The Germans are the leaders of the Russian Slavophiles, or where did the name Svetlana and the myth of Old Russian Sanskrit come from?

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

As you know, in Russia in the nineteenth century there were analogues of modern globalists and anti-globalists: Westernizers and Slavophiles. Because of the name of the movements, some think that only ethnically pure Slavs were taken as Slavophiles, but many of them were in fact Germans. Moreover, some Russian Germans can be named among the leaders and ideologists of the Slavophiles.

Alexander-Voldemar Ostenek (Vostokov)

Many are surprised to learn that the name "Svetlana" did not exist until the nineteenth century, and before the revolution they were not named children. You will not find it in any chronicle, inscription, or birch bark letter, but all because it was invented by the Slavophile poet Alexander Vostokov after the model of the Bulgarian Snezhana.

In general, the Slavophiles of the nineteenth century, despite the sometimes quirkiness of their ideas, have a lot to say thank you for, including for the fact that they brought to the scientific community an interest in pre-Christian Russia, which before them was considered unworthy of special attention, because pagans are all the same what animals. However, much of what it was impossible to study by scientific methods of the nineteenth century, they thought out from themselves. Among the dodumok there were names - although more often the Slavophiles took real Czech ones, which smelled of pagan times, like Lyudmila or Svetozar. But Svetlana is a completely artificial construct.

As for the author of the name, “Alexander-Voldemar Ostenek” was recorded in his documents at birth, as he was an ethnic German. The poet changed his surname to Vostokov purely for Slavophil reasons. In addition to Svetlana, Vostokov practically presented Russian science with comparative Slavic linguistics and other philological works, in the center of which were Russian and Church Slavonic languages.

Vostokov's poems were highly valued by Kuchelbecker, who was also an admirer of pre-Christian Russia (like his classmate Pushkin) and who did not speak Russian at all until the age of six (like his classmate Pushkin).

Vladimir Dal

Strictly speaking, the surname "Dahl" is not German - the father of the famous collector of words was a Dane (or Danish Jew). His mother, Maria Khristoforovna Freitag, was German. But Dahl's contemporaries, almost all the descendants of Protestants, automatically recorded themselves as Germans - Vladimir Ivanovich fell under the distribution too.

Dahl Sr. spoke eight languages, in addition to Danish, Maria Khristoforovna - five, in addition to German. It is not surprising that their son, a military doctor, was also interested in the language issue. It cannot be said that at the same time Vladimir was not interested in his father's homeland - he even visited Denmark and was very worried on the way there, but he was very disappointed on the spot: he did not feel anything in common with the locals and forever decided for himself that he was Russian. Nevertheless, he chose to study at the University of Dorpat, where German culture and the German language dominated, despite the fact that the institution itself was Russian.

Vladimir Dal, naturally, tried his hand at literature and began with poetry for the magazine "Slavyanin". However, he gained fame much faster as a physician, literally becoming the star of Petersburg thanks to the finest and most skillful surgical operations. And as a lover of Russian culture, he collected not only individual words, but also fairy tales. Surprisingly, the highest ranks of the collection of Russian fairy tales were considered unreliable and the entire circulation was destroyed - although the accusation of unreliability was later dropped.

Alexander Hilferding

As in the case of Dahl, Hilferding was considered a German conditionally: his mother, Amalia Witte, was German, and the Hilferding surname itself came from Hungary, however, and there the family was originally German. Hilferding became famous for his work, which showed the kinship of the "Slavic" language with Sanskrit - this work was then relied on for a long time by those Slavophiles who were convinced that Russian originated directly from Sanskrit or that Sanskrit could be considered Old Russian.

Hilferding was especially interested in the Slavs on the shores of the Baltic Sea, as for Russia, he defended the communal way of life and collected the epics of the Olonets province, considering them exclusively Slavic in origin (while the main population of the province were various kinds of Finno-Ugrians, including Russified).

Orest Miller

Everything was simple with Miller - he was born into a 100% German family and was baptized under the name Oscar, but at the age of three he was orphaned, and he was raised by a Russian in-law - so Oscar grew up as a Russian Orest. At the age of fifteen, he consciously converted to Orthodoxy. Later, he also deliberately chose Slavophilism.

Although Miller began with pathetic-patriotic literature, he, like many Slavophiles, went into folklore and began to study the epic epic - moreover, in the fashion of his time, in each line he found a certain high symbolism. In addition, he reduced each epic to some moral lesson, like the Duchess of Lewis Carroll. However, Miller very quickly began to disagree with the main backbone of the Slavophiles in Russia, since he gravitated more towards Pan-Slavism than towards Russophilia - and thus gave rise to doubts about his own patriotism. His attitude to the Polish question was especially outraged by like-minded people - Miller supported the Poles! This, however, was not surprising, because Miller grew up in a Polish environment.

By the way, a pan-Slavist (and in this respect a Slavophile) without Russophilia was, oddly enough, the Westernizer Alexander Herzen - also German by birth, to be precise - by his mother.

Nikolay Rigelman

Nikolai Arkadyevich went to the Germans mainly because of his grandfather, a German and a famous engineer - but he grew up in Kiev and did not see himself as a German at all, and he was predominantly Ukrainian by origin. Like many Slavophiles, Rigelman chose to pursue higher education in German in Vienna. During his studies, he visited Prague, met local Czech patriots and was imbued with Slavophil ideas.

All his life, moving from one official position to another, Rigelman, naturally, was not shy of publications in magazines. He began with the Slavophil "Moskvityan", but fame in the movement was given to him by essays in the "Moscow Collection", in which he described the life and position of the Slavs of Austria, who were then oppressed by the minorities of the empire.

Despite his origin, Rigelman took a Russophile position and constantly criticized the Ukrainophiles for, so to speak, pettiness and lack of understanding of the need for community in the empire. At the same time, he supported the Austrian czecophiles with might and main, despite the fact that their views coincided in everything with the Ukrainophiles, they only concerned the Czechs.

Slavophiles constantly amazed their contemporaries: Why Russian Slavophiles were mistaken for Persian merchants, how did they come up with alternative myths and what good was left to us.