East Needs West?
Old Holy Russia can never be healthily revived. But a new, living, spiritual Russia can and must be sought. Yet Russia would be misled in assuming, that the prosperous “material plenty” of the West, is surrounded and interwoven by some such grand and profound wisdom of life, as is so necessary to the “Russian Soul’s” religious past, traumatic recent history, disoriented present, от spiritual task into the future. The West has certainly, deep and profound contributions to make, even to the potent spiritual future development of Russia. But this can come only from the very best of the West’s spiritual, intellectual and cultural history [74]; and Russia should not await, and expect to find, any such special spiritual depth and substance, amidst the common contemporary culture and civilization of the West. (See Addenda.) Russia can look to the West for much; and perhaps from each distinct nation, culture and people, it can receive a slightly different contribution — be it practical, cultural, intellectual, spiritual. But it would be profoundly erred to imagine, that the slick and comfortable life in the West, is founded on, or surrounded by, some profound spiritual comprehension of life and death adequate to Russia’s needs. This it, most deeply, is not.
Do not presume, oh Russia, that just because the West has achieved such a “high standard of living” — in the earthly (“horizontal”) world — that it has also real, living answers to the (“vertical”) “cursed questions” of life, which the best of you seem, characteristically, to know and feel. For it does not also, have such a ‘high standard of soul, cultural or spiritual living’.
Accept from the West our practical ways, procedures and capacities; look to our political systems, and take the best that can be adapted to your own culture, history and character; embrace that of our economic systems as may help mollify your lamentable economic and material conditions; use the West’s achievements in science and technology: take from the West all that can help you to advance and progress. But never forget the great spiritual idea of Russia; nor imagine that the common West can adequately show you how to blend a “high standard of living” in regard to physical, mundane, earthly life and civilization, with some profound, creative, vital culture of soul [75] and mind; or a wise orientation to the spiritual questions of life — far the individual, the collective, culture, or civilization: the complete inner and outer life of Mankind. If you merely follow the casual life in the West, with its spiritual agnosticism, its sensualism, its earthiness, even its religious ways; you will find no real, sufficient answers, or understanding, of that which made Old Russia “Holy”, and may make a new Russia spiritual. The common West, as it is, can simply not answer all the questions of life and death; economic and political order; social justice and civilization, in ways appropriate to all that which has made Russia unique. Open to the West; but strive wisely, to take only the best from the West — never forgetting the special character of Russian Soul and Spirit — that towards which only the very best of the spiritual and intellectual history of the West, can be of any real, healthful, creative contribution.
TO SUCH AMERICANS AND RUSSIANS:
Thoughts
[Alexander Herzen] viewed the United States, with its emphasis on the individual, and Russia, with its emphasis on the collective, as diametrically opposed in their essential spirit and as bound to differ radically in their approach to the basic problems of mankind. He used the words “fateful antinomy” to describe the “individually atomized character of America, on the one hand, and, on the other, the amalgamation represented by the Russian commune”.
…To him, the problem of the future was not in choosing between individual freedom and socialism, but in reconciling the two and combining them in what he believed would be a higher type of society. No wonder, then, that he regarded the future roles of the United States and Russia in world history as mutually complementary rather than mutually exclusive, and saw the future relationship between the two countries as marked not by enmity, but by fruitful exchange and collaboration.
“The eastern and western understanding of the Christian conception of the dignity of man, builds a unity-in-contrast (“Spannungseinheit”) in which the two fundamental elements of the Christian ‘image of man’ are developed and unfolded fully into each of its parts. The Christian conception of man in the West (“Abendlandes”) tends toward individualism, bending toward an overemphasis of the rights of the individual, which in the end forgets God and fellow-men. The conception of man in the Eastern Church inclines toward an overemphasis of the sacramental community of the church and the even greater brotherhood of man, in which the individual gives up his own rights and self, in order to save others. This contrast in its secular form in the political arena is found in the contrast of Western democracy and Eastern communism…”
East Needs West Needs East?
One a Saturday morning in May, of 1989, [78] there was broadcast throughout the United States of America, on the independent “National Public Radio” program, an interview with a contemporary Russian writer who lives in Siberia — that region of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union most immediately associated in Western minds with Czarist and Soviet tyranny, oppression and cruelty.
From Siberia (Irkutsk), where sincere if naive Western imagination would tend easily to picture frigid, snow-bound vastnesses, with a harsh, difficult existence, and scattered villages peopled with the exiled, banished, imprisoned, suffering Russians; came the solid voice of Valentin Rasputin, himself one of a long line of creative spirits, who, by order of the state; or choice; or fate of birth, lived some of the most dear, deep and meaningful time of their lives, in this climatically harsh, unrelenting, beautiful region of the earth. He stated, unambiguously, his view, that the people and character of the West woe far more competently inclined towards a capable engagement with the material, practical matters of life and world, than the Russians would ever be. Such ‘practical reason’, science and so forth — required for material mastery, technological excellence and achievement — were not, he held, immediately or naturally inherent in the character of the Russian people; whom, he stated, were much more inclined towards a deep, soulful inner life. They would never quite ‘get it right’, with the practical, material life; whether they live in a time of perestroika and glasnost, or not.
It is a trait of our Russian character; we place our trust in writers. When our political leaders meet; it is writers, and not other politicians, who insure that they will speak well and intelligently. You Americans are more rational, and we are more sentimental. That’s why we have such an economy. And I don’t think we’ll ever get it just right. In this sense, we don’t work very well; but we can feel. Our nation has a different soul. [79]
[74] One could say that the East and the West must exchange the best which each bears, with the other.
Each culture, in so far as it can learn and well gain from that of another nation, should strive to discern and embrace, only the most pure and noble which another nation bears. For in that such of each nation, sufficiently verges on the most essentially human — because it exists in relation to the purest humanity of that one nation and people — it thereby may be most potent of use, help, inspiration, reflection or creation, when embraced by some other “nationality”. This could be pictorially described — from the perspective of an individual human being, of some nationality — as an attempt to locate, view and orient one’s self, in regard to the constellations of the brightest clearest stars surrounding one, in other nation’s culture.
In regard to the spiritual life of Russia, for example, consider these thoughts of cultural combination:
“Wisdom is by no means the same as intellectual development, and under the influence of their archangel the Russian people were in a certain sense intellectually held back. It is not their task to evolve clearly defined concepts but to ascend to the spiritual from depth of feeling. Clear concepts must come as a gift from the thinking of the West and that of Central Europe, trained for centuries in natural science. As the West has gained an understanding of nature, it must also learn to place the realm of spirit before humanity in clear pictures.
This is the only way for East and West to unite so that they can join hands as brothers. Vladimir Soloviev longed for such a union, and in his Paris lectures he appealed to the West to seek a synthesis of its best elements with eastern Christianity. Otherwise demonic forces of both East and West would unite and disaster would follow disaster.” From Maria Schindler,
Karl Marx and V. Soloviev took very different concepts from their independent work in the British Museum.
[75] Walter Schubart: “The West has endowed humanity with the most refined forms of technological development, of organization of government, and of systems of transport and communications, but it has robbed the human race of its soul. It is Russia’s task to give back to mankind its soul.” From Walter Schubart,