Eurasianship: myths of the revolutionary epoch

Abstract

The analysis of the myth of the revolutionary era of the early twentieth century and mythological core of the Eurasian ideology is given. The myth in the article is understood not as archaic unscientific fairy tales, but as a personal wonderful story, as defined by A. F. Losev. The author proceeds from the fact that any culture has its own myth, on which sci­ence, philosophy, and art are built. In the revolutionary era, the mythology of culture will open most vividly. The revolution of 1917, turning over Russian society and significantly archaizing it, led to the domination of myth in the public consciousness in the Losev sense. The main myth of that era was a kind of cosmogonic myth, which tells about the appear­ance of a new world (the world of free labor). Eurasianism of the 1920–1930-s was born from an alternative myth – about the rebirth of Russia in the catastrophe of the revolu­tion and the attainment by it of its true name, its connection with the East. The Eurasian myth or the “Eurasian mood” arose even before P. N. Savitsky, P. P. Suvchinsky, N. S. Trubet­skoy and G. V. Florovsky announced the emergence of Eurasianism. The Eurasian mood sounded in the art of the Silver Age, in the theory of Lenin's imperialism, in the political practice of the Bolsheviks and the Third International. Eurasians put it in the form of philo­sophical and cultural studies. In this doctrine, Russia appeared as Eurasia, a civilization connected not only with the West, but also with the East, but having forgotten its “true name” in the era of the “Roman-German yoke”, because of the “hypnosis of Eurocen­trism”. At the same time, Eurasians and Bolsheviks appear as “hero twins” (one is positive and the other is a negative character), who are called upon to wake up Russia and return her authentic self-consciousness to her.