See also: westernism

English edit

Etymology edit

Western +‎ -ism. The Russian ideology is a calque of Russian за́падничество (západničestvo)

Noun edit

Westernism (uncountable)

  1. The ideology and culture of the West.
    Synonym: Occidentalism
  2. (historical) An 19th-century intellectual ideology which saw Russia's development as dependent upon the adoption of Western European technology and liberal government.
    Coordinate term: Slavophilism
    • 1992, Liah Greenfield, “The Scythian Rome: Russia”, in Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, revised edition, Harvard University Press, →ISBN, page 265:
      Slavophilism and Westernism were indeed the two sides of the same set of aspirations and sentiments, one facing an image of the past, and the other that of the future.
    • 2000, Robert English, “The Origins and Nature of Old Thinking”, in Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals, and the End of the Cold War, Columbia University Press, →ISBN, page 25:
      In the coming decades, the tumult of revolution and war together with the mistakes, compromises, and ambitions of the country's new leaders would bring Russia's "Asiatic" heritage to the fore and sweep away a still-fragile Westernism.
    • 2010, Bruce K. Ward, Dostoyevsky’s Critique of the West: The Quest for the Earthly Paradise, revised edition, Wilfrid Lautier University Press, →ISBN, page 23:
      This description of a typical serious circle exposes the limitation which was so fundamental to Russian Westernism after the failure of the Decembrist revolt—the absence of any relation between thought and practice.

Translations edit