Nikolai Berdyaev and Pierre Pascal: Russian-French Meetings and Reminiscences. 1918-1935
This paper analyses the way two intellectuals, Nikolai Berdyaev and Pierre Pascal met and lived a friendship relation. They first met in April 2nd 1918, the Russian thinker Berdyaev invited Pascal at his home, during one of those traditional Tuesday evenings that he used to organize. Before Berdyaev’s exile from Russia, they met each other again only once, in January 8th 1920, Pascal left a detailed account of this in his diary. This report from Pascal nevertheless is different compared to the article “Evening at the counterrevolutionaries” written by propagandist Pascal for the Western for propaganda booklet called “In Red Russia”. Later, they saw each other and were welcomed again in France, when in March 1933 Pascal returned from Russia with his wife. As Lidia Berdyaev’s memoirs and testimonials attest, the couple became accustomed to Berdyaev’s Sundays in Clamart. Nevertheless, after 1938 they relationship declined. Pascal who knew the Soviet reality from before leaving the USSR could not accept Berdyaev’s fanatical patriotism and naive pro-Soviet ideas. Despite of this, Pascal did not exclude Berdyaev’s philosophical work of his scientific interests. The paper presents how the French appreciated at its true value, the various works of the Russian thinker. Pascal’s memoirs “My Russian newspaper”, Pascal’s work on the Berdyaev and those published in French mentioning him; Pascal’s personal documents or correspondence preserved at the French archives are the basis of this article. All these materials, translated for the first time in Russian, make an addition to Berdyaev information fund at the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts.