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By Andrei Zolotov Jr.
STAFF WRITER
The St. Petersburg Times
General news from St.Petersburg and Russia
Friday, September 27, 2002
MOSCOW - The worn folders are labeled "Top Secret" and bear the
insignia of the Soviet secret police - GPU, NKVD, KGB.
Inside, in faded ink on yellow paper, the now declassified files from the
archives of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, have much to tell about
a milestone in the establishment of totalitarianism in Russia - the 1922
expulsion of non-Communist intellectuals.
The documents reflect the story of dozens of Russian philosophers and
other leading intellectuals who were arrested in August 1922 and left
Russia in September and November of that year on two German boats
that became collectively known as the "philosophers' ship."
As part of the 80th anniversary of those events, and in an attempt to
distance today's secret service from its repressive past, the FSB has been
publishing its research on the deportation and showing some files to the
media - including the first public disclosure of the number of people
arrested and expelled.
Inside the files, the signatures of Russia's best known philosophers -
Nikolai Berdyayev, Nicholas Lossky, Fyodor Stepun - and many other
leading thinkers of the early 20th century can be seen next to that of
Bolshevik secret police deputy, Iosif Unschlicht, who oversaw the
operation ordered by Lenin and the Politburo.
"These are people here, people! Behind these signatures is our history!"
said Vladimir Makarov, an employee of the FSB archive who researched
the files and showed them to The St. Petersburg Times.
Makarov, who taught philosophy at a military college before joining the
archive, has prepared a publication on Stepun's case for the October issue
of the Voprosy Filosofii journal, which will be entirely dedicated to the
deportation of the intellectuals.
"The Central Archive of the FSB often acts as either the initiator or one of
the leading contributors of documentary publications on various historical
subjects," the FSB said in a written response to questions.
This time, the reply said, "we took into account that the issue of the
relationship between intellectuals and the authorities has not lost its
relevance today, and not only in our country, but around the world."
The FSB denied last month's report in the Izvestia newspaper that only
two case files - those of People's Socialist Party leader Alexei
Peshekhonov and journalist Viktor Iretsky - have been declassified.
Most documents pertaining to the deportation were declassified in the early
1990s, the agency said, while personal dossiers were opened up five years
ago, after the expiration of the 75-year term established for such files by
the law on state secrets.
Although a great deal of historical research on the deportation has been
published in the past decade, most of it relied on emigres' memoirs, which
differed in their estimates of how many people were expelled.
The FSB said the discrepancies arose because not all those who were
arrested were sent abroad. For example, many doctors were sent instead
to the country's southern and eastern hinterlands to battle the epidemics
there.
Others were freed on the basis of requests from the organizations where they
worked.
In total, officials said, the three detention lists approved by the
Politburo for Moscow, Petrograd and Ukraine, included 228 people, 32 of
whom were students. In Moscow, 100 people were to be arrested, but only
75 writers and academics were in fact put behind bars. Of those, 57 -
including Berdyayev and astronomer Vsevolod Stratonov - agreed to leave
Russia at their own expense and departed in September and November on
two ships from Petrograd to Stettin, Germany. Eighteen more, most of them
students, were deported under guard.
Makarov said that, in the course of his research, he discovered a
lesser-known fact: that some intellectuals were expelled as late as 1923 by
train to the Lavtian capital of Riga and by steamboat from Odessa to
Constantinople.
Stepun's 20-page case is typical for deportees, Makarov said. It begins with
a search and arrest warrant issued in mid-August. But the philosopher was
not at home when officers arrived, and the file contains testimonies by his
neighbors and an obligation by the dvornik, or janitor, to inform Stepun
that he was being summoned to the GPU. When he was finally questioned on
Sept. 30, Stepun described Bolshevism as a "very complicated religious and
moral illness of Russian people's soul, which, however, will undoubtedly be
useful for its spiritual development."
The investigator handling the case concluded that Stepun must be expelled
"in order to stop [his] malicious anti-Soviet activity."
The last page of the file is much newer. It is a certificate of
rehabilitation from the Prosecutor General's Office dated July 4, 2000.
"There is no proof of his guilt in committing a crime in the case,"
prosecutors concluded. "No investigation was conducted other than
questioning Stepun about his political views."
New York-based Russian poet Oleg Ilyinsky recalls listening to Stepun's
lectures in Munich University and in private homes from 1947 to 1956. The
lectures were equally brilliant in Russian and German, Ilyinsky said in a
telephone interview last month.
"Through him, I and many others received a tremendous wealth of historical
and philosophical culture," he said. "His artistic talent was no less than
his philosophical knowledge. It impressed students profoundly."
Makarov pointed to several features that the deportation cases have in
common. They lack original reports from GPU informers, thus testifying to
the fact that all arrests were carried out on the basis of prepared lists.
Most of the documents are written in one handwriting and only signed by the
accused intellectuals - more evidence of a well-prepared operation, in which
even procedural papers were prepared in advance.
The aim of the operation, he said, was "to clean up the ideological playing
field."
"And they [the Bolsheviks] managed to do it very successfully," Makarov
said. As a student and, later, an associate professor of philosophy, Makarov
added, he personally felt the detriment of the protracted period when the
writings of Berdyayev, Lossky, Stepun and others were off limits to
Russians.
"It took me a long time to painfully figure out many things myself," Makarov
said.
Something to say? Write to the Opinion Page Editor.
E-mail or online form: letters@sptimesrussia.com
http://www.times.spb.ru/archive/times/807/top/t_7494.htm
ArtUkraine Information Service (ARTUIS)
Kyiv, Ukraine and Washington, D.C.
ArtUkraine@starpower.net
http://www.ArtUkraine.com
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