Amid increasingly loud clamors by some Russian politicians about the need to revive the Russian Empire, we would like to remind our readers of the fact that the new national ideology that is getting hold of the minds of the Russian elite has nothing to do with imperial ambitions of the gossip column denizens, but everything to do with the idea of Russia being a civilized nation. So, the calls like the one by the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party to substitute the Imperial flag for the Russian tricolor flag should be treated in a manner consistent with Vladimir Putin's suggestions in Yalta a short while ago: "Mr Zhirinovsky is on a roll," he said, but "this is his personal opinion and does not necessarily represent the official position of the Russian Federation."
Clearly, many have been wondering for a while now, "Why doesn't President Putin make public the basics of our new national idea?" Some go hysterical as they push for making the Russian Constitution an ideologically-driven instrument. The answer is simple: all in due time. Clearly, the truly national idea cannot be imposed on the people, who have already been misled by populist leaders on two occasions in the 20th century: in 1917 and during the period of "liberal reforms." Visibly, Vladimir Putin is not a populist and realizes that such an idea should ripen within the nation. Only after that will the authorities have the moral right to make it public.
Here's the deal: The genuine national idea is being born today in Novorossiya. It's being born not in the offices of some armchair strategists, rather through the agony and blood resulting from tough armed opposition between the Russian people and a new pack of Nazis unleashed by the powers that are against Russia — once again.
In line with Hitler's precepts (Drang nach Osten), this pack has been edging up the Russian border over the past two decades not in order to join efforts with Russia and build a "Greater Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok," but for other purposes altogether. Which ones? This is illustrated well by the example of Ukraine, where the "civilized" West represented by NATO, the EU, the US State Department and other "advanced" entities tends to support everything that is directed against Russia and the Russian and the Eurasian world.
In the early stages of the bloody events in southeastern Ukraine, residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions couldn't see the reasons for these "suddenly" arisen threats or find proper words to accurately describe the unfolding events. They just felt that the world of the Russian language, the post-Soviet international culture and the Orthodox values that they know so well and love so much, has come under threat. Resisting Nazis without being backed by a strong ideology is a tall order, especially when you have to deal with the military might of an entire state and private armies sponsored by oligarchs and supported by the world's most powerful nation.
Clearly, the liberal idea is of little help here, as it was of little help to the "politically correct" Europe during World War II. Unfortunately, no one has so far come up with any new articulate ideas for the Resistance in southeastern Ukraine. People in Novorossiya started looking for an ideology they could rely on themselves. They grabbed every idea that came their way that they thought could be used to counter the idea of a "united Ukraine without Russians." They tried to find alternatives in Soviet and imperial ideas, the Orthodox faith and anti-fascist solidarity, pseudo analytics provided by the Public Security Concept and the Fairly General Theory of Management, as well as videos with gags performed by leaders of the Liberal Democratic Party and the Communist Party, thus becoming a laughing stock for sophisticated presenters of a renowned Moscow radio station. Eventually, members of the Resistance comprehended what stood behind the global upheaval and started getting rid of the pseudo-ideological fluff. Today, we can see the idea of a sovereign Russian world taking shape in southeastern Ukraine. The Russian world which is once again forced to confront the West in the form of a global market and the "world of money, technology and entertainment" that is morphing into a "world of chaos, violence and perversion." However, it would be more accurate to say that it is not just taking shape, but is reborn and is emerging from the depths of the popular memory, the national subconscious mind, including archives, libraries, and other treasure troves that have remained under seven locks until this day and constitute a potent intellectual and value-based heritage that should be re-discovered and put to good use.
The heritage in question includes dozens of outstanding Russian and Soviet thinkers of international level who authored thousands of papers that went into oblivion in the 20th century, but are now returning to appreciative audiences.
We won't have to dig deep in Russian history to find such gems as Abba Philophei, St. Sergius of Radonezh, or the first Moscow Metropolitan St. Alexius. Let's start with the famous names of the 19th century — the golden age of the Russian philosophical thought.
Prominent Russian historian Nikolai Danilevsky, who gave a fairly detailed account of the West, the Slavs and the Russian idea 150 years ago, was among the first Russian thinkers whose work laid the foundation of the civilization ideology. Furthermore, Danilevsky's Russia and Europe which Fyodor Dostoevsky believed should be "a handbook for every Russian," actually formed the basis of civilization concepts developed by such heavyweights of the world social science as Oswald Spengler, Pitirim Sorokin and Arnold Toynbee.
Speaking of books devoted to analyzing the roots of the Russian civilization, I'd be remiss not to mention Byzantium and the Slavs by famous Russian philosopher Konstantin Leontiev, as well as the works of thinkers such as Pavel Florensky, Vladimir Solovyov and Nikolai Berdyaev, who laid the foundations of the civilization axiology. Research by Russian Eurasians, such as Nikolai Troubetzkoy, Pyotr Savitsky, Georgy Florovsky, Lev Karsavin, Vladimir and Georgy Vernadsky and Nikolai Alexeyev, to name a few, also constitutes part of this line of Russian social and political thought. For example, Nikolai Troubetzkoy formulated the idea of the "civilizational challenge and response" much earlier than Arnold Toynbee, the classic of the world civilization studies, while Vladimir Vernadsky was the first to use the concept of noosphere — a system-based and supra-paradigmal approach — in his studies of the world civilization.
Russian and Soviet thinkers, such as Lev Mechnikov, Lev Gumilev, Boris Rybakov and Nikita Moiseyev did a lot to further the studies of the civilization theory and ideology. Lev Mechnikov studied the Russian civilization from the perspective of physical geography and social anthropology, thereby bridging the gaps in the world civilizational science, which at the time focused primarily on the cross-cultural factors and the constructs of political economy. The work of such a giant of a man as Lev Gumilev was not directly related to the "theory of civilizations," but was, in fact, none other than an unmatched analysis of the historical processes that took place within the Russian and Eurasian space over millennia.
The papers on civilization written by Academician Nikita Moiseyev, in which he expounded the views later presented by famous American sociologist Samuel Huntington, remain extremely relevant. Finally, there's another prominent Russian philosopher — Alexander Zinoviev — who was thinking in civilizational rather than imperial terms, and whose work can be used now if not as a starting point, at least as a "work specification" for developing a new national idea.
Of course, texts that focus on civilizational issues are hard to come by in most Russian independent or state-owned media outlets nowadays. They are not cut out to hold such discussions. So, the new ideology is using other ways to find its way to the hearts and minds of the Russian people.
First, it comes to Russia through discovering the above-mentioned heritage and Eurasianism professed by President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has for two consecutive decades been persistently teaching Eurasia to see the world through the civilizational lens, as well as through increasingly numerous texts of modern Russian civilization researchers, such as Alexander Panarin, Yury Yakovets, Alexander Kostyayev, Nadezhda Maksimova and many others.
Second, it is being formed by the statements of the Russian leaders, who — by virtue of their offices — cannot afford to be commonplace bureaucrats, but have to think about the future of our country. I'm referring, primarily, to the Russian President, and Chairman of the Constitutional Court Valery Zorkin, who recently published a brilliant article, The Civilization of Law.
Third and last, the civilizational idea reaches out to us through vibrant and tracing texts and images that are being born today in Novorossiya and around Novorossiya.
In a few words — the multinational Russia-Novorossiya people are gradually forming the idea of Russia as a "civilization country." More about this new national idea and what it is all about will be offered in our subsequent publications.
