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I cosmisti russi. Il futurismo esoterico di Nikolaj Fedorov e dei suoi seguaci
I cosmisti, i futuristi esoterici che ispirarono il programma spaziale sovietico, sono la forza occulta dietro lo sviluppo del pensiero russo dalla fine dell'Ottocento a oggi: dal fondatore, il filosofo Nikolaj Fëdorov (1829-1903), che mirava a superare la morte attraverso la resurrezione degli antenati, ai successori che, per rendere possibile tale utopia, hanno sognato e poi promosso l'esplorazione e la conquista dello spazio. Il libro del professor Young è il principale contributo allo studio del cosmismo russo e dei suoi legami con l'esoterismo occidentale, ma è soprattutto lo straordinario racconto di una grande avventura che continua, di un fantastico viaggio nel cosmo e nel divenire dell'uomo, sino ai confini occulti della creazione.
350 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
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March 27, 2020
Elon Musk has been popularising and allegedly working on some bold ideas in recent years. Among other things: building a neural interface between human brains and computers, colonising Mars, using magnetic levitation technology to connect city hubs, and last but not least, the possibility that we could all be living unawares in a “Matrix” simulation. For the most part, Musk didn’t come up with these wild ideas all on his own. He has been borrowing them from science fiction novels and such gentle lunatics as Nick Bostrom or Ray Kurzweil.
But these ideas go way back, as this monograph on Russian Cosmists demonstrates. The pioneer and thought leader of this philosophical movement was Nikolaĭ Fedorovich Fedorov (born in 1829), an ascetic original who managed to patch together a broad array of ideas: Orthodox Christianity and Slavophilia, occultism, Gnosticism and alchemy, science and technology. He advocated infinite life extension and the resurrection of the ancestors back to Adam and Eve (which Bostrom seemingly translated into his idea of “ancestor simulation”) and space colonisation, transforming the Earth into a vast spaceship, to boldly go where no man has gone before, as the saying goes.
Fedorov has been hugely influential in Russia: he knew Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy personally; his ideas were the seed of Soviet space exploration. This book is essentially a gallery of intellectual figures in Russia / the USSR who were deeply inspired by Fedorov, blending his doctrine with communism when needed. For instance, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the theorist of space exploration, or Vladimir Vernadsky, who developed the concept of “noosphere” (later popularised by the French Jesuit, Teilhard de Chardin). Sergei Bulgakov and Pavel Florensky, pictured in the painting below, are two prominent figures of the movement as well. Although these two don’t look particularly breezy, Russian Cosmists supported a form of Promethean optimism and craved for a forward-thinking world utopia — one that SF writers like Zamyatin, Huxley and Orwell would harshly criticise.
Russian Cosmism has its Western counterparts: possibly to some degree, Nietzsche, Bergson and C.G. Jung, at the turn of the 20th century. Today, this translates into “Transhumanism”, a form of New Age, of cyber-immortalism embraced by Elon Musk, Kurzweil and about every plutocrat in the Silicon Valley, and all the other stark raving bonkers who want their sperm sprayed out all over the galaxy and their mad brains frozen in a cryogenic vat, to come back ball-breaking again on Judgement Day and for the rest of eternity. Fear of death is a toughie, that’s for sure!
But these ideas go way back, as this monograph on Russian Cosmists demonstrates. The pioneer and thought leader of this philosophical movement was Nikolaĭ Fedorovich Fedorov (born in 1829), an ascetic original who managed to patch together a broad array of ideas: Orthodox Christianity and Slavophilia, occultism, Gnosticism and alchemy, science and technology. He advocated infinite life extension and the resurrection of the ancestors back to Adam and Eve (which Bostrom seemingly translated into his idea of “ancestor simulation”) and space colonisation, transforming the Earth into a vast spaceship, to boldly go where no man has gone before, as the saying goes.
Fedorov has been hugely influential in Russia: he knew Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy personally; his ideas were the seed of Soviet space exploration. This book is essentially a gallery of intellectual figures in Russia / the USSR who were deeply inspired by Fedorov, blending his doctrine with communism when needed. For instance, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the theorist of space exploration, or Vladimir Vernadsky, who developed the concept of “noosphere” (later popularised by the French Jesuit, Teilhard de Chardin). Sergei Bulgakov and Pavel Florensky, pictured in the painting below, are two prominent figures of the movement as well. Although these two don’t look particularly breezy, Russian Cosmists supported a form of Promethean optimism and craved for a forward-thinking world utopia — one that SF writers like Zamyatin, Huxley and Orwell would harshly criticise.
