Philosopher's Steamship

In the autumn of 1922, steamships departed Soviet Russia with an unusual cargo - prominent philosophers, economists, historians, and writers. Nikolai Berdyaev, Pitirim Sorokin, Semyon Frank, Ivan Ilyin, and Sergei Trubetskoy - the cream of Russian science and culture - were expelled from the country without trial, on the personal orders of Vladimir Lenin. This book is the first complete documentary reconstruction of the operation known as the "e;philosophers' steamships."e; It contains key documents of the era: Lenin's secret letter to Dzerzhinsky outlining the expulsion plan, the decree on administrative expulsion, Trotsky's pogrom-laden article, interrogation reports, GPU conclusions, and the memoirs of the exiles themselves. Documents and testimonies reveal the mechanics of totalitarian repression: how the government methodically identified "e;ideologically dangerous"e; individuals, how Soviet propaganda justified the expulsion of "e;rootless dogs,"e; and how the destinies of those torn from their native soil were shattered. The 1922 expulsion became a rehearsal for the future Great Terror and inflicted irreparable damage on Russian culture. The country lost an entire generation of thinkers many of whom became classics of world scholarship, albeit in exile. A century later, these documents serve as a warning about the fragility of freedom of thought and the price society pays for ideological intolerance.