Russian Eurasianism and its Eastern European counterparts 100 years ago and today

The Eurasian Complex

Russian Eurasianism, whose centenary we celebrated in 2021, is a complex phenomenon that can only be fully understood if we carefully consider the context of its birth and development.

Russian Eurasianism as a specific philosophical and political current emerges in the specific Russian philosophical and cultural space of the Silver Age. This space was already characterized by a “turning to the East”, a reflection on the “East” and “pan-Mongolism” by Vladimir Solovyov, and a literary current of “Scythianism”, in which Solovyov's reflections and fears were reversed into an acceptance of the “Scythian”, “Eastern” dimension of Russian identity. In the 1917 revolution, some Silver Age figures (e.g., A. Blok in “The Scythians”) saw precisely this dimension of Russian origins emerge.

These pro-Eastern connotations, on the one hand, were a continuation of Russia's populist and Slavophile traditions. On the other, they corresponded to certain trends in the West, where a specific cultural interest in the East, reinforced by World War I, was also evident in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In Europe, even before World War I, the aversion of some intellectual circles to the depersonalized, rationalist, capitalist version of European culture today was evident. The shock of how the victorious march of progress had turned into the death machine of World War I required special reflection on the very foundations of this civilization. The problem then arose of finding alternatives to it.  In 1918-1922, at the same time as the early works of the Eurasians, the first and second volumes of Spengler's The Decline of Europe were published. This is all part of the enormous work of the European spirit and peoples affected by Europeanization to rethink the legacy of Modernity.

During the Enlightenment, modern Europe itself constructed its identity on the basis of the image of the “Other”, defined by the concept of the “Orient”. The appeal to the “East” was thus a logical consequence of this search for alternatives. In the process of constructing the identity of New Age Europe, the East was perceived as “backward” and as endowed with qualities that the West was trying to eliminate in itself (see the works of Edward Said, Yves Neumann, Larry Wolfe [1]), i.e., as a bastion of tradition (religiosity or hierarchy), or as a bastion of sensuality (as opposed to arid rationalism) or of intuition as opposed to science.

In essence, the West projected onto the “Other” those qualities it had already rejected in itself, those that the dominant paradigm of Modernity rejected. This is why the subsequent turning to the “East” as an alternative could not help but intersect with the traditionalist quest of Westerners (who discovered in the East not only another world, but also something that was once characteristic of the West itself, an alternative path of development), on the one hand, and with the world of avant-garde culture, with its interest in psychoanalysis, Nietzsche and the “philosophers of suspicion” in general.

At the same time, before and after World War I, Oriental motifs are actively found in the activities of various religious and occult movements.

Finally, in 1921, the same year that Exodus to the East was published, René Guénon's first work was also published, with which the body of ideas of the philosophy of traditionalism began to take shape. It is a work on Eastern metaphysical teachings: Introduction générale à l'étude des doctrines hindoues [2].

In 1924, in another work, East and West, Guenon will offer-even more explicitly-a critique of Western universalism and materialism and call the West an “abnormal civilization”. However, all the anti-Western dispositions of Genonism, all the rehabilitation of the “Orient”, all the subversion of Western universalism and the notion of normativity in modern Western culture, all this is already contained in the 1921 work. And Guenon in “The East and the West” constantly acknowledges this [3].

Eurasianism and the philosophy of traditionalism emerged in the same historical-philosophical context, starting from common premises and developing in parallel in similar directions. Therefore, the subsequent rapprochement between neo-eurasianism and traditionalism is neither a mere coincidence nor the result of personal likes or dislikes of individual philosophers. Both intellectual movements stem from the same phenomenon of critical reinterpretation of “modernity” and “the West”, perceived as synonymous.

The result of this process of critical reinterpretation can be described as the formation of a circle of ideas that can be broadly defined as “Eurasian”. The historical Eurasian movement is only one part of this broad intellectual phenomenon. Its general characteristics can be described as:

1. confidence in the crisis of European civilization and its catastrophe;
2. confidence in the existence of multiple civilizations;
3. re-establishment of the East (“Orient, Turan, Byzantium”) as something that can serve as an alternative reference point for the West and for a given country (while the attitude of some authors toward this reference point may be negative or mixed).

