Anna Ochkina
Translated by Dan Erdman
This year marks a century since the departure of the famous “philosophers’ steamboat” from Soviet Russia. It’s the a collective name for the passenger ships that, in September and November 1922, took 228 or 272 (according to various sources) members of the opposition intelligentsia away from the former Russian Empire, now under Bolshevik rule. Among the exiles were philosophers Sergei Bulgakov and Nikolai Berdyaev, sociologist Pitirim Sorokin, scientist and mechanic Vladimir Zworykin, philosopher, poet and historian Lev Karsavin, literary critic and historian Nestor Kotlyarevsky, lawyer and publicist Ilya Yurievich and many, many others.
In the 1990s, the media in various ways used the philosophers’ ship as evidence for a some kind of mystical communist hatred of the enlightenment and for the intelligentsia. The fact that the Bolshevik leadership itself was full of intellectuals, and that all the prime movers of the Revolution were highly educated people, did not convince anyone; in the 1990s, it was customary to hate the Bolsheviks. Today the Bolsheviks are still dishonored, despite the desperate attempts of the authorities to make nostalgia for the USSR part of the ideology. But this is a nostalgia for the empire, for monarchical stability, for crowned grandeur, and the Bolsheviks are in no way compatible with any this. Indeed, they would be hostile to it.
The philosophers’ steamboat is not particularly well-remembered today, despite its anniversary. Probably, the presidential administration whispered to the producers of the news-product (for what is now being given in the Russian media cannot be described with the honest and simple word “news”) that they do not wish to bring up unpleasant memories, or to recall the exodus of the intelligentsia a hundred years ago against the backdrop of today’s weekly announcements of new “foreign agents” and mass emigration. The legal status of a foreign agent in Russia today is simply a means to mark dissenters, and at the same time a very transparent and forceful hint to them that it is time to leave Russia. The government has made it very clear to everyone who has the audacity to offer anything less than blind support: if a person decides to openly criticize state policy, sooner or later he will have to choose between prison and departure (in modern Russia called “relocation” and not emigration).
It’s funny that, of all the passengers of the philosophers’ ship, Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin, a philosopher of extreme right views, a convinced imperialist, nationalist and monarchist, is the one most often remembered today. Wikipedia even says that Ilyin is considered to be one of the ideological heroes of the President of Russia. Indeed, Vladimir Putin has often quoted Ilyin in his speeches and, by his own admission, has read the philosopher’s book Why Does the World Seek the Dismemberment of Russia? more than once. At least President Putin has not quoted Ilyin’s speeches praising Hitler.
History is the greatest playwright, although sometimes maliciously ironic. The descendants of those who overthrew the monarchy and defeated fascism revere and quote a dedicated monarchist who was the author of the following words: “First of all, I categorically refuse to regard the events of the last three months in Germany from the point of view of German Jews, now curtailed in their public legal capacity, in connection with which they have suffered materially or even left the country. I understand their state of mind; but I cannot turn it into a criterion of good and evil, especially when evaluating and studying such phenomena of world significance as German National Socialism ... What did Hitler do? He stopped the process of Bolshevization in Germany and rendered by this the greatest service to all of Europe... While Mussolini leads Italy and Hitler leads Germany, European culture is given a reprieve... And the European peoples must understand that Bolshevism is a real and fierce danger; that democracy is a creative dead end; that Marxist socialism is a doomed chimera; that a new war is beyond Europe’s strength - neither spiritually nor materially, and that only a national upsurge, which will dictatorially and creatively take on the ‘social’ aspect of the social question, can save the cause in each country.”
Historical dramaturgy does not end with this sad curiosity. The same years in which the philosophers’ ship set sail saw the birth of a generation of those who, on the ruins of Stalinism, would nurture the Soviet cultural Renaissance. I’m talking about the generation of the sixties - Soviet poets, philosophers, film and theater directors, art critics, writers, historians, and simple provincial intellectuals who, feeling the spirit of freedom, began to create the culture of a liberated (forever, as they believed) country. This arose after the 20th Congress of the Communist Party, which exposed and condemned the personality cult of Joseph Stalin.
The 1960s were years of great hope in the Soviet Union. Hopes for cleansing the communist idea of despotism, hopes for the restoration of the rule of law, hopes for democracy and prosperity. All films, books, poems, plays, philosophical debates, and dinner conversations were saturated with these hopes. These hopes created an amazing Soviet culture, combining the ideals of communism and humanism, and rethinking all the achievements of Russian and world culture. That culture lived and renewed itself until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991; now it lives in works of art and in the memory of those who know these works.
But hopes died even then, in the 1960s. You can even give a specific date for the death of these hopes – the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia on August 21, 1968. The era of the sixties generation is over, its finitude and suitability for Soviet history well described by the name of this period given to it by the writer Ilya Ehrenburg: “Thaw”.
The poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko wrote a poetic epitaph on the death of the hopes of the sixties and ended it with these words:
Before I die,
no matter what they call me,
I turn to my offspring
with just one request.
Over me – without sobbing
just write, in truth:
“Russian writer. Crushed by
Russian tanks in Prague”
Indeed, most of the hopes and aspirations of the generation of the sixties were crushed by Soviet tanks in Czechoslovakia. As another poet, Alexander Galich, wrote: “Citizens, the Fatherland is in danger! Our tanks are in a foreign land!”
On August 25, 1968, eight people went to Red Square to protest against the intervention in the fraternal republic. One of the banners read: “For your freedom and ours!” Most of the participants in this famous picket were arrested; six of them left the USSR in the 1970s and never returned. But on the day of their small picket, Soviet dissident was born. There was no hope, but resistance gave the strength to continue.
