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The Image of Jesus in the Russian Revolutionary Movement

The Case of Russian Marxism*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

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This article explores how Russian revolutionaries, in particular the Russian Marxists, used the image of Jesus to explain their political choices and commitments. These revolutionaries were almost uniformly hostile to institutional Christianity. Yet a number of Russian Marxists, such as Anatolii Lunacharskii, considered Jesus a genuine precursor of socialism. In 1917 many Bolsheviks and Bolshevik sympathizers interpreted the October Revolution in Christian terms, principally as a spiritual resurrection and rebirth. And in 1924, following Lenin's death, some Bolsheviks analogized Lenin to Jesus, and claimed that both were revolutionary martyrs. Finally, the article argues that Russian revolutionaries invested the Russian lower classes with a Christlike virtue, making it easier for the revolutionaries, once in power, to justify everything they did as advancing the interests of these classes.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1990

References

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43 And also such communists as Fidel Castro, who once declared that Marx “could have subscribed to the Sermon on the Mount” and that the struggle of the Cuban communists against Batista was comparable to that of the early Christians against the Roman Empire. Fidel and Religion: Castro Talks on Revolution and Religion with Frei Betto (New York, 1987), pp. 271, 273.Google Scholar

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72 For example, V. V. Bervi-Flerovskii, who composed a manifesto for one of the populist groups that “went to the people”, in 1874, filled the manifesto with quotations from the Gospel because he believed political agitation among the peasants could be successful only if it were presented as part of an effort to create a new “religion of equality” similar to Gospel Christianity. According to Bervi-Flerovskii, the early Christians had such an abundance of enthusiasm, courage, and moral vision that any contemporary radical group choosing to emulate them would be guaranteed the same success they enjoyed. And should the revolutionary movement in Russia sincerely profess the ethos of equality Bervi-Flerovskii claimed was implicit in Gospel Christianity, the two movements, in their totality, would be analogous. Flerovskii, N., Tri politicheskie sistemy (London, 1897), pp. 297298.Google Scholar

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84 Lunacharskii, , Religiia i sotsializm, vol. 2, p. 385.Google Scholar The Jesus analogy is even used, albeit rarely, in Soviet politics today. At a meeting of the Moscow Communist Party in October 1987, at which Boris El'tsin was sharply criticized for what his rivals considered his overly strident advocacy of glasnost', he was rebuked by V. A. Zharov, the deputy chairman of the Moscow City Council. Zharow complained, inter alia, that “we will see people who will try to make Boris Nikolaevich [El'tsin] into a Jesus Christ who suffered for his fervently revolutionary devotion to social revitalization and democracy”, Pravda (13 January 1987), p. 2. In this instance Zharov seems to be speaking ironically and sarcastically, though it is interesting that he believes there are “people” in the Soviet Union who will use an analogy with Jesus to express their support of El'tsin and glasnost'.

85 It is true that in the 1870's Nikolai Chaikovskii spoke of creating “God-men” who would combine the finest attributes of Jesus and humanity. But the attribute of Jesus that Chaikovskii prized most highly was his moral purity, not his divinity or capacity for resurrection. Frolenko, M., “Chaikovskii. Ego bogochelovechestvo”, Katorga i ssylka, 26 (1926), pp. 217223.Google Scholar

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87 Although Fedorov usually expressed his thoughts on unsigned scraps of paper, their authorship was eventually discovered. Many of his writings have been collected in Fedorov, N. F., Filosofiia obshchego dela, edited by Kozhevnikov, V. A. and Peterson, N. P.. Volume I was published in Alma Ata in 1906, and Volume II in Moscow in 1913.Google ScholarFedorov, N. F., Sochineniia, edited by Semonova, S. (Moscow, 1982),Google Scholar contains selections from these volumes as well as previously unpublished material from the Fedorov Archive. See also Wiles, Peter, “On Physical Immortality”, Survey, 56 (07 1965), p. 133.Google Scholar

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117 The Bolsheviks, of course, were well aware of how Christian notions of piety and repentance had shaped peasants' feelings towards the Tsars. An analysis of the origins of these feelings can be found in Cherniavsky, Michael, Tsar and People: Studies in Russian Myths (New York, 1971), especially pp. 4471, 190227.Google Scholar

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119 A recent study uncovered no Jesus imagery in the Stalin cult in the years 1929–1939. Heizer, James Lee, “The Cult of Stalin, 1929–1939”, (Ph.D., University of Kentucky, 1977).Google Scholar

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122 Examples of such vernacular are easy to find in the words and writings of Soviet leaders after the emergence of a new, less cultured breed of Bolshevik in the early 1930's, a phenomenon that Sheila Fitzpatrick, among others, has explored. (Fitzpatrick, Sheila, “Stalin and the Making of a New Elite, 1928–1939”, Slavic Review, 38, no. 3 (09 1979), pp. 377402)Google Scholar. Stalin astonished foreign observers by casually referring to God, and Khrushchev on at least one occasion called himself an “apostle” of the communist cause (Ulam, Adam B., Stalin: The Man and His Era (New York, 1973), p. 626Google Scholar, Khrushchev Remembers, translated and edited by Talbott, Strobe (Boston, 1970), p. 62)Google Scholar. However, Khrushchev's and Stalin's Christian vocabulary – unlike the Christian idiom of earlier revolutionaries – consisted merely of turns of phrase which reflected their peasant upbringing (and, in Stalin's case, several years in an Orthodox seminary) rather than any specific debt to Gospel Christianity.

123 See, for example, Billington, James H., The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture (New York, 1966), pp. 464472, 504518Google Scholar, and Proffer, Carl and Proffer, Ellendea (eds), The Silver Age of Russian Culture (Ann Arbor, MI, 1971).Google Scholar