Abstract
Merezhkovsky emerged from the Revolution of 1905 an advocate of a Religious Revolution which would solve all personal and social problems by inaugurating, literally, the Millennium. Between 1905 and 1917, repudiating many of his previous convictions, he advocated social didacticism in art and a “propaganda of the deed.”1 Social apocalyptism became the most prominent feature of his new views.
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References
Merezhkovsky did not actually use the term, but his discussion of action is reminiscent of the “propaganda of the deed” philosophy characteristic of European anarchism after 1905. See Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower (New York, 1972), Chapter 2.
As quoted by B. Meilakh, “Simvolisty v 1905 gody”, Literaturnoe Nasledstvo (Moscow, 1937), XXVII-XXVIII, 171. The statement is from a letter from Merezhkovsky to Minsky’s wife in which he lamented the “senseless destruction of everything.”
Benois, II, 226.
Ibid., Benois was critical of the “amateurishness and lack of seriousness” he found in Merezhkovsky’s politics.
Donald Lowrie, Rebellious Prophet: A Life of Nicholas Berdyaev (New York, 1960), p. 89. Lowrie’s own source is Madame Kuskova.
V. Chukovsky, “O Merezhkovskom, Nekrasove, i o politike v’ iskusstve”, Apollon, 1913: 2 no. 7 (July), p. 50 gives an extremely jaundiced view of Merezhkovsky’s new politics as the diversion of a man with nothing else to do. V. Ellis, “O sovremennom simvolizme”, Vesy, 1909, no. 1 (Jan.), p. 81, says “He wants to act in order not to be alone”.
A comment on the cost of furnishing this apartment is the only time Hippius ever mentions finances in describing their life before 1917. (Hippius, Dmitri Merezhkovsky, p. 154). Merezhkovsky, however, did speak of the “ache of penury” in comparing Dostoevsky with Tolstoi.
Benois, II p. 226. See also Pachmuss, Zinaida Hippius, pp. 135-37 and 169-70.
“Peripheral circle” refers to Hippius’s scheme for concentric circles of threes radiating out from her own “three” which would be the center. The purpose was to prevent the elimination of individuality by a monolithic whole; the idea was that each “three” would have its own “personality”.
Pachmuss, Zinaida Hippius, pp. 147, 169.
Merezhkovsky, “Prorok russkoi revoliutsii”, in Griadushchii Kham PSS XIV, 189.
Griadushchii Kham, pp. 8-11.
“Prorok”, p. 192.
Ibid., p. 222.
Merezhkovsky, Dostoevsky prorok russkoi revoliutsii (St. Petersburg, 1906), p. 151. The passage in PSS is somewhat desexed; see XIV, 233-34. It also appears in Lev Tolstoi XII, 48-49.
Merezhkovsky, “Predislovie k odnoi knige”, Ne mir, pp. 162-166, see especially p. 163.
Ibid., p. 165. Bely comments that while in France, Merezhkovsky told Jean Jaures, the socialist leader, that Europeans are only human whereas Russians are either beasts or gods. See Mezhdu, p. 164.
Ne mir, p. 28. For an interesting discussion of the image of woman in Russian Orthodoxy see Billington, “The Missing Madonna”, in The Icon and the Axe, pp. 346-50.
Dve tainy, p. 24, Bol’naia Rossiia PSS XV, 19, Bylo, i budet., p. 321.
Bylo i budet, pp. 222-24.
Ibid., p. 97.
Bol’naia, p. 18.
Merezhkovsky, “Umytyia ruki”, Vesy, 1905, no. 9-10 (Sept.-Oct.) pp. 50–57. He also claimed the absence of social suffering makes personal suffering worse by comparison; see p. 54.
Dve tainy, pp. 78-81.
Ne mir, p. 147. See also pp. 36-42 and Griadushchii, pp. 119-20.
Griadushchii, pp. 171-72.
Ibid., pp. 21-22.
V tikhom omute, pp. 148-55. Having revised his estimation of Tolstoi, Merezhkovsky now considered him a genius. According to Merezhkovsky, a genius sees only one thing and ignores all else. Tolstoi saw the approaching Apocalypse; he ignored the need for political activity because he was at the eye of the storm where it was peaceful and quiet. Tolstoi’s ultimate aim, however, was to liberate man from political and social repression. For both his own sake and that of humanity, Merezhkovsky added, Tolstoi needed to liberate himself from his own asceticism.
