The Return of Russian Philosophy
1994; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 35; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2753/rss1061-1428350215
ISSN1557-7848
Autores Tópico(s)Philosophical and Historical Studies
ResumoIn order to understand what happened to Russian philosophy in our country, let us perform a thought experiment: let us imagine that the same thing happened to Russian literature. That is, that we were left with only "revolutionary democrats" and the writers in agreement with them—the materialist atheists. To keep the experiment pure and simple, let us take only the greatest names. Thus we will publish, esteem, and study only "progressive" writers in the above sense. Only two writers would perhaps remain: Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin and Nikolai Nekrasov, and even with these two we would be stretching the point a bit—Shchedrin is after all the author of Provincial Sketches [Gubernskie ocherki] and Nekrasov is the author of Vlas, in which there is so much love for holy Rus' with its God's fools [iurodivye] and its beggars. Now let us look at whom we would leave out, whom we would not publish or study. First, of course, there are Tolstoi and Dostoevskii; their religiosity leaves not the slightest doubt. (Not very many people know that in 1928, on the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Lev Tolstoi, in Moscow the state publishing house "Atheist" published a book under the title Lev Tolstoi as the Pillar and Bulwark of Priestly Rule [Lev Tolstoi kak stolp i utverzhdenie popovshchiny], with the touching subtitle A Collection of Useful Materials [Sbornik poleznykh materialov] [intended, of course, for "agitators, propagandists, and leaders"]. The book was published in a huge run for that time—10,000 copies—but, alas, it soon landed in the special archives, not because of its title—believe me, the title was quite in the spirit of the times—but because, in addition to leading articles by Rosa Luxemburg and Liubov' Axel'rod, a leading article by Lev Trotskii was also included. But that is just an aside.)
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