Russian Cosmism has its Western counterparts: possibly to some degree, Nietzsche, Bergson and C.G. Jung, at the turn of the 20th century. Today, this translates into “Transhumanism”, a form of New Age, of cyber-immortalism embraced by Elon Musk, Kurzweil and about every plutocrat in the Silicon Valley, and all the other stark raving bonkers who want their sperm sprayed out all over the galaxy and their mad brains frozen in a cryogenic vat, to come back ball-breaking again on Judgement Day and for the rest of eternity. Fear of death is a toughie, that’s for sure!
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July 14, 2023A very engaging introduction to the project of Fyodorov and the subsequent Russian Cosmists, with Young´s personal interpretation and providing extracts of their most important works. Definitely a good starting point for anyone willing to do further investigation on Cosmist-related thought and its Russian incepient context.
June 10, 2022
Notes
The active human role in human and cosmic evolution; the creation of new life forms, including a new level of humanity.
Why Cosmism so popular among Russian intellectuals?
First, the Cosmists, like many Russians, are expansive thinkers: their worldview attempts to comprehend all humanity, all time, all space, all science, art, and religion. Moreover, this view is totalitarian in the sense that it must apply to all, without exception. As Berdyaev has suggested, half solutions do not satisfy the "Russian soul”
Second, the Cosmists emphasize their Russianness: otechestvennyi, "native" -"patriotic" without the Latinate flavor it carries in English, "fatherlandish:' without Teutonic connotations. Otechestvennyi is the word used in referring to World War II as the Great Patriotic War
Third, anti-western alternative to the intellectual culture of the West is isolative, individualistic, arrogant, divisive, uncentered, and self-destructive - deconstruction, ecosophism, species egalitarianism.
Fourth, the Cosmists were banned during the Soviet period
Fifth, Cosmists were polymaths with demonstrated mastery so even their unorthodox theories gained legitimacy.
Sixth, mystical dimension: 39% of all nonfiction in 90s had to do with occult.
a Slavic instinct for expansiveness, wholeness, unity, and total solutions underlies the global, and beyond-global character of their investigations and projects. "with one elbow resting on Germany and the other on China;' in a position to offer a broader outlook, a fresh synthesis of the best features from many traditions
Solovyov, the great philosopher who inspired Russia's "Silver Age" of literature and art (successor to the earlier nineteenth-century "Golden Age" of Push kin and Gogol), was a model of rational clarity, a master of lucid prose, and at the same time a mystic poet of foggy lake crossings, sophiological raptures, and ardent longing for otherworldly caresses
Most of 19th century, philosophy either prohibited in universities or limited to Plato/Aristotle. Since philosophy wasn’t a profession, major contributions to Russian thought have been made not by trained academicians but by gifted amateurs: imaginative writers (Dostoevsky, Tolstoy), literary and social critics (Belinsky, Chernyshevsky, Pisarev, Dobroliubov), wealthy landowners (Kireevsky, Samarin), former horse guardsmen (Khomiakov), certified madmen (Chaadaev), spiritual pilgrims (Skovoroda), expelled teachers (Solovyov), and frocked and unfrocked priests (Bulgakov, Florensky, Berdyaev).
Similarity between Russian and Indian spirituality: Hesychasm (monastic, quiet, repetitive prayer).
Obydennye tserkvy, churches built in a single day, thanks to the joint labor of everyone in the community - secular space turned into sacred not by any supernatural action but only by collective human will, knowledge, and labour
Russians as chosen people of the Third Rome: Tale of the White Cowl (symbol of resurrection) passed from Rome to Constantinople when popes were corrupted. Then to Moscow when Byzantine Greeks were corrupted and Constantinople fell to the Ottomans.
Russia received christianity relatively late, once all the debate on dogma had finished. So Fathers of the Russian Orthodox Church, consequently, were more concerned with creating artistic and didactic guides to the practice of living a Christian life than with developing a scholastic theology designed to appeal more to the intellect alone than to the whole person
medieval Christianity in the West became more and more an intellectual exercise of the rational (Aqui-nas) and imaginative (Dante) faculties of clever individuals on the one hand ,md unthinking mass obedience to the dictates of the papal hierarchy on the other
Catholicism stands for unity without freedom, Protestantism for free-dom without unity, and Orthodoxy for sobornost', the synthesis of freedom and unity
Secretum Secretorum, secret instructions given to Alexander the Great by Aristotle
Whereas a well-painted Renaissance portrait gives us an image (Russian obraz) of our physical reality from a limited individualistic, “illusory” perspective, a well-painted icon, when viewed by the right person (a sensitive believer) in the right setting (an irregular, round cornered Russian church interior, with the sight and aroma of drifting incense, dimly lit by flickering candles, accompanied by the slow, choreographed movements of priests in folded, rich, flowing vestments) allows the viewer to behold something like Plato’s world of ideal forms.
