Georgy Gachev as a Historian of Russian Thought

Abstract

The article is the first attempt to consider G. D. Gachev as a historian of Russian thought (based on two editions of the book “Russian Duma”) and to characterize his method of historical and philosophical review. Gachev examines Russian thought through his natural philosophical (“cosmosophical”) concept of Cosmo-Psycho-Logos. In this regard, he acts as a critic of historiosophical concepts of Russian fate. Conceptually important is Gachev's thesis about the maturation of Russian thought not from the construction of concepts (as in the West), but from polemic-critical emotionality, which determines the fundamental incompleteness of Russian discourse. Gachev reads the legacy of Russian religious idealism of the 19^th-20^th centuries. in a certain historical situation, after a miraculous “awakening from the darkness of unanimity” that happened in Russia (an expression from an essay about M. M. Bakhtin). In a critical revision of Soviet history that occurred during the period of “perestroika,” Gachev expresses ideological solidarity with the authors of the collection “From the Depths” (the main passengers of the “philosophical ship”), especially in diagnosing the negative traits of the Russian character that brought the 1917 revolution to Russia.