Down with Europe! The destruction of Western culture will instantly alleviate our cultural task [the resurrection of ByzantiumJ m Constantinople.'17
Long live the state which 'is obliged to be menacing, at times cruel and merciless, and must be severe sometimes to the point of savagery.'18 Long ve soc ilism, for 'socialism is the feudalism of the future . . . what ^s now extreme revolution will become conservation [okhraner e], a tool of strict coercion and discipline, partly even slavery.'19 'What in the West signifies destruction, for the Slavs will be creative endeavour.'20
Never before in Russia had slavery been preached by such august voices, so boldly and with such remarkable power of foresight. The syllog sm was complete and the trap snapped shut. The tsar and people merged in an apotheosis of the 'Slavic cultural-histo: ical type'. The Russian Idea, wh ;h only a generation ago had so passionately repuc ated po tics, had f'.ially acquired politics of its own — those of despotism and riperial expan; on.
A new crusade
However, the h siorical cycle of its ideolog :al evoluuon did not conclude there. Alas, a still more gloomy end lay n store for it. Danilevskii, himself history's revenge on Slavophil ;m for its roman cist utopianism, was to suffer retribution of 1 s own. Had he relied more on political reality and less on Slavophile dogma, he would have seen it coming. Contrary to this dogma, Europe was not in the least decaying. Furthermore, it had no use for the Russian Idea or Danilevskii's theory about the superiority of the 'Slavic cultural- historical type' over the 'Romano-Germanic' one. It had managed to arrive at its own racist conceptions w ihout SlavophJe help. According to the conclusions reached Ъу the Teutonophiles from their own anthropological inquiries, the Slavs were by no means God's chosen people (that is to say, the most advanced cultural-historical type) — quite the reverse. The Slavs, the Teutonophiles believed, suffered from a manifest lack of Aryan credentials. Thus, in the area of theory, Slavophilism had run into a brick wall.
In practice, would Europe really have surrendered Constantinople without a fight? Moreover, there was every reason to suppose that the prerequisite lor capturing Constani nople would have been the all-out conquest of Europe. On the evidence of the historical experience of Teutonophilism, we see that Anschluss, (the reunification of all Germans b> means of seizing all the terr ories which they inhab'ted) proved possible in practice only within the framework of the Nazis 'new order' in Europe. In other words, Europe truly did have to be conquered first to enable t to succced.
The Slavic Anschluss preached by Danilevskii offered much the same prospect. But such a perspective was hardly realistic for Russia in a period of her historical decline — even if all the wishes of the degenerate Russian Idea were fulfilled to the letter: even if the whole population was as one in its suport for the tsar and the objective of Anschluss, and the heretical intelligentsia were eliminated Even at a higher point of new historical ascendancy, in the era of Stalin s 1940s counter-reform regime, Russia was unable to realize fully Danilevskii's pan-slavic Utopia, Yugoslavia defected from the empire while Constantinople, the Utopia's central focus, proved unattainable. In the 1880s such plans were all the more naive. Thus, the third generation of Slavophiles proved incapable of fulfilling Danilevsk'i's dream, and the Russian Idea's new pan-Slavic catechism found intself in need of revision
In particular, the traditional dogma about 'rotting' Europe proved completely unrealisitic and it vanished from Slavophilism s third catechism Whereas for Danilevskii 'both France and Germany are, ;n essence, [Russia's] ill-wishers and enemies',21 for third-generation Slavophiles there existed only a beautiful France and a sinister Germany, maliciously baring its wolf s fangs.
In order to comprehend the full implications of this revision, one must remember that precisely France, accordi> g to Leont'ev, was the 'worst of Europes', and Pans had to be destroyed along with Russia s annexation of Constantinople. To the second generation of Slavophiles, Paris was the world centre of 'liberal-egalitarian putrefaction'. Leont'ev had said- "our luck s that we are im Werden, rather than at the peak, like the Germans, and, moreover, we haven , started to decline, like the French."22 Daniievsk; had asserted- Russia is the head of the world that is advancing, France represents the world that is falling back.'23 Nothing of this remained -in the Russian Idea's new, third, catechism. Though the first 4vh te general', Skobelev, with a general's directness, called for instill ng France with 'an awareness of the connection that exists today between the legitimate resurrection of Slavdom [read: the seizure of Constantinople] and the return to France of Metz and Strasbourg and perhaps the whole course of the Rhine',24 the ideological leader of the new generation, the editor of the journal Russkoe Delo (Russian Affairs), Sergei Sharapov, revised Danilevskii's catechism more profoundly and "lterestmgly.
Accord-tig to him, it is simply the case that, 'The French have already outlived their Latino-Germanic civilization.' For them it is in the past Moreover, .nsofar as a ray is shining from the East, the heart is warmed, and this heart opens up trustingly', so that, 'in
France we will encounter no til will towards us.' But, 'Germany is another matter. A later chi d of the Latino-Germanic world, possessing no ideals except those it has borrowed from Jewry, [Germany] cannot but hate the new culture and new light of the world.'25 The Russian Idea, the noble romantic Utopia which dreamed of a 'freedom formula' and of smashing despol 5m, proved to be flexible enough to adapt to che pragmatic calculations of imperial expansioi sm as well. A theoret ;al basis had been formed. The rest remained only a matter for pract ioners, who generally considered 'civ. an theories out of place here', s nee 'it's time to finish once and for all with all sentimental :y [read: Slavophile utopianism] and remember only our own interests.'26 Coming from Skobeiev, such a tirade could mean only war: War with a capital 'W'; War as a crusade; War with Germany. 'The path to Constantinople', stated the catech jm of Slavophilism's third genera on, 'must be chosen not only through Vienna, but also through Berlin. . . . There is one war which I consider holy. It is necessary that the devourers of the Slavs be in turn themselves devoured.'27
Anti-semitism
Strange as it may seem today, the Russian Idea began the twentieth century looking into the future with confidence. Though its advocates still called themselves Slavophiles, not so much as a trace remained of the original catechism's first — and main — hatred, that of Russia's native despotism Whereas Ivan Aksakov had felt some regret in allying with despotism in order to defend 'Russian originality' (samobytnost) and 'original culture' from the encroachments of the Westernizers, the third generation already poked fun at this timid defensive tactic:
Not very long ago Aksakov had to fight for originality What originality is there [to fight for] when the whole West has succeeded in understanding that the Russian genius shall not be defending itself from Western attacks but will itself turn around and subordinate everything, introduce a new culture and new ideals into the world and breathe new spirit into the decrepit body of the West,28
The third generation, militarist and pragmatic, has already forgotten even to think about retrospective Utopias. They were totally absorbed by their grandiose dreams of a future in which they saw Russia stretching out over half of Europe and dominating the remainder, which at that time found itself 'in complete subordination to the Jews'.