Top row: Sergei Bulgakov, Nicholas Berdyaev, steamboat “Oberbürgermeister Haken”
Bottom row: Semyon Frank, Mikhail Osorgin, Nicholas Lossky, Ivan Ilyin
Inga Leonova
On September 29, 1922, the first steamboat “Oberbürgermeister Haken” carrying the families of Russian intellectuals exiled from Soviet Russia departed from Saint Petersburg. Thanks to the witticism of the late Russian theologian and philosopher Sergey Horujy it has come to be called the “Philosopher’s Ship”. In truth, ships from Saint Petersburg and trains from Moscow were leaving through mid-1923, all carrying the families of philosophers, theologians, journalists, writers, and scientists – the cream of the crop of the Russian intellectual elite, considered “the enemies of the revolution” by the Bolsheviks. Ultimately almost a hundred intellectuals have been sent into exile, carrying a minimum of clothes (one fall and one winter coat, two sets of underwear, two pairs of shoes, one spare shirt, and whatever clothes they were wearing), no money or jewelry, no books or papers.
The exile followed a spate of anti-intellectual frenzy in Soviet Russia spearheaded by none other than Vladimir Lenin himself. With almost the entire territory of the Russian Empire under Bolshevik control by the beginning of the 1920s, the “great leader” set off on the path of eradicating all critical thought. It is worth remembering that significant support of the revolutionary movement in the intellectual and cultural circles was largely based on the freedom of discourse and the presumed abolition of political and ecclesial censorship. Disputes, debates, multiple journals and newspapers, poetry readings, and avant-garde performances were the stuff of daily life in the capitals even against the daily horrors of the “red terror” and shortages of food, fuel, and basic necessities. But Bolsheviks, who had come on top in the bloody squabble between the leftist parties, had never intended to establish a democratic state endowed with free speech. Their declared political purpose was “the dictatorship of the proletariat”, and this dictatorship was meant to be ideological as well as political. Lenin rightfully understood that the presence of highly educated, eloquent, and vocal thinkers constituted a threat to the hitherto-unknown monolith of the ideology of the victorious proletariat which was being cemented following the military victories. It is worth noting that there were very few representatives of natural sciences among the exiles: scientists were considered “useful” to the regime (up to the point), and the brunt of Lenin’s ire was directed at the world of humanities which he had always hated with a kind of
The wave of arrests of future exiles started in mid-August of 1922, and on August 31 the official government newspaper “Pravda” published a statement about the coming exile:
The most active of the counterrevolutionary elements among the professors, doctors, agronomists, and writers are being exiled abroad. There are practically no important scientists among the exiles. The exile of the active counterrevolutionary elements and the bourgeois intelligentsia constitutes the first warning by the Soviet power o those groups. The Soviet power will continue to appreciate and support those representatives of the old intelligentsia who will be loyally cooperating with the Soviet power as the best of the specialists are cooperating now. But it will continue to eradicate every attempt to utilize the Soviet opportunities for the open or secret fight with the power of the workers and peasants and for the restoration of the bourgeois and landowners’ regime.
Considering the horrors of the “red terror”, when people were being daily arrested and executed, exile into the free West was seen as an act of benevolence. After all, the peers of the exiled intellectuals who had either refused to go or hadn’t made it into the lists ended up meeting cruel and torturous ends within the next decade or two. Its impact on the decimated intellectual life of Russia as well as the influx of the greatest Russian thinkers into the intellectual life of Europe cannot be overestimated. Among the hundred exiles were Nicholas Berdyav, Sergei Bulgakov, Sergei Troubetskoy, Ivan Ilyin, Nicholas Lossky, Mikhail Osorgin, Abram Kagan, Yuri Aikhenvald, Pitirim Sorokin, Lev Karsavin, Semyon Frank, Fedor Stepun… the best minds that Russia had to offer were now being thrust into the middle of the European intellectual life. And in spite of the extraordinary hardships experienced by the new immigrants, they have become a catalyst of the intellectual and spiritual renaissance of Russian philosophy and Orthodoxy in the West. Having found themselves in the world of true free speech and intellectual freedom, the great exiles set about to form discussion societies, publish papers and journals, establish groups such as Sophia Society and the Russian Students’ Christian Movement, and eventually establish one of the greatest Orthodox theological schools of the twentieth century, Saint Sergius Theological Institute in Paris. The malevolent act of the Soviet regime that has beheaded and impoverished the intellectual life of Russia had, by God’s providence, enriched and inspired the intellectual life of the rest of the world.