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Nietzsche and the Russian Revolution
| Article
# : |
12986 |
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Section : |
Modern Thought
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1987 |
6,880 Words |
| Author
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Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal
Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal is professor of history at Fordham
University. Her latest book, Nietzsche in Russia, is in press
with Princeton University Press |
That Nietzsche was an influence on the Russian Revolution may come as a surprise, for Nietzsche's contempt for the "slave morality" of socialism is well known and he is generally considered an advocate of individualism. Nietzsche's impact, however, varied from nation to nation, for readers related his ideas to their own cultural legacy and immediate situation, emphasizing some aspects of his thought and ignoring or rejecting others. In Russia, Nietzsche was interpreted first as a philosopher of personal liberation and artistic creativity and then as a prophet of total revolution, a revolution that would go beyond politics and economics to create an entirely new society and culture, and a new man.
Between 1890 and 1917 Nietzsche's impact on Russian thought and culture was enormous. From hindsight, the 1890s--the years when Russians learned about Nietzsche--was the beginning of a period of ideological crisis and sociopolitical upheaval that was partly caused by the strain of early and rapid industrialization. Nietzsche's focus on metaphysical and moral issues was congenial to Russian intellectuals accustomed to discussing the "cursed questions" and familiar with the novels of Dostoyevski. The implicit apocalypticism of Nietzsche's writings paralleled Russian eschatological prophecies that began to circulate around 1900. The Revolution of 1905 stimulated a reinterpretation of Nietzsche; his Russian admirers focused on the collectivist aspect of Nietzsche--the Dionysian forgetting of self in communal ecstasy. The symbolist writers George Chulkov and Vyacheslav Ivanov incorporated Nietzsche's Dionysian principle into their new political doctrine, mystical anarchism. Alexander Blok, the great symbolist poet, equated revolution with the return of Dionysus and prophesied the destruction of modern civilization. The Marxists Maxim Gordy, Anatole Lunacharsky, and Alexander Bogdanov, newly cognizant of the power of religion, symbol, and myth on the human psyche, utilized Nietzsche's Dionysian principle to develop a new socialist religion, "God-building." These writers posited theories of deliberate cultural creation, which highlighted art, especially the theater, as a means to engender a new collectivist consciousness.
Dionysus Politicized: The Symbolist Vision
The symbolists, a school of avant-garde writers and artists, introduced and popularized Nietzsche's ideas in the 1890s. During this first stage of Nietzsche's influence, symbolists developed a philosophy of aesthetic individualism and rejected the rationalism, utilitarianism, and positivism of the mainstream intelligentsia. Psychologically oriented, they focused on the
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