Between Spiritual Self and Other: Vladimir Solov'ev and the Question of East Asia

In this essay, Susanna Soojung Lim examines the philosopher Vladimir Solov'ev's representation of China and Japan in his theory of Pan- Mongolism. Emerging at the disjuncture between Solov'ev's ecumenism and the geopolitical realities of contemporary history, Pan-Mongolism was a creation onto which the philosopher projected his anxiety and disillusionment at the failure of his vision. Lim begins by surveying Russian perceptions of East Asia before the 1850s and situating Solov'ev within the popular discourse of the “yellow peril.” Discussing how Solov'ev recapitulates previous notions of this east, she considers Pan-Mongolism in terms of an acute Russian response to the historical and cultural changes originating in China and Japan at a period when the modernization of these nations was challenging the existing relationship between, and indeed the very categories of, east and west. A hybrid construct shaped by Russian occidentalism as well as orientalism, Pan-Mongolism is an idea that reveals both the strength and weakness of Solov'ev's Utopian universalism.