History of Russia in the XIXth – XXth Centuries: Method and Forecast by N. A. Berdyaev

Works by N. A. Berdyaev have been studied in domestic and foreign literature. The theoretical and methodological foundations of his scientific views, their specificity, problems of interpretation, and the connection of the historiosophist’s concept with Western thought were studied. Modern historiography of the scientist’s work was focused on the philosophical foundations of his works, and the historical aspect of the philosophy of history, the subject of his research – history – remained outside the field of view of philosophers. The historical forecasts of the thinker and the theoretical and methodological foundations for obtaining them were separated. “Method” was divorced from “history.” We can consider the “procedure” for obtaining reliable historical forecasts in the work of a philosopher using an interdisciplinary approach that connects the historical and philosophical components of knowledge. The purpose of the study is to correlate the theoretical and methodological foundations of Berdyaev’s concept and the specific historical judgments of the scientist and to reveal their relationship. Berdyaev’s futurological historical conclusions stemmed from the idea of history as a dynamic, contradictory, eschatological spiritual process. The scientist considered “spiritual experience” to be the source of “anthropological” historical and philosophical research in a broad sense, and noted that the newly born philosophical “thought... did not have bookish” foundations, but was “nourished by the intuitions of life.” The methodological vector guided his historical and philosophical studies, which combined the philosophical search for “truth and meaning” with an explanation of the specifics of Russian history. He carried out this connection between “history” and “philosophy” in his research, emphasizing that he saw “the whole, the whole meaning of the universe”, “the decision of the fate of the universe”, “the fate of Russia” “in everything detailed, separate” and embodied this vision in his historical forecasts. Contemplation of the contradictions of spirit driving the historical process “towards the end” allowed Berdyaev to see behind the external side of events the objective direction of movement of society.