The “Russian Idea” as a Subject of Modern Russian Studies

Introduction. The subject field of modern Russian studies as an interdisciplinary direction includes a complex of knowledge about Russia “in its historical existence.” In the structure of Russian studies, four main thematic blocks are distinguished: a complex of socio-political problems, cultural topics, problems of national psychology, and historical Russian studies. Within the framework of the latter, a reconstruction of the historically changeable meanings of the “Russian idea” is carried out in order to clarify its role in the formation of the subjectivity of the Russian people. Methods and materials. An ideographic research method was used, aimed at analyzing individual events of the past through identifying the specific historical views of representatives of Russian and foreign Russian studies and correlating them with value preferences, including those conditioned by their involvement in the confrontation of civilizational projects. Analysis. In Russian studies, the concept of the “Russian idea” is understood as the development of several philosophical concepts rooted in the emergence of new genres of historical literature in 17th-century Russia – namely, historical journalism and the historical novel. These genres facilitated the transition from medieval historicism to realistic literary fiction. The emergence of the “average” Russian person in literary works as an exponent of the national character and a bearer of the Russian mentality created the ground for the formulation of conceptual models of the “Russian idea” in the works of F.M. Dostoevsky, V.S. Solovyov, and N.F. Fedorov in the 19th century. Since then, the “Russian idea” has become an integral part of the “Western myth of Russia.” At the same time, representatives of foreign Russian studies consider the “Russian idea” in isolation from the philosophical soil that gave rise to it, seeing it as a “product” of the Russian national character and linking it with everyday life, ethnic characteristics, and the peculiarities of the Russian mentality. Results. Due to the fact that the Russian mentality was formed under the conditions of a series of spiritual schisms – the schism with the West, the schism of the Slavs, and the schism of the universal Church – it bears the imprint of the experience of overcoming them and the desire to assert its own civilizational project on the basis of solidarity. Thanks to the dialectical combination of the protective and projective aspects in the “Russian idea,” its conceptual understanding in modern Russian studies underpins the collective image of the bearers of the Russian mentality as a collective subject, which, exceeding the ethnic community in scope, retains the ability to implement its civilizational project in different eras, under different regimes of government and types of sociopolitical structure.