, toward excessive support of minorities … probably we wouldn’t want to repeat this mistake … liberal-democratic instruments have become a means of interfering in the domestic affairs of other countries.”62 Accepting public manifestations of LGBT activism was framed as the first step toward a slippery slope that would lead to eventual discrimination against the moral majority of Russians. While much of the framing of the anti-propaganda legislation advocated protection of children from nefarious and foreign influences, one that combined religious-moral, rational-instrumental, and procedural sub-frames might catch many Western opponents of the laws by surprise: the argument that the anti-propaganda legislation was necessary in order to protect Russian LGBT activists from the risk of physical attacks by parents and others disgruntled by public demonstrations. One respondent viewed the law as a step toward mutual protection: “If in our culture, our society, the majority of people do not accept homosexual relationships, this means that the state is obligated to protect homosexuals on one hand, and protect society from their expression on the other.”63 Another cleric framed the Church as advocating protection of an endangered group: “We as a Church believe that [homosexuals] are people.… 59 60

Anonymous Interview Subject 6, interview by Caroline Hill, 22 October 2016. “Pastor Skott Laivli napisal Putinu blagodarstvennoe pis’mo,” Pravoslavie.ru, 9 September 2013, accessed 12 December 2017, . 61 “VKS podderzhal Rossiiskii zakon o zaprete propagandy gomoseksualizma,” Pravoslavie. ru, 17 June 2013, accessed 12 December 2017, . 62 Anonymous Interview Subject 15, interview by Caroline Hill, 27 October 2016. 63 Anonymous Interview Subject 5, interview by Caroline Hill, 22 October 2016.

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Because of this, we believe that it [was] very important to adopt this law, because these people were in a risky position, they were threatened with lynching, vigilantism.”64 The Church was presented as a supporter of Russia’s LGBT community, but on their own terms: safety from reprisals would give homosexuals a chance at redemption in line with Russian society’s moral norms, in a combination of procedural and religious-moral framing: “The Church is for this law, because [it] is on the side of minorities, so that they won’t be hurt, and so they will understand that they are wrong, and, perhaps, they will change their lives.”65 When asked their opinions of the existing anti-propaganda laws and the possibility of future restrictions on the LGBT community, the wide range of responses (mostly in the form of procedural and rational-instrumental framing) showed that the Church is far from a monolithic institution. For one respondent, the federal-level legislation was not ideal, but a step in the right direction: “I think that this draft law was a compromise in general, and perhaps is the maximum that is possible today.”66 Another declared that the adoption of the anti-propaganda laws was positive in that “lawmaking activities are taking place, and that the will of the people is manifested … in the actions of our lawmakers, adoption, implementation, enforcement, and, later on, analysis of results of laws … the process in itself is beneficial.”67 One of the respondents stood out in that he expressed doubts about the actual goals and effectiveness of the anti-propaganda laws on one hand, and the wisdom of the ROC’s involvement in publicly arguing in favor for the legislation on the other, using procedural and religious-moral frames: I am against propagandizing of any kind of sexual immorality … but I don’t really understand what has been adopted through this law, what this law is trying to achieve, and what it has in mind. The statements that have arisen from representatives of the government … have a very scandalous character, and quite often the Church is presented in an ugly way … [homosexuality] is a sinful illness, and the Lord calls for treating sinners with mercy, with the goal that the sinner will mend their ways … and I don’t see this idea of persuading people to repent, bringing them back to life, love, and the desire for salvation in this law or the people who are trying to associate themselves with it, unfortunately.68 64 Anonymous Interview Subject 8, interview by Caroline Hill, 23 October 2016. 65 Ibid. 66 Anonymous Interview Subject 13, interview by Caroline Hill, 26 October 2016. 67 Anonymous Interview Subject 14, interview by Caroline Hill, 27 October 2016. 68 Anonymous Interview Subject 11, interview by Caroline Hill, 25 October 2016.

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Although Russian Orthodox clerics featured prominently in media and legislative debates regarding the anti-propaganda laws, a number of the respondents who supported the legislation expressed misgivings about future Church-state collaboration. One respondent leaned toward religious-moral framing when they asserted that “the Church is not of this world, [it is] a society of those seeking a heavenly Fatherland. It is not correct for the Church to act out; the Church is founded for other things.”69 Others saw testimonials regarding social issues as part of the Church’s work, but did not want the Church to overstep its authority. A respondent blended religious-moral and rational-instrumental framing in their response to a question about Church-state relations: “The idea of the Church is to witness to truth. If this truth is violated by the state, the Church must witness to the state … but the Church does not and must not have correctional-judicial functions.”70 One of the respondents not only spoke at length about Church cooperation with the state on matters of morality policy, but described the potential of secular rational-instrumental and procedural framing strategies by the Church: [The Church can] find arguments, convincing arguments, and they don’t have to be moral, by the way. There can be arguments in the sphere of demography—that the country is dying out. There can be arguments in the sphere of politics.… These arguments can be posed to [parliamentary] deputies, many of whom are not Christians in terms of lifestyle, many are not even baptized. But they understand the elementary basis of things, we agree on these points, we are in solidarity.71 6 Discussion Due to the absence of morality policy studies conducted in Russia or with Orthodox Church actors in general, this study was highly inductive, with the hopes of identifying potential issues with definition and measurement of key concepts and adjusting the coding for the content analysis accordingly. While the definitions of religious-moral, rational-instrumental, and procedural framing may differ from those used in prior research, I believe that this was a necessary step in ensuring the validity of the results of this and future surveys

69 70 71

Anonymous Interview Subject 1, interview by Caroline Hill, 18 October 2016. Anonymous Interview Subject 7, interview by Caroline Hill, 22 October 2016. Anonymous Interview Subject 8, interview by Caroline Hill, 23 October 2016.

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concerning the Russian Orthodox Church and debates over moral conservatism. Morality policy frames used by Russian Orthodox clerics three years after the passage of the federal anti-propaganda law differed significantly from those recorded by Mucciaroni.72 While Mucciaroni’s study and this analysis both showed rational-instrumental frames in first place, in Mucciaroni’s case, they were followed by procedural frames, with private morality frames taking third place. In contrast, this content analysis of interviews with Orthodox clerics found religious-moral framing in second place, with no dominant procedural frames to be found. This may be due to the fact that the desired outcome (passage and implementation of the anti-propaganda laws) had already been achieved in the eyes of most of the respondents. In addition, the open-ended nature of questions posed and the fact that the interviews did not take place in public fora (such as mass media sources) allowed clerics to describe the issues in the terms they saw fit. Expanded studies regarding attitudes toward homosexuality and restrictions on its public manifestations are needed, not only in other regions of Russia, but elsewhere in predominantly Orthodox regions of Eastern Europe, in order to ascertain if these framing patterns are widespread and compare them with results in the West. While rational-instrumental sub-frames of homosexual propaganda as a threat to children and a product of foreign influence might be expected, considering the content of the law being discussed, other sub-frames were less anticipated. One surprising element was the number of times that clerics referred to science when speaking about homosexuality. The fact that acceptance of the notion of homosexuality as caused by a genetic predisposition did not preclude support of anti-propaganda legislation deserves further exploration, as it shows that belief in sexual orientation as immutable (at least for a percentage of the LGBT community) does not necessarily lead to greater acceptance of homosexuality or public expressions of it. Another unexpected sub-frame, this time rational-instrumental and procedural, was the support for the anti-propaganda laws as an attempt to protect activists from vigilante reprisals. The notion of the Russian Orthodox Church as on the side of the LGBT community may not appear credible in the eyes of the Church’s detractors, but it is a potent counter-argument to portrayals of the ROC as uniformly hostile to homosexuals. This and the dissent voiced by one of the respondents regarding the anti-propaganda legislation and the Church’s role and image in public discussions thereof both contradicted notions of the ROC as a monolithic, anti-LGBT body. 72

Mucciaroni, “Are Debates,” 206–8.

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7 Conclusion This chapter has explored framing strategies employed by clerics serving in the Russian Orthodox Church when speaking about laws banning the propagandizing of homosexuality to minors. Through this exploration, the author hoped to expand morality policy research beyond its traditional home in the West, and to delve deeper into what is actually said about the anti-propaganda legislation. This study should be seen as the first step toward larger-scale geographic and longitudinal analyses of how individuals and interest groups in the former Soviet space and Eastern Europe promote conservative values, and comparisons between these and similar cases in the West. References “Banned Moscow Gay Rally Broken Up.” BBC News. 27 May 2006. Accessed 8 October 2016, . Entman, Robert M. “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm.” Journal of Communication 43, no. 4 (1993): 51–58. Euchner, Eva-Maria, Stephan Heichel, Kerstin Nebel, and Andreas Raschzok. “From ‘Morality’ Policy to ‘Normal’ Policy: Framing of Drug Consumption and Gambling in Germany and the Netherlands and Their Regulatory Consequences.” Journal of European Public Policy 20, no. 3 (2013): 372–89.  Federal’nyi Zakon Rossiiskoi Federatsii ot 29 iuniia 2013 g. N 135-FZ g. Moskva “O vnesenii izmenenii v stat’iu 5 Federal’nogo Zakona ‘O zashchite detei ot informatsii, prichiniaiushchei vred ikh zdorov’iu i razvitiiu’ i otdel’nye zakonodatel’nye akty Rossiiskoi Federatsii v tseliakh zashchity detei ot informatsii, propagandiruiushchei otritsanie traditsionnykh semeinykh tsennostei’” [Federal Law of the Russian Federation of 29 June 2013, N 135-FZ in the city of Moscow “On amendments to Article 5 of the Federal Law ‘On the protection of children from information harmful to their health and development and selected laws of the Russian Federation to protect children from information propagandizing the rejection of traditional family values’”]. Adopted by the State Duma on 11 June 2013. Approved by the Federation Council 26 June 2013. Published 2 July 2013. Accessed 11 September 2016, . Ferraiolo, Kathleen. “Is State Gambling Policy ‘Morality Policy’? Framing Debates over State Lotteries.” Policy Studies Journal 41, no. 2 (2013): 217–42. Ferraiolo, Kathleen. “Morality Framing in U.S. Drug Control Policy: An Example from Marijuana Decriminalization.” World Medical and Health Policy 6, no. 4 (2014): 347–74.

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Ferraiolo, Kathleen. “A New Frontier in Gambling Policy: Internet Wagering as Morality Policy.” Policy & Internet 8, no. 2 (2016): 110–30. Haider-Markel, Donald P., and Kenneth J. Meier. “The Politics of Gay and Lesbian Rights: Expanding the Scope of the Conflict.” The Journal of Politics 58, no. 2 (1996): 332–49. Knill, Christoph. “The Study of Morality Policy: Analytical Implications from a Public Policy Perspective.” Journal of European Public Policy 20, no. 3 (2013): 309–17. Kon, Igor’. “Homophobia as a Litmus Test of Russian Democracy.” Sociological Research 48, no. 2 (2009): 43–64. “License to Harm.” Human Rights Watch. 15 December 2014. Accessed 11 September 2016, . Mooney, Christopher Z., and Mei-Hsien Lee. “Morality Policy Reinvention: State Death Penalties.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 566, no. 1 (1999): 80–92. Mooney, Christopher Z., and Mei-Hsien Lee. “The Temporal Diffusion of Morality Policy: The Case of Death Penalty Legislation in the American States.” Policy Studies Journal 27, no. 4 (1999): 766–80. Mooney, Christopher Z., and Richard G. Schuldt. “Does Morality Policy Exist? Testing a Basic Assumption.” Policy Studies Journal 36, no. 2 (2008): 199–218. Mucciaroni, Gary. “Are Debates about ‘Morality Policy’ Really about Morality? Framing Opposition to Gay and Lesbian Rights.” Policy Studies Journal 39, no. 2 (2011): 187–216. Mucciaroni, Gary. Same Sex, Different Politics: Success and Failure in the Struggles over Gay Rights. Chicago: 2009. “Ne govori gei! 24.2.2012” [Don’t say gay! 24.2.2012]. YouTube.com. 2 March 2012. Accessed 12 De­cem­ber 2016, .  Oblastnoi zakon o vnesenii izmenenii i dopolneniia v Oblastnoi Zakon “Ob otdel’nykh merakh po zashchite nravstvennosti i zdorov’ia detei v Arkhangel’skoi Oblasti” [Regio­ nal law on amendments and supplements to the Regional Law “On selected ­measures on the protection of the morals and health of children in Arkhangel’sk Oblast”]. Adopted by the Arkhangel’sk Oblast Assembly of Deputies on 28 September 2011. Signed 30 September 2011. Accessed 11 September 2016, . “Pastor Skott Laivli napisal Putinu blagodarstvennoe pis’mo” [Pastor Scott lively wrote Putin a thank-you letter]. Pravoslavie.ru. 9 September 2013. Accessed 12 December 2017, . Ryan, Charlotte, and William A. Gamson. “The Art of Reframing Political Debates.” Contexts 5, no. 1 (2006): 13–18.

