Earlier versions of this article were presented at the California Graduate Slavic Colloquium at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2004 and at the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies in Washington, D.C., in 2006. I would like to thank Ronald Vroon, Harsha Ram, Jenifer Presto, and Judith Kornblatt for their suggestions and comments on various drafts of this article, as well as the three readers at Slavic Review for their valuable critiques.

1. Belyi, Andrei, “Apokalipsis v russkoi poezii,” in Zis', A. la., ed., Kritika. Estetika. Teoriia Simvolizma (Moscow, 1994), 1:375-76Google Scholar; on Solov'ev's effect on Belyi and the apocalyptic mood at the turn of the century, see Samuel Cioran, The Apocalyptic Symbolism ofAndrejBelyj (The Hague, 1973), 14-15. All translations from the Russian are mine, unless otherwise stated.

2. Gaut, Greg, “Can a Christian Be a Nationalist? Vladimir Solov'ev's Critique of Nationalism,“ Slavic Review 57, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. For the one notable exception, see Setnitskii, N. A., Russkie mysliteli o Kitae: V. S. Solov'ev i N. F. Fedorov (Harbin, 1926), 19 Google Scholar. Subsequent scholarship on Solov'ev has added little to Setnitskii's study. In a gesture that ironically replicates fin-de-siécle racial visions, little effort has been made to distinguish east Asians of the early twentieth century from the Central Asian nomads who invaded Russia in the thirteenth century. If the Chinese and Japanese are referred to at all, then it is for purposes of summarizing the extraordinary plot of “The Short Tale of Antichrist” or, in studies that focus on the elements of the apocalyptic narrative, it is understood without further comment or question that these Asian peoples are fill-ins for the roles of the tribes of Gog and Magog, the necessary extras in the apocalyptic drama as outlined in the book of Revelation. The more instructive analyses of Solov'ev's Pan-Mongolism are offered by historians. See, for example, Gollwitzer, Heinz, Die gelbe Gefahr: Geschichte eines Schlagworts, Studien zum imperialislischen Denken (Gottingen, 1962), 114-20Google Scholar; Hauner, Milan, What ls Asia to Us? Russia's Asian Heartland Yesterday and Today (New York, 1992), 49–65 Google Scholar; and, more recently, David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye's excellent and engaging study of the Russian involvement in the Far East leading up to the Russo-Japanese War, Toward the Rising Sun: Russian Ideologies of Empire and thePath to War with Japan (DeKalb, 2001), 82-86.

4. Ram, Harsha, The Imperial Sublime: A Russian Poetics of Empire (Madison, 2003), 225 Google Scholar; Dany Savelli, “L'Asiatisme dans la littérature et la pensée russes de la fin du XlXémé siécle au debut du XXéme siécle: K. Leont'ev, V. Solov'ev, V Brjusov, A. Blok, A. Belyij, B. Pilnjak“ (PhD diss., Universite de Lille III, 1992), 52-115.

5. Irene Masing-Delic has drawn attention to this unexpected association of the Far East and the west in her analysis of the east in the works of the Russian symbolists in the twentieth century. Symbolist discourse, she maintains, “posits a negative, insidious and 'decrepit’ Far East, reduplicated by a stagnant and complacent Far West, which is burdened by its long cultural heritage.” Irene Masing-Delic, “Who Are the Tatars in Aleksandr Blok's The HomelandfThe East in the Literary-Ideological Discourse of the Russian Symbolists,“ Poetica: Zeitschrift fur Sprach unci Literaturwissenschaft 35 (2003): 128.

6. See Maggs, Barbara, Russia and “le reve chinois“: China in Eighteenth-Century Russian Literature (Oxford, 1984)Google Scholar. For an account of Bichurin's life and work, as well as the development of Russian sinology, see Rodionov, V, N. la. Bichurin (Iakinf). Radi vechnoi pamiali: Poeziia, stat'i, ocherki, zametki, pis'ma (Cheboksary, 1991)Google Scholar; Skachkov, P., Ocherki istorii russkogo kitaevedeniia (Moscow, 1977).Google Scholar

7. Isaacs, Harold, Scratches on Our Minds: American Images of China and India (New York, 1958), 71.Google Scholar

8. In The Outline of a Philosophy of the History of Man (1784), Herder describes China as an “embalmed mummy, wrapped in silk, and painted with hieroglyphics.” Cited in Jonathan Spence, The Chan's Great Continent: China in Western Minds (New York, 1998), 99. For Hegel's indictment of China, see G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (New York, 2004), 116.

