“Our father, the great and stern Genghis Khan”: The “Mongolian legacy” in the Eurasian concept

The purpose of the article is to analyze the intellectual evolution of the Eurasians’ assessment of the role of Mongolian statehood in the formation of the Muscovite kingdom. Research materials: The article uses the works, published in Eurasian publications of the 1920s and 1930s, written by authors who were both members of the movement and sympathized with it at a certain stage of their activities. Novelty and results of the study: The Eurasian concept, which arose at the intersection of historiosophy and geography, represented a systemic vision of a new continent – ‟Russia-Eurasia”. Anti-Westernism became the ideological vector of the new movement; the catastrophe of 1917 was directly associated with the dominance of European culture in the Russian Empire. The anti-Western sentiment as a key ideologeme demanded, first of all, historical arguments. The Eurasians’ appeal to the topic of the influence of the Mongols on the Russian principalities was natural, since the Mongol era fully corresponded to this ideologeme. The Eurasians only had to substantiate and prove the positive influence of the power of Genghis Khan’s state on the forming of the Russian state. The use of the geopoli­tical method was the most successful approach for solving this problem. The Eurasians indicated their positions and their vision of the historical process more than they offered specific historical studies on the topic of the Mongol influence on the development of the Muscovite Kingdom.