Entangled Paths Toward Modernity: Contextualizing Socialism and Nationalism in the Balkans

14. Slavophilism

14. Slavophilism Basic philosophical assumptions of slavophile doctrine were incorporated almost a priori into the Radicals’ social philosophy, informing their worldview on a variety of issues, like the relationship between societal organization and the individual, or the place of Serbia within the realm of world civilizations. Historically, the bridging of slavophile ideas and the ideas of Westernizers in Russia was achieved in the synthetic thought of Alexander Herzen. Via this modality slavophilic themes were to influence the development of populist doctrine. Moreover , they were modified and reorganized theoretically into a different ideological system. Despite the fact that slavophilism and populism developed into two distinct ideologies, they intersected ideologically at several points, as both were based on a similar axiomatic foundation. Both nurtured an abhorrence of the Western liberal-capitalistic variant of progress and the broader model of European civilization. Some of the fundamental building blocks of narodnik ideology, like the destruction of the traditional mode of life by the forces of capitalism and the potentiality of traditional institutions for the creation of a just social order, emanated from a similar starting point. With respect to the belief in a particular path for Russia, the narodniks were true descendants of the slavophiles, albeit not sharing their mystical faith in the particularity of the Russian people.117 Equally influential was the slavophiles’ organic view of social evolution as opposed to what they understood to be the formalistic, mechanical and ultimately alien social development of Western society. Slavophilic proclivities are clearly present in the thought of Svetozar Marković. In his quest for an original Serbian civilization, his evaluation of the Slavic and Western European civilizations and the taxonomic classification of Serbia as clearly belonging to the first type, his aversion to the formalistic character of the judicial system compared to the superiority of the internalized morality of the community, his vision of an organic and holistic personality, and his unitary vision of society, or better stated, his preference for the “organic community” over the 113 14. Slavophilism “contractual society,” Marković incorporated elements of the social critique and the civilizational analysis of slavophilism, omitting its theosophical foundations. Marković’s religion remained science. Further elements of slavophilism like the drama of the clash of civilizations, the superiority of the Orthodox religion as an institution (church) and a creed, and the belief in the benevolent influence of the Russian Tsar were developed, accentuated, systematized and enriched with panSlavistic elements118 in the thought of Nikola Pašić, particularly during his period in exile after the collapse of the Timok Rebellion. The slavophiles’ social philosophy deserves closer elaboration, for it provides a key to understanding the fundamental difference between their organic vision of Gemeinschaft (community) and the contractual, formally institutionalized Gesellschaft (society). It also provides a key to understanding what appears to be the major paradox of radical doctrine : the quest for constitutional rule in combination with an anti-liberal social philosophy. In their social critique, the slavophiles repudiated a vision of “society” designed to function as the institutionalized arena of confrontation and negotiation of diverse interests, upholding rather a concept of “human association,” best represented in the consensual community of superior internalized morality. According to Ivan Kereevsky, the fact that Russia had evaded the impact of the rationalism of Roman civilization, embodied in the formalized system of Roman law, constituted the fundamental difference between Russia and Western Europe, and represented a clear advantage for the development of Russia. The internal disintegration and atomization of Western society was expressed in a system of external, and entirely formal bonds based on compulsion. Seminal to the slavophiles’ philosophy of history was the belief that religion had a catalytic influence on the development of the particular character of each civilization and culture. According to the theologian Aleksey Khomyakov, “true Christianity” was “not an institution, not a doctrine,” but a “supraindividual spiritual togetherness,” which he defined as “sobornost,” the “living organism of truth and love,” and which presupposed rejection of the autonomy of individual reason. The primary reason for the disintegration of Western Christianity lay in its incorporation of the rationality of Ancient Rome, culminating in “atheism and the apotheosis of egoism, which formed the spiritual foundation of modern rational and industrial European civilization.”119 114 III. The Ambiguities of Modernity Perceived as sequences of one and the same historical process, the increasing rationalization of the Western churches, the secularizing effect of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, modern industrialism , and...