This monograph considers the problem of the Russian intelligentsia’s self-identification in its historic-philosophical aspect and compares the spiritual and biographical opposition of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy in the 19th and 20th century.

Intellectual experiences of Russian philosophers of the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries devoted to Russia demonstrate the intensive work of national self – knowledge. The concentration of thinkers on a certain range of topics, such as freedom and revolution, the state and society, culture and politics, religion and ideology, indicates a high density and polemical intensity of discussion. The thematic focus of Russian thought on national and cultural issues creates an end-to-end narrative with an open (...) structure, where texts are dialogically intertwined with each other. These statements often indicate a value and ideological conflict between various actors in the social history of Russia. This historiosophical narrative can be interpreted as a meta-text of Russian social and religious-philosophical thought, which in many senses is the practice of self-description of the national intelligentsia. It testifies to her spiritual and ideological quest, the struggle for a social ideal – about the moral choice of thinking Russian people, which encourages criticism of the historical experience of Russia. The main problem of this pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary discourse is the question of the moral and political responsibility of the educated class for the historical choice of Russia and its fate. The most important from a historical and philosophical point of view texts are the works of Russian Silver Age thinkers. Their arguments about Russia include both a reaction to the events of the three Russian revolutions and the Great War, which traumatized the consciousness of the intelligentsia, and a painful post-traumatic reception of their own intellectual tradition and the moral deformation of ideals that took place in it. Those ideals based on the idea of freedom and philosophical honesty in achieving the truth. (shrink)

The article presents an analysis of the two-century development of the Russian intelligentsia, traces the transformation of views and ideas due to historical and socio-cultural foundations. The Russian intelligentsia is regarded as a very special phenomenon in the world, whose historical significance and basic idea are determined by the relationship with the state. It is proved that the main driving force of the development of the Russian intelligentsia changed depending on the political and ideological (...) regime. Much attention is paid in the article to the understanding of the phenomenon of the Russian intelligentsia in the present reality, traditional and acquired features in this historical period are considered. Its role in the formation of value orientations of modern society is analyzed. The author suggests that in the post-reform Russia of the XXI century there is no conceptual unity in the awareness of the "Russian intelligentsia". The intelligentsia itself to a greater extent today does not see itself as a recognized and clearly defined social group, its self-consciousness is fragmented and contradictory. The conclusion is made that the ideological form of the Russian intelligentsia was and remains its alienation from the state and hostility to it, brought up on abstract enlightenment schemes supplemented by cosmopolitanism and globalization, the modern intellectual continues to suffer from the lack of a healthy national identity. Today, when time dictates the need to move to a fundamentally new type of civilizational development, where the key question of the values that set the guidelines for this transition arises again, it is the intelligentsia, as a generator of the thought field, as two centuries ago, can play a major role. (shrink)

Tekst je prvi deo obimnije studije u kojoj je analizirano delo Aleksandra Radisceva, vodeceg predstavnika Prosvetiteljstva u Rusiji XVIII veka. Polazeci od odnosa Voltera i Didroa prema ruskoj imperatorki Katarini Velikoj, autor u uvodnom delu rada formulise razloge za bavljenje ruskom recepcijom Prosvetiteljstva. U prvom poglavlju interpretirane su razlicita tumacenja fenomena 'ruske inteligencije' jer se Radiscev smatra njenim rodonacelnikom. U drugom delu izlozena je biografija Radisceva koja olaksava razmatranje njegovih ideja. Analiza tih ideja, kao i 'prosvecenog apsolutizma' Katarine II, bice (...) predmet razmatranja u nastavku ovog rada. (shrink)

Tekst je drugi deo studije u kojoj je analizirano delo Aleksandra Radisceva vodeceg predstavnika Prosvetiteljstva u Rusiji XVIII veka. Polazeci od tumacenja 'prosvecenog apsolutizma' Katarine Velike, u radu su interpretirane politicke i socijalne ideje Radiscevljevog Putovanje od Petrograda do Moskve. Autor zakljucuje da je Radiscev rodonacelnik 'ruske inteligencije' ciji kriticki angazman anticipira fenomen 'disidentstva'.

The autocratic rule of both tsar and church in imperial Russia gave rise not only to a revolutionary movement in the nineteenth century but also to a crisis of meaning among members of the intelligentsia. Personal faith became the subject of intense scrutiny as individuals debated the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, debates reflected in the best-known novels of the day. Friendships were formed and broken in exchanges over the status of the eternal. The salvation (...) of the entire country, not just of each individual, seemed to depend on the answers to questions about belief. Victoria Frede looks at how and why atheism took on such importance among several generations of Russian intellectuals from the 1820s to the 1860s, drawing on meticulous and extensive research of both published and archival documents, including letters, poetry, philosophical tracts, police files, fiction, and literary criticism. She argues that young Russians were less concerned about theology and the Bible than they were about the moral, political, and social status of the individual person. They sought to maintain their integrity against the pressures exerted by an autocratic state and rigidly hierarchical society. As individuals sought to shape their own destinies and searched for truths that would give meaning to their lives, they came to question the legitimacy both of the tsar and of Russia’s highest authority, God. (shrink)

