Dostoevsky’s View of Russian History and Assimilation of Hegel’s Concept of “Spirit”


What gave rise to this Roundtable is the invasion by the Russian Federation of the sovereign state of Ukraine. This unprovoked act on the pretext of protecting Russian national security from a nato threat (as a result of Ukraine seeking membership) has shaken the existing post-Cold War world order. The question which arose shortly after the 24 February 2022 and which is still valid is: how do we read Russian literature against the background of the daily pictures of arbitrary carnage and destruction in the Donbas region and elsewhere in Ukraine? Is this a performance of a regressive Russian history in what Hegel termed the “world-historical” process? The question is answered by looking at Dostoevsky’s assimilation of Hegel’s concept of “national spirit” and the contradictory views about Europe this yielded in Dostoevsky’s aesthetics and polemical articles. It is this split vision which characterizes the civilizational paradox of the Russian Federation’s attitude to its European neighbors.