The Russian Idea of Berdyaev

Abstract

Berdyaev wrote often and much on Russia and the Russian people-on the ways of Russia and the attitude of Russia toward Western Europe and the rest of the world, on Russian national character, on the vocation of the Russian people, on the Russian idea. But if one were to attempt to name two main books which distinctly and fully reflect the differences in Berdyaev's standpoint at different stages of his ideological evolution, the selection would be relatively simple. The first would be The Destiny of Russia (Moscow, 1918), which represents the pre-revolutionary Berdyaev; the second would be The Russian Idea. Main Problems of Russian Thought of the 19th and the Beginning of the 20th Centuries. (Paris, YMCA Press, 1946), which depicts the final stage of Berdyaev's thought. The present article deals with Berdyaev's conception of the mission of the Russian people and the Russian idea in the last phase of his intellectual evolution. The Russian Idea sums up the general development of Russian thought of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and of Berdyaev's half century of creative development as well. The book is packed with a multitude of reflections, themes, ideas, apt definitions of individual Russian writers and thinkers, and