Siberian Federal University

Issue

Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences. 2017 10 (9)

Authors

Mikhailova, Galina P.

Contact information

Mikhailova, Galina P.: Vilnius University 3 Universiteto Str., LT-01513, Vilnius, Lithuania;

Keywords

European ideas; philosophy of dialogue; ethical values national identity; self-identification

Abstract

The concept of the “Russian European” and the way it is understood is linked with the definition of Europe as an idea and an identity. Perception of Europe as a symbol and a cradle of spiritual, ethical and legal values characterize mentality in Russia as well as in Central and Eastern Europe. This allows to compare models of behaviour and ways of thinking as well as crisis periods of self-identification of such “Europeans” as Shishkin and Cz. Milosz who both encountered Western Europe. Trying to preserve Russian national identity while being in Switzerland, Shishkin turned to a discursive position, which might be described as preservation of “heritage of cultural forms” and wrote a literary and historical guidebook “Russian Switzerland” and an essay collection “Montreux-Missolunghi-Astapovo, in the Steps of Byron and Tolstoy”. As far as publicism is concerned the “recipe” of changing and revival of Russia proposed by Shishkin is traditional enough for Russian westernists: “Information. Education. Mitigation of customs. Freedom of speech”. The article emphasizes that the “recipe” is based on philosophy of human dialogical nature, and it is closely related with the idea of freedom and with ethics of dialogical personalism rooted in categories of responsibility, commitment, sympathy and compassion. It is important that compassion is the nerve of Shishkin’s big and small prose. Asserting dialogical relationship with Western civilization and culture and being convinced of impossibility of “dialogue with the state”, Shishkin as Nabokov before him takes out civil service of the writer beyond belles-lettres but reserves his right for critical reflection and for comment in genre of publicism. Shishkin’s desire to identify himself with cosmopolitical cultural elite is obvious. For this very reason his judgements of “another Russia” and his own affiliation with it implies most of all cultural opposition; his position is about individual self-determination of an artist, principle of civil particularism harmonically combined with cosmopolitism and “smart nationalism”

Pages

1368-1381

Paper at repository of SibFU

https://elib.sfu-kras.ru/handle/2311/34779

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