Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2009
The title of the panel at which this paper was originally presented — “Nationalism and the Growth of States”, at the 1960 meeting of the American Historical Association in New York City — suggested a concern with nationalism as a political phenomenon. We were not speaking primarily about love of country, the cultivation of a national style or hatred of the foreigner, but about political convictions, attitudes or movements and their relation to the state. The dilemma of nineteenth-century Russian nationalism, so defined, consists in this — that it could only with difficulty, if at all, view the tsarist state as the embodiment of the national purpose, as the necessary instrument and expression of national goals and values, while the state, for its part, looked upon every autonomous expression of nationalism with fear and suspicion.
1 See the famous collection of essays edited by Gershenzon, M. O. in Moscow in 1909, VekhiGoogle Scholar (“Signposts”) and written by him, Berdiaev, Nicholas, Sergei Bulgakov, Peter Struve and others; also, Bulgakov's Dva Grada (Moscow, 1911), Vol. ll, 291–292, where he states that “each manifestation of Russian national consciousness is met with distrust and hostility, and this boycott, or self-boycott, of Russian self-awareness reflects its spiritual weakness”.Google Scholar
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6 The text of Aksakov's memorandum is given in Brodskii, L.Rannie slavianofily (Moscow, 1910), 69–102.Google ScholarTucker, R. C., in his article “Dual Russia” in Black, C. E., ed., The Transformation of Russian Society (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), 587–605,Google Scholar describes Aksakov's program as one designed to make possible a peaceful coexistence between an absolutist government and an apolitical people. Even this more limited statement of Aksakov's aims implies the removal of the state to the periphery of national life. See also Riasanovsky, , Russia and the West, 152.Google Scholar
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31 Kornlov, A. A., Modern Russian History (New York, 1943), II, 340.Google Scholar The domestic political implications of a statement by the poet Leonid Andreev were unmistakable: “If the German be our enemy, then this war is necessary; if the English and the French be our friends and allies, then this war is good and its purpose is good.” (ibid., 346.)
32 Shul'gin, V. V., Dni (Belgrade, 1925).Google Scholar
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