9. McNally, Raymond T. and Tempest, Richard, eds., Philosophical Works of Peter Chaadaev (Dordrecht, 1991), 22, 24-25CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For comments on Belinskii and kitaishchina, see Samoilov, N., “Rossiia i Kitai,” in Ivanov, S. and Mel'nichenko, B., eds., Rossiia i vostok (St. Petersburg, 2000), 265 Google Scholar. A more detailed analysis of the Russian invention of “Chinese Europe” is given in Susanna Soojung Lim, “Chinese Europe: Alexander Herzen and the Russian Image of China,” Intertexls 10, no. 1 (2006): 51-63.

10. Gerzen, A., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem, ed. Lemke, M. K. (St. Petersburg, 1919), 11:74, 13:37.Google Scholar

11. The work was published posthumously in 1860 under the title Otryvok iz zapisok A. S. Khomiakova o vsemirnoi istorii. See Khomiakov, A., Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh, ed. Koshelev, V., vol. 1 (Moscow, 1994)Google Scholar, and Khomiakov, A., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii Alekseia Stepanovicha Khomiakova (Moscow, 1900-1911), 6:172, 175.Google Scholar The Kushites were people of an ancient North African civilization who preceded the Egyptians. Kushites are also known as the descendants of Ham, one of Noah's sons and the forefather of the nations of Africa (Genesis, chap. 9). In the idea of the eternal struggle between Iranianism and Kushitism, Khomiakov found a precedent in Friedrich von Schlegel's Philosophy of History (1828): his division of the two principles paralleled Schlegel's opposition of the Aryan and non-Aryan races. See Nicholas Riasanovsky, “Appendix,” Russia and the West in the Teaching of the Slavophiles: A Study of Romantic Ideology (Cambridge, Mass., 1952), 215-18.

12. See Dostoevskii, F., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh (Leningrad, 1972-1990), 5:69–70.Google Scholar

13. In 1854, at the beginning of the war, Dostoevskii asserted Russia's claim to the biblical east in the poem “Na evropeiskie sobytiia v 1854 godu“: “The east is Russia's! / … Russia's revival of the ancient east / (for God has thus commanded) is imminent.” Ibid., 2:405.

14. In 1854 Pogodin wrote: “Leaving Europe in peace, we should turn our attention to Asia. We had almost completely overlooked her, although it is Asia that is destined for Russia…. Half of Asia—China, Japan, Tibet, Bukhara, Khiva, Kokand, Persia—belongs to us if we want.” Pogodin, M., “O russkoi politike na budushchee vremia,” Istoriko-politicheskie pis'ma i zapiski vprodolzhenii Krymskoi voiny 1853-1856 (Moscow, 1874), 242-43.Google Scholar

15. Previously, apart from a few accounts by shipwrecked sailors or government envoys, Russians had little knowledge of this island nation. The main Russian account of Japan before the 1850s was that of Vasilii Golovnin, who had been captured by the Japanese on his way to an expedition of the Kuril Islands in 1811. V. Golownin (Golovnin), Japan and the Japanese: Comprising the Narrative of a Captivity in Japan and an Account of British Commercial Intercourse with That Country, 2 vols. (London, 1853).

16. Ivan Goncharov, Sobranie sochinenii v shesti tomakh (Moscow, 1959), vols. 2 and 3. For an abridged English translation, see Goncharov, I., The Frigate Pallada, trans. Goetze, Klaus (New York, 1987).Google Scholar

17. Shteingauz, A., “Iaponiia i iapontsy glazami russkikh (vtoraia polovina XIX v.),“ Toronto Slavic Quarterly 12 (Spring 2005), at www.utoronto.ca/tsq/12/shtejngauzl2.shtml (last consulted 22 February 2008).Google Scholar

18. An article in Novoevremia, for example, showed that initial predictions concerning Russia's role as a teacher for Japan were more wishful thinking than reality; the Japanese were being influenced, not by Russians, but by “French barbers and Prussian instructors.“ Such a development, the article warned, “distances us from Japan and draws it closer to our opponents in the west.” “Nashi otnosheniia k Kitaiu i Iaponii,” Novoe vremia, no. 1298 (1879): 1.

