A Jewish-Christian Rift in Twentieth-Century Russian Philosophy: N. A. Berdiaev and M. O. Gershenzon

Abstract

The Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 found the two friends, religious philosopher Nikolai Berdiaev and historian and philosopher M. O. Gershenzon, on different sides of the conflict. Berdiaev's vehement opposition to the Revolution ostensibly caused him to sever relations with the sympathizer Gershenzon. In 1952, Gershenzon's daughter, Nataliia Mikhailovna Gershenzon-Chegodaeva, wrote in her memoirs that her father's and Berdiaev's friendship ended badly. During the days of the October Revolution, when my dad was completely aflame, passionately awaiting and welcoming the new, they suddenly severed relations, disagreeing over political convictions. Several painful letters remain which reflect the break.3 The sudden end to the relationship between two of Russia's most creative thinkers of this century is usually attributed to their differences of opinion about the October Revolution. In fact, however, the politics at the time of the Revolution was only a catalyst for the break; the real cause of their estrangement lay in their unresolvable philosophical debates and their emotional conflicts arising from their Christian and Jewish backgrounds. They clashed philosophically because Berdiaev favored an idiosyncratic Christian philosophy, while Gershenzon adhered to a pantheist religion of the cosmos. Their personal dispute, which revolved around anti-Semitism, arose