The exile of the beautiful minds

SUSAN MANSFIELD

As evening fell on 28 September 1922, a ship edged out of the harbour in St Petersburg towards the Baltic Sea. On board was a human cargo, some of the most remarkable minds of their generation, leaving Russia in a forced evacuation on the eve of the formation of the communist state.

They were philosophers, theologians, journalists, academics, scientists and their families, those labelled as undesirable by Lenin himself. Some were opponents of communism, others supported its milder forms. A few had no idea why they were there at all.

Writer Lesley Chamberlain, who tells the story in English for the first time in her book, The Philosophy Steamer: Lenin and the Exile of the Intelligentsia, says they were "the first dissidents". She believes "this important chapter in Russia's history" is crucial not only to our understanding of Lenin and the Revolutions, but can help us understand how the country works today.

[. . .]
Chamberlain also includes the stories of others who left of their own accord, like the writer Vladimir Nabokov and some, like Tolstoy's daughter Alexandra, who might have been included, but were not. She finally left Russia in 1929. The fates of about 220 people were tied up in the expulsion.
[. . .]

Nabokov wrote Lolita and found international fame, while the Russian critic who discovered him was killed by a tram in Berlin. Boris Lossky, who once got drunk on vodka with the young Shostakovich, became an eminent art historian in Paris and still lives there, in his late nineties.

[. . .]

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