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Studlar, Donley T. “U.S. Tobacco Control: Public Health, Political Economy, or Morality Policy?” Review of Policy Research 25, no. 5 (2008): 393–410. “VKS podderzhal Rossiiskii zakon o zaprete propagandy gomoseksualizma” [The WCF supported the Russian law on the prohibition of homosexual propaganda]. Pravoslavie.ru. 17 June 2013. Accessed 12 December 2017, . “Zakon o propagande SPb-Regiony: Chast’ 3” [The law on propaganda for the Saint Petersburg region: Part 3]. YouTube.com. 3 July 2012. Accessed 12 December 2016, .  Zakon Riazanskoi Oblasti o vnesenii izmenenii v Zakon Riazanskoi Oblasti “Ob administrativnykh pravonarusheniiakh” [The Law of Riazan’ Oblast on amendments to the Law of Riazan’ Oblast “On administrative offenses”]. Adopted by the Riazan’ Oblast Duma on 24 May 2006. Signed 15 June 2006. Accessed 11 September 2016, .  Zakon Sankt-Peterburga ot 7 marta 2012 goda No. 108-18 “O vnesenii izmenenii v Zakon Sankt-Peterburga ‘Ob administrativnykh pravonarusheniiakh v Sankt-Peterburge’” [The Law of Saint Petersburg from 7 March 2012 No. 108-18 “On amendments to the Law of Saint Petersburg ‘On administrative offenses in Saint Petersburg’”]. Adopted by the Legislative Assembly of Saint Petersburg on 29 February 2012. Signed 7 March 2012. Accessed 21 June 2019, .

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Index Index

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Index Page references in bold type indicate a more in-depth treatment of the subject. abortion 19, 105, 108, 139, 189, 191, 192, 248, 383 absolute monarchy 21, 39, 54, 82 adoption, of Russian children by US citizens 4 Afanasʾev, Nikolai 327 AfD (Alternative for Germany) 134n23 Afghanistan 161 Agency for Political News (Agentstvo politicheskikh novostei, www.apn.ru)  159, 161, 169–170, 171, 172, 173, 175, 259, 261, 268 aggressive secularism 216, 224, 245 Ahnenerbe (Nazi German think tank) 185 Aksakov, Konstantin 39n9 Aksenov, Igor (Archpriest) 381 Alekseev, Nikolai 379 Aleksii II (Patriarch of Moscow and all Rusʾ) 243, 337–338n61 Alexander I (Tsar of Russia, r. 1801-1825) 37, 227, 305 Alexius, Saint (Metropolitan of Kiev, 1354-1378) 341 All-Russian National Union 46, 47 All-Russian Social-Christian Union for the Liberation of Peoples (VSKhSON) 60, 60n70, 65 Alternative for Germany (AfD) 134n23 alternative right see Alt-Right movement AlternativeRight.com 186, 188 Alt-Right Manifesto (Richard Spencer) 186 Alt-Right movement 24, 179, 186–189, 196 see also Spencer, Richard American Christian Right 179 relation with Russian Orthodox Church 24, 190–193, 194, 196, 197 American Civil War (1861-1865) 177 American Confederation (super-state) 87 American conservatism 179, 187, 348 Russian conservatism v. 23, 195 American Dream 212 American Family Association 191–192

Americanization 58 American radical conservatism see radical conservatism/conservative radicalization American Renaissance conference (2016) 186 American Renaissance (online magazine) 184, 194 The Ancien Régime and the French Revolution (Alexis de Tocqueville) 285 Androsenko, Nataliia 156 Anti-Booker Prize 158, 158n8 Antichrist 113, 353, 361 arrival of 27, 105, 351, 352, 353, 356, 357 kingdom of the 106, 351, 356, 366 Russia as protectionist force against 85, 87, 351, 357, 362, 364 anti-gay propaganda laws/legislation 4, 17, 215, 379, 385, 394 morality policy framing and 382–394 Orthodox Church’s role in debates on 27, 380–382, 390–391, 392–393, 394 as protection of LGBT 391–392 Western support for 192, 391 anti-liberalism 9, 67, 134, 138, 166 anti-propaganda laws see anti-gay propaganda laws/legislation anti-revolutionarism 281, 282, 284, 284–286, 287, 289, 300, 301 anti-Semitism 18, 42, 121, 181 conservative ideologists/radical conservatives and 60, 64, 159, 184, 186, 189, 190, 194, 196, 353, 354 Orthodox Church and 67, 355 anti-systemic conservatism (Kustarev) 348 anti-Western criticism 238, 240, 251 far-right 249–251 see also online platforms anti-Westernism 14–15, 16, 21, 41, 43, 59, 67, 83, 91, 219, 221, 238 as basis for Russian conservatism 57, 211 isolationism and 61, 78–79 (Neo-)Eurasianism and 52, 66 online platforms 24, 235–236 political hesychasm and 340

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004408005_017

400 anti-Westernism (cont.) religiously motivated 24, 25 village prose writers and 65 see also Orthodox political theology Antonello, Pierpaolo 122 Antonov, Mikhail 59 apartheid 180 Apdeit konservatizma (Leonid Ionin) 135n25 apn.ru (Agentstvo politicheskikh novostei, Agency for Political News) 159, 161, 169–170, 171, 172, 173, 175, 259, 261, 268 Apocalypse 5, 349, 351, 352, 353, 356 apocalyptic doctrine 367–368 apocalyptic imperialism 26, 356–357, 358, 361 see also eschatology; Katechon Arab Spring 133 Arab world 281 archetypical logic (Jung) 115, 116 Arkhangelʾsk Oblast 380 art, secular 55 Aryanism 181, 196 ascetic practices 337–339 Asia 158 Russian-Asian relations 95 Asriian, Armen 170 Assemblies of the Land (Zemskie Sobory) 47 “associationist approach” in international relations 92–93 Astafʼev, Viktor 58 Athonite hesychast movement see hesychasm Athos 332 “atomic Orthodoxy” (Kholmogorov) 27, 357–359 Austrian Identitarian Movement 134n23 autarchy 96, 97, 354 authenticity (ideology) 15–16, 78, 83, 95 authoritarianism 4, 14, 18–19, 43, 142n53, 159, 174, 348, 357 autocracy 38, 41, 42, 43–44, 45, 46, 47, 82 autocratic monarchy see absolute monarchy Avdeev, Oleg 137 Avdeev, Vladimir 185 Averianov, Vitaly 13n42, 132n14, 170, 234, 363 on civilization 355–356 Balkans 49, 224, 331, 360 Baltic States 133n19, 296 Bannon, Steve 187–188

Index Barlaam of Calabria 331 Basic Values as the Basis of National Identity (WRPC) 242 The Basis of Religious Culture and Secular Ethics (school course, ROC) 241–242 The Basis of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church 339 Bassin, Mark 177 Bastion (literary and philosophical group) 159 Batalov, Eduard 212 Battling to the End (René Girard) 119 Batu Khan (Mongol Ruler, r. 1227-1255) 223 Bauman, Zygmunt 138 Bausman, Charles 189 Beck, Ulrich 129, 137, 140n45 Behavior (Konstantin Krylov) 162 “being-for-self” (Hegelian logic) 81 Belarus 95, 288, 307, 309, 360, 362 Belgium 183 Belkovsky, Stanislav 169 Bellah, Robert 103 Bell, Daniel 138 Belov, Aleksandr 182, 193, 195 Belov, Vasilii 64 Belyi Mir (white world, website) 185 Benediktov, Kirill 7n17 Benoist, Alain de 136n29, 194 Berdiaev, Nikolai 5, 7, 13, 50–52, 55, 56 Berdiaevskie Chteniia (conference) 7 Berlin 49, 54 Berlin Congress (1878) 297 Bishops’ Council of the Russian Orthodox Church 339 Black Hundreds (ultra-nationalist movement) 18 Bless your people (hymn) 312 blogs 158, 174, 188, 341 see also Live Journal Blood and Honor (skinhead movement) 181 Bluhm, Katharina 9, 23, 214 Bobrinsky, Vladimir 48 Bodin, Per-Arne 26 Boldyrev, Yuri 65 Bolotnaia protests (2011-12) 215 Bolsheviks/Bolshevism 16, 53, 55, 57, 296, 297 opponents 49, 50–51, 54, 289, 353

Index border revision 272–273 Borodavkin, Aleksei 223–224 Borodin, Leonid 60n70, 61, 65 Braudel, Fernand 97 Brazhnikov, Ilʾia 170 breitbart.com 186, 187, 189 Breuer, Stefan 137n31 Brezhnev, Leonid 18n62, 57, 62 BRICS 218 British Commonwealth 93 Brown, Brian 192 Buchanan, Pat 9, 187, 191 Bulgakov, Sergii 50, 86, 332, 333 Bunin, Igor 321 Bunin, Ivan 49 bureaucratization 44 Burke, Edmund 55, 67, 82, 237, 300 on revolution 237, 284–287, 287 Bush, George W. 192 Buzhinsky, Evgeny 370 Bykov, Dmitry 165 Bystrova, Elena 105 Byzantine Commonwealth 26, 92, 315–316 Byzantinism 335, 343, 360 Byzantinism and Slavdom (Konstantin Leontʾev) 42 Byzantium 331, 339 Russia as successor to 267, 340–342, 351, 353, 362 capitalism 65, 163–164 anti-capitalist discourse on ruskline. ru 250–251, 252 capitalist revolution (1990s) 64 Carlson, Allan 192 Carolingian Empire 92 Catharine Pavlovna of Russia, Grand Duchess 38 Catholicism 248, 251, 331, 332, 335, 340, 341 Caucasus 292, 296, 360 CCC (Center for Continental Cooperation) 134 CDA (critical discourse analysis) 239, 241 Celestial Republic (China, super-state) 88 Center for Conservative Research (Lomonosov State University, Moscow) 131 Center for Continental Cooperation (CCC) 134

401 Center for Dynamic Conservatism 13n42 Center for Political Technologies 321, 322 Central Asia 161 Chaadaev, Peter 39 Chaplin, Vsevolod 191, 248–249, 368 Charlottesville 177 Chebankova, Elena 238, 239, 304 Chetverikova, Olga 243 child protection, against homosexual propaganda and 389, 390, 391, 394, 395 children’s rights 105 China 88, 190 relation with 92, 95, 96n50, 161, 218, 219 Christendom, violence and 122–123 Christian alliance 192, 245–246 Christianity 21, 251 liturgy as source of theological thought 327–328 nationalism and 60 origins of Christianity in Russia 288, 309, 330 “world plot” against 27 Christians 355 protection of 219, 225 Christian values 187, 191, 192, 197, 216, 251 see also traditional values church authority 338 see also Holy Fathers Church on the Blood (Yekaterinburg) 359 Church Fathers see Holy Fathers Church of the Prophet Elijah (Vyborg) 381 Church-State relations 235, 370, 393 Churkin, Vitaly 218 Citizen (magazine) 45 civilization 162, 167–168 Averʾianov on 355–356 definition 267, 267n31 distinctiveness of Russian 143, 144, 216, 222, 238 Ilyin on 56 Mezhuev on 84, 260, 261, 266, 267 nation v. 84 Orthodox civilization 67, 263–264 Putin on 283, 367 Solzhenitsyn on 266, 268 Tsymbursky on 162, 260, 265, 267, 268 united European civilization 143 Ziuganov on 292–293

402 civilizational isolationism see isolationism; Tsymbursky, Vadim civilizational pluralism 216, 220 civilizational realism (Mezhuev) 25, 261, 270–274, 274–275 civilizations bridging role of Russia between 225 multiple/different civilizations 42–43, 93 Claasen, Rutger 81 The Clash of Civilizations? (Samuel Huntingdon) 266 classical modernity 23, 129, 130, 137, 138, 139, 144–145 Clinton, Bill 191 CoCC (Council of Conservative Citizens, US) 184 Cohen, Stanley 112 Cold War 145, 190, 296, 297, 300, 370 “collective soul” 116, 117 collective violence 116–117, 119 colonialism 95, 222, 248, 250, 264 semi-colonial relationship with the West 59, 292, 294 The Colonization of Europe (Guillaume Faye) 184 Color Revolutions 90, 215, 281, 286, 299 communism 95, 188, 211n18, 245, 261–262, 294 collapse of 180, 241 continuation of Russian history and 297 liberal democracy v. 5, 91, 296, 348 persecution of religion 245 Communist Party Congress (1956) 21 Communist Party of the Russian Federation 65, 291, 293, 294 communitarianism conservatism v. 11–12 conservative communitarianism 22, 78, 81, 84, 92 Compact (German magazine) 133n15, 134n23 Concept of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation (2016) 223, 224, 226 conceptual ideologists 129, 130, 132, 135n25, 136, 139n42, 143 see also Izborsky Club; new conservatism/ conservatives Concerned Women for America 191

