Russian conservatives (forerunners of O. Spengler) of the late XIX - early XX century about the “Decline of Europe”

The article is devoted to the ideas of the ideologists of the Russian right-monarchist movement of the late XIX - early XX century about the coming catastrophe of the Western world. The author studied journalistic and scientific works, newspaper articles, public speeches, sermons of a number of prominent representatives of the Russian conservative movement of the pre-revolutionary period (A. A. Kireev, L. A. Tikhomirov, V. A. Gringmut, K. N. Paskhalov, K. N. Bulatsel, N. E. Markov, St. Metropolitan Macarius (Parvitsky-Nevsky), etc.). Representatives of conservative thought paid close attention to the following features of the existence of Western civilization: separation from roots and traditions, godlessness and nihilism, boundless individualism, cosmopolitanism, hedonism, etc. At the same time, the Russian right believed that these qualities would inevitably lead to the collapse and death of Western culture as such. The article emphasizes that it was Russian conservatives who, long before the German philosopher O. Spengler with his book “The Decline of Europe”, drew attention to the impending fall of Europe, wrote about the danger of thoughtless imitation of the West by Russia. Russian conservatives of the late XIX - early XX century opposed Russia and Europe following the outstanding Russian thinkers of the XIX century N. Y. Danilevsky and K. N. Leontiev. In this regard, the Russian monarchists of the late XIX - early XX century they were the successors of the philosophical tradition of the late Slavophiles and soil scientists. The monarchists believed that only the Russian tsar as a detaining (catechon) was able to protect the world from the harmful influence of the West. The article notes that many ideas of Russian conservatives about the confrontation between Russia and Europe remain relevant today, when the Western civilization has entered a phase of deep ideological crisis.