The Difficult Future of the Higher Education Intelligentsia

PEOPLE OR SCIENCE? philosophical question I had great satisfaction when I wrote this work, but even now I hold the same views. I think one of the reasons I liked it is that I wrote it exclusively for myself. I didn't think about posting it.

On August 31, 1922, the main Soviet newspaper Pravda reported that representatives of the intelligentsia opposed to the Soviet regime were being expelled from the country:

“The expulsion of active counter-revolutionary elements and the bourgeois intelligentsia is the first warning of the Soviet government in relation to these layers. Soviet power is still<…>will stop any attempt to use the Soviet possibilities for an open or secret struggle against the workers' and peasants' power for the restoration of the bourgeois-landlord regime.

With this publication, the countdown to the voyage of the so-called “Philosophical steamer” began - this is the collective name of the German ships on which the largest expulsion of the intelligentsia in Soviet history was carried out. There were two steamboats: Oberburgermeister Haken and Preussen, and in September and November 1922 they delivered intellectuals exiled from Petrograd to German Stettin. The same flights departed from Odessa and Sevastopol, and trains with those who did not accept the power of the Soviets left the stations in the direction of Poland.

“Firing 20-40 professors is a must. They fool us. Think over, prepare and hit hard,” Vladimir Lenin wrote to Kamenev and Stalin in February 1922. It was about the professors of the Moscow Higher Technical School who opposed the Bolshevik reforms of higher education in 1921.

• Steamboat "Oberbürgermeister Haken"
• Archive photo

In the first lists of 1922, there were 195 people for expulsion - doctors, professors, teachers, economists, agronomists, writers, lawyers, engineers, political and religious figures, as well as students. Thirty-five people were later removed from these lists after various applications were considered.

The decision to exile was preceded by a new policy of the Soviet government in relation to the bourgeois intelligentsia, who were on the side of the opposition. From the moment of its establishment, the revolutionary regime encountered resistance in various sections of society, including the scientific ones. Part of the scientific community enthusiastically supported the Bolsheviks, as did, for example, Timiryazev and Kashchenko, but many found themselves in opposition, not always in secret.

The decision to send the undesirables abroad can be called radical, but if compared with the death sentences that were handed down in public trials, then this measure can be called humane. In addition, the power of the Soviets could not agree to the execution of two hundred prominent representatives of the Russian intelligentsia. Therefore, in May 1922, Lenin, in a letter to Dzerzhinsky, proposed to abandon the death penalty for active opponents of Soviet power and replace it with expulsion from the country.

"Big Names"

Although the publication in Pravda claimed that there were no “big names” on the lists of deportees, this was not entirely true.

Most of those who made it to the list, other than opposition to the new regime, did not become famous for anything else, either before or after the expulsion. But there were also exceptions.

The most famous of those expelled was one of the founders of sociology, Pitirim Sorokin. During the years of the Civil War, Sorokin supported the opponents of the Bolsheviks, but later changed his views on what was happening and wrote a letter of repentance to Lenin. Nevertheless, he was among those whom the young state chose to get rid of. The reason for the expulsion was not his former views, but an attempt at a sociological study of the famine in the Volga region of the early 1920s.

The expulsion order found Sorokin in Moscow. In his memoirs, he recalls, not without irony, that even here he did not leave the omnipresent bureaucracy: “The Chekist, a young man with the pale face of an inveterate cocaine addict, shrugged his hands and said:“ We already have so many people in Moscow, we don’t even know what and make. Go back to Petrograd and let the Cheka decide your fate on the spot.”

Mikhail Novikov, an outstanding zoologist and rector of Moscow University, was expelled, among other things, for his active participation in the work of the International Red Cross.

Engineer, designer of steam turbines Vsevolod Yasinsky went to a foreign land to work in "Pomgol" ("Help for the Starving" - the name of two different bodies formed in 1921 in Soviet Russia in connection with a crop failure that hit the vast territory of the country, especially the Volga region. - RT).

The expulsion hit the humanitarian intelligentsia the hardest - dozens of writers, journalists and philosophers were taken away forever by steamboats and trains. Many of them were connected with famine relief committees or semi-legal teaching and student structures.

Exile or death

At the same time, it is easy to imagine what could have happened to all these people if they had remained in Soviet Russia.

Economist Nikolai Kondratiev, a close friend of the exiled Sorokin, the author of the theory of economic cycles and one of the founders of the NEP, was shot in 1938.

