Abstract
This chapter considers Russian identity and history in the writings of two prominent (though now largely forgotten) Russian émigré intellectuals of the first half of the twentieth century: Ilya Isidorovich Fondaminsky (1880–1942) and Semen Osipovich Portugeis (1880–1944). It describes their complicated biographies and lives in Paris. Fondaminsky and Portugeis were compelled to live in the West and published primarily in Parisian Russian émigré journals. In their numerous publications of the 1920–1930s, they not only offered original historiosophical interpretations of Russian history but also deeply analyzed, in the words of Nikolai Berdyaev, “the origins and meaning” of Russian Bolshevism. Having died during the Second World War, the two Russian humanist theorists predicted the mechanisms of the gradual degradation and the final collapse of the Communist Empire. This chapter considers Fondaminsky’s (pseudonym Burnakov) main work, a series of essays titled, “Russian Paths|” (1920–1940), which were published in the main Russian émigré journal, Sovremennye zapiski, and his numerous essays published in the Parisian journal Novy Grad (1931–1938). The work of Semen Portugeis is considered with a particular emphasis on his series of analytical monographs devoted to the analysis of the main Bolshevik institutions (the party, the army, the Komsomol, and the Profsoyuz trade unions), as well as his numerous articles published in French and US émigré journals. Before the Russian Revolution, he was considered one of the best Russian political journalists and later was called the first émigré Sovietologist of his generation.
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Notes
- 1.
According to the law of 1887, the proportion of Jewish students in Moscow was not to exceed 3 percent. More fortunate than Fondaminsky in this respect was another descendant of the old Moscow Jewish community, the future outstanding philosopher of the Russian Silver Age, Semyon Frank (also then an emigrant), who did manage to matriculate in the Lazarev Institute. As a side note, my grandfather, Sergei Georgievich Kara-Murza (1878–1956), had no problem matriculating in the prestigious Lazarev Institute, and studied alongside Semyon Frank. He went on to become an attorney, journalist, and theorist of drama, and remained in Soviet Russia after the revolution.
- 2.
In the Russian circle in Heidelberg, Fondaminsky met another student from Moscow, the famous philosopher and sociologist Fyodor Stepun, who in his memoirs commented about the erudition and oratory talent of the young socialist revolutionary (Stepun 2000, 90–91).
- 3.
Fondaminsky once admitted that he chose the pseudonym Bunakov absolutely by accident. At one of the mass rallies where he was to speak, he saw a bright sign on the Moscow street bearing the name of the owner.
- 4.
During the only meeting of the Constituent Assembly on the night of January 5, 1918, one of the Bolshevik sailors in the Taurida Palace in Petrograd tried to shoot Fondaminsky in the meeting room after recognizing the then Deputy Fondaminsky as the former Socialist-Revolutionary Commissioner of the Black Sea Fleet.
- 5.
For more on the biography of Semyon O. Portugeis, see Kara-Murza (2006).
- 6.
The publication of “Puti Rossii” lasted until the final issue (no. 70) of Sovremennye zapiski, published in 1940 during the chaos of the Second World War. From 1921 to 1940, he published seventeen of these philosophical-historical essays with their unprecedented conception and depth.
- 7.
- 8.
See also Kara-Murza (2017a).
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Kara-Murza, A.A. (2021). Between East and West: Russian Identity in the Émigré Writings of Ilya Fondaminsky and Semyon Portugeis. In: Bykova, M.F., Forster, M.N., Steiner, L. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Russian Thought. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62982-3_14
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