Such an interpretation can significantly broaden the understanding of the phenomenon of Eurasianism by comparing it with the counterparts and representatives of this circle of ideas both in Russia itself and abroad and by opening up a meaningful philosophical dialogue with the heirs of other branches within a single phenomenon. The latter can have general theoretical value and practical geopolitical value.

Eastern Europe: a return to the origins

This complex of Eurasian ideas could not fail to manifest itself in Eastern Europe as well. As in Russia, thinkers in this region continued the pan-European line of thought on the crisis of modern European civilization. On the other hand, since Eastern Europe was conceived by the West as “the East of Europe”, as an internal “Other” within Europe, the pan-European reference to the East as an alternative in Eastern Europe was an appeal to itself, just as in Russia. This in turn led to a reassessment of the unique historical and cultural heritage that had been cast aside in the process of modernization and Westernization.

As the Romanian philosopher of the interwar era, Nicifor Krajnik, wrote: “Anyone who advocates orientation toward the West is talking nonsense. The word orientation includes the word East itself and means orientation toward the East. And since we are geographically in the East, and since through the Orthodox religion we possess the truth of the Eastern world, our orientation can only be toward the East, that is, toward ourselves, toward what we are by inheritance... Westernization means the denial of our Orientalism, Europeanizing nihilism means the denial of our creative possibilities [4].

In Romania, this movement in the direction of the rehabilitation of non-Western, indigenous, Byzantine, Eastern Orthodox cultural origins is most vividly manifested in the phenomenon of the Gandira (“Thought”) magazine, in Nicifor Krajnik's “Orthodoxism”, in Mircea Eliade's ideas on Eurasian unity [5] or Vasile Gerassim's concept of “Spiritual Eurasia” [6], in G. M. Ivanov's focus on Russian Eurasianism (authors. M. Ivanov (the authors of “Gydiri”). In Bulgaria, in the work of philosopher Naiden Sheitanov, who saw the Balkans as a special space between Europe and Asia. In Poland, in the culture of Ignacy Wincenty Witkiewicz (his novel “Unsatisfiability” in which it is not difficult to detect the influence of Solov'ev's ideas and Russian Scythianism) or Felix Konechny, a theorist of the civilization approach, in his typology of civilization [7]. In the first case, the “Byzantine” orientation was understood as a lost opportunity for Poland and the triumph of the “East” as an inevitable fate; “Eurasianism” took on nihilistic traits. In the second, Konieczny directly assessed the “Eurasian” and “Turanian” characteristics of the new Polish state negatively. However, this negative assessment merely emphasized the presence of these characteristics.

In the latter case, both Tsarist Russia and Józef Piłsudski's Poland were for the scholar the embodiment of Turanian-type civilization. The sympathies for the Turanian peoples of Pilsudski's entourage, “Prometheanism” as reverse Eurasianism, and “Eurasianism” against Russia can also be evaluated as a kind of “turn toward the East”.

Against the background of these general “Orientalist” trends in Eastern Europe, Hungary occupied and still occupies a special place in this complex because of the specificity of the Turanian origin of the Hungarian people.

Hungary: turanic traditions

The intellectual movement of “Turanism” became actively established as early as the 19th century. Particularly in that period appeared the term keletiség - “Orientalism” - a belief in the Oriental origin (Turkish or mixed Turkish-Ugric with a predominant Turkish cultural influence) of the Hungarian people, the need for Hungary to get closer to the “East”, and its special role in the East. Ultimately, the East was identified as its “own”, “native space”.

Geopolitically, however, this Turanism was an ambiguous phenomenon. Thus, in the 19th century, Turanism was fueled by pro-Turkish and anti-Habsburg sentiments. A key figure was Arminius Vamberi, a Hungarian adventurer and traveler (originally from a Jewish family) to Central Asia, who tried to justify the theory of the Turkish origin of the Hungarians. At the same time, he was an agent of Turkey and Britain.

However, in the early 19th century the developing Turanism was placed under the protection of the Habsburgs. In Hungary the “Turanian Society” (also known as the Hungarian Asiatic Society) was founded in 1910 with the aim of “strengthening national identity through the study of the roots of the East”. Archduke Franz Joseph of Habsburg was the society's patron.

