My research on left-wing Eurasianism has been supported by a 2018 Pernod Ricard Fellowship, a residency program run by Bétonsalon at Villa Vassilieff in Paris.
For more details, see Patrick Sériot, Structure et totalité. Les origines intellectuelles du structuralisme en Europe centrale et orientale (Paris: PUF, 1999); and Patrick Flack, “Roman Jakobson and the Transition of German Thought to the Structuralist Paradigm,” Acta Structuralica 1 (2016): 1–15.
Mstislav Shakhmatov, “Podvig vlasti (opyt po istorii gosudarstvennykh idealov Rossii)” (“Power’s deed: an essay in the history of Russian national ideals”) in Evraziiskii vremennik 3 (1923). Republished in Mstislav Shakhmatov, Gosudarstvo pravdy (The truth-based state) (Moscow: FondIV, 2008), 5–20.
Vladimir Ilyin (1891–1974) was a Russian philosopher, theologian, music critic, and composer. In 1929, he broke with the Eurasianists, accusing their leaders of loyalty to Bolshevism. He should not be confused with Ivan Ilyin, another, more notorious Russian émigré philosopher.
Letter dated February 2, 1925, in Gerald Stanton Smith, ed., The Letters of D.S. Mirsky to P.P. Suvchinskii, 1922–1931 (Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1995).
D.S. Mirsky, “The Eurasian Movement,” Slavonic Review VI, 17 (1927): 311–319.
L.P. Karsavin, “Fenomologiia revoliutsii” (“A phenomenology of revolution”), Evraziiskii vremennik 5 (1927): 38.
GARF (State Archive of the Russian Federation), f. 5783, op. 1, d. 359, l. 225.
Anastasia Gacheva, “Evraziistvo: ot vostochnichestva do vsechelovestnosti” (“Eurasianism: from orientalism to universalism”), Tetradi po konservatizmu 2, 5 (2015): 215–239.
Vladimir Dukel’skii, “Modernizm protiv sovremennosti” (“Modernism versus contemporaneity”), Evraziia 9 (1929): 7.
“Pis’ma iz Rossii. Pis’mo chetvertoe” (“Letter from Russia: fourth letter”), Evraziia 22 (1929).
Vladislav Ivanov, “O novoi estetike II” (“On the new aesthetics, II”), Evraziia 9 (1929).
See Igor Vishnevetskii, “Evraziiskoe yklonenie” v muzyke 1920–1930-kh godov (“The ‘Eurasian deviation’ in music of the 1920s and 1930s”) (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2005).
Pierre Souvtchinsky, “La motion du temps et la musique,” Revue musicale 191, 1 (1939): 70–80.
I would like to thank Irina Akimova for her insights on Souvtchinsky’s philosophy of the deed.
Left-wing Eurasianism ceased to exist in 1930. Subsequently, none of the political involvements of the faction’s former members was directly connected with Eurasianism. For example, the membership of certain left-wing Eurasianists in communist parties and the collaboration of others with the Soviet secret police took place after the movement per se had become a thing of the past. It would be an oversimplification, however, not see any connections between the earlier and later periods of their often wildly contradictory careers.
In this case, I draw upon the distinction made between percept and concept in a number of works by Deleuze and Guattari, in particular What Is Philosophy? and the 1988–1989 French television program L’Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze. They argued that philosophy created concepts, while art created percepts and affects. In this sense, all total utopias, Eurasianism in particular, are initially aesthetic constructions (percepts). Only later do they become political constructions (concepts).
See, for example: Between Europe and Asia: The Origins, Theories and Legacies of Russian Eurasianism, eds. Mark Bassin, Sergey Glevov, and Marlene Laruelle (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015).
Robert J.C. Young, “Editorial: Ideologies of the Postcolonial,” Interventions 1, 1 (1998): 4.
For a critique of postcolonial theory, see Vivek Chibber, Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital (London & New York: Verso, 2013).
Marlene Laruelle has made a similar argument: “Не является ли самой крупной победой Европы ее колонизация изнутри, которая приводит каждый народ к определению собственного разнообразия по сравнению с Европой с помощью критериев и моделей идентичности, которые являются европейскими?” (Is not the biggest victory of Europe the colonization from within, which leads every nation to define its own diversity in comparison with Europe, with the help of criteria and identity models that are European?) Marlene Laruelle, Ideologiya russkogo Evraziistva ili mysli o velichii imperii (The ideology of Russian Eurasianism, or thoughts about the greatness of the Empire) (Moscow: Natalis, 2004) 263. Translation by NS.
Peter Osborne, Anywhere or Not at All: The Philosophy of Contemporary Art (London & New York: Verso, 2013), 26. For another account of the difference between modernity and contemporaneity, see: Peter Osborne, “Global Modernity and the Contemporary: Two Categories of the Philosophy of Historical Time,” in Peter Osborne, The Postcolonial Condition (London & New York: Verso, 2018).
