Wolfgang Mueller ©Barbara Mair
About:Wolfgang Mueller
Position:Key Researcher
Node:Identities and Religions

Modern identity building and the uses of the past

Russian Perceptions of Europe and Asia

Since the days of Peter I and Catherine II, the increased import of Western personnel, technology, culture and manners changed Russia significantly. However, the heyday of Russia’s ‘Westernization’ also stimulated argument among the country’s intellectuals in how far Russia was ‘a European power,’ as Catherine had famously declared, and whether the empire should follow a European model of development, or rather focus on its own roots. This debate concerned the identity of Russia at its core (Klug 1987; Neumann 1996) and culminated in the controversy of Slavophiles and Westerners in the 19th century (Riasanovsky 1952; Walicky 1975).