The spiritual form of Europe: the ideal of unity and the dialogue with Giuseppe Mazzini in the Russian intellectual tradition of the 19th century

The article examines the spiritual concept of Europe in the Russian intellectual tradition of the nineteenth century in comparison with Giuseppe Mazzini’s moral universalism and in light of Franco Venturi’s historiographical interpretation. Through an analysis of Chaadaev, Khomyakov, Herzen, Danilevsky, Leontiev, Dostoevsky, and Solovyov, it is shown that the question of Europe in Russian thought was understood primarily as an ethical and anthropological problem rather than a political or geopolitical category. Special attention is given to the way Mazzini’s idea of incivilimento — the understanding of historical development through duty and the moral education of humanity — was reinterpreted in the Russian context along the lines of sobornost’, spiritual renewal, and a critique of European rationalism. Venturi’s interpretation makes it possible to view the dialogue between Mazzini and Herzen as one of the key points in the formation of early Russian populism and as a reflection of the tension between European universalism and Russian civilizational models. The article argues that Russian thought did not reject Europe, but sought to offer its spiritual redefinition as a space of a “brotherhood of consciences”, where diversity becomes a form of unity and critique becomes a source of moral deepening of the European idea.