Ivan Aksakov on the “qualitative force” of the Russian people

Abstract

One of the urgent problems of the national public consciousness of the second half of the nineteenth century is connected with the comprehension of the state and prospects of the development of the Russian people in the context of the formation of nations and national states in Europe and the related attempts of foreign authors to “range” nationalities according to the degree of thoroughness of their claims to be state-forming, among other things, by means of assimilation of other nationalities. The article presents a detailed analysis of the views of Ivan S. Aksakov, the main spokesman of the thoughts on this problem in the Slavophile environment, who shared the idea that the state needs a leading nationality, assimilating other national groups or capable of attracting the peoples who maintain their political independence in a single state with its goals and programs. The publicist defined the limits of the capabilities of the Russian people by the state of their “qualitative strength” or assimilation potential, highlighting two stages in the process of its development according to the possibilities of implementing the most important criterion – success in assimilation of non-Russian tribes and peoples. According to the publicist, in the era of Kievan Rus and the Tsardom of Muscovy, the Russian people represented a single community that believed in itself and its historical destiny, and under its influence other nationalities “became Russian by themselves.” The publicist assesses the second, imperial, stage as a time of negative changes in the condition of the Russian people, which resulted from the transformations introduced by Peter the Great: the loss of their former unity, the manifestation of the traits of “non-nationality” and “Europeanization” by the national elite, uncritical perception of foreign experience and lifestyle. As a result of these changes, in Aksakov’s opinion, the Russian people largely lost their assimilation capacity and the state lost its strength and unity that had been inherent in it earlier, which undermined Aksakov’s faith in the prospects for the existence of a multi-tribal Russian Empire.