Love and hate follow the same patterns among émigrés as among people in general. Among the several models of the love émigrés feel for a foreign land is pragmatic love, based not so much on real attachment as on interests. For an Orwellian Big Brother this love does not necessarily imply direct material benefits but could be an attempt to justify something that has already occurred—emigration, for example. Pragmatic love for a foreign land and people and a corresponding hatred for (...) one's land of origin raises fewer problems than love for its own sake, which often leads to disappointment and a violent emotional response. Everything is reversed in one's mind: the distant motherland becomes desirable, almost an ideal, whereas the foreign land, the place of residence, is hated and despised. Such was often the case for Russian émigrés to the West from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century. Two nineteenth-century Russian intellectuals—Vladimir Pecherin (1807–55) and Alexander Herzen (1812–70)—though different in many ways, came to a similar conclusion: that the West was not the embodiment of goodness but the dead end of history, and that Russia, which they never visited once they had left it, was the shining star of humanity. (shrink)

The Russian intelligentsia emerged and existed in diversity due to specific political and social conditions within Russian society. The intelligentsia was (and is) more than just a class or group of educated people. The present article is an attempt to give a retrospective interpretation of the Russian intelligentsia and its transformation into the Soviet one in the 1920s, when Vygotsky also was an engaged actor in different programmes. At that time the political was as (...) sharp and critical as the scientific, and science became an arena of radical political clashes and struggle. The contradictory historical atmosphere and the sincere wish of a new Soviet state to create a new society made it possible for young scholars to assume their positions in science very rapidly. (shrink)

This paper investigates the multifaceted universe of Russian intelligentsia and addresses the following, troubling, questions: What caused pro-democratic political dissent to weaken among the intelligentsia in the aftermath of perestrojka? Why has the young generation of Russian public intellectuals undergone a radical metamorphosis of their value system and plunged into political passivity and conformism? Freedom has historically been a prima facie value for the Russian liberal intelligentsia. By the mid-1990s, however, much of the (...) class='Hi'>intelligentsia came to be associated not with advocacy of individual liberty and human rights but with the failure of liberal democracy in Russia. This paper focuses on how the generation of the 1960s liberal intelligentsia, or shestidesjatniki, who played an active role during perestrojka, gave way to a generation of the “sons,” who, characterized as Western-style intellectuals, became spin doctors and political technologists, replacing the original ideals and high moral stance of their predecessors with nihilistic nonchalance. It is argued that the demise of dissent in post-Soviet Russia derives from the younger generation of intellectuals’ view of the attainment of political power by the generation of shestidesjatniki during perestrojka and the first El’tsin term as the latter’s moral fall and abandonment of the intelligentsia’s traditional role as an outside critic of the state. (shrink)

To date, critical engagement with Arnold Hauser’s sociology of art has been confined to the field of art history. This perspective has ignored Hauser’s interest in literary history, which I argue is essential to his project. Hauser’s dialectical model, composed of conflicting realist and formalist tendencies, extends to the literary sphere. In The Social History of Art, these two traditions are epitomised by the Russian social novel and German idealism. Anti-enlightenment tendencies in German intellectual culture provide Hauser with evidence (...) of idealism’s propensity for escapism and reaction. Conversely, he extols the Russian social novel as the naturalistic art form par excellence. Because the intelligentsia is central to Hauser’s understanding of the formation of literary culture, this paper provides an outline of his sociology of intellectuals. Through a comparison of the German and Russian literary intelligentsia, this paper shows that Hauser’s analysis of literature is often more complex than his sociological interpretations of the visual arts. (shrink)

I argue that the Nineteenth Century phenomenon of Russian nihilism, rather than belonging to the spiritual crisis that threatened Europe, was an independent and historically specific attitude of the Russian intelligentsia in their wholesale and utopian rejection of the prevailing values of their parents’ generation. Turgenev’s novel, Fathers and Sons, exemplifies this revolt in the literary character Bazarov, who embodies an archetypical account of the conflict between generations, social values, and traditions in Russian—but not just (...) class='Hi'>Russian—culture. (shrink)

This article describes a logic of distinction and succession within the late-twentieth-century Leningrad-St. Petersburg cultural field, whereby consecutive intelligentsia mainstreams were replaced by their avant-garde peripheries. In this dynamic picture of socio-cultural transformations, I propose a working hypothesis of a repeated stratification of the field into an ‘official’, an ‘unofficial’, and a third ‘non-aligned’ intelligentsia. This hypothesis is tested in reference to the ‘non-aligned’ groups founded by the avant-garde artist and ideologue Timur Novikov (1958–2002). Three major shifts are (...) described: from the politicized late-Brezhnevite early 1980s to the apolitical radicalism of Novikov’s New Artists; from this anarchistic underground, through the perestroika era, to the playful ‘classicism’ of the New Academy of Fine Arts in the 1990s; and from this postmodern international orientation to an arch-reactionary, neo-imperial posturing at the turn of the 2000s. Lastly, this ‘non-aligned’ intelligentsia is suggested as a possible precedent, or, indeed, a model for understanding other historically significant avant-garde peripheries, which commonly seek to distinguish themselves from (often mutually-exclusive) centres. (shrink)

