William van den Bercken

CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM IN ��â THE FIRST ENCOUNTER

Unlike in the West, the Union has never seen a dialogue between marxism and christianity. The communist party has always rejected such an encounter and the churches have never feit the need. Despite the political- patriotic support it has given the state, the Russian Orthodox Church has always guarded against any marxist ideological influence on Christian theology. Nor have there been any intellectual dialogues between a party ideologist and a believer. Not merely because such an exchange could not be published, but also because of the 's dearth of original marxist thinkers. Moreover, marxism is ignored by Christian writers, even in samlzdatl publica- tions. One explanation for the lack of intellectual contact between marxism and christianity could be that church and party know quite well that the two Weltanschauungen are incompatible. Cooperation is possible on the practical, political level, especially because marxism in Russia is primarily a statist ideology. But as long as state and party formally harbour the scientific illusion of marxism, christians can have no illusions about the two world views sharing a common philosophical basis. It can be no coincidence that in the country where marxism had the monopoly of Weltanschauung Christian thought and ideas are being rediscovered and taken up with a degree of receptiveness no longer met with in the secularised West. The spiritual divide came early in Russia, well before the 1917 revolution. In 1909, a book of collected articles was püblished under the title Vekhi, meaning 'Signposts' or 'Landmarks'.2 In it, the seven contributing authors distance themselves from Russian socialism. At this time marxism is one of the two political streams in Russian socialism; the other being populism, an ideology

1 For an explanation of the word saeizdat see next article, p.39.

Vekhi, sbornik statey o Russkoy intelligentsia, Moskva 1909 (2-e izd.). Reprint: Posev, Frankfurt a.M., 1967. An English translation appeared in 1977 in New York: Landearks, a collection of essays on the Russian intelligentsia, transl. by M. Schwarz, ed. by B. Shragin and A. Todd.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 02:43:15PM via free access born in the sixties and seventies of the previous century. In terms of political ideologies, populism was a native Russian form of socialism (Herzen, Cher- nyshevski, Lavrov, Mikhailovski); but philosophically it was strongly influenced by western materialist thinkers like Feuerbach, Compte, Darwin and Mill. Plekhanov and Lenin, the founding fathers of Russian marxism were also philosophically steeped in the materialist tradition of the 19th century. Despite the political differences between populism and marxism, both movements in Russia shared the same materialist Weltanschauungwith all the implications for the image of man, ethics and the concept of truth. In fact the entire progressive Russian intelligentsia of the time adhered to the materialist Weltanschauung, and traditionally they kept far away from christianity and religion. This outlook took as lead a natural link between progress, socialism and atheism. And it was this intellectual position to which the Vekhi writers, themselves former adherents of marxism, were opposed. Vekhi's philosophical-ethical critique of Russian socialism anticipates today's ethical discussion in the Soviet Union. One cannot help being struck by the continued freshness of the matters raised by four of the Vekhi writers, Berdyayev, Kistyakovski, Bulgakov and Frank. Kistyakovski's plea for an authentic sense of justice equals the contemporary calls for the in the Soviet Union. Vekhi's anti-revolutionary position may have been seen as betraying the cause of progress in 1909, but today one is obliged to grant the Vekhi writers a large degree of foresight and forward thinking. They warned against the intellectual and moral consequences of what was then Soviet ideology statu nascendi. In the Soviet period the Vekhi writers have suffered under the general odium of "Philosophie idealism", in common with all non-Leninist forms of thought, but to a larger degree in that Lenin had condemned them personally ("reac- tionary", "counter-revolutionary", "bourgeois", "renegades" etc.). Therefore the book has never been published in the Soviet Union. Now a clear revaluation of Russian "idealistic" 19th and early 20th century thinkers is underway; and the publication of Berdyayev has already been announced. Other anti-socialist thin- kers like Dostoyevski and Solovyov are quoted in the media with a relish and frequency which would make Marx jealous. The Vekhi writers share in this general rehabilitation. True, it is not so much because of their un-marxist attitude as for their Russian-ness; but the two are very close: the latter being a frequent alibi for the first.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 02:43:15PM via free access 1. The birth of Vekhi

