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Petersburg “Free Philosophic Association” As a Russian-Jewish Dialogue

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Petersburg “Free Philosophic Association” As a Russian-Jewish Dialogue chapter seven THE DISCUSSIONS ON FEDOR DOSTOEVSKY AT THE MOSCOW BRANCH OF THE ST.-PETERSBURG “FREE PHILOSOPHIC ASSOCIATION” AS A RUSSIAN-JEWISH DIALOGUE Leonid F. Katsis (Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow) The famous Russian intellectual society commonly known as “The Free Philosophic Association” was possibly the main place where Russian non- communist intellectuals could hold semi-o cial meetings during the early post-revolutionary years.1 As we have shown, earlier members of the St.-Petersburg (Petrograd) branch of this association were interested not only in the Russian Orthodox philosophical disputes over the main problems of Russian culture and liter- ature, but they once even organized a Jewish-Russian discussion on F. Dos- toevsky.2 Here one can nd such names as Aharon Shteinberg, Israel Zinberg, Asia Veksler from the Jewish side and a famous Russian Orthodox thinker such as Alexander Meier. It is important to note that the lecturer Aaron Shteinberg, a young Jewish Russian neo-Kantian philosopher who graduated from Heidelberg Univer- sity, was a secretary of “The Free Philosophic Association” (Vol la). He was the main supporter of its chairman, the renowned Russian poet, writer and thinker Andrei Bely. This point is of the utmost importance to our theme. The fact is that Andrei Bely was not a philo-Semite at all. He was the author of the key Russian symbolist novel “Petersburg” (1916), which was based on the idea of a combination of the so-called “yellow” danger (concerned with Japan 1 A general view is in: V. Belous. VOL’FILA ili Krizis kul’tury v zerkale obschestvennogo samosoznaniia. Sankt-Petersburg, 2007. 2 L. Katsis. A.A. Meyer vs. A.Z. Shteinberg (iz kommentariev k russko-evreisim sporam 1920-kh gg.)// Issledovaniia po istorii russkoi mysli [8]. Ezhegodnik 2006–2007. Pod red. M.A. Kolerova i N.S. Plotnikova. Moscow, 2009. pp. 427–468. 124 leonid f. katsis and China) and the Jewish one, which could destroy Russia and even the rest of Europe along with it. At the same time, Bely was closely connected with an anti-Semitic wing of Russian Symbolism and its leaders, such as Emil Metner, who was one of the main active ghters against the Jewish dominance of the musical scene. The young virtuosos he most actively protested against were of Jewish origin. Andrei Bely expressed his solidarity with Metner in his article “The Stamped Culture”.3 So, the general ideological and political context of Vol la, especially after the October revolution associated the rst Bolshevik government with a Jewish presence, was not particularly liberal. But at Vol la, Andrei Bely unexpectedly proved himself to be a real liberal intellectual leader, both regarding politics and philosophy. At the same time, Moscow intellectuals lead by Nikolai Berdiaev and Gustav Shpet independently organized something similar to Vol la, called the Moscow Academy of Spiritual Culture. Andrei Bely, emboldened by the success of his Petrograd initiative, decided to organize a Moscow Vol la on the base of the said Academy. He thus sent the brothers Steinberg to Moscow. The second brother was a very signi cant gure in the Russian revolution. He was a member of Socialist Revolutionary Party and became a commissar of Justice in Lenin’s rst government of 1918. Like all other representatives of the non-Bolshevik parties, he left the Soviet government very soon after his appointment because of the impossibility of any forms of coexistence with Lenin, the Bolsheviks and their aspiration to political monopoly. As opposed to his liberal younger brother, Isaac Shteinberg was a rmly orthodox Jew. From Aaron’s works on Dostoevsky we know the real history: unlike Aaron’s memoirs and his writings on Dostoevsky that have reached our time the leaders of the Moscow Vol la did not leave us with an oppor- tunity to hear or read Isaak’s lecture on the author of “The Crime and Pun- ishment”. Why and how this occurred we will try to explain here. But beforehand, it is important to know some circumstances connected with the Petrograd Vol la discussions on Dostoevsky which developed into a Jewish-Russian dialogue. 3 These problems were studied in: M. Bezrodnyi. O ‘iudoboiazni’ Andreia Belogo.// Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. Moscow, 1997. No. 28. pp. 100–125.: Same. Iz istorii russkogo neokan- tianstva (zhurnal Logos I ego redaktory)// Litsa. Biogracheskii al’manakh. I. Moscow-Sankt- Peterburg. 1992. pp. 372–408.; Same. Iz istorii russkogo germano l’stva: izdatel’stvo “Musaget”//Issledovaniia po istorii russkoi musli. Ezhegodnik na 1999 god. Moscow, 1999. pp. 157–198..
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