Berdyaev and the Ukrainian War

Gordon Hahn, in this fascinating and wide-ranging overview, unearths aspects of Russian philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev’s thought that have heretofore received little notice in the West: for example, Berdyaev’s belief in the indivisible unity of Russia, Ukraine and Byelorussia.

We can only assume that such a position will produce indignation in certain circles and calls to dismiss Berdyaev as an imperialist and beneath notice. We urge our readers in advance to dismiss such calls for the Russian philosopher’s cancellation. Among other virtues, his thought is refreshingly free from moralizing; it is also fearlessly honest. For Berdyaev, there is in global affairs no one ‘side’ (very much including Russia) which holds a monopoly on virtue. 

Finally, anyone reading Berdyaev today would do well to remember the enthusiastic reception the West accorded this Christian existentialist philosopher when the Soviet Union still existed. As Paul Grenier noted in an essay previously published by Landmarks: “  … Bill Keller, writing for The New York Times [in 1989], praised the Soviet magazine Novy Mir for focusing attention on ‘the more Western-inclined 19th-century Russian thinkers such as Nikolai Nekrasov, Aleksandr Herzen, and the Christian philosophers Vladimir Solovyov and Nikolai Berdyaev.’ These were the sort of thinkers, Keller emphasized, who would help encourage ‘a humane alternative to zealous Leninism and the darker Russian nationalism.’ By publishing such writers, Keller continued, Novy Mir was demonstrating that it ‘occupies a key centrist position, attempting to reconcile the Westernizers and the Russian patriots on a common ground of tolerance and democratic ideals.’ ”    — The Editors

Introduction

Lately, while re-reading works by Nikolai Berdyaev, one of Russia’s greatest thinkers, it occurred to me that it might be of some interest to examine Berdyaev’s views on war, Russia, and Ukraine. Berdyaev was born in Ukraine, near Kiev. He spent his entire youth in Ukraine and completed Kiev University. All the same, and like many others born in Ukraine over the centuries, he identified exclusively as a Russian. His family ancestry, to be sure, was not Ukrainian but rather noble Russian and noble French, and he also had some Polish and Tatar ancestry.

A Marxist in his university days, he was exiled to Vologda in 1897 for anti-Tsarist activity.  Soon after, Berdyaev embraced a moderate conservatism and experienced a revival of his Orthodox Christian faith. He vehemently opposed the post-Revolution atheistic communist Bolshevik regime, and for his opposition was arrested and interrogated by Cheka chief Felix Dzerzhinsky, ultimately being deported from Soviet Russia, along with hundreds of other philosophers and conservative intellectuals, in 1922. 

Berdyaev’s thought is, overall, characterized by a very Russian belief in, or aspiration to, unity and wholeness or what is called, in the Russian philosophical tradition, tselostnost’. This embrace of tselostnost’ can be found in his tendencies toward universalism, communalism, solidarism, and historical unity (See Hahn, Russian Tselostnost’). As an Orthodox Christian, Berdyaev believed in the ultimate unity of all humankind in Christ.

Similarly, Berdyaev also shared the typically Russian aspiration toward and belief in the propriety of communalism — the priority of the group’s interest over individual interests and the benefits of such a stance both for individuals and humankind (Hahn, Russian Tselostnost’, pp. 567-8). Although he was critical of the Slavophiles, he saw their belief in the advantages and moral superiority of the village commune as a reflection of Russians’ preference for a communalist rather than individualist culture. He likewise endorsed Slavophile Aleksei Khomyakov’s spirit of communalism or sobornost’ –  sometimes translated as ‘conciliarism’ – under the protective wing of Christian love in the community of Orthodox believers and the Church (Nikolai Berdyaev, “Slavyanskaya ideya,” in Nikolai Berdyaev, Sud’ba Rossii [St. Petersburg: Azbuka, 2016] ).

To be sure, this typically-Russian preference for political, social, cultural, and ontological (identitarian) unity or solidarism is present in Berdyaev’s work as an aspiration; he was well aware of the great schisms that plagued Russia both historically and in his own time. As I will discuss below, these foundational elements of Russian tselostnost’ in Berdyaev’s thinking condition and color his equally Russian messianism, his vision of Ukraine, and his views on war. 

