Nikolai Berdyaev

Non-fiction

Project 1917 is a series of events that took place a hundred years ago as described by those involved. It is composed only of diaries, letters, memoirs, newspapers and other documents

Nikolai Berdyaev

Bol'shoy Vlasyevskiy Lane, 4, Moscow, Russian Republic

14.01.18

There were many violations and outrages against humanity committed in the old “bourgeois” world. Has the newly-minted world of “socialism” swept aside and overcome this old evil? No - it is committing a thousand more violations and outrages against humanity. The very idea of human freedom and sacred human rights is quite alien to this new world.

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Nikolai Berdyaev

Bol'shoy Vlasyevskiy Lane, 4, Moscow, Russian Republic

30.12.17

The Russian revolution has an anti-nationalistic character, and it has turned Russia into a bloodless corpse. Yet despite this anti-nationalistic character, the peculiarities of our nation, the “Russian style”, have significantly determined the course of this unhappy and destructive revolution. See more

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Nikolai Berdyaev

Bol'shoy Vlasyevskiy Lane, 4, Moscow, Russian Republic

29.10.17

The nation has brought itself to suicide. On these grounds not only the army (which is an inherently hierarchical body) is falling apart; the government is falling apart, culture is falling apart, every possible societal mode or structure is falling apart, the self is falling apart. See more

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Nikolai Berdyaev

Petrograd, Russian Republic

28.10.17

The traditional history of the Russian intelligentsia is over. It was in power, and there was hell on earth. Indeed, the Russian revolution has some great mission, but the mission is not creative, but negative - it must expose the lie and emptiness of some idea that the Russian intelligentsia was obsessed with and with which it poisoned the Russian people.

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Nikolai Berdyaev

Bol'shoy Vlasyevskiy Lane, 4, Moscow, Russian Republic

04.10.17

It must be loudly proclaimed that in revolutionary Russia the freedoms of speech, thought and the press are non-existent – that they exist to an even lesser degree than in the old autocratic Russia. The revolutionary democratic societal order demands a greater conformity of thought than the pre-revolutionary reactionary powers, which were too indifferent to every nuance of societal thought and incapable of making sense of it. See more

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Nikolai Berdyaev

Trushevа estate, Lyubotin station, Russian Empire

23.08.17

Socialism is not right for the Russian people and the Russian state; beggars can’t be choosers. There is some grain of truth in socialism, but at this historical hour I will stand for any party and any class that is built on patriotism and nationalism, that will save the motherland from destruction. See more

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Nikolai Berdyaev

Trushevа estate, Lyubotin station, Russian Empire

07.08.17

It is an ugly lie to bellow that the party of “people's freedom” is bourgeois in nature, that it defends the interests of the capitalists, that it contains the seed of the counter-revolution. This party could, truly and in accordance with actual reality, be accused of a degree of academism, of an over-reliance on external constitutional forms, of an inability to attract the broader masses, of a lack of strength and will. See more

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Nikolai Berdyaev

Bol'shoy Vlasyevskiy Lane, 4, Moscow, Russian Empire

16.07.17

There is nothing more horrible than a decaying war, a decaying army, and a multi-million army at that. The decay of the war and the army creates chaos and anarchy. Russia faces this type of chaos and anarchy.

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Nikolai Berdyaev

Bol'shoy Vlasyevskiy Lane, 4, Moscow, Russian Empire

15.07.17

We still have no genuine parties with realistic political programmes. The slogans used by the parties are entirely artificial, and it is not clear to whom they are addressed; they are not taken seriously by those who proclaim them. See more

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Nikolai Berdyaev

Bol'shoy Vlasyevskiy Lane, 4, Moscow, Russian Empire

13.07.17

I’m not a fan of Plekhanov, and his ideas are alien to me. But now I feel a great deal of respect for him and he touches me. He could be the most popular and glorified man in Russia, he is the long-time leader of Russian Social Democracy. To achieve this he would have had to become just a bit of a demagogue, to embark on the path of flattery and indulgence to mass instincts.

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Nikolai Berdyaev

Bol'shoy Vlasyevskiy Lane, 4, Moscow, Russian Empire

12.07.17

The specter of “counterrevolution” is being disgracefully misused. The manner in which this word is being applied in the left-socialist press, at public meetings, and at private debates, should be called nothing less than moral blackmail. It is the easiest way to silence an opponent and deprive him of his voice. “Counterrevolutionary” is now any opinion which its pronouncer dislikes.

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Nikolai Berdyaev

Bol'shoy Vlasyevskiy Lane, 4, Moscow, Russian Empire

17.06.17

Russia's isolation in the world cannot be allowed. It needs to have allies in Europe, and those allies could only be England and France. It needs to stay true to allies and to follow common goals. Only then will it really, and not dreamily, enter humanity, world culture, the extent of the world. Dreamy internationalism only pushes us into Asia and isolates us.

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Nikolai Berdyaev

Bol'shoy Vlasyevskiy Lane, 4, Moscow, Russian Empire

01.06.17

Russian Revolution is a tragicomedy. It is the final act of a Gogol epic. And perhaps the bleakest and most hopeless in it is what it took from Gogol. In whatever is in it from Dostoyevsky, there are more glimmers of light. Russia needs to break free from the power of Gogol’s ghost .

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Nikolai Berdyaev

Bol'shoy Vlasyevskiy Lane, 4, Moscow, Russian Empire

31.05.17

The “bourgeois” revolution currently underway in Russia is not a class revolution but a supra-class, all-people’s revolution with national- and state-level objectives. But if a “proletarian” revolution were now to occur in Russia, it would be an exclusively class-based revolution of an anti-national and anti-state character, and it would lead to violent dictatorship followed, in accordance with immutable law, by Caesarism.

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Nikolai Berdyaev

Bol'shoy Vlasyevskiy Lane, 4, Moscow, Russian Empire

22.05.17

We can criticise our Provisional Government from different points of view, but there is no doubt that it has a highly developed sense of responsibility. It assumed responsibility for the great whole, called Russia, at the most difficult moment of Russian history and is ready to bear this responsibility to the end. It has no self-sufficient love of power, no self-assertion, no dictatorship.

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