In 1922, Vladimir Lenin proposed replacing the death penalty for intellectuals opposing Soviet power with exile abroad. On September 29, 1922, the steamer "Oberbürgermeister Haken" departed from the Petrograd pier; on November 16, the "Prussia"; on September 19, a steamer left Odessa; on December 18, the Italian steamer "Jeanne" departed from Sevastopol. Trains from Moscow to Berlin (Germany) on September 23, 1922, and from Moscow to Riga (Latvia) on September 23, 1922, also departed. Sea vessels, like the trains sent abroad, entered history under the collective image of the "philosophers' steamer," a term coined by the well-known physicist and philosopher Sergey Khoruzhy. It carried the future of Russia into exile. This special operation of the Soviet government was personally controlled and ordered by its leader, who gave the fateful directive on May 19, 1922—three days before suffering his first stroke.

“Comrade Dzerzhinsky,

Regarding the issue of expelling writers and professors who aid the counterrevolution abroad. This must be prepared more carefully. Without preparation, we will make mistakes... All these are obvious counterrevolutionaries, accomplices of the Entente, an organization of its servants, spies, and corrupters of the student youth. The matter must be handled so that these 'military spies' are caught and continuously and systematically caught and expelled abroad. Please show this secretly, without copying, to the members of the Politburo, with a return to you and me, and inform me of their feedback and your conclusion.

Lenin.”

“The matter must be handled so that these 'military spies' are caught and continuously and systematically caught and expelled abroad. Lenin.”

They were expelled without trial because there was no reason to prosecute them: defending freedom of thought and refusing the imposed uniformity from above were not subjects for trial. Trotsky commented on this action: “We expelled these people because there was no reason to shoot them, but it was impossible to tolerate them.” The main goal of the expulsion was to intimidate the intelligentsia and force it into silence. It was a warning: do not oppose the authorities. An article in "Pravda" dedicated to the expulsion was titled “The First Warning.” The expulsion of the intelligentsia was an unprecedented act in world history: the government thus deliberately and voluntarily reduced the spiritual and intellectual potential of its people by expelling the most educated, talented, and creative individuals from the country.

Each person was allowed to take: two pairs of long underwear, two pairs of socks, two pairs of shoes, a jacket, trousers, a coat, and a hat.

It was forbidden to take: money, jewelry, and valuables.

The list of those expelled included 197 people (67 from Moscow, 53 from Petrograd, 77 from Ukraine). Among them: 69 scientific and pedagogical workers, 43 doctors, 34 students, 29 writers and journalists, 22 economists, agronomists, and cooperators, 47 political figures, scientists, writers, engineers, as well as their family members (at least 114 people in total) were expelled from Soviet Russia in the autumn. In total, 75 people were actually expelled from the country in 1922–1923 (35 scientists and educators, 19 writers and journalists, 12 economists, agronomists, and cooperators, 4 engineers, 2 students, a political figure, an official, and a priest). More than a third of them had previously belonged to Menshevik parties.

When I was expelled from Soviet Russia, a gentle and comparatively cultured communist said to me: “The Kremlin hopes that once you reach Western Europe, you will understand on whose side the truth lies,” recalled the passenger of the “philosophers' steamer” Nikolai Berdyaev.

Interestingly, the very first “philosophers' steamer” was expelled from the USA.

Between 1921 and 1923, the Bolsheviks launched a large-scale campaign to “cleanse” the Russian intelligentsia. They began with politically active groups and ended with scattered communities of scientists, writers, and philosophers who did not intend to participate in politics, and some of whom planned to remain in Russia and serve their country. Repressions were common at that time, but the punitive apparatus was so vigorously activated that the Soviet government invented a special way to “cleanse Russia for a long time.” In 1919–1920, the evacuation of White Army units from Crimea and Odessa took place. The Soviet government then felt maximally confident. Most of the Whites had left Russia, so it was possible to focus on internal enemies. Perhaps Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky would have continued the established practice of shootings without much investigation of who was friend or foe.

