Русская интеллигенция о глубинах русской революции: истерики и иллюзии в контексте времени

Вопросы философии. 2019. № 8. С. 134–145.

Kiseleva M.

The article attempts to reflect on the revolution and the fate of Russia by the Russian intelligentsia in the collection “De profundis” (1918); it reconstructs the borderline mental situation of the Russian thought of that time – the breakdown experienced by the intellectuals, the state of intellectual hysteria. The authors of the collection send their accusations to two addresses – “mass”, “Russian people”, its “lack of culture”, “wildness”, etc. and the “rotten” Russian intelligentsia, who seduced the people, cut them off from Orthodoxy and honoring the fatherland. The question is raised whether the authors of the collection themselves realize the destructive nature of such criticism. An attempt of S.N. Bulgakov to find reconciliation of the dispute between the six “talking heads” and the words about the resurrection of Christ does not give confidence in the salvation of Russia. The author of article shows that the S.L. Frank’s accusations addressed to the people who replaced the “idea of socialism” with a “personal material interest” is doubtful. The diagnosis of the “spirits of the revolution”, extracted by Berdyaev from the works of Russian writers, is of interest from a literary and philosophical point of view, but it does not give a recipe for saving Russia. The problem, as it seems to the author of article, is in the absence of analytics and intellectual consensus regarding the events under discussion. In another, program key, as the author shows, is written the article by P.B. Struve, who offered an alternative to the transformation of a collapsed empire for building Russia as a nation. However, his departure to emigration at the end of 1918 turned this program into an illusion. The author of article discovers that the tasks set by Struve are still in demand today by the Russian authorities, and she concludes that Russian history is slowly moving. 

Keywords: Russian Revolution, русская революция 1917 года, Из глубины: Сборник статей о русской революции, De profundis

Publication based on the results of: Russia and Europe: polemics and controversial unity (2019)