Index Congress of Orthodox Theological Schools 333 Congress of Russian Communities 65 consequence-based frames (morality policy) 384 conservatism core principles/features 211, 237, 347 definition 13n40, 80, 179 levels of interpretation 11–12 Russian v. Western/European 23–24, 37, 78, 81, 82, 179, 195, 211, 211n16, 237–239, 284 see also American conservatism; European conservatism; Russian conservatism; traditionalism; Western conservatism Conservatism for Development project (ISEPI) 13 conservative alliances see Izborsky Club conservative communitarianism 22, 78, 81, 84, 92 conservative dissidents 21, 61, 63, 64–65 conservative ideologists see ideological conservatism The Conservative (Konservator, newspaper) 161, 165, 167, 174 Conservative Meeting (Young Conservatives) 170, 171 “conservative minimum” 11–12 conservative modernization 4, 5, 6 Conservative Press Club 164, 166, 168, 169 see also Remizov, Mikhail “Conservative Revolution” 9, 15, 17, 24, 64, 167 Conservative Revolution (Germany, 1918-1932) 79, 137n31, 196, 366–367 Conservative Revolution (Italy) 79 Conservative Thought (Karl Mannheim) 322 “conservative turn” 3–9, 13n43, 21, 26, 79, 109–110, 131, 214 in domestic policy 6, 88, 93, 94, 215 in foreign policy 6, 24, 215–217, 227 see also “morality turn” “conservative utopia” (Mannheim) 81–82, 210, 286–287, 301 conspiracy theories 107–108, 118, 366 eschatology as background for 351 mythological logic 115–117 rational criticism/statistics and 114–116

Index ways of interpretation 108–111 see also Nazarov, Mikhail Constantinople 43, 331, 340 Constantinople Patriarchate 332, 339, 340 constitution 38, 42, 43, 47, 309, 315 constitutional conservatism 348–349 constitutional monarchy 54 constitutional movements 39 constitutional reform 21, 37 Coordinating Council of the Opposition (CSR) 172 cosmopolitanism 184, 293, 361 Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church outside of Russia 333 Council of Conservative Citizens (CoCC, US) 184 Council of Ministers 45 counter-modernity (Beck) 137 counter-reformation 170 Counter-Reformation (Kontrreformatisiia, Young Conservatives) 170–171 covenant messianism 85–87, 89 Cowdell, Scott 122 creative conservatism 13, 50–51 creative democracy 55 Crimea 188, 314 annexation of (2014) 87, 94, 95, 172, 307, 314, 341, 342, 367, 369 Crimean War (1853-1856) 41 critical discourse analysis (CDA) 239, 241 CSR (Coordinating Council of the Opposition) 172 cultural creativity 50, 51, 290 cultural development, stages of (Leontʾev) 42 cultural foundations of Russian conservatism 85–88 cultural homogeneity 93, 94 cultural hybridity 62, 94 cultural nationalism 37, 39–40, 293 cultural order 111 culture revival of Russian 40, 290 Russian v. Soviet 316 culture wars 119 Curanović, Alicja 24, 119n55 Daniel (prophet) 360

403 Danilevsky, Nikolai 42, 258 Danilin, Pavel 170 Danilov, Viacheslav 157, 158, 167, 171 Day of National Unity (November 4) 182, 304, 308 Decembrist Revolt (1825) 39 de-humanization 139–140 democracy 52, 354 creative v. formal 55 moral restrictions and 390 Western 44, 141 see also liberal democracy democratic institutions, role and form of 45–48 demography, homosexuality and 389–390 Denʼ (newspaper) 65, 132n15, 180 deontological frames (morality policy) 384 derevenshchiki (village prose movement) 58, 64, 65 de-socialization 141–142 de-sovereigntization 140–141 diaspora, Russian 94, 334 see also emigration/émigrés Dickson, Sam 193 digital platforms see online platforms Dijk, Teun van 239 discrimination 142, 391 Diunov, Mikhail 159, 170, 173 DNPI (Movement against Illegal Immigration) 182, 195 “Doctrine-77” (Ivan Okhlobystin) 358 Dolgov, Konstantin 222, 225 Donbass, War in (2014- ) 193, 240 Donetsk People’s Republic 6 Dostoevsky, Fyodor 7, 59, 157 Druzhba narodov (“Friendship of the People’s” doctrine) 287–288 Dubrovin, Aleksandr 46, 48 Dugin, Aleksandr 9, 64, 85, 107n18, 132n15, 136, 137, 182–183, 193, 257 Bannon on 187–188 on bourgeois high culture 138, 138n40 on fascism 131, 188 fourth political theory 188, 196 on geopolitics 91, 257 influence on Alt-Right movement 24, 188, 189 on (neo)-Eurasianism 66, 131, 144n59, 166–167, 195, 196, 360

404 Dugin, Aleksandr (cont.) on white nationalists/supremacists 185, 195–196 see also International Eurasian Movement Duke, David 180–181, 182, 193, 196 Dulles, Allen 358 Duma 46, 47 Durnovo, Petr 48 Dushenov, Konstantin 235, 243 dynamic conservatism 13, 16, 355, 363, 366 see also Russian Doctrine Dzerzhinsky, Feliks 306 Eastern Europe 17 Eastern Mediterranean 360 Eastern Ukraine war/intervention 95, 307, 369 see also Donbass East Slavs, unity of 309 ecclesiastical hierarchy 338 ecologism 139–140, 140n45 economical modernization 4, 6, 138–139 economic development 3, 56, 134, 140, 141, 248, 358 economic policy 129, 133, 135, 163 “Third Way” 179, 189–190 Edinaia Rossiia (United Russia, political party) 4–5, 6, 13n40, 135, 171, 308 EEU (Eurasian Economic Union) 190 egalitarianism 42, 184 1812 Overture (Tchaikovsky) 312 88 United Brigades (OB 88, skinhead movement) 181–182 Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. 144 Eliseev, Gleb 159 elites 209 American 184 Byzantine 341 globalist 187, 194, 209 Russian 132, 133, 134, 141, 145, 170, 215, 283, 293, 357, 365, 367, 370 elitism 361 emigration/émigrés 49–50, 57, 94, 289, 332–333, 352 see also Berdiaev, Nikolai; Ilyin, Ivan émigré conservatism 21, 49–56, 57, 63 EMRF (Eurasian Movement of the Russian Federation) 134, 143n54

Index Encyclical of the Holy and Great Council (Orthodox Church) 321 Engström, Maria 368 enlightened conservatism 37–39 Enlightenment 137–138, 295 rejection of 12, 61, 79, 80, 137 Russian 40 Western 40, 137 Entangled Far Rights (Marlène Laruelle) 9 Enteo, Dmitry 174 Entman, Robert M. 382 entrepreneurialism 163 environmentalism 139–140 Die Erfindung Ruβlands (Boris Groys) 128 The Eschatological Teaching of the Church (conference) 349 eschatology 26 as background for conspiracy theories 351 as background for Orthodox political theology 349, 350–352 eschatological mission of Russia 355, 356–357, 363–365 see also Katechon esotericism 364 Essays on Conservatism (journal, ISEPR) 133 established order see world order ethnic cleansing 186, 195 ethnic identity 155 ethnic self-consciousness 167 ethnopluralism 177, 194, 195 Eucharistic Ecclesiology (project, Nikolai Afanasʾev) 327 Euchner, Eva-Maria 386 Eurasia 52, 96, 143, 195, 214 Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) 190 “Eurasian” interlude (Tsymbursky) 95–96 Eurasianism 24, 52–54, 143n54 Dugin on 66, 131, 144n59, 166–167, 195, 196, 360 Mezhuev on 263 neo-Eurasianism 66, 131–132, 144, 360 Tsymbursky on Eurasianism 95–96 Eurasianist continentalism 27 Eurasian Movement of the Russian Federation (EMRF) 134, 143n54 Eurasian Party 131 see also International Eurasian Movement

405

Index Eurasian Union 134 Eurocentrism 249 Europe 17, 24, 87, 141 cultural development 42 dialogue with conservative groups in 178 differentiation between “the West” and 142–143, 197 geopolitical confrontation with 25, 247–248, 249–250, 252, 358 online anti-European discourses 248, 252 position of Russia within 250 Russian doctrines in 197 Russian-European relations 95–96, 179 Russian mission toward 144, 248–249 European conservatism 24, 211, 284 Russian v. 179, 211, 211n16, 284 see also Burke, Edmund European Institute for Democracy and Cooperation (IDC) 133n15 European New Right 9, 145, 183 interactions with/inspiration from 128, 129, 134, 144, 177–178, 194, 195 on (post-)modernity 136–137 European Synergies (movement) 185 European Union 144, 179, 240 Europe and Humankind (Nikolai Trubetskoi) 52 Eurosiberia concept 183–184, 186, 195 euthanasia 105, 139, 251, 383 evangelical identity 117–118 Evola, Julius 188, 194 Evseev, Aleksandr 243 exceptionalism, geopolitical 24, 207, 215, 222, 227 American Dream v. Russian Idea 212 connection with conservatism 212 definition 212n22 external origins of 208–210 in foreign policy 218 mission as aspect of 207, 209–210, 226 Executive Intelligence Review (magazine) 190 exile, conservatism in see emigration/émigrés Exodus to the East 52 expansionism 94, 95, 273, 296, 354–355, 356, 360, 361 Mezhuev on 263 expansionist messianism 85–86, 89

extreme right see radical conservatism/ conservative radicalization Fadeev, Valery 167 Fairclough, Norman 240–241 The Fall of an Empire: The Lesson of Byzantium (film) 108n22, 340–341 The Family Leader (political organization, US) 191 family values 19, 21, 63, 90, 191, 217, 381 see also traditional values far-right see radical conservatism/ conservative radicalization fascism 15, 21, 82, 196, 219 Dugin and 131, 188 Russian émigrés and 54, 57 victory over 248, 298, 362 Faye, Guillaume 183–184, 185–186, 194 February Revolution (1917) 54, 57 see also Russian Revolution (1917) Federal Security Service (FSB) 305–306 Fedorov, Nikolai 85 Fedotov, Georgy 49, 86, 327 FEP (Foundation for Effective Politics) 171 Ferraiolo, Kathleen 386 Fidesz (Hungarian Civic Alliance) 135 Filaret (Amfiteatrov, Metropolitan of Kiev) 307 Filaret, Saint (Drosdov, Metropolitan of Moscow) 336, 336n56 Filimonov, Valery 244 Filipp II (Metropolitan of Moscow, b.1507-d.1569), Saint 305 First Duma 46 first modernity (Beck) 129, 137, 137n31 see also imagined classical modernity First Philosophical Letter (Peter Chaadaev) 39 First World War 47–48, 51, 53, 56, 367 Fischer, Bryan 191–192 Fleming, Chris 118 Florensky, Pavel 332, 333 Florovsky, Georgy (Archpriest) 52, 86, 334 on (Holy) tradition 326, 328–329, 335–336 neo-patristic approach to theology  332–334 flower metaphor (Kireevsky) 81, 83

406 foreign policy, Russian 269, 275 “conservative turn” in 6, 24, 215–217, 227 exceptionalism in 218 mission in 208, 209–210, 217–219, 222–226, 228 multipolarity in 220–221 see also isolationism; “soft power” foreign policy, US 269 formal democracy 55 Forty Times Forty movement (Sorok sorokov) 235 Foundation for Effective Politics (FEP) 171 The Foundation of Geopolitics (Aleksandr Dugin) 131 Foundation for the Investigation of Historical Perspectives 133n15 The Foundations for the Struggle for National Russia (Ivan Ilyin) 289 Fourth Duma 46 Fourth Political Theory (Aleksandr Dugin)  188, 196 framing definition 382 see also morality policy framing France 48, 183, 209, 284, 291 see also French Revolution Frank, Semon 50 Frank, Thomas 124n67 Freeden, Michael, on conservatism as ideology 11, 80, 128, 145, 210–211, 212 free market 191, 195 Freemasons 350, 351, 352, 353, 354, 355 French New Right 136, 155, 164, 183, 187 French post-structuralism 138 French Revolution (1789-1799) 237, 239, 284–286, 287, 291 “Friendship of the Peoples” doctrine (Druzhba narodov) 287–288 Frolov, Kirill 170 Fronde 58, 64, 65 Frontpage (journal) 184 FSB Alpha group 165n22 FSB (Federal Security Service) 305–306 fundamentalism/fundamentalists American 351 geopolitical 270–271 liberal 270–271 mystical 59–60 Orthodox 59–60, 335, 348, 349, 351, 352, 365, 367

