ABSTRACT
One of the most important events of 1988 was the May 12 decision of the Politburo to authorize the publication of works of pre-revolutionary and emigre Russian philosophers. A number of other non- and anti-Marxist Russian philosophers have been made available to Soviet readers for the first time since the Revolution. In his contribution to the collection, the essay “Spirits of the Russian Revolution,” Nikolai Berdiaev wrote that the Bolshevik revolution was the result of a “spiritual degeneration” of the Russian intelligentsia and, particularly, of its failure to learn the bitter lessons of the 1905 revolution. One of the major reasons for the spread of judophobia in the USSR was the failure of the West to recognize the legitimacy of the striving of ethnic Russians for their national emancipation from the yoke of Communism. Some of Berdiaev’s notions gave rise to considerable confusion in the minds of those eager to blame Communism on Russia.