After 1915, when Turkey and Bulgaria decided to join the Central Powers [8], Slavic Serbia was defeated and Russia suffered great losses, Turanism in Hungary received greater state support. During World War I, the “Turanian Society” became a center with strengthened state support and strong direct government influence over its activities. Its task became liaison with the allied Turanian peoples and states (especially Turkey and Bulgaria). It seemed that the Central Powers would quickly win the war, which would make Turanism politically useful, including its anti-Slavic attitude. There were plans to create independent states for the Turanian peoples inhabiting Russia, such as the Crimean Tatars, Kazan Tatars, or Azerbaijanis.

Turanist was, for example, Count Pal Teleki, a geographer, Far Eastern specialist, and future prime minister of independent Hungary, as well as president of the “Turanian Society” until 1916.

He summarized these aspirations as follows: “Hungarians in the East! To the East, the national, scientific, and economic Hungary! A great and bright future awaits the Hungarian nation, and it is certain that the blossoming of Germanism and Slavism will be followed by the blossoming of Turanianism. We Hungarians, the Western representatives of this great awakening force, have a great and difficult but glorious task ahead of us as the intellectual and economic leaders of the Turanian nation of 600 million people [9].

A leading figure of Turanism in Hungary was Alajos Pajkert, entrepreneur, founder of the Turan Society and publisher of Turan magazine. Well-known orientalists, including Arminio Vamberi, collaborated with the society. Pikert founded (in 1917) and organized (in 1920) the Hungarian Society for Foreign Affairs and in 1936 planned the “World Federation”.  He supported the development of the Turanist paradigm on economic grounds, advocating Hungary's economic rapprochement with Eastern countries, supporting the export of Hungarian products to the East, promoting economic interests [10].

Hungary's defeat in World War I, the loss of significant territories, along with the pan-European context, contributed to the growth of numerous Turanist organizations, both academic and political, radical, neutral, and even neopagan (Turáni Monotheists' - Turáni Egyistenhívők). Until the end of World War II, paramilitary formations of the Turáni Hunters' Association (Turáni Vadászok) were active.

After the establishment of Admiral Miklós Horthy's regime, the Turanian movement in Hungary split into several groups. A moderate faction, led by Count Teleki, founded in the 1920s an academic organization called Kőrösi Csoma Társaság (Kőrösi Chioma Society), named after Szandor Körösi Chioma, an early 19th-century Hungarian orientalist who lived for a long time in Tibet. The society was oriented toward scientific research. It was banned in 1949 and reopened in 1968.

At the same time, in 1920, the most radical group, under the leadership of geographer Jönö Csolnoki, created its own structure, the Turanian Union of Hungary (Magyarországi Turán Szövetség), which held anti-Western positions.  As contemporary Polish researcher Michal Kowalczyk notes, the movement was “strongly anti-aristocratic, anti-capitalist, anti-clerical, anti-modernist, anti-Western, anti-German, and anti-Slavic” [11].

“The Hungarian Turanian Union wants to teach the Hungarian people that the Hungarian Turanian people, proud of their origins, are not a people who come and go, of uncertain origin, but speak the ancient language of glorious history, patriotism and cultural humanity”  Cholnoky wrote [12].

“Either the Hungarians will break away from Western Europe, which is now in shambles, or they too will disintegrate and fall apart with Western Europe”, wrote another representative of the “Hungarian Turanian Union”, László Turmezay, in 1936.

The Hungarian writer of the interwar period, Béla Balás I, also an advocate of Turanianism, observed that:

“The essence of Turanian thought: love, reason and truth. (...) The end of this [Western materialistic] activity, the beginning-or the continuation, with an interval of a thousand years-of the Asian, Turanic one: the era of divine love, divine reason, divine truth, Turanic activity. This is the Turanic idea” [13].

The “Turanic Society” under the leadership of Gyula Pekár, who declared in the late 1920s, “On the border between East and West, we play the role of a transmitter, an aligner between two different cultures and worldviews, and in this way we promote the sacred goal: the resurrection of a great and intact Hungary” [14].

Some supporters of Hungarian Turanism, notably Istvan Mezei, insisted on prioritizing the development of ties with Japan and Finland as “Turanian” powers.

The “Turanian” style became part of Hungarian culture in the early 20th century. For example, Turanic motifs are characteristic of Körösföy-Kris Aladar, one of the leading artists of the Hungarian “Art Nouveau” style (see, for example, the work “Dancing Circle Around Shaman”).