This article is devoted to the “Orthodox intelligentsia” project by N.A. Berdyaev. The question of the possibility of its existence was raised by Berdyaev in the article “Does Freedom of Thought and Conscience Exist in Orthodoxy?” (1939), published in defense of G.P. Fedotov in the situation of his conflict with the St. Sergius Institute. The aim of the paper is to identify what ideological foundations underlie Berdyaev’s project of a new spirituality, the bearer of which should be the (...) class='Hi'>intelligentsia. The author of the paper applies the methodology of intellectual history, which allows considering Berdyaev’s “Orthodox intelligentsia” project as a way of substantiating the creative meaning of Orthodoxy and the need to reform the church community on a different meaning of sobornost, which should include the values of Christian humanism. The article examines Berdyaev’s historiosophic arguments that allow him to affirm the spiritual and cultural significance of the phenomenon of the intelligentsia as the true bearer of humanized creative Orthodoxy. The author concludes that Berdyaev brings the idea of creativity in Christ closer to the cultural tasks of the intelligentsia and insists that an Orthodox intelligentsia is possible only through an inner spiritual reform of Orthodoxy as a religious tradition and the church as a social institution. (shrink)

Ayn Rand and the Russian Intelligentsia, by Derek Off ord, deals with both the origins and the influence of Rand’s thought. On the former, Off ord places Rand squarely and persuasively within the Russian intelligentsia tradition. On the latter, and less convincingly, the author discusses Rand as an “icon” of an American “Right” that remains largely undefined.

In the second half of the nineteenth century utilitarianism and naturalism dominated Russian ethical thought. The Russian intelligentsia, nurtured on the works of N. G. Chernyshevskii, P. L. Lavrov, and D. I. Pisarev, regarded utilitarianism as an alternative to all the ideologies that harness man to the service of "ends higher than himself." It was thought that only man, as a concrete, living individual, could be regarded as the end and purpose of activity. Such concepts as individual (...) interests, utility, and calculus became the cornerstones of practical morality, while scientific studies of human nature became the foundation of theoretical ethics. Any mention of "a priori duty" or "categorical imperative" were regarded as manifestations of religious authoritarianism and political conservatism. (shrink)

The narod and the intelligentsia. The intelligentsia and the narod. Is this really an issue, a theoretical question for us who perceive and are conscious of ourselves as Russians? It is a horrible pain, reducing our soul to ashes; it is the sin, the cross, and the redemption of Russia. It is always very difficult to discuss such a topic, since inevitably a sense arises of how incommensurate the unparalleled tragedy of our historical path is with our vain, (...) unending chatter about it. I am more and more often tormented by the thought that we Russians always for some reason have found ourselves below the destiny determined for us from on high, that we were and will continue to be unworthy of our own history among the ranks of the world's destinies. Why it is so, is the judgment of Him Who knows the Purpose, but it is our path, and we must traverse it to the end. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviews 105 NEW RUSSIAN WORK ON RUSSELL IRVING H. ANELLIS Modern Logic Publishing I Box 1036, Welch Ave. Station Ames, JA 5°010-1036, USA A. S. Kolesnikov. cI»HJIOCOcPHJl BepTPaHa PacceJIa [Filosofija Bertrana Rassela]. Leningrad: Izdatel'srvo Leningradskogo Universiteta, 1991. Pp. 232. 3 rub. 30 kop.. Anatolii Sergeevich Kolesnikov is a relatively new name in Russell studies,.r1.a1though his book shows a deep knowledge of the material available on Russell in (...) class='Hi'>Russian and a wide acquaintance with Russell's publications in English and in Russian translation.1 In this work, which translates as The Philosophy ofBertrand Russel~ Kolesnikov traces the evolution of Russell's "world-view", while presenting a traditional Soviet interpretation of Russell's place in "bourgeois" philosophy. This monograph presents for the first time in Russian a thorough analysis of the evolution of Russell's philosophy as the outstanding representation of contemporary bourgeois philosophy, and is the first major study on Russell's philosophy in Russian since the appearance in'1962 ofSoviet philosopher 1. S. Narskii's The Philosophy ofBertrand Russell2 Russell himself is viewed by Kolesnikov as the best representative of the bourgeois humanist, philosopher, and mathematician. The author seeks a critical understanding of the historical and philosophical sources of Russell's ideas and conceptions and of the influence which these exercised and continue to exercise on contemporary Western philosophy and science. The author's aim is to "uncover" the neo-realist empiricist direction of Russell's philosophy as it manifested itself as a condition of his scientific and epistemological thinking. As had been usual for Soviet studies of Western "bourgeois" philosophers and their philosophies, Lenin and his empiriocriticism serves as a foil for the elucidation of Russell's thought and its development. Probably the most famous example of the dialectical attack on anaI Kolesnikov is also the author of The Freethought ofBertrand Russell [Svobodomyslie Bertrana Rassela] (Moscow: Mysl', 1978). 2 The Philosophy ofBertrand Russell: Lectures for Students in the University Philosophy Faculty [Filosofija Bertrana Rassela: lekcija dlja studentovfilosofikih fakul'tov universitetov] (Moscow: 1962). In the first footnote (on p. 60) to his translation of the article on "Bertrand Russell in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia: Translation from Russian", Russel~ nos. 23-4 (1976): 60-2, Charles Haynes wrote that "Narskiy... appears to be a leading Soviet writet on Russell's philosophy." In fact Narskii wrote extensively on philosophy of logic, for which work he is bcst known. 106 Reviews lytic philosophy revolved around the rather rough treatment accorded to A. J. Ayer when he lectured at Moscow State University in 1962. This methodology for criticizing "bourgeois idealism" has declined in recent years as a consequence of perestroika; from as early as 1987 Soviet philosophers have managed to refrain from employing this tactic in their writings (as one may readily see, e.g., from Zinaida Sokuler's recent paper on "Wirrgenstein on the Contradictions in Logic and in the Foundations of Mathematics"3). Kolesnikov's discussion of political-ideological, social and moral issues is limited to the Preface, which also presents a brief sketch of Russell's life, especially his education and the earliest of the philosophical influences at Cambridge, of course Russell's visit in 1920 to Soviet Russia and the writings that derived from that trip, especially his book The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism, and of his travels in China. Here Kolesnikov notes Russell's ties to the Fabian socialists and names in particular the Webbs, H. G. Wells and "other members representative of the bourgeois intelligentsia" (p. 5). Mention is also made here of his activism for nuclear disarmament and against the American war in Indochina, and of the essay "Why I Am Not a Christian". We are told at the very outset (p. 3) that "the name of this philosopher is widely known in our country." The remainder of the book is concerned with Russell's technical philosophy, i.e. with his work in philosophy of mathematics, logic, philosophy of language, metaphysics and epistemology. Kolesnikov divides Russell's philosophical evolution into three stages (p. 22). The "early" period (1894-1910) is the developmental stage, characterized by the influence ofneo-Hegelianism and neo-Kantianism and by the development of the conception of... (shrink)

