Philosophers' Ships

Name and scope

The philosophers' ships (Russian: философский пароход) is a collective name for the voyages by which Soviet Russia expelled non-Marxist intellectuals abroad in 1922. The term was popularised by the philosopher and mathematician Sergey Khoruzhiy, who published an article under that title in Literaturnaya Gazeta in 1990. The sailings were not limited to the two ships that ran from Petrograd to Stettin: deportees also left on steamers from Odessa and Sevastopol to Constantinople and by train from Moscow to Latvia and Germany.

Background and decision

The operation began on Lenin's initiative. In an article published in March 1922 he called religion and modern philosophy the "ideological slaves of the bourgeoisie", and in May he proposed in several letters replacing execution with expulsion abroad. On 8 June the Politburo adopted a decree on anti-Soviet groupings among the intelligentsia, restricting student and professorial meetings, banning independent publishing and setting up a special conference empowered to decide on expulsion abroad. On 10 August 1922 the All-Russian Central Executive Committee passed a decree on administrative exile permitting deportation abroad or to designated regions of the Russian SFSR without trial. Night arrests and house searches followed in Moscow, Petrograd, Kiev and Yalta in August and September; those detained were given neither trial nor counsel and were questioned about their view of "the Soviet power structure and the proletarian system of government".

The expulsions

The Oberbürgermeister Haken left Petrograd on 28 September 1922 (29 September in Russian accounts) and reached Stettin on 30 September, carrying Berdyaev, Frank, Ilyin, Trubetzkoy and Vysheslavtsev among others. The Preussen sailed on 16 to 17 November with Lossky, Karsavin and Lapshin aboard. The two ships carried 225 people in all. By train, the Moscow to Riga service of 23 September carried Peshekhonov and Sorokin, followed by a Moscow to Berlin train with Stepun. Deportees were limited to a few items of clothing; gold and jewellery were forbidden except wedding rings, and each person could take at most $20.

The reasoning

The Soviet government presented the measure as a humane answer to dissent. On 31 August 1922 Pravda announced the deportations under the headline "First Warning", assuring readers that "no great scientist" was being targeted. Trotsky told a US journalist that "we expelled those people because there was no pretext to shoot them dead, and there was no possibility to tolerate them", calling it "Bolshevik humanism"; English-language sources name the interviewer as Louise Bryant, Russian-language accounts as Anna Louise Strong. The choice of exile over execution also reflected calculation about foreign opinion: after the Treaty of Rapallo with Germany in April 1922 Russia could obtain loans from international banks, and executions could have provoked an outcry and an embargo, while the American Relief Administration's famine relief was likewise at risk.

Historiography and memory

The episode long remained a "white spot" in Soviet historiography. The opening of KGB archives after the 1990s revealed that Lenin was its main instigator. A memorial marker was installed on the Lieutenant Schmidt Embankment in Saint Petersburg in 2003. Some scholars note that fewer than ten of those expelled were philosophers, so the name highlights philosophers more than the actual composition warranted.