Nikolai Berdyayev, Sergei Bulgakov, Semyon Frank and Bogdan Kistyakovski, were not the only Vekhi writers. The school also included Pyotr Struve, Aleksandr Izgoyev and Mikhail Gershenzon. With the exception of the last named, all belonged to the so-called legal marxists during the 1890's, young academics who expressed marxism in their lectures and writings. Their "legality" lay in the fact that, unlike revolutionary marxists of Lenin's ilk, they were tolerated by the tsarist authorities. Berdyayev and Frank taught philosophy, Bulgakov economy. Struve was the only political activist, being among the authors of the first programme of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party (later the Communist Party). After 1900 these intellectuals broke with marxism as philosophy. Their critique of marxism was formulated by Berdyayev, Bulgakov, Kistyakovski, Struve and Frank together with Pavel Novgorodtsev in Problemy Idealizma ("Problems of Idealism", 1903). In this volume of collected articles they defended a neo- kantian ethic against Marx's economic and extrapolated a moral duty for social struggle. "Problems of Idealism" readership stayed confined to academic circles, it lacked the political pregnancy of later Vekhi. In 1905 came Russia's first revolution. Initially, expectations among radical intelligentsia soared, but soon after it became clear that the government would not honour its commitments to political reform, and revolutionary elan deflated accordingly into disillusion. Berdyayev and his fellows, seeking an explanation for the bankruptcy of revolutionary thought, publish the volume of Vekhi articles. They make a clean break with the intellectual and political attitudes of the radical intelligentsia whose maximalism they blame for the malaise. The authors point to the need for an individual, intellectual and moral about face as prerequisite for society's renewal. In Vekhi the authors go a step beyond their 1903 book. Ethics are now seen primarily as the individual's duty to personal self-perfection. The individual conscience and feeling of responsibility are given priority over and above structural changes in society. The writers extend this idea in an analysis of the philosophical, ethical, legal, and cultural concepts of the Russian intelligentsia. So, in a sense, the articles are related to concrete historical circumstances. But the case studies deal with values and goals with a scope wider than the historical context. That makes most of the articles (not all, but more on this below) classics of Russian intellectual history. In so far philo- sophical positivism, ethical nihilism, cultural utilitarianism and ideological dogmatism are not exclusively typical progressive Russian thought anno 1909,

Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 02:43:15PM via free access Vekhi's criticism of these concepts has a universal significance. Vekhi's onslaught against wat was held holy by the revolutionary intelligentsia provoked bitter reactions from Russian society. Not only the parties of the left but also the rightist Constitutional Democrats (of which Struve had become a member himself) counter-attacked Vekhi. Within twelve months hundreds of articles appeared in the press and six volumes of collected essays were published - all directed against Vekhi. And the Vekhi volume itself went through five editions. Even so, the repercussions faded as fast as they had been bitter. The Vekhi concepts fell on the stony ground of Russian society, only taking root in certain ultra-rightist circles, where they were usurped. Only on one further occasion did the Vekhi authors - or at least five of their number - make themselves heard; that was in 1918, a year after the Bolshevik revolution. Together with six like-minded writers they produced a new volume of articles, Iz Glubiny ("From the Depths"), so called after the contribution by Semyon Frank with the latin title De Profundis. However, the Russian situation had changed to such a degree that it was impossible to distribute the printed book. Only in 1921 did a few illegal copies appear in , the rest being confiscated by the authorities. It is not the purpose to deal with the contents of Iz Glubiny here; suffice it to say that the Vekhi authors saw their worst fears for a manifested; and their third book re-emphasised the necessity of a religious-ethical reversal. Only Struve propagated a political alternative in the form of an anti-Bolshevist nationalism, building further on his previous neo-slavophile ideas. As irony would have it, a nationalist answer to communism had already been formulated, albeit diametrically opposed to that envisaged by Struve. It was a Russian nationalism integrated with communism, the so-called national bolshevism. This ideology came from a number of ex- Vekhi sympathisers and was set out in a new collected volume, Smena Vekh ("Changing of Signposts", 1921). There were indeed a number of party members who were not un- favourably disposed to such adjustment of communism, but the leadership would have none of it. A protest at this betrayal of Vekhi principles also came from Pyotr Struve, now living in Prague where he continued to publish his newspaper Russkaya Mys ("The Russian Thought"). Aleksandr Izgoyev, the only Vekhi author to remain in Russia, also raised his voice in protest; surprisingly, he succeeded in Publishing a new collected volume, 0 Smene Vekh ("Concerning the Change of Signposts", 1922). This was the last heard in favour of Vekhi; like all other forms of independent thought, the verdict had gone against it. Most Vekhi authors joined the Russian intellectual exodus to

Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 02:43:15PM via free access the West during the 1920's. There Nikolai Berdyayev would develop into the greatest of Russian philosophers and Sergei Bulgakov would earn prominence as a theologian of the Orthodox Church.

2. Philosophie culture Vekht 1s not centred on a particular church message or doctrine but on a general Christian view of life - a religious personalism. On occasion the reader comes across a reference to the church, and the word is notable for its absence from several articles. And yet all the authors speak from a clearly religious-philosophic, christian-ethical background. I shall now summarise the four most important Vekhi articles. In this the authors will be allowed to speak for themselves, and I shall confine myself to short commentaries on every author and a general assessment at the end. Nikolai Berdyayev elaborates a Philosophie subject: the concept of truth in thought among the revolutionary-intelligentsia. Their club-spirit and sectarian intellectualism position this intelligentsia far away from ordinary people and from the real intellectuals - the cultural intelligentsia. They have a superficial attitude towards philosophy and reject the autonomy of science; they regard philosophy and science as subordinates to political utilitarian ends. Socialist and populist ideals dominate to such a degree that it is considered immoral to be involved with Philosophie science. Intellectual creativity and pure esthetic consciousness must be abandoned in favour of the social ideals of equality and egalitarian distribution. The fixedness on equal sharing of goods is not only intellectually crippling but also economically counter-productive. In both cases creative initiative is stifled. And submission to the criterium of social usefulness means politicisation of science, culture, universities and upbringing. Berdyayev draws attention to the paradox that, despite the distaste for philosophy, practical matters are elevated precisely to Philosophie status: the question of labour becomes a universal soteriological problem; sociological doctrines are given an almost theological dimension and even economics become philosophy. And so, an enthusiastically preached materialism receives almost metaphysical status. According to Berdyayev this paradoxal aspect is a typical characteristic of Russian thought. The ideologists of the revolution are not the only ones to think in this manner - so too do Dostoyevski and Tolstoi, slavophiles and western-oriented philosophers. Hence philosophy has always been primitive in Russia, seen only as a sanction for social sentiments. Russia has no Philosophie culture. Berdyayev recognises that there are good sides to the rejection of abstract

Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 02:43:15PM via free access academicism, but this Russian characteristic should not be idealised. What best suits the Russian revolutionary intelligentsia is self-criticism and repentance. Repentance, because the radical intelligentsia has in fact fallen for the temptations offered by the Grand Inquisitor: the relinquishment of truth in the name of human happiness. Lack of interest in truth has itself led to revulsion for God and all that is divine. The ' care for human happiness did not spring from an autonomous respect for man as the image of God, but from a deification of man, "the people" of populist ideology and "the proleta- riat" of marxism. As for marxism Berdyayev holds the view that thinking in terms of classes, the concept of class-consciousness itself is in conflict with its struggle for universal justice. Class-consciousness splits thought into proletarian and bourgeois camps, into right and left, into useful and damaging. In so doing, it cuts off the way to ecumenical and universal standards. Scientific positivism as such is not incompatible with metaphysical and even religious thought, both have their own areas of research and knowledge. Marx' economic positivism has also a scientific right to exist, but according to Berdyayev, under the dogmatic interpretation of its Russian adherents, marxism has lost its scientific status. Scientific positivism in Russia is identified with atheism and has thus itself become a religion which is defended with almost catholic-like fanaticism. After this critique of utilitarianism and positivism of socialist thought, Berdyayev breaks a lance for that other school in Russian intellectual history: the religious-philosophical tradition of Chaadayev, Khomyakov, Dostoyevski and Solovyov. On the one hand these Christian thinkers follow a long western tra- dition, from Plato to German idealism, but on the other hand they provide an essential supplement to western rationalism. They bring about a reconciliation between faith and reason, between the theoretic concept of truth and truth as justice. Vladimir Solovyov is a particularly good example of a catholic and Europe-oriented Russian thinker. (Here, Berdyayev uses the word "catholic" in a positive way, as synonymous with "universal" or "European".) On the basis of this tradition Russia can make a contribution to that general search for truth which is not confined within national boundaries. Berdyayev reproaches what he himself calls the right and left camps in Russia, with a lack of philosophical culture. Philosophie mystics like Rozanov, Merezhkovski and V. Ivanov display the same anti-philosophic attitude and anarchistic denial of reason as do the materialist thinkers. Radical reform is needed in the consciousness of the Russian intelligentsia, and philosophy has a purifying function here. Berdyayev concludes that not only political liberation

Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 02:43:15PM via free access is needed but also a liberation from politics: an emancipation of thought from the thrall of politics. In his conclusion he changes from "I" to "we": "We will only be freed from external repression if we free ourselves from inner slavery, that is to say ... realise our own guilt ... ourselves take responsibility instead of blaming everything on the external structures". Later, in the 1930's Nikolai Berdyayev would extend the critical analysis of revolutionary-ideological thought given as his contribution to Vekhi into a book: Origins and Meaning of Russian Communism. By that time, the utilitarian intellectual position had been victorious on all fronts: philosophy, science, arts and morality.

3. Sense of justice Just as Berdyayev drew the Russian intelligentsia's attention to its lack of Philosophie culture, so Bogdan Kistyakovski brought up the lack of a culture of justice. According to Kistyakovski, when it comes to the concept of justice, Russia is beyond the pale of European civilisation. In contrast to with Hobbes and Milton, France with and Rousseau, and Germany with Wolff and Kant, in Russia not one work has been published on the problems surrounding the rights of the person (we would say "human .rights"), or such rights in relation to the state. Russian slavophiles had the illusion of an inner, natural feeling of justice in the Russian people; a feeling which needed no legal formulation. And the revolutionaries rejected the idea of a constitutional state as bourgeois. Neither did liberal thinkers like Chicherin and Solovyov contribute to the development of a concept of justice. Hence neither individual personal rights nor democratic collective rights have ever been formulated in Russia. And where these were promised by the marxist they were totally subordinate to the revolution: salus revolutiae suprema lex, as it sounds in russified latin. Kistyakovski criticises the social democrats citing the relativist concept of justice held by their leaders, Plekhanov and Lenin in particular. The strict party organisation is an expression of this. The absence of standards of justice is compensated by an over-abundance of statutes, rules and instructions. And this is typical of a police state; indeed their lust for regulation and bureau- cracy is not different from that of the tsarist state. All the exterior discipline demonstrates the lack of interior discipline. Kistyakovski does not conclude that socialism and a law governed state are incompatible; on the contrary, they are mutually complementary. He calls, however, for a socialism without class justice and democratic advantages for

Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 02:43:15PM via free access certain groups, and with constitutional guarantees for freedom of the individual. Kistyakovski's argument is surprisingly familiar to us, given the current discussion on justice and legal-ethical matters in the Soviet Union; and his final remark has lost nothing with time: "we cannot give all the blame for the fact that we have such bad judges to political conditions, we too are guilty". And so both Kistyakovski and Berdyayev end their criticism with a moral conclusion. Joint responsibility and awareness of guilt are important elements in the Vekhl message. Bulgakov's religious themes show this even more clearly than the treatises on Philosophie culture and culture of justice, phenomena which can be called secular aspects of intellectual civilisation.