the word as an intermediary between the inner and outer world, as “an amphibian,” living both here and there, a thread between this world and that. Before we are able to speak, the word is only inside our heads, and as soon as we can speak we no longer have control over it. Paradoxically, then, while we have power over the word, it does not, strictly speaking, exist, and when it emerges from us and does exist, we no longer have power over it, as in the wise folk saying: “A word is a sparrow: let it go, you can’t catch it.”
Bulgakov would write in his obituary, Florensky was in no way a Russian nationalist but was a thoroughly native, patriotic (otechestvennyi) Russian thinker and accepted inevitable persecution in the homeland rather than material comfort but spiritual misery elsewhere.
Evraziitsi, as they called themselves, openly acknowledged their debt to Fedorov, debated in their journals whether Marx or Fedorov presented the better model for future Russian development, and concluded that Marx might offer the best plan for the twentieth century, but Fedorov would best serve the twenty-first century and beyond.
Vernadsky’s ideas of the biosphere and noosphere, and Chizhevsky’s ideas of the influence of variations in waves of solar energy on human history. In recent times, Gumilev’s theories have proved especially useful to Russian neonationalists, neo-Eurasianists and others with an anti-Western, anti-Atlanticist political bias,11 the most prominent of whom is the ideologist Alexander Dugin—and, some might add, Vladimir Putin.
Incarnation, then—the literal taking into the body—in Bulgakov, becomes not only a theological doctrine but a practical everyday activity. The taking of food erases the difference between subject and object, and our act of incarnating the world parallels God’s act in becoming man.
The active human role in human and cosmic evolution; the creation of new life forms, including a new level of humanity.
Why Cosmism so popular among Russian intellectuals?
First, the Cosmists, like many Russians, are expansive thinkers: their worldview attempts to comprehend all humanity, all time, all space, all science, art, and religion. Moreover, this view is totalitarian in the sense that it must apply to all, without exception. As Berdyaev has suggested, half solutions do not satisfy the "Russian soul”
Second, the Cosmists emphasize their Russianness: otechestvennyi, "native" -"patriotic" without the Latinate flavor it carries in English, "fatherlandish:' without Teutonic connotations. Otechestvennyi is the word used in referring to World War II as the Great Patriotic War
Third, anti-western alternative to the intellectual culture of the West is isolative, individualistic, arrogant, divisive, uncentered, and self-destructive - deconstruction, ecosophism, species egalitarianism.
Fourth, the Cosmists were banned during the Soviet period
Fifth, Cosmists were polymaths with demonstrated mastery so even their unorthodox theories gained legitimacy.
Sixth, mystical dimension: 39% of all nonfiction in 90s had to do with occult.
a Slavic instinct for expansiveness, wholeness, unity, and total solutions underlies the global, and beyond-global character of their investigations and projects. "with one elbow resting on Germany and the other on China;' in a position to offer a broader outlook, a fresh synthesis of the best features from many traditions
Solovyov, the great philosopher who inspired Russia's "Silver Age" of literature and art (successor to the earlier nineteenth-century "Golden Age" of Push kin and Gogol), was a model of rational clarity, a master of lucid prose, and at the same time a mystic poet of foggy lake crossings, sophiological raptures, and ardent longing for otherworldly caresses
Most of 19th century, philosophy either prohibited in universities or limited to Plato/Aristotle. Since philosophy wasn’t a profession, major contributions to Russian thought have been made not by trained academicians but by gifted amateurs: imaginative writers (Dostoevsky, Tolstoy), literary and social critics (Belinsky, Chernyshevsky, Pisarev, Dobroliubov), wealthy landowners (Kireevsky, Samarin), former horse guardsmen (Khomiakov), certified madmen (Chaadaev), spiritual pilgrims (Skovoroda), expelled teachers (Solovyov), and frocked and unfrocked priests (Bulgakov, Florensky, Berdyaev).
Similarity between Russian and Indian spirituality: Hesychasm (monastic, quiet, repetitive prayer).
Obydennye tserkvy, churches built in a single day, thanks to the joint labor of everyone in the community - secular space turned into sacred not by any supernatural action but only by collective human will, knowledge, and labour
Russians as chosen people of the Third Rome: Tale of the White Cowl (symbol of resurrection) passed from Rome to Constantinople when popes were corrupted. Then to Moscow when Byzantine Greeks were corrupted and Constantinople fell to the Ottomans.