Other cultural figures attracted to the Turanian style include:

Edön Lechner (1845-1914) - architect who created a new national architectural style using elements of Hungarian folk art, Persian, Sassanid, and Indian art.  Károly Kós (1883-1977), architect, writer, graphic designer and publisher, was one of the main representatives of the folk variant of Hungarian Art Nouveau, close to the English Arts & Crafts movement. In 1920 he published his epic Turan, by Hungarian national poet Andor Kozma, celebrating the steppe roots of the Hungarian people.

Another interesting figure in interwar Hungarian Turanism is the artist Ferenc Zaiti, who was obsessed with Hungarian-Hungarian and Indian-Hungarian relations, traveled frequently to India, invited Rabindranath Tagore to Hungary, and met with Gandhi and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Given the complex and pervasive nature of Hungarian Turanism (politics, culture, science), the establishment of the communist regime only partially arrested the development of this intellectual movement. In culture and science, it survived and many figures were not even seriously persecuted, allowing historical continuity to be maintained [15].

Modern Hungary: from Turanism to Eurasianism

The resurgence of interest in Turanism in modern Hungary occurred in the 1990s and in the early 21st century it first became part of the official discourse of the largest nationalist party, Jobbik, and then part of the official discourse of the ruling Fidesz party, which sometimes resulted in specific exotic practices.

Notably, in 2012 the Hungarian government invited a Hungarian folk singer and a Tuvan shaman to perform a special “purification ceremony” on the crown of St. Stephen to endow it-and by extension the entire country-with positive energy. During one of his visits to Kazakhstan, Viktor Orban stated that “Hungarians consider themselves descendants of Atilla of Hunn-Turkish origin”.

On another occasion, Orban, advocating national unity, stated that Hungary is a “half-Asian nation” [16].

In 2018, Hungary joined the Turkic Council and the Parliamentary Assembly of Turkic Speaking Countries as an observer. During the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in 2020, Budapest openly supported Azerbaijan and, after the victory, Baku expressed its desire to participate in the reconstruction of the recaptured Azerbaijani territories [17].

“Since Orban and Fidesz came to power for the second time in 2010, Turanism has become a kind of official government ideology”, notes Orban critic Jakob Mikanowski [18].

According to this author, the national-populist Fidesz has cultivated “a Hunnish, military, autocratic, and patriarchal past that is clearly opposed to modern liberalism”. That said, both the “Turanian idea”, which aims to conceive of Hungarians as an Eastern people linked to the peoples of Eurasia, and the Christian idea of Hungary as a bulwark of Europe against invasions from East and South, have a common enemy. And this enemy is Western liberalism [19].

Viktor Orban's government combines both perspectives in its foreign policy. On the one hand, he has a negative attitude toward migration flows from the Middle East and has been the most zealous among EU governments in protecting its borders from migrant infiltration. Orban is not shy about declaring Christian values. At the same time, Hungary is developing close contacts with Russia, Turkey and China and is attentive to its Eurasian homeland.

This stance-a combination of Turkicist and conservative-Christian elements-has led some researchers to speak of “Hungarian Eurasianism” as a new form of thinking about Hungary's place in geopolitics and history on the part of the conservative elite. Eurasianism is replacing simple Turanism.

In the early 2010s, the Jobbik party spoke openly about Hungarian Eurasianism as a political ideology and geopolitical orientation, but later abandoned these positions [20]. However, the concept of “Hungarian Eurasianism” has already been introduced into the political lexicon [21].

This eurasianism is partly a reaction to the excesses of modern liberalism, which is considered immoral and foreign to the spiritual and moral traditions of the Hungarian people. Appealing to one's identity in the Hungarian context, however, also means appealing to the Turanian, i.e., non-European, component of that identity.

“In essence, the new advocates of moral politics reject the agenda of liberalism as irrelevant”, notes Umut Korkut, a Hungarian scholar working in Britain. - In the Hungarian context, this rejection is accompanied by the search for a more advantageous alternative geopolitical association, which manifests itself in the form of Eurasianism” [22].

Since 2019, the Hungarian Central Bank has organized the Budapest Eurasia Forum, an international forum of experts, mainly economists, and business representatives. Representatives from China actively participate in the forum, as well as Russians and Kazakhs.

