Nikolai Berdyaev book, The Russian Idea, provides readers with a wonderful survey of the Russian revolutionary tradition. Its central thesis, that the Russians are an almost inherently millenarian or eschatologically-minded people, and therefore naturally produce social conflagrations that prefigure religious apocalpyse, is ultimately unconvincing. Notwithstanding, the long-standing tradition of fixating on the myriad characteristics of the "Russian Soul," Berdyaev's attempt to assign unique properties to the Russian people is anything but scientific or even rational. Ironically, by tracing the history of Russian exceptionalism in such detail, Berdyaev highlights the fact that his theory of Russian messianism is in some respects merely the latest chapter in a flawed intellectual tradition. If the Russians were victims of certain strands of Enlightened thinking, they certainly weren't alone in their victimhood. Even so, Berdyaev's intellectual and theological perspectives on the Russian Revolution remain thought-provoking. Certainly the Russian Revolution bears striking similarities to a religious awkening. Shouldn't we be skeptical of any overtly atheistic political phenomenon in a religion-soaked land?
Berdyaev's attempt to synthesize religion and atheism is intriguing. What, ultimately, is the difference between a militant, evengelical atheist and a militant, evengelical Christian? Can anything as all-emcompassing and explosive as a revolution be devoid of religious content? Over and over again, Berdyaev asks us to consider the relationship between religion and its antithesis, socialist or anarchic atheism, in the annals of revolutionary activity. Were outraged members of the materialist or even nihilist intelligentsia more or less spiritual than the members of the Orthodox clergy who practiced empty rituals while defending absolutism? Didn't Russian communism express at least some vital elements of the Christian agenda, including brotherhood and radical, otherworldly, justice? Berdyaev's central question is this: why do we find it necessary to take revolutionaries at their word by accepting the false premise that revolution springs from purely materialist considerations? Shouldn't intellectual history be taken seriously? Shouldn't religion and philosophy be incorporated into our understanding of the revolutionary dynamic?Although Berdyaev's book isn't free from muddled assertions about the essential and unchanging Russian personality, his book makes important contributions to our understanding of both Russia and the Russian Revolution. If nothing else, Berdyaev's investigation into the broad currents of nineteenth century religious and philosophical history, remind us that one can't study the Bolshevik Revolution without studying Russia. That is to say, one cannot understand 1917 without delving deep into the history of Russian ideas. Of course, the reverse is also true: one can't study Russia without studying revolution. For Russia has always been on the brink of apocaylpse, witness the Pugachev Rebellion and the aborted Decembrist revolt and the 1905 Revolution. What is 1917 if not a link in a long, unbroken chain of revolutionary events or at least potential events. But perhaps this isn't a pecularity of Russian history. Perhaps all societies stand on the brink of apolaypse. What is modern European Civilization if not a chain of revolutionary moments such as 1789, 1830, 1848, 1870, 1905, 1917, 1968, and 1989? And shouldn't even these moments be seen as the visible peaks of partially submerged volcanos of revolutionary ferment waiting to erupt?
Showing posts with label The Russian Idea. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Russian Idea. Show all posts
Thursday, January 9, 2014
Nikolai Berdyaev on Russian Identity, Revolution, and History
Below are some choice phrases culled from my first reading of Nikolai Berdyaev's famous treatise on the Russian revolutionary tradition, The Russian Idea.
Russian Identity
Berdyaev citing Tyutchev: "Russia is not to be understood by intellectual processes. You cannot take her measurements with a common yardstick, she has a form and stature of her own: you can only believe in Russia."
Berdyaev citing Khomyakov: "The Russians are a people in the highest degree polarized: they are a conglomeration of a contradictions."
"The unexpected is always to be expected from them. They are as a people capable in the highest degree of inspiring both intense love and violent hatred. As a people the Russians have a dusturbing effect upon the peoples of the West."
"The Russian people is not purely European and it is not purely Asiatic."
"In the Russian soul there is a sort of immensity, a vagueness, a predilection for the infinite, such as is suggested by the great plain of Russia."
"Russia was never an aristocratic country in the Western sense, and equally there was no bourgeois."
"The burning oneself alive, as an exploit in religion, is a Russian national phenomenon…"
"That the Russians have a leaning to debauchery and to anarchy with a loss of discipline is well known."
"Messianic consciousness is more characteristic of the Russians than of any other people except the Jews."
Berdyaev citing Pushkin upon completion of Gogol's Dead Souls: "Oh, Lord, how wretched our Russia is."
"The Russian emotional bent for revolution was the outcome of the unbearableness of the actual conditions in which they lived, of their wrongness, and their ugliness."
Berdyaev citing Chaadav: "At the present time we constitute a gap in the moral order of the world."
Berdyaev citing Chaadav: "Looking at us it might be said that the general law of mankind had been abrogated so far as we are concerned."
Berdyaev citing Pechorin: "How sweet is is to hate one's native land, and eagerly to await its annihilation."
