The World of the End

Mikhail Epstein

1.

The end of the world has been expected from time immemorial, or at the very least since the crucifixion of Christ. However, perhaps nowhere more so than in Russia has the expectation of the end so thoroughly taken hold of the historical process itself, inexorably propelling it to its conclusion.

Among the world's peoples, both historical and—to use Hegel's definition of Russia—nonhistorical, Russia chose a special path: upon entering history it immediately began to seek a way out from it. In Russia, the moment that history begins to gain momentum, churning and raging before finally overflowing its banks, preparations are made for the creation of a more voluminous, otherworldly temporal vessel in which history can attain eternal rest. Barely exiting the realm of dreary public stagnation, Russia feels the alarming alacrity of time and immediately seeks a return to metaphysical stagnation, which in order to ease our national conscience we give the name "eternity," "metahistory," etc.

Russia grew accustomed to dealing with historical problems in geographical terms. It occupied so much space that it was difficult to find its place in time. Time itself had to be conquered as if it were a new territory, a third continent somewhere beyond Eurasia, in order to be incorporated into the imperial domain. Time had to be conquered so that the outlines of an otherworldly geography, with its heavenly lands and celestial provinces, could be included in native Russian history. Thus Russian eschatology was born — the geography of a new earth and, simultaneously, of a new heaven, which the nation could occupy by right and experience of its previous territorial conquests.

In Russia, space supplants time: this is the "Archimedes law" of the immersion of a vast geographical body in the medium of history. The broader Russia becomes, the more slowly time flows through it — and it is only through spatial reduction that Russia can accelerate temporally. This is precisely what occurred after military defeats in the Crimean, Japanese, and First World wars: Russia lost small parts of its territory and suddenly received a jolt of historical energy — reforms and revolutions. On the other hand, when burdened with new spatial territory, Russia suffers temporal coagulation, as happened as a result of the two victorious military forays into Europe: 1812 and 1945. Such is the physiology of the Russian body of State: made heavy and sated, it falls into slumber.

Having returned Eastern Europe to Europe, having cast off the burden of a sated and sleepy expanse, Russia once again flows more friskily in time. And it would be even more lightened and cheered if it were to cast off the leaden chains of its bordering republics. . . The Russian paradox is that the moment time begins to accelerate, a host of new ways of stopping and restraining time is suggested. No sooner does it awake to history from centuries of myth than Russia is overwhelmed by eschatological longings. Apocalyptic voices are heard, alternately soothing and admonishing us with the promise that the vanity and tormenting nightmare of history will soon come to an end. A Messiah will appear, resolving our vain dissensions in final blood, granting us longed-for rest beyond the limits of all history.

This is what happened under Peter the Great, who tore Russia away from the warmth of Muscovy's embrace — and for this act he was immediately proclaimed the Antichrist: the end of the world was expected beyond every verst separating Moscow from the barely built and already doomed Peters-Babylon.

This is what happened at the beginning of the twentieth century as well, when Russia, riding the troika of its revolutions, cast off—with a war cry—the bridle of autocracy. Once again, with time hurtling forward at maximum velocity, the country was enveloped in expectations of the end, as if only a short path separated it from the abyss; and while this was going on the intelligentsia conjectured and argued over whether Russia would be taken up on the wings of angels or carried away on the backs of demons. It would be impossible to list all the apocalyptic thinkers of that era: from Valdimir Solovyov to Dmitri Merezhkovsky, from Vladimir Lenin to Vladimir Mayakovsky; from tormented visions of the coming Antichrist to the attempt to become its death-wielding sword and smiting word.

Merezhkovsky and Berdyaev, Andrey Bely and Vyacheslav Ivanov, Blok and Yesenin: all of them, in their apocalyptic poems and treatises, called on Russia to abandon the beaten paths of history and instead lead humanity to a new earth and a new heaven. In comparison with the universal conflagration that loomed ahead and which, in the words of Heraclitus, "encompasses and judges all," existence within history, with its stock of modest measures and humble achievements eternally separating history from its final goal, seemed to offer little more than the slow torment of decay. What of Blok's apostles in his poem "The Twelve"? Do they embody Heraclitus's divine fire or is theirs but a man-made conflagration, lit with matches and bursts of cannon shot? "To the grief of all the bourgeoisie we will fan the flames of the world's fire."

Only God has the power to stop history. The prophets, even the most wise among them, and the leaders, even the most fierce, can only slow time, to the sound of chariots' screeching wheels and the crunch of breaking bones. The most prophetic voices, proclaiming the imminent end of history, turn out to be precursors of the most successful leaders, for whom the end of history marks the beginning of their own "millennial" reign. Thus Merezhkovksy and Berdyaev became the involuntary precursors of Lenin.

In essence, this applied eschatology of tomorrow is nothing more than a case of premature exhaustion from history and the attempt to stop its unfolding. Neither a new earth nor a new heaven can result from this kind of eschatology: only the One who originally created the heavens and earth can do so. A humanly accomplished end of time can only bring a desolate earth and a deserted heaven. Beyond it lies not the radiance of eternity but the dreariness of stagnation. The desire for an end to history does not sow the seeds of parousia but of revolution, not the completion of history but its miscarriage, in which the sufferings that result from of one's own diminished being are barely even registered.