Temira Pachmuss, “Perepiska Z.N. Gippius i B. V. Savinkovym”, Vozdushnye puti: Almanakh V ed. R. N. Grinberg (New York, 1967), pp. 161–67. The statement on weaning Savinkov away from terror is on p. 161. Hippius claims she first became interested in Savinkov when she became aware of the problem posed by the use of force. See also Z. Gippius, “Varshavskii dnevnik”, in Vozrozhdenie no. 216 (Dec. 1969), p. 28.
“Prorok russkoi revoliutsii”, p. 219.
Bol’naia, p. 183.
Ibid.
Ibid., pp. 26-27.
Ibid., pp. 24, 30.
Ibid., p. 27.
Ibid., p. 76.
Ibid., pp. 27-28.
Ibid., pp. 22-23.
Ibid., p. 31.
Peter Struve, “Velikaia Rossiia”, in Patriotica (St. Petersburg, 1911), pp. 73–96. See also his follow-up essay, “Otryvki o gosudarstve”, pp. 97-108.
Struve, “Otryvki”, pp. 99-101.
Merezhkovsky, “Krasnaia shapochka”, in V tikhom omute pp. 50-56, especially pp. 51-53. On p. 53, Merezhkovsky compared Struve’s conception of the state to a Leviathan who devours living men. See also Merezhkovsky’s “Eshche o ‘Velikoi Rossii’”, in V tikhom omute, pp. 57-65, especially p. 64.
Ibid.
“Krasnaia shapochka”, p. 53.
Bylo i budet, pp. 265-267. See also Hippius’ letter to Russkaia Mysl’ (Struve was the editor) no. 5-6 (1914), pp. 132-35 and Struve’s answer, pp. 136-40, especially p. 137. Hippius’ letter was a reaction to a previous article by Struve (Russkaia Mysl’ nos. 3-4, 1914, pp. 104-18) “Pochemu zastoialas nasha dukhovnaia zhizn’” (All page references are second pagination).
V tikhom omute, p. 43.
Ibid., pp. 62-63.
Ibid., pp. 53, 63.
See Terence Emmons, “The Beseda Circle” in Slavic Review vol. 32, no. 3 (Sept. 1973), pp. 461–490; Shmuel Galai, The Liberation Movement in Russia 1900-1905 (Cambridge, Eng. 1973), and G. Hoskins, The Russian Constitutional Experiment (Cambridge, Eng., 1973), for more on gentry activism and political developments.
Merezhkovsky, “Khristianstvo i gosudarstvo”, in V tikhom omute, pp. 94–103, especially pp. 96, 98-99, 100-101.
V tikhom omute, pp. 63-65.
Peter Struve, “Spor s Merezhkovskim”, in Patriotica, pp. 109-27, especially, pp. 115, 116, 117. See also “Neskol’ko slov o D. S. Merezhkovskom”, pp. 439-42, especially p. 442.
Peter Struve, “Kto iz nas ‘maksimalist’?” Patriotica, pp. 119-27, especially, pp. 121, 123-27. See also his “Bor’ba za vera i bor’ba za dogmat’ ”, pp. 441-42.
Struve, “Pochemu”, pp. 113-117.
Nicholas Berdiaev, Dukhovnyi krizis intelligentsii (St. Petersburg, 1910), p. 112. See p. 62 for his criticism of those devoid of spiritual culture, half-educated, and in an almost complete break with universal tradition, devoid of any religious consciousness of the meaning of life. It could have been written by Merezhkovsky; both attacked those “educated in the spirit of nihilism”.
V tikhom, p. 36.
Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation” and “Science as a Vocation” both printed in entirety in Gerth and Mills, ed. From Max Weber (New York, 1970).
V tikhom, p. 35.
Ibid.
Ne mir, p. 22.
Griadushchii Kham, p. 137.
Bol’naia, pp. 65-66.
Ne mir, pp. 41-50.
Ibid., p. 30; see also, p. 69.
Griadushchii, p. 34.
Ibid., pp. 26-27.
Ibid., p. 38.
