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Can a Christian Be a Nationalist? Vladimir Solov'ev's Critique of Nationalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Greg Gaut
Greg Gaut*
Affiliation:
Department of History, St. Mary's University of Minnesota
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Extract

If my entire argument could fit under this rubric: Russia is a Christian nation and therefore should always act in a Christian way, my opponents’ argument can be expressed in the following formula: The Russian nation…is the only truly Christian nation, but nevertheless, it should act in a pagan way in all of its affairs.

—Vladimir Solov'ev, Preface to The National Question in Russia, Part II (1891)

In the 1880s and 1890s, Vladimir Solov'ev worked out a Christian approach to nations and nationality, and a moral critique of nationalism, while waging a polemical battle against the Russian conservative nationalists of his day. His ideas emerged primarily from his own social gospel theology, but they were marked by both the Slavophile romanticism of his early career and the western liberalism of his later years. Solov'ev is most often treated as a philosopher, a mystic, or a literary figure, and as a result, his journalistic writings on nationalism and other topics have often been overlooked by scholars, even though they constitute at least a third of his published output.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , Spring 1998 , pp. 77 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1998

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References

I am grateful to Kristi Groberg, Gary Jahn, George Kline, Marsha Neff, Daniel P. O'Neill, Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, David Rowley, Theofanis Stavrou, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Work on this article was assisted by a National Endowment for the Humanities seminar on the Russian empire led by Mark von Hagen and Michael Stanislavski, and by the support of St. Mary's University of Minnesota.

Epigraph: V. S. Solov'ev, Sobranie sochinenii Vladimira Sergeevicha Solov'eva, 10 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1911-1914; reprint ed. with two additional volumes, Brussels, 1966-1970), 5:158 (emphasis in the original). Unless otherwise indicated, citations will be to the Brussels edition indicated by volume and page number in parenthetical notes. Solov'ev's letters were published as Pis'ma Vladimira Sergeevicha Solov'eva, 4 vols., ed. Ernst Radlov (St. Petersburg, 1908, 1909, 1911, 1923; reprinted with additional material, Brussels, 1970). Citations to the letters use the abbreviation Pis'ma with volume and page numbers

1. Most histories of Russian thought (e.g., by Sergei Zenkovskii, Frederick Copleston, and Andrzej Walicki) pass over Solov'ev's writings on nationalism, with the exception of Lossky, N. O., History of Russian Philosophy (New York, 1951), 113–21Google Scholar. Frank, S. L.'s seminal introduction to A Solovyov Anthology (London, 1950)Google Scholar also overlooks this part of Solov'ev's work. When considered, Solov'ev's polemics on nationalism are sometimes reduced to an aspect of his ecumenism, as in Stremooukhoff, Dimitri s Vladimir Soloviev and His Messianic Work (Belmont, Mass., 1979)Google Scholar. Occasionally, scholars have confused Solov'ev with the very nationalists he fought. See Smith, C. Jay Jr., “Miliukov and the Russian National Question,” in McLean, Hugh et al., eds., Russian Thought and Politics (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), 395 Google Scholar. To my knowledge, there is only one brief article in English specifically devoted to Solov'ev's writings on nationalism: Michael, Karpovich, “Vladimir Soloviev and Nationalism,” Review of Politics 8 (1946): 183–91Google Scholar. Andrzej Walicki touched on these writings in the chapters on Solov'ev in his Slavophile Controversy (Oxford, 1975) and his Legal Philosophies of Russian Liberalism (Oxford, 1987). See also Walter G. Moss, “Vladimir Solovev and the Russophiles” (Ph.D. diss., Georgetown University, 1968). Several Russian scholars have been interested in this aspect of Solov'ev's thought, most especially V. S. Asmus. See his “V. S. Solov'ev: Opyt filosofskoi biografii,” Voprosy filosofii 6 (1988): 70–89. English translation: “V. S. Solov'ev: An Attempt at a Philosophical Biography,” Soviet Studies in Philosophy 28 (Fall 1989): 66–96.

2. To his contemporaries, Solov'ev was a publitsist, which I think is best rendered by the word publicist, even though one modern meaning of this word suggests “a press or publicity agent.” In the nineteenth century it referred to a person who wrote about contemporary social and political questions, the kind of writings that Russians call publitsistika. The word journalist does not have the same connotation. For the publitsistika on the “national question,” see N. A. Rubakin, “Natsional'nyi vopros,” in his Sredi knig, 2d ed., vol. 3, pt. 1 (Moscow, 1915). In this bibliographic article of almost 100 densely worded pages, Rubakin surveys Russian literature from the Slavophiles to the outbreak of World War I.

