Our Notes & References

Cult of scientific and technologic knowledge, “prometheism” and attempts to create a new philosophical religion: a complete set of this ambitious magazine, nicely preserved in its constructivist wrappers.

Rare on the market: although copies can be found in public institutions, we couldn’t trace any at auction in the West, and no complete set in Russia.

Petr Boranetskii (1900–after 1965), the magazine’s main driving force —serving as editor, publisher, and regular contributor—illegally left the Soviet Union in 1928. In exile, he was described as “the first man of the new social world, raised to the surface by the earthquake of the Revolution, to emerge among Russian émigrés” (Varshavskii, quoted by Ekhina, our translation here and elsewhere). Boranetskii “quickly made a name for himself with his speeches, in which he equally thrashed democrats and socialists on the left and ‘White Guard activists’ on the right” (Mikhalev). In “great contrast to the archaism of the classical conservatives”, he also distinguished himself with his ardent beliefs that “modern technology is the magic of a new religion, not yet recognised by mankind, […] the religion of historical achievements” (Bazanov).

In the early 1930s, he created a group of ‘Messianist Narodniks’, advocating for “a new constructive stage of the revolution, intended to lead Russia, and ultimately all of humanity, into the era of genuine post-revolution [“porevoliutsionnost“], the era of ‘Peace, Freedom, and the construction of new, higher forms of life’. He saw the driving force of the ‘Third National People’s Revolution’ in the peasantry, […] opposing […] ‘the lumpenised proletariat’, a product of ‘Western European capitalist civilisation'” (quoted by Gacheva).

Unlike other ‘post-revolutionaries’ of the 1920s–1930s, Boranetskii took a strong anti-Christian stance, opposing the “theological worldview, which educates the man-slave, deprives him of confidence in his own abilities, and promises paradise only in the beyond”. Instead, he promoted a new Promethean, titanic worldview, animated by “the pathos of the man-creator, inspiringly and powerfully organising the world and history”. This “New Supreme Man” is called to achieve immortality and omnipotence, inspired by “the philosophy of [Maksim] Gorky […], the ideas of proletarian poetry of the late 1910s and early 1920s, and the immortalist constructions of the biocosmists” (Gacheva).

With the goal of creating a “genuine People’s Movement”, Boranetskii founded Tretia Rossia, “an organ for the search for a new [post-revolutionary] synthesis” in which he and his fellows, “tretierosy“, developed the aforementioned ideas. In addition to Boranetskii, the contributors to Tretia Rossiia included the Eurasianists Nikolai Nikolaevich Alekseev (1879—1964) and Nikolai Andreevich Klepinin (1899-1941), who returned to Russia with Marina Tsvetaeva’s husband, Sergei Efron, in 1937; shortly after, both were arrested and executed.

Among the most telling articles are “Will a new class or a new nation save the world?” “Messianism and the national problem”, “Analogy to our catastrophic epoch”, “The crisis of Christianity”, “Who will succeed the Bolsheviks?”, “The collapse of Lenin’s national policy”, “Towards the idea of a scientific state”, “German Hitlerism and Russian emigration”, “Letter from Russia. Stalin’s backstage: preparing a coup from above”, “Fathers and children in exile”, “Facts to the Ukrainian question”, and “The meaning of legends about bogatyrs”.

Bibliography

Bazanov, Petr. “Izdatelskaia deiatelnost levykh porevoliutsionnykh organizatsii russkoi emigratsii” // Vestnik SPbGIK, 2011, #1.

Ekhina N. A. “Molodaia emigratsiia v poiskakh novoi Rossii: P. S. Boranetskii i evraziistvo” // Ezhegodnik Doma russkogo zarubezhia imeni Aleksandra Solzhenitsyna, otv. red. N. F. Gritsenko, 2014.

Gacheva A. G. “Petr Stepanovich Boranetskii”. Russkaia Filosofiia. Entsiklopediia. Izd. vtoroe, dorabotannoe i dopolnennoe. Pod red. M. A. Maslina, M., 2014, pp. 69-70.

Mikhalev N. M. “Problema samoidentifikatsii emigratsii v pechati russkogo zarubezhia v 1930-e gg.” // Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta, Ser. 10. Zhurnalistika, 2011.