La tentation de comprendre.

The present article discusses Emil Cioran’s attitude and perception of Russia as highlighted on the one hand, in his work Transfiguration de la Roumanie, where Cioran manifested fascination for expansionism, where his models for messianism were Germany and Russia. On the other hand, in his later, more skeptical and moderate one, Histoire et utopie, Cioran changed his perception, and regarded Russia in a way that was to seem rather prophetic for Russia’s destiny in Europe, that of ‘an empire of evil’. This radical change in his understanding of the world meant that his interest in Russia no longer mounted to a fascination with naked force, whether political, military or ideological. A fully mature thinker free of all illusions, Cioran renounced the collectivist interpretation of the human universe and accepted the idea that every nation, even the Russian nation, is first and foremost a plurality of individuals. From this perspective, Russia no longer has the character of a historical inevitability that will inevitably dominate the world.