Index fundamentalist traditionalism 137 Fundamental Laws (23 April 1906) 46 Fund for Effective Politics 164 Fursov, Andrei 299 Gabrelianov, Aram 172 Gaidar, Egor 190 Galenin, Boris 361 Galkovsky, Dmitry 157–158, 158n8, 159, 160 Gamson, William A. 382 Gatilov, Gennady 222 Gay Pride Parade (Moscow) 379–380 gay pride parades 388, 391 gay propaganda see homosexual propaganda gay rights framing of 383, 384, 385 see also anti-gay propaganda laws/ legislation gender equality 139, 142 The General Newspaper (Obshchaia gazeta) 165 Generation P² (Viktor Pelevin) 154 Genghis Khan 53 Genocide (Sergei Glazʾev) 190 geoconservatism 78 geocultural expansion 265 geo-economic competition 97 geographical realism 91 geopolicial polycentrism (multipolarity) see multipolarity geopolitical balance 292, 294, 300 geopolitical communities 93 geopolitical confrontation, with Europe 25, 247–248, 249–250, 252, 358 geopolitical conservatism 14–15, 22, 24, 97, 207 mission in 217–219 see also exceptionalism geopolitical exceptionalism see exceptionalism geopolitical expansion 94, 95, 263, 273, 296, 354–355, 356, 360, 361 geopolitical fundamentalism 270–271 geopolitical isolationism see isolationism; Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr geopolitics 66, 91, 95, 131, 162, 257, 360, 361 connection with conservatism 88, 93, 211–212

Index geopolitical fear of the West 239–240 kenotic 86–87 as reaction to globalization 92 religion and 85 see also Katechon see also Dugin, Aleksandr; Eurasianism; exceptionalism; Tsymbursky, Vadim Georgia 355 Rose Revolution (2003) 216 Russo-Georgian War (2008) 3, 272, 362 German Ideology (Karl Marx) 130 German Romanticism 37, 39 Germany 48, 79, 183, 209, 249, 361 Groβraum 92 Nazi Germany 60, 185, 250 see also Conservative Revolution (Germany) Gibelʾ imperii: Vizantiiskii urok (The Fall of an Empire, film) 108n22, 340–341 Gifford, Paul 122 Gippius, Zinaida 49 Girard, René 78n3 scapegoating theory 22, 111–123 Girenok, Fedor 158 glasnost 64 Glazʾev, Sergei 65, 133, 195 LaRouche and 189–190, 194 Glinka, Stanislav 47 global governance 141 globalization 20, 92, 94, 153, 178, 353–354, 356 Nazarov on 353–354 Glorious Revolution (Great Britain, 16881689) 286 Gogol, Nikolai 157 Golovanov, Mikhail 170 Golovkin, Nikolai (Archpriest) 381 Golyshev, Vladimir 170 Gorbachev, Mikhail 288, 292 Govorun, Kirill 367 Great Britain 48, 92, 209, 211–212n18 “Great Limitrophe” (Velikii limitrof) 96, 265, 266, 267 see also limitrophes Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) 297 “Great Reforms” (1860s/early 1870s) 37, 41 Great Russia 293, 297, 312

407 GRECE (European New Right’s school for cadres) 183 Green, Ewen 348 Green Star (Alt-Right website) 188 Grigorʿev, Sergei 243 Gringmut, Vladimir 45 Grishaeva, Ekaterina 24 Groβräume-theory (Schmitt) 22, 79, 91–97, 97, 98 Groupement de recherche et d’études pour la civilisation européenne (GRECE) 183 Groys, Boris 128 Gryzlov, Boris 13n40 GULAG 310–311 Gul, Roman 49 Gumilev, Lev 177 Hammerskin Organization 182 Handbook for the Clergy 331 Hanick, Jack 193 Hearnshaw, F.G.C. 10 Heidegger, Martin 188, 194 Heimbach, Matthew 183, 193 Herder, Johann Gottfried 39 hesychasm 331, 335, 336, 340, 341 political 339–342 see also Palamism “Highest Rome”, Moscow as 356 Highland Park Presbyterian Church (Dallas) 192 Hilarion (Alfeev, Metropolitan of Volokolamsk) 191, 192, 243 Hill, Caroline 27 Himmler, Heinrich 185 historical continuity of Russia 25–26, 290–291, 299–300, 305 Russia as successor to Byzantium 267, 340–342, 351, 353, 362 “thousand-year history” idea 281–282, 283, 284, 287–291, 292, 293, 294, 295, 297, 298, 299, 305 history of Russian conservatism 1894-1917 43–49 1960s-1990s 57–63 after Russian civil war 49–56 during Perestroika and 1990s 63–67 prerevolutionary Russia 36–43

408 Hitler, Adolf 54, 82 Hochkultur 138n40 Hofstadter, Richard 109, 124n67 Holy Fathers 332, 336, 337, 337–338n61, 351 heritage of 333–334, 334–335 see also neo-patristic theology Holy Rusʾ 26, 59, 63, 214, 340, 342, 356 Holy Scripture 321, 325n22, 335, 353 Holy Tradition 321, 326, 327, 336 homogeneity 22, 91, 93, 94, 184 homosexuality/homosexuals 22 framing of homosexuality, as genetic predisposition 387, 388ill., 394 as (mental) illness 388ill., 389, 392 as a sin 387, 388ill., 389, 392 hostility toward 117–118 homosexual propaganda 388 demographic situation and 389–390 framing by Russian Orthodox Church 27, 379, 382, 385, 393, 394 protection of children/minors from 389, 390, 391, 394, 395 see also anti-gay propaganda laws/ legislation Honderich, Ted 347 Horowitz, David 184 hostilities (in societies) see internal hostilities How to Rebuild Russia (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) 87 humanism 340 humanitarian sovereignty 89 human rights 88, 139, 218, 237, 245, 246, 251, 285, 295, 343 see also gay rights; LGBT Hungary 135, 305 Huntington, Samuel 258 on conservatism as ideology 10, 79n6, 210, 266, 347–348, 352 on reactive nature of 347–348 on world order 92 hybrid war 307, 370 I Carried Russia with Me (Roman Gul) 49 IDC (European Institute for Democracy and Cooperation) 133n15 Identitarians 179, 183–185, 194, 195 see also Taylor, Jared

Index Identity Evropa (American identity movement) 184 identity, Russian 6, 120, 143–144, 178, 228, 234 ideological conservatism 9, 10, 12, 77–80, 97–98, 120, 167, 239 Freeden on conservatism as ideology 11, 80, 128, 145, 210–211, 212 Huntington on conservatism as ideology 10, 79n6, 210, 266, 347–348, 352 origins of 82–83 traditional foundation of 14, 17, 79 transnational ideologies 19 United Russia/Putin regime 3–5, 15, 130–131 Western conservative ideologies v. 237– 239 Young Conservatives 153–154, 156–157, 174 ideological square (conceptual tool, Van Dijk) 239 ideology, conservatism as ideology see ideological conservatism IEM (International Eurasian Movement) 131–132, 133, 134, 139n42 Ignatius Brianchaninov 337 illiberal conservatism 88, 130, 136–137, 141, 142, 145 Ilyin, Ivan 13, 54–56, 227, 289, 291 Ilyin, Konstantin 359 Ilyin, Mikhail 272n48 imagined classical modernity 129, 130, 137, 138, 139, 144–145 Imiaslavie (onomatodoxy) debates 332 immigration/immigrants 20, 24, 141, 182, 186, 187n43, 195, 197 imperfection, conservatism as philosophy of 80, 81 imperialism 296, 297, 353, 360, 368, 369 apocalyptic 26, 356–357, 358, 361 German 367 kenotic geopolitics and 86, 87 nationalism v. 87, 154, 155, 159 see also Izborsky Club; Nazarov, Mikhail; “Third Rome” India 161, 218 Indian Confederation (super-state) 88 individualism 40, 51, 123, 216, 245, 246, 250, 252

Index industrialism 16, 65, 66, 140 inequality 50, 55, 141, 237, 245, 300 The Infinite Dead End (Dmitry Galkovsky)  157–158 “information war” 115 infowars.com 189 Institute for Dynamic Conservatism 13n42, 132 Institute of National Strategy (INS) 169 Institute for Socio-Economic and Political Research (ISEPR) 6–7, 13, 133, 137, 259 instrumentalization approach, for interpretation of conspiracy theories 109–111 “integrity” (Slavophile concept) 290 intellectual conservatism/ conservatives 7–8, 9, 63–64, 172, 348 dialogue between Russian and Western 19 expulsion of intellectuals 50, 289 Orthodox 24, 59, 241, 242 see also Izborsky Club; Slavophiles/ Slavophilism; village prose movement; Young Conservatism/Young Conservatives intellectualization approach, for interpretation of conspiracy theories 109, 110–111 internal hostilities (in societies) 120–121, 122 externalization of 121 rituals and customary resolutions in 122 see also violence International Conservative Forum (2015) 193 International Eurasian Movement (IEM) 131–132, 133, 134, 139n42 International Fund for Writing and Slavic Culture 185 International Independent Environmental and Political University (MNEPU) 164 international order see world order international organizations 140, 179 international relations 213 “associationist” approach in 92–93 see also isolationism Internet 140, 160 see also online platforms

409 Interregional Academy of Personnel Management (Ukraine) 181 Inter-Sobor Assembly 363 intervention in foreign conflicts 269–270 Ioann (Snychev, Metropolitan of Saint Petersburg and Ladoga) 64, 67, 243, 293, 350–352, 358, 363, 364 Ionin, Leonid 135n25 Iran 79, 92, 361 Iraq War (2003-2011) 269 Iron Curtain 57 Isaev, Andrei 4, 5 ISEPR (Institute for Socio-Economic and Political Research) 6–7, 13, 133, 137, 259 ISIS 219 Islam 53, 85, 187, 188, 195 Islamic Caliphate (super-state) 88 Islamic Revolution (Iran) 79 Islamization 195, 251 “Island Russia” theory (Tsymbursky) 95–96, 161, 257, 258, 265–266, 268, 271, 272, 273 Island Russia (Vadim Tsymbursky) 161–162, 266, 272 isolationism 5, 16, 22, 23, 57, 91, 98 American 264–265, 264n24, 265n25 anti-Westernism and 61, 78–79 definition 269 Mezhuev on 25, 259–268, 269, 274 Shimanov on 62–63 Solzhenitsyn and geopolitical 86–87, 95, 261–265, 270, 273, 274 Tsymbursky and civilizational 87, 95–96, 161–162, 265–268, 274 see also Groβräume; “Island Russia” theory Iurʾev, Mikhail 87–88, 97 Ivanov, Anatoly 185 Ivan the Terrible (Ivan IV, Tsar of Russia, r. 1547-1584) 290, 305, 313 Izborsky Club 85, 132–134, 137, 139n42, 142, 143, 144, 234, 237, 243, 299, 367 Izvestiia (newspaper) 172, 173, 259 Jakobson, Roman 52, 307 Jane, Emma 118 Japan 184, 209, 361 Jews 194 as enemies of Orthodoxy 189, 350, 351, 352, 353, 355

410 John VI Kantakouzenos (John Cantacuzene, Byzantine Emperor, r. 1347-1354) 339 Jones, Alex 189 Joseph of Volotsk, Saint 340 Judaism 85, 354 Jung, Carl Gustav 115, 116 Jünger, Ernst 194 juvenile justice 22, 104–106, 114, 115 Kaczyński, Jaroslaw 135 Kagarlitsky, Boris 213 Kalinin, Ilya 282 Karamzin, Nikolai 37–39, 41 Karlsohn, Irina 25 Karpets, Vladimir 268n35 Karsavin, Lev 50, 52 Kasimovsky, Konstantin 181 Katasonov, Valentin 244 Katechon (club) 341 Katechon (Retainer) Russia as 26–27, 85–86, 87, 120, 352, 353, 354, 356, 360–364, 367 see also Maler, Arkady Katechon TV 87 Katehon.com 189 Katkov, Mikhail 66 Kazakhstan 358n46, 360 kenoticism 86–87 Key Thinkers of the Radical Right (Mark Sedgwick) 9 KGB 60, 60n70 Khazin, Mikhail I. 132n11, 133n15 Kholmogorov, Egor 7n17, 156, 172, 175, 350, 355, 363 on “atomic Orthodoxy” 27, 357–359 on eschatological mission of Russia  85–86, 342, 356–357 on hesychasm 342 imperialism v. nationalism of 155, 361 on Tsymbursky 162 Young Conservatism and 160, 163, 165, 166, 169, 170, 171, 173 Khomiakov, Aleksei 37, 39n9, 328 Khondzinsky, Pavel (Archpriest) 336–337 Kiev as beginning of Russian history 282, 287, 288, 292, 311–312, 341

