Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration ... - europeanization

162 Erhard Stölting
In general, this kind of Russophilia indicated an anti-Western attitude in the
German context. It either symbolised the wish to dissociate from a Germany which
had become too modern and too westernised, or it symbolised the idea of the
basically Eastern character of Germany as opposed to the West; Russia and
Germany were seen as twin nations.
The situation in Russia was quite different. As romantic anti-Westernism was
claimed as something essentially Russian, it could not be German. So even the early
impression made by Schelling or Hegel was subsequently kept secret or denied.
It was said that nobody in the West, including German Romantics, was able to
penetrate or understand the deep Russian mind. The dominant image of Germany
remained that of a Western nation. The Russian mind was unfathomable.
The situation was different with Russian Westernisers. As can be exemplified
with Herzen, they no longer tended to identify with Germany, but with France or
Britain. According to an older image, Germany was the cold and philistine nation
in contrast to magnanimous and sparkling France or solidly cosmopolitan Britain,
the identification with the West going as far as contempt for Germans, and especially
its émigré community (Gertsen 1973: 130–54, 397–400).
The Soviet Union and the Great Patriotic War
In many respects Soviet self-definitions preserved the great Russian idea in Marxist-
Leninist disguise. In the public rituals, in the veneration of strong leaders, in the
enforcement of unconditional submission and in the authoritarian power structures,
the Byzantine tradition was alive although it was veiled by Marxist-Leninist and
internationalist rhetoric in the Soviet Union.
But ever since Stalin rose to absolute power at the end of the 1920s, official
Communist ideology cannot be seen as a continuation of Westernising aspects
of the Russian tradition alone. With the Third International, Moscow became
the focal point of world history. If for Trotsky and many of the elder Bolsheviks the
Revolution had to take place on a global scale or at least in the developed world,
the end of the ‘Permanent Revolution’ marked a shift from ubiquity to a
geographical centre. Moscow became the focal point of world history once more as
it had in the ideology of the Russian empire.
Until the Second World War, Germany was held in high esteem. It was
the country of birth of Marx, Engels and also of minor socialist theorists like Rosa
Luxemburg and Karl Kautsky. It was the country which until the outbreak of the
First World War had had a particularly strong and disciplined socialist movement.
It was even expected for some time that Germany should be the second country in
which a socialist revolution would be successful. But support for the German
government by the majority of the Social Democrats at the outbreak of the war
and the role they played in the crushing the Spartakus rebellion of November
1918 in Berlin could be integrated into a grand historical tale: the leadership of the
global socialist movement had passed from Germany to Russia. Moscow had
become the Third Rome of socialism. Indeed, since 1929 Stalin himself had become
the living incarnation of socialism and was ascribed a charismatic position which
no Czar had ever reached in previous times (Stölting 1997: 45–74).