Another member of Pomgol, economist and sociologist Alexander Chayanov, was shot in 1937.

One of the deportees, a medievalist historian (specialist in the history of the Middle Ages. — RT) Lev Karsavin was overtaken by the Soviet authorities in 1944 in Vilnius. After the inclusion of Lithuania into the Soviet Union, he was first suspended from teaching, and in 1949 he was arrested and accused of participating in the anti-Soviet Eurasian movement and preparing to overthrow the Soviet regime. In March 1950, Karsavin was sentenced to ten years in labor camps. Two years later, the historian died of tuberculosis in a special camp for the disabled in the Komi ASSR.

The words of Leon Trotsky are well known, who commented on the action of expelling those objectionable to the authorities abroad: “We sent these people because there was no reason to shoot them, and it was impossible to endure.” But, as history testifies, by getting rid of the intelligentsia, the Soviet government paradoxically saved the lives of those it got rid of.

The USSR returned to the practice of expelling dissidents from the country only in the Brezhnev years, but not on such a scale. Then Solzhenitsyn, Voinovich, Rostropovich and some other figures of culture and art were deprived of Soviet citizenship.

On August 31, 1922, Pravda published a message about the expulsion of a number of intellectuals abroad (flights Oberbürgermeister Haken on September 29-30 and Prussia on November 16-17, 6160 people + other flights and trains). Among those expelled: Nikolai Berdyaev, S. L. Frank, I. A. Ilyin, S. E. Trubetskoy, B. P. Vysheslavtsev, A. A. Kizevetter, M. A. Ilyin (Osorgin), P. A. Sorokin , F. A. Stepun, A. V. Florovsky, Sergey Bulgakov.

In the autumn of 1922, about two hundred intellectuals objectionable to the authorities were expelled from Soviet Russia: they included engineers, economists, doctors, writers, journalists, lawyers, philosophers, teachers ... Almost all Russian philosophers then fit on two steamboats. On September 29, N. A. Berdyaev, S. L. Frank, I. A. Ilyin, S. E. Trubetskoy, B. P. Vysheslavtsev, M. A. Osorgin and many others sailed to Germany on board the steamer Oberburgomaster Haken. .

A month and a half later, the ship "Prussia" took away N. O. Lossky, L. P. Karsavin, I. I. Lapshin, A. A. Kizevetter. Even earlier, the philosophers P.A. Sorokin and F.A. Stepun were deported to Riga, and the historian A.V. Florovsky - to Constantinople. At the beginning of 1923, the famous philosopher and religious figure S. N. Bulgakov was sent abroad.

The action of forced expulsion of the best part of the domestic intelligentsia marked not so much the beginning of political repression as a split within Russian culture. From the moment the Prussia steamship set off on its historic voyage, Russian thought ceased to be a single phenomenon, a cultural event, it was tragically divided into the Russian Diaspora and Soviet Russia. N. O. Lossky described the situation amazingly accurately: "... Germany is still not Siberia, but how terribly difficult it was to break away from the roots, from its very essence, which fit in one short word - Russia."

Today, many reasons are known for the expulsion of the Russian intelligentsia from the country: this is the release of the Russian version of O. Spengler's book "The Decline of Europe", published by philosophers N. A. Berdyaev, F. A. Stepun and S. L. Frank, and critical reviews of Soviet power and the economic model in the journal "The Economist", published in Petrograd, and the speeches of the professors against the Bolshevik reforms of higher education in 1921, and much more. However, the real reason, as I.A. Bunin in "Cursed Days", there were not events, but time ... As the transition to the NEP, V. I. Lenin and his entourage found themselves in a dilemma: to accompany a certain freedom in the economic sphere with political liberalization, a certain limitation of their power or to preserve it in the future, follow the path of deportations, repressions against political opponents and potential competitors. The Bolshevik government chose the second option. In 1921 - 1922 arrests, deportations, executions, which were carried out by revolutionary tribunals and affected all political opponents of the RCP (b) - Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Cadets, clergymen - became commonplace.

In line with this tactic of destroying the political and ideological opposition, by the summer of 1922 it was decided to organize the expulsion abroad of representatives of the "anti-Soviet intelligentsia", those who were skeptical of the Bolshevik experiment, publicly opposed their ideas, who until October 1917 were active supporter of democratic ideas and was not going to abandon them. They worked in universities, in publishing houses, in magazines, in various state institutions, in cooperation, that is, in general, they influenced the intellectual development of the country. "Politicizing scientist-professors" were accused of "stubbornly resisting the Soviet regime at every step, stubbornly, viciously and consistently tried to discredit all the undertakings of the Soviet regime, exposing them to supposedly scientific criticism."

