Fedor Stepun, 1884-1965
NB: Fedor Stepun was a Russian writer, editor, professor, political commentator. In 1922, he. along with over 200 non-communist intellectuals perceived as hostile to the Bolshevik regime. was arrested and ordered to leave the USSR within a week. They included the philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev, and scores of other academicians, writers, artists, editors of journals etc. DS
.. we must remember that it's not the blinded wrongdoers who are primarily responsible for the triumph of evil in the world but the spiritually sighted servants of the good - Fedor Stepun, 1884-1965
In 1914, Stepun was called up to serve in the First World War. He was commanded
to the 12th Gunners Artillery Division in the rank of lieutenant, and, after an
initial period in the Far East near Irkutsk, Stepun served throughout the
Ukraine and Poland. The March revolution found his division in Galicia, and he
was soon sent to Petersburg as part of an army delegation. Stepun became a
representative of the front troops at the All-Russian Soviet of Workers',
Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies. He soon returned to the front, but was
immediately called back to serve in the Political Section of the War Ministry,
headed by ex-terrorist Boris Savinkov. Stepun played an active role in many
important events of the pre-October period; he later told how he was present when
A. F. Kerensky signed the order freeing Leon Trotsky from prison. At this time
Stepun seems to have been closely tied to the Socialist Revolutionary Party
(the SRs), although he was not a member. Stepun continued to write during this
period: his first novel, Pis'ma praporshchika-artillerista, was first published
in 1916 (in book form it was first published in 1918, together with a work by
Savinkov). He was Political Editor for the newspaper Invalid (renamed Armiia i
Flot Svobodnoi Rossii ), where he published several polemical articles,
photostats of which are among his papers.
Stepun was briefly arrested during the October Revolution, but soon made his way to Moscow. He was active in the opposition press, particularly in the Right SR Vozrozhdenie, which was closed in June 1918 (and succeeded by Syn otechestva ), and as editor of Shipovnik . Called up into the Red Army, he was able to win a post in 1919 as repertoire and stage director of the Revolutionary Theater, where he staged Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex" and Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure". After losing this post in late 1920, Stepun retired to Ivanovka. Throughout the years 1918-22, Stepun continued to participate in meetings of the Free Philosophical Academy and revolutionary theater groups. In 1922 he collaborated with Nikolai Berdiaev and others in the collection Osval'd Shpengler i Zakat Evropy, and edited the literary and artistic almanac Shipovnik . In November of this year he was also expelled from Soviet Russia, together with a hundred and fifty other intellectuals. Stepun left the USSR with his wife and his mother, who died during the Second World War, and to whom Stepun devoted the final pages of his memoirs…
https://snaccooperative.org/ark:/99166/w6n59q0j
The legacies of 1917 Orlando Figes & Daniel Gascon
Madhavan Palat: Utopia and Dystopia in Revolutionary
Russia
The Bolshevik Heritage. By Dilip Simeon
The Bolsheviks Come to Power in Petrograd: Centennial Reflections
Why Leninism and Bolshevism Are Not the Same
Jairus Banaji: A Hundred Years After October
Revolution, Rethinking the Origins of Stalinism
The Soviet Retreat From the Emancipative Ideas of
1917. By Arup Banerji
Mar 8, 1917: February
Revolution begins in Russia
Hari Sankar Vasudevan (1952
– 2020). A tribute by Madhavan K. Palat
A Final Warning by George Orwell
Walter Benjamin: Capitalism
as Religion (1921)
