Nikolay Danilevsky

Nikolay Yakovlevich Danilevsky

Nikolay Yakovlevich Danilevsky(‹See Tfd›Russian:Николай Яковлевич Данилевский;10 December [O.S.28 November] 1822 – 19 November [O.S.7 November] 1885)was a Russiannaturalist,economist,ethnologist,philosopher,historianand ideologue ofpan-Slavismand theSlavophilemovement. He expounded acircularview of world history.

He is remembered also for his opposition toCharles Darwin's theory ofevolutionand for his theory of historical-cultural types.

Life

Danilevsky was born in the village ofOberetsinOryol Governorate.As a member of a noble family, he was educated at theTsarskoye Selo Lyceum.After graduation, he went on to an appointment with the Military Ministry Office. Dissatisfied with the prospect of a military career, he began to attend theUniversity of St Petersburg,where he studiedphysicsandmathematics.

Having passed his master's exams, Danilevsky prepared to defend his thesis on the flora of theBlack Seaarea ofEuropeanRussia but in 1849 he was arrested there for his membership in thePetrashevsky Circle,which studied the work of Frenchsocialistsand includedFyodor Dostoevsky.Its most active members were sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment. Danilevsky was imprisoned for 100 days in thePeter and Paul Fortressand then was sent to live under police surveillance inVologda,where he worked in provincial administration.

In 1852, he was appointed to an expedition, led byKarl Ernst von Baer,to assess the condition of the fishing industry on theVolgaand theCaspian Sea.The expedition lasted four years, and Danilevsky was then reassigned to the Agricultural Department of the State Property Ministry. For over 20 years, he was responsible for expeditions to theWhite Sea,the Black Sea, theAzov Sea,the Caspian Sea and theArctic Ocean.The expertise that he gained from the expeditions led to the publication of his 1872 book,Examination of Fishery Conditions in Russia.

Aside from his work on fisheries and the seal trade, he was the head of the commission setting the rules for the use of running water inCrimeafrom 1872 to 1879. He ran theNikitsky Botanical Gardensfrom 1879 to 1880, and he was part of a commission appointed to deal with thephylloxeraepidemic in the 1880s. His papers on Russianclimatology,geology,geography,andethnologyearned him a gold medal from theRussian Geographical Society.

Danilevsky died inTbilisi,Tiflis Governorate,and was buried at his estate, in Mshanka.

Work

Natural theology and rejection of Darwinism

Danilevsky'sDarwinism: Critical research,which brings together more than 1,200 pages of arguments against Darwin's theory, mostly assembled from the literature that already existed at the time, was published in 1885. It was meant to be the first volume of a longer work, the second volume containing Danilevsky's own theories, which he characterised as "natural theology",but it was unfinished at his death. When it was published posthumously, it contained only preliminary studies.

Danilevsky had been influenced by the work of von Baer, who had developed his ownteleologicaltheory of evolution and gone on to criticise Darwin's work in the 1870s. Danilevsky took from von Baer's theory the notion ofZielstrebigkeit.TheGermanword means "singleness of purpose" but Danilevsky imbued it with a religious aspect and argued that evolution, as well as the original creation of the world, has a rational purpose and follows the will of a divine creator.

Theory of historical-cultural types

Danilevsky first publishedRussia and Europe: A Look at the Cultural and Political Relations of the Slavic World to the Romano-German Worldin the journalZaryain 1869. Later republished as amonograph,it brought him international fame.

He pioneered the use of biological and morphological metaphors in the comparison of cultures. Danilevsky compared cultures and nations to biological species, denied their commonality and argued that each nation or civilisation is united by its language and culture, which it cannot pass on to any other nation. He thus characterisedPeter the Great's reforms in Russia as doomed to failure, as they had attempted to impose alien values on the Slavic world.

Danilevsky distinguished four categories of historical-cultural activity:

1. religious
2. political
3. sociopolitical
4. cultural

They gave rise to ten historical-cultural types:

1. Chaldean
2. Hebrew
3. Arab
4. Indian
5. Persian
6. Greek
7. Roman or ancient Italian
8. Germanic
9. Hamitic or Egyptian
10. Chinese

Danilevsky applied his teleological theory of evolution by stating that each type went through various predetermined stages of youth, adulthood, and old age, the last being the end of that type. He characterised the Slavic type as being at the youth stage, and he developed a socio-political plan for its development, involving unification of the Slavic world, with its future capital atConstantinople(nowIstanbul), ruled by an Orthodox emperor. While other cultures would degenerate in their blind struggle for existence, the Slavic world should be viewed as aMessiahamong them. Danilevsky, however, believed that there is no genuine or absolute progress, as history is circular.

Aspects of Danilevsky's book prefigured some of the theories inOswald Spengler'sThe Decline of the West.Arnold J. Toynbeementions them inA Study of History.The Danilevsky hypothesis became the subject of much controversy and polarised its readers. On one hand,Fyodor DostoyevskyandLeo Tolstoypraised it, but on the other hand,Occidentalists,such asNikolai Kareev,Pavel Milyukov(1859-1943) andNikolai Mikhailovsky(1842-1904), strongly opposed it. Czech statesmanTomáš Masaryk's bookRussia and Europe(1913) is a critique of Danilevsky's book with the same title.

See also

• List of Russian historians
• Social cycle theory

Sources

• Eduard I. Kolcjinsky, "Nikolaj Jakovlevich Danilevsky", inEncyclopedia of Anthropologyed.H. James Birx(2006, SAGE Publications;ISBN0-7619-3029-9)
• Macmaster, Robert E., "Danilevsky: A Russian Totalitarian Philosopher".(1967, Harvard University Press)
• (in Russian)Danilevsky Nikolai Yakovlevich. 1885-1889Darwinism. A Critical Study(Дарвинизм. Критическое исследование) atRunivers.ruinDjVuformat
• (in Russian)Danilevsky Nikolai Yakovlevich. 1895Russia and Europe. A look at the cultural and political relations of the Slavic world to the German-Roman(Россия и Европа. Взгляд на культурные и политические отношения Славянского мира к Германо-Романскому)
• (in Russian)Danilevsky Nikolai Yakovlevich. 1890Collection of political and economic articles(Сборник политических и экономических статей)