Nikolay Yakovlevich Danilevsky (russian: Никола́й Я́ковлевич Даниле́вский; 28 November 1822 – 7 November 1885) was a Russian Empire
naturalist,
economist
An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social science discipline of economics.
The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this field there are ...
,
ethnologist
Ethnology (from the grc-gre, ἔθνος, meaning 'nation') is an academic field that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural, social, or sociocultural anthropology). ...
,
philosopher,
historian and ideologue of
Pan-Slavism and the
Slavophile
Slavophilia (russian: Славянофильство) was an intellectual movement originating from the 19th century that wanted the Russian Empire to be developed on the basis of values and institutions derived from Russia's early history. Slavop ...
movement. He expounded a
circular
Circular may refer to:
* The shape of a circle
* ''Circular'' (album), a 2006 album by Spanish singer Vega
* Circular letter (disambiguation)
** Flyer (pamphlet), a form of advertisement
* Circular reasoning, a type of logical fallacy
* Circular ...
view of world history.
He is remembered also for his opposition to
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...
's theory of
evolution and for his theory of historical-cultural types.
Life
Danilevsky was born in the village of
Oberets in
Oryol Governorate
Oryol Governorate (russian: Орловская губерния, ''Orlovskaya guberniya'') or the Government of Oryol, was an administrative division (a '' guberniya'') of the Russian Empire and the early Russian SFSR, which existed from 1796 to ...
. As a member of a noble family, he was educated at the
Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum
The Imperial Lyceum (Императорский Царскосельский лицей, ''Imperatorskiy Tsarskosel'skiy litsey'') in Tsarskoye Selo near Saint Petersburg, also known historically as the Imperial Alexander Lyceum after its foun ...
. After graduation, he went on to an appointment with the Military Ministry Office. Dissatisfied with the prospect of a military career, he began to attend the
University of St Petersburg
Saint Petersburg State University (SPBU; russian: Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет) is a public research university in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Founded in 1724 by a decree of Peter the ...
, where he studied
physics and
mathematics.
Having passed his master's exams, Danilevsky prepared to defend his thesis on the flora of the
Black Sea area of
European Russia but in 1849 he was arrested there for his membership in the
Petrashevsky Circle
The Petrashevsky Circle was a Russian literary discussion group of progressive-minded intellectuals in St. Petersburg in the 1840s. It was organized by Mikhail Petrashevsky, a follower of the French utopian socialist Charles Fourier. Among the memb ...
, which studied the work of French
socialists
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the econ ...
and included
Fyodor Dostoevsky. Its most active members were sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment. Danilevsky was imprisoned for 100 days in the
Peter and Paul Fortress and then was sent to live under police surveillance in
Vologda
Vologda ( rus, Вологда, p=ˈvoləɡdə) is a city and the administrative center of Vologda Oblast, Russia, located on the river Vologda within the watershed of the Northern Dvina. Population:
The city serves as a major transport hub ...
, where he worked in provincial administration.
In 1852, he was appointed to an expedition, led by
Karl Ernst von Baer, to assess the condition of the fishing industry on the
Volga and the
Caspian Sea
The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, often described as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia; east of the Caucasus, west of the broad steppe of Central Asi ...
. The expedition lasted four years, and Danilevsky was then reassigned to the Agricultural Department of the State Property Ministry. For over 20 years, he was responsible for expeditions to the
White Sea, the Black Sea, the
Azov Sea
The Sea of Azov ( Crimean Tatar: ''Azaq deñizi''; russian: Азовское море, Azovskoye more; uk, Азовське море, Azovs'ke more) is a sea in Eastern Europe connected to the Black Sea by the narrow (about ) Strait of Kerch ...
, the Caspian Sea and the
Arctic Ocean
The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five major oceans. It spans an area of approximately and is known as the coldest of all the oceans. The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) recognizes it as an ocean, a ...
. The expertise that he gained from the expeditions led to the publication of his 1872 book, ''Examination of Fishery Conditions in Russia''.