It is by humanity's own efforts that history is created and develops. Human effort, however, does not determine its end. Human exhaustion with history does not prepare the way for its end; it merely horrifyingly stretches and delays history, making possible the next Lenin. It does not signify the holy calm of the Sabbath day but the depressing inactivity of the seventh day of the week: brief frenzy as the cause of and right to infinite weariness.

Profane eschatology, as expressed in the words of Faust, "Stop, beautiful moment," is but a parody of the "end time" of John the Theologian. However, the parodic form of eschatology is the one that is far more often realized in history — a never-ending series of parodies based on the most convincing prophecy of all. As soon as "the end of history" became a part of history, it became the latest form of stagnation, a parodic embodiment of eternity.

2.

And now, having barely emerged from the long lethargy of the Soviet period, history has again stepped up its pace . . . only to head toward its usual conclusion. It took the Soviet Union approximately three years, roughly from 1985 to 1988, to awaken and get a taste for historical existence — and only a year or two afterward, history again took on the form of mass hysteria: when will this end? In this final Soviet year it has become as impossible to separate eschatological from political aspirations as to separate these two from every imaginable form of desperation. Everywhere we hear heart-rending cries, see frothing mouths, rolling eyes, and the national finger despairingly pointing toward the impending abyss.

Hovering above the snow-covered Kremlin, we can once more see—depending on our point of view—either radiant angels going about their business, or grey, experienced demons. And of course there's all the talk, ranging from the shyest of whispers to loud-mouthed prophecies, about the inevitable end of the world under the sign of the implacable stars. Astrologists and magicians, who have rapidly become fashionable, lay their star charts over Russian history, which is clearly arranged with landmarks of impending events — as if the Leninist-Stalinist geographical map had been expanded to include markers of future power stations and auto assembly plants. Either astrology already contained socialism within itself, or socialism increased the influence of astrology on the disciplined minds of the citizens of the socialist state. The planned socialist consciousness, even after the end of developed socialism, functions well: if the end of the world is to occur in the final year of an apocalyptic three-year plan, then you can trust it happening no later than the second quarter of that year. If in the political life of the Soviet Union there exists a war of competing laws (Soviet, local, and republic-wide), then on the ideological front it is a battle of apocalypses, a struggle to be first to identify the signs of the advancing end and immediately account for what lies ahead in the coming zodiacal period.

What is the source of this impatience with historical toil, this hunger for an instantaneous metahistorical harvest? Why the long, drawn-out decades and even centuries of withdrawal from history, followed by brief and furious periods of historical activity, when in a moment's time we pass from frenzy to exhaustion?

Perhaps Russian history has borrowed its model from Russian nature, with its short summers and long winters, the calendrical habit of a month or two of ceaseless labor followed by a year of slumber and idleness. Perhaps it is the whiteness of the snowfall itself, covering earth and sky in an equally unending shroud, that underlies the Russian conception of the end of the world as the beginning of the real world — sunless, unheated, illuminating nothing except its own chaste whiteness. Russian history too is inevitably framed and foreshortened in eschatological perspective, like a summer glade seen through an icy window.

It is important to distinguish clearly between the end of the world as an instructive idea and as an otherworldly reality. When trying to come to terms with our ultimate purpose in life, almost every generation and every individual lives, in the final analysis, in the face of the impending end. This is what makes it possible for us to define ourselves temporally — mentally crossing the border between ourselves and everything else, living each moment as if it were our last. "The end of time is at hand": this experience comes to us from the depths of antiquity, from Egypt and Babylon, where the old grieved over the moral decay of the young; and it has been passed on ever since, from generation to generation. The end of time itself is stretched out over time. The idea of the end has been given to us in order to increase our human responsibility, so that the eternal can enter time without ending it.

The reality of the end, however, lies absolutely beyond the limits of human knowledge, even beyond the limits of the God-Man, for Christ himself acknowledged that he did not know when the end was coming. All attempts to predict or hasten the end, to bring it nearer or to venture to the other side, and especially to lead others there, imply a failure to perform a basic human responsibility: to endure time. For history is the art of endurance, an exercise in the most demanding of virtues. Neither to demand an immediate end nor forget about the inevitability of the end.

This is why talk about the end of the world is senseless. Better to talk about the world of the end, illuminating each moment of life with ultimate meaning. And let this world of the end not be mistaken for the end of the world, removing the burden of everyday existence from us. History is not the Procrustean bed, it is more like Penelope's thread. History does not cut our projects short; on the contrary, it generously lengthens them through our lack of knowledge of our end — so that each one of us can realize our projects through our own efforts in the full length of remaining time. The most difficult thing of all is to live a long life in this way, as if life were short and might at any moment be cut off. But let us live long lives. Let us use the zeal of everyday life to overcome the futility of each day, as if each day were our last.

January 1991

Transl. Thomas Epstein