Humanities & Social Sciences 2 (2015 8) 308-328 ~ ~ ~ УДК 81`25:001 Resolving the Paradox of the Enlightenment Sergey Tyulenev* School of Modern Languages & Cultures Durham University Elvet Riverside, New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK Received 26.11.2014, received in revised form 04.12.2014, accepted 20.01.2015 The focus of this article is on the role of translation in the Westernisation of eighteenth-century Russia. <...> The emphasis is placed on the integration of Russian science into the European global science function system (Luhmann). <...> In the global science system, translation played a part in resolving the paradox of the Enlightenment agenda, which was how to make possible the exchange of knowledge in the scholarly community (mainly in Latin), and at the same time make that knowledge accessible to any other, nonacademic, linguistic community (in Russian). <...> Reports of the Saint-Petersburg Academy of Sciences, Russian renderings of scientifi c terminology and non-verbal scientifi cally relevant phenomena are analysed as examples. <...> It is as if he [Vasilii Tatishchev] lived in two worlds–Russia, his political and physical world […]; and Europe, the West, his mental world, the world of scholarship, which had its inviolable rules of objectivity and contempt for petty national differences and boundaries […] Herbert Leventer (1972:7) 1. <...> The Three Aspects of the Westernisation of Eighteenth-Century Russia In the eighteenth century, after a long period of being almost completely cut off from the rest of Europe, the Russian Empire made a turnabout and opened itself up to the Reformation along Western European lines. <...> This process is usually referred to as Westernisation or Europeanisation. <...> All rights reserved * Corresponding author E-mail address: sergeytlnv@gmail.com # 308 # dynamics of the process, the following three aspects of which should be singled out: (1) Russia borrowed from Europe; (2) Russia projected information about itself into Europe; (3) Russia endeavoured to become part of the European global function system. <...> In what follows, I will consider the Westernisation of Russia in the terms of social systems theory (SST) developed by Niklas Luhmann (1927– Sergey Tyulenev. <...> Resolving the Paradox of the Enlightenment 98), because it makes it possible to show the relationship between the eighteenth-century Russian Empire and Western Europe in a fuller way. <...> In Luhmannian terms, Russia may be described as a social <...>