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By Milena Faustova
Nikolai Berdyaev was one of the most prominent figures of the "Russian cultural Renaissance" of the early 20th century and later a leading philosopher of the Russian emigration. "Professional philosophers appeared in Russia in the 19th century. But it was thanks to Berdyaev that Russia had contributed new ideas to world philosophy. On the whole the beginning of the 20th century introduced qualitative changes into world philosophy. The period when whole systems offered a detailed analysis of every aspect of being was over. The new epoch put mankind to the test. It had in store the growth of violence and social aggression, the increasing dissonance between people and the environment, the fear of overpopulation, and mass neurasthenia with an epidemic of suicides.
Philosophy was expected to produce new methods of cognition. Such methods were offered by existentialism, a teaching that was concerned with intuition and an understanding of universal being through individual being. Berdyaev's was an existentialistic attitude. He comprehended the tragic reality of the world through the drama of his own life. He appeared in Russia in "the time of troubles". And this was no accident.
Nikolai Berdyav's life was crowded with events. In czarist Russia he was a member of clandestine groups and took part in legal disputes in St. Petersburg. He made a rapturous tour of Italian monasteries and closely observed life in the Russian provinces. He had contacts with religious sectarians and anarchists, and in 1918 organized a Free Academy of religious culture and was Professor at Moscow University. In 1922, after a short time in prison, Berdyaev was driven out of Soviet Russia, leaving the country aboard the so-called "philosophical ship", which took to exile the cream of Russian intelligentsia. He died in France in 1948.
Berdyav wrote dozens of brilliant, passionate, polemical books. Even their titles speak volumes: "Philosophy of Freedom", "The Meaning of Creative Work", "Philosophy of Inequality", "The Russian Idea", "About Slavery and Human Freedom". Though he addressed a great number of subjects, Berdyaev had one that remained central to his work in different periods of his life. "Individuality and freedom have remained my subjects all my life," he wrote in his memoirs.
Western scholars have always believed that Berdyaev was concerned with the Orthodox Church more than any other Russian philosopher. Yet his attitude to religion, for this matter to Orthodoxy, was never simple.
"Berdyaev might repeat the words uttered once by Fyodor Dostoevsky, who said that God tormented him all his life," says Doctor of Philosophy Alexei Pavlov. In one of his books Berdyaev insisted: "If God is present in every ill deed and suffering, in war and torture, in plague and cholera, then one cannot believe in God, then a mutiny against God is justified." This made Berdyaev create a theory of justifying God. Seeking to preserve the idea of God for people, he relieved God of all responsibility for the evil existing in the world.
Berdyaev understood and accepted Christianity only as a religion where God exists for the sake of human beings, where man is a spiritually independent creature, where there was no room for the fear of God, for punishment for sins, for the idea of hell and Doomsday. The creative parity of God and Man was central to his Christianity.
Thinking of the future, Berdyaev believed that man alone could decide the fate of the world, and change it for the better. Now, on the threshold of the third millennium, it remains to be seen if mankind will live up to this belief of the Russian thinker Nikolai Berdyaev.
 
 


MOSCOW'S BRONZE SYMBOLS

April 18, International Day of Monuments and Historical Sites

 

By Olga Rusanova
The Kremlin, Red Square, St. Basil's Cathedral. In front of the famous cathedral with its motley "onions" stands a monument to Minin and Pozharsky, heroes of the liberation struggle of the Russian people against foreign invaders in 1612. This sculptural composition of Ivan Martos is one of Moscow's symbols. It has gone down in history not only for its artistic merits but also as Moscow's first sculptural monument. The public made a great effort to see the monument erected in 1818. Though the money was raised by Minin's fellow countrymen, residents of the city of Nizhny Novgorod on the Volga River, and Alexander I ordered the monument erected there, the sculptor insisted that it belonged in the center of Moscow. After the monument was cast in bronze in St. Petersburg, it was first taken to Nizhny Novgorod in a sign of gratitude to its residents. Newspapers wrote: "It defies description how delighted the residents of the city and the area were to see the famous monument."
In February 1818 the monument arrived in Moscow. The city held a real celebration with a parade of the guard. The monument was unveiled to the sound of drumming. "The ceremony," newspapers wrote, "drew in big crowds. All the stores, roofs, and the Kremlin towers were covered with people eager to relish the new and extraordinary sight."
The interest in monuments remains keen to this day. The famous monument to Moscow's founder Yuri Dolgoruky, another symbol of the city, was erected in 1954 on the occasion of Moscow's 800th anniversary. When the equestrian statue of Yuri Dolgoruky was being unveiled in front of a large gathering, someone is said to shout out "It doesn't look like him!", which was a joke, of course, since not a single image of Prince Yuri Dolgoruky, who lived in the 12th century, survived to that day.
One of the latest monuments in the city center is the huge statue of Peter the Great across the recently restored Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Passions were running high around this statue.
"The public took a firm stand against the statue," says historian Alexei Anikin. "Indeed, it was illogical to erect a monument to Peter the Great, who was known to dislike Moscow, a city that hatched plots against him. When St. Petersburg was built, the czar moved the capital there. Besides, the work of sculptor Zurab Tsereteli itself prompts debate. Sure, Tsereteli is a talented sculptor but his manner appears to be excessive and ostentatiously decorative, which is at variance with Moscow's tradition."
The famous monument to Alexander Pushkin, created by sculptor Alexander Opekushin became a favorite with the Muscovites at once and for good. The monument stands in the center of Moscow, on Pushkin square, a place of romantic dates and business appointments, a place where politicians hold rallies and lovers of poetry improvised readings. The ceremony of unveiling the monument in 1880, 43 years after the poet's death, developed into a popular festival.
"All the festivities on June 6-8, 1880, were intentionally unofficial," the historian Alexei Anikin says. "The public wanted them this way. The money for the monument had been raised by the public. The society of lovers of Russian literature held open readings with the great writers Dostoevsky, Turgenev, and Ostrovsky speaking. According to contemporaries, Dostoevsky's address produced a tremendous impression: "There has been no other poet with such universal responsiveness… Pushkin had the ability to transform his spirit into the spirit of other nations. That's where his national Russian power was expressed at its strongest. This power was expressed by the national character of his poetry, and it was expressed prophetically. What is the force of the Russian national character, if not a drive to embrace the entire world, the entire humanity?"
Then, nearly 120 years ago, Moscow was rejoicing. According to playwright Alexander Ostrovsky, "people can rejoice like that only when one's deserts are appreciated, when justice prevails." Greetings on the occasion came from the French writer Viktor Hugo, the English poet Tennison, and many other literary figures of the world.
"Monuments to leaders and events live for centuries. It's a rare case when an undistinguished monument goes to the scrap heap. Such a monument will show the poor taste of the people who created it and, which is much worse, it tells lies of its epoch," the talented sculptor Nikolai Andreev, the author of the monuments to Gogol and Ostrovsky in Moscow, said in the early 1930s. Apparently, Andreev meant the numerous monuments and busts to Lenin and other revolutionaries, which at the time mushroomed across the Soviet Union.
"Hardly any other country has had so many monuments to leaders," historian Alexei Anikin says. "That was no accident. One of the first decrees signed by Lenin after he took office in 1917, was a decree on monumental propaganda. The task was to urgently change the appearance of cities and materialize the new ideology. In those years plans were drawn up for a series of monuments, many of which were later erected. Today the once famous monuments to Dzerzhinsky, Kalinin and Sverdlov, which stood in Moscow's central streets and squares, can now be found in Moscow's Park of the Arts. They symbolize a change in people's attitude toward the authorities. The outstanding Russian sculptor Nikolai Tomsky said once: "The language of sculpture is easy to understand for people of all times, countries and continents. Sculpture can justly be called the science of humans."
 
 

 
 
 
 

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