The west and the great steppe in the history of Rus and Russia

Born to the famous poets Anna Akhmatova and Nikolay Gumilev, Lev Gumilev achieved fame in his own right, in the social sciences, as the creator of the innovative historiosophic concept called the theory of ethnogenesis. The original and controversial methodology adopted by him ensured that his entire scholarly output and legacy, both during his life and after his death, was subject to interpretation only on his own terms of reference. This flaw also attaches to Polish scholarship in this discipline. Of the research touching on his legacy, that of “the last Eurasian” as Gumilev was to describe himself, only his “theory of ethnogenesis” can be assumed to have been thoroughly examined. Ryszard Paradowski did this in his study, published in 1996, Idea Rosji Eurazji i naukowy nacjonalizm Lwa Gumilowa, which, after being supplemented with a chapter on the output of Aleksander Dugin, was republished in 2001 under the titled Eurazjatyckie imperium Rosji – studium idei.1 Other aspects of Gumilev’s legacy which are very interesting from the conservative vantage point of the history of Russian thought, or historical thought in the broader sense of the word, still constitute a blank on the Polish roadmap of the social sciences2, and this is despite the fact that several works devoted to Lev Gumilev have been published. The bibliography in the recently published book of Malgorzata Zuber Wplyw koncepcji euroazjatyzmu na pisarstwo historyczne Lwa Gumilowa3, which takes no cognizance of the more exhaustive Russian sources that are now available, totally disqualifies her