Anton Vladimirovich Kartashev as a Prophet not in His Own Country

Abstract

This article discusses the justification by Anton Kartashev, a Russian emigrant historian, theologian, and public figure for the ideal of Holy Rus’, which was supposed to serve as a religious basis for the creation of the cultural and historical identity of the representatives of the “second wave” of emigration from the Soviet Union during the Second World War. In the case study, the author of the article applies methods of “personal history” and “new intellectual history” to both historical works and such ego documents as letters published and stored in the Bakhmeteff Archive of Russian and East European Culture at Columbia University. Considering the genesis of the concept of Holy Rus’ in the publications of Karashev before the war, the author of the article shows the influence on the content of the political views of the public man who followed the principles of centrism, intransigence, and non-precondition. Along with this, the article reveals the links between the historical and cultural, canonical and dogmatic justifications of the ideal in his narratives which were constructed as the Hegelian triad: thesis – antithesis – synthesis. Kartashev represented the process of transformation of the emerging symphony of church and state in Ancient Rus’ and Muscovite State through its denial in the laic culture of the Russian Empire after the Petrine reforms into a new desired symphony of church and society. The central place in the article is occupied by the characteristics of changes among Russian émigrés at the end and after the Second World War and by the explanation of the impact of these changes on the motivation of Kartashev to present his vision of the ideal of Holy Rus’ in a form of a book. As a result of studying the long process of preparing the edition and the subsequent reviewing and discussion of the book, it is shown that this ideal was perceived ambiguously. Such perception of Kartashev’s book was influenced by the complication of ideological divisions among Russian emigrants as a result of the spread among the part of them of the mood of “Soviet patriotism” and the addition to their ranks of anti-Soviet-minded “displaced persons” from the Soviet Union, as well as differences in the vision of life prospects by the representatives of the “older” generations of refugees who had to leave Soviet Russia soon after the revolution and the “younger” one, who were entering into life abroad. As a result, most of the participants in the discussion of the book, speaking kindly about the author, nevertheless emphasized their disagreement with both the political and religious-dogmatic justifications of the ideal of Holy Rus’ as a basis for their cultural and historical identity.