The article treated various concerns of Russian Marxists relating to the concept of personality. In fact, it was not the individual per se and the kindred conceptual constructs that shaped discussions inside Russian Social-Democracy. The individual, on the contrary, was seen as an alien concept, as a central idea of the opponents: the Narodniks, anarchists, Cadets, and liberals in general. The post-1907 Marxist writings demonstrated a significant shift of accent in their approaches to the category of individuality. This (...) was the result of polemics on the psychological particularities of the "reactionary" period (1907-1910). This profound and frequently concealed interest in the individual was typical, in general, of the new generation of Social-Democrats (Bogdanov, Bazarov, Lunacarskij) disillusioned with the classical positivism of the "fathers" and the dogmatic materialism of the "older comrades.". (shrink)

The editorial note recommending the book by Vladimir Kantor Russkaya Klasika Ili Bytiye Rassiyi communicates that the author (philosopher, novelist and historian) believes that only this culture is fully valuable whose most representative artists’ work turns into classics, thus gaining the status of high culture. It indicates the extent to which the great names of Russian literature write with an awareness that in order to make it into the classics canon of European literature, too, one needs to reckon with (...) the previous work of Dante, Goethe, Schiller, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Hegel, Marx, Feuerbach, Nietzsche, and a number of other prominent representatives of the culture of the West. This is not to say that Pushkin, Goncharov, Tolstoy, Gogol or Dostoyevsky were imitators. By reproducing patterns or themes developed by the literature of the West, they set those in realities fundamentally different from the social realities of the West, often in a polemic vein. Kantor stresses that the great artistic ambitions or the Russian classics are accompanied by great social duties because they lived and created their artin a country that had been lagging behind for centuries. It did catch up at times, but it was successful only as of Czar Peter I, not without periodic regressive collapses, though. The sense of social obligations, characteristic of Russian writers, intellectuals, or intelligentsia, and to be more precise, the implementation of these obligations, enabled Kantor to prove that the progress of literature—the great classics in particular—was linked in Russia with civilizational progress, and that in terms of the weight of these links, Russia was very different in civilizational progress from Europe, which lay ahead civilization-wise. (shrink)

Milestones was a manifesto of rightwing, anti-revolutionary liberalism, according to which the political events of 1905 should have officially concluded the intelligentsia’s battle against autocracy and inaugurated the intelligentsia’s cooperation with Russia’s “historical rulers” to turn the country into an economically and culturally strong “state of law.” All the Milestones ’ authors agreed that Russia’s intellectual history was not identical with the traditions of the radical intelligentsia, and that there was need for a new intellectual canon focused (...) on religious thought and efforts to define the Russian national identity. (shrink)

The First World War forced the Russian intelligentsia to rethink its values—values that had been constructed in the nineteenth century. Distancing itself from pacifism and cultural relativism, it began to search for a moral meaning to the war that broke out in 1914—i.e. to defend the war as morally right and having a higher spiritual purpose. Russian philosophers were central to these debates, as they tried to interpret the war, and the relationship between war and peace, from (...) a metaphysical point of view. The paper will look at philosophical, ethical and religious aspects of these debates, and some of the philosophers who participated in them. (shrink)

