In recent years I’ve often come across discussions about what exactly the “Russian idea” is — what Russia’s mission is supposed to be. And with the start of the war in Ukraine, this question began sounding from absolutely everywhere. And suddenly it turned out that there is a major scholarly work by Alexander Yanov devoted specifically to this topic — an attempt to explain what this “Russian idea” actually is, what it consists of, and how it has shaped and continues to shape Russian history.
First, a few words about who Alexander Yanov was. Alexander Lvovich Yanov was a Soviet and later American historian, political scientist, and publicist. Having received a history degree in 1953, he simultaneously began working as a journalist, traveling around the country and writing for many magazines, including Novy Mir, Molodoy Kommunist, and others.
He was deeply interested in Slavophilism, defended a dissertation on it, and later wrote a monumental work on the history of Russian opposition. By his own account, he was essentially pushed out of the USSR, and in 1975 he emigrated to the United States, where he continued developing his favorite subject while teaching at various universities.
For decades he debated (often in magazine columns) many prominent figures — for example, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Alexander Dugin. Many of those polemical texts later became parts of his books.
So the history of the Russian idea, and Slavophilism more broadly, was his core topic for many decades.
Between 2014 and 2016, the publishing house Novy Khronograf released his four-volume work The Russian Idea: From Nicholas I to Putin, in which he set out to explain how the very concept of the Russian idea emerged, how it evolved, how it clashed with alternative views, and how all of this influenced the history of the Russian state — and even its neighbors. In the later volumes he increasingly reflected on where the current regime was heading, essentially describing and explaining why Russia rejects the idea of an independent Ukraine.
Yanov died on February 18, 2022 — one week before Russia invaded Ukraine.
Read more
