The Specifics of Russian Sonderweg, or ‘What a Russian Likes…’

Book Review: Velizhev M.B., Аtnashev T.M., Zorin А.L. (compl.) (2018) «Osobyj put’»: ot ideologii k metodu [Sonderweg: from Ideology to Method]. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie.

Abstract

Vladimir Babashkin – DSc in History, Associate Professor, Institute of Economics, Mathematics and Information Technology, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA). Address: 82, Vernadskogo Prospect, Moscow, 119571, Russian Federation. E-mail: vbabashkin@ranepa.ru

Citation: Babashkin V. (2018) The Specifics of Russian Sonderweg, or ‘What a Russian Likes…’. Mir Rossii, vol. 27, no 4, pp. 163–175 (in Russian). DOI: 10.17323/1811-038X-2018-27-4-163-175

Russians have a saying ‘What a Russian likes is death for a German’. It was particularly popular in the 19th century as a way to describe the fact that many Europeans or European-minded Russian intellectuals disdained many things about Russia – the same things Russians themselves were perfectly comfortable with. These things are well described in the Russian literature and these descriptions are rather numerous
and diversified. Many thinkers and publicists in Russia attempted to explain this cultural persistence by looking deeper into the roots of the Russian mentality with 174 V. Babashkin most previous accounts typically pointing to the communal life of Russian peasants. There are currently signs of a return to this kind of reasoning in modern Russian historiography. In this sense, it is quite unfortunate that the first part of the book, while obviously addressing the same problematics, does not even engage with the rich
Russian tradition of understanding Russian mentality and what some sociologists now define as “moral economy”.

The second part of the book consists of texts by Europeans on the issue of Sonderweg. This part  introduces the reader to the ways in which German historians considered the problem of Germany’s special mission. Their works are skillfully analyzed and generalized in the concluding chapter by Dubina, in which she shows that modern German historiography features a variety of different approaches to the problem such that one should speak of the variety of Sonderwege rather than a single Sonderweg.
This situation, seemingly incompatible with the scientific nature of historiography, paradoxically saves its scientific nature. It reduces external pressure to a kind of confession, while it contributes to a better understanding of the kind of comparative studies required to form the basis of this methodology.