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Wednesday 31 May 2017

Blavatsky and Russia


Article on oriental influence on Russian writers:
What Russian Writers Learnt From India
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Viktor Vladimirovich Khlebnikov (1885-1922) was a major poet-philosopher of Russian Futurist movement. A minor planet has been named after him too. Influenced by Helena Blavatsky, the founder of theosophical movement, Khlebnikov considered her ‘the only one who traveled to India in search of what it means to be a Russian’ (4). In his lyrical prose work titled‘Yasir’ which means ‘captive’, he explores Indian themes elaborately. It is about Istoma, the alter-ego of Khlebnikov, who wanders in search of a principle that shall provide ‘liberty to all oppressed people’ and finds it in the all-embracing universal soul – Brahman and non-dualism (Advaita).
http://swarajyamag.com/culture/what-russian-writers-learnt-from-india
 
Peter Kropotkin - Blavatsky connection? She was an admirer of Tolstoi, so there is one. Covers Russian intellectual mood of the era.
Milan Djurasovic — October 23, 2016
Russian literature of the mentioned period is replete with Nietzschean influences and extremely subjective and individualist themes (the abstract ideas of Helena P. Blavatsky and Nicholas Roerich, the obsession with the notion of fin de siècle of many artists and Symbolist writers such as Alexander A. Blok and Andrei Bely, the preoccupation with eternal life, the overbearing fear of the looming Asiatic invasion, etc.). Additionally, a number of predominantly English influential thinkers and scientists had isolated and focused only on the Malthusian aspects of Darwin’s theory of natural selection (intraspecific competition and overpopulation), and had manipulated these ideas to justify the brutal conquests of foreign lands as well as the extreme economic inequality in their own country.[2]
 
Why the Soviets Sponsored a Doomed Expedition to a Hollow Earth Kingdom
Dimitra Nikolaidou September 15, 2016
Unfortunately for the Roerichs, the area they aimed to investigate was all but inaccessible in the early 20th century. Tibet was closed to foreigners; moreover, the Soviets, the French, the English, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Mongolians and the Germans vied for control of the place. Spies, rebels and rogue warlords clashed daily in the mountain passes making the expedition extremely hazardous. The rivalry between the USSR and the British Empire in particular, was so intense it was nicknamed “the Great Game”.

In an article entitled “Turkish Barbarities”, she wrote during the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878:

 “I regard this war not as one of Christian against Muslim, but as one of humanity and civilization against barbarism.” 

http://www.katinkahesselink.net/blavatsky/articles/v1/y1877_009.htm

 
Blavatsky's translation of Leo Tolstoy's The Imp and the Crust (1889)
 
Interesting Blavatsky article The Jews in Russia
New York World, Sept. 25th, 1877

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