Russian Logos

Ninety years ago, the Bolsheviks of Soviet Russia performed a political and symbolic act with the provisional title of 'philosopher's ship' (which historiography more crudely calls 'philosopher's steamer'). Nominally, it was the expulsion of part of the Russian humanist intelligentsia from Russia to Germany and Latvia. In September 1922, two steamships left Petrograd and many others sailed from Sevastopol. Among the thinkers who found themselves in exile were Russian philosophers: N. A. Berdyaev, I. A. Ilyin, L. P. Karsavin, N. O. Lossky, P. A. Sorokin, S. E. Trubetskoy, S. L. Frank and others. Many thinkers, writers and musicians had left Russia even earlier. Among them: S. V. Rachmaninoff, S. S. Prokofiev, I. Severyanin, V. Nabokov, I. A. Bunin, Z. N. Hippius, D. S. Merezhkovsky, K. D. Balmont, , A. M. Belyi, A. M. Rechka. Belyi, A. M. Remizov, B. K. Zaitsev, I. G. Ehrenburg, V. V. Kandinsky, F. I. Chaliapin, M. I. Tsvetaeva, V. B. Shklovsky, V. F. Khodasevich, etc.  Many of those who did not leave Soviet Russia were repressed and even shot (N. Gumilev, later N. Klyuev), some committed suicide, others went into internal exile...