Lev Gumilev

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
(Redirected from
Lev Gumilyov
)
Not to be confused with Lev Gurilyov.
In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Nikolayevich and the family name is Gumilev.
Lev Gumilev
Лев Гумилёв
20th-century philosophy
RegionRussian philosophy
SchoolEurasianism
InstitutionsSaint Petersburg State University
Doctoral advisorNikolai Kuehner
Doctoral studentsGelian Prokhorov
Main interests
Philosophy of history, history, ethnology, turkology, cultural studies, geopolitics, religious studies
Notable ideas
Eurasianism, passionarity
This article is part of a series on
Eurasianism
Concepts
People
Works
Organisations
Related topics

Lev Nikolayevich Gumilev (also Gumilyov;

translator. He had a reputation for his highly unorthodox theories of ethnogenesis and historiosophy. He was an exponent of Eurasianism. According to geographer Mark Bassin, Lev Gumilev, whose books have now sold millions of copies, can be compared in terms of influence to Herodotus, Karl Marx, Oswald Spengler or Albert Einstein.[1]

Life

Gumilev's parents, the prominent poets

Soviet secret police had already prepared an order for her arrest, but Stalin decided not to sign it. Relations between Gumilev and his mother became strained, as he blamed her for not helping him enough. She described her feelings about her son's arrest and the period of political repressions in Requiem
(published in 1963).

Young Gumilev with his parents in 1913

After Stalin's death in 1953, Gumilev joined the

Leningrad University. Two years later, he defended his doctoral thesis on ancient Turks
. From the 1960s, he worked in the Geography Institute, where he would defend another doctoral thesis, this time in geography.

Although the official Soviet authorities rejected his ideas and banned most of his monographs from being published, Gumilev came to attract much publicity, especially in the Perestroika years of 1985–1991. As an indication of his popularity, the Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev ordered the L. N. Gumilev Eurasian National University (Евразийский Национальный университет имени Л. Н. Гумилёва, founded in 1996) to be erected just opposite his own palace on the central square of the new Kazakh capital, Astana.

Ideas

Senior researcher in the Department of Ethnology at the University of Tartu, Aimar Ventsel states the following: "Gumilev’s central concept is that of the ethnos. He connected it to the biosphere concept promoted by Academician Vernadsky and came to the conclusion that the ethnos is like a human being: it has its own character, childhood, adulthood and waning period. As people are part of nature, peoples must also follow the laws of nature. Of these, the most important is passionarity, or the vital energy of the ethnos. Passionarity is connected to geography—in other words, ethnic groups that developed in certain climatic and geographical conditions “adapt” to their environment, find their “ecological niche” and become part of the energy of their living environment. Each ethnos has its own “behavioural stereotype”, which is passed down from parent to child, and could be considered a national mentality. These stereotypes are like animal reflexes that ensure the preservation of an ethnos. In time, an ethnos develops its own civilisation, which includes religion, manners and norms. Gumilev was never able to explain whether or not a civilisation is a biological phenomenon, but he claimed that people of different races could be part of the same civilisation".[1]

Drawing inspiration from the works of

Konstantin Leontyev and Nikolay Danilevsky, Gumilev regarded Russians as a "super-ethnos" kindred to Turkic-Mongol peoples of the Eurasian steppe. The periods in which Russia has been said to conflict with the steppe peoples were reinterpreted by Gumilev as the periods of consolidation of Russian power with that of steppe to oppose destructive influences from Catholic Europe, that posed a potential threat to integrity of Russian.[citation needed] He also saw a distinct Eurasian civilization with there being a unification of the Eurasian peoples around Russia.[4]

In accordance with his pan-Asiatic theories, he supported the national movements of Tatars, Kazakhs and other Turkic peoples, in addition to those of the Mongols and other East Asians. Unsurprisingly, Gumilev's teachings have enjoyed immense popularity in Central Asian countries.[5] In Kazan, for example, a monument to him was erected in August 2005.

The historian Mark Bassin stated that Gumilev's theories are scientifically unproven and problematic but that they have a significant impact in a range of Soviet and post-Soviet contexts.

