Vekhi (Milestones) as a Post-Secular Manifesto of the Russian Philosophy

Abstract

The article investigates the Vekhi (Milestones), a collection of articles published in 1909 by Nikolai Berdyaev, Sergei Bulgakov, Mikhail Gershenzon, Bogdan Kistyakovski, Peter Struve, Semyon Frank and Aleksandr Izgoev, that is analyzed through the prism of the post-secularization, which became the dominant in the Russian intellectual culture of the early 20th century. This phenomenon implied a rapid advancement of various forms of religious philosophy into the centre of the Russian philosophical tradition in search for solution to various problems faced by the state, society, family and education, reflected in the articles of the Milestones authors. The collection became most widely known — and criticized — among the leftist intelligentsia, which made this book an absolute bestseller in the history of the Russian philosophical thought. The position of its authors, deeply post-secular, antiutilitarian and anti-scientistic, and their criticism of the politicized groundless intelligentsia were the main reasons for the retaliation. The trick was a convincing reconstruction of an “average intellectual’s” consciousness. The Russian intelligentsia gave birth to a lot of prominent cultural figures. But it also gave birth to ambitious people who considered themselves to be the salt of the earth, the stateless apatrides who hate everything Russian and admire everything European or American. The Milestones authors were among the first in Russia to show that the fruits of the intelligentsia revolution are non-national, groundless phenomena, in no way connected with Russian foundations and traditions. The intellectuals’ political consciousness is irreligious and based on atheism, but it has many similarities with religion and acquires the features of some atheistic pseudo-religion. The Milestones contained sharp and justified criticism directed at the intransigent party struggle, the love of extremes and the predilection for egalitarianism, that is, those pseudo-religious qualities of the intelligentsia that have a pronounced anti-cultural and anti-national orientation.