The "operation" against dissidents was not a one-time action, but a series of successive actions. The following main stages can be distinguished: the arrests and administrative exiles of doctors, the repression of university professors, and preventive measures against bourgeois students. During the same period, the leaders of political parties opposed to the Bolsheviks were arrested.

The idea of ​​expelling representatives of the opposition abroad was put forward by V. I. Lenin. “Almost all [philosophers] are the most legitimate candidates for deportation abroad, obvious counter-revolutionaries,” he wrote to L. D. Trotsky. From the directives of V. I. Lenin: "Continue steadily expelling active anti-Soviet intelligentsia abroad. Carefully draw up lists. There must be a case for each intellectual ...". There were several lists developed in parallel: Moscow, Petrograd, Ukrainian. Characteristics were prepared for those who were sent. They were based on compromising material that the political police had at their disposal. All philosophers were expelled under article No. 75 of the Criminal Code: "counter-revolutionary activity."

The arrests, the process, and the expulsion itself resembled a farce. Here is what the philosopher and publicist M. A. Osorgin recalls: "... all these investigators were illiterate, self-confident and had no idea about any of us ... in one piece of paper there was a statement of our guilt:" unwillingness to reconcile and work with the Soviet government. And further on how the expulsion went: “It dragged on for more than a month. The all-powerful GPU turned out to be powerless to help our voluntary departure from the Motherland. Germany refused forced visas, but promised to immediately provide them at our personal request. it was proposed to organize a business group with a chairman, an office, delegates. We gathered, sat, discussed, acted. We exchanged rubles for foreign currency in the bank, prepared red passports for the deportees and their accompanying relatives. Among us were people with old connections in the business world, only they Petersburg. They rented a hotel in St. Petersburg, somehow managed to rent all the cool places on the German steamer leaving for Stettin. All this was very difficult, and the Soviet car at that time was not adapted to such enterprises. this complexity will be replaced by our simple liquidation, we were in a hurry and waited for the day of departure; in the meantime, we had to somehow live, get eat food, sell your property, so that you have something to come to Germany. Many worked to be left in the RSFSR, but only a few achieved this ... People destroyed their way of life, said goodbye to their libraries, to everything that had served them for work for many years, without which the continuation of mental activity was somehow not conceivable, with a circle of relatives and like-minded people, with Russia. For many, the departure was a real tragedy - no Europe could beckon them to itself; their whole life and work were connected with Russia by a single and indestructible bond separate from the purpose of existence.

As for the fate of the deportees, it is amazing: cut off from their homeland, deprived of their usual cultural context, placed in an alien environment, domestic philosophers and thinkers did not dissolve in the emigration flows, but, on the contrary, presented Europe with a completely unknown intellectual Russia.

The expulsion of prominent representatives of Russian culture and science is, of course, a tragic episode in the history of Russia in the 20th century. Meanwhile, the analysis from today's positions, oddly enough, shows not only the negative aspects of this event. Thanks to the expulsion, outstanding scientists survived who made a significant contribution to the development of world science, technology and art. Approximately the same point of view is shared by some historians of the Russian Diaspora: "Thanks to Lenin, Russia Abroad received a cohort of brilliant scientists and intellectuals, whose activities were called upon to lay the foundations of the culture of the Russian emigration."

From an article by Gusev D. A., Faculty of Philosophy and Political Science, St. Petersburg State University

"We are accommodating, we are busy"

How the "philosophical ship" was equipped

In September 1922, by train and two ships, the Soviet government expelled representatives of the intelligentsia from the country, who could not accept the new government. The operation, which went down in history as a "philosophical ship", was notable for the mass character and decisiveness characteristic of the Bolsheviks and their humanity not characteristic of them: the intelligentsia was sent, albeit accompanied by employees of the GPU, but first class. On the occasion of the 95th anniversary of one of the strangest repressive actions in the history of the USSR, Weekend recalls how the "philosophical ship" was equipped

Vladimir Lenin's article "On the Significance of Militant Materialism" is published in the magazine "Under the Banner of Marxism" - it mentions for the first time the possibility of getting rid of disloyal intelligentsia by expelling them from the country. Lenin's indignation was caused by criticism of the Soviet regime, in particular, by an article by Pitirim Sorokin, in which Lenin saw the accusation of the Bolsheviks of undermining the institution of the family. The article was published in the journal The Economist, published by the Russian Technical Society, which for the most part consists of former business owners and technical intelligentsia who have no sympathy for the Bolsheviks. The journal as a "clear center of the White Guards" will soon be closed, but Lenin will not abandon the idea of ​​getting rid of not only the publications of the hostile intelligentsia, but even the intelligentsia itself.

