The ship of philosophers how the early USSR dealt with dissident intellectuals.

• Author: Gregory, Paul R.

On the morning of September 28, 1922, the German steamer Oberbuergermeister Hacken set sail from Petrograd. Its passengers represented the cream of Russian intellectual life--writers, poets, journalists, scientists, and philosophers. The best known of them, philosopher Nikolai Berdiaev, strolled the deck wearing a broad hat and galoshes and carrying a thick cane. He and other passengers were given a "Golden Book" to sign to memorialize the famous Russians' traveling on the ship. On the book's cover was a picture of baritone Fedor Shaliapin, a passenger on the previous voyage. This "Ship of Philosophers" was carrying Russian intellectuals forever banished from Russia by the Bolsheviks. The secret police, then called the Ob'edinennoe Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie (OGPU, Joint State Political Directorate), had arrested, investigated, and sentenced them as enemies. Most, like Berdiaev, would never see Russia again.

This article is the story of the Bolsheviks' repression of intellectuals, which began in May 1922 as one of Vladimir Lenin's last major acts, shortly before a first incapacitating stroke left him partially paralyzed. No longer able to speak after his third stroke in March 1923, Lenin retired from active politics, but his anti-intellectual policies continued unabated. His May 1922 initiative resulted in the exile, imprisonment, and internal banishment of hundreds of leading intellectuals, representative of the "Silver Age" of Russian intellectual life. Under Stalin, the policy continued, but it was applied to much greater numbers of intellectuals and specialists in the late 1920s and even more broadly during the Great Purge from 1937 to 1938.

Lenin is often portrayed sympathetically as a leader who was willing to tolerate open discussion and debate, leading to speculation that the Soviet Union would have developed a more humane form of socialism had he lived. His writings took contradictory positions as he maneuvered the Bolsheviks through the civil war and the New Economic Policy introduced in March 1921. Lenin was consistent, however, with regard to "democratic centralism," the principle that power should be concentrated in a monopoly Communist Party that was "democratic" only in the sense that it reached its decisions by votes of party leaders after open discussion.

The distinction is stark between Lenin's democratic centralism, which allows discussion only within the party, and democracy, which allows open discussion among members of society at large, including intellectuals. The story begins with Lenin's repression of "non-Communist" physicians and then moves to his purge of intellectuals. These purges took place during the "liberal" New Economic Policy period, and they show that the Bolsheviks could not tolerate any type of independent assembly or thinking.

Lenin: Learning How to Purge

Lenin's repression of anti-Soviet intellectuals was sparked by a letter from the minister of health (since 1918), N. A. Semashko. Lenin then set in motion a purge to be organized by Joseph Stalin, the Cheka, and various top Bolshevik leaders (Khaustov, Naumov, and Plotnikova 2003, 7-12). Semashko, himself a physician, feeling upset by the Congress of Physicians' "anti-Soviet" attitude, sent the following letter to Lenin on May 23, 1922:

To Comrade Lenin and Members of the Politburo: Respected comrades. The recent All-Russian Conference of Physicians took such a significant and dangerous turn that I consider it necessary to inform yon about tactics being used with success by Kadets, Monarchists, and Social Revolutionaries [three opposition parties]. My information suggests this tendency is wide-spread not only among doctors but among other specialists (agronomists, engineers, technicians and lawyers). Even responsible persons do not recognize the danger. What went on at the Congress can be summarized as follows: 1. A movement against Soviet medicine, 2. The demand for "freely" elected officials and grassroots independent organizations (an exact resolution of the Congress) according to formulations advanced by Kadets, Monarchists, and Social Revolutionaries, 3. A clear intent to remain outside the professional worker movement, and, 4. An intent to organize independent publishing organizations. (1) Semasko proposed limiting the independence of professional organizations, banning independent publishing, and imposing an...