Russia received christianity relatively late, once all the debate on dogma had finished. So Fathers of the Russian Orthodox Church, consequently, were more concerned with creating artistic and didactic guides to the practice of living a Christian life than with developing a scholastic theology designed to appeal more to the intellect alone than to the whole person
medieval Christianity in the West became more and more an intellectual exercise of the rational (Aqui-nas) and imaginative (Dante) faculties of clever individuals on the one hand ,md unthinking mass obedience to the dictates of the papal hierarchy on the other
Catholicism stands for unity without freedom, Protestantism for free-dom without unity, and Orthodoxy for sobornost', the synthesis of freedom and unity
Secretum Secretorum, secret instructions given to Alexander the Great by Aristotle
Whereas a well-painted Renaissance portrait gives us an image (Russian obraz) of our physical reality from a limited individualistic, “illusory” perspective, a well-painted icon, when viewed by the right person (a sensitive believer) in the right setting (an irregular, round cornered Russian church interior, with the sight and aroma of drifting incense, dimly lit by flickering candles, accompanied by the slow, choreographed movements of priests in folded, rich, flowing vestments) allows the viewer to behold something like Plato’s world of ideal forms.
the word as an intermediary between the inner and outer world, as “an amphibian,” living both here and there, a thread between this world and that. Before we are able to speak, the word is only inside our heads, and as soon as we can speak we no longer have control over it. Paradoxically, then, while we have power over the word, it does not, strictly speaking, exist, and when it emerges from us and does exist, we no longer have power over it, as in the wise folk saying: “A word is a sparrow: let it go, you can’t catch it.”
Bulgakov would write in his obituary, Florensky was in no way a Russian nationalist but was a thoroughly native, patriotic (otechestvennyi) Russian thinker and accepted inevitable persecution in the homeland rather than material comfort but spiritual misery elsewhere.
Evraziitsi, as they called themselves, openly acknowledged their debt to Fedorov, debated in their journals whether Marx or Fedorov presented the better model for future Russian development, and concluded that Marx might offer the best plan for the twentieth century, but Fedorov would best serve the twenty-first century and beyond.
Vernadsky’s ideas of the biosphere and noosphere, and Chizhevsky’s ideas of the influence of variations in waves of solar energy on human history. In recent times, Gumilev’s theories have proved especially useful to Russian neonationalists, neo-Eurasianists and others with an anti-Western, anti-Atlanticist political bias,11 the most prominent of whom is the ideologist Alexander Dugin—and, some might add, Vladimir Putin.
Incarnation, then—the literal taking into the body—in Bulgakov, becomes not only a theological doctrine but a practical everyday activity. The taking of food erases the difference between subject and object, and our act of incarnating the world parallels God’s act in becoming man.
August 26, 2024
La dottrina cosmista - non credo che la parola dottrina sia corretta, ma va bene - è una speculazione filosofica che nasce nella Russia della seconda metà dell'ottocento. A svilupparla è un bibliotecario al limite dell'estasi dei santi e dei folli, Nikolaj Fedorovic Fedorov, un uomo che non possiede nulla, nemmeno un letto, dorme su un baule, i pochi soldi che guadagna come bibliotecario a Mosca li distribuisce con chi ne ha bisogno. I suoi amici devono addirittura accertarsi costantemente che non dia via le poche cose che ogni tanto gli procurano, basta che una volta saltino l'appuntamento per controllarlo, e Fedorov si sbarazza di tutto. Ogni tanto, con l'aiuto di una sorta di discepolo, Nikolaj Pavlovic Peterson, scrive di malumore le proprie speculazioni filosofiche e, ancora più raramente e con ancora più malumore, distribuisce queste carte, tra cui a Dostoevskij (che lo lesse, ma non seppe mai chi fu) e Tolstoj (che lo conobbe, e Fedorov scuoteva la testa per la scelta di Tolstoj di smettere di essere un buono scrittore per diventare un pessimo filosofo). L'arditezza delle sue teorie - poi ci arriviamo - e la particolarità del suo carattere, non gli permisero mai di diffondersi. Eppure, a diverse ondate, in modo sia diretto che indiretto, segreto e palese, le sue idee hanno attraversato più di un secolo e ci sono arrivate, arrivando a influenzare sia ricerche scientifiche che metafisiche. E' veramente sorprendente e meraviglioso il modo in cui le idee di Fedorov abbiano continuato come un fiume carsico a infiltrarsi nei pochi spazi lasciati dalla Rivoluzione e dall'Unione Sovietica. Nonostante soltanto in tempi relativamente recenti si sia potuto tornare a parlare esplicitamente di Fedorov e della sua Opera Comune, Young mostra come germi delle idee fedoroviane hanno fecondato una manciata di altri studiosi, filosofi, visionari, e come piano piano siano mutate e stratificate. Arrivando vive fino a oggi.