First we should define the concepts ‘narod’ and ‘intelligentsia.’ Usually the concepts ‘narod’ and ‘populace’ [naselenie] are equated, and indeed the etymology of the word ‘narod’ assumes the inclusion of all those who are born [narodivshiesia]. But this equating of narod with populace is not fully valid since it disregards the fact that a narod is not simply the aggregate of all people but a determinate whole, united not only by a common language and territory but also by a (...) common consciousness, an idea. In determining the meaning of the concept ‘narod,’ not only must it be distinguished from the concept ‘populace’ but the two must be contrasted to a certain extent. (shrink)

This article compares the thinking of Andrzej Walicki and Isaiah Berlin on the nineteenth-century Russian intelligentsia and on Soviet totalitarianism. It suggests that Berlin saw totalitarianism as an externally imposed political system, whereas Walicki understood totalitarianism to depend both on external pressure and inner coercion. The article draws on a variety of published and unpublished sources, including personal interviews with Walicki and Berlin’s archives at the New Bodleian Library in Oxford, England.

Liberalism in Russia is one of the most complex, multifaced and, indeed, controversial phenomena in the history of political thought. Values and practices traditionally associated with Western liberalism—such as individual freedom, property rights, or the rule of law—have often emerged ambiguously in the Russian historical experience through different dimensions and combinations. Economic and political liberalism have often appeared disjointed, and liberal projects have been shaped by local circumstances, evolved in response to secular challenges and developed within often rapidly-changing institutional (...) and international settings. This third volume of the Reset DOC “Russia Workshop” collects a selection of the Dimensions and Challenges of Russian Liberalism conference proceedings, providing a broad set of insights into the Russian liberal experience through a dialogue between past and present, and intellectual and empirical contextualization, involving historians, jurists, political scientists and theorists. The first part focuses on the Imperial period, analyzing the political philosophy and peculiarities of pre-revolutionary Russian liberalism, its relations with the rule of law, and its institutionalization within the Constitutional Democratic Party. The second part focuses on Soviet times, when liberal undercurrents emerged under the surface of the official Marxist-Leninist ideology. After Stalin’s death, the “thaw intelligentsia” of Soviet dissidents and human rights defenders represented a new liberal dimension in late Soviet history, while the reforms of Gorbachev’s “New Thinking” became a substitute for liberalism in the final decade of the USSR. The third part focuses on the “time of troubles” under the Yeltsin presidency, and assesses the impact of liberal values and ethics, the bureaucratic difficulties in adapting to change, and the paradoxes of liberal reforms during the transition to post-Soviet Russia. Despite Russian liberals having begun to draw lessons from previous failures, their project was severely challenged by the rise of Vladimir Putin. Hence, the fourth part focuses on the 2000s, when the liberal alternative in Russian politics confronted the ascendance of Putin, surviving in parts of Russian culture and in the mindset of technocrats and “system liberals”. Today, however, the Russian liberal project faces the limits of reform cycles of public administration, suffers from a lack of federalist attitude in politics and is externally challenged from an illiberal world order. All this asks us to consider: what is the likelihood of a “reboot” of Russian liberalism? (shrink)

Introduction. Modernism as a culture -- Culture and cognition -- Culture, mythology, politics -- Culture, community, cartography -- Cultural spaces and their travelers -- The toponymical labyrinth of Russian modernist culture. Early Russian modernism and its "isms" ; The Russian domestication of the term Modernism ; New names, old problems ; Politics and cultural toponymy ; Naming the field -- The errant compass rose of Russian modernist studies. Realism as a cardinal direction ; Tradition and innovation (...) as cardinal directions -- Russian modernism in time and space. The myth of 1917 ; Culture and border patrol ; Putting late Russian modernism on the map ; Chronologies of Russian modernism -- Navigating Russia's cultures of modernity. The intelligentsia and the two avant-gardes ; The two avant-gardes and mass culture -- Russian modernism in the cultural market. The economics of Russian cultural modernity ; The formalist writer-type and the evolving institution of authorship ; The political economy of Russian modernism -- Conclusion. (shrink)

The article discusses the place of Plato in the ideology and political practice of the Bolsheviks in the first five years after the seizure of power. The conception of Plato as a forerunner of socialism dates back to Germany in the 1890 s (in the works of von Pöhlmann, Kautsky and Adler etc.) and was quickly picked up in Russia. This is supported both by numerous Russian translations of these works and the development of the thesis about Plato’s “socialism” (...) by Novgorodtsev, Bulgakov, Trubetskoy, and others. The October Revolution enhanced interest in Plato’s ideal state, as evidenced by the increased number of publications on this topic. Despite the fact that the theoreticians of Bolshevism themselves treated Plato either indifferently or negatively, for a certain part of the Russian intelligentsia, Platonic “socialism” became a kind of explanatory model for the processes occurring in Russia. In the works of authors like Pertsev, Novitsky, and Vyshinsky, Plato’s political utopia was considered as a paradigm to the leveling and state-compulsory communism of the Bolsheviks. Since the mid- 1920 s, recourse to Plato for an explanation of the Bolshevik socialist project has become less common. The policy of war communism, which prompted the closest analogies with Platonic egalitarianism, had concluded; the canonization of Lenin’s works, in which the assessment of Plato was generally negative, made a “Platonic” interpretation of Bolshevism ideologically unacceptable. (shrink)