But at that time, the US authorities began their own “cleansing,” as a result of which leftist emigrants, former subjects of the Russian Empire, were sent on December 21, 1919, aboard the ship Buford to Soviet Russia. The gesture was aesthetically and politically strong. One postcard with a photo of this ship even bore the caption: “Soviet Ark. The US Army transport Buford brings 249 Reds as a Christmas gift to Lenin and Trotsky.” The “gift” was accepted, and anarchist Alexander Berkman and anarcho-feminist Emma Goldman were personally met by Lenin. He even assigned them the task of collecting materials for a future Museum of the Revolution. Two years later, both Berkman and Goldman realized that no liberating revolution had occurred. In 1921, they left the country voluntarily. To some extent, the very first “philosophers' steamer” turned out to be the ship traveling from the USA to the RSFSR, not from the RSFSR to Germany.

What finally convinced the anarchists that the revolution in Russia had no future? Most likely, the events of 1921, after the Kronstadt uprising. In October 1921, the Presidium of the Cheka decided to expel anarchists beyond Russia's borders. A few months later, they were given fake Czechoslovak passports and sent to Germany, to the city of Stettin, while Mensheviks were subjected to administrative exile to remote parts of the country.

On May 15, 1922, Lenin wrote to the People's Commissar of Justice Dmitry Kursky: “In my opinion, the use of shooting should be expanded (with replacement by exile abroad).” The leader of the world revolution clung to the idea that “undesirable elements” could be sent abroad, not only physically eliminated. Was there a kind of humanitarianism in this? Trotsky believed so. Here is what he later told American journalist Anna Louise Strong on August 30, 1922: “The elements we expel or will expel are politically insignificant by themselves. But they are potential tools in the hands of our possible enemies. In case of new military complications, all these irreconcilable and incorrigible elements will become military-political agents. And we will be forced to shoot them according to the laws of war. That is why we preferred now, in a calm period, to expel them in advance. And I hope you will not refuse to recognize our prudent humanity and take on its defense before public opinion.”

At first, Lenin instructed Felix Dzerzhinsky to ensure that Politburo members spent at least 2–3 hours a week checking books and journals published in Russia. By June 1922, Iron Felix had already compiled a list of “anti-Soviet groups among the intelligentsia.” The lists included philosophers, scientists, writers, and theater people. On August 16, 1922, Joseph Unshlikht, deputy chairman of the GPU, who directly supervised the arrests and interrogations of intellectuals, announced the start of the expulsion operation.

Interrogations were conducted according to a pre-prepared questionnaire. It is unclear who composed it, but it was probably created by a team of the highest-ranking Bolshevik elite representatives. Lenin kept the operation under close watch, Trotsky worried about the international reaction to the expulsion, and Dzerzhinsky specialized in interrogating especially intelligent intellectuals. In 1921, he personally arrested philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev, once again accused of anti-Soviet activity, with whom he had a long philosophical dispute within the walls of Lubyanka. Berdyaev himself had been a Marxist in the past, like many Russian philosophers of that time, so he had common ground for conversation with Dzerzhinsky.

Nikolai Berdyaev told Felix Edmundovich that he wanted to explain his views himself. Dzerzhinsky responded positively to the philosopher’s proposal and began to listen attentively. Berdyaev tried to explain everything in 45 minutes: that he was an opponent of Bolshevism, but his struggle was not political but spiritual; that he saw no future for Russia if culture was destroyed; that by nature he was an idealist and an opponent of materialism. Sometimes Dzerzhinsky supplemented Berdyaev’s speech; his remark “One can be an idealist in life and a materialist in philosophy” is well known.

The conversation went well: Dzerzhinsky even sent the philosopher home by car because “banditry was rampant” in the city.

What were those interrogated about in the case “on anti-Soviet groups among the intelligentsia”? It is known that they were asked about contacts with Russian emigrants in Europe, their attitude toward university teachers’ strikes, and, of course, their attitude toward Soviet power. Answers to the last question varied, but mostly they were positive or neutral.

For example, Nikolai Lossky, a representative of the domestic school of intuitionism, whose fundamental idea is understanding intuition as a special way to “grasp” life in dynamics (unlike reason, which works with static fragments of reality), stated that he “considered it his duty to be a loyal citizen, complying with all decrees of Soviet power.”

