George M. Young - The Russian Cosmists

The Russian Cosmists

The Esoteric Futurism of Nikolai
Fedorov and His Followers

GEORGE M. YOUNG

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Young, George M.
The Russian cosmists : the esoteric futurism of Nikolai Fedorov and his followers / George M. Young.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-989294-5 (hardcover : alkaline paper)ISBN 978-0-19-989295-2 (ebook)
1. Philosophy, RussianHistory. 2. CosmologyPhilosophy. 3. Fedorov, Nikolai Fedorovich, 18281903.
4. PhilosophersRussia. 5. PhilosophersSoviet Union. I. Title.
B4235.C6Y68 2012
197dc23 2011041924

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper

THIS STUDY BEGAN some years ago, in 1964, in a Yale graduate school seminar on Dostoevsky taught by Robert Louis Jackson. As I recall, ten or twelve of us were in the seminar, and early in the term Professor Jackson gave us a list of some ten or twelve topics for weekly reports. We chose by our order in the class roll, and I watched in dismay as one after another all the best Dostoevsky-and topics were chosen: Bakhtin, Vyacheslav Ivanov, the Elder Amvrosy, Dickens, Pushkin, Images of Childhood, the Ideal of Beauty. When the choice reached me, as last in the alphabet, two topics were left, neither of which I had ever heard of. So, having no idea what I was in for, I chose Nikolai Fedorov. The first information I found about him came from a footnote to Dolinins edition of Dostoevskys letters, and reading that footnote again and again I began to think to myself: this is a big idea! When the week for my report came, I gave it and have been thinking and writing about Fedorov and topics related to him since.

This study presents several corrections and a great many updates, and is an adventurous outgrowth of my 1979 book, Nikolai Fedorov: An Introduction. When I wrote that work, I was not a proponent of Fedorovs teachings but admired the strength and boldness of his philosophical imagination. Over the years, my attitude to Fedorovs ideas has not changed significantly, and in writing the present book I find that I view the thoughts of most of the other Cosmists much in the same way I view Fedorovs: hugely fascinating, inspiring, stimulating, but not ideas I would insist that friends and readers drop everything to live by. Mental health warning: fascinating as they are, at least to me, all the Cosmists were and are highly controversialsome would say even kookythinkers, recommended for mature audiences only.

In mechanical matters, the translations are mine unless otherwise noted. In the notes and bibliography I have used a standard system of transliteration, but in the body of the text I have used familiar English spellings rather than consistent transliterations for certain Russian words and names. In quoting other commentary in English, I have used that authors spelling of Russian names instead of changing them to be consistent with my spellings.

Over the years, many people, some no longer alive, have supported and helped my writing in general and my work on Fedorov and the Cosmists in particular. I would like to express my gratitude to all of them, but will mention only a few teachers, colleagues, friends, and editors: Gale Carrithers, William Blackburn, Reynolds Price, Fred Chappell, Wallace Kaufman, Robert Louis Jackson, Victor Erlich, Richard Gustafson, Rene Wellek, Michael Holquist, John Dunlop, Gordon Livermore, George Zimmar, George L. Kline, William F. Buckley, Jeffrey Hart, Peter Jarotski, Walter Arndt, Robert Siegel, James Tatum, Charles Stinson, Anouar Majid, Matthew Anderson, Susan McHugh, Lee Irwin, Maria Carlson, Kristi Groberg, Bernice Rosenthal, Betty Bland, Richard Smoley, John Algeo, David London, Svetlana Semenova, Anastasia Gacheva, Valery Borisov, Julie Scott, Steven Armstrong, Cynthia Read, and Ben Sadock. I am grateful to the University of New England librarians for help in research, and to the Center for Global Humanities of the University of New England for generous financial assistance to complete research and writing. Most important of all to me over these many years has been the love and support of my wife Patricia, son Roy, daughter Susannah, and son-in-law Patrick. Always in my mind, I wish to dedicate this book to the memory of my parents, George and Mary Ella Young, and my sister Patricia Pryor.

The Russian Cosmists

There is that in the Russian soul which corresponds to the immensity, the vagueness, the infinitude of the Russian land, spiritual geography corresponds with physical. Two contradictory principles lay at the foundation of the structure of the Russian soul, the one a natural, Dionysian, elemental paganism and the other ascetic monastic Orthodoxy. The mutually contradictory properties of the Russian people may be set out thus: despotism, the hypertrophy of the State, and on the other hand anarchism and licence: cruelty, a disposition to violence, and again kindliness, humanity and gentleness: a belief in rites and ceremonies, but also a quest for truth: individualism, a heightened consciousness of personality, together with an impersonal collectivism: nationalism, laudation of self, and universalism, the ideal of the universal man: an eschatological messianic spirit of religion, and a devotion which finds its expression in externals: a search for God, and a militant godlessness: humility and arrogance: slavery and revolt. But never has Russia been bourgeois.

NIKOLAI BERDYAEV, The Russian Idea

SINCE THE COLLAPSE of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian intellectuals have directed much of what Berdyaev describes as their traditional prodigious, contradictory, but creative mental energy toward bringing back into focusand finding new signs of vitality inwriters, artists, thinkers, and intellectual currents suppressed, degraded, or merely ignored during the Soviet period. One of the most vigorous and productive of these rediscovered intellectual tendencies is Russian Cosmism, a highly controversial and oxymoronic blend of activist speculation, futuristic traditionalism, religious science, exoteric esotericism, utopian pragmatism, idealistic materialismhigher magic partnered to higher mathematics.