Russian cultural historian who launched the Vekhi collection and urged the intelligentsia toward spiritual self-awareness
In his introduction to Vekhi (1909), Gershenzon wrote: "We must bless this government which alone, with its bayonets and prisons, still protects us from the fury of the people."
A Russian cultural historian and essayist, Mikhail Gershenzon was the initiator and editor of the landmark 1909 collection Vekhi (Landmarks), which denounced the revolutionary radicalism of the Russian intelligentsia. He argued that the intelligentsia, fixated on reorganizing external social forms, had neglected the inner life of the spirit: a stance crystallized in his provocative line that "we must bless this government which alone, with its bayonets and prisons, still protects us from the fury of the people." After the revolution, he served as the first chair of the All-Russian Writers' Union and headed the literary section of Narkompros, while his scholarship on Pushkin (The Wisdom of Pushkin, 1919) and 19th-century Russian thought left a lasting intellectual legacy.
Career Timeline
- 1894Graduated Moscow University, history and philology
- 1903–1905Literary reviewer, Nauchnoe Slovo
- 1907–1909Literary editor, Kriticheskoe Obozrenie
- 1909Initiated and edited Vekhi; wrote introduction and essay
- 1915–1919Edited Russkie Propilei (6 vols.)
- 1918First chair, Moscow Writers' Union
- 1920–1921Chair, All-Russian Writers' Union; member, Narkompros literary bureau
- 1922–1925Head, literary section, State Academy of Artistic Sciences (GAKhN)