The phenomenon of nationalism, which emerged as a result of modernization and industrialization in Western Europe, soon began to threaten the multi-lingual multinational feudal state structure of the Tsarist administration. Tsarist Russia, which wanted to preserve its borders and the existing state structure that expanded to the Caucasus and Turkestan, followed the assimilation and missionary policies towards the middle of the 19th century to Russify and Christianize non-Russian (Nerusky) and non-Christian (Inoverets) ethnic groups. At the beginning of this cultural (...) nationalist policy, which was carried out by Nikolai Ivanovich Ilminsky, who worked on theology and Turkish dialects in Kazan Spiritual Academy, in order to have Russian as a language of education and communication within the Tsarist borders. The education method of Ilminsky, supported by Tsar Alexander II, enabled the Russian language and Christianity to become widespread and more systematically applied as a reflection of the rising Russian nationalism. In line with this training method, it was aimed to carry out missionary activities, to teach Russian and Cyrillic alphabet alongside local languages, to divide these languages with accents and dialects and to make Russian a common language within Tsarist borders. Thus, the religious and ethnically different groups were wanted to be assimilated within the Russian and Orthodox Christian identities. This study examines the process of cultural assimilation policy carried out by the Russian nationalism through the education system of Ilminsky, the factors affecting this process, the structure and applications of this education system. Although the education system of Ilminsky did not reach its target within the boundaries of the empire, it was seen to be quite effective in Christianization of Tatar Turks, in spreading Russian among other ethnic groups and in terms of laying the ground for the subsequent Russification policies. The Ilminsky education system, which caused the start of a new phase in Russian nationalism, led to the emergence of nationalist ideas and intelligentsia among the ethnic groups exposed to this system The nationalist ideas spread among the ethnic groups exposed to the policy of Russification have enabled the establishment of new educational systems and the emergence of national liberation movements. (shrink)

Based on materials collected during a fieldwork in Barnaul (Siberia, Russia) in 2001–2004, the article explores two provincial academic discourses that are focused on issues of Russian national identity. Ethnohistories of trauma address Russia’s current problems through the constant re-writing of the country’s past in order to demonstrate the non-Russian character of its national and state institutions. In the second discourse, ethno-vitalism, the struggle over constructing and interpreting the nation’s memory of the past is replaced with a similar (...) struggle over constructing and interpreting perceptions of the nation’s current experience. Produced by professional intelligentsia, these frameworks and discourses provide a useful link to understanding imaginary constructions of the national belonging in a situation where more positive ways of inventing traditions and imagining communities are unavailable or discredited. (shrink)

This paper examines the changing ethical consciousness in Russia since the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 and discusses how this change was reflected in Russian religious philosophy. This process can be characterized by a series of sudden and violent replacements of contradictory ethical models, which, by disorientating the public consciousness, led to the atrophy of the ethical instinct. The last two models in the series correspond to the “anti-ethics” of the 1990s and the “non-ethics” of the third Millennium. The latter (...) model corresponds to the current absence of individual ethical positions and the willingness to adopt any position prescribed by the state. A review of philosophical reflection on this process shows that Russian religious thought did not foresee such an ethical catastrophe. Indeed, although Vladimir Solovyov presented an alarming eschatological foresight of the future, and despite the fact that the collection Landmarks, written in 1907, firmly identified the intelligentsia as a highly destructive agent promoting their own alternative ethics, the optimistic philosophical model nonetheless prevailed. According to this optimistic model, the period of disasters and catastrophes will be followed by a new spiritual reawakening. (shrink)

Based on materials collected during a fieldwork in Barnaul (Siberia, Russia) in 2001–2004, the article explores two provincial academic discourses that are focused on issues of Russian national identity. Ethnohistories of trauma address Russia’s current problems through the constant re-writing of the country’s past in order to demonstrate the non-Russian character of its national and state institutions. In the second discourse, ethno-vitalism, the struggle over constructing and interpreting the nation’s memory of the past is replaced with a similar (...) struggle over constructing and interpreting perceptions of the nation’s current experience. Produced by professional intelligentsia, these frameworks and discourses provide a useful link to understanding imaginary constructions of the national belonging in a situation where more positive ways of inventing traditions and imagining communities are unavailable or discredited. (shrink)

In light of discussions on Russian exceptionalism, this article considers the question of the independence of thought in the Russian Religious Renaissance. After the post-Revolutionary emigration of the intelligentsia, interaction with the scholars of the West – largely within the ecumenical movement – gave rise to an ecumenical theology that was distinct from the theology that preceded it. Consideration of the theology of the Russian diaspora reveals a development of thought and an interaction with the theology (...) of the West. This paper considers the development of the notion of sobornost and Sergius Bulgakov’s theological insight on the eucharistic dogma, hierarchy and the sacraments, and ecumenical theology. The interference of the “Sophia Affair” notwithstanding, and accounting for the heterogenous diaspora landscape, émigré Russian thought reveals an independence distinct from national sentiment. (shrink)