"The vocation of Russia presents itself as connected with the fact that the Russian people are the most humble people in the world. But there exists among that peopler a pride in their humility."
"Among the Russians and it may be among the Russians only, there exists a doubt about the righteousness of punishment."
"It is the property of the Russian people to indulge in philosophy."
"The vocation of Russia is a world vocation."
"Russia alone lives not for herself, but for thought…"
"The Russian people are a people of the future; they will decide questions which the West has not yet the strength to decide, which it does not even pose in their full depth."
"The Russian has a greater capacity for enduring suffering than the man of the West, and at the same time he is especially sensitive to suffering; he is more sympathetic than the Western man."
"Spengler described Russia very acutely and very well when he said that it is an "apocalyptic revolt against antiquity.""
"Among the Russians there is always a thirst for another world; there is always discontent with that which is."
"An eschatological bent is native to the Russian soul."
"Russia took shape in grevious historical circumstances; the Russian land was surrounded by enemies; it was made use of by the evil forces of history."
"Russian
Characteristics of Russian History
"Interruption is a characteristic of Russian history. Contrary to the opinion of the Slavophils the last thing it is is organic."
"The very manner of life of the landowning nobility was a thing incomprehensible to the people."
"The history of the Russian people is one of the most poignantly painful of histories."
"The development of Russia has been catastrophic."
"The State grew strong, the people grew weak, as Kluchevsky says."
"Among us the Intelligentsia could not live in the present; it lived in the future and sometimes in the past."
"In the second half of the century the Intelligentsia, keyed up to a revolutionary frame of mind, was obliged to lead an existence which was almost heroic…"
"There was no Renaissance among us…"
On the Nature of the Revolution
"History is not only traditional and it is not only guardianship; a lack of basis has a basis of its own; revolution is part of the flow of history."
"The Russian Intelligentsia…endeavored to find a way out of the unbearable sadness of Russian reality into an ideal reality. This ideal reality was either the Russia before Peter's the, or the West, or the coming Revolution."
"[Herzen]…regarded Hegel's philosophy as the algebra of revolution."
Berdyaev citing Belinksy: "I am beginning to love mankind in the manner of Marat. To make the smallest part of it happy I think I would exterminate the rest of it with fire and sword."
"The makers of the French Revolution lived by the up-to-date ideas of the time, the ideas of J.J. Rousseau, of the eighteenth century philosophy of the Enlightenment. Those who made the Russian Revolution lived by the ideas of Chernishevsky, Plekhanov, by a materialist and utilitarian philosophy, by an outworn and tendentious literature; they were not interested in Dostoyevsku, Tolstoy, Solovyov; they knew nothing of the new movements of Western culture."
The real content disappeared from the official phrase: "Orthodoxy, autocracy and the people;" such has an expression had become insincere and false.
"In the Russian communist revolution it was not the actual proletariat of experience which was in control but the idea of the proletariat, the myth of the proletariat."
"Followers of Lenin exalted the revolutionary will and regarded the world as plastic and fit for any changes you like..."
"There is in communism its own truth and its own falsehood."
"To the Russian Intelligentsia of the left the Revolution has always been both a religion and a philosophy."
"The Russian Revolution awakened and unfettered the enormous powers of the Russian people."
Berdyaev citing Tyutchev:
"The abyss now yawns across the path we tread
With all its terrors and its gloomy mist.
Between the gulf and us no barriers exist
And hence to us the night is filled with dread."
Berdyaev citing Tyutchev:
"O! rouse not sleeping storms,
Beneath us quivering chaos moves."
Berdyaev citing Lermontov:
"The day will come, for Russia that dark day
When the Tsar's diadem will fall, and they,
Rabble who loved him once, will love no more,
And many will subsist on death and gore."
Berdyaev citing Blok:
"Wild passions are let loose
'Neath the yoke of the crescent moon.
I see over Russia afar,
A broad and gentle fire."
Berdyaev citing Blok:
:A sphink is Russia; sorrow and joy embrace
Her both; and she is darkly drenched in gore"
Other
"It was a particularity of Herzen that truth presented itself to him as sad."
"It is astonishing that the Christian writer Gogol was the least humane of Russian writers, the least humane in the most humane of all literatures."
Russian Identity
Berdyaev citing Tyutchev: "Russia is not to be understood by intellectual processes. You cannot take her measurements with a common yardstick, she has a form and stature of her own: you can only believe in Russia."
Berdyaev citing Khomyakov: "The Russians are a people in the highest degree polarized: they are a conglomeration of a contradictions."
"The unexpected is always to be expected from them. They are as a people capable in the highest degree of inspiring both intense love and violent hatred. As a people the Russians have a dusturbing effect upon the peoples of the West."
"The Russian people is not purely European and it is not purely Asiatic."
"In the Russian soul there is a sort of immensity, a vagueness, a predilection for the infinite, such as is suggested by the great plain of Russia."
"Russia was never an aristocratic country in the Western sense, and equally there was no bourgeois."