Berdyaev, Russia, and its Fate

Berdyaev was neither a revolutionary nor a reactionary. He was, rather, a Russian patriot who was, at the same time, critical of the Russian elite, its intelligentsia and people.  An Orthodox believer, he was at times also strongly critical of the Orthodox Church. Presaging the Soviet culturologist Yurii Lotman’s work on Russian duality, Berdyaev was struck by the stark contradictions in the Russian character — its abundant antinomies: “In other countries one can find all these same contradictions, but only in Russia does thesis turn into antithesis, with anarchism giving rise to the bureaucratic state, slavery arising from freedom, extreme nationalism from supra-nationalism” and universalism (Berdyaev, Sud’ba Rossii, p. 29]. “ … The national in Russia is precisely supra-nationalism and its freedom from nationalism; in this Russia is distinctive and unlike any other country in the world. Russia is called upon to be the liberator of nations.”  And in another antinomy, “(t)he other side of Russian humility is the unusual extent of Russian self-opinion. The humblest Russian is at the same time the greatest, most powerful, someone uniquely called.” Here again, another essential Russian trait leads, in Berdyaev’s thinking, to Russian messianism.  He readily acknowledged that Russia, in order to attain its proper status in the world and have its say in History’s course and outcome, needed to overcome the negative sides of these same antinomies.

Like Dostoevsky, Berdyaev came to have a faith that Orthodox Russia would overcome its shortcomings and ultimately play an important role in leading humankind to Christian unification at the end of History. He certainly saw Russia as properly a “great Empire” (Berdyaev, Sud’ba Rossii, p. 276) and was supportive of Russia’s colonial advancement of less developed peoples and of Russia’s “heroic” army in World War I. At times, he wrote as if Russia was destined to overcome its insufficiencies and play a pivotal or at any rate a leading role in history, though at other times he expressed uncertainty about Russia’s ability to play such a role, at least in its current state. 

Berdyaev’s own nationalism and messianism were reflected in his belief in a special historical role of the Slavs—his “Slavic idea.” He was no enemy of the West but was highly critical of its bourgeois materialism, which he blamed for the outbreak of the World War (Berdyaev, Sud’ba Rossii, pp. 207, 217-18). “Russia is the most non-bourgeois country in the world” and lacks the “despotism” of bourgeois family life and concerns. “The Russian spirit cannot sit in one place, it is not a shopkeepers’ soul …  In Russia, in the soul of (its) people there is a kind of endless searching, a searching for the invisible city of Kitezh, an unseen home. … Before the Russian soul great expanses open, and there is no marked horizon before its spiritual eyes. The Russian spirit originates in a fiery pursuit of truth, of absolute, divine truth and salvation for the whole world and the universal resurrection to a new life” (Berdyaev, Sud’ba Rossii, pp. 24-6). 

Oddly enough, Berdyaev did not view Russia’s main opponent in World War I, Germany, as having been soiled by its pronounced bourgeois life and he even denied that German culture was fundamentally materialist. German culture and messianism derived from a far deeper cause, from its own peculiar idealism. Bourgeoisness and industrial-technological advancement were both consequences of the German spirit. “The German is a metaphysician,” Berdyaev states. In contrast to Russian idealism’s humility, however, German culture, in Berdyaev’s view, is imbued with an egocentric nationalism and aspiration to instill rationality, organization, and order in the world. While Russian messianism and universalism accepted chaos as intrinsic to the nature of human history prior to salvation, German messianism and universalism pursued humankind’s salvation through the willful elimination of chaos, and only Germany, Germans thought, can accomplish this task (Berdyaev, “Religiya Germanizma,” pp. 195-204, especially p. 200). In this way, like Russian nationalism, German nationalism contained and indeed nurtured the germ of universalism, not to mention imperialism.

Despite its own spirituality, Germany had chosen the path of “prideful” nationalism and the machine in excess and thus was in conflict with Russia and potentially could be better opposed by the Slavic idea, Slavic unity, and Slavic messianism. In his earlier writings, which have been my focus so far, Berdyaev adhered to certain pan-Slavist tendencies and even proposed Slavic unity and messianism as an antidote and counterforce to German militaristic messianism. In his “The Slavic Idea” (“Slavyanskaya ideya”), he emphasizes that one of the great oversights of the 19th century Slavophiles and pan-Slavists was their failure to address the divisions between the various Slavic peoples; and they were equally wrong to harbor disdain for Poland as a result of its Catholic faith.  All this left the “Slavic idea” in a “sad condition” (Berdyaev, “Slavyanskaya ideya,” in Berdyaev, Sud’ba Rossii, pp. 161-70 and 163-5). 