The dissidents’ favorite toast: “To our hopeless cause!”
Another irony of history: in the days of the thaw, another generation was born, later named by the political scientist Vladimir Pastukhov the “perestroika generation.” Indeed, for people born between 1955-1970, Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika became a life-shaping event. It seemed to have revived the hopes of the generation of the sixties, including dissidents, and it seems to have revived something, but not quite in the same way. The return to true communism and socialism - “with a human face” - was discussed only at the very beginning; by the end of perestroika, democracy, of the sort found in normal (read: Western) countries, became the idol of the crowd. The heroes of perestroika were the liberals, who drew the legendary representatives of the 1960s into their ranks.
During this era, the heroes of the thaw often spoke from openly anti-communist positions. The answer to the question of how the generation of the sixties turned from ideological communists into ideological anti-communists seems to be very simple: they were disappointed. The events of the 1960s and 70s gradually led our heroes to the conclusion that the struggle to return to Leninist principles did not produce the expected systemic result. Rhetoric may have returned, but to move the bureaucratic colossus, to deploy a passive society that did not understand democracy turned out to be impossible through cultural revival alone. In addition, behind the mythical great Bolsheviks, under the pressure of facts, real people began to appear, who, naturally, turned out not to be ideal heroes. This is understandable - they dealt with real politics, made difficult decisions in difficult, sometimes unbearable, circumstances.
In many ways, the Bolsheviks were political pioneers and innovators. But instead of following the path of studying the circumstances, conditions, and social processes within which the initial ideas were applied, the generation of the sixties, true to their idealism, came to the conclusion that the initial ideas were vicious. Moreover, the ideas were evaluated not as right or wrong, adequate to reality or not, but as belonging to the categories of good and evil. And again, further declarations, slogans, than ideas were evaluated.
Many of people born in the sixties came to perestroika already as anti-communists. Nevertheless, perestroika gave rise to many hopes. First of all, for democratic development, for overcoming the economic impasse, for the revival of creative potential, even for the humanization of the state. There were also more utilitarian hopes: for the rehabilitation of free enterprise, for satisfying the appetites of the Soviet consumer, frustrated by the eternal shortage of goods, for the fall of the “Iron Curtain.”
It must be said that the most utilitarian hopes came true. After the collapse of the USSR, Russia began to build capitalism, private ownership of the means of production returned, shops were filled with a variety of goods, and it became possible to travel abroad. True, the consumer debt of Russians are growing year by year, the average salary even now is less than $1000 a month (and the median salary does not reach $400), the economy is monopolized and corrupted, medium and small businesses are crushed by taxes and dependent on the central and regional authorities. The high cost of housing is dragging more and more families into mortgage slavery, and almost 70% of Russians have never been abroad. And yet people continue to pursue personal well-being, refusing to believe that this race is hopeless and that, somehow, they might reach a more or less happy ending. This race, however, is not an easy one, which is also reflected in Russian demographic statistics. In 2021, for example, male life expectancy was just 65.5 years, just half a year over retirement age.
The vigorous pursuit of well-being continues to shorten our lives in one way or another, but in Russian society there is still the illusion that material comfort and individual well-being are possible. Or rather, there is confidence that this is possible for some other, more fortunate citizens.
But the hope for humanization and democratization, even among those who are ardent supporters of the authorities - these hopes are definitely dead. And this death, it seems to me, also has a specific date: October 3-4, 1993. On this day, the conflict between the first Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, and the parliament, the Supreme Council, tragically ended. On these days, the chambers of the Supreme Council were wracked with cannon fire, on the orders of Yeltsin, and in full view of citizens. Of course, perestroika officially ended with the collapse of the USSR, but hopes were still alive: for parliamentary democracy, civil society, and the rule of law. The artillery fire aimed at the Supreme Council dealt with these timid hopes in a couple of days. I cannot say that such expectations cannot be born again, but they will already be the hopes of another era.
And today’s Russia is extremely poor in hopes. The 2000s, especially the years 2006-2010, gave rise to new hopes, this time for stability. It began to seem to citizens that a new social contract had been drawn up, providing some kind of social security under certain conditions: political neutrality, loyalty to the authorities, low political and civic activity. But then February 24, 2022 came. “Citizens, the Fatherland is in danger! Our tanks are in a foreign land!” The generations born between 1985 and 2000 who grew up with signs of stability and relative prosperity, generations that worship individual freedom, the internet, and the right to choose, are faced with a situation in which all these values may disappear.
Maybe this generation will be able to nourish the only hope - to survive.
History is a great playwright, but ruthless to its characters. The passengers of the philosophers’ ship and the leaders of October were about the same age, the camps of opponents and supporters of the revolution sprang from the same generations. And everyone had hopes, of course, for the glory of Russia. The exiles considered their hopes dashed, as the Bolsheviks considered theirs accomplished. However, in the end, the aspirations of the revolutionary October were to be betrayed. Both the thaw and perestroika seemed to contemporaries a great chance, but each left only a bitter aftertaste: “It didn’t work out.” And now, children who did not understand the horror of the gangsters and beggars of the 1990s, who entered this world in an era of relative satiety, faced the prospect of dying in an unnecessary criminal war.
It seems to me that in Russia there is only one generation that was not disappointed - those who were born during and immediately after the Second World War. They were too young to take part in the sixties, and in the seventies they quickly realized that social activity was fraught with trouble. But economic growth has brought them the opportunity to create a small world of their own; modest, perhaps, but their own and under control. In this generation, the most distinct, most passionate desire was the desire to never go hungry again. So far, our story has not disappointed them. Maybe at least this hope will come true? Will there be at least one exception in a series of disappointed generations of Russian history?
Who knows? History is a big joker and does not shy away from dark humor.