© 1991 by United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Articles |
RUSSIAN ORTHODOXY AND THE NEW PATRIOTISM*
Academy of Sciences Moscow, Russia
The current cultivation of aggressive nationalism and antisemitism in Russian society, which has led to the exodus of Jews from Russia and which promises many other serious consequences in the future, is most often considered in a purely political context. If a historical dimension is adduced, It is, as a rule Russian history: Russian nationalist thought of the 19th–20th centuries, Russian imperial statism of the past three centuries, the ten centuries of Russian Christianity, etc The Russian people have always been attracted by historio-sophic problems and so much has been written in that field that today an author who attempts to base an analysis of contemporary antisemitism on a certain understanding of Russian history, finds himself as if at a public meeting where everyone attempts to outshout everyone else and no one listens to anyone. Indeed every publicist already has an opinion on the Jews, on Saint Vladimir, on the causes of the Russian Revolution and of the Church schism of the 17th century, on the Russian idea, on Dostoevsky, on the meaning of Russian Communism, on the true essence of Russian Orthodoxy, etc. It seems that for a serious discussion on Russian nationalism in the 20th century, and in particular on the place of Russian Orthodoxy and antisemitism within that phenomenon, a useful perspective must go beyond the plane of the usual political and historiosophical discussions. This article suggests such a point of view in the hope that it will help the reader in his thinking on these topics.
*This is an abridged version of the article which originally appeared in the Soviet journal Oktiabr' 10 (1990), 148–160. It was translated by Yisrael Elliot Cohen, Centre for Research and Documentation of East European Jewry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.