I. M. Andreyev
TRUE ORTHODOX CONVERT
FROM THE RUSSIAN INTELLIGENTSIA
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T THE DAWN of the 20th century, the Russian intellectual class—the
intelligentsia—had wandered far from the Orthodox Christian roots of
Russian life. The promising beginnings in them id-19th century of a genuine
Orthodoxy philosophy able to meet the challenge of Western ideas (Kireyevsky,
Khomiakov) had few followers. With a few exceptions (such as Constantine Leontiev)
the Russian intelligentsia in the second half of the 19th century went far
away from the Orthodox Church, turning ever more to Western revolutionary
ideas, ending in materialism and Marxism.
The natural reaction against the materialism in the late
19th century did not take an Orthodox form. The powerful religious philosophy
of Vladimir Soloviev influenced many to return to a religion of a sort—but
to a "free" religion, not the Orthodoxy of
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In many minds the impression remains that the Russian intelligentsia, even when religious, is basically free-thinking, modernist, renovationist, even when its members join the ranks of the Orthodoxy clergy, while they are opposed only by "narrow church circles" which have no "creativity," but simply preserve the church tradition of the past wihtout any answer to the "problems of the time."
Such an over-simplifed view does not do justice to the integrity of teh genuine bearers of tradition, who transmit the Orthodox patristic philosophy of life without the great crises and "conversions" and fanfare of the intelligentsia, and perform indeed a difficult and creative task in living and transmitting it against all the attacks of the modern world; nore does it pay sufficient attention to those members of the intelligentsia whose conversion from materialism and Western ideas is complete and not partial, and who therefore become part of the preservers of tradition and cease being a part of the rebellious intelligentsia.
These latter "converts" are invariably and especially disowned by the liberal intelligentsia, and their views are not seen as worthy of respect. But their experience of philosophical and spiritual growth is of great value, whether for younger Russians or Western converts whose experience in our times (so hostile to tradition) is much closer to theirs than to those who never rebelled. One such convert, an inspiring example for our times, was I. M. Andreyev, whose conversion and spiritual growth can be followed for the most part in excerpts from his own writings.
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VAN MIKHAILOVICH ANDREYEVSKY (Andreyev being his literary pseudonym)
was born on March 14, 1894, of well-to-do parents in St. Petersburg and attended
secondary schools in that city. He had at least one brother and one sister
(the poetess Maria Shkapskaya). He evidently was raised in Orthodox piety
(he twice had contact with St. John of Kronstadt), but in late adolescence
he entered a period of "rebellion." His outlook at the end of his
secondary schooling may be seen in the following account by someone who knew
him then, Nocholas Sergeev (private letter of February 7, 1977):
"Ivan Mikhailovich came to the sixth class of the
Vyedensky Gymnasia in 1911-12; where he had been before that I don't know.
He sat two seats away from me; he was a serious boy, never joked, was a fairly
good student… I sang in the choir of our house church, but I never saw
I. M. in church. In the seventh class, I believe in November 1912, we were
all thunderstruck when we found out from the newspapers that a revolutionary
group had been discovered (in our school and in the Wideman Gymnasia)—I.
M. and a student of the class ahead of him, in whose room a mimeograph machine
and proclamations had been found (the latter killed himself). We didn't see
I. M. in the Gymnasia after that. I can only write what was said: there was
a trial; the participants of the group were taken under the protection of
the millionaire Shacht and sent to study in Switzerland."
The beginning of Andreyev's intellectual and spiritual
path, therefore, is clear: he was an unchurchly, deadly-serious, revolutionary-minded
youth, such as were common in the Russia of the early 20th century.
Apparently he finished his secondary schooling in Switzerland,
and we next hear of him in Paris. "In 1914 I was a young student of the
Philosophy Department of the Sorbonne, and I had the right of attending lectures
at the College-de-France. There I listened to Lalande and Bergson." He
also attended the lectures of Emile Durkheim, Levy-Bruel, and other noted
philosophers and scientists of that time, and completed his studies in the
department of philosophy at the Sorbonne. Most of all he was under the influence
of Bergson: "Bergson lectured with inspiration, improvised, thought out
loud, created on the lecture platform, and ruled the minds of the young generation,
especially of Russians. I was among the latter." ("The Path of Prof.
S. A. Askoldov," in Orthodox Way for 1955, Jordanville, p. 55;
all sources translated from Russian.)
Here again it is not difficult to understand the course
of Andreyev's intellectual growth. The young "revolutionary," broadened
by exposure to some of the leading scientifict and philosophical minds of
Europe, made the same jump "from Marxism to idealism" that was then
being made by Bulgakov, Berdayev, and otehr famous members of the Russian
intelligentsia. The philosophy of Bergson was a reaction against 19th-century
materialism and atheism which strove to attain some higher reality by means
of "intuition," making use of the then fashionable scientific philosophy
in order to create a new philosophy of "creative evolution," wherein
the world is viewed as a reality constantly changing, constantly being created,
constantly striving towards something beyond itself. "God" Himself,
according to Bergson, is constantly moving, and changing, and the "worlds"
He creates are in a constant process of "evolution," lower being
being transformed into higher with virtually no limit to the upward surge
of this irreversible process: "There is a center from whcih worlds shoot
out like rockets in a fireworks display… God, thus defined, has nothing
of the already-made, he is unceasing life, action, freedom… All the living
hold together, and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes
its stand on the plant, man bestriedes animality and the whole of humanity,
in space and in time, is one immense army galloping beside and before and
behind each of us in an overwhelming charge able to beat down eery resistance,
and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death" (Bergson,
Crative Evolution). Such a philosophy must have been alluring indeed
to a 20-year-old "philosopher," just awakened to the insufficiency
of a materialistic philosophy and the utter stupidity of atheism, but not
yet ready to see any other way out of the crisis of modern European philosophy
than a vague and romantic irrationalism. The philosophy of Bergson did not
leave a deep trace on the mature world-view of Andreyev; it was, rather, an
important stage in his assimilation of the best of modern "wisdom,"
which enabled him later to be a brilliont apologist for the higher wisdom
of Orthodoxy. His older contemporary, Berdayev, never left this immature stage
of "romantic idealism"; but Andreyev advanced, one step at a time,
along a path that was to take him to true orthodoxy.