19. Leont'ev, K., Vostok, Rossiia i slavianstvo: Filosofskaia i politicheskaia publitsistika. Dukhovnaia proza, 1872-1891 (Moscow, 1996), 142.Google Scholar

20. As Bassin also points out, however, the excitement surrounding the discovery of a “Russian Mississippi,” disappeared as quickly and abruptly as it emerged. See Bassin, Mark, Imperial Visions: Nationalist and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East, 1840-1865 (Cambridge, Eng., 1999), 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21. M. Bakunin, “La Theologie politique de Mazzini et l'lnternationale,” in Arthur Lehning, ed., Ouvres completes de Bakounine, vol. 1, Michel Bakounine et Vltalie, 1871-1872 (Paris, 1973), 69-71. The impact of population pressure from China was covered by Russian journals as well. An article in Novoe vremia of 1879 addressed the issue of Chinese immigration to North America, claiming that the “Chinese question” was in danger of becoming a pressing matter now that the Chinese were settling, not only on the western, but also on the eastern coast of America. According to this report, in recent times, “to the horror of the whites,” an entire Chinese quarter had formed in New York, presenting a serious economic threat to white workers. “Kitaiskii kvartal v N'iu-Iorke,” Novoe vremia, nos. 1-13 (1879): 317.

22. Another major cause of the Chinese migration, as Lynn Pan has argued, was British and European demand for cheap labor following the abolition of African slavery in the colonies. See Pan, Lynn, Sons of the Yellow Emperor: A History of the Chinese Diaspora (Boston, 1990).Google Scholar

23. A general study of the yellow peril is given in Richard Thompson's “The Yellow Peril, 1890-1924” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1957). For the yellow peril in the context of American history and culture, specifically in relation to the 1840s Gold Rush and anti-immigration legislation, see Robert Lee, Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture (Philadelphia, 1999). The yellow peril in the Russian context is treated in Hauner, What Is Asia to uys?49-65; Gollwitzer, Diegelbe Gefahr, 94-120; Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Toioard the Rising Sun, 82-103.

24. For Russian responses to Chinese and Korean migration in the Far East, see Siegelbaum, Lewis, “'Another Yellow Peril': Chinese Migrants in the Russian Far East and Russian Reaction before 1917,” Modern Asian Studies 12, no. 2 (1978): 307-30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for the effect of Russian and east Asian settlement on the native peoples of the Far East, see Stolberg, Eva-Maria, “The Siberian Frontier between ‘White Mission’ and ‘Yellow Peril,’ 1890s-1920s,“ Nationalities Papers 32, no. 1 (March 2004): 165-81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25. Odoevskii, Vladimir, “The Year 4338: Letters from Petersburg,” in Fetzer, Leland, ed. and trans., Pre-Revolutionary Russian Science Fiction: An Anthology (Seven Utopias and a Dream) (Ann Arbor, 1982), 38–54.Google Scholar

26. Anindita Banerjee, “From Geopolitics to Philosophy of History: The Trans-Siberian Railroad and Russia's Emergence as an Asiatic Power” (unpublished manuscript, 2004).

27. Danilevskii, G., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii G. P. Danilevskogo (St. Petersburg, 1901), 19:12–34 Google Scholar. The text is also provided online at az.lib.ru/d/danilewskij_g_p/text_0070.shtml (last consulted 22 February 2008).

28. Ibid., 19:24-26.

29. In his article, “Kitaiskii progress” (1883), Vasil'ev warned: “Seizing the richest islands in the world, those of the eastern ocean, China would simultaneously threaten Russia, America, and Western Europe…. The whole world would be inhabited by Chinese alone—to that extent, our fantasies about the future, which we now call impossible, could come true.” V. P. Vasil'ev, Otkrytie Kitaia (St. Petersburg, 1900), 163.

30. A thorough analysis of the tsarevich's grand tour, as well as of the attitudes toward the Far East held by various tsarist officials at the turn of the century, including Esper Ukhtomskii, Sergei Witte, and Aleksei Kuropatkin, is provided by Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Toward the Rising Sun, 15-103.

