Any
attempt to present Russian civilization as a totality, as a historical,
continually evolving phenomenon possessing its own linear logic and expressed
in its own distinct form as a nation runs up against great internal
difficulties and contradictions. Each time we make such an attempt, we find
that, at any stage of its growth and historical development, this civilization
divides, as it were, into two, showing at one and the same time two distinct
faces: European and Asiatic, spontaneous and organized, natural and artificial,
secular and spiritual, official and unofficial, collective and individual --
these and similar, inseparable pairs of opposites have been characteristic of
Russian civilization since ancient times and remain in force right up to the
present time. "Dvoeverie" [duality of faith], "dvoemyslie" [duality of thought], "dvoevlastie" [duality of political authority], "raskol" [schism] --
these are just a few of the concepts that are significant for the
understanding of our civilization and which have already made their appearance
in ancient Russian culture. Such a stable contradiction of Russian culture,
giving birth, on the one hand, to heightened, dynamic self-development and, on
the other hand, to a periodically accentuated conflict characteristic of
civilization itself, constitutes its organic peculiarity, its typological
distinctiveness. We may consider this contradiction binary in nature.
The
characteristic distinctiveness of Russian culture with its
"duocenter" lies in the fact that its foundation, its essence, its
deeper meaning consists not of a mechanical sum of two oppositely charged
nuclei, bound together in one inseparable whole, but rather of the act
of binding itself, which
continually changes, like the flickering that results from the interaction
of two centers, two nuclei, two
polarities, combining in itself their deep internal unity and yet without
thereby nullifying their absolute opposition vis-à-vis each other.
It
is no accident that throughout our country's history there appear binary
frames, organizing Russian culture and history in the form of a dichotomy running through it:
"dvoeverie", "dvoevlastie", "oprichnina" [Ivan
the Terrible’s administrative elite], heresies, impostors, rebellions, the
schism, "raznochinstvo" [Russian intelligentsia not of gentle birth],
Russian communism, Eurasianism, the Russian Abroad, post-Soviet world -- each
of these and similar concepts include a semantic ambivalence, a dual structure,
an inner drama. Strictly speaking, even such classic semantic pairs of Russian
culture, as e. g., Westernizers --
Slavophiles or people -- populism or revolution -- counter-revolution,
constitute in each case not a sum of two frames but rather a single, unitary,
semantic construct, in which neither of the two polarities can exist without
the other, in which each of them must interact with its opposite, carrying on a
polemic with it and struggling for supremacy. Moreover, the victory of one
polarity automatically signifies also its defeat in that, without such a
struggle for supremacy, its purpose and activity would lose their meaning and
their applicability. We should acknowledge furthermore that all of the frames,
from which the whole of Russian culture (and therefore history) has issued, are
bound to each other at all levels of their semantic organization precisely in
accordance with the principle of "reciprocal support": paganism --
Christianity, autocracy -- Orthodoxy, the authorities -- the intelligentsia,
the intelligentsia -- the people, religion -- science, art -- reality,
literature -- criticism, history -- contemporaneity, the "Russian
Idea" -- the Communist idea, State Security -- the human rights movement,
the dissidents, and so on.
We
may consider the following major figures of Russian culture as representatives
of binary frames: Theofan the Greek -- Andrei Rublev, Iosif Volotsky -- Nil
Sorsky, Patriarch Nikon -- Archpriest Avvakum, N. Radishchev -- M. Shcherbatov,
N. Karamzin -- P. Chaadaev, A. Pushkin -- N. Gogol', N. Nekrasov -- A. Fet,
Vladimir Solovyov -- Konstantin Leontiev, L. Tolstoy -- F. Dostoevsky, and so
on. The key figures of our country's history are similarly bound to each other.
These include: Askol'd -- Dir, Olga -- Vladimir, Alexander Nevsky -- Mikhail
Tverskoi, Ivan the Terrible -- Ivan Kurbsky, Boris Godunov -- the False
Dimitry, Catherine II -- Yemelyan Pugachev, Lenin -- Stalin, and so on. In each
case, the semantic pair signifies both the symbolic unity of figures of history
or culture (contemporaneity or succession, a common activity, a shared
influence or shared persona), and their mutual opposition, their conflict
(differences pertaining to their character, person or aims, their destinies, their
authority, their role as the initial and concluding phase of a historical
process, as causes and effects, beginnings and ends), that is, such a semantic
pair embodies the principle of ambivalence as a system-building cultural
construct.