Thank you for the introduction and I would like to stress that I'm speaking

here to you as a historian, not as an artist or philosopher. Artists are

absolutely free to create myths and to think the Russians call it Mifatvortestvo.
I'm a historian, and so I keep to historical facts.
Nikolai Fyodorov's project of universal salvation
and Russian cosmism.
Let us imagine that one day, technical and social progress
will make paradise on earth possible,
that realm of freedom of which Marxists dreamt.
Man is no longer exploited by man.
All the springs of wealth will satisfy all material needs.
There are no diseases and genetic defects,
and human life can be extended as desired.
In this perfect society, all humans are brothers.
But what about the fathers?
What about those who helped create this paradise who suffered and died without
partaking in the fruit of progress?
The question of whether there is such a thing as progress at all, considering the
ever-growing number of victims,
has occupied Russian writers and philosophers since the early 19th century.
Famously, Ivan Karamazov voiced a radical rejection of a future harmony whose soil
has
been manured with the suffering of innocent people.
For him, this harmony is not worth the tears even of one abused child.
Not to mention the hell that reigns on earth and which is supposed to become even
worse
in the other world, so as to compensate for the sins of this one.
For him, for Ivan Karamazov, this price is way too high,
and he hurries to return his entrance ticket into such a harmony.
In the early 20th century, thinkers like Nikolai Berdyaev,
Sergei Bulgakov, and Vladimir Erne criticized the idea
that a kingdom of freedom might be possible in this world,
at the end of a continuous progressive development
of humanity.
According to Bulgakov, all previous generations
gone forever, it would be not harmony,
but in the best case, a few generations
that would manage to achieve the end goal
of historical progress, the dubious fortune
being able to enjoy the bliss of a socialist state of the future built on
the bones of ancestors. Seen like this, the promise of a kingdom of perfect
justice and bliss within the limits of history is an illusion. It is
unrealizable because there is death. Death not only makes the life of an
time limited and random, hence devoid of value and meaning, it also destroys the
unity of humanity by dividing it into generations. The division into
generations makes it impossible for everybody to achieve the end point of
progress so that the sacrifices and efforts made throughout history remain
meaningless, the results of no importance to all humanity.
For Bulgakov, Berdyaev, and some other thinkers,
the solution of the problem was in the resurrection
of the dead, all of them.
Only belief in this possibility
modeled on the resurrection of Christ
made possible an idea of progress, whose end goal is,
and this point is of crucial importance,
beyond the realm of secular history.
But does Christian belief in resurrection
and eternal life really offer consolation?
To speak with Ivan Karamazov again,
what becomes of harmony if there is hell?
Once again, humanity is divided
in those who are blessed and those who are damned.
And this time, the division is forever,
so that the bliss of some would mean an extension of the suffering of others
into infinity. A great number of surrogates were called upon to salvage
the idea of progress in this world. In trying forever in the great heart of
the working class or lying mummified in the mausoleum on Red Square, the
the red hero lives on, even if only metaphorically.
But where will the traces of the individual be preserved?
Where will the individual be commemorated
when the sun is no longer shining
and the human species itself is no longer there?
When this happens, the individual will not even have existed.
However numerous the attempts to salvage the idea of progress in the face of
suffering, death, and inevitable decay, however hard one tries to justify the
sacrifices, ultimately there is nothing one could call a satisfactory solution.
This was exactly how Nikolai Fyodorov, a humble librarian of the Rumyantsev Museum
in Moscow, saw progress in a world where there is death.
As a triumph of the young over the old, of the living over the dead.
For him, this kind of progress was deeply objectionable.
The highest goal of all human efforts must be a world without dead or more
precisely
a world in which death will have never existed.
So that everybody, including the dead, would be able to become part of it.
In his philosophy of the common task, Fyodorov appeals to all the living, the sons,
to come
together in a brotherly fashion in order to work towards overcoming death with
rational,
that is, scientific and technical means, and to physically bring back from the dead
all the dead people.
The petrification, otsetvarenje, which is gradually progressing,
imminent resurrection of all previous generations,
comes in place of childbearing, which only produces mortals
and thus perpetuates the meaningless cycle of birth and death
in a state of blind natural decay.
Fyodorov describes the physical restoration of dead people
as a completely mechanical and materialistic process
that consists of tracing, collecting, and synthesizing
the dispersed material particles of their bodies.
The product will be a pure work of art,
chudoriztia mei praziedenia,
created rather than begotten,
and thus perfect and imperishable,
even if the question of personal identity remains unresolved.
In their search for the ancestors Ashes, Prach, Prietkov,
humans will free themselves from the shackles of gravity
which stand for decrepitude and death.