At the 2020 forum, Hungarian Central Bank Governor György Matolcsy said that a new era in global geoeconomics, the Eurasia era, is coming. While the Atlantic period is slowly coming to an end, “we are at the beginning of another 400- to 500-year period”, Hungarian Insider said [23].

Experts associated with the initiative understand Eurasian cooperation as mainly focused on China. They talk about “sustainable development”, economics, technology, but also a multilateral approach in international relations.

As Hungarian researcher Péter Balogh points out, “Hungary is an illustrative and relevant example of a country undergoing a partial but significant reorientation” of geographic metanarrative:

“Although until recently it clearly saw its place in Europe and within the country's current borders, significant efforts have recently been made to move closer to some Eurasian societies, not least Turkey, Russia and Central Asia. Such orientations are not only based on purely geopolitical and geoeconomic considerations (as in some Western countries) but are also supported by new old metanarratives such as Neo-Turanism and other forms of 'Eurasianism'” [24].

Atlanticist-oriented researchers seriously fear that by leveraging an emerging “Asian discourse” and dissatisfaction with European policies, Hungary may become a strategic partner of Russia and Turkey in a confrontation with Europe [25].

Conclusions

The example of Hungary demonstrates the relevance of Eurasian political philosophy and, more generally, the “Eurasian complex” of ideas for contemporary geopolitics. Studying Hungarian Turanism and comparing it with Russian Eurasianism can highlight points of contact that will enable serious intellectual dialogue. Turanism still influences Hungarian identity and thus politics and culture today. The fact that in Viktor Orban's version, Turanism is taking on a more balanced, “Eurasian” character is also extremely important.

Historical interwar Turanism had a largely anti-Slavic and “anti-Aryan” orientation. Of course, the latter is an aberration of pseudoscientific theories of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is primarily about Western racism, primarily German and Anglo-Saxon racism, which exalted “Aryan” peoples over “non-Aryan” peoples. Hungarian Turanists adopted this racist worldview, changing only the signs from plus to minus, but maintaining the artificial dichotomy of cultural “Aryans” and Asian Turanian “savages”.

But from the standpoint of unbiased sociological and cultural-anthropological analysis, both the Turks and the Indo-Europeans and the Ugrian ancestors of the Hungarians belonged to the same kind of society that can be called precisely Turanian. They were originally nomadic, patriarchal, and warlike tribes of Eurasia with extremely similar mythological, social and moral systems. If the Turan is to be pitted against anything, it is modern Western liberal civilization.

If we refer to the noological analysis (undertaken, for example, by Alexander Dugin [26]), Hungary, as the most Turanian country in Eastern Europe, is already a de-facto custodian of these values. Moreover, these are the values that underlie medieval European civilization itself [27]. This approach can also consistently justify and explain the synthesis that Hungarian conservatives unconsciously implement, combining the narratives of Turanianism and the medieval spirit of Hungary as a defender of Christian Europe.

If Hungarians could finally purge their Turanism, their Eurasianism of racist and anti-Slavic sentiments, including anti-Russian ones, it would be a real intellectual revolution. In theory, the Hungarian people have all the prerequisites to create their own Eurasianism, partly similar and partly not, to Russian or even Turkish Eurasianism, given the development of Eurasian studies in modern Turkey. Practically in this direction Viktor Orban's official discourse is developing. However, this “spontaneous” Eurasianism requires conceptual and doctrinal framing.

Eurasianism is the only ideological and philosophical movement that reconciles the idea of turning to the East and preserving Christian values, that does not see the Eastern origin of Hungarians as a symbol of backwardness or inferiority, and that prioritizes peace and the culture of the Great Steppe of Eurasia. At the same time, Eurasianism is not antagonistic to the Slavic element, but it is in the environment of the Slavic peoples that Hungarians live.

Such a Eurasian Hungary could become a new power pole in Eastern Europe, a pole of conscious ideological alternative.

Notes:

[1] Said E., “Orientalism: Western Concepts of the East”, SPb, 2006; Woolf L., “Inventing Eastern Europe: the map of civilization in the consciousness of the Enlightenment epoch”, Mosca, 2003.; Neumann I.B., “Using the Other. Images of the East in the formation of European identities”, М., 2004.

[2] Guenon R., “General introduction to the study of Hindu doctrines”, Moscow: Belovodie, 2020.

