'The Russian Cosmists' by George M. Young

Hello Hivers and Book Clubbers,

It's high time for another book review. I check in on what other in the Book Club are presenting/writing periodically, and I always notice that the blog skews heavily towards the realm of fiction. I'd like to think of myself and my reviews as a bit of a counter-balance to what the current is in the community. And sometimes, to paraphrase a common English saying, the truth can be stranger than fiction.

And boy, is this a strange one. Every once in a while, I like to pick up a book with a subject that is completely out of my comfort zone; my comfort zone being mostly history, regular politics, ideology, and geopolitics. This book is more esoteric and philosophically inclined, with a very remarkable specific subject: Russian Cosmism.

The book's full title is 'The Russian Cosmists: The Esoteric Futurism of Nikolai Fedorov and His Followers'. It was written by George M. Young and published in 2012. I found an e-book copy of it, of which the story proper, excluding notes etc., clocks in at about 250 pages.

Nikolai Fedorov and Cosmism

Russian Cosmism is a wide field, with several 'members' or adherents/thinkers associated. For this review, however, I'll keep things limited to the man mentioned in the subtitle, who is also considered the founder of the movement: Nikolai Fedorov (or Fyodorov). Fedorov (1829-1903) was the bastard son of minor nobility, and thus was able to get a good education for the time.

He became a teacher in turn, but never got along with other teachers and school-masters, which meant he was never able to stay at one school for more than a year. After a while, he switched careers and became a librarian in Moscow. This work suited him far better, and he would stick with the same post for over 25 years. He was proud of the collection he supervised in 'his' library, and was always looking to add more to his collection, and to save rare volumes and texts from oblivion; sentiment that I can sympathise with, even though time and place are wholly different.

Even though he was very keen on rescuing the work of others, he did not publish any of his own writings; it's due to his friends, colleagues and associates that his thoughts have found its way to us, and to each other at the time. Many in Russian elite circles were directly or indirectly influenced by Fedorov, among them Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, whom he both knew personally too.

Fedorov's cosmism is an all-encompassing idea, which can remarkably enough be summarized quite easily: Fedorov felt that humanity's biggest enemy was death. Death, according to him, was the one enemy that the world agreed on. And thus, this was what needed to be conquered.

More specifically, this should be read in the Christian context of Russian Eastern Orthodoxy: it is a commonly held Christian belief that when Christ returns to earth, the dead will rise again. Fedorov believed that it was up to men themselves to work towards this end-goal: the resurrection of the dead. For this, a massive technological advancement was necessary, and also a massive restructuring of societies all around the world.

Fedorov lamented war, and found that man's energies were directed mostly towards the purpose of war, which he dubbed 'horizontal'. Instead, man should be directed upwards, towards the heavens, and the people on the entire world should work together towards this purpose.

The word 'cosmos' makes sense in the context of massive technological advantage from the perspective of the 19th century; Fedorov envisioned the colonisation of the stars, both as a solution to the eventual problem of space and man's goal. The problem of space on earth becomes quite obvious if you consider what Fedorov meant with human resurrection; he saw the possibility to resurrect EVERYONE, from the generation currently alive back to Adam.

For this, Fedorov envisioned the man of the future to be able to synthetically make living tissue, and the essence of those departed could be filtered from the dust of the dead, that still can be found on this Earth in minute particles. These ideas have a clear link with modern trans-humanism, though Western thinkers did not take their cue from Federov specifically.

Some personal thoughts

A lot of time has passed since Fedorov died himself in 1903. Some of his wild plans did not seem as absurd as they did then; space-flight has made leaps and bounds, and man is able to grow organs, as some examples. Several pieces are there in terms of the technology. As for society, I'd say humans are in some respects further from Fedorov's vision than they were in the 19th century; society has become more individualistic, instead of being welded together in a collective. Also, Fedorov's reliance on Christian ideals would be considered quaint and/or outdated in vast parst of Europe and America, which have become quite secularized.

Yet, Cosmist ideas are more widely known in the 21st century than they have been for a while. As one can imagine, these ideas were suppressed in the Soviet Union (1919-1991), and as mentioned before, not many published copies existed. But both in Russia itself and abroad (see the American writer of this book), there has been a resurgent interest.

I enjoyed this read, though its ideals are ambitious to the point of being ridiculous. As a Calvinist myself, I think that Fedorov takes the idea of 'heaven on Earth' a bit too literal in wanting to conquer death on his own. Perhaps that is something that can only be done by God/Christ, and it is not meant for us to conquer it. Fedorov's basic assumption is completely correct: death is perhaps the only common certainty in life. It's a brave new world if it is overcome by technology.

I hope you enjoyed reading this review. I'll be doing more of these in the future, so stay tuned. I'll see you all in the next one,

-Pieter Nijmeijer