Pan-Slavism and Construction of National Identity in Russian and Polish Literature of the XIX Century

The article describes how the ideas of Slavic unity were used in the practice of nation-building of the XIX century. Distinctive features enable Pan-Slavic motifs in the designing of the national identity of Russians and Poles. The Russian version of Pan-Slavism expanded the understanding of the "Russian" to the universal element that incorporates all the essential features of the Slavic culture and is able to serve as a model for other nations. This interpretation was connected with the imperial vision in which the dominating people was the unifying centre and patron of subordinate national communities. The article traces the evolution of intentions of Russian Pan-Slavism from I.I. Sreznevsky's romantic Slavic studies to F.M. Dostoevsky's conception of "vseotzyvchivost'" (world responsiveness). The intention changes reflect the features of national identity formation, firmly fused with the imperial complex. The "centrifugal" Russian interpretation of Pan-Slavism opposed the "centripetal" Polish. Its primary aim was the selection of national identity as a key to cultural autonomy and, ideally, political independence (Polish messianism). For the Poles, after the partition of Poland the preservation of national identity was the only way to resist assimilation. The elements of this ideology were used to confirm the special place of Poland in the circle of the Slavic peoples, allowing, even in the absence of their own statehood, to be a source of cultural and political gravity, an alternative centre of Slavic unity.

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