A RUSSIAN IN CHINA

Russicus sum, nihil alieni a me alienum puto…
My two-year stay in China at an impressionable early age could not fail to stimulate within me an especially heightened aesthetic appreciation of Oriental culture. Not at the expense of my native Western culture, mind you, but as a healthy addition to it, a “separate admiration,” intensified by the nostalgic touch of associating China with a precious part of my childhood.

This is not the Mirror section, however, and personal reminiscences have limited place here. My intention is to raise a curious question in connection with this personal involvement of mine with the Chinese culture, in particular, and with non-Western culture in general, and this is a good place to do it.

As the world’s Third Rome, at least in her self-perception, does Russia stake her claim on what is Rome’s actual domain in modern times, that is, the Christian world, or does her ambition reach beyond the confines of Western Civilization? On the one hand, the Church component of the Great Russian Duumvirate has not claimed the non-Christian world as its sphere of influence, and thus, no interest in such global outreach can be attributed to Russia’s Manifest Destiny.

On the other hand, however, the State component of the Great Russian Duumvirate claims the four religions of the Russian Empire as its legitimate assets, and thus goes beyond the Christian element of the Third Rome Doctrine.

It turns out that our Third Rome has a well-marked political and supra-religious aspect to it, but how much effect this aspect has on the whole is a much more elusive consideration than may appear at first sight. We must re-emphasize first and foremost that Russia’s Manifest Destiny is inconceivable without the religious component, and thus the purely political element has to take a back seat to an organic combination of both. It does not mean that Russia has no political interest outside the Church-State mix. In fact, it is very much involved with the totality of the international structure, and in our modern day and age anything less than a full global outlook is unthinkable.

The answer is that as far as her Manifest Destiny is concerned, Russia claims the Christian world as her own domain, while her multiethnic and multi-religious political composition provides her with a huge leverage to sit at the same table with the other cultures, particularly the Islamic nations, as their equal, but only as an equal. Hence Russia’s historical propensity to make alliances with the Eastern nations against the enemies from the West. (Alexander Nevsky and Batu-Khan, Stalin and Yamamoto, etc.) Even though politically explainable without a recourse to mysticism, the latter becomes a helpful illuminating tool in an in-depth analysis of the overall Russian political philosophy, her strategies, and often even her tactics.

And lastly, seeing herself as a repository of world culture, Russia does not possess an inherent mechanism of discrimination of non-Christian cultures in favor of the Western Christian culture. Just as she embraced Pushkin’s African ancestor, and so many others, as her own, she is always ready to embrace any Chinese, Japanese, or any other Oriental newcomer to the fold of her Russianness, and so, she is always prepared to say to them and to others, in any language, including this Latin paraphrase of the famous Terentius quote: Russicus sum, nihil alieni a me alienum puto. (I am Russian, therefore nothing alien is alien to me.)