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ABSTRACT
This article attempts to analyze Karsavin’s theory of revolution in the broader context of a Russian metaphysics of revolution in order to determine the place of Karsavin’s phenomenology of revolution both in his work and within Eurasianist ideology. His article “Phenomenology of Revolution” ontologically links two key concepts within Karsavin’s understanding: the “symphonic person” and the “ruling stratum.” The meaning of revolution consists in leading the symphonic person to a realization of its main tasks, which require the utmost exertion and are related to the very existence of its historical form. This crisis can result in the person’s death, but in the death of the old person is born a new individuation of a higher order of personhood for whom that revolution has been a rebirth. If the symphonic person succeeds in “being revived through death or recovery,” then this will also be the birth of a new ruling stratum and a new government, that is, its new being as a state. Karsavin thus clarifies the historical functions both of the symphonic person and of the ruling stratum. The latter turns out to be a kind of entelechy of the symphonic person, providing its own personal content to the generic concept. The concept of the ruling stratum is explained in the metaphysical context of the symphonic-person theory. In light of the symphonic person’s mission, the ruling stratum is an organic connection among individuals of the active sociocultural segment of the population that has resonated with the spirit of history and the people. In this case, the stratum “rules” along with parties and institutions, eventually passing judgment on them. The main results of Karsavin’s work are (1) modeling a developmental phase of revolution and (2) the concept of the ruling stratum, which allows us to avoid formal sociological understanding of the active elite and direct our attention to the connection between personal activity and the “silent” but by no means “sleeping” substrate of the nation that manifests itself in critical epochs.
Notes
Notes have been renumbered for this edition.—Ed.
1. We will use “the Russian Revolution” as an overall term for the sequence of events that changed the country’s political system three times: the 1905–1907 Revolution, the February Revolution of 1917, and the October Coup of 1917.
2. Published by A.L. Ospovat in 1989, with commentary by S.S. Khoruzhii. See L.P. Karsavin, “Zhozef de Mestr,” Voprosy filosofii, 1989, no. 3, pp. 79–92.
3. S.S. Khoruzhii [Horujy], “Karsavin i de Mestr,” Voprosy filosofii, 1989, no. 3, p. 90.
4. Karsavin, “Zhozef de Mestr,” p. 96.
5. L.P. Karsavin, Filosofiia istorii (St. Petersburg: Komplekt, 1993), p. 308.
6. Ibid., p. 310.
7. Two indicative views of Karsavin’s personalism, respectively pro et contra, appear in the following works: (1) Yu.B. Melikh, “Sushcheee lichnosti i lichnostnost’ edino-sushchego. K voprosu o spornosti personalizma u L.P. Karsavina i N.A. Berdiaeva,” in Lev Platonovich Karsavin (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2012), pp. 275–296; and (2) S.S. Khoruzhii, “Filosofiia Karsavina v sud’bakh evropeiskoi mysli o lichnosti,” in Lev Platonovich Karsavin, pp. 8–29.
8. We should recall that Karsavin never disappeared into this trend: He dissociated himself from it in 1929 and was never considered “one of theirs” by the Eurasianists themselves. On these difficult circumstances, see T. Obolevich, Semen Frank, Lev Karsavin i evraziitsy (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Modest Kolerov, 2020).
9. I am quoting here from the original edition: L.P. Karsavin, “Fenomenologiia revoliutsii,” Evraziiskii vremennik, book 5 (Paris: Evraziiskoe knigoizdatel’stvo, 1927), pp. 28–74. It has been reprinted twice: (1) L.P. Karsavin, Fenomenologiia revoliutsii (Tver, 1992); (2) L.P. Karsavin, “Fenomenologiia revoliutsii,” in Russkii uzel evraziistva (Moscow: Belovod’e, 1997), pp. 141–201.
10. Cited in Obolevich, Semen Frank, Lev Karsavin i evraziitsy, p. 149.
11. A number of works demonstrate the place of Karsavin’s phenomenology of revolution both within his work and within Eurasianist ideology. See, for example, V.P. Kosharnyi, “Karsavin: razmyshleniia o russkoi revoliutsii,” in Istoriko-filosofskii al’makankh, vol. 3 (Moscow: Sovremennye tetradi, 2010); V.P. Kosharnyi, “Problema revoliutsii v sotsiologii i filosofii russkogo posleoktiabr’skogo zarubezh’ia,” Izvestiia vysshikh uchebnykh zavedenii. Povolzhskii region. Obshchestvennye nauki, 2015, no. 1; E.I. Zamaraeva, “L.P. Karsavin: russkaia revoliutsiia v kontekste evraziiskogo proekta,” Solov’evskie issledovaniia, 2018, vol. 2(58). This article attempts to examine Karsavin’s theory in the broader context of Russian metaphysics of revolution.
12. Karsavin, “Fenomenologiia revoliutsii,” p. 36.
13. Ibid., p. 38.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., p. 41.
16. Ibid., p. 64.
17. Ibid., pp. 67–68.
18. Ibid., p. 68.
19. Ibid., pp. 70–72.
20. Kitezh: the “invisible” religious–mythological city in the folk tradition that God saved from Mongol invaders by submerging it below the surface of Lake Svetoyar, preserving it as a kind of Atlantean refuge.—Trans.
21. B. Glebov, “Evraziistvo o revoliutsii,” Ekho, 1928, no. 43 (February 22).
22. Karsavin, “Fenomenologiia revoliutsii,” pp. 70–71.
23. Shatovism (shatovshchina): from the Shatov of Dostoevsky’s novel Demons, a passionate defender of Orthodoxy and its ties to the Russian people and nationhood, though without genuine religious conviction or even necessarily belief in God.—Trans.
24. Karsavin, “Fenomenologiia revoliutsii,” p. 70.
25. See L.P. Karsavin, “O smysle revoliutsii,” Evraziia, 1928, no. 1; and L.P. Karsavin, “K poznaniiu revoliutsii,” Evraziia, 1929, no. 11.
26. L.P. Karsavin, “Gosudarstvo i krizis demokratii,” Novyi mir, 1991, no. 1, pp. 183–193.
27. Ibid., p. 193.
28. Ibid., p. 192.
29. Ibid., p. 193.