…. said Dostoevsky, according to the reviewer of a recent book about him.* There was a “sentimental and reactionary” self-image of the Slavophile Russian and a rather ambivalent, but definitely idealising, vision of a “modern” and rational European. These two visions stood in dramatic confrontation with each other, but both were held with equal if irreconcilable commitment.
Writing on the day when the United Kingdon leaves the European Union, I am struck by the similarity between this account of the paradoxes of Russian identity, exemplified in Dostoevski, and the problematic identity of many British citizens. Too many of us, I believe, cling onto a vision of Britishness that surely justifies the description of “sentimental and reactionary”. Nevertheless, this illusion of British particularism manages to persist along with the claim that those things which are often taken as most typical of “European” culture are exemplified supremely in our country. We (or so we are led to believe) are the home par excellence of representative democracy, personal freedom and the rule of law.
Notwithstanding the widespread belief on the part of the “Leave” campaign, that this schizophrenia might be resolved by leaving the EU, I believe that it will actually be deepened and intensified. The Johnson government may well have kept its electoral promise to “get Brexit done”. Nevertheless, just as Dostoevski regarded the dilemma of Russians as a permanent dilemma of their cultural identity, so too our juridical separation from the European Union can be considered in no way to have resolved the painful duality of what it means to be “British”.
During my former academic career I was brought into professional contact on numerous occasions with Russian scholars. Dostoevski’s characteristion strikes me in retrospect as very perceptive, and probably one which persists into our own day. Russians do seem to vacillate between a truculent exceptionalism and resentment at being left out of the European reckoning. I’m pretty certain that our confused and contradictory national identity will prove to be just as durable.
*Michael Wood, reviewing the study by Julia Kristeva, in the London Review of Books, 3 Dec. 2020.