No longer idle passengers of the earth,
they will transform their planet into a spacecraft
that will serve them in their exploration of the vastness of the universe,
so they can use the infinite cosmic space as living quarters for the generations
they will have brought to life.
They will rebuild the universe, fill it with reason, and perfect it.
In order to make their way through the universe and to be able to exist in all its
worlds,
humans will have to acquire the ability to create their own bodies,
that is to synthesize them from the elementary cosmic matter.
Fyodorov never ties of repeating,
our body must be our work.
Our work must be our work.
Because only in this way would humans ever be able to gradually transform
themselves
from perishable natural creatures to self-regulating independent artificial
entities.
Humans will no longer be forced to transform the ancestors' ashes into nourishment
for themselves and their progeny.
Instead, they will learn to use those very ashes to reconstruct their ancestors
with the help of the knowledge and practical abilities
they will have learned through mastering the art of constructing their own bodies.
The cannibalistic suppression and devouring of the fathers will be replaced with
their
conscious reconstruction.
Love of parents will replace sensual longing, and the tremendous power which
manifests itself
in lust, is a quotation, will create eternal life in order to give it back to those
who died.
According to Fyodorov, the resurrection of all the dead will mark a complete
victory over space and time, and thus the end of history.
The general resurrection and a complete liberation from the shackles of a blind
death-dealing nature are mutually dependent.
Only a fully united community of humans, including dead ones, is capable of
converting all that
is nature-given and therefore decrepit into something man-made, artificial and
therefore
perfect.
Perfection and immortality are ethically justified only when everybody, without
exception, can partake of them, whereby injustice and suffering will be
annihilated.
In this way, Fyodorov eliminates the aporia inherent in all theories of progress.
Created by everybody for everybody,
his paradise in this world is a product of the union
of all humans in space and time,
there being neither the doomed nor victims of history.
You see here a drawing by Vasili Chekrigin,
two of his paintings are also on display
and in our exhibition, showing the process of searching,
collecting the particles of the dead ancestors,
and the beginning of the work of the resurrection
of the dead.
Chekrigin, who died in 1922, he
made a whole series showing the resurrection of the dead.
he was deeply impressed by Fyodorov and his philosophy.
Fyodorov's followers in post-Soviet Russia
presented him as an important religious thinker
whose teachings opened up a third phase
after the Old and New Testament,
that of an active no-sphere Christianity,
whatever that might be.
Especially the reference to humans perfecting the universe
led to a misunderstanding of Fyodorov's common task
as a connecting link between divine grace and human action,
pointing to an active participation of humanity
in the divine and human act of the resurrection
of the dead and the salvation of the world.
However, even though Fyodorov speaks of God's kingdom,
and the realization of divine will, he never mentions divine assistance.
Rather his project is an essentially immanent, human, scientific, and technical
one.
In his own words, the resurrection will be a task not of miracle but of knowledge
and
common labor.
Consequently, the need for an otherworldly existence is eliminated.
Fyodorov's supermoralism demands, I quote, and you see it here, paradise, the
kingdom
of God, so not in another world, but in this one.
It demands a transformation of our reality here on earth, a transformation that
will
extend also to all heavenly worlds.
The paradise can only be created by people themselves.
Fyodorov does speak of a possibility of divine intervention,
but only in one case.
If humans fail in fulfilling their task,
then there is a danger of, I quote Fyodorov,
a transcendental resurrection,
a resurrection that will be accomplished not by us,
but from outside, regardless of and even against our will,
a resurrection of wrath of the last judgment
and a condemnation of some to eternal torments
while others will be doomed to witness these torments.
In other words, the apocalyptic prophecies
are contingent.
Their fulfillment is not irreversible
and depends on the behavior of humans.
By redeeming themselves and transforming the universe into a paradise, humans can
prevent
and irate God from destroying the world and dividing humanity forever into those
who are
redeemed and those who are doomed.
Theologians consequently reject Fyodorov's religion of humankind as incompatible
with
redemption.
Führer's project resembles most closely the belief
in apocatastasis panton, a restitution of all things
or universal salvation.
This concept, however, is rejected
by all Christian confessions as heretical,
because it would mean that beginning and end would
become one, whereby the historical process of salvation
would be deprived of all significance.
We spoke, Boris Groys also spoke about this picture
of circularity.
So this is also the problem with the apocatastasis pantone.
The whole creation will be set back into a position
before the fall, before the pre-Lapsarian situation.
Fyodorov and Russian cosmism.
Today, Nikolai Fyodorov is considered
to be a founder of the so-called Russian cosmism.
