17 - Nikolai Berdiaev and the philosophical tasks of the emigration

Summary

Is the Russian emigration aware of its mission? This mission cannot be limited to a haughty awareness of one's superiority over those who have remained within Russia, in the cultivation of feelings of malice and vengeance, in petty political rivalries, based on fictions. This mission lies first and foremost in spiritual tasks, in the gathering and forging of spiritual forces, in the spiritual overcoming of a malicious, vengeful attitude toward the ordeals God has sent them.

“Spiritual Tasks of the Russian Emigration,” from the editors of Put′ (The Path), 1925

Man fell from the heights and can ascend to the heights.

Nikolai Berdiaev, The Destiny of Man, 1931

Paradoxically, Russian philosophy of the Silver Age experienced a final renaissance during and immediately after the grueling years of the Russian Civil War. Despite difficult material conditions, government censorship, ideological and political estrangement, and significant emigration, philosophy flourished in universities, public societies, kruzhki (“circles”) and resurgent thick journals and monographs. As before the Revolution, neo-idealist religious thought predominated, and there was significant cross-fertilization among philosophy, literature, religion, and obshchestvennost′, the distinctly Russian intellectual sense of public duty. This renaissance ended abruptly in 1922 with the expulsion of most of Russia's most prominent philosophers, the elimination of traditional philosophy departments at the most important universities, and the closure of non-Marxist philosophical societies.

Once abroad, the expelled philosophers had to determine their mission: what was the proper role of a Russian philosopher in exile?