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Disenchanted Russian Reactionaries


For the first time in quite a few years I'm impatiently waiting for a book release. It's a rare event for a number of reasons, the primary ones being that most of my reading consists of 1 - biographies and novels that I've read a dozen times before and 2- as many already published books I can find on whatever topic I happen to be obsessed with at the moment (more on that in the future). Well the stars have aligned and a new release is overlapping with a topic that fit into that second category: Russian writer  and the subject of Cornell Press's Disenchanted Wanderer: The Apocalyptic Vision of Konstantin Leontiev.

For anyone interested in the history of Russian conservatism or just Russian culture in general, Leontiev is a refreshing and interesting figure because of his biography and the impossibility of categorizing him according to modern standards. A minor noble born in 1861, he developed an aesthetic approach to life and morality, prioritizing the picturesque over the mundane and frequently viewing non-Russian peoples as being equal to or superior to his own civilization based on his own aesthetic standard. Few people who earn the label "Russian nationalist" would praise the Ottoman Empire and question the wisdom of pan-Slavism but he did. Trained as a doctor he also wrote a few novels, developed a theory of how civilizations develop and decay, and finished his life as a monk, because of course he did.

Unlike some of my other literary/historical obsessions, I don't really remember when I first discovered Leontiev's existence. I vaguely remember reading a Ph.D thesis about him online during my second stint in China, so that would put it after 2015, far too late in life for someone who thought of himself as being well read on the topic of Russian conservatism and philosophy. I probably saw his name on a list of people who influenced someone else I happened to be reading about and then tried to find everything I could about him online (that "someone else" was probably Limonov, a list of his influences makes up about 50% of what I have read in the last five years).

Once I had read about him and began my search for whatever else I could find about his life I didn't find much- until recently. There hasn't really been much available by or about Leontiev in English until not that long ago. The above mentioned Ph.D thesis is available online, as are articles written about his spirituality and blog posts about him. Weybright and Talley published translations of two of his works in the 1960's: Against the Current, selections from his novels and other writings, and The Egyptian Dove, an unfinished novel based on his time as a diplomat in Turkey. Once my obsession with Leontiev kicked into high gear I found used copies of both and that was pretty much as far as it could go until Taxiarch Press published his Byzantinism and Slavdom, where his main historical and philosophical ideas are articulated. Mentioned in that book is Lukashevich's biography, which I also bought immediately despite it interpreting Leontiev through  Freud's theories, something which seems to inhibit rather than assist with understanding him. 

In any event, I'll try to find other topics to keep myself busy until this book comes out. I'm sure I'll finish it within a few days and then reread everything else I own by him.



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