‘Slavia Orthodoxa’ and ‘Slavia Romana’: V.V. Rozanov on the convergence and divergence between two historical and cultural worlds

Abstract

V. V. Rozanov’s extensive corpus highlights the problems of Slavic world, which he perceived through the prism of the correlation of two local ethnic communities in historical, cultural and confessional contexts. Rozanov associated the consequences of a broader phenomenon — the meeting of the Western and Eastern worlds — with the theme of Slavism. The articles puts forward the idea that the Slavic world in Rozanov’s view is at the intersection of Romano-Germanic and Greek-Slavic worldviews. In this setting, Rozanov highlights three of the most important themes: the meaning of ‘predanie’, the papacy in the West and East, the eternal struggle, and possible Union of the West and the East. The article shows that Rozanov saw the Slavs as a young ‘movement’, gradually developing and becoming significant on the world stage, but he also realized that Slavic unity, in addition to cultural, literary and ideological convergence, needs stronger spiritual and economic bonds. In Rozanov’s reflections, one can find an echo of Danilevsky’s view on the unification of Slavs, the conservative thoughts of Konstantin Leontiev, as well as Vladimir Solovyov’s ideas on the unity of the Easter and Western churches.