Instead, Russia should work to unify the Slavs under the “Slavic idea” against the threatening danger of Germanism; and toward that end they should emphasize ethnicity over religion, thereby unifying Slavdom, particularly its two greatest states, Russia and Poland, against Berlin. Indeed, Russia must, according to Berdyaev, “redeem its historical guilt” before the Polish people. “The idea of Slavic unification, first of all Russian-Polish unification, should not be external-political or utilitarian-statist;” instead, it must be “spiritual and focused on internal life” in the Slavic world.  Presumably this means focusing on overcoming the religious schism, cultural differences, and historical grievances.

One cannot help but be struck by the analogies between, on the one hand, Berdyaev’s analysis of the conflict between the Slavic and German worldviews, and, on the other hand, the similar conflict, today, between Russia and what Russians perceive to be America’s quest for global hegemony. In the first case, Berdyaev saw ‘idealistic’ German militarism as being at the root of this conflict, which was pushed forward by the German aspiration to organize and order all of humankind.  Today, in place of the German idea we now have Washington’s ‘rules-based’ new world order counterpoised to Russian neo-Eurasianism and the Sino-Russian-led alternative multi-civilizational model, as reflected in BRICS+, the One Belt One Road Initiative, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Indeed, Berdyaev perhaps presaged Eurasianism when he wrote that “Russia should …  overcome the one-sidedness of Western European culture with its positivism and materialism and its self-satisfaction of limited horizons. … We should move out into the worldly expanse. And in this expanse the ancient wellsprings of culture should be visible. The East should become of equal value to the West again” (Berdyaev, “Slavyanskaya ideya,” in Berdyaev, Sud’ba Rossii, p. 159).  

Berdyaev’s fondness for the “Slavic idea” centered on a Russo-Polish rapprochement and alliance; and his disdain for Germany’s imperialism and war machine suggest that he would similarly  have rejected the United States’ positivism, materialism, and quest for hegemony, along with the expansion of NATO and its splintering of the Slavic peoples away from Russia. If alive today, Berdyaev would support Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to block NATO expansion even at the cost of war in Ukraine. It is reasonable to conclude, in fact, that Berdyaev’s views of Ukraine, adjusted for present-day conditions, would still lead him not just to accept, but even to support Russia’s ‘special military operation’ against Kiev.

Berdyaev, Ukraine, and Russia

As already noted above, Berdyaev spent his childhood and young adult years in Ukraine, even attending university in Kiev. So he could have succumbed to ideas of Ukrainian nationalism which were intensifying at the time. The issue of Ukrainian nationalism and separatism was already a burning issue in the Russian Empire by the time of World War I and was intentionally aggravated both before and during the war by politicians in Vienna.  Berdyaev did not shy away from blaming Czarist policy for damaging Russia’s prestige and strengthening separatism in Galicia (Nikolai Berdyaev, “Natsionalizm i Imperializm,” in Berdyaev, Sud’ba Rossii, pp. 132-40, 139).

Berdyaev’s belief in Slavic unity would naturally have predisposed him to oppose Ukrainian separatism. At the same time, when discussing the divisions in the Slavic world, he noted the tendency of ethnically close or related peoples to be less able to understand each other and so to more easily reject one another than peoples culturally and linguistically more distant. (Nikolai Berdyaev, “Rossiya i polskaya dusha,” in Berdyaev, Sud’ba Rossii, pp. 187-95, at p. 188). This dynamic can be seen nowhere better than in Russo-Ukrainian relations, even though, to be sure, much of the antagonism has been egged on by Russia’s foes, who for centuries have sought  to sow Ukrainian separatism – Berdyaev was at the time and would again today be keenly attuned to the complexities of the Russian-Ukrainian relationship – complexities which were further compounded, after his writings on the subject, by the Soviet experience, an experience which also contributed to the crisis that led to the NATO-Russia Ukrainian war.