Index monument of Vladimir the Great  306–307, 312–313 Kievlianin (newspaper) 48 Kireev, Aleksandr 45n29 Kireevsky, Ivan 37, 39n9, 81, 83 Kirill (Gundiaev, Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus’) 3, 191, 240, 299, 356 on “Russian World”/Russian Doctrine 84, 132, 362, 363 on saving Europe 245–246 speech at inauguration monument Vladimir the Great 304, 309–310 on spiritual sovereignty 89 WRPC and 235, 242, 243, 247 Kisoudis, Dimitrios 142, 142n53, 144n59 Kiziakov, Sergei (ps. Vadim Nifontov) 157, 159–160, 169 Kjellén, Rudolf 92 Kliuchevsky, Vasily 287, 288 Kobiakov, Andrei 13n42, 132n11,n14, 133n15, 137, 139n42, 170 Kofner, Juri 134, 143n54 Kokkin, Philotheus (Patriarch of Constantinople) 339, 342 Kolokol (newspaper) 48 Komov, Aleksei 193, 194 Komsomol 58, 60, 61 Konservator (newspaper) 161, 165, 167, 174 Korchagin, Yuri 217 Korsun legend 314 Kostin, Andrei 370 Kostiuk, Konstantin 350 Kouprianova, Nina (Nina Byzantina)  188–189, 194 Kozhinov, Vadim, on Russian history  289–291 Kravchuk, Andrei 304, 314 Kremlin 5, 67, 88, 130, 133, 164, 191, 215, 225, 275, 370 Krylov, Konstantin 155, 158, 160, 162–163, 164, 165, 166, 169, 170, 171, 172, 175 Kshesinskaia, Matilda 314 Kucherenko, Vladimir A. (Maksim Kalashnikov) 132n14 Ku Klux Klan 180, 181, 184, 186, 187, 193, 196 Kustarev, Alexandr 348, 368 Kyrgyzstan 161, 216

411

Index Lacan, Jacques 103 Laclau, Ernesto 120 language use, ban on explicit 215 large spaces theory see Groβräume-theory LaRouche, Lyndon, Glazʾev and 189–190, 194 Laruelle, Marlène 9, 23, 54n57, 132–133, 249 on conservative ideologies 237–238 on “morality turn” 103, 215, 234, 315 “Last Rome”, Russia as 361 Last Stage (Vladimir Soloukhin) 64 “last war” 370 Latinism see Catholicism Laughland, John 7n17 Lavrov, Sergei 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 226–227 Law on Amendments to the Law of Saint Petersburg “On Administrative Offences in Saint Petersburg”  380–382 lawlessness 106n14, 354, 357, 360, 362 Law on patriotic-military upbringing of young people (no. 315234-7) 370 Lebow, Richard Ned 209 Lee, Mei-Hsien 382 left conservatism 23, 155 left-nationalism 48 legal consciousness (pravosoznanie, Ivan Ilyin) 55–56 Legoida, Vladimir 322 Leibman, Viacheslav 165, 166 Leninism, Slavophilism and 59 Lenin, Vladimir 56, 283, 292, 297 Leonidovich, Vadim 161 Leontʾev, Konstantin 37, 42–43, 142, 178 Leontʾev, Mikhail 133n15, 167, 234 Letter to the Soviet Leaders (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) 63, 86, 258, 261–264, 265, 268, 273, 274 LGBT LGBT activism 391 LGBT rights 105, 106, 117–118, 139, 191, 363, 379, 384 protection by anti-propaganda law 391– 392, 394 see also anti-gay propaganda laws/ legislation; homosexuality/ homosexuals

liberal authoritarianism 142n53 liberal conservatism 48, 355, 360 liberal-conservative consensus (“Sacred Unity”) 48 liberal democracy 20, 67, 96n50 communism v. 5, 63, 91, 296, 348, 391 liberal fundamentalism 270–271 liberalism 84, 92, 128, 188, 195, 296, 355 conservatism as counter-ideology 132 discourse on patriarchia.ru 246–247 merger with post-modernism 136, 142 new conservatism and 129, 135, 142 Young Conservatism/Young Conservatives and 153, 174 see also anti-liberalism liberalization 64, 136 liberal morality 247 liberal pluralism 247 liberal protests 234 liberal reform 39 liberal values 179, 190, 234, 237, 240, 250, 348 Liberty Counsel (US) 191 Library of Racial Thought (book series, raciology group) 185 Life.ru 172n34 Likhachev, Dmitry 290 limitrophes 265–266, 269, 271–272 “Great Limitrophe” 96, 265, 266, 267 instability of 266, 272 Limonov, Eduard 172 Lipovetsky, Mark 136, 316 liturgical tradition 327–328 Live Journal (LJ, blogs) 158, 159, 160, 163, 165, 171, 174 Lively, Scott 391 Lives of Remarkable People (series) 290 Lomonosov State University (Moscow) 131 Lossky, Nikolai 50, 86 Lossky, Vladimir 332, 333, 334 Loukianov, Mikhail 21 Louth, Andrew (Archpriest) 332, 333 Luhansk People’s Republic 6 Lukʾianenko, Sergei 8 Luks, Leonid 366–367 Luzhkov, Yuri 181n15 McDaniel, Timothy 212n22 Machiavelli, Niccolò 39

412 Mackinder, Halford 258 mainstream conservatism, radical conservatism v. 197 Maler, Arkady 26, 87, 170, 341–342, 355, 363 on Katechon 360–361 Malinova, Olga 215, 294 Malofeev, Konstantin 193 Mannheim, Karl 128, 135n25, 301, 344 on natural conservatism/traditionalism v. modern conservatism 137, 322–325, 329–330 on utopian nature of conservatism  81–82, 210, 286–287, 301 market economy 132, 160 Markov, Nikolai 46, 48 Martynov, Kirill 174 Marxism 61, 62, 65 Marxism-Leninism 21, 59 Marx, Karl 128, 130 Matilda (film) 314 The Meaning of Creativity (Nikolai Berdiaev) 50 media access 63, 64–65 Medinskii, Vladimir 7, 91 Medvedeva, Irina 106n14 Medvedev, Dmitry 3, 4–5, 171, 192 Melville, Andrei 145 Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia (Nikolai Karamzin) 37–38 Menʾ, Aleksandr 330 Merezhkovsky, Dmitry 49 Meshchersky, Vladimir 45 messianism American 195 Russian 59, 62, 64, 221, 356, 361 Berdiaev on 50–52 covenant v. expansionist messianism 85–87, 89 “messianic” roles of Russia 62, 222–226 Western 221, 222 see also mission Meyendorff, John (Archpriest) 332, 333, 334, 336, 339 Mezhuev, Boris 7n17, 355 on annexation of Crimea 87 career 161, 168, 171, 172, 258–259 on civilization 84, 96–97, 260, 261, 266, 267

Index on civilizational isolationism 25, 264, 265–268, 274 on civilizational realism 25, 261, 269–274, 274–275 on Eurasianism 263 on expansionism 263 on geopolitical isolationism 25, 259–265, 274 on multipolarity 271, 271n44 on Solzhenitsyn 25, 260–265, 266, 267, 268, 270, 273, 274 on Tsymbursky 87, 161, 162, 257n2, 260, 265–268, 274 Young Conservatism and 155–156, 161, 162, 169, 170, 172–173, 178, 258, 258n6 Middle East, protection of Christians in 225 migration/migrants 240 see also emigration/émigrés; immigration/ immigrants Mikhalkov, Nikita 7 Milbank, John 92, 94, 322 Militarev, Viktor 168–169, 170, 171, 172, 175 militarism 355, 358, 367, 371 military conflicts 249, 358 military coups 60 military-religious order 60 Millennium of Russia (monument, Tysiacheletie Rossii) 288 Mill, John Stuart 84 Milonov, Vitaly 380 mimetic rivalry 77–78, 78, 87, 91, 97, 98, 119 Minakov, Arkady 7 Minin and Pozharsky monument (Moscow) 308 Ministry of Foreign Affairs 217–219 see also foreign policy “Ministry of Trust” 48 minors, protection against homosexual propaganda 389, 390, 391, 394, 395 mission 62, 355, 362 American v. 212–213 conservative origins and content of  212–214 in foreign policy 208, 209–210, 217–219, 222–226, 228 functions of Russian 214, 228 geopolitical dimension of 213

Index progressive v. conservative missions  212–213 Russian mission toward Europe 248–249, 252 see also eschatology; messianism Mjør, Kåre Johan 21, 25 mladokonservatizm/mladokonservatory see Young Conservatism/Conservatives (mladokonservatizm) MNEPU (International Independent Environmental and Political University) 164 modern conservatism definition 128, 323 natural conservatism/traditionalism v. 137, 322–325, 329–330 see also new conservatism; Young Conservatism/Conservatives (mladokonservatizm) Modern Conspiracy (Emma Jane, Chris Fleming) 118 modernity 23, 60 European v. Western 143 (imagined) classical 23, 129, 130, 137, 138, 139, 144–145 processes of 139 de-humanization 139–140 de-socialization 141–142 de-sovereigntization 140–141 rejection of 136–137 see also post-modernity modernization 17, 19, 98, 129, 141 conservative 4, 5, 6 economical 4, 6, 138–139 political 21 reactionary 221 reflexive 140n45 Soviet 289 Moldova 133n19, 296 monarchism/monarchists 54–56, 57, 82, 82n14, 239, 352 monarchistic component in conservatism 82 see also Ilyin, Ivan; Nazarov, Mikhail monarchy 16, 21 absolute monarchy 21, 39, 54, 82 constitutional monarchy 54 rejection of 52

413 republicanism v. 54, 368–369 restoration of 63 monastic ideology 337–339 Mongols 53, 360 Monomakh’s Cap 313 Monroe Doctrine 91–92 Montenegro 82 monument of Vladimir the Great (Moscow) 26, 304, 305, 306 controversy 306–307 inauguration 308–312 political message 314–315, 316 sculptor 312–313 Mooney, Christopher Z. 382 moral conservatism 103, 117, 310, 315, 316 cultural approach to 111–114 meta-narrative of 104 mythological logic/storytelling and 114, 115–117 psychological basis of 109, 110, 112 violence and 111, 112, 116, 119, 121–124 see also conspiracy theories; scapegoating “moralist International”, Russian Orthodox Church as new 178, 197 morality policy framing 379, 382–385, 387, 388ill. anti-gay propaganda laws and 382–394 consequence-based frames 384 definition 382 deontological frames 384 players and arguments in debates on 383–384 private v. public behavior 387 procedural frames 384, 385, 386 rational-instrumental frames 384, 385, 386–387, 389 religious-moral frames 386–387, 389 “morality turn” 103, 108, 124, 191, 214, 215, 315 see also “conservative turn” “moralizing amoralism” (Luks) 366–367 moral pluralism 245, 246–247, 252 moral superiority 208, 210, 222, 226, 228 moral values 237, 238, 241, 242, 271, 295 European/Western 240, 248, 251 inter-traditional 90, 91 traditional-(spiritual) 6, 103, 104, 321 Moroz, Aleksy 381 Morozov, Viacheslav 216, 221

414 Moscow as capital of new “Conservative Internationale” 130 as Highest Rome 356 monument of Vladimir the Great in 26, 304–315, 316 rise of 342 as Third Rome 51, 85, 354, 356 Moscow Collection (K.P. Pobedonostsev) 44n23 Moscow Demographic Summit (2011) 192 Moscow Gazette 45 Moscow Patriarchate see Russian Orthodox Church Moscow Pride Parade 379–380 Moscow Skin Legion 181 Moscow Sretensky Monastery 243 Moscow State University 137, 164, 259 Moskva (journal) 65 Mouffe, Chantal 120 Movement against Illegal Immigration (DNPI) 182, 195 MP see Moscow Patriarchate Mucciaroni, Gary 379, 383–385, 386, 387, 394 multiculturalism 20, 23, 187, 282 multi-ethnicity 283 multinationality 195 multiple civilizations 89–90, 93, 94–95, 97 see also Groβräume theory multiple modernities theory (Eisenstadt) 144 multipolarity 93, 135, 216, 219, 220–221, 271, 271n44 “multi-unipolar world” (Vadim Tsymbursky) 271n44 Munich Speech (Putin, 2007) 3, 269 Muscovy 53, 292 Musil, Robert 314 Musin, Marat 244 Muslims 18, 183, 184, 186, 195 Mutti, Claudio 195 My Awakening (David Duke) 181 mystical Christianity 21 mystical fundamentalism 59–60 The Mystical as Political (Aristotle Papanikolaou) 343 mythological logic/storytelling 114 definition 115

Index moral conservatism and 115–117 rationality and 115–116 see also conspiracy theories Napoleon 21, 224 Narochnitskaia, Nataliia 25, 133n15, 294, 295–298, 299, 300 Naryshkin, Sergei 370 Nash Sovremennik (journal) 299 Nasledie predkov (The heritage of ancestors, newspaper) 185 nation civilization v. 84 concept of 155 “national concentration” (Solzhenitsyn) 263 national consolidation 48, 238, 242, 364 national culture 49, 55, 153 revival of 39, 40, 290 “national egoism” (Solzhenitsyn) 263 national identity 4, 6, 49–50, 108, 138, 143, 170, 197, 223 Church as element of 50, 131, 321 West as threat to 178, 239, 248 nationalism 60, 65, 86, 187, 188, 312, 315, 316, 361 conservatism and 18, 41, 59, 64, 68, 129, 238 cultural 37, 39–40, 293 ethnic 163 imperialism v. 87, 154, 155, 159 left 48 militarized 371 pan-European/European-style 178 popular representation and 46 post-Soviet 8, 289 role of Christianity/Orthodoxy in 60, 235, 238–239, 242, 243, 244, 247, 252, 340, 342, 350–351, 354, 365 romantic 21 White 182, 183, 184, 195 Young Conservatism and 153, 154, 155, 158, 159, 163, 167–168, 173 nationalist collectivism 51 nationality 82 multinationality 195 religious identity and 40 National Liberation Movement 174 National Organization for Marriage (US) 192

