Exodus to the East and the Cossacks

The world is a very strange place, a construct of millions of people and events that make a unique reality.

During the period of the Russian Civil War, the Russian Empire was no exception, the place was simply a huge breeding ground in a rather chaotic world.

That is why in 1921 a new ideology emerged in the Russian Empire: Eurasianism (евразийство / yevraziystvo).

The emergence of Eurasianism comes from various factors, among which are included.

* The legacy of Slavophilia in the Russian Empire (ideological movement of the 19th century that focused on Russia and its values-experiences as a civilization above Western-Europe).

Eurasianists regard early and late Slavophiles, such as Alexei Stepanovich Khomyakov, Sergei Timofeevich Aksakov, Konstantin Leontiev, Nikolai Strakhov, and Nikolai Danilevsky, as some kind of ancestors (and at one point they were called 'Slavophiles of the Age of Futurism').

Despite this there are still differences, and the Eurasianists, among other things, reject the pan-Slavista project.

* The board of intellectuals Pyotr Nikolaevich Savitsky (geographer and economist), Prince Nikolai Sergeevich Trubetskoy (linguist) and Georgy Vasilyevich Florovsky (historian and religious thinker).

This group created the first Eurasian manifesto "Exodus to the East: Premonitions and achievements - The declaration of the Eurasians".

* The Cossack and military officer, Pyotr Nikolayevich Krasnov and his Cossack followers, the so-called Krasnovites (Kрасновцами).

Savitsky, Trubetskoy and Florovsky gained some popularity for their manifesto, although they did come under some scrutiny by the authorities due to Savitsky's possible sympathies with the Hetman Skoropadskyi.

In essence the Eurasians believed that Russia was part of a unique geographical and cultural space (a unique historical, geographical and particular community, 'Eurasian', with similar worldviews), in essence a civilization of its own (also defined several times as a civilization ' steppe '). Civilization far from the liberal political traditions and the West ("Roman-Germanic").

For the first Eurasians, the Russian civilization shared more with the "Turanians" (Turkish, Finno-Ugric and Mongolian peoples) and Asians, than with Western Europe and even some Slavs (such as the Poles, Czechs or Slovaks, generally non-Orthodox). .

* [Annex]: Trubetskoy was the first to argue that the Russian Empire was heir of the Mongol Empire and not to the Kievan Rus, which was partly used by some as propaganda against Russia.

But it was one of the reasons (in addition to the 'steppe brotherhood') why the Eurasians defend Mongolia's membership of the Russian Empire.

The ideas of this first Eurasian Manifesto were not yet fully refined (its creators added more developments as time passed), but they were interesting and soon caught the attention of the 'Krasnovites', a group of Cossacks led by the loyalist official Pyotr Nikolayevich Krasnov.

Krasnov was moving with a particular idea, after the civil war, the Cossacks would suffer regardless of the winner. Many Cossacks had followed the Kolchak Directorate, but the Directorate was not necessarily pro-Cossack, and in the event of a Legitimist victory, the Cossacks were no longer useful to Moscow.

So the Cossacks had to find a new momentum to once again gain a place in the Russian State out of the civil war.

For Krasnov and the Krasnovites, there was no 'independence', but there must be some kind of 'renewal' and autonomy within the Cossacks, and to some extent within Russia.

Krasnov was not a leftist, so entering the Eurasian group allowed him and his Krasnovites to align themselves more with the center and the Russian political right.

For many reasons, many of the Eurasianists were Ukrainians (with their early theorists and newspapers being popular in Ucreania) and Cossacks (for the Krasnovites).

Then the Left Eurasianists emerged, but that is a division for later.

Another notable success of the Eurasianists, was their support for the Covenant of Nations (which, while having controversial tendencies within the Eurasianists, could be used as a basis for 'Eurasian civilization') and Alexandrian economic policies (which according to them was a harmonious between private property and state property).

However, the Eurasianists would also struggle with problematic tendencies of anti-Semitism, populism and militancy, which could also be explored later.

With the eventual withdrawal of some of the early Eurasian ideologists, Krasnov became one of the movement's most famous writers (fiction and non-fiction) and had a strong influence on the Eurasian movement.

Which led him precisely to be part of the creation of the first Eurasianist party of the Russian state, a few years after 1921.

Krasnov was not a cause, he was a symptom of what was happening in Russia at the time.

Russian civilization since the beginnings of Tsar Alexander III, underwent a change not only economic and technological, but also cultural, ideological and political. It had been a renewal of the Russian Empire, and as a consequence there was an explosion in all walks of life.

An explosion that allowed areas of experimentation, which gave rise to many historical, ideological, emotional, artistic, political personalities and movements, etc. They arise from the influence of a mixture of the Tsarist Alexandrian Period (plus the government of Tsar Nicholas II, which is also an entire era in its own right) and leftist Stalinism.

Among them Eurasianism and the Krasnovites (arising mainly from the right-wing Cossacks who did not want to be replaced by Moscow or join the Russian left, but did not want to join the Directorate or Russian far right either).