The Fate of Russia

1st English Translation from Russian: The Fate of Russia is an insightful book by the eminent Russian religious philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev (1874-1948). There is an irony of fate regarding the book in its untimely timeliness -- a collection of WWI related articles from 1914-1916 it was published in 1918 only after the Russian Communist 1917 Revolution and Russias subsequent dropping out of the war but before the total closure of independent presses.Thus untimely at the moment of its appearance it is at present quite timely as regards an understanding of the enigmatic visage of post-Soviet Russia for the world. Berdyaev was banished from Russia by the Communists in 1922 a forbidden author during the Soviet period. The Fate of Russia is divided into five segments the first exploring the psychology of the Russian Soul the vastness of the Russian Land a great East-West historically conflicted between its European and Asiatic-Mongol inheritance the choice as expressed by Vl. Solovev between Xerxes or Christ. In separate articles Berdyaev writes also of the French the Germans and the Polish. WWI proved to be the graveyard of empires spawning further historical nightmares into our own time. Like Spengler Berdyaev had presentiments of the End of Europe which in modern a perspective has seemed a slow-motion spiritual and cultural collapse like the slow fading away of the Roman Empire. In our own time particularly acute has become the question whether the nation state has become obsolete to be subsumed and replaced by ideological concerns. Berdyaev addresses various aspects of nationalness its various guises. We live increasingly in a world of mass society beset by a totalitarian stifling of and intrusion upon the person by both technology and the state. Two of Berdyaevs articles in the final segment speak of Spirit and the Machine and Democracy and the Person. Other articles address the contrast between words and reality in societal life its political abstractive manifestations and the conventional lie. Throughout all his many writings over his lifetime Berdyaev was a champion of authentic freedom of the person at spiritual and creative a depth innate to the dignity of the person the freedom of conscience a responsible freedom not bestowed by some whatever social concordat. For both Russia and the modern world it remains the choice between the barbaric totalitarianism of Xerxes or the innate freedom preached by Christ. This is the first appearance of Berdyaevs current tome The Fate of Russia in the English language. It represents yet another hitherto unavailable work within the continuing series of our efforts at translation of primary texts in Russian Religious Philosophy.