415

Index National Policy Institute (NPI, US) 187 National Power Party of Russia 185 National Question (Putin) 282–284 national regeneration (palingenesis/ polygenesis) 82, 211 National Rifle Association (US) 177 national security 90, 248, 249 National Security Strategy 90 national self-determination 43, 183, 227, 283, 283–284, 298 National Strategy Institute 137, 161 national unity 310, 311 nation-states 92, 141, 143n56 natural conservatism modern conservatism v. 137, 322–325, 329–330 see also traditionalism Nazarov, Mikhail 26, 352–355, 360n57, 363 anti-Semitism of 353, 354 on globalization 353–354 on imperialism 353, 354–355 Nazi Germany 60, 185, 250 Nazism/Nazis 180, 196, 224 Neo-Byzantinism 43, 360 neo-conservatism 269, 347, 361, 368 Orthodox background and perspectives 365–371 Russian v. American 178, 258n6, 349, 365–366 see also new conservatism/conservatives neo-Eurasianism 66, 131–132, 144, 360 neo-isolationism 265 neo-liberalism 132, 135, 142, 190, 191, 221 neo-paganism 194, 364 neo-patristic theology 329, 332–334, 338n61 Palamism and 334, 335, 336, 337, 338, 343 see also Florovsky, Georgy neo-Slavophiles 44, 178, 290 neutral secularism 245 New Age 364 New American Century (neoconservative project, US) 178 new conservatism/conservatives 128, 130–134, 217 on dehumanization 139–140 economic policy 135 post-modernist philosophy 135–136

see also Dugin, Aleksandr; Izborsky Club; neo-conservatism; Young Conservatism/Conservatives (mladokonservtizm) New Conservatives in Russia and East Central Europe (Bluhm, Varga) 8–9 New Resistance (Alt-Right website) 188 New Rome 340 new world order 88, 189, 216, 220–221, 353, 354, 356, 365 “messianic” role of Russia 222–226, 357, 364 Nezavisimaia gazeta (newspaper) 157n8 Nicholas II (Tsar of Russia, r. 1894-1917) 43, 44n23, 227, 307, 314, 315 Nicholas I (Tsar of Russia, r. 1825-1855) 41, 42 Nietzsche, Friedrich 194 Nifontov, Vadim (Sergei Kiziakov) 157, 159–160, 268n35 Nikolai Berdiaev Prize in the Legacy of Russian Thought 7 Nikonov, Viacheslav 6, 217n40 Noble, Ivana 333 nodal discourses (Fairclough) 240–241 non-Western partners 218 Noordenbos, Boris 136 North Korea 78, 368 Novaia gazeta (newspaper) 165, 174 Novgorod 288, 289–290 Novikov, Andrei (Archpriest) 362 NPI (National Policy Institute, US) 187 NRA (National Rifle Association, US) 177 nuclear energy 140n45 “nuclear Orthodoxy” 27, 357–359 nuclear shield 358 nuclear warfare 357, 358, 359, 365, 370 nuclear weapons 357, 359 Nystad Treaty (1721) 297 Oakeshott, Michael 10 OB 88 (88 United Brigades, skinhead movement) 181–182 Obama, Barack 191, 269 Obshchaia gazeta (The General Newspaper) 165 October Revolution (1917) 292 see also Russian Revolution (1917) Okhlobystin, Ivan 358–359

416 Olshansky, Dmitry 160, 165 On the Essence of Legal Consciousness (Ivan Ilyin) 55 online platforms, anti-Western 24, 235–236, 240 see also patriarchia.ru; ruskline.ru; vrns.ru onomatodoxy (Imiaslavie) debates 332 Open Revolt (Alt-Right website) 188 Optina Elders 337 Orange Revolution (Ukraine, 20042005) 88, 153, 170, 216, 269 Orbán, Viktor 103–104, 135 Orel 305 organic change 67, 78, 219, 220 organic communities/societies 10, 68, 78, 80, 81 organic growth/development 57, 59, 68, 80–81, 83–84, 222 organic unity 41, 120 Organization of Islamic Cooperation 218 Origins and Meaning of Russian Communism (Nikolai Berdiaev) 51 Orthodox Christianity see Orthodoxy Orthodox Church see Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) Orthodox civilization 26, 67, 263–264, 266, 267, 275, 296, 343, 362 see also “Russian World” project Orthodox conservatism 239, 251 actors 234–235, 241–244 far-right/nationalistic groups and 235, 236, 242, 243, 244, 349 Orthodox fundamentalism 59–60, 253, 335, 348, 349, 351, 352, 365, 367 Orthodox political theology 26, 85 as anti-Western stance 355–363 eschatology as background for 349, 350–352 see also Averianov, Vitaly; Kholmogorov, Egor; Maler, Arkady; Nazarov, Mikhail Orthodox websites 240 see also patriarchia.ru; ruskline.ru; vrns.ru Orthodoxy, Russian 53, 82, 234, 310, 335 Catholicism/Latinism v. 251, 331, 332, 335, 340, 341 patriotism and nationalism in 56, 60, 235, 238–239, 242, 243, 244, 247, 252, 340, 342, 350–351, 354, 365

Index

penetration into public sphere 241–242 Russian identity 50, 131, 321 superiority of 341, 356, 357 the West as enemy of 350, 352, 355 see also Orthodox political theology; Russian Orthodox Church Osipov, Vladimir 59, 60, 61 Ossetians 362 “other Europe”, Russia as the 143, 144, 248 Ottoman Empire 224 Pabst, Adrian 92, 94 Palamas, Saint Gregory 331, 332, 335, 336, 337–338, 339, 342 Palamism 26, 330–332, 335, 343 monastic ideology/ascetic practices 337– 339, 343 neo-patristic theology and 334, 335, 336, 337, 338, 343 political hesychasm and 339–342 theosis doctrine 337–338, 343 Palaver, Wolfgang 119–120 paleo-conservatism 187, 187n43 palingenesis/polygenesis (national regeneration) 82, 211 Pamiatʼ (Memory, society) 60 Panarin, Aleksandr 64, 96, 138 Papanikolaou, Aristotle 343–344 Papernyi, Vladimir 316 paranoid narratives see conspiracy theories The Paranoid Style in American Politics (Richard Hofstadter) 109 Parfentʾev, Pavel 193 Paris, Russian émigrés in 49, 332 Parker Yockey, Francis 194, 196 parliamentarism 21, 47, 82 “path-dependency” (theory) 82n14 patriarchia.ru (website, Moscow Patriarchate) 24, 235, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244 anti-Western criticism on 236, 244–247 on human rights 246 on individualism 246, 252 on liberal moral pluralism 245, 246–247, 252 on secularism 245–246, 252 patriotism 56, 59, 66, 67, 172, 173, 350, 358, 365, 368, 370

Index patristic tradition (Orthodoxy) 332, 333–334, 334–335, 336 see also neo-patristic theology patrology 333–334 Pavlov, Alexander 23, 169 Pavlovsky, Gleb 164, 169, 170, 171 Pax Americana 220 pedophilia 248, 380, 381 Pelevin, Viktor 17, 154 Perestroika 60, 63–67, 242, 292 Pershin, Dimitry 381 perversion/perverts 106–107, 113, 123 see also scapegoating Peter I (Tsar of Russia, r. 1682-1725) 14, 15, 38, 40, 41, 42, 52, 307, 313 see also Westernization Petrovsky-Petrovo-Solovovo, Mikhail 46 Petrunin, Vladimir 339 Philokalia (Dobrotoliubiia) 337 “philosophical steamship” (group of philosophers) 50, 54 The Philosophy of Inequality (Nikolai Berdiaev) 60 Pipes, Richard 18n64, 82, 82n14, 295 PiS (Law and Justice, Polish political party) 135 Pobedonostsev, Konstantin 44n23, 66, 178 Pogodin, Mikhail 287 Poklonskaia, Nataliia 174 Pokrovsky, Mikhail 297 Polis (journal) 168, 259 Politburo 18, 18n62, 261 political conservatism 130 political hesychasm 339–342 Political Hesychasm (Vladimir Petrunin) 339 political PR 154 political theology see Orthodox political theology Politicheskaia kritika Vadima Tsymburskogo (Boris Mezhuev) 257n2, 267 The Politics of Virtue (John Milbank, Adrian Pabst) 92 polycentrism 220, 222, 226 see also multipolarity polygenesis/palingenesis (national regeneration) 82, 211 Popova, Olga 213 Popovic, Justin 333

417 popular representation nationalism and 46 see also representative institutions populism 20, 86, 129, 313 Poroshenko, Petro 307 post-modern capitalism 129 post-modernism definition 136 merger with liberalism 136, 142 Western 129, 141 post-modernity 23 definition 135, 136 new conservatives on 138, 141 as totalitarian ideology 136 Western 129, 136 post-modern liberalism 139, 251 post-reform conservatism 37, 41–43 post-revolutionary conservatism 21 post-revolutionary Orthodoxy 335–336 see also Palamism post-Soviet conservatism 3, 294 post-structuralism, French 138 Prague, Russian émigrés in 49 pravoslavie.ru (Moscow Sretensky Monastery) 243–244, 363 pravosoznanie (legal consciousness) 55–56 pre-revolutionary conservatism 57, 58 pre-revolutionary Orthodoxy, Palamism v. 335 Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly 90 press, reformist trend in 45 Pride Parade (Moscow) 379–380 Primary Chronicle (Nestor) 305, 307, 309, 314 “primitive mind”, rational consciousness v. 112 private life, right to 140 private property 12, 16, 42, 56, 143 procedural frames (morality policy) 384, 385, 386 progressive conservatism 12, 16, 137–138 Progressive Nationalist Group 48 progressivism 322, 330, 348 Prokhanov, Aleksandr 26, 64, 65, 172, 180, 291, 368 on “atomic Orthodoxy” 359 on reconciliation of “Whites” and “Reds” 177, 234, 359

418 Prokhanov, Aleksandr (cont.) on Ukraine/Kiev 312, 313 on US history as example for Russia 177, 178 see also Izborsky Club Prokhorov, Gelian 339 Prokopovich, Feofan 36 pro-life movement 192–193 Prosvirnin, Egor 174 Prozorov, Sergei 294 pseudomorphosis (corrupted tradition) 333, 333n46, 335–336 Pskov 290 Pufendorf, Samuel 39 Purishkevich, Vladimir 46, 48 purposelessness communities/societies 78, 81, 83–84 Pushkin, Alexander 7, 157, 290 Pussy Riot affair (2012) 4, 191 Putinism 15, 19, 23, 63, 84, 131, 159 Putin, Vladimir 67, 79, 164, 182, 197, 294, 368 Alt-Right on 187–188 anti-revolutionarism of 281, 282, 284 authoritarian regime of 4, 14, 142n53 on collapse of Soviet Union 294, 299 on conservatism/conservative rule of 5, 130–131, 281, 284, 347 on continuity of Russian history 282, 283, 284, 299, 300 multipolar world theory 93 Munich speech 3, 269 National Question 282–284 on national self-determination/selfdefinition 283–284 on/promotion of Christian and traditional values 90–91, 183, 191–192, 196, 217 on Russia as distinct civilization 226, 283, 367 on security 357 on sovereignty 88–89, 308 speech at inauguration monument Vladimir the Great 304, 306, 308–309 Young Conservatism and 23, 153–154, 159, 161, 168, 175 see also “conservative turn” Rabow-Edling, Susanna 21

Index racial homogeneity 184 raciology group (Russian racialist movement) 185–186, 194, 195, 196 racism 24, 43 see also radical conservatism/conservative radicalization; radical right; white supremacists/supremacy theories racist violence 177, 179, 182, 183, 196 Radical Apocalypticism 368 radical conservatism/conservative radicalization 9, 14, 15, 22, 26, 179, 236, 238 connections between Russian and Western/US/European 177–179, 196–198 far-right trends in Orthodox community  235, 236, 242, 243, 244, 349 mainstream conservatism v. 197 similarities and differences between American and Russian 193–196 see also Alt-Right; Identitarians; raciology group; “Third Way”; white supremacists/supremacy theories Rasputin, Valentin 58, 65, 292 rational-instrumental frames (morality policy) 384, 385, 386–387, 389 rationalism/rationality mythological logic and 115–116 “primitive mind” v. 112 role in politics 348 Rauschning, Hermann 367 Reagan, Ronald 349 “Red” agenda in Russian conservatism (Laruelle) 234 reconciliation between “White” and 177, 359 see also Eurasianism; Izborsky Club Red Army 223 “red-brown” alliance 16, 16n54, 65–66 Reflections on the Revolution in France (Edmund Burke) 237, 284, 286, 287 reflexive modernization 140n45 reform 37, 41, 43, 209 see also bureaucratic reform; constitutional reform; post-reform conservatism; representative institutions reformist conservatism 13 regeneration of nations (palingenesis/ polygenesis) 82, 211