"The burning oneself alive, as an exploit in religion, is a Russian national phenomenon…"
"That the Russians have a leaning to debauchery and to anarchy with a loss of discipline is well known."
"Messianic consciousness is more characteristic of the Russians than of any other people except the Jews."
Berdyaev citing Pushkin upon completion of Gogol's Dead Souls: "Oh, Lord, how wretched our Russia is."
"The Russian emotional bent for revolution was the outcome of the unbearableness of the actual conditions in which they lived, of their wrongness, and their ugliness."
Berdyaev citing Chaadav: "At the present time we constitute a gap in the moral order of the world."
Berdyaev citing Chaadav: "Looking at us it might be said that the general law of mankind had been abrogated so far as we are concerned."
Berdyaev citing Pechorin: "How sweet is is to hate one's native land, and eagerly to await its annihilation."
"The vocation of Russia presents itself as connected with the fact that the Russian people are the most humble people in the world. But there exists among that peopler a pride in their humility."
"Among the Russians and it may be among the Russians only, there exists a doubt about the righteousness of punishment."
"It is the property of the Russian people to indulge in philosophy."
"The vocation of Russia is a world vocation."
"Russia alone lives not for herself, but for thought…"
"The Russian people are a people of the future; they will decide questions which the West has not yet the strength to decide, which it does not even pose in their full depth."
"The Russian has a greater capacity for enduring suffering than the man of the West, and at the same time he is especially sensitive to suffering; he is more sympathetic than the Western man."
"Spengler described Russia very acutely and very well when he said that it is an "apocalyptic revolt against antiquity.""
"Among the Russians there is always a thirst for another world; there is always discontent with that which is."
"An eschatological bent is native to the Russian soul."
"Russia took shape in grevious historical circumstances; the Russian land was surrounded by enemies; it was made use of by the evil forces of history."
"Russian
Characteristics of Russian History
"Interruption is a characteristic of Russian history. Contrary to the opinion of the Slavophils the last thing it is is organic."
"The very manner of life of the landowning nobility was a thing incomprehensible to the people."
"The history of the Russian people is one of the most poignantly painful of histories."
"The development of Russia has been catastrophic."
"The State grew strong, the people grew weak, as Kluchevsky says."
"Among us the Intelligentsia could not live in the present; it lived in the future and sometimes in the past."
"In the second half of the century the Intelligentsia, keyed up to a revolutionary frame of mind, was obliged to lead an existence which was almost heroic…"
"There was no Renaissance among us…"
On the Nature of the Revolution
"History is not only traditional and it is not only guardianship; a lack of basis has a basis of its own; revolution is part of the flow of history."
"The Russian Intelligentsia…endeavored to find a way out of the unbearable sadness of Russian reality into an ideal reality. This ideal reality was either the Russia before Peter's the, or the West, or the coming Revolution."
"[Herzen]…regarded Hegel's philosophy as the algebra of revolution."
Berdyaev citing Belinksy: "I am beginning to love mankind in the manner of Marat. To make the smallest part of it happy I think I would exterminate the rest of it with fire and sword."
"The makers of the French Revolution lived by the up-to-date ideas of the time, the ideas of J.J. Rousseau, of the eighteenth century philosophy of the Enlightenment. Those who made the Russian Revolution lived by the ideas of Chernishevsky, Plekhanov, by a materialist and utilitarian philosophy, by an outworn and tendentious literature; they were not interested in Dostoyevsku, Tolstoy, Solovyov; they knew nothing of the new movements of Western culture."
The real content disappeared from the official phrase: "Orthodoxy, autocracy and the people;" such has an expression had become insincere and false.
"In the Russian communist revolution it was not the actual proletariat of experience which was in control but the idea of the proletariat, the myth of the proletariat."
"Followers of Lenin exalted the revolutionary will and regarded the world as plastic and fit for any changes you like..."
"There is in communism its own truth and its own falsehood."
"To the Russian Intelligentsia of the left the Revolution has always been both a religion and a philosophy."
"The Russian Revolution awakened and unfettered the enormous powers of the Russian people."
Berdyaev citing Tyutchev:
"The abyss now yawns across the path we tread
With all its terrors and its gloomy mist.
Between the gulf and us no barriers exist
And hence to us the night is filled with dread."
Berdyaev citing Tyutchev:
"O! rouse not sleeping storms,
Beneath us quivering chaos moves."
Berdyaev citing Lermontov:
"The day will come, for Russia that dark day
When the Tsar's diadem will fall, and they,
Rabble who loved him once, will love no more,
And many will subsist on death and gore."
Berdyaev citing Blok:
"Wild passions are let loose
'Neath the yoke of the crescent moon.
I see over Russia afar,
A broad and gentle fire."
Berdyaev citing Blok:
:A sphink is Russia; sorrow and joy embrace
Her both; and she is darkly drenched in gore"
Other
"It was a particularity of Herzen that truth presented itself to him as sad."
"It is astonishing that the Christian writer Gogol was the least humane of Russian writers, the least humane in the most humane of all literatures."
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