« The working class in Russia has managed to win power, but has not yet learned how to use it, because, otherwise, he would have politely escorted such teachers and members of learned societies to the countries of bourgeois "democracy" long ago. There is a real place for such serf-owners. Learn, would be willing to learn "

Ten days before the submission of the draft of the first Criminal Code of the RSFSR for discussion in the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Vladimir Lenin asks People's Commissar of Justice Dmitry Kursky to add a paragraph to it providing for the possibility of expulsion from the RSFSR for counter-revolutionary activities. The new Criminal Code comes into force on June 1, "propaganda and agitation in the direction of assistance to the international bourgeoisie" is punishable by imprisonment or expulsion from the RSFSR, in case of unauthorized return, execution is provided. The first deportees under this article will go abroad on the same day - Ekaterina Kuskova and Sergei Prokopovich, the organizers and leaders of the All-Russian Committee for Assistance to the Starving, were arrested after the Committee was dispersed in 1921 and until April 1922 they served exile in the northern cities of the USSR, June 1 In 1922 they were exiled to Berlin indefinitely.

« The court must not eliminate terror; to promise this would be self-deception or deceit, but to substantiate and legitimize it in principle, clearly, without falsehood and without embellishment. It is necessary to formulate as broadly as possible, because only a revolutionary sense of justice and a revolutionary conscience will set the conditions for applying in practice, more or less wide.

“On the question of the expulsion abroad of writers and professors who help the counter-revolution. We need to prepare it more carefully. Without preparation, we will be foolish. <…>Collect systematic information about the political experience, work and literary activities of professors and writers " Vladimir Lenin. Letter to Felix Dzerzhinsky

“Once a talented poetess, a naughty woman, chaotic, comes running to me at the House of Writers, with both a religious and a communist bias at once. He locks the doors and mysteriously, excitedly says: “Just think, an idiot is just catching me (gives the name of a completely ignorant person who edited a Soviet theater magazine) and asks me on the go if I can tell him in a nutshell what trends there are in modern Russian I ask why he needs this, and he answers me in a completely helpless voice that he was ordered "from Smolny" to prepare a "certificate" with directions and names ... I’ll run to Lunacharsky, it’s impossible for illiterate idiots to prepare “references” on literary issues, and even with names. And she left as quickly as she came.

Articles directed against those who never accepted Soviet power began to appear in the Soviet press. First of all, the Economist magazine, already criticized by Lenin, and its regular contributors - Pitirim Sorokin, Ivan Ozerov, Alexei Rafalovich - are attacked. However, the most notable and high-profile speech was Leon Trotsky's article "Dictatorship, where is your whip?" published in Pravda, which smashed the literary critic Yuli Aikhenvald.

“Mr. Aikhenvald’s book (“Poets and Poetesses.”—Weekend) is thoroughly saturated with cowardly, reptile nits, purulent hatred for October and for Russia, as it emerged from October. This priest of pure art approaches poets and poetesses, most simply, with that disinterested aesthetic goal, to find in them a slightly disguised cobblestone that could be thrown into the eye or temple of the workers' revolution.<…>This is a philosophical, aesthetic, literary, religious platter, that is, scum and rubbish.<…>The dictatorship did not find in its time for the undercarriage aesthete - he is not alone - a free blow even with the shaft of a spear. But she has the dictatorship has a whip in reserve, and there is vigilance, and there is vigilance. And with this whip, it's time to make Eichenwald get out of the line, to the maintenance camp to which he rightfully belongs - with all his aesthetics and with all his religion "

The Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) adopts a resolution "On anti-Soviet groups among the intelligentsia", which gives the People's Commissariat of Justice and the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs the right to replace more severe punishment with deportation abroad, and also establishes a commission to compile a list of deportees and justify the need for their deportation. There are three people in the commission - Deputy Chairman of the Cheka Iosif Unshlikht, People's Commissar of Justice Dmitry Kursky and Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars and the STO of the RSFSR Lev Kamenev. In this composition, the commission will work until July 20, but the Politburo will remain dissatisfied with its work - there are too few people on the lists, and the grounds for expulsion are unconvincing. The composition of the commission will be supplemented - as well as new lists.

