Vospominaniya (Memoirs) by Nicolay Onufrievich LosskyReview by: Natalie DuddingtonThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 48, No. 112 (Jul., 1970), pp. 450-452Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4206254 .

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450 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

some distrust by the Party faithful, the case of authors who had fought in the civil war (Babel', Leonov, Ivanov, to name only a few) is quite a different matter, and the bracketing of their names with those of the

emigres and ex-Whites in the pages of Na postu (and elsewhere) was a calculated smear; even Mayakovsky was sometimes called a poputchik.

But these criticisms are only peripheral to the main argument, which is

convincing, and acquires a certain poignancy from the spectre of Socialist Realism hovering round the corner. Professor Maguire reminds us,

though, that Voronsky, at least in his early years at Krasnaya nov' would

probably not have been alarmed at the prospect. The book has been

spaciously planned. It moves at perhaps somewhat too sedate a pace; but it has been well designed and the subject is of the first importance. For the foreseeable future, we shall have only a trickle of further information from Soviet sources.

Toronto R. D. B. Thomson

Lossky, Nicolay Onufrievich. Vospominaniya (Memoirs). Wilhelm Fink

Verlag, Munich, 1968. 334 pages.

N. O. Loss ky (1870-1965) was an eminent Russian philosopher whose name is well-known in academic circles of Europe and America. His chief works have been translated into German, French and English and present a harmonious system of thought embracing the main branches of philo? sophical inquiry. His Memoirs which he did not intend for publication are a straightforward account of his life and of the development of his philo? sophical thought; absence of literary embellishment makes them par? ticularly convincing both as a human document and as a contribution to the history of Russian culture.

Lossky was born in Western Russia to which his remote ancestors had moved from Poland in the seventeenth century. His father held the post of the district police inspector. His mother, a beautiful and sweet-tempered woman, was of Polish descent and a Catholic. They lived happily in a small country place called Dagda on the banks of the Western Dvina, in

peaceful and picturesque surroundings. The descriptions of country life with its humble pleasures recall passages in Tolstoy's Childhood and in Aksakov's books.

When Lossky was ten his eldest brother who was finishing school in

Riga committed suicide and two years later his father died suddenly. His mother was left with nine children to bring up, the youngest three months old. She had only a pension of twenty-five roubles a month and a

tiny income from some landed property. But she managed to give them all a good education; some received free places in state schools, and others were helped by relatives. Lossky, at the age of eleven, went as a boarder to a State Secondary School ('Gymnasium') at Vitebsk. He was

thoroughly miserable there. Quiet and studious, he was a ready target for the mockery and practical jokes of his rough school fellows. The pleasure they took in bullying the weak and defenceless, especially their Jewish

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REVIEWS 451

comrades, revolted him. After a couple of years matters improved and he made friends with some of the boys, but the whole atmosphere of the school weighed upon him.

After the assassination of Alexander II by the terrorists in 1861, fear and suspicion inspired government policy in every department of national life. Young people of an independent turn of mind were regarded as

budding revolutionaries; school boys who met together to read serious books and discuss social problems were accused of subversive activities. As a result of the school's repressive regime Lossky, at the age of fifteen, was greatly attracted by the ideals of socialism, and at the same time he lost his religious faith. The bigotry and uncharitableness of the school

chaplain turned him against the Church and then against religion in

general. For eight years he was an atheist, and only much later was led

by philosophical reflection, to theism and later to Orthodoxy. When the school authorities discovered Lossky's 'dangerous' ideas they expelled him a year before matriculation, depriving him of the right to enter any other state gymnasium. This was a terrible blow, and it was decided at the

family council that he should finish his education abroad. His mother

promised to send him twenty roubles a month, and he set off for Switzer? land.

