Apollon Grigoriev in search of Russian identity

The article examines A. A. Grigoriev’s views on the nature of national identity in the context of the development of Russian social thought of the XVIII-XIX centuries. The evolution of the concepts of “nation” and “national” in the ideology of Westernism, which served as a system of negative correlation for Grigoriev’s development of his own concept of Russian identity, is considered in detail. Grigoriev’s worldview was based on the ideas of Slavophiles about the identity of Russia and the Orthodox roots of Russian culture, but patriarchal limitations and class particularism in their understanding of national identity were criticized by him. His own concept asserted the nationwide character of Russian identity and insisted, in contrast to the concept of the nation as an “imaginary community”, on the natural-historical origin of national identity. For all their divergence, the views of Westerners and Slavophiles were interpreted by Grigoriev as speculative and lifeless constructions that impose uncharacteristic qualities on reality. In Grigoriev’s philosophy, national identity acted as a function of life and was deciphered as an organic unity of religious, historical, cultural and ethnic practices.