Towards the Spiritual Convergence of America and Russia: American Mind and Russian Soul, American Individuality and Russian Community, and the Potent Alchemy of National Characteristics

East Needs West?

Old Holy Russia can never be healthily revived. But a new, living, spiritual Russia can and must be sought. Yet Russia would be misled in assuming, that the prosperous “material plenty” of the West, is surrounded and interwoven by some such grand and profound wisdom of life, as is so necessary to the “Russian Soul’s” religious past, traumatic recent history, disoriented present, от spiritual task into the future. The West has certainly, deep and profound contributions to make, even to the potent spiritual future development of Russia. But this can come only from the very best of the West’s spiritual, intellectual and cultural history [74]; and Russia should not await, and expect to find, any such special spiritual depth and substance, amidst the common contemporary culture and civilization of the West. (See Addenda.) Russia can look to the West for much; and perhaps from each distinct nation, culture and people, it can receive a slightly different contribution — be it practical, cultural, intellectual, spiritual. But it would be profoundly erred to imagine, that the slick and comfortable life in the West, is founded on, or surrounded by, some profound spiritual comprehension of life and death adequate to Russia’s needs. This it, most deeply, is not.

Do not presume, oh Russia, that just because the West has achieved such a “high standard of living” — in the earthly (“horizontal”) world — that it has also real, living answers to the (“vertical”) “cursed questions” of life, which the best of you seem, characteristically, to know and feel. For it does not also, have such a ‘high standard of soul, cultural or spiritual living’.

Accept from the West our practical ways, procedures and capacities; look to our political systems, and take the best that can be adapted to your own culture, history and character; embrace that of our economic systems as may help mollify your lamentable economic and material conditions; use the West’s achievements in science and technology: take from the West all that can help you to advance and progress. But never forget the great spiritual idea of Russia; nor imagine that the common West can adequately show you how to blend a “high standard of living” in regard to physical, mundane, earthly life and civilization, with some profound, creative, vital culture of soul [75] and mind; or a wise orientation to the spiritual questions of life — far the individual, the collective, culture, or civilization: the complete inner and outer life of Mankind. If you merely follow the casual life in the West, with its spiritual agnosticism, its sensualism, its earthiness, even its religious ways; you will find no real, sufficient answers, or understanding, of that which made Old Russia “Holy”, and may make a new Russia spiritual. The common West, as it is, can simply not answer all the questions of life and death; economic and political order; social justice and civilization, in ways appropriate to all that which has made Russia unique. Open to the West; but strive wisely, to take only the best from the West — never forgetting the special character of Russian Soul and Spirit — that towards which only the very best of the spiritual and intellectual history of the West, can be of any real, healthful, creative contribution.