ABSTRACT
Kåre Johan Mjør’s chapter is a case study of Oleg Platonov and the Institute for Russian Civilization, founded by Platonov in 1993. Mjør shows how Platonov, a key actor in the rise of Russian civilizationism and known for his extreme anti-Western and anti-Semitic views, not only disseminates his own works on the theory of Russian civilization but also republishes Russian classics, in particular, nineteenth-century Slavophile works, in order to secure a broader audience for books he sees as supporting his views of Russia as a unique and self-sufficient civilization. Platonov’s Institute promotes distinctly different Russian thinkers as a unifying embodiment of “Russian national thought” and an alleged “ideology of the Russian people.” The chapter reviews Platonov’s contribution to contemporary Russian civilizationism and nationalism, while it also highlights the readiness of Russian nationalist production to include marginal, radical positions alongside the more moderate ones, forging a Manichean worldview through the promotion of an isolationist stance and a categorical rejection of the West.
