| Mikhail Bakunin and Vissarion Belinskii, central figures in Russian culture and thought, have been extensively written about both as individuals and as leading "Westernizers." However, traditional views of them have failed to take sufficient account of the Russian, non-Western, and national aspects of their thought. This dissertation redresses this historiographical imbalance by presenting them as Russian nationalists who forged a new notion of national identity in the 1840s. Through an analysis of their letters, speeches, essays, and notes, this dissertation shows how they respond to the challenge of Western culture. The prevailing views of Russian nationalism are thus broadened to include the humanist and universalist brand constructed by Bakunin and Belinskii in the 1840s.;To ascertain how Belinskii and Bakunin constructed their sense of Russian nationalism and Russian national identity, the dissertation examines the evolution of their outlook in the 1840s with respect to three main ideas: humanism, nationality, and Russian national identity. The core of the analysis is the examination of both the various discourses and binary oppositions that Bakunin and Belinskii used to define Russia and themselves as Russians and the course of their gradual emergence as Russian nationalists. With respect to methodology, the dissertation uses discourse theory to link their abstract discussions and oblique references to various aspects of Russian and non-Russian identity to broader structures of meaning and power.;In short, this dissertation not only challenges facile notions of what it meant to be a Russian "Westernizer" in the 1840s, but also engages the more general debates about the nature of Russian nationalism, the construction of national and regional identity, the nature of cultural encounter among westernized national elites, and the influence of the discourses of race, gender, and progress upon the process of national and regional identity formation. |
