488 Book Reviews / Journal of Religion in Europe 6 (2013) 483–493
George M. Young, The Russian Cosmists. The Esoteric Futurism of Nikolai Fedorov and His Followers, London, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2012, 280 p., isbn 978-0-19-989294-5, $ 29,95.
In Western countries, even to today’s Slavists, ‘Russian cosmism’ remains generally unknown; and if not, it is considered with disdain. To give a definition of this “loose, diverse, and complex tendency” (p. 11) is far from easy. The method chosen by George M. Young is mainly to show the many-sided influence that the project of the philosopher Nikolai Fedorov (1829–1903), which is behind Russian cosmism, exerted on Russian culture and to demonstrate that it played a fundamental role on Russian thought and science. To define the topic of the book, one must refer to this project. According to Fedorov—a librarian who hardly ever published in his lifetime – to act as Christians, human beings must resuscitate their ancestors as far back as Adam; once brought back to life with the aid of science, the resurrected will start the colonisation of the stellar space. Connected to “subsidiary projects” (p. 49), such as the political gathering of all nations under the authority of a Russian autocrat, the “common task” to which Fedorov calls all the living (resuscitating all the dead for humanity’s salvation) has religious, social, political, economical, and artistic implications. Before dealing with it, Young looks at several figures of eighteenth-century Russian thought who may be recognised as Fedorov’s forerunners, such as the writer and political critic Alexander Radishchev and the author and scientist Mikhail Lomonosov. Reviewing the discussion between ‘Slavophiles’ and ‘Occidentalists,’ he notes the interest shown by cosmists (i.e. all who drew their inspiration from Fedorov) in Western technological progress, which they at the same time combined with an attachment to the “Slavophile goals of communal wholeness, unifying activity and spiritual consensus” (p. 23). To shed light on Fedorov’s political ideas, tinged with messianism, Young provides information about the so-called “Moscow, the Third Rome” prophecy, which at least since the fifteenth century has assigned a special role in history to Russia. Though Fedorov rejected esotericism, his project presents an esoteric dimension. Young makes connections with the Western esoteric tradition that encourages the human being “to control nature and achieve immortal life” through science, with the Masonic idea of rebuilding oneself as one rebuilds the world, as well as with the alchemists’ project of transmutation of the human being while transmut- ing matter (pp. 83–84). These considerations lead Young to paint a panorama of freemasonry, theosophy, and anthroposophy in Russia at the turn of the twenti- eth century. The ‘common task’ that affirms the human responsibility to overcome death is also examined within the general context of Russian Christian Orthodox religious thought; the influence of Fedorov on Vladimir Solovyov, Sergei Bulgakov, Pavel
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI 10.1163/18748929-00604005
Florensky, Nikolai Berdyaev, and others is discussed at length and it becomes clear that even if these philosophers did not completely subscribe to all of Fedorov’s propositions, they nevertheless paid attention to them. If Russian cosmism has not been restricted to the interest of a few philosophers and theologians, one of the reasons is that Fedorov’s ideas stimulated several first-class scientists, among them the ‘father of astronautics,’ Konstantin Tsiolkovski. In other words, these ideas had a considerable impact on the conquest of space. Was it not intended originally to resolve the question of the Lebensraum (so to speak) of the resurrected ones? Though the Soviet government was eager to promote an ambitious aerospace program, the conception of a New Man created by the class struggle could hardly cohabit with Fedorov’s Christian soteriology. Neither could it agree with Fedorov’s follower Alexander Chizhevsky who in the 1920s stressed that the sun’s rays (rather than Marxism-Leninism) dictate the historical process. When reading about Chizhevsky’s historical law, one cannot but think of the futurist poet Velimir Khlebnikov and his theories about the laws of time. To give a detailed account of this book is impossible considering the many- sided aspects recognised in Russian cosmism especially in the arts; suffice it to mention Alexander Scriabin and his Mysterium supposed to arouse a ‘cosmic event’ which would mean the accession of a new human race, or Boris Pasternak and his ‘most Fedorovian work’ Doctor Zhivago (p. 205). A review of this book boils down to judging the solidity of Young’s demonstra- tion of the central role accorded to Fedorov in Russian thought and particularly in aeronautical sciences. This question will certainly stimulate interesting debates among the specialists in the field. It would have been interesting if Young gave a detailed presentation of the many different opinions that have already been expressed regarding this issue, in particular Irene Masin-Delic’s illuminating Abolishing Death: A Salvation Myth of Russian Twentieth-Century Literature (Stanford 1992, p. 102–103). But I would like to address another question discussed by Young: the resolutely Russian specificity recognised in Fedorov’s “common task.” For all Young’s efforts, this question (definitely delicate) remains problematic and, of course, it cannot be explained only by the nationalist elements present in Fedorov’s doctrine. In fact, to include Russian cosmism in a general treatment of eschatology and utopia would have been wise, in particular in order to link Russian cosmism with Western theories or trends – the link with William W. Reade and Jules Verne could have been developed, just to mention writers here. Would this have made the impact of Fedorov’s doctrine on Russian thought appear less signifi- cant than Young apparently likes it to be? These are remarks by a reader who sometimes felt lost in the author’s diachronic analysis. His biographical information about the main philosophers and scientists mentioned in the book, as well as his presentation of the various doctrines