Johan Huizinga’s Russia

This article deals with the changing views of Dutch historian Johan Huizinga (1872–1945) on such topics as Russian culture, 19th-century Russia, and the Soviet Union. While Huizinga did not count them among his core research interests (he never published an independent work on Russia or the Soviet Union), he remained preoccupied with these topics, particularly during the last phase of his life, in relation to his criticism of the declining forms of contemporary culture. Little has been made of the fact that Huizinga prepared a course on 19th-century Russia for students of history at the university of Groningen in 1914 (he taught the course in 1935/6 at Leiden). It was also in 1914 that he became interested in the idea of pan-Slavism in Russia and Central Europe. Huizinga’s unpublished lectures on Russia and pan-Slavism demonstrate his exceptional knowledge of history, surpassing that of his academic contemporaries. The lectures also show Huizinga’s critical attitude towards the political life of 19th-century Russia as well as the Soviet political experiment.