Eurasian Structuralism

The article examines the socio-political consequences of the structural-linguistic concepts of N.P. Trubetskoy and R.O. Jacobson, as well as the structural-geographical theory of P.N. Savitsky. These scientists, who were the pioneers of the structuralism of the twentieth century, were at the same time the founders of the Eurasian movement, which tried to compete with the Bolshevik doctrine in 1920—1930s. The sociolinguistic principle of “linguistic unions” and the morphological concept postulated by N.S. Trubetskoy became the basis for the semantic picture of the Eurasian space proposed by R.O. Jacobson, which resulted in a socio-political development construct that has not exhausted its potential so far. The morphological and phonological approaches of these two linguists were supported by the structural-geographical concept of P.N. Savitsky, who showed the prerequisites for the emergence of a Eurasian community not only at the linguistic, but also at the geographical and economic levels. Linguists pointed to the connection between language and thinking, which forms the idea of extant and due, which gave arguments for the assertion of the axiological proximity of the Eurasian peoples. Geographer P.N. Savitsky confirmed these conclusions with his research on the formation of the economic kinship of the population of Eurasia on the basis of a single space. Using these concepts, Russian structuralists created a socio-political doctrine about the special role of Eurasia, its separate path, opposite to the western direction of development. Applying certain provisions of F. de Saussure, the founders of Eurasianism created the teleological syntagma ideocracy — demotia — soviet, which determined the structure of the Eurasian socio-political space. The combination of elements of the Eurasian structure is interpreted collinearly of the triad proposed by F. de Saussure langage — langue — parole. The ideocratic system, verified by demotia, determines the activities of the soviets. It follows from this that the teleological syntagma of the Eurasianists, ideocracy — demotia — soviet, was the antithesis of the Bolshevik syntagma communism — Soviet authority — soviet. Ideocracy here is the opposition to communism, and demotia is opposition to Soviet authority. Thus, the structure of the Eurasian state was finally determined. Ideocracy was understood by the Eurasians as a political system, demotia, as a way of social control of the system, and in this case soviets were supposed to become an instrument of self-government, uniting the structure of the Eurasian state from top to bottom. © Shabaga A.V., 2022.