31. Marks, Steven, The Road to Poiuer: The Trans-Siberian Railroad and the Colonization of Asian Russia, 1850-1917 (Ithaca, 1991), 35–37.Google Scholar

32. In a letter of 26 September 1895 to his cousin Tsar Nicholas, Wilhelm II explained that he had instructed the artist Herman Knackfufi to depict the “Powers of Europe represented by their respective Genii called together by the Arch-Angel Michael,—sent from Heaven,— to unite in resisting the inroads of Buddhism, heathenism and barbarism for the Defence of the Cross.” Issac Don Levine, ed. and trans., Letters from the Kaiser to the Czar Copied from Government Archives in Petrograd Unpublished before 1920 (New York, 1920), 17. Emphasis in the original.

33. Berdiaev, N., “Problema vostoka i zapada v religioznom soznanii VI. Solov'eva,“ in Averin, B. V. and Bazanova, D., eds., Kniga o Vladimire Solov'eve (Moscow, 1991), 357 Google Scholar. In works such as “Lectures on Godmanhood” (1877-81) or “Three Speeches on Dostoevskii“ (1881-83) Solov'ev places great hope in Russia's role as a reconciler, the eventual unity of the churches, and the establishment of a theocracy.

34. Solov'ev, V., “Kitai i Evropa,” in Solov'ev, S. M. and Radlov, E., eds., Sobranie sochinenii Vladimira Solov'eva, 10 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1911-1914Google Scholar; reprint edition with two additional volumes, Brussels, 1966-1970; hereafter SS), 6:143. Unless otherwise stated, Solov'ev's citations will be from the Brussels edition, indicated, as here, by volume and page number(s). For the English translation of Solov'ev writings on the east, see Vladimir Wozniuk, Enemies from IheEast? V. S. Soloviev on Paganism, Asian Civilizations, and Islam (Evanston, 2007).

35. Solov'ev, , “Ex Oriente Lux,” SS, 12:27–28.Google Scholar

36. A study of Solov'ev's attitude toward Islam falls outside the immediate scope of this article; it is noteworthy, however, that although he spoke of Islamic infidels in the 1880s, he perceives Islam as being historically closer to Judaism and Christianity, a monotheistic faith that, although limited in comparison to Christianity, represented a higher level of spirituality than mere paganism. See Solov'ev, , “Magomet, ego zhizn’ i uchenie,“ SS, 7:203-81.Google Scholar

37. See Setnitskii, Russkie mysliteli, 16; Savelli, “L'Asiatisme,” 70.

38. Solov'ev, “Kitai i Evropa,” SS, 6:147. For Solov'ev's view of the French Revolution, see Dmitry Shlapentokh, The French Revolution in Russian Intellectual Life, 1865-1905 (Westport, Conn., 1996), 59-62.

39. Solov'ev, , “Kitai i Evropa,” SS, 6:93, 94.Google Scholar

40. Chenjitong (1851-1907) was a Qing diplomat to France and the first Francophone Chinese writer. An avid reader of European culture and literature, Chen played the role of a bicultural mediator between Europe and China in the 1880s and was lionized by Parisian society and luminaries such as Anatole France. His many works, including Le Chinoispeintspareux- memes (1883) and Contes chinois (1889), were published in France to great success. At the same time, Chen was also an early critic of western images of China. Catherine Vance Yeh writes that the “dominating motif… in Chen's works is to overcome what he considered shallow and uninformed Western opinions of China.” Catherine Vance Yeh, “The Life-Style of Four Wenren in Late Qing Shanghai,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 57, no. 2 (December 1997): 437.

41. Solov'ev, “Kitai i Evropa,” SS, 6:94. The sinologist Anna Stolpovskaia, a contemporary of Solov'ev's, points out that when speaking of Chinese philosophers such as Lao- Tzu, the author frequently puts words into their mouths. See Stolpovskaia, Anna, Istorii kul'tury kitaiskogo naroda s prilozheniem retsenzii na stat'iu g. V. S. Solov'eva “Kitai i Evropa“ (Moscow, 1891), 457.Google Scholar In fact, Solov'ev uses this rhetorical device throughout, as in the passage in question when he proceeds to translate the gist of Chen Jitong's message for Russian readers.

