Academic literature on the topic 'White Russian Philosophy'

Anton Antonovich Kersnovski (1907–44) was Russian military historian, who immigrated to France after the defeat of the White Movement in the Russian Civil War. During his short writing career, Kersnovski authored hundreds of articles and numerous books, many of which have been widely republished, analyzed and commented on in post-Soviet Russia. This chapter is based on the translation of selected chapters from his Filosofiya voyny [The Philosophy of War], which was initially published as a series of articles, and was later turned into a book. In this work he combines strategic insights and historical commentary with a conviction that Russian strategy must reflect its national, Christian, spiritual roots and avoid the soulless rationalism of Lenin or unhelpful borrowing from the West.

This chapter concerns Russian emigration. Historians have contrasted the political weakness of the Russian emigration with its vibrant artistic and intellectual life. In 1922, the Bolsheviks expelled 220 of Russia's leading intellectuals on the so-called “philosophers' steamer.” They and other émigrés made important contributions to a large range of subjects, including philosophy and history, while émigré communities produced hundreds of journals and newspapers. In the post-Soviet era, as Russian politicians and intellectuals have sought non-communist sources of inspiration, many have turned to émigré writings. Important political figures such as President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have cited émigré thinkers in their speeches. Although it was cut off from the vitally important developments taking place in the Soviet Union, the emigration is an integral part of Russian history.

I demonstrate how subjectivities work to flatten such folds (as conceived in Deleuze’s work on Foucault and Leibniz) by examining Elena, the logic of which is underpinned by the notion of flatness. In his special attention to surfaces and patterns Zviagintsev elucidates a particular film philosophy which Zviagintsev’s cinematographer, Krichman, calls ‘visualisation’, or transference of meaning with the help of cinematic symbols. The symbolic modes instantiates a new plane of meaning, a surface on which meaning is inscribed, which, while alluding to the materiality of being, is elusive in its metaphysical construction. Cinematically, while the camera looks in both directions, it glides above these surfaces and in doing so creates meaning; it is in the gap between surfaces that the meaning is actualised. Krichman and Zviagintsev discuss non-representational strategies which they call ‘visualisation’. Zviagintsev compares film to a ‘magical mirror’ which enables a two-directional mode of operation: while viewers watch films, the films watch the viewers (Zviagintsev 2014). For him, film offers both knowledge and non-knowledge. The latter—a more powerful stance, according to the director—provides ‘freedom and emptiness’, that is, a temporal lack of signification, a void of meaning to be filled in the process of watching (2014).

This chapter examines nineteenth-century Russian writers who drew on the Gothic in order to explore the experience of death, existential terror, and the possibility of an afterlife within the bounds of literary realism. In Turgenev’s story ‘Bezhin Meadow’ and Chekhov’s sketch ‘A Dead Body’, Gothic language and imagery create a narrative frame that contextualizes an encounter between peasants and a traveller focused around a discussion of death. This chapter argues that the Gothic is juxtaposed with folk belief in these works, to underscore that both the peasants’ dvoeverie and educated Russia’s interest in natural sciences, materialist philosophy, and the pseudo-science of spiritualism represent attempts to systematise and explain the unknown. The Gothic mediates the tension between science and faith, the irrational and the prosaic, and the abject and the mysterious, while allowing these ruminations to remain ambiguously unfinalised for the reader.

The article is devoted to the origins and reception of the concepts of the vsechelovecheskoe and vsechlovek in the work of the late F. Dostoevsky. N. Danilevsky’s book “Russia and Europe” attracted attention of the writer, because it contained ideas in tune with his own thoughts about the special role of Russia, destinated to unite the Slavs. However, the program of Dostoevsky was significantly different from the conception of Danilevsky: the scientist radically separated religion and politics, while for Dostoevsky religion was called to sanctify politics and point out the ideal of the development of the Russian state, history and humanity; Danilevsky considered the struggle of Russia and Europe inevitable, and the writer believed in the possibility of building of new relations with the Western Europe countries on the Christian fraternal principles. Moreover, Dostoevsky accepted the distinction between universal and vsechelovecheskoe, introduced by the author of “Russia and Europe”. The ideas of vsechelovecheskoe evolved not without the influence of the young philosopher V.S. Solovyov. The historiosophical views of Dostoevsky, concedered by his contemporaries to be overly naive and devoid of robust realism, were adopted by Silver Age thinkers and Eurasians. Using the category of vsechelovecheskoe V.F. Ern and V.I. Ivanov comprehended contemporary historical events, revolutions and wars. The Eurasians, who at first came closer to Danilevsky’s concept with its isolated cultural-historical types, subsequently came to a religious understanding of history in the spirit of A.S. Khomyakov, V.S. Soloviev, F.M. Dostoevsky and others.

