Russian culture of modern as a "crossroads" of western and non-western utopian traditions

The paper is devoted to the analysis of the encounter and interaction of utopias of modernity with the earlier utopian tradition that was inherent in Russian culture before the dissemination of western utopian projects. In the general case the ideology of modernity, having exceeded the bounds of its natal place, influenced not only on its own backward inner spheres, but also on neighboring societies which were in exactly the same way considered to be backward and had to queue up for modernization. It is emphasized that the western utopian narratives as an accompanying element of the modernization guided by examples of already established modernity, having encountered with non Western utopian tradition, could not but trigger a reaction against the extraneous influences. Hence, the representation of power during the alternation of grand and little utopian narratives is analyzed beforehand. The following scrutiny proceeds from the assumption that the modernization in the general case gives rise to the syncretic utopian imagination which, however, often relies on the archaic hopes and antimodernist apprehensions. That syncretism, having combined modernity with tradition at a “crossroads” of modern and premodern societies, sometimes had dystopian flavor, but more often it boiled down to the reconciliation of certain opposites. Just the inclusive syncretic utopianism became a means of both rejection and selective acceptance of the new forms of culture. In Russia such syncretic utopianism came true for a short while as an existing in a borderland between peas- ant and modernized cultures and sought to retain the incipient cultural identity.