Sorokin Pitirim Alexandrovich. Professor of sociology at St. Petersburg University.<…> The figure is undoubtedly anti-Soviet. Teaches students to orient their lives towards St. Sergius. The last book was hostile and contains a whole series of insinuations against Soviet power.
Bulgakov S.N. Professor. Pop. Lives in Crimea, Black Hundreds, churchman, anti-Semite, pogromist, Wrangelite.
Lossky. Professor at Petrograd University. Editor of the magazine "We". Ideologically harmful»

Characteristics drawn up by the updated sub-commissions on those subject to expulsion

The Politburo reviews and approves the final lists of deportees. In Moscow - 61 people, in Petrograd - 51. On the same day, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee issues a decree "On administrative expulsion." According to him, persons involved in "counter-revolutionary actions" could be sent abroad or to remote regions of the RSFSR in an administrative order - that is, their cases were not referred to the court, but were considered by the Special Commission under the NKVD, established by decree, chaired by People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Felix Dzerzhinsky .

“Pretty soon, they started talking about the Moscow arrests and that all prisoners would be deported outside the USSR, and their families would have the opportunity to follow them. On this occasion, I can’t help but recall how, sitting at the hairdresser’s — a silly fellow I know, but who thinks a lot about himself — I told him about it, to which he objected with the importance of an informed person: "Nothing like that... everyone will be shot... definitely..."»

On the night of August 16-17, searches and arrests of intellectuals take place in Moscow and Petrograd. Lev Karsavin, Nikolai Lossky, Nikolai Berdyaev, Julius Aikhenvald and others find themselves in GPU prisons or under house arrest. However, many people on the lists are still at their dachas, so by noon on August 17, only 33 people were arrested in Moscow. The search for the rest continues: ambushes have been left in the apartments, neighbors and relatives have been warned of the need to immediately notify the GPU in the event of their return. All those arrested are interrogated over the next few days according to a pre-prepared questionnaire, after which they are offered to travel abroad with their families.

“Summer – which turned out to be the last in Russia – we spent holidays in Tsarskoye Selo, expecting an unusual event: my father’s trip to Karlovy Vary for a course of treatment, for which he managed to get a Czechoslovak visa<…>. It remained to obtain permission to temporarily leave the USSR. Therefore, my father was not surprised when on August 16 he received an order to appear at the building of the Petrograd GPU. The next morning he went there, accompanied by his mother.<…>. And by the evening my mother returned alone, with the news that my father had not returned from the GPU and that our apartment had been searched the day before»

“My sister wrote that there was a search in our room, but that, apart from a magazine with a portrait of Kerensky and my article, nothing reprehensible was found.<…>. In the postscript, the sister reported that the same searches had been carried out in recent days at a number of philosophers and writers, that rumors are circulating in Moscow that "religious" and "idealists" will soon be sent abroad most likely to Germany

“We spent the summer of 1922 in the Zvenigorod district, in Barvikha, in a charming place on the banks of the Moskva River, near the Arkhangelsk Yusupovs, where Trotsky lived at that time. The forests near Barvikha were wonderful, we were fond of picking mushrooms. One day I went to Moscow for a day. And it was on that night, the only one in the whole summer, when I spent the night in our Moscow apartment, that they came with a search and arrested me. I was again taken to the Cheka prison, renamed Gepeu.”

“After reading the accusation, I turned pale, realizing that this threatened with execution, and expected that they would interrogate me, who I knew, what meetings I had attended, where conspiracies against the government were organized, etc. In fact, no such questions were asked to me, like to all of us: the government knew that we did not participate in political activities»

“We were not kept under interrogation for a long time, maybe half an hour each. Without much courtesy, but no physical impact was applied to any of us.<…>No specific charges were brought against us, and two days later we were transferred to a real prison on Shpalernaya Street, placing us in cells of two or three people each. So we could choose who to sit with»

The GPU begins preparations for the departure of the anti-Soviet intelligentsia of Moscow and Petrograd abroad - it thinks through the logistics and draws up an estimate. The GPU is forced to ask the deportees themselves to deal with visas themselves - Germany, designated as the country of expulsion, refuses to issue visas for the deportees at the request of the Soviet government, but is ready to provide them upon personal requests.