Russian cosmism, together with its rapidly increasing
number of sub-disciplines such as astro-cosmism,
theo-cosmism, sophia-cosmism,
anthropocosmism, bio-cosmism, sociocosmism,
cosmic aesthetics, cosmic ecology, etc., etc.,
appears to be a blossoming branch of contemporary Russian culture.
Adherents define it as, these are all quotes,
an original outgrowth of the Russian spirit,
an essential element of the Russian idea,
and at the same time one of the greatest discoveries of human culture.
The specifically national character of this world view is said to be rooted in the
uniquely
Russian archetype of all unity.
It is being declared as a basic feature of Russian-ness, Ruthkust, as a Russian way
of
perceiving life and the world, cosmic, Kosmichesky, thereby becomes a mark of
everything
that is considered truly Russian, from old Russian icons showing the prophet Ilya
riding
a flaming chariot across the sky right up to spaceflight of Yuri Gagarin, Russia's
son
who has paved the way to the cosmos for mankind and who, according to popular
belief, went
to heaven in his plane crash.
Despite the claims of its followers, Russian cosmism, I speak of Russian cosmism,
as
propagated today is far from being
a unified philosophical school or tradition
in the sense of an academic history.
On the contrary, both the term Russian cosmism
and the concept, a hybrid ideological construct,
originated in the late Soviet period
and has fed into a nationalist discourse
about Russian identity in post-Soviet Russia.
Russian cosmism is a typical case of the invention of a tradition, with the
additional intent
to support a tradition of invention.
The assumption of cosmism, of Russian cosmism as a tradition, is already undermined
by
the fact that the most important representatives of this tradition in the 20th
century did
consider themselves part of an intellectual school of any kind. In
addition to that, the differences in their objectives and methods of research as
well in their worldviews were so fundamental that their works do not
contain references to one another. Concerning their relationship to
Fyodorov, the alleged founding father of Russian cosmism, there is no
evidence of a deeper reception of his work.
I would like to demonstrate this on the example
of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the autodidact and nearly deaf
schoolteacher of physics and mathematics
in the then obscure provincial town of Kaluga,
the grandfather of Soviet space travel
and one of the most prominent representatives
of Russian cosmism.
Tsiolkovsky's pioneering work in rocketry
was inspired by a self-styled cosmic philosophy,
a weird bricolage, I wouldn't call it philosophy,
of ideas drawn from panpsychism,
theosophy, and spiritualism,
which he regarded as the work of a genius and redeemer
and did not shy away from comparisons with Jesus Christ,
or as he always collegially called him
the teacher from Galilee.
Contemporary devotees of Russian cosmism purport time and again that Tsiolkovsky
was directly inspired by Fyodorov in his ideas on space travel.
Tsiolkovsky's inventions, so they claim, merely serve to realize Fyodorov's great
visionary design.
This view has found its way into Western publications as well.
Here we read that Tsiolkovsky took up the course of space flight under the
influence
of Fyodorov with the aim to bring the awakened ancestors, some even speak of
millions of
returning souls, to other planets.
This is far from truth.
Tsiolkovsky's solution of the problem of death.
Death for him doesn't exist.
it is only an illusion of the weak human mind,
is completely incompatible with Fyodorov's central idea
of personal resurrection by technological means.
Whereas Fyodorov's grand project aimed at a restoration
of mankind in its entirety
and included all deceased people,
Tsiolkovsky was solely concerned with the breeding
of a future race of superhumans while actively eradicating all inferior beings.
It is obvious that neither his cosmic philosophy nor his space projects had
anything to do
with Fyodorov's common task.
What therefore is, ah, you see here a depiction of Tsiolkovsky, which is much more
heroic
than the one I showed you before.
It's also Mifatvorshestva.
What, therefore, is Russian cosmism?
In the years of Perestroika, a wave
of writings on Russian cosmism brought these ideas
enormous popularity.
The reasons for this are apparently
to be found in a general awareness of an impending
crisis, hunger for a compensation
for the loss of the empire, like Swiss cosmism would be ridiculous, and the need
for a theory
that assumes the world to be a rational entity with mankind as its center.
According to Michael Epstein, the breakdown of the Soviet system left behind a
metaphysical
Wakeham. In order to fill it, advocates of Russian cosmism developed the
foundations for a new ideocratic regime, a syncretic ideology which combines a
number of different key futures. I will name only five and with that I'm
coming to the end of my presentation. What is Russian cosmism? First, para-science.
Heliobiologist Aleksandr Chizhevsky, we heard about him today, is considered one of
the
main exponents of Russian cosmism in the 20th century, developed a theory of the
impact
of cosmic factors on human life and society.
