George Pattison: Reading Russian Philosophy in the Age of Putin: Dostoevsky and Putinism

George Pattison
Clemena Antonova
Tuesday, 17 January 2023, 18:00 CET
SPITTELAUER LÄNDE 3, IWM Library, VIENNA, 1090
In his Valdai conference in Autumn 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin made two explicit references to Dostoevsky and possibly one implied reference. In one case, he cited the cancellation of a lecture course on Dostoevsky as evidence of the ‘cancel culture’ of the West and the attempt to obliterate Russian culture from the world. In the other he cited the speech of Shigalev (The Possessed) as illustrative of the destructive ideology directing Western policy, a total democratization that leads to total authoritarianism. Implicitly, he may also have alluded to Dostoevsky’s idea of Russian culture as capable of entering and affirming a pluralism of European cultures. It is not surprising that the Russian President uses Dostoevsky in this way, since Dostoevsky’s writings, fictional and non-fictional, are strongly nationalistic. The paper continues by exploring Dostoevsky’s Russian exceptionalism, with particular reference to The Diary of a Writer, Shatov’s speech (The Possessed) and the 2014 television adaptation that spun the God-building theme in the context of Russia-Ukraine tensions, and the homilies of the Elder Zosima. The paper argues that despite the prima facie plausibility of using Dostoevsky in support of Russian World ideology, a more spiritual reading of the ‘Light from the East’ theme remains, as realized in the writings of V. S. Solovyov.
George Pattison, Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of Glasgow, formerly Professor in Divinity at University of Oxford.
Clemena Antonova, Research Director at the IWM - The World in Pieces Program.