Suchergebnisse

The striking affinities that have developed between radical-conservative movements in Western Europe and Russia since the end of the Cold War have been widely noted. This essay considers these affinities through the example of the Soviet historian and geographer Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev (1912–1992). It argues that Gumilev and the European New Right developed perspectives that were highly comparable, founded on similar principles, and articulated through similar images and allusions. Yet despite the powerful resonances in terms of basic concepts and theoretical orientation, there were nonetheless deep differences in terms of the conclusions regarding the practical implications for their respective societies that Gumilev and the Europeans deduced from these principles.

In this article, Mark Bassin explores Lev Gumilev's theory of ethnicity. Developing his ideas in the context of post-Stalinist debates about the relationship of society to the natural world, Gumilev maintained that theetnoswas a wholly natural, quasi-biological entity. Although this naturalism involved an important genetic dimension, Gumilev denied that ethnicity was determined by race and emphasized instead its ecological quality as an organic part of biogeocenoses or natural-landscape ecosystems. Although he remained marginalized in his day by the Soviet ethnographic establishment, his essentialist perspective is powerfully appealing for post-Soviet audiences, who find his "ecology of ethnicity" singularly useful for the purposes of ethnopolitical discourse.

SUMMARY:
Марк Бассин разбирает необычную националистическую концепцию известного евразийца Николая Сергеевича Трубецкого. Трубецкой ассоциировал Россию с колониальным миром и выступал с лозунгом "паневразийского" национализма, что естественным образом ограничивало претензии русского этнического национализма. Согласно Бассину, адекватно понять разрыв Трубецкого с русской националистической традицией можно лишь в поствоенном (после Первой мировой войны) контексте с его фиксацией на вопросах колониализма и самоопределения. Провозглашая Россию колониальной страной, объединенной общей евразийской культурой, Трубецкой стремился сохранить целостность традиционного российского имперского государства, в пределах которого не было места принципу самоопределения.