4. Sense of sin Sergei Bulgakov deals with the relationship between revolution and religion. He gives an analysis of external similarities and differences of content between the revolutionary and Christian philosophies of life. Although Bulgakov extends his idea by using the concrete situation of the Russian revolutionary intel- ligentsia of the time, he covers points which are central to any christian- marxist dialogue. Despite revulsion from religion, the spiritual make up of the Russian revolu- tionary shares common ground with the religious mentality: the eschatological directness, the doctrinal puritanism and the rigorous ethic with its ascetic bent. Bulgakov explains this from the fact that revolutionary ideology in Russia was partly formulated by people with an ecclesiastical background; ex- seminarists like Chernyshevski and Dobrolyubov. On top of this, Russian intellectuals feel guilty towards the people - the proletariat. This explains the emphasis on self-denial for the sake of the revolution. Even so, no intelligentsia is more atheist than the Russian; the categorical rejection of religion is a principal point in its Weltanschavvng. This atheism is a primitive and pseudo-scientific interpretation of western thought, and quite in line with the Russian tendency to adopt the latest the West has to offer without understanding the deeper background. Parallel, or indeed as a substitute for atheism, the intelligentsia has created a religion of the man-god, based on man's natural perfection and unlimited potential for progress. Evil in the world is seen as the result of defects at the surface of society rather than in man. Hence there is no question of personal guilt. This implies that evil can be overcome by exterior, social reforms. In this view of the world, man is his own saviour and there is no requirement for

Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 02:43:15PM via free access divine interference. In his conviction of being the sole creative factor in the historical process, man is even unaware that this is incompatible with his mechanistic-materialistic and economic-deterministic view of history. Bulgakov then goes on to describe how this Philosophie self-deification dictates the revolutionary's behaviour pattern. Living with the idea of being saviour of the fatherland and emancipator of humanity, a practical minimum falls to satisfy him, he struggles for an heroie maximum. He is ready for political martyrdom for the cause. He is a victim of his own ideological self- hypnosis and political fanaticism. At the same time, the seemingly religious belief in the infallibility of his own party programme clashes with claimed scientificness thereof. Also clashing are the revolutionary's struggle for a new spirit of community for mankind and his own elitist position: his heroic self- worship places him above his fellows. The democracy for which he aims is in fact a new form of aristocracy. The struggle for heroism leads to a romanticisation of the revolution. Seen in itself the concept of revolution is something negative: it implies destruction, its impulse is hatred. In the vision of the revolutionary this becomes a creative act, just as Bakunin had previously stated. Maximalistic goals demand maximalistic means. The ethic of revolution is that all means are justified to achieve the end. This is the consequence of revolutionary self-deification already foreseen by Dostoyevski. The a-moralism, or to use the Russian revolutionary term of the 1860's, nihilism, expresses itself in arrogance, corruption and contempt for others. Established concepts such as personal morality and self-perfection have no place whatsoever in the ethic of the revolutionary; but the word "social" has an almost sacramental character. Here is yet another paradox: on the one hand the revolutionary view of life is characterised by man's extreme self-assertion - to the point of self- deification; but on the other hand man rejects the idea of moral self-perfec- tion and reduces the personality to a product of the social environment and historical forces. The creativity of the human being is in fact ignored. This sets the revolutionary's view of man not only against that of christianity but it is also in direct contrast to philosophical personalism. At this point in his argument, Bulgakov speaks of the specifically Christian view of man as individual. The revolutionary should shake off his intellectual pride, his self-image of misunderstood liberator in favour of Christian humility. Bulgakov is aware of intellectuals' horror at the very word "humility", however he posits humility not only as a fundamental concept of christianity but also as an expression of general spiritual maturity. As his knowledge increases so

Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 02:43:15PM via free access the true scientist realises how little he knows; a good artist is constantly hurt by the awareness that his works fails to express completely the ideal of beauty; and a statesman realises the limitation of his politics. If man feels his inadequacies in these areas, then, says Bulgakov, the same must, a fortiori, be the case in the moral sphere. Christianity points to man's imperfection, his corruption by sin and passions, and to the distance he is still removed from the ideal of human perfection, revealed in the God-man Christ. The christian idea of personal imperfection is linked to sense-of-sin, another concept held in contempt by the intelligentsia. The idea of original sin is mocked as a myth. People have believed in man's innate goodness since Rousseau and the . The struggle for human perfection has been replaced by an exclusive concentration on the improvement of the social environment, with man - as product of that environment - improving at the same time. That, says Bulgakov in a non-biblical comparison, is like the Baron Münchausen's attempt to extract himself from the swamp by his own hair. The intelligentsia's revulsion for Christian humility and inner struggle against human selfishness springs partly from faulty thinking - namely the idea that the struggle against one's own evil nature could be equivalent to resignation in the face of objective evil. Such is indeed the case with monastic ascesis, but ascesis as a manner of inner reform is compatible with political activity and even with revolutionary deeds. As an example Bulgakov refers to the Russian struggle against Mongol invaders. This was a revolution in the political sense in that it was aimed at government. It was backed by the church. But in contrast to the Russian revolutionaries of 1905, those involved in the struggle against the Mongols saw their actions as Christian self-denial. It was not a political deed on one's own behalf, but in the name of God. Without going into further explanation of how the political struggle can be combined with a christian attitude to life. Bulgakov warns against the ruling tendency overhasty to equate revolutionary acts with Christian politics. In this view, Christ is freed of what are considered disfigurements of his image by the church, and presented as Social-Democrat or Social-Revolutionary. The atheistic intelligentsia accepts this socf alistic interpretation of Christ for considerations of political opportunism. Equally misleading, says Bulgakov, is the reverse tendency to present the atheist revolution as the realisation of what are actually Christian social principles, even if those responsible lack religious consciousness. The idea here being that the revolution will eventually bring about a new religious conscious- ness. In this interpretation Christ, Marx and Mikhailovski are interchangeable,

Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 02:43:15PM via free access as are the gospel and Das Kapital. In Bulgakov's opinion the temptation to clothe revolutionary heroism in Christian ideals is present "in each of us, we Christians among the intellectuals". Finally Bulgakov emphasises what he sees as an unbridgeable gap between a Christian view of life and revolutionary heroism, namely the gospel's call for man to repent and do penance for his sins in order to be re-born. This new man is not a matter for a new political programme, he is the concern of the individual person self. Only those renewed from within can implement the required political, economic, cultural and religious renewals in Russia. He then moves on to the slippery ice of the classic Russian problem area "nationalism versus cosmopolitanism, slavophiles versus those who look to the West", maintaining, however, his balance throughout. Anticipating the conclusions on the overall significance of Vekhi we can already say that Sergei Bulgakov deals with a timeless issue: the question of whether man will morally improve with the structural betterment of society. His negative answer is based on his Christian view of man. The root of evil lies in the egotism of every individual. This issue is not a narrow moralistic one, what is involved here is a fundamental ethical-philosophical question: the source of evil, the problem of individual guilt and collective injustice. A good social system makes man as individual a better person, that was the ideological illusion of the Russian intelligentsia. That the inheritors of this ideology in today's Soviet Union are now aware of its illusory character is only one reason for Bulgakov's writing remaining up-to-date. The other reason concerns the implication that a social system which, as I see it, is unmistakably better in terms of individual freedom and collective prosperity, namely that of the West, has not lessened man's selfishness or made man morally better.

5. The moralistic paradox The last important Vekhi author is Semyon Frank. His argument frequently shares common ground with Berdyayev and Bulgakov (the writers worked independently) but the accents differ. The central point in Frank's critique of the Russian revolutionary intelligentsia is its moralistic approach to science, aesthetics and philosophy on the one hand and its rejection of objective values in these areas on the other. Science, culture and philosophy are only con- sidered permissible if they are politically useful and fulfil a moral-educative function. Science pur sang, l'art pour l'art and religion are unnecessary luxuries, and he who indulges in them betrays the cause of the revolution and

Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 02:43:15PM via free access service to the people. The revolutionary intellectual suppresses his feelings for higher culture as illegitimate, just as a soldier suppresses his feelings of sympathy for the enemy. Judging all human activity on the basis of its politico-moral merits is an extreme form of moralism; but the fact that it simultaneously denies the autonomous values of science, art and Weltanschauang, also makes it nihilistic moralism. Because the religious Weltanschauungin particular teaches absolute values, this moralism has a strongly anti-religious orientation. So Frank rejects what he calls the fashion of presenting the Russian revolutionary intelligentsia as in fact religious. If the intelligentsia can be called religious, then it is only because it has taken on the negative characteristics of religion: intolerance and fanaticism. Frank does not elaborate on religion as such but treats it as an essential part of intellectual civilisation, to which science, art and ethics also belong. He contrasts the view of culture as a connected whole of autonomous intellectual values with the revolutionary's utilitarian view of culture. For the latter culture is a materialistic concept: railways, education of the people and improvement of the political operating system. The revolutionary would have one believe that he improves the cultural level of the people, where it is precisely culture that he impoverishes. His culture is the cult of simplification, and unification of the proletariat: all must become workers. According to Franks this cultural-populism has become the thought pattern of marxism in Russia, as a result of which marxism has lost its original respect for culture. This last remark is much in line with Berdyayev's passing remark about the originally scientific character of marxism, and with Bulgakov and Struve who give a casually moderate verdict on marxism as economic theory. But the Vekhl authors do not elaborate on marxism, preferring to concentrate on the Russian deformation thereof. It is precisely their leanings towards Russian marxism of the time which allow them to give its later Soviet development a surprisingly good character. Just as the Soviet ideological way of thinking comes through in Berdyayev's description of the revolutionary intelligentsia's Philosophie attitude, and Bulgakov's critique smacks of Soviet "scientific atheism", so Frank seems to give a preview of the Soviet "socialist-realistic" view of culture. However, one principal point of criticism of socialism as such, crops up in the writings of Frank and Bulgakov and Berdyayev and Struve: the belief in a happy ending of history. Frank calls this metaphysical optimism, which is

Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 02:43:15PM via free access logically out of tune in a materialistic Weltanschauung. there is no philosoph- ical certainty, let alone scientific proof that the cosmos and history have an intrinsic tendency towards a happy end-phase. That is a dogma of the so-called scientific socialism. Frank draws attention to the fact that concentration on the final goal of history, the universal happiness of mankind, means that the socialists sees no point in small-scale charitable aid to one's neighbour. Acts of charity have lost their moral attraction when compared to the great task of liberating humanity. The revolutionary sees Christian love of one's neighbour as cheap charity and structurally redundant. He prefers the ideal of loving mankind as a whole and is prepared to sacrifice himself and his neighbour for that ideal. Frank shows that the most important psychological motivation for the revolutionary struggle for the people lies in hatred of so-called enemies of the people. This is no personal hatred but a general impulse with the methods of confrontation and elimination at its heart. Frank does not consider the belief in struggle as such the fundamental moral fault of revolutionary socialism - history and nature itself are the result of struggle - but the absolutisation of this struggle. When struggle and destruction are paramount, the human personality is degraded and the autonomous creative process of science, culture and religion, hindered. In concrete terms this tendency in socialism manifests itself in the principle of equal sharing by means of confiscation of goods from the owners for distribution among the non-owners. Distribution has precedence over creation of goods. The principle of equal distribution eventually leads to impoverish- ment of the culture, of material and intellectual goods. According to this principle, it is not the scientist, the artist, the inventor and the philosopher who are at the core of society, but the teacher of the people, the populariser and the propagandist; and with them, the bureaucratic controllers, administra- tors and distributors, at the cost of the real producers. Frank pleads with the revolutionary intelligentsia for revaluation of the concept wealth, taken in the intellectual and cultural-material sense; for recognition of the absolute values of science, aesthetics, religion and ethics. This means that the revolutionary intellectual must abandon the moralistic idea that enjoyment of culture's benisons is only acceptable when enjoyment is open to all. Given his moralistic distaste for riches and prosperity, it appears that the social reformer loves the weak, not as victims whom he wishes to enrich but as an idealised type. Love for the poor has become love for poverty.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 02:43:15PM via free access So much for Semyon Frank's critique on the Russian intelligentsia. Clearly, he has pointed to a number of essential contradictions in its socialist thought process: the faulty priorities and the contrary-wise working of this socialism. With his plea for autonomy of culture, in the widest sense of the word, he envisages not an intellectual aristocracy but, as he himself calls it, a culturally constructive religious humanism.

