Cosmists, kooks and Anti-Christs

"The Russian Cosmists" is a scholarly overview of a rather broad current of thought known as Cosmism. In many ways, the Cosmists were early Russian equivalents of today's transhumanists and other peculiar, super-cornucopian groups on the far side of American cyberspace (Ray Kurzweil and his "singularity" comes to mind).

Cosmism originated with Nikolai Fedorov (pronounced Fyodorov), a 19th century Russian intellectual and - some would argue - crank, who attempted to influence both Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Solovyov with his "Philosophy of the Common Task". Typical of Cosmist thought is a strong belief in "active evolution" and eternal progress through super-technology, the conquest of outer space and physical immortality. This is often coupled with quasi-spiritual ideas derived from Madame Blavatsky's Theosophy and garbled Orthodox Christianity. Thus, Fedorov believed in a general resurrection of the dead going back to Adam, but accomplished through an advanced technology, rather than by supernatural means. An interest in subjects considered heretical by establishment science, such as reincarnation or the search for Shamballa, is another defining trait. The prominent Soviet rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky semi-secretly harboured ideas similar to those of Theosophy, but expressed in pseudo-scientific language ("atom-spirit" for monad, "ethereal being" for Mahatma, etc).

With some notable exceptions, Cosmists broadly defined had an authoritarian political streak. Fedorov supported Czarist autocracy and longed for a time when all Earth would be under the suzerainty of a single autocrat and a single "Orthodox" Church. His geopolitics were "Eurasianist", pitting a continental-collectivist civilization against both the Atlantic West and the nomadic barbarians of the East. Tsiolkovsky believed that future human evolution necesserily means weeding out the weak and unfit. Modern Russian Cosmists are nostalgic about the Soviet era, especially the halcyon days of Stalin. This is richly ironic, since many of the original Cosmists were sent to the gulag or executed by Stalin's regime! Yet another defining trait of Cosmists seem to be their sheer personal weirdness. Let's be honest: Fedorov and many other luminaries mentioned in this volume were kooks, pure and simple. A psychologist would love to poke into the heads of these people, and might even discover a new syndrome or two!

"The Russian Cosmists" is an interesting book, but I sometimes get the feeling that the author attempts to find connections between thinkers that were really very different. In what sense is Vladimir Solovyov a "Cosmist", for instance? As the author points out himself, Solovyov argued against Fedorov's materialist-technological conception of the resurrection. On this point, Solovyov's ideas strike me as similar to Steiner's Anthroposophy or Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga, with humanity slowly evolving towards godmanhood through purely spiritual techniques. Apparently, the figure of the Anti-Christ in Solovyov's famous short story is to some extent based on (perhaps parodically) Fedorov! And while the author does place Cosmism in an early 20th century Russian intellectual context, he says very little about the obvious parallels to Communism and fascism. Fedorov's ideas could also be seen as a particularly bizarre and self-conscious "immanentization of the eschaton", complete with faux references to Christianity and Orthodoxy. (Reverend Straik from C. S. Lewis' "That Hideous Strength" comes to mind here.) Indeed, Cosmism is probably best understood as a materialist or materialistic form of messianism, promising this-wordly salvation through science fiction technology.

But yes, the author is probably on to something important when he investigates the Cosmist-occult interface. It's difficult *not* to sound supernatural when proposing "naturalist" solutions to physical death, universal decay, etc. Arthur C Clarke famously quipped that a sufficiently advanced technology would look like magic to the uninitiated. Clarke's statement could be altered to state that a really advanced "technology" *would be* magic. Compare this to Steven Greer's UFO books, or the rather odd combinations of New Age and dreams of super-technology that were once popular on the alternative spirituality scene. Once again, I'm also reminded of C.S. Lewis' novel, where a group of scientists believe they have cracked the riddle of immortality, when actually their laboratory is under the control of supernatural demonic forces! It's almost as if religion forces itself on the Cosmists, but - unfortunately for them, and perhaps for us, too - it's the wrong kind of religion, a cult of the divinized Overman who extirpates the weak, or who graciously resurrects everyone in the name of a eternal Czarist autocracy...

Perhaps Solovyov was right. Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov really was the Anti-Christ.