Slavic identity in the context of mental geography by A. S. Budilovich
Abstract
The problem of Russia’s cultural and civilizational identity has been in the limelight for intellectuals for a long time and still remains rather relevant. A number of mythological patterns reproduced in our day in attempts to solve this problem by means of pseudo-scientific and propagandistic constructions were formed within the slavophile mythology of the turn of 19–20 centuries. The concepts characteristic of Russian slavophilic nationalism were used and developed in the works of A. S. Budilovich. The subject of this article is the Slavic identity, its peculiarities and the images the Other which constitutes this identity in the context of the mental geography in Budilovich’s national discourse. The research of his scientific and journalistic works proposed in the article was done by means of discourse analysis. It is shown that the Slavic identity, identified by Budilovich with the East, is determined by the coexistence of the two binary oppositions: East–West and East–Asia. The West is considered in three aspects: as an active threat to the East, its antipode and the object of salvation. Asia is regarded as an antipode of the civilization, a threat to its existence and an object of the civilizational expansion. The East is interpreted by Budilovich as the bearer of Christian truth, the source of civilization (for both signifiers) and the protector of the West and Asia from each other. In such a messianic project is expressed the dream of establishing a discursive hegemony within the framework of a universal Christian Empire, the core of which is Russia.
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