From Orthodox Messianism to the Doctrine of the "World Revolution": Continuity or a Radical Break with the Past?

In the 16th century, Moscow proclaimed itself to be the «the third Rome» and discovered the «special way» or Russian Orthodox Messianism doctrine. Since the mid-nineteenth century, the idea of Russia's unique global historical role went beyond exclusively church discussions, and the idea of «Moscow as the Third Rome» acquired an important place in the structure of imperial ideology. Even after a break with the past, after the 1917 October Revolution, the country did not abandon the idea of Messianism, which organically «fitted» into the structure of Soviet ideology. At the same time, reanimation of messianic moods was carried out here in the format of the doctrine of the «World Republic of Soviets» and/or «World Revolution.» Of course, some backbone elements of old Messianism underwent a significant transformation, which can hardly be called secularization. The purpose of this article is to show that the time 1917 mid-1930s may be described with the help of a peculiar dialectic, as the unity of a radical break with the past and the specifically manifested continuity with it. Subsequently, despite large-scale changes, the idea of the «peculiarity» of the Russian way, firstly in Soviet and then in Russian society, including the specific perception of its past, continued to remain an influential political brand. This kind of discourse should be considered highly archaic today; however, it does not become an attribute of the distant past, retaining the attractiveness and even acquiring state ideology.