Tatar Yoke" for the Mongol domination of medieval Russia, a term that Gumilev rejected since he did not regard the Mongol conquest as a necessarily-negative event. Instead, he believed the Tatar yoke to be a military union of the Russians and Tatars.[12]

In particular, he asserted that the

mercenaries.[13][14][15]

In the capital of Tatarstan (Russia), Kazan, a statue in honor of Gumilev says the following: "I, a Russian, have been defending the Tatars all my life".[16] About Tatars he said for example that "Tatars are in our blood, our history, our language, our worldview. Whatever the real differences with the Russians, the Tatars are not a people outside us, but within us". He called Tatar a "proud name". Tatar historian Gali Yenikeev (among others) has continued with Gumilev's ideas since.[17]

President Vladimir Putin expressed during a speech in November 2023, that "Alexander Nevsky was given the yarlyk [permission] by Golden Horde khans to rule as prince, primarily so that he could effectively resist the invasion of the West".[18] Gumilev himself expressed similar ideas.[19]

Influence

The "Eurasian vision" of president Vladimir Putin has allegedly been influenced by Gumilev's ideas.[20]

Personal life

Gumilev identified himself as an Orthodox Christian.[21]

Gumilev married in 1967, the year after his mother died.[22]

Works

  • The Hsiung-nu (1960)
  • Ancient Turks (1964)
  • Гумилёв, Лев Николаевич (1970). Поиски вымышленного царства: Легенда о государстве пресвитера Иоанна
    [Searching for an Imaginary Kingdom: The Legend of the Kingdom of Prester John] (in Russian). Moscow: Наука/Nauka.
  • The Hsiung-nu in China (1974)
  • Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere of Earth (1978)
  • Great Steppe
     (1989)
  • An End and a New Beginning (1989)
  • From
    Rus
    to Russia     (1992)

References

  1. ^ a b Ventsel, Aimar (2018). "The Base Text for Modern Eurasianism".
  2. ^ Vengeance of Kremlin's Highlander (Russian) Archived 2013-04-19 at the Wayback Machine by Semion Kiperman, publication of Russian Jewish on-line Center.
  3. ^ (in Russian) Лев Гумилёв. Открытие хазарии. Москва. Айр Пресс, 2006.
  4. ISBN 9781498525657
    .
  5. ^
    OCLC 945976904.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
    )
  6. ^ Rossman, Vadim, et al. Russian Intellectual Antisemitism in the Post Communist Era (Studies in Antisemitism Series). Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2005
  7. ^ Klier, John. "The Myth of the Khazars and Intellectual Antisemitism in Russia, 1970s–1990s". The Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 83, Number 4, 1 October 2005, pp. 779–781(3).
  8. ^ Yasmann, Victor. "The Rise of the Eurasians". The Eurasian Politician Issue 4 (August 2001) Radio Free Europe, 1992
  9. ^ Yasmann, Victor. "Red Religion:An Ideology of Neo-Messianic Russian Fundamentalism" Demoktratizat: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization. Volume 1, No. 2. p. 26.
  10. ^ Shnirelman, Victor A. "The Story of a Euphemism: The Khazars in Russian Nationalist Literature." The World of the Khazars: New Perspectives. Brill, 2007. p. 353-372
  11. ^ Malakhov, Vladimir. "Racism and Migrants". (Trans. Mischa Gabowitsch.) Neprikosnovennij Zapas, 2003
  12. ISBN 978-90-04-15415-5
    .
  13. ^ Выбор веры (in Russian)
  14. ^ Tripolsky, Mihail. ОБ ИЗВРАЩЕНИИ ИСТОРИИ: Хазарский каганат, евреи и судьба России
  15. ^ Rossman, Vadim. The Ethnic Community and Its Enemies: Russian Intellectual Antisemitism in the Post-Communist Era Archived 2005-09-21 at the Wayback Machine
  16. ^ "Памятник Льву Гумилёву".
  17. ^ "Внешний вид (фото), Оглавление (Содержание) книги Еникеева Г.Р. "По следам чёрной легенды".
  18. ^ Pohorilov, Stanislav (2023). "Putin claims Mongol invaders were better for Russia than "Western conquerors"".
  19. ^ Гали Еникеев: Корона ордынской империи, 2007.
  20. ^ Clover, Charles (2016). "Lev Gumilev: passion, Putin and power".
  21. S2CID 151507081
    .
  22. ^ Clover, Charles (2016-03-11). "Lev Gumilev: passion, Putin and power". Financial Times. Retrieved 2021-11-10.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lev Gumilev.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lev_Gumilev&oldid=1217271998"