4 October 1917. 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

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.

The censorship imposed by the revolutionary democratic societal set-up is more all-encompassing and pervasive than our old censorship. And it must be said that a censorship driven by rampaging popular masses is invariably more terrifying than that instigated by governmental authorities, whom much tends to elude. When the people themselves violate the freedoms of thought and speech, said violations are more terrible, more oppressive than those that might committed by governmental authorities: there is no escaping their effects.

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