La teoria di Fedorov è una teoria omnicomprensiva, che abbraccia qualsiasi aspetto della realtà: dal sesso (male) alle stelle (da conquistare), dagli atomi (che contengono tutti i nostri antenati) agli altopiani del Pamir (luogo di origine dell'uomo). Ma il vero, scandaloso, vertiginoso fulcro della teoria di Fedorov, che poi io dico teoria, ma per lui la teoria è pratica, comunque, il vero scandalo che Fedorov ci sfida a prendere seriamente è l'abominio della morte. L'affermazione, tanto spiazzante quanto rivoluzionaria, che non ci sta assolutamente nessun cazzo di motivo per cui dovremmo morire. Per cui dovremmo accettare passivamente la morte. Fedorov lo dice con la stessa sconvolgente serietà con cui Cristo affermava la resurrezione dei morti nella Palestina di 2000 anni fa. E come Cristo, anche Fedorov si spinge oltre: la scienza non deve solo permetterci di vivere tutti noi ora che siamo vivi per sempre. Sarebbe egoistico e infantile fermarsi qui. La scienza deve resuscitare tutte le persone che siano mai esistite. Il nucleo rovente della filosofia di Fedorov è qua: sfidarci nel trovare un qualsiasi motivo per cui non dovremmo unire tutte le forze umane, scientifiche e mentali, per ribaltare la morte e, semplicemente, annullarla, non solo nel presente e nel futuro, ma anche nel passato. La vertigine sta qua, per me: nel considerare seriamente questa domanda. Questa pietra dello scandalo.
(Per quanto riguarda il saggio di Young, sinceramente ho sentito molto la mancanza che queste storie non siano capitate nelle mani di un Carrere. Ma ci sta sempre speranza, come ci insegna Fedorov)
La teoria di Fedorov è una teoria omnicomprensiva, che abbraccia qualsiasi aspetto della realtà: dal sesso (male) alle stelle (da conquistare), dagli atomi (che contengono tutti i nostri antenati) agli altopiani del Pamir (luogo di origine dell'uomo). Ma il vero, scandaloso, vertiginoso fulcro della teoria di Fedorov, che poi io dico teoria, ma per lui la teoria è pratica, comunque, il vero scandalo che Fedorov ci sfida a prendere seriamente è l'abominio della morte. L'affermazione, tanto spiazzante quanto rivoluzionaria, che non ci sta assolutamente nessun cazzo di motivo per cui dovremmo morire. Per cui dovremmo accettare passivamente la morte. Fedorov lo dice con la stessa sconvolgente serietà con cui Cristo affermava la resurrezione dei morti nella Palestina di 2000 anni fa. E come Cristo, anche Fedorov si spinge oltre: la scienza non deve solo permetterci di vivere tutti noi ora che siamo vivi per sempre. Sarebbe egoistico e infantile fermarsi qui. La scienza deve resuscitare tutte le persone che siano mai esistite. Il nucleo rovente della filosofia di Fedorov è qua: sfidarci nel trovare un qualsiasi motivo per cui non dovremmo unire tutte le forze umane, scientifiche e mentali, per ribaltare la morte e, semplicemente, annullarla, non solo nel presente e nel futuro, ma anche nel passato. La vertigine sta qua, per me: nel considerare seriamente questa domanda. Questa pietra dello scandalo.
(Per quanto riguarda il saggio di Young, sinceramente ho sentito molto la mancanza che queste storie non siano capitate nelle mani di un Carrere. Ma ci sta sempre speranza, come ci insegna Fedorov)
June 19, 2020
I have been researching about the Space Race between US and USSR for sometime now. One of the striking thing is that the Pioneers involved in the Space/Rocketry industry were somewhere between proper Genius and borderline Lunatic.
Personally I knew very little from the Russian side of the space history apart from the Starman Yuri Gagarin. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky -the most famous Russian Rocket scientist - and Sergei Korolev -the Soviet Rocket Engineer responsible for launching the first artificial satellite and human being into space - were Russian cosmists. I knew I fell into a rabbit hole.
Russian Cosmism is an unusual religious philosophical movement. The philosophy combines scientific method, esoterism , magic and religion that advocates immortality, resurrection of the death and space colonization as means of achieving salvation.
