‘Will that great poet come soon?’: messianic themes, religious ideation and Marxist zeal in the 1905 revolution

Abstract

The concept of messianism is a significant motif in Russian religious philosophy, which becomes more accentuated during times of crises, notably in the revolutionary period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While messianism is often purely metaphysical and abstract, with the personification of a Christ-like figure as its spiritual guide, this philosophy had also played a significant role in the political struggle for social justice, with revolutionary groups from the Narodniks to the Marxists being no exception. Indeed, messianism is significant in the writings of Lev Trotsky in 1905, where the failure of the revolution led him to envisage the coming of a future messiah to ‘revive’ and ‘avenge’ the dramatic end of such a movement. In critiquing the theoretical ideas of Russian Marxists and developing the Russian religious themes of messianism as defined by Nikolai Berdiaev, this article will demonstrate the religious themes and metaphors within Russian Marxist thought and argue for the socio-political interrelation between Marxism and religion that acts as an incitement for revolutionary social change.