Russian Cosmism

Origins and the Name

Russian cosmism is a current of Russian philosophical thought running from the second half of the nineteenth century into the first half of the twentieth. It rests on a holistic worldview that recognizes the mutual conditionedness and all-unity of the world, the interconnection of cosmic and earthly processes, and the correspondence between the microcosm (the human being) and the macrocosm (the universe). It gathers elements of science, philosophy, religion, and art.

The term 'Russian cosmism' appeared in the 1970s as a name for a national tradition of thought, and its authorship is disputed. One account credits Yulia Shishina, an assistant to Chizhevsky in his last years; another credits Nikolai Gavryushin, who proposed it in September 1970 to designate the current to which Tsiolkovsky belonged.

Fyodorov and the Religious-Philosophical Branch

Fyodorov is regarded as the father and most representative figure of Russian cosmism. The idea central to him is the philosophy of the Common Task: to regulate the forces of nature, to defeat death, and to bring the ancestors back to life so that they too would take part in the general resurrection. The sense of urgency about uniting for a common task runs in some form through the writings of every Russian cosmist. The mystical and metaphysical religious-philosophical wing includes Solovyov's philosophy of all-unity together with Berdyaev, Bulgakov, and Florensky; Fyodorov's own line continues into his followers of the 1920s and 1930s, namely Gorsky, Setnitsky, and Muravyov.

The Natural-Scientific Branch

The natural-scientific branch includes Tsiolkovsky, Umov, Chizhevsky, and Vernadsky. What they share as a starting point is the conviction that the conditions nature offers are not sufficient for human life and that a 'new' nature must be created on the basis of reason and science. Vernadsky treated the evolution of the biosphere as a unity of cosmic, geological, biogenic, and human processes, and described the new state humanity was approaching as the 'noosphere'.

The Cosmists of the 1920s and Their Practical Orientation

In the 1920s and 1930s Fyodorov's followers carried forward the task of synthesizing science and art, knowledge and creativity. They set against mere contemplation of the world a humanity that actively participates in the creation of the world, and the cosmists of the 1920s sought to add labor and religion to the collaboration of science and art. They founded an Organization of World-Transformation meant to encompass every sphere of human activity on the creative principle found in art, holding that science must organize all human labor and guide it toward the transfiguration of nature, resurrection, and life-creation.

The conditions of that period also deserve attention. Fyodorov's direct successors, Gorsky, Setnitsky, and Muravyov, were active across the 1920s and 1930s, and Chekrygin left the graphic series 'Resurrection: A Migration of People into Space' as sketches for the frescoes of a Cathedral-Museum of the Common Task. Activity around cosmic themes was genuinely intense, and Proletkult too was under the influence of cosmism. As the state's monopoly on the space narrative took shape, however, independent cosmist circles lost their room to operate.

Legacy

Suppressed during the Soviet era, cosmism nevertheless influenced Soviet space exploration, transhumanism, and later philosophical movements. The traces left by Fyodorov's speculations on resurrection, Tsiolkovsky's cosmist ideas, and Vernadsky's notion of the noosphere can be traced across twentieth-century Russian culture in Briusov and Mayakovsky, Khlebnikov and Zabolotsky, the poets of the 'cosmist' groups and the biocosmists, Prishvin and Gorky, Platonov and Pasternak.

Russian cosmism has been examined mainly in Russian publications and has had no particularly notable influence in Western countries. In the twenty-first century it has drawn renewed interest, above all in discussions of space colonization, technological immortality, and the role of humanity in the universe.