Nikolai Fyodorov is Russian Orthodox Mystic who believes the only way to achieve salvation is through resurrection of all our ancestor and radical life extension. To address the Malthusian problem of radical life extension, Fyodorov advocates space colonization.
In his work "Philosophy of the Common task", he advocates resurrection of all our ancestors across space and time and immortality. He admits which a task would require thousands of years to accomplish and believes human being should play an active role resurrection of the dead.
Cosmists were polymath who were highly competent in half a dozen specialized discipline. Cosmists like Vladimir Vernadsky basically founded their own specified disciplines. Another interesting fact about Russian cosmism is that were every much interested in philosophical, theological, scientific and esoteric endeavors
Cosmist had background on both religious and scientist minds. The most famous example is Pavel Florensky ,who is called Da vinci of Russia, was a priest, mathematician, philosopher, electrical engineer, physicist and philosopher.
And about the book itself, there are very few books in English to non-Russian speakers. This is a accessible but a bit dry book. The subject at hand is so intriguing that you will overlook the style of writing.
Takeway:
We truly live a time of technological stagnation. We as a society no longer the have grandiose vision of conquering the stars. In the 19th century, many ordinary people had such dreams and visions. Now these dreams are left to the multi billionaire like Musk and Bezos.
Joseph Stalin is truly the vilest dictator to walk this earth and Soviet had one of the vilest bureaucracy in our history. Some of the greatest minds were sent to gulag on the whims of the officers.
Not only scientific progress was inter-related to religion. But there is a strong correlation between esoteric-occult-magic studies and scientific progress(at least till the end of 19th century).
Personally I knew very little from the Russian side of the space history apart from the Starman Yuri Gagarin. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky -the most famous Russian Rocket scientist - and Sergei Korolev -the Soviet Rocket Engineer responsible for launching the first artificial satellite and human being into space - were Russian cosmists. I knew I fell into a rabbit hole.
Russian Cosmism is an unusual religious philosophical movement. The philosophy combines scientific method, esoterism , magic and religion that advocates immortality, resurrection of the death and space colonization as means of achieving salvation.
Nikolai Fyodorov is Russian Orthodox Mystic who believes the only way to achieve salvation is through resurrection of all our ancestor and radical life extension. To address the Malthusian problem of radical life extension, Fyodorov advocates space colonization.
In his work "Philosophy of the Common task", he advocates resurrection of all our ancestors across space and time and immortality. He admits which a task would require thousands of years to accomplish and believes human being should play an active role resurrection of the dead.
Cosmists were polymath who were highly competent in half a dozen specialized discipline. Cosmists like Vladimir Vernadsky basically founded their own specified disciplines. Another interesting fact about Russian cosmism is that were every much interested in philosophical, theological, scientific and esoteric endeavors
Cosmist had background on both religious and scientist minds. The most famous example is Pavel Florensky ,who is called Da vinci of Russia, was a priest, mathematician, philosopher, electrical engineer, physicist and philosopher.
And about the book itself, there are very few books in English to non-Russian speakers. This is a accessible but a bit dry book. The subject at hand is so intriguing that you will overlook the style of writing.
Takeway:
We truly live a time of technological stagnation. We as a society no longer the have grandiose vision of conquering the stars. In the 19th century, many ordinary people had such dreams and visions. Now these dreams are left to the multi billionaire like Musk and Bezos.
Joseph Stalin is truly the vilest dictator to walk this earth and Soviet had one of the vilest bureaucracy in our history. Some of the greatest minds were sent to gulag on the whims of the officers.
Not only scientific progress was inter-related to religion. But there is a strong correlation between esoteric-occult-magic studies and scientific progress(at least till the end of 19th century).
November 5, 2025
What intrigued me about Cosmism was its holistic, absolutist ("totalitarian" in the words of the author) world view, contrasting the pathetic narrowness and inaction of academia. And, of course, wanting to learn more about their notable ideas; spaceship earth, solar-powered longevity, conscious evolution, etc.
But, for all their boldness, it's clear these men were utterly confused. They generally do not approach these questions in any scientific way (with the exception of Tsiolkovsky on a few matters), and only approached the truth via pseudoscience and esotericism.
In attempting to give the book and their ideas a fair go, I found what few nuggets did exist are buried under a heap of unreadable academic rubbish and postmodern phrasemongery from the author.
Furthermore, the author unfortunately, champions the weakest side of Cosmism, rather than seriously grappling with the strengths and weaknesses.