Consistent with his pan-Slavist idea, Berdyaev fully rejected in his time the idea of a separation of Russia and ‘Malorossiya’ (Little Russia) or Ukraine. In his 1918 article “Russia and Great Russia,” Berdyaev denied both the Great Russians and “Little Russians” any status as separate nations or peoples. Just as there is no separate Ukrainian nationality, he asserted, so too there is no separate Great Russian nationality; there is only a single, united Russian nation, with “tribal differences” between Russians and Ukrainians (N. A. Berdyaev, “Rossiya i Velikorossiya,” Nakanune, No. 3, April 1918 republished in A. Yu. Minakov, ed., Ukrainskii Vopros: V russkoi patritiocheskoi mysli [Moscow: Knizhnyi mir, 2016], pp. 413-19). In other words, he supported the solidarism of the Russian nation as a united ethno-cultural entity, noting its centuries’ long continuity until 1917. He did so in the unique way of denying the Great Russians any national status separate from its union with Ukraine and other traditional territories and even Russia’s colonized peoples. Berdyaev was prepared to sacrifice even the well-being of each of the eastern Slavic nations for the sake of a unified Russia. “A suffering, sick, misfit Russia would be better than well-off and self-satisfied states of Great Russia, Little Russia, Belorussia, and other regions, thinking themselves independent wholes” ( Berdyaev, “Rossiya i Velikorossiya,” p. 418). For Berdyaev, “(i)t is not possible to think of Great Russia without the south and without its riches. And it is impossible not to see a terrible betrayal and terrible crime in the destruction of the entire cause of Russian history which carried out the idea of Russia” (Berdyaev, “Rossiya i Velikorossiya,” p. 419). Assuming Berdyaev would not have acquiesced to constructivist arguments regarding nations, his pan-Slavism would have inclined him to refuse to recognize the formation of a separate Ukrainian identity and the idea of a separate Ukrainian nation and state. Moreover, Berdyaev asserted that annexations can be historically useful and he condemned Europe for failing to help the Christians of the Ottoman Empire.  

Berdyaev on War

Berdyaev’s monist tselostnost’ was reflected in his belief that war was a reflection not just of humankind’s inner, spiritual world but also of the divine world (Berdyaev, Sud’ba Rossii, pp. 205-18). War is the material reflection of the spiritual world, a symptom of internal disease in humankind, a reflection of evils that already exist. In this way, all were to blame and responsible for the ‘Great War’ and all participated in it one way or another. Most of all, materialism in its most concentrated social form – bourgeois life and values – was ultimately responsible for the outbreak of WW I. Here, Berdyaev’s very typical Russian transcendentalism emerges to indict the non-spiritual, bourgeois life, which, he argued, kills human spirituality.

On the grandest scale, war is inevitable; it is an integral part of the tragic nature of human history (Berdyaev, Sud’ba Rossii, p. 217). Berdyaev asserted that materialists’ greater fear of death contributed to their greater fear of war and therefore their pacifism. Consistent with his monism, Christians (such as he himself), he argued, see war more deeply as a symptomatic expression of a “spiritual violence” which all inflict on others. There is a “dark irrational source” in the depths of humankind from which comes “the deepest tragic contradictions.” Evil in humankind was gaining full reign in the absence, or the insufficient ubiquity, of the Divine. And yet war is a mix of good and evil. On the evil side of the ledger, it involves violence and death inflicted by man against man. A truly Christian war (and state) was impossible for Berdyaev.  And yet war is not only evil.  War moves the tragedy of history forward towards its apocalyptic apotheosis of all humankind and the ultimate triumph of “Christ’s sword,” the Second Coming, and Heavenly Kingdom (Berdyaev, Sud’ba Rossii, p. 209). Thus, Berdyaev’s views on war are based on his Christian philosophy of history and historicism intermixed with his Orthodox monism and universalism.  

Later, Berdyaev would develop a sophisticated religious philosophy of history in which he reflects on the connection between the worldly and spiritual worlds’ struggle between good and evil and its relationship to world history and its ultimate apocalyptic, yet Christian outcome. A hint of his more deeply developed Christian eschatology and teleology of History’s ultimate outcome and man’s ultimate salvation can be seen in the following metaphysical-philosophical passage on the meaning of war:

The responsibility of man (for the war) should be broadened and deepened. Truly, man is violent, and a murderer more often than he suspects and more often than (others) suspect about him. It is impossible to see violence and murder only in war. All our earthly life rests on violence and murder. Even before the beginning of today’s world war we committed acts of violence and murder in the very depths of life no less than during the war. The war manifested on the material plane our old violence and murder, our hatred and antagonism. In the depths of life there is a dark, irrational wellspring. The most profound tragic contradictions are born from it. Humankind has not been enlightened within itself by the divine light.  It is because of this dark ancient element that humankind is inevitably passing through the baptismal horror and death of war.  Immanent to war is a redemption of ancient guilt. There is something foolish in the abstract wishes of pacifism to avoid war, leaving humankind in its previous condition. This is the wish to remove responsibility from oneself. War is both immanent punishment and immanent redemption. In war, hatred is remolded into love, and love into hatred. In war the furthest extremes touch, and diabolical darkness intersects with divine light. War is the material manifestation of the ancient contradictions of being and the revelation of life’s irrationality. Pacifism is the rationalistic negation of the irrational darkness in life. And it is impossible to believe in an eternally rational world. It is not for nothing that the Apocalypse prophecies about wars. And Christianity does not foresee a peaceful and painless end of world history. What is below reflects that which is above, and on earth it is at it is in Heaven. And above, in Heaven, God’s angels fight with Satan’s angels. In all spheres of the cosmos there are fiery and furious elements, and war is conducted. And on earth, Christ brought not peace but a sword. And herein lies the deep antinomy of Christianity: Christianity cannot answer evil with evil, it cannot resist evil with violence; at the same time, Christianity is war, it is the division of the world, and it lives out until the bitter end the redemption of the cross of darkness and evil (Nikolai Berdyaev, “Mysli o prirode voiny,” in Berdyaev, Sud’ba Rossii, pp. 205-13, at pp. 208-9).

The above exegesis is not only Berdyaev’s metaphysical analysis of the meaning of World War I and of war in general. It is Berdyaev’s recommendation to Russians on how they should interpret the apocalyptic events they were witnessing.

Indeed, Berdyaev argued that Russians’ failure to adopt such a religious-metaphysical attitude towards the war, an attitude that recognizes the “(c)reative historical tasks” related to the war, led to a need for self-justification for Russia’s involvement. Self-justification was achieved by placing themselves above the Germans, who were portrayed as morally inferior. Such moralizing was alien to Berdyaev. 

On Berdyaev’s part, there was no shying away from criticizing Russians’ behavior at the outbreak of the war. He castigated the bloodthirsty nationalism that swept through Russia at the time, as it did throughout Europe: “The orgy of elemental instincts and the ugly profiting and speculation in the days of the great war and the great trials for Russia are our great shame and a black stain on national life” (Berdyaev, Sud’ba Rossii, p. 99). He saw this as a consequence of Russia’s weak moral education, lack of a civil society and civic honesty and honor, and the negative or flip side of Russian smirenie (humility/resignation) and its susceptibility to the “temptation of easy gains,” which he saw elevated in Russia’s bourgeois-philistine class” (Berdyaev, Sud’ba Rossii, pp. 99-100). Today he would be dismayed by similar war mongering and the like coming from the ultra-patriotic wing of Russia’s political spectrum as well as from more ‘bourgeois-philistine’ elements such as Russian Security Council Secretary, Chairman of the Military-Industrial Commission, and former Russian president Dmitrii Medvedev.

Finally, Berdyaev placed the war in another, larger context of the struggle between peoples for a “dignified national existence” that was part of the development of the world’s historical tragedy in which no nation had a monopoly on morality in war [emphasis mine – GH]. “Тhe historical struggle is a struggle for being and not for forthright justice, and it is implemented by the comprehensive spiritual forces of nations. [The historical struggle] is a struggle for national being and not a utilitarian struggle, and it is always a struggle for values, for creative strength, and not for the elementary fact of life and not for simple interests. One can say that the struggle among nations for historical being has deep moral and religious meaning, and it is necessary for the higher goals of the world process. But it is impossible to say that in this struggle one people wholly represents the good, while another wholly represents evil. One people can be more on the side of right than another people only relatively speaking. The struggle for historical existence of each people has an internal justification” (Berdyaev, Sud’ba Rossii, p. 223).

Conclusion

Berdyaev’s thoughts on Russia, Ukraine, and war are a clear function of his Russianness and Orthodoxy filtered through his own personal struggle to understand the visible and invisible world and cosmos around him. Berdyaev’s Christian eschatology, teleology, and soteriology dictated an even-handed treatment of the relative good and evil of the world’s peoples in the making of humankind’s tragic history. This even-handedness is reflected in Berdyaev’s harsh criticisms of Russia alongside his attribution of a special mission to it. It is also evident in Berdyaev’s refusal to support Russian chauvinist positions in relation to Ukraine as well as Poland and even Germany. Great and Little Russians are co-equals in the Russian nation, in Berdyaev’s view. Finally, all are responsible and participate in the human evils of hate, violence, and war through which humankind must suffer to attain a divinely determined, not a man-made historical outcome, on earth as in Heaven.