Russian Political Philosophy: Anarchy, Authority, Autocracy

289 Pages·2022·2.121 MB·English

by  Evert van der Zweerde

Russian Political Philosophy
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Edinburgh Studies in Comparative Political Theory & Intellectual
History
Series Editor: Vasileios Syros
Edinburgh Studies in Comparative Political Theory & Intellectual
History welcomes scholars interested in the comparative study of
intellectual history/political ideas in diverse cultural contexts and
periods of human history and Comparative Political Theory (CPT).
The series addresses the core concerns of CPT by placing texts from
various political, cultural and geographical contexts in conversation.
It calls for substantial reflection on the methodological principles of
comparative intellectual history in order to rethink of some of the
conceptual categories and tools used in the comparative exploration
of political ideas. The series seeks original, high-quality monographs
and edited volumes that challenge and expand the canon of readings
used in teaching intellectual history and CPT in Western universities.
It will showcase innovative and interdisciplinary work focusing on
the comparative examination of sources, political ideas and concepts
from diverse traditions.
Available Titles:
Simon Kennedy, Reforming the Law of Nature: The Secularisation
of Political Thought, 1532–1689
Lee Ward, Recovering Classical Liberal Political Economy: Natural
Rights and the Harmony of Interests
Evert van der Zweerde, Russian Political Philosophy: Anarchy,
Authority, Autocracy
Forthcoming:
Leandro Losada, Machiavelli in Argentina and Hispanic America,
1880–1940: Liberal and Anti-Liberal Political Thought in Com-
parative Perspective
Filippo Marsili and Eugenio Menegon, Translation as Practice:
Intercultural Encounters between Europe and China and the
Creation of Global Modernities
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Russian Political
Philosophy
Anarchy, Authority, Autocracy
EVERT VAN DER ZWEERDE
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has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).
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Contents
Introduction vii
Acknowledgements xv
Glossary of Russian Concepts xvi
Timeline xx
1. The Origins of Political Philosophy in Russia 1
2. First Debates in Russian Political Philosophy –
‘What Is to be Done?’ 18
3. Socialism and Marxism in Russia: The Peasant Commune
is Dead – Long Live the Peasant Commune! 37
4. Christian Political Philosophy in a Modernising
World – Preparing for God’s Kingdom 55
5. Russian Liberalism Revisited – Between a Rock and
a Hard Place 75
6. The Long Russian Revolution – Signposts for a
Roller Coaster 92
7. Soviet Marxism–Leninism and Political Philosophy –
Never Mind the Gaps! 109
8. Christian Political Philosophy in Exile – Between
Sobornost’ and Theocracy 129
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vi | russian political philosophy
9. Counter-Soviet Political Philosophy in Emigration –
Beyond the Pale 147
10. Late Soviet and Early Post-Soviet Political
Philosophy – Licking the Wounds 165
11. Political Philosophy for a New Russia –
New Wine in Old Bottles? 185
Conclusion – Mediation Beyond Duality and Immediacy 202
Afterword 211
Bibliography 212
Index 245
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Introduction
I beg you in advance, please don’t think that all the charlatans of
the world are living in your country. They are everywhere! Forget,
generally, about Russia’s exclusivity.
Aleksandr M. Piatigorskii, Chto takoe politicheskaia filosofiia:
razmyshleniia i soobrazheniia (Piatigorskii 2007: 38)
The topic of this book is political philosophy in Russia. The fact
that, to date, there is no monograph on this topic, is suggestive,
not of the absence of the phenomenon it seeks to address, but of
its intrinsic sensitivity. Whenever philosophy becomes political, it
is looked upon with suspicion by the authorities in place. Although
Russia is not unique on this point, it certainly is extreme. For long
periods of time, philosophy generally has been either forbidden or
subordinated by the incumbent regime (tsarist or Soviet), while
political philosophy as a separate academic discipline is almost
non-existent. This implies that one has to look for political phi-
losophy in unexpected places. Sources include diaries, letters and
prison writings; authors include activists, novelists and a nun. At
the same time, it means that one needs a flexible understanding of
political philosophy.
Many of the authors discussed in this book use concepts that
may appeal to some while others abhor them. This applies both
to the political–theological language of Orthodox-Christian think-
ers and to the political-philosophical categories used by socialists
and revolutionaries. The key categories of modern political theory,
from sovereignty to bright communist future, are ‘secularised’
political–theological concepts (Schmitt). However, ‘secular’ is itself
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viii | russian political philosophy
a religious category that makes full sense only within the Latin–
Christian tradition, and, second, political theology is already an
attempt to articulate the political dimension of human existence. If,
therefore, Christian thinkers detect, at some point, the Antichrist,
while Marxists point to a class enemy, they are employing different,
yet functionally equivalent concepts. In both cases, they identify the
opponent as an enemy that has to be defeated or even destroyed,
rather than as an adversary who can be convinced in a debate.
In order to present and analyse so widely diverse currents,
authors and texts within a single framework, without burdening
the book with elaborate arguments of my own, I apply a simpli-
fied, yet specific, conception of political philosophy. The basic, axi-
omatic premiss of this conception is that reality, at least as far as
humans are concerned, is populated by an indeterminate number of
finite beings, each with their limited physical, mental and symbolic
powers and capacities. Between these beings there is, always and
everywhere, the possibility of both conflict and concord. Where
conflict prevails, alternatives are always available, and where con-
sensus seems achieved, contestation always remains a possibility.
Also, while agreement requires at least two persons, one suffices
for polemics. In principle, this political dimension, as a potential-
ity, is present in anything human, from economic relations via art
works and potable water to religiously obligated garments.
This ubiquitous and permanent possibility of conflict and con-
cord I label ‘the political’ (following Mouffe, but adding concord).
Given this first definition, I define politics as ‘dealing with the politi-
