Pre-Eurasian Motives in Russian Social Thought of the Nineteenth Century: Intersections of Chinese Influence as a Far East Culture and Egyptian Influence as a Mediterranean Culture

Eurasianism as a political thought had important roots in the nineteenth century. One of the most noted pre-Eurasianists, Nikolay Danilevsky, was the first scholar ever to contrast Russia as a Eurasian country to the Western civilisation, mainly Europe. Danilevsky’s understanding of Eurasianism was radical. He did not recognise any possibility of considering Russian Eurasia as an analogue of Europe with similar values and cultural preferences. The whole of Eurasia was potentially or really influenced by Russian culture, according to him. Danilevsky and his supporters, late Slavophiles Nikolay Strakhov and Konstantin Leontyev used the Chinese phenomenon of strict contradiction with European values and lifestyle to support their views about Russia. In fact, Danilevsky’s use of the Chinese case can be explained by research and social activities of Fr Hieromonk Hyacinth (secular name Nikolay) Bichurin, the first Russian professional sinologist. In the paper, I study the maps and works of Fr Hyacinth and conclude that his original pre-Eurasianism was based on the idea about the united Mongolian cultural, administrative and legal legacy of Russian Empire, Chinese Empire, countries of Larger Confucian Belt and Mongolia prime. In his historical map of the first four Mongol khans, including Genghis Khan, he places Russian Empire along with Xi Xia, the Tangut Kingdom of the thirteenth century, and Genghis Khan’s lands. Such an anachronism helps to see Bichurin’s notion of Eurasia better. For him, this map demonstrated diachronic Mongolian influence on the Eurasian states and therefore the unification of their cultures, judicial codes (related to Mongolian Yasa) and vectors of civilisational development. Unlike Danilevsky, Bichurin did not distinguish between Chinese and Russian cultures, as he considered them homogeneous and mutually penetrable. I argue that Danilevsky and his aides inscribed Bichurin’s geographical and historical ideas about China into their Eurasian concept, having received the solid foundation of using the Chinese uniqueness as a proof of the Eurasian essence of Russia. There was a different trend in Russian social thought of the nineteenth century, whose representatives refused seeing the Chinese case and its influence on Russia (through Russian Siberia, or Great Tartary, as it was known for centuries before the establishment of the Russian Empire by Peter the Great) as an evidence of Russia’s uniqueness and its irreducibility to the Western civilisation. The main advocate of this group was the Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyev. Solovyev had to explain the specificity of the Chinese case somehow. Initially he inclined towards admitting China’s being an exception of his universalist programme. What was Eurasianism for Danilevsky, Strakhov and Leontyev, was “pan-Mongolism” for Solovyev, his greatest socio-cultural fear that Europe may surrender to the assault of combined Siberian, Mongolian, Far East and Southeast Asian forces. According to Solovyev’s universalist viewpoint, the Western civilisation was the “only” true civilisation, since it was built on the Christian values universal for the whole world. The rest of non-Western Eurasia was regarded a Barbarian territory that needed gradual Christianisation and embedding into the European (for Solovyev, that meant universal) civilisation. Solovyev criticised Danilevsky’s concept of cultural-historical types vehemently. The bitter scholastic rivalry was initiated by Danilevsky who published his critique essay Vladimir Solovyev about Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism which contained a furious attack on Solovyev’s work Great Dispute and Christian Politics. Danilevsky criticised a Solovyev’s attempt to explain universalism of Eurasian history on the basis of West–East opposition, where the leading, active role was ascribed to the Western cultures that presumably formed the principle of “human self-activism” (a term introduced by Solovyev). According to Danilevsky, the Eastern cultures, including the Chinese case, could not be understood as Solovyev did, i..e. they could not be reduced to meditational and passive perception of the supernatural. China, as Danilevsky argued, is indeed a country in a strong opposition to the West, but its technical, administrative, social and cultural experience is not in the least less active or valuable than the European experience. The main difference is that the European civilisation was built upon the principle of conquest of the other, while the Chinese civilisation as a truly Eurasian civilisation upon the respect to the other that is dissimilar with it. Russia as a counterpart of China in Eurasia, as Danilevsky believed, was “historically called and predestined” to the similar attitude. Therefore, Russia did not wage annexionist wars. Solovyev attacked Danilevsky’s view in his article “China and Europe” (1890). Later, Solovyev introduced some corrections into his concept of the Chinese case by careful comparing Chinese and Japanese cultures in his paper “Japan” (1890). Solovyev admitted that the huge Chinese civilisation, including states of the Larger Confucian Belt, was mainly built on the foundation of order, while Europe on the foundation of progress. However, Solovyev finally wrote, “China has reached strong order, it is doubtless. But whether the European progress may lead to social perfection is a question.” On the whole, Vasily Rozanov sustained Solovyev’s critical attitude towards pan-Mongolian Eurasianism, including the Chinese case, but from the other side. According to Rozanov, the European civilisation was the product of developing Mediterranean Oecumene. The latter emerged from the Egyptian culture, literally on its ruins. Rozanov believed that all European cultural, religious and legal inheritance was connected with Egypt, the “land of abundance.” Eurasian heritage was mainly associated with Confucianism and China. Therefore, as Rozanov argued, in the development of Russia, there are two distinct vectors, the Egyptian and Chinese ones. They cannot be reconciled and melded into a single geographical, historical, political and cultural mixture. The analysis of pre-Eurasianist or sometimes anti-pre-Eurasianist beliefs of Russian social thinkers Fr Hyacinth Bichurin, Nikolay Danilevsky, Nikolay Strakhov, Konstantin Leontyev, Vladimir Solovyev and Vasily Rozanov gives an opportunity to trace sources of Eurasianism of the twentieth century as a political movement and political organisation