6. Final consideration Compared with the four Vekhi authors discussed above, the other three authors Izgoyev, Gershenzon and Struve, are less important. Their contributions were mainly in the form of occasional articles. Aleksander Izgoyev wrote on the sexual decadence of Russian students (with embarrassing precision on the scope of brothel visits and self-abuse), of their snobbery and lack of discipline in their studies. Mikhail Gershenzon conducts a somewhat mystical-philosophic argument on the human consciousness as source of knowledge-of-God and creative power; but in his defence of the human person "against the tyranny of public opinion", he is in line with the general import of Vekhi. Finally, Pyotr Struve, holds a rather contrived - and by history refuted - argument on the anti-state nature of the revolutionary intelligentsia. Entirely within the Vekhi spirit, however, is his critique of the "socialistic denial of personal responsi- bility" and he makes an interesting comparison between the determinism of socialism and such dogmatic varieties of christianity as calvinism and janse- nism. Struve also says that socialism as economic doctrine does not conflict with religion, but a "religious person can no more believe in socialism than in railways, wireless or proportional representation", and makes a general call for "reduction of politics from end to means". In closing, what can be said about the significance of Vekhi within the Russian context from which it sprang? In its time Vekhi was a critique on a one-sided view of progressiveness and social advancement, and was labeled as conservative and reactionary. Now, after such a lapse of years, when it transpires that the then hailed idea of progress, realised in Soviet communism, has not brought the expected happiness but millions of victims instead, Vekhi's message that man is more valuable than structures, is to be seen under a new light. History has proved Vekhi to be right in its view of human nature. The irony of Vekhi's proving right is, however, the fact that it has already been overtaken: the reaction to the revolutionary verve and social of 1909 appears overdone when compared with the general dis- illusion with communism and marxism in the 1980's. Life itself has belied the

Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 02:43:15PM via free access naive progressive optimism, has demonstrated the inhuman consequences of the utilitarian class-moral as well as the reverse effect of dissolving personal responsibility in collectivist structures. These Vekhi themes are central to writings by the contemporary Soviet intelligentsia and in the thoughts of today's political leaders in the Soviet Union. In addition, many members of the intelligentsia, writers, scientists and artists are, as it were, rediscovering the other ideas of Vekhi for themselves: sense of guilt, repentance and human dignity. These terms have been non-existent in official Russian language since 1922. Now in the late eighties, they are permanent fixtures in the Soviet media. In particular the concept "repentance", also taken as the title for Tengiz Abuladze's impressive film on stalinism, has become a symbol of new moral thinking. Commonality with the Vekhi thought is so obvious that Abuladze's film prompted a critic to go into "the first call for repentance in 1909", in some detail, before rejecting it.3 But even if not all Soviet intellectuals understand the concept "repentance" in the same sense as Vekhi, it is certain that no self-respecting Soviet intellectual would think of repeating the sneering remarks on Vekhi made by Pavel , leader of the Constitu- tional Democrats, in 1909: "Just imagine, words like 'purification' and 'repent- ance' on the lips of a European intellectual! "4 Whatever the strong similarities visible between the current ethical reappraisal in Soviet society and the message of Vekhi, it is precisely Vekhi which disturbs the comparison. In as far as all hope for renewal in Soviet Society is being pinned on the political restructuring, the self-same pitfall looms against which Vekhi once warned: overconfidence in the effects of renewing struc- tures. In that sense Vekhi is more than a moral support for the current renewal process in Soviet society; it is also a warning. One could say: alongside of social restructuring also moral conversion is needed, alongside of perestrojka, metanoia. These are two different matters.

3 Igor Klyaikin, "Kakaya ulitsa vedyot k khraxy?' ("»hieb way to the church?"I, Norf Mir 1987, 11, p. 162.

4 See L. Schapiro, "The Vekbi group and the nystique of revolution", Slavonic and last furopeia Revier 34 (1955� , p. 67.

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