Nikolai Alexeev's Reflections on Soviet Energism, and Their Context

• In Event: Energies of Transgression: Early Soviet Modernism Revisited

Abstract

In his essay written in 1935, Nikolai Alexeev reflects on energism as the primary ideal of communist Russia.He says that the spirit of energism finds a special manifestation in Soviet public rhetoric and literature. However, Alexeev sees Soviet Russia as a case of the more general phenomenon – that of the energetic spirit inherent to modern Western culture as such, which has spread from the West to the Soviet Union and assumed its forms there. Alexeev contrasts two poles within human culture: the one of immobility and the one of relentless motion (energism). The former is characteristic of the East, and the latter of the West. Also, Alexeev speaks of the East’s orientation towards the “other-worldliness” and the West's towards the “worldliness.” The Byzantine medieval energism of Gregory Palamas, according to Alexeev, is a doctrine that maintains a balance between immobility and motion on one hand, and other-worldliness and worldliness on the other. Alexeev argues that Eurasian doctrine also strives for such a balance. I demonstrate that the context influencing the formation of this concept of Alekseev consists of two lines. These are the Guenonian and the Fedorovian lines. Alekseev's reasoning on the West and the East as polar cultures, where the former is associated with the category of motion/energy and the latter with immobility is inspired by René Guénon. Alekseev's attention to Palamism and his rhetoric of Palamite energism are likely the influence of early Soviet followers of Nilolai Fedorov - Nilolai Setnitsky and Alexander Gorsky, primarily through their brochure “Smertobozhnichestvo”.

Author

• Dmitry Biriukov, Freie U Berlin (Germany)