Semyon Frank, a specialist in epistemology who believed that there is an incomprehensible to the senses sphere of being that unites the human soul’s organization and the world beyond consciousness, answered: “The five-year existence of Soviet power proves that it is not an accident but a power with deep historical causes and corresponding to the spiritual and moral state of the people.”

Already in emigration, writer Mikhail Osorgin, a friend of Nikolai Berdyaev and an anarchist by conviction who underwent this interrogation, recalled that he was brought to Lubyanka at night and immediately asked about his attitude toward Soviet power. Could one answer negatively? Yes, but only two people dared to do so out of fear of being shot: left SR Ilya Bakkal and Ivan Ilyin, now known, among other things, as Vladimir Putin’s favorite philosopher. Ilyin even called Soviet power “a historically inevitable form of a great socio-spiritual disease.” Naturally, he was sentenced to death, which was replaced by exile.

All those interrogated signed that they were ready to settle their affairs in Russia within 7 to 14 days. They separately signed a paper committing not to return to the RSFSR territory without special permission. An attempt to return illegally was punishable by the highest penalty—execution.

It is important to note that civilians who left Russia in 1920 along with White Army units packed their belongings chaotically. They did not sign any “commitments,” of course. They took valuables as they could—some a lot, some little. In the case of the “philosophers' steamer,” there was a strict regulation: two pairs of shoes, a jacket, trousers, a coat, a hat, and two sets of underwear. Money, valuables, and jewelry were strictly forbidden to take along.

Why was the ship called “philosophers'”? At that time, those who read philosophical literature and could write texts based on what they read were considered philosophers. The community of Russian philosophers at that time was largely informal. However, this did not prevent Nikolai Berdyaev and some others from gaining fame in the European philosophical world long before 1922. Specialists now agree that there were very few professional philosophers (those who wrote specifically on philosophical topics) among the expelled. Usually, eight people are counted, including Sergey Bulgakov, who was in Crimea at that time and whom Lenin personally included in the expulsion list, so this particular deportation did not happen from Petrograd but from Sevastopol.

How did the story of the expulsion of intellectuals come to be known in culture as the “philosophers' steamer”? In the 1990s, Russian philosopher Sergey Khoruzhy, in a series of publications dedicated to intellectuals expelled in the 1920s, emphasized the exile of philosophical thought from Russia. He also proposed the term “philosophers' steamer.”

The expelled perceived their exile as a tragedy. However, it turned out to be a salvation for them and their families. The talents and knowledge of these people became the heritage of world art, culture, and science.

Among the exiled were Berdyaev—one of the best Russian philosophers of the 20th century—and such well-known philosophers as Frank, Lossky, Karsavin, Bogolepov, Bulgakov, Stepun, Ilyin, Lapshin, Trubetskoy, as well as Frolovsky (historian), Babkin (physiologist), Osorgin (writer). Among the exiled were both progressive leading professors and heads of schools and higher education institutions, including rectors of Petrograd and Moscow universities.

Thanks to their high intellectual and professional level, all the exiles not only found opportunities to work in their specialties but also created cultural and scientific values that became the heritage of Europe and America. Berdyaev published many works, was recognized as a leading thinker in Europe, and greatly influenced the development of European philosophy; Sorokin, a famous sociologist, became a professor at Harvard University and a founder of American sociology; Frank, a Russian religious philosopher, made a significant contribution to social psychology and epistemology; the outstanding scientist—linguist and literary critic Jakobson, a professor at Harvard University; Igor Sikorsky—an aircraft designer, scientist, inventor, creator of airplanes and helicopters; the senior microbiologist Professor Vinogradsky worked successfully at the Pasteur Institute, made several discoveries, laid the foundations of new directions in agrobiology, and was elected a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences.

Sources:

https://daily.afisha.ru/specials/23437-filosofskiy-parohod-1922-goda-istoriya-emigracii-intellektualov/

https://rg.ru/2017/09/28/rodina-filosofskij-parohod.html

http://www.library.fa.ru/exhib.asp?id=226