“Submitting at the same time an approximate cost estimate for the expulsion of the anti-Soviet intelligentsia abroad, I ask for a vacation for the specified purpose of a special fund of 50 billion rubles»

"I don't know why the Soviet government paid for the travel of all of us first class. Miracles do happen."

“The intelligentsia expelled from Moscow is divided into 2 parties: 23 families, about 70 people, are sent to the 1st party.<…>I would have thought to send the 1st batch through Riga (Moscow - Riga)<…>. As for sending via Petrograd-Stettin, I consider it not rational for the following reasons:
1) the steamer will arrive in about 2 weeks, the steamer is a freight-passenger steamer with 15-20 seats.
2) those deported must make a change in Petrograd and fornicate there, wait for the steamer, a very protracted story»

“The Bolshevik government turned to Germany with a request to give us visas to enter Germany. Chancellor Wirth replied that Germany is not Siberia and it is impossible to exile Russian citizens to it, but if Russian scientists and writers themselves apply for a visa, Germany will gladly give them hospitality.

“Germany – then Germany! - offended: it is not a country for exile. She is ready to receive us if we ourselves ask for it, but on the orders of the political police she will not give us a visa. A noble gesture - we appreciate it, but let them ask us too. And we are convincingly and touchingly asked: "Find a visa at the embassy, ​​otherwise you will be imprisoned indefinitely." We are accommodating, we are busy. I will be fair to today's enemies - they were very kind to us.

“Armed with paper and pencil, we began to calculate how much money we needed to travel and how much we could get from selling things that would still be impossible to carry.<…> Gold items, precious stones, with the exception of wedding rings, were prohibited from export; even pectoral crosses had to be removed from the neck»

“We, the deportees, were asked to organize a business group with a chairman, an office, and delegates. Gathered, met, discussed, acted. With courtesy (otherwise - how will you send it?) The car was provided to our representative, at his request, they issued papers and documents, exchanged rubles for foreign currency at the bank, prepared red passports for the deportees and their accompanying relatives "

For the first time, the Soviet people are officially informed about the upcoming expulsion of the intelligentsia: Izvestia publishes an interview with Leon Trotsky to the American journalist Anna Louise Strong, in which he explains the need for the upcoming action and calls it "cautious humanity", clearly counting on the sympathy of the world community. The next day, Pravda comes out with the editorial "First Warning", in which the meaning and significance of the expulsion is explained more clearly.

“The foreign press is interested in us, and Leon Trotsky, the ideologist of our deportation, gives interviews to journalists: “We are deporting out of mercy, so as not to be shot.”<…> Trotsky had the idea, but it was carried out by a less intelligent person. Or less evil»

“The elements that we are expelling or will be deporting are in themselves politically insignificant. But they are a potential tool in the hands of our potential enemies. In case of new military complications<…>all these irreconcilable and incorrigible elements will turn out to be the military-political agents of the enemy. And we will be forced to shoot them according to the laws of war. That is why we preferred now, during a calm period, to send them out in advance. And I express the hope that you will not refuse to recognize our prudent humanity and take it upon yourself to defend it before public opinion.

Interview with Leon Trotsky

“If these gentlemen do not like it in Soviet Russia, let them enjoy all the benefits of bourgeois freedom outside of it.<…> There are almost no major scientific names among those sent out. For the most part, these are political elements of the professorship. who are much more famous for their membership in the Kadet party than for their scientific merit"

"First Warning"

« Many people envy us: how they would like to exchange fate with us. In a way, we are the heroes of the day. Why exactly we, such and such, were chosen, we could never find out: individuals were included in the lists, who had almost no connection with each other. The exile was striking to some: no one had heard of their public role before, it did not manifest itself in anything, and their names were not known.

The first group of deportees with their families is leaving the Soviet Union by train from Moscow to Riga. Among the passengers are Pitirim Sorokin, Fedor Stepun and Alexei Poshekhonov. September 28 they will be in Berlin.