cal’. Politics comes in a large variety of forms, ranging from denial,
via suppression and canalisation, to mobilisation and unchaining.
In any concrete situation, politics stabilises into some form of politi-
cal order or overall political form of society, which I call, using
classical terminology, politeia. This politeia is of an objective and
seemingly unassailable nature, but it is inevitably political and,
therefore, contestable and vulnerable. One of its possible fortifica-
tions is a state-supported religion or ideology. The result is a given
political system, surrounded by other entities that act as its consti-
tutive others (Mouffe). Externally, it is surrounded by any number
of similar entities with which it can stand in a number of different
relations (enmity or friendship, war or trade, and so on), but which
in any case act as its constitutive outside others that, among other
things, shape its identity as being alike or different. Internally, it is
surrounded by any number of explicitly or implicitly oppositional
forces and positions, from critical voices to terrorist organisations.
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introduction | ix
While the system is the constitutive inside other of these forces
and positions, they are, in their turn, its determined negations
[bestimmte Negationen]. Similarly, factions within a political party,
for example, are each other’s inside constitutive other.
In this whole constellation, I distinguish, very traditionally, three
dimensions. The first is theory, which can be religious, theological,
philosophical or scientific, and that reflects upon, but also seeks to
influence the existing socio-political situation broadly understood,
and yields the concepts in which the humans that populate that
situation understand themselves and articulate their differences.
The second is praxis, understood as action, including protest and
speech, but also any number of more or less stable repertoires and
practices. Agents of such praxis are both a regime or government
and indigenous or foreign oppositional groups and individuals.
The third, often underrated, dimension is poièsis, understood as
the making and maintaining of institutions, from laws and tax
systems to political parties and concentration camps. This whole
political constellation of more or less stable theoretical, practical
and poiètical elements forms an internally harmonious or antago-
nistic and externally open or closed whole. It exists over time and
thus obtains a life and logic of its own, with a ‘political memory’
that contains crucial events in the past, perceived dangers and
opportunities, theoretical, practical and poiètical elements – from
key concepts to perceived pitfalls – and a number of political and
intellectual traditions. Since this constellation is itself political, it is
intrinsically vulnerable, which explains the demand for ideological
fortification and for clear markers of certainty (Lefort).
Simultaneously, if such a constellation has a long history of
statehood and a self-referring intellectual tradition, it becomes rec-
ognisable and typical. This applies to those entities that we habitu-
ally call countries, represented by colourful patches on a political
world map. In any such country, questions of power, authority,
obedience and protest, and of the legitimacy or illegitimacy of
each of these, arise and are resolved in one way or the other. Since
humans also have the capacity to think independently and hence
critically, political philosophy is likely to emerge in any society and
to develop gradually from more rudimentary and implicit to more
complex and explicit forms. Human thought, by default, transcends
its own immediate situation in the direction of more general con-
ceptualisations, even if universality remains an unreachable goal.
To the extent to which all forms of human society share a number
of ‘political issues’, different traditions of political philosophy share
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x | russian political philosophy
a common ground and can engage in communication as a matter of
principle, even if in practice it may be hard, for people from different
backgrounds, to understand one another. In practice, this functions
as the tertium comparationis in any endeavour in the field of com-
parative political philosophy. The central question then becomes:
how do philosophers, from different traditions, relate to and deal
with the basic issues that are part of their political reality? At this
point, I use a triple concept of political philosophy. The first, most
traditional, meaning is that of a branch of philosophy that has exist-
ing political reality as its object of conceptual analysis and normative
judgement. The second meaning relates to the ontological question
of why and how, if politics is the totality of ways of dealing with the
political, our reality is political in the first place. The third and final
meaning relates to the articulation, or concealment, of the fact that
philosophy itself is inevitably political, too. This triple understand-
ing is helpful in assessing political philosophy in Russia, or anywhere
else for that matter. The aim of this book is to facilitate, on this con-
ceptual basis, communication between Western and Russian politi-
cal philosophy, building a bridge from one to the other.
This bridge consists of eleven arches: eleven chapters that are
both chronological and topical. The underlying assumption is
that this is the best way to build up gradually the elements that
have shaped political philosophy in Russia and to highlight the
features that determine it to this very day. The first two chapters
sketch, first, a long pre-history that introduces a number of theo-
retical, practical and poiètical elements that are still recognisably
there: an indigenous republican tradition, Byzantine and Tatar
legacy, traditional forms of religious protest and opposition, and
the impact of the West European Enlightenment. Second, an over-
view of the short eighteenth century focuses on the emergence of
recurrent questions and debates, such as the traditionally opposed
Westernising and Slavophile motifs, and on the genesis of radical
political movements.
The following three chapters discuss, synchronically, several
strands of political thinking: agrarian, Marxist, narodist and anar-
chist socialism; Christian political philosophy with a focus on four
towering figures; and liberalism in its growth and maturation. Sepa-
rate chapters on anarchism and narodnichestvo (often mistranslated
as ‘populism’) were a possibility. I have, however, integrated a discus-
sion of these trends in the second and third chapters, linked to the
radicalisation of political philosophy in the nineteenth century and to
the struggle over socialism in which Marxism was engaged.
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