Between East and West: Russian Identity in the Émigré Writings of Ilya Fondaminsky and Semyon Portugeis

Abstract

This chapter considers Russian identity and history in the writings of two prominent (though now largely forgotten) Russian émigré intellectuals of the first half of the twentieth century: Ilya Isidorovich Fondaminsky (1880–1942) and Semen Osipovich Portugeis (1880–1944). It describes their complicated biographies and lives in Paris. Fondaminsky and Portugeis were compelled to live in the West and published primarily in Parisian Russian émigré journals. In their numerous publications of the 1920–1930s, they not only offered original historiosophical interpretations of Russian history but also deeply analyzed, in the words of Nikolai Berdyaev, “the origins and meaning” of Russian Bolshevism. Having died during the Second World War, the two Russian humanist theorists predicted the mechanisms of the gradual degradation and the final collapse of the Communist Empire. This chapter considers Fondaminsky’s (pseudonym Burnakov) main work, a series of essays titled, “Russian Paths|” (1920–1940), which were published in the main Russian émigré journal, Sovremennye zapiski, and his numerous essays published in the Parisian journal Novy Grad (1931–1938). The work of Semen Portugeis is considered with a particular emphasis on his series of analytical monographs devoted to the analysis of the main Bolshevik institutions (the party, the army, the Komsomol, and the Profsoyuz trade unions), as well as his numerous articles published in French and US émigré journals. Before the Russian Revolution, he was considered one of the best Russian political journalists and later was called the first émigré Sovietologist of his generation.