Work · Sociology & Social Theory
The Spirit of Russia
A history of Russian philosophy of history and religion from Chaadaev and the Slavophiles to the revolutionaries, as a study of Russia’s relation to Europe.
Introduction
Masaryk published the work in 1913 in Jena under the title “Russland und Europa”, with the subtitle “Zur russischen Geschichts- und Religionsphilosophie”; the English translation “The Spirit of Russia” followed in 1919, and a third volume on Dostoevsky, left unfinished, appeared in English only in 1967. The two volumes trace Russian thought from Chaadaev’s “Philosophical Letter” through the Slavophiles and Westernisers, Herzen, Bakunin, Chernyshevsky and the populists to the Marxists and the religious philosophers of his own time. Masaryk reads this history as a struggle between Orthodox, theocratic tradition and the critical thought of modern Europe, and sees in Dostoevsky the crisis in its sharpest form. For decades it was a standard Western account of Russian thought.
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