ABSTRACT
Before we examine the era of the Russian Revolution, it is important to briefly consider the century that preceded it. Nineteenth-century Russia was dominated by intellectual debates that were founded on the question of whether Russia belonged to the East or to the West. Sparked by Peter the Great’s reforms, this debate permeated every aspect of Russian society following major events such as the French Revolution, the War of 1812, and the failed Decembrist revolt in 1825. Pyotr Chaadaev’s famous statement that Russians “belong neither to the West nor to the East,” that Russians are “placed outside of the times” and “have not been affected by the universal education of mankind” shook a country consisting of “illegitimate children without a heritage, without a link with the men who preceded [them] on earth” (Chaadaev 27, 31). While Russia’s late arrival on the world stage can be viewed as a tragic disadvantage, it was also perceived as proof of Russia’s messianic mission to save Europe from the rubble of its failed Enlightenment project, epitomized by the violence enacted in the name of rationalist ideals. This led to the rise of the Russian intelligentsia, which was still haunted by the “empty place left by the powerful men [the Decembrists – C.C.] that had been exiled to Siberia,” and the heated debate between the Slavophiles and the Westernizers (Herzen 293). The ensuing conflict of faith against reason was framed by Russia’s developing social consciousness and the limitations placed on it by state authority. Although Chaadaev felt that Peter the Great was correct in making his reforms, the only reason they were possible was because Russia had not organically developed its own institutions that had been tested and passed down throughout the history of a nation. Hence, in the eyes of many, “Russians were only a collection of unrelated individuals,” with “no sense of permanency and [who] resemble homeless spirits condemned to creative impotence” (Walicki 85-86).
