Vekhi (Milestones) as a Post-Secular Manifesto of the Russian Philosophy

The article investigates the  Vekhi (Milestones), a collection of articles published  in 1909 by Nikolai Berdyaev, Sergei Bulgakov, Mikhail Gershenzon, Bogdan Kistyakovski, Peter Struve, Semyon  Frank and  Aleksandr Izgoev,  that  is analyzed  through the prism of the post-secularization, which became the dominant in the  Russian intellectual culture of the  early 20th century.  This phenomenon implied a rapid advancement of various forms  of religious philosophy into the  centre  of the  Russian philosophical tradition  in search  for solution to various problems  faced by the state,  society, family and education,  reflected in the articles of the Milestones authors.  The collection became  most widely known — and criticized — among  the leftist intelligentsia, which made this book an absolute bestseller in the history of the Russian philosophical thought. The position of its authors,  deeply post-secular,  antiutilitarian and anti-scientistic, and their criticism of the politicized groundless intelligentsia were the main reasons for the retaliation. The trick was a convincing reconstruction of an “average  intellectual’s” consciousness. The Russian intelligentsia gave birth to a lot of prominent cultural figures. But it also gave birth to ambitious people  who considered themselves to be the  salt of the  earth, the stateless apatrides who hate  everything Russian and admire everything  European  or American. The Milestones  authors were among the first in Russia to show that  the fruits of the intelligentsia revolution are non-national, groundless phenomena, in no way connected with Russian foundations and traditions.  The intellectuals’ political consciousness is irreligious and based  on atheism, but it has many similarities with religion and acquires the features of some atheistic pseudo-religion. The Milestones contained sharp and justified criticism directed  at the intransigent party struggle, the love of extremes and the predilection for egalitarianism, that is, those pseudo-religious  qualities of the intelligentsia that  have a pronounced anti-cultural and anti-national orientation.

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