A ‘Cheka Acting in God’s Name’ would be Even Worse than the Bolshevik Original, First Emigration Critics of Eurasianism Said

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 4 – Eurasianism, a set of ideas which arose in the Russian emigration in the 1920s and 1930s and which influences Vladimir Putin’s thinking to a remarkable extent, is much discussed; but its first and most penetrating critics, also part of the first Russian emigration, have largely been ignored, Georgy Mitrofanov says.

            That is a tragedy, the church historian at St. Petersburg’s Spiritual Academy says, because these critics understood how dangerous Eurasianism was and how “a Cheka actin in the name of God” could prove even worse for Russia than the Bolshevik original of Dzherzinsky and Lenin (severreal.org/a/chem-filosofskie-parohody-otlichayutsya-ot-filosofskih-samoletov-/32151030.html).

            The Eurasianists, as Mitrofanov points out, “considered Russia to be a unique and self-sufficient civilization, combining in itself elements of Europe and Asia but distinguished from both.” They believed that Eurasia, “not so much geographically but geopolitically and culturally” was central and argued that Russia must be “spiritually independent” from the West.

            According to Mitroganov, the Eurasianists viewed the sources of their world to be not Kievan Rus “but the empire of Chingiz Khan and dreamed about the revival of a powerful Russian state in the borders of which should be Mongolia.” Unlike the Slavophiles, they saw themselves closer to the Finno-Ugrics and Turks than to other Slavs.

            “The Eurasians hoped that the revolutionary events of 1917 would open a new era in Russian history, one which would allow the country to escape from European influence.” They had a significant following in the 1920s but became marginal, only to reemerge in Russia itself in the 1990s thanks to the efforts of Lev Gumilyev and Alekxandr Dugin.

            But if Eurasianism made a comeback, the critics of Eurasianism did not, critics who early one warned that this set of notions was “a very dangerous ideology which could allow the preservation of communism by transforming it into a kind of national bolshevism,” as in fact Stalin did.

            And today, Mitrofanov concludes, “we see how the ideology of Eurasianism has led to the promulgation of a new ideology which really recalls such a symbiosis of bolshevism, fascism, and the ideas of Eurasianism about Russia’s special path,” one opposed to all outside influences but above all to European ones.

            In this pastiche of ideas, there is even a place for the Russian Orthodox church, but that makes Eurasianism even more dangerous as its critics noted. Georgy Fedorov, for instance, observed that if that happened, a new Cheka would arise, one “much more horrific than the Bolshevik one because it would be a Cheka acting in God’s Name.”

            From Fedotov and other first emigration critics of Eurasianism, Russians have much to learn, but their words today remain “unheard, unread and un-reflected upon by our contemporaries.” But of course, almost all the other warnings of the first emigration about the dangers ahead have been ignored as well.

            The intellectual leaders of the first emigration, those whom Lenin exiled via the philosopher ships from Petrograd and Odessa, all believed in Russia and that is why they kept writing in Russia, hoping for a Russian audience. But they didn’t get one, and now many of their worst nightmares are coming true even if Russia has ceased to be communist.