The aim of our study is the description and initial systematization of the texts about saints in the Russian collection of the ELM folklore archive labeled ERA Vene – the records from the 1920s-40s, created by the ELM collectors belonging to the Russian population of Estonia. Among the texts about saints in the Russian collection of the ELM archive we can find fairy tales (magical and legendary), spiritual and ethical legends, lore (stories about local landscape features, natural and cultural objects), bylichkas (mythological stories), stories about miracles (legends-bylichkas), legendary stories about help and punishment from saints. Thus, texts about saints in the Russian archive can be divided into 2 large groups: 1) narrative texts, i.e. texts that tell a story; 2) discursive texts-descriptions of beliefs, customs, perceptions. The most frequent protagonists of the texts of different genres and beliefs are such saints as St. Nicholas of Myra (commonly known as Nicholas the Wonderworker or Saint Nicholas), the Great Martyr George the Victory-bearer (known among Estonian Russians as Yegoriy), the Old Testament prophet Elijah (Elijah the Prophet), the Venerable John Cassian the Roman (popularly known as Kasyan the Merciful). Russians of Estonia also knew local saints or saints of the nearby lands - St. John Archbishop of Novgorod (12th century), Monk Makariy Roman of Novgorod (late 15th - early 16th centuries), Monk-martyr Korniliy of Pskov-Pechersk, Monk Nikandr of Pskov (16th century), Izborsk righteous man Matvey the Miserable (early 20th century). The list of all the saints is quite extensive: Archistratigus Michael, King Solomon, John the Forerunner and the Baptist, Apostle Andrew the First-Called, Venerable Sergius of Radonezh, Great Martyr and Healer Pantheliimon, Great Martyr Paraskeva Friday, Martyrs Kirik and Julita, Hymenless and Wonderworkers Cosmas and Domian, Martyrs Florus and Laurus, Great Martyr Anastasia of Sirmium, Monks Savvatiy and Zosima of Solovtsy, Holy Martyr Antipas of Pergamon, etc. At the same time, King Solomon is a protagonist of fairy tales, in one tale the main character is Andrew the First Called, the other saints are mentioned in connection with the beliefs about what needs they help with, what prayers are addressed to them, what holidays and how they are celebrated. In many cases, the customs coincide with those of the Seto ethnic group living in the same area, and there are similarities with the Latvians living in the Ludza region, and Belarusians. The texts combine the elements of the Christian canonical, apocryphal, and folkloric traditions. This philosophy includes various etiological (including cosmological), eschatological, ethno-confessional perceptions, a set of ethical norms, the most important components of which are notions of good and evil, sin and miracle. As for the veneration of St. Nicholas, according to the ELM archive, he was considered a „universal“ helper with all the problems of life, while other saints had their own particular «specialization». At the same time the popular saint Kasyan, nicknaed «the Unmerciful» had nothing in common with his canonical prototype, Saint John Kasyan the Roman, a Christian monk and theologian, the founder of monasticism in Gaul, and a theorist of monastic life. Thus, the texts of the Russian ELM archive on saints constitute a unique collection that is a reflection of the peasant worldview peculiar to the 1920s and 1940s.

Chapter 2 provides a historical overview of controlled inclusion in modern China. It covers both traditional roots of consultative administration in Chinese history and the potential influence of democratic institutions for open governance and transparency. More importantly, the chapter explains why the primary foundations for inclusive control were most likely imported from revolutionary Russia and reinterpreted during China’s interwar period. The blending of Leninist thought with Maoist mobilizational philosophy contributed to informal institutions for bringing public input into bureaucratic oversight and planning. While this approach to administration has at times been on the brink of collapse, the chapter also illustrates how modern technology has helped to revive bottom-up governance while enhancing top-down control.

Dmitry Zhilinsky establishes himself as an artist in the first half of the 1960s by creating a series of paintings which differ distinctly, in their form and content, both from the canons of the Socialist Realism and from those of the ‘severe style’. Zhilinsky's artistic style was unique because he was inspired more than by the classical Russian and Soviet figurative tradition by the Renaissance art. While art critics and art historians often mention a strong influence of the Renaissance art on Zhilinsky, a truly in-depth and systematic study on this subject has not yet been conducted. In this paper, we analyse some of his most significant works in order to identify stylistic and compositional quotes from Renaissance masterpieces in them and to propose new interpretations of their subjects.

This chapter interprets the reforms by Deng Xiaoping and Mikhail Gorbachev in the context of their efforts to find alternative means to great power status—through social creativity. Deng launched the “reform and opening” policy, developing the economic foundation for China to play a great power role while exercising unparalleled diplomatic flexibility in dealing with some of China's most difficult territorial and sovereignty disputes. Gorbachev abandoned Russia's usual military methods for achieving great power status in favor of promoting a new, idealistic philosophy for a more peaceful and harmonious world—the “New Thinking.” While Gorbachev's ideas enjoyed remarkable success internationally, the failure of his domestic reforms, along with the rise of nationalism, contributed to the breakup of the Soviet Union and an end to the Soviet Union's status as an innovator of new principles for world order.

In Albert Camus' 1950 play Just Assassins, terrorists are at work in nineteenth-century Russia. They kill people, and they all believe that there is a superior moral reason for doing so. But they also know that killing is wrong. In their own view, they are innocent criminals; innocent, because their action is justified, but criminals, because they kill. So tacitly they conclude that they deserve punishment that will remove the regret from their shoulders. Their execution, by the same despotic authorities they are attacking, completes their actions: regret, caused by justified killing, gets its counterpart. Regret is an interesting mental phenomenon. Some people say that feeling regret is irrational, or even that it is immoral. But surely the usual opinion is that in some situations regret is an appropriate way to react. An interesting question is what it means to say that sometimes it is 'appropriate' to feel regret. Do we have a moral obligation to feel regret sometimes? How could one have an obligation to feel anything, since, at least seemingly, feelings are not voluntary acts. If we do have a moral obligation to feel regret in some cases, does it follow that all good people are emotionally "hot," while "cool" persons, who are not able to feel deep regret, are bad?