open access

https://hdl.handle.net/2115/47614

Eurasianism as an Alternative : Linguist N. S. Trubetzkoy's Intellectual Reaction to the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany

日本語

2011

北海道大学スラブ研究センター

Slavic Studies

58

229-252

Eurasianism was a movement created by a group of Russian émigré linguists, ethnologists, geographers, and historians in the 1920s and 1930s. Although the Eurasianists possessed no political power, their ideas have had a significant influence on a wide range of intellectuals, even to this day. The most famous member of the movement was N. S. Trubetskoy (1890-1938), a renowned linguist. While scholars have examined the political implications of Eurasianism in the context of the 1920s, this essay shifts the emphasis to the academic and theoretical development of Eurasianism from the late 1920s into the 1930s. The examination of this new turn that the Eurasianists went though during this period reveals new aspects of their movement. Trubetzkoy's linguistic ideas made a major contribution to determining the direction of Eurasianism. My approach to Trubetzkoy's Eurasianism with much attention paid to his non-political aspects could solve the question of why his social thought was called "Eurasianism" and not "Russianism." This essay shows that Trubetzkoy suggested Eurasianism as an alternative ideology to Bolshevism, an alternative racial theory to Nazi racism, and an alternative name for the USSR. Trubetzkoy did not support the Bolsheviks during his lifetime. He rather sought to promote an alternative view to Bolshevik policy in many respects. His struggle with Bolshevism led him to forge the idea of Eurasianism. As far as national policy in the Soviet Union was concerned, Trubetzkoy recognized both the applicability and the limits of Eurasianism vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. He claimed that the Soviet assimilation policy was the opposite of national diversity, assuming that every national culture was equally valuable in its uniqueness. Strictly speaking, he disagreed with Soviet national policy, contending that an alternative ideology to Marxism was necessary. Trubetzkoy considered it possible to bring a variety of nations together with their every uniqueness preserved. Accentuating cooperation among various races, Trubetzkoy's Eurasianism worked as a challenge to Social Darwinism. He was against the concept of the "the struggle for survival," as he found himself "socially and racially weak" as a Russian émigré in Western Europe. Social Darwinism was a theory of "the strong" at that time. In fact, in his letters to R. Jakobson, Trubetzkoy mentioned the racial discrimination he confronted in daily life. These letters and his article "On Racism" (1935) revealed that Trubetzkoy and his colleagues were already under pressure from the Nazis at that time. In this article, he criticized the Nazi's Indo-Europeancentrism and racial determinism. In this essay, I attempt to define Eurasianism in the 1930s as an endeavor to create an ideal type of "Eurasia" replacing Bolshevism. The linguists Trubetzkoy and R. Jakobson and geographer P. Savitsky used a multi-disciplinary approach, applying concepts deriving from Neo-Lamarckian evolutionism to their social ideas concerning Eurasianism. This methodology stemmed from Trubetzkoy's article "The Tower of Babel and the Confusion of Tongues" (1923). Later, in his article "On the Indo-European Problem" (1937), his linguistic ideas clashed with the Nazi's racial and pseudo-linguistic theory that involved the concept of a "Proto-Indo-European language." In the 1920s and 1930s, Eurasianism developed as a reaction against European intellectual trends, including Social Darwinism. Trubetzkoy's Eurasianism stood between the communism of the USSR and the fascism of Nazi Germany, not only politically but also academically and ideologically.

紀要論文

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0562-6579

AN0012574X