The Russian Idea (Library of Russian Philosophy)

Russia's Mystical Idea; influencing Russian political and social thought

"Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;" R. Kipling



East, and West:
Russians are accustomed to referring to Russia as the East, although, as one thinker said, "our spiritual, political, and cultural centers are not in the East. Furthermore, even if we belong to the East, it is the East of Europe that we belong to. And if the real East and the real Far West can meet, the meeting of two parts of the unified European culture is all the more natural."

Russia & West Europe:
After the reforms of Peter the Great, when Russia returned to Europe, the relationship between Western Europe and Russia became so tight that the European WWI, led to the 'Russia catastrophe'. Russia was already part of Europe, and its collapse resulted in degeneration of many European countries. As early as the 19th century, when Russia acquired its cultural and artistic self-consciousness, her thinkers were persuaded into the Western idea of Russia's extra-European path and has chosen to adopt it. This very idea of the special path, which was to be used for leaving Europe behind and turning Russia, as Peter Chaadaev put it, into Europe's "joint court,' supported by the majority of Russian thinkers, Westerners as much as Slavophiles (Chaadaev, Danilevsky, Herzen, and others). They didn't admit that they had picked up this concept from the West. European Russians, as Pushkin, Turgenev, Chekhov and Bunin believed themselves a part of Europe; a curious concept, no one recalls.

Russian religious thought:
As Russia entered the modern age in the nineteenth century, many Russian intellectuals combined the study of Western philosophy with a return to their own traditions, culminating in the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and the religious philosophy of their famous contemporary, Vladimir Soloviev.
Exploration of the central issues of modern Russian religious thought by studying the work of Soloviev and other religious philosophers who developed his ideas in the early twentieth century as Florensky, and S. Bulgakov, generally placed in the contexts of both Western philosophy and Eastern Orthodoxy, presents a substantially new perspective on Russian religious thought. The work of these philosophers, influenced virtually all aspects of modern Russian tradition, and many aspects of twentieth-century Soviet culture, and enhanced a rich philosophical tendency devoted to issues of community, humanity and even divinity, that transcend Russian boundaries and national soviet historical eras.

Russia's mystical mission:
Demanding all or nothing, alternatively apocalyptic and nihilistic, Russians strove to justify culture and discover Russia's mystical mission. Impatient with the slow processes of history, distrusting authority while haunted by a vision of unity, great thinkers, as Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Federov, and Solovyov created an original and vital religious philosophy that culminated in the Russian Renaissance of the twentieth century. The fruit of these heroic figures, of whom Berdyaev was one, included Florensky, Bulgakov, Rozanov, etc., was cut short by the 1917 Revolution. In recent years, however, their works have been available in self-published editions. Underground, a great philosophical and spiritual rebirth (renaissance) was occurring.

Russia's mystical idea:
Berdyaev's 'Russian idea' is thus a mystical one, he suggests that theology, not political economics determine Russian history and society. He takes up the story, starting with the nineteenth century, tracing the powerful chain of artists and thinkers as Bakunin, Chaadev, Khomyakov, Leontyev, among others, who struggled to dissolve the East and West polarities in the Russian soul. This immense, boundless soul, is so mystically vague that it is incapable of settling for "the halfway kingdom of culture."
Vladimir Kantor, eminent Russian scholar, masterfully summarizes the case, "thinkers appeared who turned the idea of Russia's European involvement into a determining one. I'll mention here the ranks of philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev. ... irrational myth of the socialist world. It would be unfair to underestimate the role of the Russian diaspora. The names and texts of Nikolai Berdyaev, Ivan Bunin, Vladimir Nabokov and others were reaching Soviet Russia."

Nikolai A. Berdyaev:
Berdyaev (1874-1948) was born in Kiev into an aristocratic family. He was educated in a military school and later entered the University of Kiev, from which he was expelled for embracing Marxism and taking part in political agitation. At twenty-five he was exiled from Kiev to the north of Russia before the Revolution. He had broken with Marxism, previously, together with Bulgakov, contributing to a symposium that reaffirmed Orthodox Christianity. After the Revolution, he was appointed by the Bolshevists to teach philosophy in the University of Moscow, but soon fell into disfavor for his independent political opinions. He settled first in Berlin, where he opened a Russian Academy of Philosophy and Religion, then moved to Paris, where he lectured in a similar institution. He was invited to lecture at the Sorbonne in 1939, and survived the German occupation with no harm.

Christopher Bamford
A Fellow of the Lindisfarne Association, is the editor in chief of Steiner Books and has lectured, taught, and written widely on spiritual and esoteric traditions.

Book Reviews:
Now that this book is available again, and the next installment of the Russian idea is being prepared, it is no doubt, an essential reading for an understanding of the new Russia, by Americans and Europeans, lay and experts.
"Imperative reading for persons interested in Russian culture." Alexander Vucinic
"No one wishing to understand Russian thought should overloook it." --Donald A. Lowrie, The Rebellious prophet: A life of Nicolai Berdyaev