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[–]MarkimusNational Socialist 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I am not really sure what Yockey's definitions of Culture and barbarism are.

It's the same as Spengler, in the 20th century Europe was the only Culture. There was the Arabic/Islamic/Magian culture too, which jews are part of. Russia apparently hasn't had one yet, there's been like 8 I think according to Spengler's evaluation. (Classical, Aztec, Mayan, Babylonian, Egyptian, Magian, Western, Chinese, iirc)

[–]NeoRail 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I skimmed some parts of Decline of the West since I was interested in seeing what Spengler thought about Russia - there is a lot of talk of Russia in this context - but I couldn't really find anything that felt like a good explanation of the Russian situation. If Yockey is working with Spengler's definition of a High Culture, however, there is a problem - according to Spengler, Europe had already stopped being a Culture and had instead become a Civilisation, devoid of vitality and characterised by mechanical and materialistic forms. In Spengler's framework, High Cultures cannot take the mould of another, and Spengler did consider Russia a nascent High Culture. There is some stuff about "pseudomorphosis" in the context of the Soviet Union etc but I could never find any clear information on this either.

In my personal view, the main difference between Russia and the rest of Europe was that until relatively recently Russia was still a traditional, religious monarchy, whereas the West started to gradually depart from this state sometime in the 1400s. After the Soviet period and its modern, urbanised, bureaucratised and mechanicised structures shaped the lives of generations of Russians, I think Russians have become basically indistinguishable from other Europeans. There are differences in political beliefs and in the other national elements of life, but I have not noticed any hard boundary between a European High Culture on the one hand and Russia on the other.

[–]MarkimusNational Socialist 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

however, there is a problem - according to Spengler, Europe had already stopped being a Culture and had instead become a Civilisation, devoid of vitality and characterised by mechanical and materialistic forms.

Yes, each Culture has the two phases, Culture and Civilisation. The Classical's Culture was Greece, the Civilisation was Rome. In Europe/West the Culture was from the Medieval until about the 18th/19th century and the Civilisation was the British Empire, America etc.

Spengler did consider Russia a nascent High Culture

Yockey too, I think they were seeing Russia as emerging into a Culture the same way that the Vikings were the barbarian pre-Culture of the Faustian/Western/European Culture.

There are differences in political beliefs and in the other national elements of life, but I have not noticed any hard boundary between a European High Culture on the one hand and Russia on the other.

Me too. I also reject the distinction between the Classical and Western, they were both formed by Aryans/Europeans and Russia is also Aryan/European. I think Yockey bridged the gap between the more rigid Spenglerian ideas and the racial ideas. I don't see how Russia isn't part of the West, they were founded by Vikings just like the rest of the Faustian Culture and developed along very similar religious, political etc lines for hundreds of years. I haven't seen an explanation for why Russia isn't part of the West but Spengler might explain it somewhere, I assume it's just Catholic vs Orthodox stuff or something.

[–]NeoRail 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I don't see how Russia isn't part of the West, they were founded by Vikings just like the rest of the Faustian Culture and developed along very similar religious, political etc lines for hundreds of years. I haven't seen an explanation for why Russia isn't part of the West but Spengler might explain it somewhere, I assume it's just Catholic vs Orthodox stuff or something.

I think a lot of the 17th-20th century discourse on Russia is down to exoticism, to be honest. As far as I am aware, it starts with French Enlightenment thinkers who used Russian serf communes and juxtaposed the "natural harmony and liberty" of the common people against oppressive and obscurantist Western European absolute monarchies. Then when the bourgeois revolution actually set firm roots in the West, Russia transformed into the religious, obscurantist absolute monarchy, but this time the image was also bolstered with ideas of "passive orientals", "Oriental despotism", "resistance against dynamic Western progress" etc. Finally, during the Soviet period, people on the far right with an interest in Russia ended up synthesising these two views and mixing those ideas about "oriental passivity", "brutal Oriental despotism" with a renewed, selective emphasis on the more social, communitarian, collectivist traditions of Russia. You can find this in various sources - I think Stoddard took a similar position in order to claim that the Russian revolution was simultaneously an "oriental revolt against civilisation" and the assertion of an anti-Russian, materialist and technophilic Bolshevik movement.

In my view, this type of opinions are usually just a result of polemics and the diffusion of polemical ideas within a broader political subculture. A lot of them are tendentious and deliberately uncharitable, so I can only see them as polemics. I've seen some of this stuff with Evola as well - he very rarely makes mention of Imperial Russia. I think the only time he mentioned it was in his commentary on the Protocols, when he briefly described its role in Europe as a defender of rightism. It's the same with Orthodoxy - from what I remember, he affords it only two lines, and ends up dismissing interest in it despite also acknowledging that it's a traditional religion which even includes some initiatic elements. He gives more attention to the Soviet Union and describes it precisely as a kind of anti-Europe, something which has defined itself against Europe and something which Europe should also define itself against. I think at least in the case of Evola, and perhaps also in that of other people like him, the anti-Russian stance may have been affirmed as a kind of practical polemic in an attempt to help mobilise Westerners and raise their political and moral strength. Otherwise, the only other explanation I have for his low interest in Russia is a possible lack of sources on Imperial society. I would have thought that Evola might have an especially positive opinion of it, because of the Russian claim to being Third Rome, the fact that Russia upheld the ideal of a divine imperium and a holy nation all the way up to the 20th century etc. Despite that, I can't find any positive mention of Russia. Ultimately, I think the anti-organic character of the Soviet Union was probably the reason why Evola presented Russia as an anti-Europe and ignored not only any positive elements of traditional Russia, which, admittedly, were already lost at the time, but also ignored the positive elements and the possibilities offered by revolutionary Russia as well. For example, in one essay on the Neue Sachlichkeit - probably the most difficult text of his that I have ever read - he attempts to outline an ethos suitable for modern men, and explicitly compares the Nordic Neue Sachlichkeit with Soviet ideas of cold realism, but ends up attributing a completely opposing character to these two sets of ideas. In my view, he seems to do this mostly for polemical reasons. Naturally, I can't claim to know what Evola's thought process was as he wrote his articles, so these are all just my own interpretations.

Things also become a bit more complex when we shift away from holistic thinkers like Evola and look at more general trends. There were several common types of arguments used to attribute a special, "oriental" character to Russia, but some were used more often by critics from different countries. For example, the heavily modernist character of Atlantic states often meant that critics from those states chose to criticise precisely those elements of Russia which had a genuine traditional character shared also by pre-modern Western states. In Germany, on the other hand, critiques tended to be more essentialist in nature, for various reasons.

To briefly return to the original point, I think Spengler claims that High Cultures develop in relation to space and are in a way based on the environment around the people of the culture. Spengler posits that the Western Faustian worldview is the three-dimensional worldview of "infinite possibilities", whereas the Russian one - based on the endless steppes - is that of "the world as one-dimensional plane". To be honest, I have no idea what this is supposed to mean, what systematic values these assertions hold, or how Spengler arrived at them. Admittedly, I have only skimmed Spengler's work, but his ideas do not seem especially objective or persuasive to me.