“On a gloomy day on September 23, 1922, the first group of deportees gathered at the Moscow railway station. I brought two bags into the Latvian diplomatic carriage. "I carry everything with me." I could say the same about myself. In shoes sent by Czech scientists, a suit donated to me by the American Relief Organization, with fifty rubles in my pocket, I left my native land. All my companions were in a similar position, but no one was particularly worried about this. Despite the authorities' ban, many friends and acquaintances came to see us off. There were many flowers, hugs and tears»

About 30 deported professors and scientists with their families are leaving Petrograd on the steamer Oberburgomaster Haken. Among them are Nikolai Berdyaev, Semyon Frank, Ivan Ilyin, Sergei Trubetskoy, Mikhail Osorgin and Mikhail Novikov. On November 16, the Prussia steamer departed the same route, taking 17 more deportees with their families from the Soviet Union, including Nikolai Lossky, Lev Karsavin and Ivan Lapshin.

“In St. Petersburg, there is the International Hotel, I think it was the former European Hotel, near the Kazan Cathedral. The next day - the steamship pier, the most thorough search - if it is possible to go through seventy people in a huge luggage (counting family members); we are not allowed to take with us a single record or anything that is not marked in the approved inventory. Here two St. Petersburg writers came to see off, also scheduled for exile, but then managed to stay in Russia - honor to them and praise for their courage.

« There were ten people seeing off, no more: many were probably afraid to openly say goodbye to the deported "enemies" of the Soviet regime. We were not allowed on the ship. We were on the embankment. When the steamer set sail, those leaving were already invisibly sitting in their cabins. Failed to say goodbye"

“First, a detachment of Chekists rode with us on the steamer. Therefore, we were careful not to express our feelings and thoughts. Only after Kronstadt the ship stopped, the Chekists got into the boat and left»

« When we crossed the Soviet border by sea, there was such a feeling that we were safe, until this border no one was sure that they would not return him back. <...>The boat trip across the Baltic Sea was quite poetic. The weather was wonderful, there were moonlit nights. There was almost no pitching, only about two hours of rocking for the whole trip. We, exiles with an unknown future, felt free. The moonlit evening on deck was especially good. A new era has begun"

The steamer "Oberburgmeister Haken" arrives at the port of Stettin with more than 70 passengers on board, who transfer to the train and arrive in Berlin by the evening of the same day. On November 18, 44 Prussia passengers will also be in Germany. At first, they try to stay as a group, helping each other find cheap apartments in Berlin and the first earnings.

"We had to come to Stettin, and then for some reason everyone imagined that representatives of emigration would meet us. And everyone got excited and began to think how to respond to this meeting. The professors gathered, there was a rather long meeting with the participation of Berdyaev, Ilyin, Frank, Kizevetter, Vysheslavtsev and others. And they worked out a common response to the proposed meeting.<…>Then we all went out on deck. The pier was already very close to us and ... not a soul, not a dog, no one. Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev is standing - he had a terrible tic - and says:
- No one is visible...
That was the first greeting.
After we got off the steamer, my father made very cheerful arrangements for the transfer of things to the station. They hired three wagons drawn by bityugs and piled all our luggage on them.<…>And wagon after wagon drove in the direction of the station, from where we were supposed to go to Berlin, and behind the wagons, not along the sidewalk, but right along the pavement, taking their wives by the arms, walked the professors. It was a whole procession through Stettin, somewhat reminiscent of a funeral procession. Five days after his arrival in Berlin, Pitirim Sorokin delivers a report "On the current state of Russia" at the Union of Russian Journalists and Writers in Germany. A fiery speech about the spread of venereal diseases in the USSR, the destruction of the educational system and the general moral degradation of the new Russia and the anticipation of its imminent end opened a series of lectures that Sorokin will give in Europe. A year later, at the end of 1923, he will be invited to the United States, where in 1931 he will open the sociological department of Harvard University. The fate of the rest of the exiles will also turn out to be rather successful: Berdyaev will write 21 books in exile and will be nominated seven times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Nikolai Lossky will teach philosophy in Prague, Paris and New York, Fedor Stepun in Prague and Dresden, and in 1947 In 2010, he headed the department of the history of Russian culture, created especially for him, at the University of Munich.

“Well, then began what has to be called “life”. At first they remained a close-knit group of "expelled citizens", then they dispersed. At first we "knew more than others", now we know just as little. At first there were "people of a special psychology", then the majority settled in obligatory emigrant divisions "

"In conclusion, Professor Sorokin said he is optimistic about the future. The people will cope with communism. The report was a resounding success among the crowded audience"