He makes no effort to seriously understand the social origins of Cosmism, or the recent resurgence in popularity. While he pays honest attention to such rubbish as Russian-ness, the soul, religion, magic, etc. he does not consider the intellectual backwardness of nineteenth-century Russia, or the intellectual crisis of the restoration of capital in twenty-first-century Russia.
He clutches at coincidences, highlights banalities, and ignores or slurs over inconvenient facts, in order to dress up Cosmism as a coherent body of thought, and one thoroughly occult - packaging up Cosmism as an esoteric peculiarity for westerners to gawp at.
He misunderstands Marx’s most basic philosophy, summarising it as “though as action” (and thus making Marx kin with Feoderov!!). This is blatantly clear to anyone who has even glimpsed at the Theses on Feuerebach. Marx's philosophy of action is based first and foremost on a material world, not a magical fairy tale world.
I think it says a lot about the world today that so many people yearning for some boldness of ideas, failing to find it in the mainstream and major counter-currents, turn to this witchy nonsense.
But, for all their boldness, it's clear these men were utterly confused. They generally do not approach these questions in any scientific way (with the exception of Tsiolkovsky on a few matters), and only approached the truth via pseudoscience and esotericism.
In attempting to give the book and their ideas a fair go, I found what few nuggets did exist are buried under a heap of unreadable academic rubbish and postmodern phrasemongery from the author.
Furthermore, the author unfortunately, champions the weakest side of Cosmism, rather than seriously grappling with the strengths and weaknesses.
He makes no effort to seriously understand the social origins of Cosmism, or the recent resurgence in popularity. While he pays honest attention to such rubbish as Russian-ness, the soul, religion, magic, etc. he does not consider the intellectual backwardness of nineteenth-century Russia, or the intellectual crisis of the restoration of capital in twenty-first-century Russia.
He clutches at coincidences, highlights banalities, and ignores or slurs over inconvenient facts, in order to dress up Cosmism as a coherent body of thought, and one thoroughly occult - packaging up Cosmism as an esoteric peculiarity for westerners to gawp at.
He misunderstands Marx’s most basic philosophy, summarising it as “though as action” (and thus making Marx kin with Feoderov!!). This is blatantly clear to anyone who has even glimpsed at the Theses on Feuerebach. Marx's philosophy of action is based first and foremost on a material world, not a magical fairy tale world.
I think it says a lot about the world today that so many people yearning for some boldness of ideas, failing to find it in the mainstream and major counter-currents, turn to this witchy nonsense.
December 19, 2017
Expounded primarily through a series of brief intellectual biographies – encyclopedic in style if more representative than exhaustive in scope – Young traces the background and legacy of Nikolai Fedorov, as propagated sometimes directly but often less so through the thought of those late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russian scientists and theologians of a speculative, philosophical bent whose works would form the basis for a heterogeneous ideological movement that has come to be known as Cosmism. Comprising autodidact rocket scientists as well as sophianic mystical poets, this disparate cohort shared a universalizing vision for the future of humanity, a future culminating in spiritual, physiological, or at least sociocultural transcendence, to be attained through a consciously-directed evolutionary process of one kind or another. While for Fedorov this transcendence entailed the literal, physical resurrection of every person who had ever lived (!), his successors were more diverse, if only marginally more modest, in the cosmic goals they set for the human race. Obscure in his own lifetime, his heirs' more adventurous suggestions largely marginalized or persecuted under the Soviet regime, Young concludes with a consideration of the renaissance experienced by Fedorov's ideas since the opening up of the USSR, at least among a certain stratum of Russia's scientific fringe.
September 9, 2022
3.4 stars
+ Those Russian Cosmists were pretty interesting!
+ For something that interesting, it is quite unknown in the West, or at least unknown to me, so it scored really well on "almost everything I read in the book was new to me"
+ their views are really quite different from the views one encounters in the West, so also scores well on reinforcing how other cultures view the world in ways that are more different than I intuitively realize
0 The book several times made the claim that while Cosmism and Federov are pretty unknown in the West, they huge in Russia. Interesting if true but I didn't really know how to evaluate that claim.
- the book wasn't terribly well written; pretty academic style (not in a good way)
- at time the book seemed like an endless list of names (maybe this would have been less true if I had some familiarity with the topic and hence those names carried meaning for me, but that mostly wasn't the case)
- the book used a lot of esoteric (at least to me) terms without defining them. Seemed jargon-y
+ Those Russian Cosmists were pretty interesting!
