Russia, Poland and Universal Regeneration : Studies in Russian and Polish Thought of the Romantic Epoch

Andrzej Walicki here examines the relations between Polish and Russian thinkers in the 1840s, analyzing these relations in a broad comparative perspective against the background of the main currents of European throughout of that time.

The book demonstrates that despite the scarcity of documentation, the intellectual encounters between Adam Mickiewicz or August Cieszkowski, on the one side, and Alexander Herzen or the Russian Slavophiles, on the other, should not be treated as a matter of marginal importance.

The book begins by interpreting the Russian socialism of Alexander Herzen as a response to Polish revolutionary Slavophilism and national messianism.

It discloses the great impact of Adam Mickiewicz on Herzen's thought.

The importance of Adam Cieszkowski's influence on Herzen's early philosophical writings is examined next.

Walicki analyzes the ideas of both thinkers, comparing and contrasting them with the post-Hegelian philosophy and French utopian socialism of their contemporaries. A comparative analysis of Mickiewicz's religious messianism and Russian Slavophilism leads to the conclusion that despite some striking similarities Mickiewicz's messianism represented a style of thought that was structurally different from the Slavophile's conservative romanticism.

Walicki concludes by discussing Adam Gurowski - a Polish nationalist turned into Pan-Slavist and, later into an ideologist of American Manifest Destiny - to demonstrate the usually unacknowledged importance of the Russophile trend in Polish Romantic thought.