Aside from his work on fisheries and the seal trade, he was the head of the commission setting the rules for the use of running water in
Crimea
Crimea, crh, Къырым, Qırım, grc, Κιμμερία / Ταυρική, translit=Kimmería / Taurikḗ ( ) is a peninsula in Ukraine, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, that has been occupied by Russia since 2014. It has a po ...
from 1872 to 1879. He ran the
Nikitsky Botanical Gardens
Nikita Botanical Garden (russian: Никитский ботанический сад,
ua, Нікітський ботанічний сад) is one of the oldest botanical gardens in Europe. It is located in Crimea, close to Yalta, by the shores ...
from 1879 to 1880, and he was part of a commission appointed to deal with the
phylloxera
Grape phylloxera is an insect pest of commercial grapevines worldwide, originally native to eastern North America. Grape phylloxera (''Daktulosphaira vitifoliae'' (Fitch 1855) belong to the family Phylloxeridae, within the order Hemiptera, bugs ...
epidemic in the 1880s. His papers on Russian
climatology,
geology,
geography, and
ethnology
Ethnology (from the grc-gre, ἔθνος, meaning 'nation') is an academic field that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural, social, or sociocultural anthropology). ...
earned him a gold medal from the
Russian Geographical Society
The Russian Geographical Society (russian: Ру́сское географи́ческое о́бщество «РГО»), or RGO, is a learned society based in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It promotes geography, exploration and nature protection w ...
.
Danilevsky died in
Tbilisi,
Tiflis Governorate, and was buried at his estate, in Mshanka.
Work
Natural theology and rejection of Darwinism
Danilevsky's ''Darwinism: Critical research,'' which brings together more than 1,200 pages of arguments against Darwin's theory, mostly assembled from the literature that already existed at the time, was published in 1885. It was meant to be the first volume of a longer work, the second volume containing Danilevsky's own theories, which he characterised as "
natural theology", but it was unfinished at his death. When it was published posthumously, it contained only preliminary studies.
Danilevsky had been influenced by the work of von Baer, who had developed his own
teleological theory of evolution and gone on to criticise Darwin's work in the 1870s. Danilevsky took from von Baer's theory the notion of ''
Zielstrebigkeit''. The
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
word means "singleness of purpose" but Danilevsky imbued it with a religious aspect and argued that evolution, as well as the original creation of the world, has a rational purpose and follows the will of a divine creator.
Theory of historical-cultural types
Danilevsky first published ''Russia and Europe: A Look at the Cultural and Political Relations of the Slavic World to the Romano-German World'' in the journal ''
Zarya Zarya may refer to:
*Zorya, personification of dawn in Slavic mythology
* Zarya (antenna), a type of medium-wave broadcasting antenna used in former Soviet Union
*Zarya (ISS module) is a module of the International Space Station.
* ''Zarya'' (magazi ...
'' in 1869. Later republished as a
monograph, it brought him international fame.
He pioneered the use of biological and morphological metaphors in the comparison of cultures. Danilevsky compared cultures and nations to biological species, denied their commonality and argued that each nation or civilisation is united by its language and culture, which it cannot pass on to any other nation. He thus characterised
Peter the Great's reforms in Russia as doomed to failure, as they had attempted to impose alien values on the Slavic world.
Danilevsky distinguished four categories of historical-cultural activity:
# religious
# political
# sociopolitical
# cultural
They gave rise to ten historical-cultural types:
[
]
# Chaldean
# Hebrew
# Arab
# Indian
# Persian
# Greek
# Roman or ancient Italian
# Germanic
# Hamitic or Egyptian
# Chinese
Danilevsky applied his teleological theory of evolution by stating that each type went through various predetermined stages of youth, adulthood, and old age, the last being the end of that type. He characterised the Slavic type as being at the youth stage, and he developed a socio-political plan for its development, involving unification of the Slavic world, with its future capital at
Constantinople (now
Istanbul), ruled by an Orthodox emperor. While other cultures would degenerate in their blind struggle for existence, the Slavic world should be viewed as a
Messiah among them. Danilevsky, however, believed that there is no genuine or absolute progress, as history is circular.