3. See generally Petrovich, Michael Boro, The Emergence of Russian Panslavism: 1856–1870 (New York, 1956)Google Scholar, and Sumner, B. N., Russia and the Balkans: 1870–1880 (Oxford, 1937).Google Scholar

4. Geoffrey, Hosking, Russia: People and Empire, 1552–1917 (Cambridge, Mass., 1997), 374–.Google Scholar

5. These two nationalisms were ideologies of the political elite. They sought to create a popular nationalism among the masses. Although they did not succeed enough to save the empire, a popular nationalism was developing among Russians as literacy spread. See Jeffrey, Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read (Princeton, 1985), 214–45.Google Scholar

6. Details on Solov'ev's relationships can be found in Mochul'skii, Konstantin, Vladimir Solov'ev: Zhizn’ i uchenie, 2d ed. (Paris, 1951)Google Scholar; Solov'ev, Serge, Zhizn’ i tvorcheskaia evoliutsiia Vladimira Solov'eva (Brussels, 1977)Google Scholar; Losev, A. F., Vladimir Solov'ev i ego vremia (Moscow, 1990)Google Scholar; A. F., Losev, “Vladimir Solov'ev i ego blizhaishee literaturnoe okruzhenie,” Literaturnaia ucheba, no. 3 (1987): 151–64, and no. 4 (1987): 159–68.Google Scholar

7. His lecture was never published, but a summary based on the notes of audience members survived. A few days later Solov'ev wrote a letter to the tsar that undoubtedly gives a more dependable account of his speech. These materials can be found in P. Shchegolev, “Sobytie 1-go marta i V. S. Solov'ev,” Byloe 3 (1906): 49–52, and Shchegolev, “Sobytie 1 marta i Vladimir Solov'ev: Novye dokumenty,” Byloe 10–11 (1918): 330–36. These were reprinted in Pis'ma, 4: 149–50, and 4: 243–46. Although Solov'ev called for “pardoning” (milium) the regicides, he probably did not mean that they should be freed. In his later writings, he made clear that he opposed capital punishment, but not incarceration. See the chapter on penal law in his ethical treatise Justification of the Good (8: 332–60).

8. Paul Valliere analyzed the liberal trend in Russian theology, and the role that Solov'ev played in it, in a series of articles: “The Liberal Tradition in Russian Orthodox Theology,” in Breck, J. et al., eds., The Legacy of St. Vladimir (Crestwood, N.Y., 1990)Google Scholar; “Theological Liberalism and Church Reform in Imperial Russia,” in Geoffrey, Hosking, ed., Church, Nation, State in Russia and Ukraine (New York, 1991)Google Scholar; “The Humanity of God in Liberal Orthodox Theology,” Modern Theology 9 (January 1993): 55–65.

I described the “social gospel” basis of Solov'ev's theology, and argued that he held firm to these views until his death, in “Christian Politics: Vladimir Solovyov's Social Gospel Theology,” Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 10/11 (1994–1995): 653–74. On the question of whether Solov'ev repudiated his social gospel beliefs in his final work, see also Kornblatt, Judith Deutsch, “Soloviev on Salvation: The Story of the ‘Short Story of the Antichrist,” in Deutsch Kornblatt, Judith and Gustafson, Richard, eds., Russian Religious Thought (Madison, 1996)Google Scholar.

9. Beginning in the 1870s, Vestnik Evropy criticized cultural Russification in Poland and Ukraine, especially in the many articles by A. N. Pynin. See Alexis E. Pogorelskin, “Vestnik Evropy and the Polish Question in the Reign of Alexander II,” Slavic Review 46, no. 1 (Spring 1987): 87–105, and Pogorelskin, “A. N. Pynin's Defense of Ukraine: Sources and Motivation,” in Bohdan Krawchenko, ed., Ukrainian Past, Ukrainian Present (New York, 1993), 35–54. After Solov'ev's death, the journal continued to criticize conservative nationalist thought and policy. In fact, the editors associated the term nationalism completely with the right. See “Iz obshchestvennoi khroniki,” Vestnik Evropy, 1903, no. 5: 403–12. However, they had difficulty going beyond criticism to an affirmative program to resolve the national question.

10. From 1891 until his death, Solov'ev was the philosophy editor of the Brokgaus-Efron Entsiklopedicheskii slovar', the standard encyclopedia for prerevolutionary Russia.