The history of art in Russia and China is closely intertwined in the XX century, including thanks to the creative and pedagogical activities of Russian artists who found themselves in exile. Largely thanks to them, Harbin and Shanghai became major art centers in the 1920s–1930s. This period is characterized by fruitful processes in the country's art and culture, but also political upheavals at the same time. The problem of the study is to determine the peculiarities of the perception and (...) interpretation by the emigrant masters of events from the life of the Chinese people, the atmosphere that prevailed in China. Thus, the subject of the study is the paintings and graphics of the largest emigrant artists of the specified period, and the object is the images of China of those years, conveyed in their works, and the means of implementing the idea. The main purpose of this article is to determine the range of themes and subjects that Russian emigrant artists addressed when creating images of contemporary China, as well as the specifics of their artistic embodiment. It is achieved by analyzing the historiography of this issue in Russian art criticism, as well as analyzing the creative works of such prominent representatives of the artistic intelligentsia in exile as M.A. Kichigin and his daughters, V.S. Podgursky, Ya.L. Likhonos, V.A. Asypkin. The study of the thematic component of their works shows that the masters were attracted by events from the life of ordinary people, as well as psychological portraits of residents of Chinese cities. Artistically, the artists remained committed to the Russian school, but allowed the influence of expressive features of Chinese painting. (shrink)

The essays collected in this new volume reveal Isaiah Berlin at his most lucid and accessible. He was constitutionally incapable of writing with the opacity of the specialist, but these shorter, more introductory pieces provide the perfect starting-point for the reader new to his work. Those who are already familiar with his writing will also be grateful for this further addition to his collected essays. The connecting theme of these essays, as in the case of earlier volumes, is the crucial (...) social and political role--past, present and future--of ideas, and of their progenitors. A rich variety of subject-matters is represented--from philosophy to education, from Russia to Israel, from Marxism to romanticism--so that the truth of Heine's warning is exemplified on a broad front. It is a warning that Berlin often referred to, and provides an answer to those who ask, as from time to time they do, why intellectual history matters. Among the contributions are "My Intellectual Path," Berlin's last essay, a retrospective autobiographical survey of his main preoccupations and "Jewish Slavery and Emancipation," the classic statement of his Zionist views, long unavailable in print. His other subjects include the Enlightenment, Giambattista Vico, Vissarion Belinsky, Alexander Herzen, G.V. Plekhanov, the Russian intelligentsia, the idea of liberty, political realism, nationalism, and historicism. The book exhibits the full range of his enormously wide expertise and demonstrates the striking and enormously engaging individuality, as well as the power, of his own ideas. "Over a hundred years ago, the German poet Heine warned the French not to underestimate the power of ideas: philosophical concepts nurtured in the stillness of a professor's study could destroy a civilization."--Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty , 1958. (shrink)

In 1922, many representatives of the Russian Intelligentsia, including many philosophers, were exiled from the young soviet state. Many left with the so-called Philosophy Steamer (Chamberlain in The philosophy steamer: Lenin and the exile of the intelligensia (2006) Atlantic Books). The exiled philosophers tried to go on with their previous professional lives in cities as Prague, Berlin and Paris. The St. Serge Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris, founded by, among others, Sergei Bulgakov (1871–1944), became the new center of (...) Russian religious philosophy and theology in Europe. Soon, however, the community of immigrant Russian religious philosophers and theologians was divided by conflicting opinions, and fell apart in various brotherhoods and movements. An important conflict was the so-called Sophia controversy: the Brotherhood of St. Photius, which included Vladimir Lossky (1903–1958), as well as the famous spokesman of the Neopatristic Synthesis, Fr. Georges Florovsky (1893–1979), attacked the Brotherhood of St. Sophia, which included the above mentioned Bulgakov. His Sophiology, or study of Sophia, Divine Wisdom, was accused of heresy on the instigation of Florovsky and Lossky. From this Sophia controversy, the Neopatristic Synthesis emerged as the dominant school of Russian Orthodox Theology, whereas Sophiology fell practically into oblivion. This article will attempt to answer the question whether there is still room for a re-valuation of the sophiological stance in Orthodox theology through a survey of recent literature on the subject. The article will conclude the affirmative: namely, that the controversy is shown to be the result of a conflict between generations and the necessity to empower their Orthodox identity in emigration, rather than the result of intrinsic philosophical or theological differences. (shrink)

The article provides a historical and philosophical analysis of the deportation of many Russian intellectuals abroad in 1922. It is known that such a vicious deed on the part of the Soviet authorities, in fact, turned out to be an act that saved many Russian intellectuals either from starvation or from repression and death in the camps. It is also widely known that the cultural activities of Russian emigrants after their arrival in the West were varied and (...) intense. The article also emphasizes that expulsion and its significance for the destinies of the country and the emigrants themselves remained a "blank spot" for a long time. It was only in the 1990s that research into the events of the 1922 exile, both in Russia and abroad, started to change. The author draws attention to the fact that the very nature of examination of the expulsion of the Russian intelligentsia has also changed over the years. At the beginning of studies in the 1990s, it was purely archival works aimed at recovering emigrants' cultural heritage and returning "forgotten" names. Over the last decade, we may observe a more critical reading of this heritage, supposing a more precise reconstruction of facts and contexts and a broader analysis of the significance of events in the history of the early 1920s. The study of the various cultural activities of the Russian migr intelligentsia allows us to strike a conversation on Russian philosophy, its peculiarity and originality, the mutual influences of the Russian and European philosophical traditions, and the meaning and significance of Soviet philosophy relevant again. (shrink)