Aspects of Danilevsky's book prefigured some of the theories in
Oswald Spengler's ''
The Decline of the West
''The Decline of the West'' (german: Der Untergang des Abendlandes; more literally, ''The Downfall of the Occident''), is a two-volume work by Oswald Spengler. The first volume, subtitled ''Form and Actuality'', was published in the summer of 191 ...
''.
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold Joseph Toynbee (; 14 April 1889 – 22 October 1975) was an English historian, a philosopher of history, an author of numerous books and a research professor of international history at the London School of Economics and King's Colleg ...
mentions them in ''
A Study of History
''A Study of History'' is a 12-volume universal history by the British historian Arnold J. Toynbee, published from 1934 to 1961. It received enormous popular attention but according to historian Richard J. Evans, "enjoyed only a brief vogue befo ...
''. The Danilevsky hypothesis became the subject of much controversy and polarised its readers. On one hand,
Fyodor Dostoyevsky and
Leo Tolstoy
Count Lev Nikolayevich TolstoyTolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; russian: link=no, Лев Николаевич Толстой,In Tolstoy's day, his name was written as in pre-refor ...
praised it, but on the other hand,
Occidentalists, such as
Nikolai Kareev,
Pavel Milyukov (1859-1943) and
Nikolai Mikhailovsky
Nikolay Konstantinovich Mikhaylovsky () (, Meshchovsk–, Saint Petersburg) was a Russian literary critic, sociologist, writer on public affairs, and one of the theoreticians of the Narodniki movement.
Biography
The school of thinkers he bel ...
(1842-1904), strongly opposed it,
Tomáš Masaryk
Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (7 March 185014 September 1937) was a Czechoslovak politician, statesman, sociologist, and philosopher. Until 1914, he advocated restructuring the Austro-Hungarian Empire into a federal state. With the help of ...
wrote his most famous book “Russia and Europe” (1913) exactly as the critique of Danilevsky’s book.
See also
*
List of Russian historians
This list of Russian historians includes the famous historians, as well as archaeologists, paleographers, genealogists and other representatives of auxiliary historical disciplines from the Russian Federation, the Soviet Union, the Russian Empire a ...
*
Social cycle theory
Sources
*Eduard I. Kolcjinsky, "Nikolaj Jakovlevich Danilevsky", in ''
Encyclopedia of Anthropology
The ''Encyclopedia of Anthropology'' is an encyclopedia of anthropology edited by H. James Birx of Canisius College and SUNY Geneseo.
The encyclopedia, published in 2006 by SAGE Publications, is in five volumes, and contains over 1,200 articles ...
'' ed.
H. James Birx
Harry James Birx (born June 1, 1941 in Canandaigua, New York), is an American anthropologist and a professor of Anthropology at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York. He is a distinguished research scholar at the State University of New York at Ge ...
(2006, SAGE Publications; )
*Macmaster, Robert E.,
Danilevsky: A Russian Totalitarian Philosopher. (1967, Harvard University Press)
* Danilevsky Nikolai Yakovlevich. 1885-188
Darwinism. A Critical Study(Дарвинизм. Критическое исследование) at
Runivers.ru
Runivers ( rus, Руниверс) is a site devoted to Russian culture and history. Runivers targets Russian speaking readers and those interested in Russian culture and history.
Runivers is an online library aimed to provide free access to aut ...
in
DjVu format
* Danilevsky Nikolai Yakovlevich. 189
Russia and Europe. A look at the cultural and political relations of the Slavic world to the German-Roman(Россия и Европа. Взгляд на культурные и политические отношения Славянского мира к Германо-Романскому)
* Danilevsky Nikolai Yakovlevich. 189
Collection of political and economic articles(Сборник политических и экономических статей)
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Danilevsky, Nikolay Yakovlevich
1822 births
1885 deaths
People from Izmalkovsky District
People from Livensky Uyezd (Oryol Governorate)
Russian nobility
Slavophiles
Russian nationalists
Intelligent design advocates
Anthropologists from the Russian Empire
Danilevsky,Nikolay Yakovlevich
Danilevsky,Nikolay Yakovlevich
Danilevsky,Nikolay Yakovlevich
19th-century historians from the Russian Empire
Non-Darwinian evolution
Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum alumni
Prisoners of the Peter and Paul Fortress