P. B. Struve’s critical notes concerning the origin of the “rotting West” idea

Abstract

P. B. Struve’s critical notes concerning the origin of the “rotting West” idea and its fate in Russian social and political journalism are con-sidered. Reflecting on the fate of Russia, Struve chooses the traditional for the dispute between the Slavophiles and Westerners form of dia¬logue and comparison, as he constantly com¬pares the history and culture of Europe with those of Rus-sia. Struve’s report at the Russian Scientific Institute in Belgrade (1939) in which he formu-lated the idea of a crisis of Western values is analyzed. The author discusses the most interest-ing statements of Struve such as cultural inter-ference implying that thinkers of different coun-tries and cultures are able of having similar “his-torical experiences”. This statement led to anoth-er one, namely that the idea of a crisis of West-ern values appeared both in European and in Russian philosophy. Ac¬cording to Struve, the origin of the “rotting West” idea should be dis-covered in the essays of European thinkers who were disappointed with the Great French Revo-lution, later this idea was fully accepted and developed by Russian Slavophiles who were disappointed with the results of Peter’s I re-forms. Indeed, in Russia the process of Europe-anization resulted in the practice of noncritical borrowing of Western customs, on the one hand, and in total neglect of the Russian traditions, on the other. It is concluded that Struve’s critical con¬siderations concerning the origin of the “rot-ting West” idea reveal his pro-Western attitude of mind. Struve was a constructive critic of the Slavophiles’ in¬ter¬pretation of Russia as a civili-zation which is fundamentally different from the Western ones and has its own way of historical development.