The volume contains Isaiah Berlin's letters to his Polish friend, Andrzej Walicki, and Walicki's detailed account of Berlin's role in his life. Berlin actively promoted Walicki's books on Russian intellectual history not only because of his own interest in the subject. Above all he wanted to promote Russian intellectual history as a separate, internationally recognized field of study and, therefore, warmly welcomed Walicki's firm intention to study it in a systematic way, with the aim of providing a comprehensive (...) synthesis of all important currents in pre-Revolutionary Russian thought. Already at their meeting Berlin discovered in Walicki a promising candidate to help him in laying foundations for Russian intellectual history as a legitimate part of the universal history of ideas; as a discipline rewarding in itself and particularly relevant for rediscovering the great traditions of the Russian intelligentsia and setting them against the stifling dogmas of Soviet totalitarianism. (shrink)

The collection Landmarks [Vekhi], published in the spring of 1909, was destined to have an amazing fate. Devoted to the Russian intelligentsia, the book was the subject of almost unanimous criticism that often degenerated into defamation and abuse. For several months, the entire periodical press of Russia, both newspapers and magazines, published responses to Landmarks on their pages; the number soon exceeded a hundred, but the reviews in which an attempt was made to penetrate the authors' arguments and (...) come up with a substantive criticism of them were a negligible minority. Articles by E.N. Trubetskoi, V.V. Rozanov, and A. Belyi were among the positive responses. (shrink)

In the eighteenth century, Voltaire presented China as the kingdom of philosophers. The term philosophe, which appeared at this period, is the ancestor of the "intellectual," a name most historians date back to the Dreyfus Affair at the beginning of the twentieth century. But the request for a specific role in public affairs by literati is much more ancient than this specific case. After all, at least since the early nineteenth century, the Russian intelligentsia affirmed its involvement in (...) the public sphere. And discussions have been going on in China for decades to assess how much modern zhishifenzi can be considered as the heirs to the traditional literati, or shi. All along the twentieth century, and especially after the May Fourth movement signaled its irruption on the political scene, the intelligentsia has been involved in the definition of the way to "save China." The 1920s and 1930s have been witnesses to raging debates on the path to modernization, the necessity to create a new culture in rupture with Confucianism, and on the desirable political system for China.1 The majority of intellectuals agreed on the necessity to introduce the values of Enlightenment in the Middle Kingdom, but they soon diverged on the type of political system that would best ensure their enactment. Intellectuals were soon involved with the various political parties that competed for the leadership of the country, and opposition between exponents of parliamentary democracy such as Hu Shi and Marxists such as Chen Duxiu. (shrink)

Between 1899 and 1906, Alexander Bogdanov developed a scientific philosophy intended to substantiate the basic principle of historical materialism—the idea that existence determines consciousness—in terms of the most advanced science and empiricist epistemology/ontology of his day. At the same time, however, he strove ‘to answer the broad needs of our workers for an overall worldview’, and in the process of doing so he elaborated a complete philosophical system and a holistic worldview. Although his intention was to serve the proletariat and (...) advance socialist revolution, Bogdanov also provided the sort of integral vision of the interconnectedness of the individual, society, and the cosmos that the Russian intelligentsia had traditionally pursued. Bogdanov adopted a number of the principles of nineteenth-century German and Russian idealism, including the concept of the unity of the subject and the object and the ideas that the laws of thought are the same as the laws of being, that there is no qualitative difference between humans and nature, and that humanity is central in the progressive development of the cosmos. Bogdanov, however, provided a materialist mirror image of the idealist worldview. While Russian idealists celebrated spirituality, individual personhood, freedom, and religion, Bogdanov advocated materialism, collectivism, determinism, and naturalism. (shrink)

The article consistently reconstructs the history of the creation and publication of one of the most important and least researched treatises by Vladimir Solovyov—Istorija i Budushhnost’ Teokratii (The History and Future of Theocracy). The first printed version of this treatise was published in Zagreb in 1887. The ideological context in which this work was written is shown. The important point of this context was the polemics between Solovyov and almost all representatives of the Russian intelligentsia, both conservative and (...) liberal, as well as the restrictions imposed on the publication of his works in Russia by the clerical censorship and personally by the chief prosecutor of the Holy Synod Konstantin Pobedonostsev. The differences and discrepancies between the first edition of this text and the later editions published in three versions of Solovyov’s Collected Works (1904, 1914 and 1966 respectively) are analyzed. The history of the only known manuscript of this treatise, which is currently kept in the Vatican Apostolic Library (Vat. Slav. 64), is presented. (shrink)