cosmism

2024. Vol.9. №3.

“Resurrection is possible not only for people”

Oct 25 2024

Bernstein A., Sivkov D. Yu. “Resurrection is possible not only for people” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2024. V.9. №3. P. 119-126.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2024-9-3-119-126

Annotation

This interview with Anya Bernstein, Professor of Anthropology at the Harvard University, the author of books on immortality and transhumanism in Russia, focuses on her new research — ethnography of the Pleistocene Park in Yakutia. The anthropologist Denis Sivkov discusses the context of this study and the main ideas of the Zimovs, father and son, creators of the park, about the ecosystem restoration — the mammoth steppe, the revival of species and the preservation of permafrost. The interview considers a broader context — the concepts of Russian cosmism and the issues of regulating nature, immortality and resurrection.

Keywords

Pleistocene Park, soil, ecosystem, permafrost, cryonics, cosmism, future, revival of species.

About the authors

Anya Bernstein, Professor of Anthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge MA 02138, USA.
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Denis Yu. Sivkov, PhD (Philosophy), Senior Researcher, Center for Cosmism Studies, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. Gazetny Per., 3–5, bldg. 1, Moscow, 125009.
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2024. Vol.9. №3.

Peasant cosmos of the Russian avant-garde and N. F. Fedorov’s aesthetic supra-moralism

Oct 25 2024

Titarenko E. M. Peasant cosmos of the Russian avant-garde and N. F. Fedorov’s aesthetic supra-moralism // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2024. V.9. №3. P. 105-118.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2024-9-3-105-118

Annotation

The author conducts a comparative analysis of the peasant cosmos representations in the Russian avant-garde art and of Nikolai Fedorov’s aesthetic supra-moralism based on the works of visual art, articles, treatises, autobiographies and letters of K. Malevich, N. Goncharova, P. Filonov and V. Chekrygin. Aesthetic supra-moralism as the highest morality or “Universal Synthesis” is Fedorov’s religious-philosophical doctrine promoting the idea of cosmism as a project of world order based on the all-unity and a synthesis of science, art and religion. Avant-garde artists expressed their understanding of the human involvement in the multifaceted and complex spatial relationships through images of the peasant world. By comparing the anthropological projection of the Russian avant-garde art with Fedorov’s project of aesthetic supra-moralism, the author shows the similarity between the artistic images of peasant cosmos and the cosmic ideas about the correlation between macrocosm (universe) and microcosm (individuals). In this context, the author explains Malevich’s return to figurativeness and anthropocentrism in his second peasant cycle. The article also considers cosmic intuitions of the Russian avant-garde as related to the perception and interpretation of the sacred church space and of the nature as a temple. Feodorov’s ekphrasis of the Orthodox church describes the liturgical image of all-unity and kinship, uniting the peasant world as a cosmos. Malevich reduces this description to a color image or a feeling, in which the temple’s objectivity dissolves.

Keywords

Peasantry, Russian avant-garde of the first quarter of the 20th century, peasant cosmos in art, suprematism, K. S. Malevich, analytical art, N. F. Fedorov’s aesthetic supra-moralism, cosmism.

About the author

Evgeny M. Titarenko, PhD (Philosophy), Associate Professor, Faculty of Philology, Saint Petersburg State University; Senior Researcher, Center for Cosmism Studies, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. Universitetskaya Nab., 7–9, Saint Petersburg, 199034, Russia.
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2024. Vol.9. №3.

Nikolai Setnitsky and Alexander Chayanov: On ideals, exploitation, non-capitalist systems and regulation of nature

Oct 25 2024

Nikulin A. M. Nikolai Setnitsky and Alexander Chayanov: On ideals, exploitation, non-capitalist systems and regulation of nature // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2024. V.9. №3. P. 47-72.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2024-9-3-47-72

Annotation

The author conducts a comparative biographical analysis to consider the social-philosophical and political-economic views and the interdisciplinary intellectual heritage of the remarkable Russian scientists N. A. Setnitsky and A. V. Chayanov on the ideals of social development, features of capitalist and non-capitalist economic systems, issues of regulating the relationship between man and nature in the 1920s–1930s. The article identifies the fundamental worldview ideas of the “agrarian-relativist” Chayanov and the “apocalyptic cosmist” Setnitsky, which determined their theoretical-methodological approaches to the cognition and transformation of reality, focusing on the comparative analytical assessment of their utopian and futurological forecasts and projects. The author concludes about the significance of the intellectual heritage of Setnitsky and Chayanov for the study of contemporary political, economic and environmental issues in Russia and the world.

Keywords

N. A. Setnitsky, A. V. Chayanov, capitalism, non-capitalist systems, city, village, exploitation, nature, utopia, cosmism.

About the author

Alexander M. Nikulin, PhD (Economics), Head of the Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. Vernadskogo Prosp., 82, Moscow, 119571, Russia.
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2024. Vol.9. №3.

Peasant question in the common cause philosophy

Oct 25 2024

Onosov A. A. Peasant question in the common cause philosophy // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2024. V.9. №3. P. 7-24.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2024-9-3-7-24

Annotation

The article presents the results of the explication and analysis of the “peasant question” as one of the semantic centers of N. F. Fedorov’s common cause philosophy. In its various formulations and analytical sections, the peasant question is an ideologically complex issue of cosmism, which combines multiple antinomies of being — urban and rural, present and due, secular (universal-philistine) and sacred (cosmic-peasant). The cause-and-effect analysis of the peasant question shows that its polysemantic nature is determined by the extreme ontological tension of the main nerve of the cosmism philosophy — issues of “life and death” in its moral-family form as issues of mortal sons who lost brotherhood and universal fatherland, and as issues of fathers awaiting bodily resurrection, a rebirth. The article identifies the supra-moralistic significance of the “bread labor” — various subject-life, planetary-cosmic expressions of agriculture in civilizational practices and projective goal setting of cosmosophy. The author emphasizes that in his deep retrospective and prospective historical analysis Fedorov clearly realized the peasant essence of the question of life and was a pure pragmatist of life as immortal and perfect for all sons of men, psychocratically integrated into the “adult society”.

Keywords

N. F. Fedorov, common cause philosophy, cosmism, supra-moralism, peasantry, peasant question, agriculture, village, regulation of nature, resurrection.

About the author

Alexander A. Onosov, PhD (Philosophy), Leading Researcher, Faculty of Philosophy, Lomonosov Moscow State University; Senior Researcher, Center for Cosmism Studies, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences; Associate Professor, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, RUDN University. Lomonosovsky Prosp., 27–4, Moscow, 119991, Russia.
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