In the 1880s the proponents of degenerated Teutonophilism exported anti-semitism to Russia. As one German historian noted, 'the idea of anti-semitism has revealed the full measure of its venomousness only in Russia . . . Berlin's anti-semitic leaders provided the Russian hooligans with the [ideological] ammunition they needed Stoecker and Ahlwardt became the true fathers of Russia s pogroms Meanwhile, the Teutonphiles congratulated themselves that, 'with a weapon from our ideological arsenal the Russian folk can now free itself from its mortal enemy'.
In the 1920s the proponents of degenerated Slavophilism were to repay this debt with interest to their German counterparts by exporting to Germany the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the idea of Bolshevism s identity with World Jewry.
In the 1830s the classical authors of Slavophilism were engrossed in reading Hegel and Schelling. In the 1880s their degenerate intellectual progeny were to do the same with Theodore Frnsch and Hermann Goedsche. the great grandparents of German anti-semiiism. If, during the first half of the nineteenth century, Slavophilism and Teutonophilism resembled one another but travelled separate paths, then one might say that during the second half their degenerate intellectual offsprings were reunited Fifty years further on, this collaboration had managed to bring the world to the br nk of the very catastrophe from which the founding fathers of Slavophilism had originally intended to save it
Metamorphosis
To the defenders of the restoration of despotism, into whose camp Slavophilism crossed over in the 1870s, ne ther its freedom formula nor its call to save Europe from parliamentarism were of any 'aterest In the immediate political crisis at hand, something completely different was demanded of Slavophilism s second generation: a rationale for unlimited power — irrespective of whether that power interfered in the 'moral life of the people' — and a pisi'fication for imperial expansion. The Slavophiles of the second generation willingly responded to the autocracy's political needs and tailored their doctrine to fit the required conditions.
Their main ideologue was Nikolai Danilevsk\ who, in the words of his younger contemporary Konstantin I.eont'ev, 'explained the essence of the Slavophiles' teachings better and more clearly than the fathers of these teachings themselves'.8 This essence, according to Danilevskii, consisted in the view that Russia could only fulfil her b stoucal mission after transforming herself into a giant superpower Moreover, the sense and content of all of Russian history, in his view, had been leading Russia to nothing less than repossession of Constantinople. 'The goal of the Russian people's strivings since the very dawn of the * statehood, the ideal of enlightenment, glory, luxuriance and grandeur for our ancestors, the centre of Orthodoxy — what a historic mean lg Constaninople would have for us, torn from the hands of the Turks i spite of all Europe!'9 Fedor 4 lutchev expressed this second generation Slavophile ideal in splendid verse:10
When Byzantium is restored to us The ancient vaults of Saint Sophia Will shelter the altar of Chiist anew. Kneel then before it, О Tsar of Russia — You will ar >e all Slavdom's Tsar!
Indeed, having taken Constantinople, Russia 'would be the restorer of the Eastern Roman Empire.'11
Thus, the main requirement for Russia was not reform, let alone a constitution, but rather military power and, above all, to be stronger than Europe. Moreover, this was not someth:,\g so d fficult to achieve given that parliamentary Europe, or 'the dual-foundation Romano- Germanic historical type' as Danilevskii put it, was — through its parliamentarism — 'decaying'. This was a view the second generation Slavophiles clung to from the Russian Idea's original catechism, and its significance for Russian autocracy's imperial strategy proved priceless. Conviction in the 'spiritual decay' of the West lent a moral justification to such designs. In order to become stronger than 'rotting Europe', Russia also needed, according to Danilevsk , something else — monolithic internal order, that is, tsar and people un ed around state power for the sake of Russia's grand historical m ,;sion. The old 'freedom formula' was totally redundant to this purpose since 'for any Slav, after God and the holy Church, Slavdom must be the highest idea, higher than freedom, higher than education, higher than any earthly blessing.'12 It was only one short step from this to the fundamental conclusion Konstantin Leont'ev reached a decade later: 'The Russian nation has expressly not been created for freedom.'13
This pronouncement was made in the 1880s, at a tune when a new counter-reform was trying to return the country to the dark days of Nikolaevian dictatorship. Undoubtedly, the ideas of the second generation of Slavophiles assisted the gradual slippage of the 1860s reform regime into one of political stagnai on in the 1870s. Ivan Aksakov was still alive at the time and distant recollections of the ancient 'freedom formula' still held sway among the heirs of the initial catechism. Danilevskii himself, as we shall see later, was a liberal imperialist': that is, he was ready to give his blessing to a liberalization of the domestic order as soon as Russia was isolated from pernicious Western influences and a great Slavic Federation had slammed the window on Europe' tightly shut Danilevski was essentially the first representative of chat strange amalgam of .solationism and expansionism which was to become the principal characteristic of the Russian Idea after his time.
The arrival of Alexander ill's new counter-reform in 1881 — after some timid reformist attempts at the start of the decade had been crushed — revealed how far the revision of the Russian Idea s initial catechism had progressed in the second Slavophile generation. Ivan Aksakov himself was suspected of seditious 1 beralism, while Konstantin Leont'ev declared of himself that he was a Slavophile strictly in the cultural sense', which, incidentally, was closer to true Slavophilism 'than semi-liberal Slavophiles of the immobile Aksakov cast'.14 It was at this time that Slavophiles pronounced that it was not with sadness that they had made their peace with despotism as the old patriarch Aksakov had said, but because they saw i* it the superior strength and wisdom of the nation The liDeral positions of the initial catechism were subsequently discarded as subversive and a hindrance to the autocracy from leading Russia toward its grand goal. Rather like a sad memorial to the Nikolaevian ideologv of 'official nationalism', the augmentation of state power was again proclaimed the nation's goal.
Now, however, this was not going to be advocated by state oftieia's or muddle-headed intellectuals whose dishonesty and official lies had been uncovered by founding fathers of the Russian Idea. This time, it would be preached by its own new prophets with new rallying calls.
Down with everything that undermines the state's power! Down with the intelligentsia (the 'smatterers', as Solzheniisyn was to call them a century later). 'The rotten West', — wrote Leont'ev, '— yes, rotten, it spatters and stinks from every quarter wherever our intelligentsia has been involved.'15
Down with mass education! 'Compulsory literacy will only bnng good fruits when the landowners, officials, and teachers are made into still much greater Slavophiles than they have become under the influence of nil rlism, the Polish mutiny, and European spite.'16