„In the spiritual mission“ — Semyon Frank’s Reflections on Russia on the Pages of Catholic Journal „Hochland“

Abstract

Russian emigrants, who left their country after victory of the Bolshevik Revolution, witnessed the first-ever attempt to turn a totalitarian utopia into reality. Many of them realized that the events of 1917 were only the first act of the pan-European tragedy and tried to warn the public of their host countries about the impending catastrophe, but they did not find a wide response. The West was much more interested in winners of the internal Russian struggle rather than the losers. However, there were people in the West, who tried to swim against current: they were ready to listen to Russian émigré thinkers. Their circle also included publishers of the German Catholic magazine „Hochland“, which in the 1920s and 1930s was a kind of forum for Russian authors in emigration, especially for those who, after their exile from Soviet Russia, had settled in Germany. Primarily it concerned Semyon Frank and Fedor Stepun, who especially often appeared in the columns of the magazine. In this article, I would like to consider the texts of Frank, published in this magazine. All of them were devoted to Russian topics, however as a rule, in the pan-European context. Frank paid special attention to works of the Russian thinkers, who had predicted the events of 1917 and other disasters oft he 20th century.