11. For the liberal view of nations, see Hobsbawm, E. J., Nations and Nationalism since 1780 (Cambridge, Eng., 1990), 37–.Google Scholar

12. See Richard, Gustafson, “Soloviev's Doctrine of Salvation,” in Kornblatt, and Gustafson, , eds., Russian Religious Thought (Madison, 1996), 31–48.Google Scholar

13. “Protiv natsional'nogo samootrecheniia i panteisticheskikh tendentsii vyskazavshikhsia v statiakh V. S. Solov'eva,” reprinted in Ivan, Aksakov, Sochineniia (Moscow, 1886), 4: 218–.Google Scholar

14. Solov'ev's view coincides with the mainstream of Russian liberal thought going back to Vissarion Belinskii, whose theory of nations was quite similar, and who also shared similar ideas about Ukraine. See Andrea, Rutherford, “Vissarion Belinskii and the Ukrainian National Question,” Russian Review 54 (October 1995): 500–515.Google Scholar

15. In the Introduction to Russification in the Baltic Provinces and Finland, 1855–1914 (Princeton, 1981), the editor, Edward Thaden, demonstrated that “Russification” meant different things at various times in the empire. He makes the useful distinction between “unplanned, voluntary Russification (natural assimilation) and conscious governmental policies such as “administrative Russification” (introducing Russian institutions and laws and extending the use of Russian language by local bureaucracies and schools) and “cultural Russification” (coercing local populations to adopt Russian culture, religion and language as their own) (8–9). Under Alexander III, the government greatly accelerated Russification, administratively in Finland and culturally in the Baltic provinces. Of course, there was a wide gap between policy and result.

16. Mochul'skii, Vladimir Solov'ev, 148.

17. Judith Deutsch Kornblatt demonstrated the great significance of the Jews in Solov'ev's theology in “Vladimir Solov'ev on Spiritual Nationhood, Russia and the Jews,” Russian Review 56 (1997): 157–77.

18. Mochul'skii, Vladimir Solov'ev, 151. See also Walter G. Moss, “Vladimir Soloviev and thejews in Russia,” Russian Review 29 (1970): 181–91.

19. An early draft of the letter (May 1890) is reproduced in Pis'ma 2: 160. V. G. Korolenko included a different version of the letter, which he said he received from Solov'ev in October 1890, complete with about two dozen signatures, in a 1909 article he wrote about Solov'ev's efforts entitled “Deklaratsiia V. S. Solov'eva.” See Korolenko, V. G., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Petrograd, 1914), 9: 257 Google Scholar. Korolenko's article was reprinted in Oktiabr', May 1989, 206–8. The draft Korolenko received was shorter, but the language quoted here appeared in both.

20. Salo, Baron, The Russian Jews under Tsars and Soviets, 2d ed. (New York, 1987), 51, 137Google Scholar, and the note on 358–59. See also Mochul'skii, Vladimir Solov'ev, 151.

21. For Aksakov's speech, see Rech' proiznesennaia 22 iiunia 1878 v Moskovskom Slavianskom Blagotvoritel'nom Obshchestve (Berlin, 1878), reprinted in Aksakov, Ivan S., Socheniniia (Moscow, 1886), 1: 297–.Google Scholar

22. Essentially, Solov'ev argued that Slavophilism was the root of the chauvinistic nationalism of his day. This argument was developed in several articles, most especially in “Slavophilism and Its Degeneration” (5: 181–252).

23. Nicholas, Riasanovsky, Russia and the West in the Teaching of the Slavophiles (Cambridge, Mass., 1952), 163–.Google Scholar

24. Walicki, Legal Philosophies of Russian Liberalism, 172–73n22. For Mickiewicz's romantic antinationalism, see Andrzej, Walicki, Philosophy and Romantic Nationalism: The Case of Poland (Oxford, 1982), 257–67.Google Scholar

25. Solov'ev occasionally invoked the European image of the African as a “savage.” When he charged Europeans with “international cannibalism,” he argued that they were sinking to the level of the African tribesman who explained good and evil by saying that “the good is when I take my neighbors' heads and wives, and the bad is when they take them from me” (5: 11). As for the Americas, Solov'ev argued that the Spanish had easily destroyed the Inca and the Aztec civilizations because they had reached their limits and become an “absurdity” (5: 112).

27. The drift to “liberal nationalism” is described in Geoffrey, Hosking, The Russian Constitutional Experiment: Government and Duma, 1907–1914 (Cambridge, Eng., 1973), 215–Google Scholar; and Dietrich, Geyer, Russian Imperialism: The Interaction of Domestic and Foreign Policy, 1860–1914, trans. Little, Bruce (New Haven, 1987), 293–97.Google Scholar

28. As Andrzej Walicki observed, “it was Solov'ev's merit to undermine, if not completely destroy, the widespread view that liberal values are incompatible with Christianity” (Legal Philosophies of Russian Liberalism, 211).