Index Reichstag 48 religion/religiosity 17, 53, 65, 251 and anti-Westernism 24, 25 choice of religion 309–310, 311 geopolitics and 85 see also Katechon legal consciousness and 55 persecution of religion 245 role in conservatism 16, 17, 26, 40, 163, 347, 349 see also Orthodoxy; Russian Orthodox Church religious-moral frames (morality policy) 386–387, 389 religious violence 122–123 Remizov, Mikhail 97, 133–134, 137, 155, 164, 166, 170, 171, 172, 175 on isolationism 161–162 Militarev v. 169 on (post)modernity 138–139, 139n42 representative institutions, role and form of 45–48 republicanism, monarchy v. 54, 368–369 Republican Party (US) 186 The Restoration of the Future (Egor Kholmogorov) 163–164 Retainer see Katechon revolutions conservatism as response to 284–287 revolutionary origins of Russia 25, 281, 282 see also anti-revolutionarism; French Revolution; Russian Revolution RIAC (Russian International Affairs Council) 219 Riazanʾ Oblast 380 right-wing activists, underground 21, 57–63, 64 right-wing politics conservatism v. 11, 14 on representative institutions 46–48 on social consolidation 48 Western 135 see also radical conservatism/conservative radicalization RISI (Russian Institute for Strategic Research) 13 Riurik (Prince of Ladoga and Novgorod, r. 862-879) 288

419 ROC see Russian Orthodox Church Rodina party 185 Rogozin, Dmitry 64, 65, 175 Romanides, John 333 Romanov Empire 21, 52, 55, 234 romantic conservatism 37, 39–41 see also Slavophiles/Slavophilism Romanticism, German 37, 39 romantic nationalism 21 see also Slavophiles/Slavophilism romantic theology 328 Rome see “Highest Rome”; “Last Rome”; “Third Rome” Rose Revolution (Georgia, 2003) 216 Rossiia: Zemlia za Velikim Limitrofom (Vadim Tsymbursky) 267, 268 Rozanov, Vasily 157 Rudakov, Aleksandr 87 rusdoctrina.ru 163 Rusʾ (historical Russia) 26, 309, 362 ruskline.ru (radical nationalistic news site) 24–25, 235–236, 241, 243, 244 on anti-capitalism 250–251, 252 on geopolitical confrontation 249–250, 252 on human rights 251 on post-Christian Europe 251, 252 on secularism 251 rusk.ru 235–236 Rus’ Pravoslavnaia (journal) 235, 243 Russia alliance between China, India and Russia 161 cultural development 42 history of see historical continuity of Russia as the “other Europe” 143, 144, 248 position within Europe 250 Russian-US relations 161, 360, 361 shared history/reunion with Ukraine and Belarus 95–96, 307, 309, 313, 355, 360, 362, 369 as world arbiter/savior 88, 223–224, 226, 353 see also Katechon Russia Abroad (Zarubezhnaia Rossiia, community of Russians) 49–50 Russia and the Contemporary World (pamphlet) 292

420 Russia Insider (news website) 189 Russia: the land beyond the Great Limitrophe (Vadim Tsymbursky) 267, 268 Russia - My Homeland (Gennady Ziuganov) 292 Russian Banner (newspaper) 46 Russian conservatism core principles/features 207, 219, 238 cultural context of 85–88 definition 304 dilemma’s of 14–20 history see history of Russian conservatism Western/European/American v. 23–24, 37, 78, 81, 82, 179, 195, 211, 211n16, 237–239, 284 Russian Constitution 309, 315 Russian Doctrine (Institute for Dynamic Conservatism, 2005) 132, 132n15, 134, 363, 366, 367, 368 Russian Doctrine (Russkaia doktrina, ideological experiment) 178 eschatology and 363–365 Russian Doctrine (WRPC, 2007) 242 Russian Empire 283, 292 Russian Empire (super-state) 88 The Russian Hoopoe (online magazine) 159 The Russian Idea (Nikolai Berdiaev) 51–52 Russian Idea (Russkaia ideia) 212, 212n22, 226–227, 289, 353 Russian Idea (website) 259, 353 Russian identity see national identity Russian Institute for Strategic Research (RISI) 13 Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) 219 Russian International Conservative Forum (Saint Petersburg) 186 Russian Journal (Russkii zhurnal, Fund for Effective Politics) 164, 166, 169, 170, 172, 174 Russian March (nationalist demonstration) 182 Russian National Union 181 “Russian nation” concept 67 see also “Russian World” project “Russianness” 59, 68, 94 Russian Orthodox Church, traditionalism in 321–323, 325–330

Index Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) 39, 51 (anti-)gay/LGBT propaganda and 27, 379, 380–382, 385, 390, 392–393, 394 Church-state relations 235, 370, 393 far-right Orthodox conservatism and 235, 236, 242, 243, 244, 349 American Christian Right 24, 190–193, 194, 196, 197 as leading/universal church/faith  178–179, 341, 356, 357, 360 (neo)-patristic tradition/theology  332–335, 334n53, 336 return to public life 66, 288, 289, 334 role in conservative turn/conservatism 3, 7, 8, 17, 20, 26, 234–235, 321 role in legal debates/issues 27, 105, 309–310, 380–382, 390–391, 392–393, 394 as symbol of national consolidation and identity 50, 131, 321, 364 tradition in 321–323, 325–330 see also Kirill; Orthodox conservatism; Orthodox political theology; Orthodoxy, Russian; patriarchia.ru; World Russian’s People Council “Russian path” 238, 239, 249 Russian People’s Union of the Archangel Michael 46–47 Russian Revolution (1905) 21, 25, 45, 305 Russian Revolution (1917) 25, 52, 53, 57, 281, 292, 295, 335, 353 Russian Special Forces (newspaper) 165n22 Russian Spring (2014) 153, 172, 270 “Russian World” project (Russkii Mir) 6, 22, 67, 84, 93–94, 131, 143 Russian Young Conservatism (mladokonservatizm) see Young Conservatism/Young Conservatives (mladokonservatizm) Russia and Russians in World History (Nataliia Narochnitskaia) 295 Russia’s Foreign Policy in a Historical Perspective (Sergei Lavrov) 226–227 Russkaia ideia (Russian Idea) 212, 212n22, 226–227, 289, 353 Russkaia narodnaia liniia see ruskline.ru Russkii arkhipelag (website, The Russian archipelago) 259

Index Russkii Mir see “Russian World” project Russkii Mir Fund 217n40 Russkii vestnik (journal) 185 Russkii zhurnal (journal) 259 Russo-Georgian War (2008) 3, 272, 362 “Russophobia” 247–248 Rutskoi, Aleksandr 65 Ryan, Charlotte 382 “Sacred Unity” (politics of liberalconservative consensus) 48 Saint Petersburg legislation against propaganda of homosexualism  380–382 St. Tikhon Orthodox University 336 Saint Vladimir Cathedral (Kiev) 307 Sakharov, Sophrony 333 salvation, “policy of separate salvation” 262, 263, 273 Samarin, Fedor 45n29 Samarin, Yuri 39n9 same-sex relations see homosexuality/ homosexuals Satan 351 Savage, Kirk 316 Savelʾev, Andrei 185 Savenko, Anatoly 48 Savitsky, Petr 52, 96 Scandinavia 183 scapegoating (theory, Girard) 22 conspiracy theories 117–119 erasure of cultural differences 112, 113 moral panic 111–112 mythological logic/conspiracy theories and 114–117, 118 overcoming inner crises 111, 112, 113, 114, 117–121 “primitive mind” v. rational consciousness  112 role/profile of scapegoats 111, 113 violence and 111, 112, 116, 119, 121–124 Schiller Institute for Science and Culture 190 Schmemann, Aleksandr 327, 329n37 Schmitt, Carl 9, 22, 79, 88, 91–92, 96, 97, 155, 194, 315n33 see also Groβräume-theory science fiction literature 7–8, 159

421 Second Coming 357 Second Duma 46 Second World War 54, 219, 291, 298 secular art 55 secularism/secularization 117, 216, 221, 224, 240, 245, 246, 252 secular kenosis 86 Sedgwick, Mark 9 segregation 180, 195, 196 self-consciousness, ethnic 167 self-definition, Putin on national 283–284 self-description/determination 53 conservatism as 11 self-determination, national 53, 183, 227, 283, 283–284, 298 self-government 44–45, 55 self-identification 226 self-legitimation 234 self-sufficient communities 78 Semanov, Sergei 290 Semenov, Viacheslav 258 Serafim of Sarov, Saint 243, 315 serfdom 288 Sergius of Radonezh, Saint 315, 340, 341 Sevastianov, Aleksandr 185 sexuality/sexual differences, moral panic about 22, 111–112 sexual minorities’ rights see gay rights; LGBT Shanghai Cooperation 218 Sharapov, Sergei 44, 45 Shcherbakov, Salavat 312–313 Shchipkov, Aleksandr 12, 244 shelf (aspect of “Island Russia” theory) 271– 273, 272n48 Shimanov, Gennady 60, 61–63 Shishkov, Andrey 26 Shishova, Tatʾiana 106n14 Shnirelman, Victor 26 shock therapy (Gaidar) 190 Shulʾgin, Vasily 48 Siberia 183–184, 186, 195, 262 Silver Age 59 situational approach to conservatism 10 The Sixth Hour (Vasilii Belov) 64 skinhead movements 181–182, 195, 196 Skinner, Quentin 300 Skuratov, Anatoly 59 Skurlatov, Valery 60–61, 63

422 Skvortsov, Vasily 48 slavery, American 180 Slavophiles/Slavophilism 38, 42, 56, 58, 82, 109, 167, 173, 179, 236 Leninism and 59 romantic conservatism 37 romantic nationalism 21, 39–41 underground 59–61 Smirnov, Dimitrii 359 Smith, Anthony 85, 208 Snyder, Timothy 54n57 sobornostʾ (concept) 246 social change 12, 37, 81, 82, 154–155, 237 social conservatism 4, 12, 132, 187n43 social consolidation 48 socialism 58, 128, 132, 294 social liberalism 191 social networks 140, 158, 160 see also Live Journal social unity 120 Soffer, Reba 347 “soft-power”, conservatism as 94, 130–131, 137, 139, 143 Sokolov, Maksim 167, 172 Soloukhin, Vladimir 58, 64, 65 Solovʾev, Sergei 287, 288 Solovʾev, Vladimir 56, 259, 332, 333 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr 170 on civilization 266, 268 on geopolitical isolationism 86–87, 95, 261–265, 270, 273, 274 Letter to the Soviet Leaders 63, 86, 258, 261–264, 265, 268, 273, 274 Mezhuev on 25, 260–265, 266, 267, 268, 270, 273, 274 policy of separate salvation 262, 263, 273 Tsymbursky on 258, 268 Solzhenitsyna, Nataliia, speech at inauguration monument Vladimir the Great 304, 310–311, 312 Sonderweg, Russian 66, 67, 178, 197 Sophiology 333 Sorokin, Vladimir 17 Sorok sorokov (Forty Times Forty movement) 235 “Source of Abomination” 107, 108 South Africa 180 Southern Poverty Law Center 187

Index sovereign democracy 84, 88, 94, 308 sovereignty 78, 84, 89, 141 Soviet ideology 167, 289, 290 Soviet Russia (newspaper) 291 Soviet Union 227 collapse of 49, 160, 178, 180, 273–274, 283, 286, 290, 291, 295, 348 modernization 17, 289 Soviet history 289, 290–291, 295, 296, 297, 298, 299 Soviet past v. conservative identity 16–17, 25, 297 Soviet power and traditionalism 61–62 statue culture 305, 313 see also historical continuity of Russia; Letter to the Soviet Leaders space exploration 140n45 Spencer, Richard 186–187, 188, 189, 193–194, 195, 196 Spengler, Oswald 9, 258, 333n46 Speransky, Mikhail 37 spiritual-cultural identity 108 spiritual sovereignty 89 spiritual values 238, 246 in Europe 248, 252 Sputnik 189 stability 3, 4, 13n40, 18, 77, 214, 221, 223, 363, 365 Stalinism 57, 60, 173, 174, 290, 295, 300n60, 316 rehabilitation of 65–66 Stalin, Joseph 6, 65–66, 294, 297, 313, 316 Stalin and Our Times (Gennady Ziuganov) 294 “standstill” (zastoi) 13n40, 58 Staniloae, Dumitru 333 State, role in legal consciousness 55–56 State Council 45, 46, 47, 48 State Duma Elections (2016) 234 state interference/domination 41 statistics, conspiracy theories and 114–115 statues 307–308 re-erection of 305–306 Russian statue culture 313–314 see also monument of Vladimir the Great Statute of Morals (Valery Skurlatov) 60, 63 Stepanova, Elena 109–110 Stepanov, Anatoly 243

