In 1922, five years after the communist Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, numerous academics, journalists, professors, students, philosophers, and other intellectuals were exiled by Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolsheviks.
Before Lenin established the Soviet Union in December of that year, he ordered the deportation of a significant number of intellectuals via two German ships he called called the “Philosophers’ Ships”—the Oberbürgermeister Haken and the Preussen—to what is now Poland. If they returned, Lenin charged, they would be shot.
Dozens of writers and their families were exiled. Lenin apparently had kept a copy of everything they had written.
From one angle, the intellectuals and their families who were expelled could be considered lucky, as millions were murdered in the communist purges that followed. But, as Lesley Chamberlain, author of “Lenin’s Private War,” noted, it is significant.
Through exile, Lenin and his cohorts eliminated an ideological threat to the Soviet regime that offered a “third way,” an alternative from the Tsarist monarchy or communism.
The Soviet Union announced their deportations in the Pravda newspaper, portraying the move as a humane way of dealing with dissent.
“From a contemporary perspective, it was a rude violation of a fundamental human right: to live where you want, or at least the right to live in your own country. Secondly, behind Trotsky’s talk of humanity was the hidden wish to be free from powerful (in their intellectual capabilities) opposition. In the third place this action was not humanitarian in the sense of historical responsibility. Nobody has the right to proclaim the ‘unique truth’ and assert this ’truth' as the one and only possibility for a whole nation’s historical development.”Those expelled included writers who argued for personal liberty, spiritual development, or Christian beliefs.
Religious and political philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev was among them. After he became a professor of philosophy at the University of Moscow, he was accused of being involved in an anti-government conspiracy and arrested. According to some accounts, he was personally interrogated by Dzerzhinsky, who was best known for developing the Soviet secret police force.
[Berdyaev] was arrested twice; he was taken in 1922 for a midnight interrogation with Dzerjinsky; [Lev] Kamenev was also there.... But Berdyaev did not humiliate himself, he did not beg, he firmly professed the moral and religious principles by virtue of which he did not adhere to the party in power; and not only did they judge that there was no point in putting him on trial, but he was freed. Now there is a man who had a “point of view.”