The first commandment of this relig m ran: the state s the intellect of the nation, its spiritual pastor, its consciousness. The state is all- knowing, all-seeing, all-loving and all-powerful. A Russian's principal civic virtue was his or her faith in the infallibility of the state. This pagan-like deification of authority was unprecedentedly dangerous for Russian culture because it threatened to bring with it intellectual degradation.
The mechanism of official nationalism was craftily constructed. The trio of Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality artfully interwove despotism with religion, reaction with patriotism, and serfdom w th sense of nationality. In rising up against despot'sm, one r.sked striking a blow against patriotism, and in rising up against reaction, one risked challenging religion. It was a resourceful construct, an ideological trap of enormous potency. Only by basing one's argument on its particular groundwork was it possible to tear 'the nat щ з genius' away from despotism, patriotism away from serfdom, and Orthodoxy from political dolairy.
Slavophilism fulfilled just this function in Russian political history. On the basis of defending Russian Orthodoxy, it attacked the official religion as heresy. From the position of defending unlimited power, it attacked the deification of the state as blasphemy. From the position of an offended sense of patriotism it attacked 'official na onality' as a perversion. In short, it fought for the secularization of power. It fearlessly declared that 'a yoke of state has arisen over the Russian land and it has become as though conquered, and the state as though conqueror. The Russian monarch has obtained the status of a despot and his freeiy subject people that of imprisoned slaves.'5 If Marx was correct in asserting that 'criticism of religion s the prerequisite for all other criticism',6 then this was the way in which Slavophil sm fulfilled its historical mission. Its service to Russian culture must not be forgotten.
Paradoxically, however, it is from just this point that the drama of the Russian Idea begins. As long as it was lighting against the paganlike deification of the state, it remained relevant and useful. When political-idol worship collapsed along with the rei me of counter- reform in 1855, the progressive historical function of the Russian Idea was exhausted. From what it had once been only the idea of a retrospective Utopia remained.
The proponents of the Russian Idea did not know that one of the fundamental patterns of political change in Russia is that no Russian despot has ever been able to make a regime of counter-reform outlive him. After Nicholas I another despot was impossible (just as after Stalin). After each of these despots an era of reform and political crisis had to ensue. This constitutes the second of the patterns of Russian political change, of which the proponents of the Russian Idea were also unaware, which was eventually to prove fatal to them.
A choice of evils
Slavophilism, having superbly mastered the tactics of 'deological combat in the era of dictatorship, proved to be completely unready for the reality of political combat in the epoch of reform. I ike all Utopians, the Slavophiles knew quite precisely what they sought to do away with but only very vaguely what they wished to set up in its place Their hatred was utterly concrete, while their love was woolly and abstract. Was it possible to have such a th.ng as a State of the Land (zemskoe gosudarstvo), that is, an unlimited power that didn't interfere in the affairs of the 'land' [society], which, accord.ng to their scheme, was supposed to take the place of despotism? Post-dictatonal Russia, a Russia ot reform, had no interest in this question. Instead, it split into two major irreconcilable camps liberals and conservatives. The liberals aimed at following up the social reforms of the 1860s with a constitution — in other words the parliamentarism that the Slavophiles despised. The conservatives on the other hand, fought for the preservation of autocracy, increasingly striving for the restoration of the Slavophiles' no-less hated 'soul-destroving despotism' As for the Utopian principle of authoritarianism', which comprised the nucleus of the Russian Idea's political doctrine, its only proponents were the Slavophiles themselves.
The political crisis that ensued demanded from this magnanimous, naive, and anti-political ideological movement a tough choice: whom to support arid whom to oppose. The reality of the crisis did not permit them to toss and turn between two hatreds. Slavophilism made its decision 'Now the situation is such that there is no middle ground — eilher side with the nihi'ists and the liberals or with the conservatives, As sad as it is, we have to go with the latter.'7 Such was the choice of Ivan Aksakov, the younger brother of Konstantin, who headed Slavophilism after its founding fathers (K, Aksakov, I. Kireevskii, and A. Khomiakov) had passed on. To a survivor of old Slavophilism and pieserver of .ts early dogmas, taking sides with despotism was s 11 a sad thing. Only with difficulty did Aksakov tear the ideal of a 'State of the Land' from his heart, but he was still laying tactical plans: first, to beat off parliamentarism, working alongside those who wished to restore despotism, and then. . . . But there wasn't to be any then. If the regime didn't want a 'State of the Land' when it was weak, then even discussion of such a thing would be out of the question when it became stronger. After making a temporary concession to devil number one in its alliance with despotism, while retaining a State of the Land as ts distant dream, Slavophilism emerged from this union with completely new ideas about the world.
Twin nationalisms
The Russian Idea's degeneration, which began wah this fatal choice, is stril ngly reminiscent of an analogous process that was taking place at the same time in another idcoloj cal movement. It too was a Romantic reaction against the bankruptcy of eighteenth-century Rationalist doctrines and might, analogous to Slavoph lism, be called Teutonophilism. At its source, animated by the purest of visions of national regeneration, were Johann Gottlieb Fichte, w rh his fiery Speeches to the German nation', and the resurrector of German folklore, Jakob Grimm. They were the respective counterparts of Russia's Konstantin Aksakov and P. Kireevskii. Schleiermacher, with his 'Speeches about religion', and Novalis, with his 'Fragments about Christianity', were comparable to I. Kireevskii and A. Khomiakov. In the same way as the Slavophiles viewed Oleg's campaigns agpinst Constantinople, their German colleagues revered Armir us's battles with the Romans and the triumphs of the medieval Teutons orders. In deifying their nation, in what Vladimir Solov'ev later called 'idolatry of the folk', the two movements resembled each other 1 :e tv n brothers Moreover, as with Slavophiles, the inndious embraces of pan-Germanism lay in store for the Teutonophues. Ultimately, it was to be a similarly tragic metamorphosis, later expressed in the form of fascist messianism, that awaited them too.