Index Stepun, Fyodor 49 stereotypical accusations see scapegoating Stoeckl, Kristina 249 Stolypin, Petr 305 “strait territories” (territorii-prolivy, zone of nations between Russia and European continent) see “Great Limitrophe” Stranahan, Lee 189 Strategic Culture Foundation 243, 243n35 Struve, Petr 49 Studlar, Donley T. 383 A Study of Gregory Palamas (John Meyendorff) 332 superpower status, preservation of 263 Surkov, Vladislav 84, 88, 97, 154, 171 Suslov, Mikhail 21, 22, 93n47, 211 Suvchinsky, Petr 52 Sviatenkov, Pavel 162, 164–165, 169, 170, 171–172, 175 on nation 155, 172 on origins of Young Conservatism 160 on The Conservative 165, 166 Sviatopolk-Mirsky, Dmitry 52 Switzerland, Russian émigrés in 54, 289 Synodal Biblical-Theological Commission 363 Syria 218, 269–270 Syromiatnikov, Sergei 44–45 Tabor Light (Uncreated Divine Light) 331 Tatars 52–53 Tatishchev, Vasily 36 taxation 142n53 Taylor, Jared 184–185, 186, 193, 194, 195 Tchaikovsky, Petr 312 Tcherni, Maria 105 technological progress 261, 262 Terre et Peuple (movement) 185 territorii-prolivy see “strait territories” terrorism 161, 218, 269 Tetradi po konservatizmu (journal, ISEPI) 6, 7, 259 Texas A&M University 182 Thatcherism 173, 211n18, 365 Theophan the Recluse 337 A Theory of Conservatism (Francis G. Wilson) 237 theosis (obozhenie, theological doctrine) 337–338, 343

423 “third continent” theory 96 Third Duma 46 The Third Empire (Mikhail Iurʾev) 87–88 “Third International” 51 “Third Rome”, Russia/Moscow as 20, 51, 85, 340, 351, 353, 354–355, 356, 358, 361, 364 “Third Way” 179, 189–190, 196 “thousand-year history” idea 281–282, 283, 284, 287–291, 292, 293, 294, 295, 297, 298, 299, 305 The Thousand-Year-Old Roots of Russian Culture (Gennadi Naryshkin)  289–290 Tian-Shansky, Petr 258 Tikhomirov, Lev 178 Tikhon (Shevkunov, Metropolitan/ Bishop) 6, 108n22, 133n15, 243–244, 340, 341 Time of Troubles 283, 286, 308 Timofeevsky, Aleksandr 165 Tkachev, Andrei (Archpriest) 244 Toal, Gerard 368 Tocqueville, Alexis de 285 To the Leader of the Third Rome (Mikhail Nazarov) 353 Tolstaia, Tatiana 165 Tomorrow (Zavtra, newspaper) 65, 166 Torshin, Aleksandr 177 totalitarianism 55, 106, 136, 142, 245, 297–298, 354 Tovarishch (Comrade, club) 169 traditionalism 14, 16, 17, 21, 62, 187, 348 critical v. romantic approach 26, 326–330 definition 322–323 (modern) conservatism v. 137, 322–325, 329–330 in Russian Orthodox Church 321–323, 325–330 see also natural conservatism Traditionalist Worker Party (US) 183 Traditionalist Youth Network (US) 184 traditional values 13n43, 17, 19–20, 22, 24, 65, 107, 110, 119, 218 as basis for international order 224 Christian values 187, 191, 192, 197, 216, 251 as core principles/basis of conservatism  57, 211, 219

424 traditional values (cont.) family values 19, 21, 63, 90, 191, 217, 381 modern conservatism and 137 Putin on 90–91, 183, 191–192, 196, 217 Russian v. Western/American 89, 194, 195, 216–217, 234, 237, 240 Soviet geopolitical power and 61–62 streamlining into conservative doctrine 79 as transnational ideology 19–20 universalism of 97 transgenderism 381 see also LGBT Trinity Monastery (Moscow) 341 Triumph of Orthodoxy (holiday) 335 Trotsky, Leon 297 Trubetskoi, Nikolai 52, 53 Trump, Donald 20, 104, 187, 188, 189, 349 tsar, role and power of 38, 44, 47, 82 Tsargrad (Internet tv channel) 175, 193 Tsarist Russia 82, 234 Tsygankov, Andrei 109n24, 257–258, 259 Tsymbursky, Vadim 157, 160–162, 259 on civilization 162, 260, 265, 267, 268 on civilizational isolationism 87, 257–258, 265–268, 273, 274 on Eurasianism 95–96 “Island Russia” theory 95–96, 161, 257, 258, 265–266, 268, 271, 272, 273 Mezhuev on 25, 87, 161, 162, 175, 257n2, 260, 265–268, 274 on Solzhenitsyn 258, 268 Tsypko, Aleksandr 370 Tulaev, Pavel 185 Tulip Revolution (Kyrgyzstan, 2005) 216 Turkey 92, 209 Tysiacheletie Rossii (monument, “Millennium of Russia”) 288 Ukraine 87, 181, 316, 342, 369 Orange Revolution 170, 216 shared history/reunion with Russia and Belarus 95, 307, 309, 313, 360, 362, 369 Vladimir the Great and 26, 305, 306, 307, 315 see also Ukrainian conflict Ukrainian Church (Moscow Patriarchate) 362–363

Index Ukrainian crisis/conflict (2013-14) 5, 89, 94, 133, 153, 182, 189, 218, 270, 307, 312 Ukrainian Revolution (2013) 153 Uncreated Divine Light (Tabor Light) 331 underground conservatism 21, 57–63, 64 see also Shimanov, Gennady UN Human Rights Commission 218 unilateralism 190, 223 Union of the Archangel Michael 46–47 Union of Orthodox Citizens 190 Union of the Russian People 46 unipolarism 195, 220, 365 uniqueness see exceptionalism, geopolitical United Nations 220, 223 United Russia (political party) 4–5, 6, 13n40, 135, 171, 308 United States 17, 87, 91, 92, 140, 142, 217, 349 involvement in presidential elections 20, 24 isolationism 264–265, 264n24, 265n25 radical conservatism in 24, 177–179 rejection as social model 141 Russian-US relations 20, 161, 179, 360, 361 Russian v. US conservatism 23, 177, 191, 197 universalism 90, 91, 97, 295 universalist individualism 51 Universal Russian People’s Assembly 87 universal uniform conservatism 348 Unlearned Lessons from Vadim Tsymbursky (Boris Mezhuev) 271–272, 272n48 The Uprooting of European Identity (Richard Spencer) 186 “us”-communities 18, 22, 66, 84, 93, 113 Ustav nravov (Statute of Morals, Valery Skurlatov) 60, 63 utopianism 50, 56 utopian nature of conservatism (Mannheim) 81–82, 210, 286–287, 301 Uvarov, Sergei 316 Uzbekistan 161 Uzlaner, Dmitry 22 Valdai Club 191 Vander Plaats, Bob 191 Varga, Mihai 9 Vasey-Saunders, Mark 117–118

Index Vasilʾeva, Olga 6, 7 Vasilʾev, Dmitry 60 Vatican 362 Vdovin, Aleksei 181 Veche (samizdat journal) 59, 61, 65 Vekhi (Signposts, manifesto) 178 Velikii limitrof see “Great Limitrophe” Vernadsky, Georgy 52, 53 The Viking (film, 2016) 26, 304, 314–316 village prose movement (derevenshchiki) 58, 64, 65 Vincent of Lerins, Saint 325n22 violence Christendom and 122–123 collective 116–117, 119 moral conservatism and 111, 112, 116, 119, 121–124 racist 177, 179, 182, 183, 196 religious 122–123 scapegoating and 111, 112, 116, 119, 121–124 Vision America 191 Vlaams Blok (Flemish nationalist party) 184 Vladimir the Great (Grand Prince of Kiev, r. 980-1015) 304, 306 as Christianizer of Rusʾ 26, 305, 308, 309, 310, 315 as founder of Russian state 315 see also monument of Vladimir the Great; Viking, The Volodikhin, Dmitry 159, 169 Volodimerov, Sviatoslav 47 Volodymyr see Vladimir the Great Voloshin, Aleksandr 154 Vostorgov, Ivan 48 vrns.ru (WRPC website) 235, 236, 240, 241, 242, 244, 247–249 on geopolitical confrontation 247–248, 249, 252 on Russia’s mission toward Europe  248–249, 252 on spiritual and moral crisis in Europe  248, 252 VSKhSON (underground organization) 60, 60n70, 65 Vytautas the Great (Grand Duke of Lithuania, r. 1392-1430) 288 Walicki, Andrzej 81, 208n5

425 Wallerstein, Immanuel 135n26, 213 war social attitude toward 369–370 see also nuclear warfare Ware, Kallistos 333 War on Terror 269 Washington Consensus 134 The Way (émigré journal) 51 Ways of Russian Theology (Georgy Florovsky) 335–336 Weber, Max 77n1 websites anti-Western criticism on 24, 235–236 see also apn.ru; patriarchia.ru; ruskline.ru; vrns.ru Weimar liberalism 366 Western conservatism 103, 284 Russian v. 23–24, 37, 78, 81, 82, 179, 195, 211, 211n16, 237–239, 284 see also Burke, Edward Western idealization 64 Westernization 14, 19, 21, 22, 38, 39, 40, 52, 68, 78, 81, 83, 98 West, the differentiation between “Europe” and 142–143, 197 as enemy of Orthodoxy 350, 352, 355 geopolitical fear of/confrontation with 25, 239–240, 247–248, 249–250, 252 hegemonic position 20, 23, 24, 216, 221, 224, 225 recognition from 14, 24 as reference point for civilizational identity 236 relationship/dialogue with 3, 59, 178, 179, 239–240, 270, 292, 294 as threat to national identity 178, 239, 248 see also anti-Westernism “White” agenda in Russian conservatism (Laruelle) 234 reconciliation between “Red” and 177, 359 White emigration 234 White Identity (Jared Taylor) 184 White movement 54 white nationalism 182, 183, 184, 195 see also Identitarians; raciology group

426 White Power see white supremacists/ supremacy theories white supremacists/supremacy theories 184, 195 Russian and American 180–183 see also Alt-Right movement; Duke, David; Ku Klux Klan; Spencer, Richard White World association 186 Why Do We Fight? (Guillaume Faye) 184 Wiginton, Preston 182, 193 Wilson, Francis G. 237 Wilson, Woodrow 283 World Congress of Families 192–193, 391 world order 227 “natural” v. “unnatural changes” in  220–221 revision of 207, 209–210, 218, 220–221, 226 traditional values as basis of 224 see also new world order World Russian Assembly 89 World Russian People’s Council (WRPC) 24, 25, 235, 236, 240, 242–243, 244, 247, 248 see also vrns.ru “world supranational system” (Averianov) 356 Writers’ Union of Russia 185, 242 WRPC (World Russian People’s Council) 24, 25, 235, 236, 240, 242–243, 244, 247, 248 see also vrns.ru Yablokov, Ilya 108 Yakovlev, Egor 165 Yanukovich, Viktor 362–363 Yeltsin, Boris 65, 66, 153, 159, 173, 294, 299 Yeʾor, Bat 195

Index Young Conservatism/Conservatives (mladokonservatizm) 23, 25, 178 aftermath 172–175 ideas and politics 153–157, 158 influence on Russian leadership 178 institutionalization of 162–168 on isolationism 269 nationalism and 153, 154, 155, 158, 159, 163, 167–168, 173 origins and ideological sources 157–162 Putin and 23, 159, 161, 168, 175 rise and fall 168–172, 174 see also apn.ru; Galkovsky, Dmitry; Kholmogorov, Egor; Kiziakov, Sergei; Krylov, Konstantin; Mezhuev, Boris; Militarev, Viktor; Remizov, Mikhail; Sviatenkov, Pavel; Tsymbursky, Vadim Young Conservatism (Germany) 153 “young elders” (mladostarchestvo), condemnation by Church authorities 337, 337–338n61 Zalygin, Sergei 58 Zarakol, Ayse 209 zastoi (“standstill”) 13n40, 58 Zatulin, Konstantin 65 Zavtra (newspaper, formerly Denʼ) 65, 166 Zemshchina (journal) 47 Zepp-LaRouche, Helga 190 Zevelev, Igor 225 Ziuganov, Gennady 25, 65, 291–294, 299, 300 on Russian civilization 292–293 on Russian history 292–294 Žižek, Slavoj 121 Zizioulas, John 333 Zygmont, Aleksei 118