+ For something that interesting, it is quite unknown in the West, or at least unknown to me, so it scored really well on "almost everything I read in the book was new to me"
+ their views are really quite different from the views one encounters in the West, so also scores well on reinforcing how other cultures view the world in ways that are more different than I intuitively realize
0 The book several times made the claim that while Cosmism and Federov are pretty unknown in the West, they huge in Russia. Interesting if true but I didn't really know how to evaluate that claim.
- the book wasn't terribly well written; pretty academic style (not in a good way)
- at time the book seemed like an endless list of names (maybe this would have been less true if I had some familiarity with the topic and hence those names carried meaning for me, but that mostly wasn't the case)
- the book used a lot of esoteric (at least to me) terms without defining them. Seemed jargon-y
February 7, 2023
The subject matter in terms of the thought of the personalities discussed seemed to me to tack between wishful thinking and sheer gibberish. The exposition was replete with errors in reasoning and use of English.
December 22, 2025
Didn't feel like finishing but read the entire philosophical/theological Cosmism section and it was quite interesting. Great research and presentation, recommended if you think you might be interested.
May 4, 2019
Only a marginal interest but a truly interesting margin.
We could be entering a neo-gnostic epoch, now with an increasing interest in transhumanism and immortality.
We could be entering a neo-gnostic epoch, now with an increasing interest in transhumanism and immortality.
April 3, 2020
An amazing view into the Russian futurist thought.
June 7, 2020
More of that rabbit hole pls
October 3, 2025
This book changed my life.
January 10, 2019
Young presents the intellectual tendencies shared between Federov & those associated with the (largely diffuse) Cosmist movement as a core of modern (post-1860) Russian thought, and he makes the case admirably: one can see traces of the stranger tendencies of pre-Soviet, Soviet, and post-Soviet philosophy here, and draw lines between Blavatsky, Scriabin, ideas like the New Soviet Man, & even those elements of current Russian political thought that have been in the news lately.
I've given the book only three stars simply because the more academic style was at times a slog. The book is short, and with such interesting subject matter it should be a joy to read, but somehow it took me weeks. Slightly better prose would have easily brought it up to four stars.
I've given the book only three stars simply because the more academic style was at times a slog. The book is short, and with such interesting subject matter it should be a joy to read, but somehow it took me weeks. Slightly better prose would have easily brought it up to four stars.
January 2, 2014
Young’s book, “The Russian Cosmists: The Esoteric Futurism of Nikolai Fedorov and His Followers,” [Young 2012], is a very intense mini encyclopedia with a lot of short biographical, literary and philosophical entries about main and lesser known Cosmist thinkers, all influenced by Fedorov’s seminal work.
Young emphasizes the Russianness of Cosmism, the vastness of Russian land and history as a unique stage for the emergence of a system of thought so vast and daring to encompass both science and religion in a synergistic whole, and shows the diversity of the Cosmist galaxy, and the many co-existing scientific, philosophical, religious, spiritual, as well as esoteric, shamanistic, gnostic approaches.
The core idea of Cosmism is active evolution, taking the future of our species in our hands and steering it toward cosmic transcendence. This is also the core idea of transhumanism, of which the Russian Cosmists must be considered as direct precursors. Critics say that active evolution is “against God’s will,” but the Cosmist insight is that, on the contrary, radical active evolution IS God’s will. One of Fedorov’s favorite Bible passages was: ‘Truly, truly I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than those will he do.’ (John 14:12, RSV). Young refers to “Fedorov’s active, forceful, masculine Christianity” – a Christianity of action, to become more like God.
Read full review:
http://turingchurch.com/2014/01/01/th...
Young emphasizes the Russianness of Cosmism, the vastness of Russian land and history as a unique stage for the emergence of a system of thought so vast and daring to encompass both science and religion in a synergistic whole, and shows the diversity of the Cosmist galaxy, and the many co-existing scientific, philosophical, religious, spiritual, as well as esoteric, shamanistic, gnostic approaches.
The core idea of Cosmism is active evolution, taking the future of our species in our hands and steering it toward cosmic transcendence. This is also the core idea of transhumanism, of which the Russian Cosmists must be considered as direct precursors. Critics say that active evolution is “against God’s will,” but the Cosmist insight is that, on the contrary, radical active evolution IS God’s will. One of Fedorov’s favorite Bible passages was: ‘Truly, truly I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than those will he do.’ (John 14:12, RSV). Young refers to “Fedorov’s active, forceful, masculine Christianity” – a Christianity of action, to become more like God.
Read full review:
http://turingchurch.com/2014/01/01/th...
February 7, 2014
Andrei Platonov's name is not in the index. An unforgivable omission for a pretty general survey of Fedorovism.
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