Что делать? What is to be done? This question was famously asked by the 19th century Russian philosopher Nikolai Chernyshevsky, and it would inspire the likes of Leo Tolstoy and Vladimir Lenin. Lenin would go on to publish a pamphlet under the same name, creating further animosity on the road to the Russian Revolution of 1918. Tolstoy would discuss this question with a man named Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov, who would argue that any question – the above in particular – is, under its surface, a question of life and death. What is to be done about life? What about death? Fedorov believed that there was something to be done, and he called it the ‘common task’ of humanity: a moral obligation to defeat death through the resurrection of all who have
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In later writings, Fedorov would claim to have three distinct memories from childhood: “black, very black bread,” an explanation of war which make him feel “a terrible confusion: ‘In war people shoot each other,’” and the realization that “some people are not one’s kin but strangers, and even among one’s kin some are not kin but strangers” (Young 53). These memories would influence him greatly as he began teaching elementary education later in life, though they would have their greatest influence after Fedorov retired from teaching and found himself at the Rumiantsev Library where he would work for the rest of his life, teaching young scientists and prolifically writing (Young 68). Upon intense reflection, he noticed a disturbing motif in his memories: disunion and disorder. In the burnt bread, he saw classist division in which the poor suffered, while in war, he saw global division in which nations would ruthlessly destroy eachother, and in kinship, he saw individual division in which people felt a personal disconnect from everyone and everything. He saw a world falling swiftly and inevitably toward its own destruction. These ideas deeply disturbed him and inspired him to write hundreds of pages of philosophical text throughout his tenure at the Rumiantsev Library, where he would scarcely share a thing beyond ink and paper up to his …show more content…
He particularly chastises its failure as the second Rome to promote ultimate global unification: “the unconscious activity which could have worked out a means of resuscitation directed people to the destruction toward which the world is veering” (Fedorov). However, this allows a theological connection between Cosmism and Russian Orthodoxy to form. Russian Orthodoxy did not have much influence until the fifteenth century, at which point a Russian monk named Philotheus created a theory known as “Moscow, the Third Rome.” In this doctrine, Philotheus claimed Moscow as the third and final union point of all Christianity after the fall of the Roman and Byzantine Empires, each home to the first and second Rome, respectively (Zenkovsky). Moscow would have solidified its inheritance of the Orthodox Church after Prince Ivan III of Moscow, the first Russian Tsar, married the daughter of the last Byzantine emperor in 1472 (Morrissey). The novelty of Cosmism, then, is in its inherent identity as a Russian philosophy: Russia had to be destined to be an eschatological epicenter. The inevitable resurrection of the world would rest in the hands of the third and final Rome. As such, Russia would have the sole ability to lead humanity in the apocalyptic common task, which is
In later writings, Fedorov would claim to have three distinct memories from childhood: “black, very black bread,” an explanation of war which make him feel “a terrible confusion: ‘In war people shoot each other,’” and the realization that “some people are not one’s kin but strangers, and even among one’s kin some are not kin but strangers” (Young 53). These memories would influence him greatly as he began teaching elementary education later in life, though they would have their greatest influence after Fedorov retired from teaching and found himself at the Rumiantsev Library where he would work for the rest of his life, teaching young scientists and prolifically writing (Young 68). Upon intense reflection, he noticed a disturbing motif in his memories: disunion and disorder. In the burnt bread, he saw classist division in which the poor suffered, while in war, he saw global division in which nations would ruthlessly destroy eachother, and in kinship, he saw individual division in which people felt a personal disconnect from everyone and everything. He saw a world falling swiftly and inevitably toward its own destruction. These ideas deeply disturbed him and inspired him to write hundreds of pages of philosophical text throughout his tenure at the Rumiantsev Library, where he would scarcely share a thing beyond ink and paper up to his …show more content…
He particularly chastises its failure as the second Rome to promote ultimate global unification: “the unconscious activity which could have worked out a means of resuscitation directed people to the destruction toward which the world is veering” (Fedorov). However, this allows a theological connection between Cosmism and Russian Orthodoxy to form. Russian Orthodoxy did not have much influence until the fifteenth century, at which point a Russian monk named Philotheus created a theory known as “Moscow, the Third Rome.” In this doctrine, Philotheus claimed Moscow as the third and final union point of all Christianity after the fall of the Roman and Byzantine Empires, each home to the first and second Rome, respectively (Zenkovsky). Moscow would have solidified its inheritance of the Orthodox Church after Prince Ivan III of Moscow, the first Russian Tsar, married the daughter of the last Byzantine emperor in 1472 (Morrissey). The novelty of Cosmism, then, is in its inherent identity as a Russian philosophy: Russia had to be destined to be an eschatological epicenter. The inevitable resurrection of the world would rest in the hands of the third and final Rome. As such, Russia would have the sole ability to lead humanity in the apocalyptic common task, which is