The story of his sojourn abroad is as exciting as any fiction. High- principled, guileless as a child and utterly unpractical, Lossky had extra?

ordinary adventures, and it is a wonder that, after all the hardships and

dangers he underwent, he returned safely to his family. By that time the Russian political climate had changed for the better

and Lossky was able to matriculate in Petersburg and enter the University. He had a scholarship which he supplemented by coaching and doing literary work; he graduated in both the faculty of Science and of Arts and soon became a rising star in the academic world. He became a lecturer

(and later Professor) at the St Petersburg University, and held other teaching posts as well, teaching logic and psychology at Madame Stoyunin's gymnasium, one of the best in Russia. In 1902 Lossky married her

daughter and the two families settled together. Happy in his personal and professional life he could now concentrate

on the problem which had occupied him for years?the problem of the

validity of knowledge. He formulated his conclusions in his remarkable book Obosnovaniye Intuitivizma 'The Intuitive Basis of Knowledge'. He

argues in it with great force and subtlety that knowledge is direct in character and, however imperfect and fragmentary, is a revelation of an

objective reality independent of our mental processes. After demonstrating that reality is knowable Lossky went on to inquire into its nature; his

subsequent works deal with the problems of metaphysics and ethnics, as well as those of logic and epistemology.

The literary, artistic and social activities of the Russian intelligentsia and indeed cultured life as such were shattered by the First World War and by the Revolution of 1917. Under the Communist regime the framework of civilised urban existence rapidly disintegrated. Hunger, cold and general squalor reduced people to the level of cave-dwellers; the task of keeping

9?S.E.E.R.

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452 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

alive absorbed all their energies. The Losskys' only daughter, a child of

ten, died of diphtheria because they could not get in time either the doctor or the serum for injection. The rest of the family, like most of their friends, were on the brink of starvation. Fortunately in 1921 food parcels sent from abroad through the American Relief Association began to reach them.

Throughout this terrible time Lossky went on with his writing and

teaching, but in 1921 he lost his professorship: his offence was that in one of his books he defended the Trinitarian dogma. The shock of dismissal from the university brought on a serious illness, and he spent nearly four months in bed. He had scarcely recovered when he was arrested, together with many other university teachers and writers. They were all accused of disagreeing with Soviet ideology and of counter-revolutionary activities

(a capital offence), but received a mild sentence of banishment from Russia. Some 200 people, the flower of Russian intelligentsia, were ex?

pelled from the country. The Losskys and Mme Stoyunin settled in

Prague at the invitation of President Masaryk. The last chapters of the Memoirs deal with the family's life in exile,

and the reader becomes more interested in the author's personality than in his surroundings. He was a true Christian and a philosopher in the full sense of the term. He had lost his country, his work, his worldly possessions, the daughter he loved, and finally his wife and eldest son?and yet there is no bitterness or resentment in his attitude to life, and no traces of self-

pity. He firmly believed that 'God knows best'. The Memoirs have been prepared for publication and excellently

annotated by the author's son, Mr Boris Lossky, director of the National Museum at Fontainebleau. London Natalie Duddington

Kliuchevsky, V. O. A Course in Russian History. The Seventeenth Century. Translated by Natalie Duddington. Edited by Alfred J. Rieber.

Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1968. xl+ 400 pages. Index.

Since its publication in the early years of this century, V. O. Klyuchevsky's Kurs Russkoy Istorii has exercised an unparalleled influence on students of

the Russian past. English-speaking students have been no exception, in

spite of the fact that they have as a rule become acquainted with Klyu?

chevsky in the singularly infelicitous Hogarth translation made in 1913. Liliana Archibald's able rendition of Klyuchevsky's chapters on Peter the

Great (published in 1958) may be thought of as a first instalment on a long overdue new translation. We are now offered under other auspices a second

instalment, a new translation of Klychevsky's volume on the seventeenth

century. We are in Miss Duddington's debt for a translation that is decidedly

more readable than Hogarth's, and in the main quite accurate. However, certain unique features of seventeenth century Russia's social and political

organisation cannot be comprehended precisely without the special

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