42. Solov'ev, , “Kitai i Evropa,” SS, 6:94 Google Scholar. Emphasis in the original.

43. Ibid.

44. Solov'ev's evaluation of the Chinese situates them in direct opposition to his notion of the Jews, as examined by Judith Kornblatt. As a people both choosing and chosen by God, the Jews, for Solov'ev, served as a model for Russia in its quest for spiritual nationhood. See Kornblatt, Judith, “Vladimir Solov'ev on Spiritual Nationhood, Russia, and the Jews,” Russian Review 56, no. 2 (April 1997): 157-77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45. Solov'ev, , “Kitai i Evropa,” SS, 6:133, 121.Google Scholar Emphasis in the original.

46. Ibid., 6:150.

47. Solov'ev, , “Zametki o E. P. Blavatskoi,” SS, 6:395.Google Scholar

48. Solov'ev, , “Kratkaia povest’ ob Antikhriste,” SS, 10:83–84.Google Scholar A striking aspect of Tolstoi's engagement with Chinese thought in the 1880s was its connection to the new type of moral art he began to espouse after his crisis and his educational projects for the Russian peasants. See the remarkable study by Derk Bodde, Tolstoy and China (Princeton, 1950). Critics have pointed out how the character of the Prince in Three Conversations is not too subtly modeled on the author of War and Peace. See, for example, K. Mochulskii and V M. Tolmachev, Gogol', Solov'ev, Dostoevskii (Moscow, 1995), 208. Another Russian who was fascinated with eastern spirituality was Esper Ukhtomskii, a figure never mentioned in Solov'ev's writings but who influenced the Russian government's push to the east. Like Tolstoi, he was deeply sympathetic to Buddhism and the religions of Asia. See Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Toward the Rising Sun, 41-60.

49. Solov'ev, , “Iaponiia: Istoricheskaia kharakteristika,” SS, 6:153, 160.Google Scholar

50. Ibid., 6:164-66, 173.

51. Solov'ev, , “Pan-Mongolism,” SS, 12:96, 95.Google Scholar

52. Ibid., 12:96.

53. Solov'ev, , “Kratkaia povest’ ob Antikhriste,” SS, 10:89–90.Google Scholar

54. Ibid., 10:193. Emphasis in the original.

55. Ibid., 10:194. Emphasis in the original.

56. Ibid., 10:196.

57. Ibid.

58. See, for example, Zernov, Nicolas, Three Russian Prophets: Khomiakov, Dostoevsky, Soloviev (London, 1944), 132 Google Scholar; Mochulskii, K., Vladimir Solov'ev: Zhizn’ i uchenie (Paris, 1951), 250-53Google Scholar; Cioran, S., Vladimir Solov'ev and the Knighthood of the Divine Sophia (Waterloo, Ontario, 1977), 63–64.Google Scholar

59. Solov'ev, , “Lermontov,” SS, 9:363.Google Scholar

60. Solov'ev, , “Kitai i Evropa,” SS, 6:9.Google Scholar; Solov'ev, , “Kratkaia povest’ ob Antikhriste,” SS, 10:19.Google Scholar. Emphasis in the original.

61. Kochetkova, Tat'iana, “Solovyov's Insight on the Nature of Modernity,” in Borisova, I. V. and Kozyrev, A. P., eds., Solov'evskii sbornik: Materialy mezhdunarodnoi konferentsii V. S. Solov'ev i ego filosofskoe nasledie.’ 28-30 avgusla 2000 g. (Moscow, 2001), 386.Google Scholar

62. Pan-Asianism promoted the idea that imperial Japan, based on its early westernization, had a mission to unite and lead the rest of Asia and protect it from western advances. See Vladimir Tikhonov, “Korea's First Encounters with Pan-Asianism Ideology in the Early 1880s,” Review of Korean Studies 5, no. 2 (2002): 201.

63. Solov'ev, , “Kratkaia povest’ ob Antikhriste,” SS, 10:22.Google Scholar.

64. Emphasis in the original. The full text of Wilhelm II's speech can be found at h-net.org/∼german/gtext/kaiserreich/china.html (last consulted 22 February 2008)

65. Solov'ev, , “Drakon,” SS, 12:9.Google Scholar.

66. L. Slonimskii, “Vladimir Sergeevich Solov'ev,” quoted in Setnitskii, Russkie mysliteli, 28.

67. S. Trubetskoi, “Smert’ V. S. Solov'eva: 31 iuliia 1900 g.,” in Averin and Bazanova, eds., Kniga o Vladimire Solov'eve, 294. The poem appeared in the August edition of the journal, after Solov'ev's death on 31 July.