Russian nationalism and orthodoxy in the second half of the 19th century

For Russian nationalists of the first half of the 19th century - from Shishkov to Uvarov - the connection between faith and nationality was not a subject of discussion. The need for its protection appeared among the Slavophiles, who were looking for the “ideal” foundations of national culture. Russianness was also identified with Orthodoxy by thinkers close to the Slavophiles: N. P. Gilyarov-Platonov, K. P. Pobedonostsev, the “pochvenniki” and “Western Russians”. All of them were characterized by anti-aristocratic pathos - therefore, their nationalism acquired pronounced conservative-democratic features. At the same time, Orthodoxy was often understood in a peculiar way - as some arbitrarily interpreted “inclinations concealed in it”. In Russian nationalism of the 1860s another tendency emerged: the desire to separate nationality from religion, Russianness from Orthodoxy (of course, while maintaining one’s own loyalty to the latter). The ideologist of this version of nationalism was M. N. Katkov, who shared the concept of a “political nation” and, after the uprising of 1863, supported the program of “Russian Catholicism”. The Slavophiles actively argued with the latter. The common enemy of the “conservative-democratic” and Katkovian tendencies was the estate party represented by the newspaper Vestʹ. In the 1870s, after the Greco- Bulgarian church schism, T. I. Filippov, N. N. Durnovo and K. N. Leontiev speak out against Russian nationalism. The latter was especially hostile to Katkov;s version of nationalism. Finally, the main critic of nationalism in the 1880s-1890s becomes Vladimir Soloviev.