[3] Guenon R., “East and West”, M.: Belovodie, 2021.

[4] Nichifor Crainic, “Sensul tradiţiei”, Gândirea, 9/1-2 (1929).

[5] Mutti K., “Mircea Eliade and the unity of Eurasia”, Imperium. – Moscow: Eurasian Movement, 2013. С.156-165

[6] Vasile Gherasim şi Eurasia spirituală. https://www.eurasia-rivista.com/vasile-gherasim-si-eurasia-spirituala/

[7] https://jpilsudski.org/artykuly-ii-rzeczpospolita-dwudziestolecie-miedzywojnie/mysl-polityczna/item/2027-jozef-pilsudski-i-turan...

[8] Kowalcyk M., “Hungarian Turanism. From the birth of ideology to modernity - an outline of the problem”, H i s t o r i a i P o l i t y k a No. 20 (27)/2017, pagg. 49-63.

[9] Ablonczy B., “Go East! A History of Hungarian Turanism”, Indiana University Press, 2022.

[10] A turanizmus: http://www.kagylokurt.hu/2503/kulturtortenet/muvelodestortenet/a-turanizmus.html

[11] Kowalcyk M. Il turanismo ungherese. Dalla nascita dell’ideologia alla modernità – uno schema del problema // H i s t o r i a i P o l i t y k a No. 20 (27)/2017, pp. 49-63

[12] A turanizmus: http://www.kagylokurt.hu/2503/kulturtortenet/muvelodestortenet/a-turanizmus.htm

[13] A turanizmus: http://www.kagylokurt.hu/2503/kulturtortenet/muvelodestortenet/a-turanizmus.html

[14] A turanizmus: http://www.kagylokurt.hu/2503/kulturtortenet/muvelodestortenet/a-turanizmus.html

[15] Ablonczy B., “Go East! A History of Hungarian Turanism”, Indiana University Press, 2022.

[16] Moreh Ch., “The Asiatization of national fantasies in Hungary: a critical analysis of political discourse”, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2015.

[17] Hungary will contribute to the reconstruction of the liberated lands of Azerbaijan. https://moscow-baku.ru/news/sotrudnichestvo/vengriya_okazhet_pomoshch_v_vosstanovlenii_osvobozhdennykh_zemel_azerbaydzhana/

[18] Mikanowski J., “The Call of the Drums. Hungary's far right discovers its inner barbarian”, Harpers Magazine https://harpers.org/archive/2019/08/the-call-of-the-drums-hungarian-far-right/

[19] Balogh P., “Conflicting geopolitical images? The strange coexistence of Christian bastion and Eurasianism (Turanism) in Hungary”, Geography and economy of Eurasia, 2020.

[20] Vona Gábor, “Néhány bevezető gondolat a szellemi eurázsianizmus megteremtéséhez” http://jobboldalikultura.blogspot.com/2016/

[21] BALOGH PÉTER. “VERSENGŐ MAKROREGIONÁLIS TÉRKÉPZETEK MAGYARORSZÁGON: EURÁZSIANIZMUS” http://www.mrtt.hu/vandorgyulesek/2018/15/balogh.pdf

[22] Umut Korkut, “Resentment and reorganization: anti-Western discourse and the creation of Eurasianism in Hungary”, Acta Slavica IaponicA, volume 38, pagg. 71-90.

[23] “Cooperation with the East is good for Hungary”, Hungarian Insider https://hungarianinsider.com/cooperation-with-the-east-is-good-for-hungary-5684/

[24] Balog. P., “Return to Eurasia from the heart of Europe? Geographical metanarratives in Hungary and beyond”; Törnquist-Plewa, B., Bernsand, N. amd E. Narvselius, “Beyond transition? Memory and identity narratives in Eastern and Central Europe”, CFE Conference Document Series No. 7, Lund University, Lund, 2015.

[25] Moreh Ch., “The Asiatization of national fantasies in Hungary: a critical analysis of political discourse”, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2015.

[26] Dugin. A.G., “Noomakhia: Wars of the mind. The Logos of Turan. Indo-European ideology of the vertical”, Mosca: Academic Project, 2017

[27] Cardini F., “Origins of medieval knighthood”, Mosca: Progress, 1987.

Translation by Costantino Ceoldo