Nikolai Jakowlewitsch Danilewski

Nikolai Jakowlewitsch Danilewski.

Nikolay Danilevsky ( Russian Николай Яковлевич Данилевский ;. Scientific transliteration Nikolaj Jakovlevic Danilevskij * November 28 ^jul. / 10. December  1822 ^greg. In Oberze, Oryol Governorate , † November 7 ^jul. / 19th November  1885 ^greg. In Tbilisi ) was a Russian natural scientist, political writer and programmer of Potzhnichestvo and Pan-Slavism .

family

Danilewski came from a noble Cossack family who originally lived in Podolia . His parents were the Russian diplomat and officer, as well as later general of the cavalry Jakow Ivanovich Danilewski (* 1789; † 1855) and Darja Ivanovna Mishina (* 1800; † 1855). Both died of cholera .

Pan-Slavic program

Between 1865 and 1867, Danilewski wrote a book entitled Russia and Europe , published in Saint Petersburg in 1871 . In this programmatic work he constructs a cultural identity of Russia and the Slavic world, which is opposed to Europe as an independent type of culture. He considers a struggle between the two “cultures” to be “inevitable”. He developed a theory of “cultural-historical types” and the regularity of the development of civilizations . This cycle theory is based on an ideal type of history, as it had already been formulated by Giambattista Vico . After that, history runs forever and ideally according to a certain time pattern in which the stories of all peoples go through a phase of ascent, progress, standstill and decline.

Danilewski takes on findings from biology for his view of history. The human race is divided into larger units, similar to how he knew it from botany with its classification into different orders and families. The book, which Karl Nötzel translated into German in 1920 with the title Russia and Europe , is called the "Bible" of Pan-Slavism .

Russia versus Europe

Nikolai Danilewski identifies three essential differences in “mentality and character” between the “Germanic-Romanic culture type” and the Slavic civilization that is to be established, which he contrasts diametrically with each other.

Violence versus tolerant orthodoxy

A common characteristic of all peoples of the Germanic-Romanic cultural type is violence. According to Danilewski, the feeling of personality and individuality is disproportionately pronounced in people of this culture, so that the people concerned place their own convictions and their own interests so high that they try to impose them on others.

Since the religious intolerance of the Roman church continued in Protestantism , he concludes that there must be an unmistakable cruelty in the Germanic-Romanic peoples. He sees an important indication in the fact that this type of culture has even managed to instrumentalize fundamentally non-violent Christianity for its own cause.

In his theory, the principle of violence of the European type contrasts with the tolerance of the Russian type. While Europe has brutally distorted the Christian faith, the Russian type has been able to maintain his "orthodoxy". The Russian is by nature a peaceful person.

Party dispute versus "people's soul"

Danilewski sees in his theory between Russians and Europeans a difference in the course of historical development. In Europe the development was accomplished through the struggle of opposing parties and interest groups. The more brutal parties prevailed and, as always, persecuted the peaceful ones. On the other hand, historical developments in Russia on a purely internal basis, in the depths of the “people's soul”, have taken place invisibly and silently: “Inwardly, the people renounce what is subject to detachment or change, the struggle takes place within the people's consciousness, and if so the time comes to actually replace the old with the new, this replacement is carried out with astonishing speed, without visible struggle [...]. "Parties are foreign bodies in Russia:" Everything that can be called parties in our country hangs from the intrusion of foreign and foreign influences into Russian life; Therefore, when we speak of an aristocratic or democratic party, of a conservative or progressive one, everyone knows very well that these are nothing but empty words with no meaning whatsoever. "

True Orthodox Church versus lying Catholicism and Protestantism

He makes a third distinction with regard to church membership. With the philosophical tradition of the truth-lie dichotomy developed from Europe, he answers the question of whether the Christian background of the denominations could not represent a connecting element of both types of culture, “that the difference between the truth and the lie is infinite, and that two Lies always differ less from one another than either of them from the truth [...]. ”Since the Orthodox Church is the truth, the two lies Protestantism and Catholicism must have more in common with each other than either of them with the Orthodox truth.

effect

Danilevskij's rejection of the West, the Enlightenment , individualism , rationalism and secularization , based on his Eurasian system of values, found famous imitators with Dmitri Mereschkowski , Dostoyevsky and in Germany with Arthur Moeller van den Bruck and the young Thomas Mann .

His cycle theory influenced historians and cultural scientists such as Christopher Dawson , Reinhold Niebuhr , Rushton Coulborn , Pitirim Sorokin , Henri Pirenne , Othmar Anderle , Karl August Wittfogel , J. De Beus and last but not least: Samuel P. Huntington and Bassam Tibi in the 20th century . Their rigorism was only exceeded by the cyclical ideas of Oswald Spengler and Arnold J. Toynbee . It is unclear whether Spengler knew Danilewski's view of Russian culture before 1920, but his concept of a Russian cultural “latecomer” (with “Johannine Christianity”) seems to speak in favor of it.

The culturally pessimistic thesis Dani Lewskis about the decline of a culture is closely linked to the minds of many, not only conservative thinkers who after a period of decadence to a restoration or even a cultural rebirth believe. This attitude is central to almost all thinkers of the Conservative Revolution , such as B. the aforementioned Arthur Moeller van den Bruck.

Works

• Russia and Europe . A view of the cultural and political relationships between the Slavic world and the Germanic-Romance world. Stuttgart 1960 (Original title: Rossija i Evropa. Vzojad na kul'turnyja i političeskija otnošenija Slavjanskago mira k Germano-Romanskomu . First edition: 1920).

Web links

• Article Nikolai Jakowlewitsch Danilewski in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BSE) , 3rd edition 1969–1978 (Russian)http: //vorlage_gse.test/1%3D019167~2a%3D~2b%3DNikolai%20Jakowlewitsch%20Danilewski
• Entry in the encyclopedia "Krugosvet" (Russian)