#5 - JRL 7260
EXHIBITION ABOUT EXILED RUSSIAN INTELLECTUALS OPENS IN MOSCOW

MOSCOW, July 22 (Yelena Titarenko, a RIA Novosti correspondent) - The exhibition titled Ship of Philosophers is dedicated to a dramatic episode in Russia's history - the exile of intellectuals from the country in 1922. It opens Tuesday in the Federal State Archives Exhibition Hall.

The day when several hundred philosophers - the flower of the nation - were deported from Russia was reconstructed by the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts, the Presidential Archive, the State Historic Museum-Reserve "Gorki Leninskie", the State Public-Political Library and the Memorial Centre.

The exhibition focuses on the tragic period after the 1917 revolution and the civil war in Russia, which split the Russian Empire and left its former nationals in different states. All strata of society suffered from that, but it was arguably the intelligentsia that were most affected. Under the NEP (New Economic Policy), the financial reform, liquidation of famine provoked by the Bolshevik policy and anti-church campaign, the new powers would not have any dissent. However, as the Bolsheviks were struggling for international recognition of their regime, Lenin thought it dangerous to send to concentration camps such celebrities as Nikolai Berdiayev, Sergy Bulgakov, Nikolai Lossky, Lev Karsavin, Pitirim Sorokin or Semen Frank.

Idealist philosophers and theosophists, adherents of God-seeking, intuitivism, Vladimir Soloviev-styled universalism and other religious and philosophical trends contradicting the Marxist dogmas spoke in the press, were professors in the leading universities and laid a powerful spell on the intellectuals. The Bolsheviks decided to get rid of the dangerous "ballast" by forcing them to emigrate.

The paintings, photos and posters witness the life of Russian emigres on board the steamer bound for Germany and further in emigration.