Ne mir, pp. 95-96. This is a reference to Merezhkovsky’s belief in the religious origins of political authority. According to him, the monarch, originally considered the son of God, had both temporal and spiritual functions. As late as 1900, Merezhkovsky defended Autocracy as a religious conception, the visible symbol of the unity of the world. Only in 1905 did he begin to argue that Autocracy is a perversion of religion. He traced the present differences in East and West to the divergent developments from the Caesaropapist unity of Ancient Rome. In the West, he argued, authority was polarized early into church and state. As the Roman Empire declined, the church itself became a state; the Papacy succumbed to the temptation of power, became materialistic, and lost its spirituality. But Western personal freedom developed as a result of the conflict between church and state. In Russia, however, the opposite process occurred; the state absorbed the church. Orthodoxy became “the religion of the state”; it lost its Christian spirit. See Ne mir, pp. 39-40 and Griadushchii, pp. 122-24. A catechism prepared for school use in 1895 by the Holy Synod contained the following item: Q. Why should we especially respect the Tsar above all others? A. Because he is the father of the whole people and the Anointed of God. As quoted by John Curtiss, Church and State in Russia (New York, 1940), pp. 186-87.
Ne mir, p. 96.
Iliodor was the editor of Pochaevskii Listok (Pochaev Leaflet) published by an organ of the local branch of the Union of the Russian People. Though rebuked by the Synod in 1907, he continued to publish his vicious tirades in which he blamed the Jews for the pogroms. In 1911, he was deprived of his diocese. See Curtiss, pp. 255-56, 264, 338.
Bylo i budet, pp. 188-89.
Ne mir, pp. 66-67; Griadushchii, pp. 227-28.
Merezhkovsky, “Bor’ba za dogmat’” in Bol’naia, pp. 102-107, especially pp. 102-103.
Griadushchii, p. 134. Actually, Merezhkovsky wavered between seeking scriptural proof and devising his own prophesies.
Struve, Russkaia Mysl’ 1914, no. 3, p. 117; 1914, no. 5 “Religiia i obshchestvennost’: otvet’ Z. N. Gippius,” pp. 136-40, especially 137-38.
Bol’naia, pp. 107-108.
Struve, “Religiia”, pp. 138-40.
For more on Vekhi see Treadgold, The West in Russia, pp. 234-38 and Zernov, pp. 111-30.
Merezhkovsky, “Sem’ smirennykh”, Bol’naia, pp. 71-73.
V tikhom, pp. 101-103.
Bol’naia, pp. 75-76. 83 Griadushchii, p. 39.
Merezhkovsky, Zavef Belinskogo (Petrograd, cl916), pp. 42-43.
Pachmuss, Zinaida Hippius, p. 168.
V tikhom, p. 93. Note the play on words.
Zapiski Peterburgskago Religiozno Filosofskago Obshchestva: (Petrograd, 1916), pp. 8-11.
Bol’naia, p. 178.
Bylo i budet, p. 308; see also pp. 67-68.
Ibid., pp. 65-69. Because Goethe lacked a sense of the apocalyptic, Merezh-kovsky no longer considered him a Christian.
Ne mir, pp. 53-54.
Zapiski (1916), p. 13. See p. 9 for his description of the Germans as barbarians. A similar statement occurs in Griadushchii p. 209. For Trubetskoi’s views see Hoskins, p. 223.
V tikhom omute, pp. 122, 130-35.
Ne mir, p. 35. See also Jesus Manifest for his conviction that Christianity completely transforms the world, cleaves and unites earth and heaven, turns the whole world upside down, and reverses everything.
Ibid., “The Church of Christ Who is to come is that of the sword”.
Bylo i budet, pp. 24-26.
Bol’naia, p. 100. (This was in a critique of the “mystical anarchists”).
Florovsky, pp. 490-96.
Isaac Deutscher, Stalin (New York, 1971), pp. 269–72, 278.
Nicholas Berdyaev, The Origins of Russian Communism, (London, 1937).
Karl Marx’ most famous statement on religion as the “opium of the people” appears in his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. It is quite clear that to Marx, religion is a response to suffering and that while religion is an illusion, the suffering is real. See Richard Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader, (New York, 1872), p. 12. For Freud’s views on religion see The Future of an Illusion ed. J. Strachey (New York, 1964).
See, for example, Lewis Feuer, The Conflict of Generations: A History of Student Movements (New York, 1969).
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© 1975 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Rosenthal, B.G. (1975). The Religious Revolution. In: Dmitri Sergeevich Merezhkovsky and the Silver Age. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-9036-7_8
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