The Russian Cosmists by George M. Young

Author:George M. Young [Young, George M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2012-07-30T07:00:00+00:00

Berdyaev admits that he sometimes seems to contradict himself. And indeed, we find him arguing in one place that everything existing must be eliminated and in another that wellsprings within the existing world can supply energy for the world’s renewal. If we eliminate everything, do we eliminate the wellsprings? And if so, where does the renewal come from? In the course of his writings, the theme of self-renewal generally prevails over the earlier anarchistic calls for total elimination. And in his life, the idea that the true Russian spirit of Christian collectivism (sobornost) would renew itself from within the prison of Bolshevism led him to break decisively with former friends and associates in emigration who called for an armed invasion of the Soviet Union, believing that the Russian spirit could only be saved from outside.

Unlike Florensky, Berdyaev had no scientific or technical skills that could be put to temporary use in building the new Soviet society. Thanks to Lunacharsky, the former aristocrat and later Bolshevik commissar; the science fiction writing revolutionary Bogdanov; and a few other high Bolshevik officials with roots in, and some slight lingering respect for, the values of the prerevolutionary high culture, Berdyaev and others were permitted to continue to speak and write freely for a few years. In his autobiography, Berdyaev even describes being called from his prison cell in the middle of the night to be interrogated by a Cheka official

in a military uniform wearing a red star. He had fair hair, a thin, pointed beard and dull grey and somewhat melancholic eyes. His appearance and manner suggested good breeding and gentleness. He asked me to sit down and said: “My name is Dzerzhinsky.” This, then, was the notorious head of the political police, believed to have much blood on his hands, at whose name all Russia trembled with horror.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.