His theory of helioterroxy, the influence of this 11 years circle of sun activity,
We heard even on the results of British elections.
His theory, which shows, I think,
obvious connections also with astrology
and an occult fascination with prophecy,
was never scientifically validated.
No wonder Marxist critics condemned his search
for what they called a transcendent factor
of the historical process as leading to cosmic fatalism.
Likewise, considered part of Russian cosmism
is Liev Gumilyov's highly speculative
biocosmic theory of ethnogenesis,
which attempts to explain the origin of ethnic groups
and civilizations as the results of spontaneous discharges
of a special biochemical energy of cosmic origin.
Today's cosmists are doing research on bioenergy, ufology, morphogenetic fields, or
try to change
the course of time with the aid of COSYREF's mirrors.
Second, I give you just a few examples looking to 30 minutes I tried to keep.
Occultism. Second, Russia has been beset by a wave of fascination with the occult
for
over four decades or even longer. This wave also carries Russian cosmism. There are
many
false connections between contemporary cosmists and other groups and movements
within the
flourishing occult milieu in Russia. Yelena Blavatskaya's Theosophy, a synthesis
of science, religion, and philosophy
has become a permanent feature of Russian cosmism,
as well as the living ethics by Yelena Nikolay-Urerich
or Daniel Andreas Rosamira.
In particular, due to these obvious ties to occultism
in both its eastern and western variety,
Russian cosmism is being fiercely
opposed by orthodox thinkers.
The philosopher Nikolai Gavryushin denounced Russian
cosmism as a technocratic pseudo-religion and linked it
with western traditions such as Auguste Kant's religion
of mankind, Masonic Gnosticism
and occult theosophical speculations in order
to demonstrate that it was not only incompatible
with orthodoxy, but even not of Russian origin.
For Alexander Dugin, Russian cosmism is the occult shadow ideology of Soviet
Marxism and
thereby part of a world-spanning conspiracy against the Russian people.
Third, New Age ideology.
Much of the syncretic ideology currently propagated under the label of cosmism
appears
to be a Russian variant of Western New Age thinking.
since both are rooted in the same traditions of pseudoscientific utopian and
esoteric thought.
Take, for example, the holistic organic conceptions of Fritjof Capra, James
Lovelock, or Gregory Bateson.
Their works are proof that concepts such as planetarian consciousness,
Noosphere, ecology of the mind, or the so-called Gaia theory, which takes the Earth
to be a
living self-regulating organism, have become standard terminology for both Western
New Age
ideologists and contemporary Russian cosmists.
Fourth, neo-God building.
Russian cosmism is also an offspring of Soviet ideology in that it continues trying
to
connect the peters of scientism with an all-encompassing sense of meaning of human
action.
At times, it even appears as a renewed attempt at God-building, Bogastereitilstwo,
destined
to replace the narrow-minded Marxism of Western origin with an autochthonous meta-
religion
of superhumanity, aiming at a deification of man.
Such an attempt had been made by post-industrial patriots,
a group of prominent Moscow scientists
centered around Sergei Kourginian, who
propagated a new humanistic religion,
incorporating allusions to Fyodorov, Teilhard
Desjardins, and Vladimir Vernadsky.
In their view, only the metaphysics of the common task is capable of conveying to
humanity
its historic and cosmic mission, overcoming the cosmic absurdity of earthly
existence."
Slavoj Žižek consequently denounced cosmism as a strange combination of vulgar
materialism
and gnostic spirituality, which formed an occult shadow
ideology, the obscene secret teaching of Soviet Marxism,"
end of quote.
And last, finally, speaking of art,
which is, after all, our topic here,
one can extend to Russian cosmism
what Boris Groys once said of the Russian soul.
Russian cosmism, and I quote Boris Groys, what
he said, on the Russian soul, is a commercial strategy used
by some to promote themselves in the West
as Russian authors, intellectuals, or artists.
According to Groys, for somebody
seeing to establish themselves here in the West,
it is important to define whatever is unique about them
and to turn it into a trademark.
This is part of intellectual enterprise.
The West does not need a westernized Russia.
It needs an exotic Russia.
Russian Cosmism answers this need for exoticism
in the best way possible.
I'm coming to the end.
Russian Cosmism elaborates an image of humanity
which spreads its noocratic rule over the universe
when it can fulfill the universal cosmic plan
of turning itself into an almighty and immortal
single universal superorganism, thus attaining the status of God.
The conjunction between two adjectives, single
and universal, is however a sign of totalitarian thought.
Every great people, Dostoevsky once said,
believes and must believe, then in it alone
lies the salvation of the world.
Russian cosmism has become the catchword
for yet another Russian doctrine threatening to save the world.
Thank you.