National Character and Foreign Cultural Borrowings in the Light of Domestic Thought

Abstract

Liberal Russian reforms at the turn of the millennium actualize the issue of foreign cultural borrowing in the national discourse. The study, using examples of P. Ya. Chaadaev, F. M. Dostoevsky and N. A. Berdyaev analyzes the relationship between foreign cultural borrowings and traits of national character, which determine the attitude towards other cultures and towards qualitative transformations of society. All these concepts reflect the inconsistency of the respective features of the national character. The position of P. Ya. Chaadaev is contradictory. Whereas in Philosophical Letters he simultaneously ascribes to the Russian people a lack of innovation and a lack of soil, in Apology of the Madman, on the contrary, he sees in the Russian people a paradoxical unity of national conservatism and the ability to innovate. F. M. Dostoevsky perceives the basis of our national character a synthesis of national soil and universal responsiveness. N. A. Berdyaev formulates two antinomies of the Russian soul: 1) the antinomy of universalism and nationalism and 2) the antinomy of “boundless freedom of spirit” and “unheard-of servility”, without finding a convincing solution to these antinomies. The authors come to the conclusion that as a result of the interaction of foreign cultural innovations and the traits of the Russian national character associated with their perception, certain modes of antinomies identified by Russian thinkers are actualized in it. As a result, the national character informs a certain balance, providing a specific historical continuity and stability of its archetypal structures.