Russia and the West: Social and Cultural and Intellectual Origins of Libertarian Socialism
The article reviews the cultural-historical and intellectual context in which Russian anarchist thought influenced Western libertarian socialism. Two major areas are considered and reflect the key issues of libertarian theory, such as the ecological crisis (social ecology) and the war regime (anarchism and pacifism). With these examples, it is shown that a lot of ideas of Russian classical anarchism was actualized in a new sociocultural context and became a powerful instrument of criticism of the neoliberal ideology of state-corporate capitalism dominating nowadays, especially in the West. M. Bukchin’s social ecology is presented as an example of P. Kropotkin’s "scientific anarchism". Modern anarcho-pacifist thought explicated as a product of L. Tolstoy’s "non-resisting anarchism" reception.