Между террором и святостью: жизнь и судьба Ильи Бунакова-Фондаминского (1880–1942)

Abstract

The article examines the life path of the Russian intellectual and politician Ilya Isidorovich Fondaminsky (1880–1942; literary and political pseudonym “Bunakov”). Coming from a Jewish merchant family, Fondaminsky was unable, due to the “Jewish quota”, to get a decent education in Russia and, after graduating from a private gymnasium, went to study philosophy and history at the Universities of Berlin and Heidelberg, where his professors were Kuno Fischer, Wilhelm Windelband, Heinrich Thode. After returning to Russia in 1904, he became one of the leaders of the Moscow committee of the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries, participated in the work of the Combat group, preparing terrorist acts, and during the December (1905) armed uprising in Moscow, purchased weapons at the personal expense. He was repeatedly arrested, and in 1907 went to the first emigration (1907–1917). After the February Revolution – he was one of the leaders of the Executive Committee of the Council of Peasant Deputies, the General Commissar of the Provisional Government in the Black Sea Fleet, from which he was elected a deputy of the Constituent Assembly. After the Bolshevik coup and the dispersal of the constituent assembly – a member of the “white” underground, and since 1919 again an emigrant. I.I. Fondaminsky became one of the central figures of the Russian post-revolutionary emigration in France: he published the journals “Modern Notes” and “Novy Grad”, conducted extensive cultural and educational activities, becoming increasingly interested in religious issues. During the German occupation of France, Fondaminsky received Orthodox baptism, but in 1942 he ended his earthly days together with his fellow Jews in the gas chamber of Hitler's Auschwitz-Oswenzim. In 2004. he, along with three other Russian ascetics-emigrants, was beatified by the Patriarchate of Constantinople of the Orthodox Church.