Curated category
19th-century philosophers from the Russian Empire
- Fyodor DostoevskyFyodor Dostoevsky stood in Semyonov Place in Saint Petersburg on the 23rd of December 1849, waiting to be shot. He had been split into a three-man group with…
- Leo TolstoyLeo Tolstoy spent the last hours of his life on a train, preaching love, non-violence, and Georgism to fellow passengers, before pneumonia stopped him at a…
- Helena BlavatskyHelena Blavatsky preferred to be known by three letters: HPB. The sobriquet came from her friend Henry Steel Olcott, and it stuck to a woman who spoke…
- Vladimir LeninVladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, the man the world would come to know as Vladimir Lenin, took the name from no person at all. He first used it in December 1901, and…
- Nicholas RoerichNicholas Roerich left behind more than 7,000 paintings, a spiritual movement that still has followers today, and an international treaty signed at the White…
- Mikhail BakuninMikhail Bakunin spent three years chained in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg, alone in a cell, with no certainty he would ever leave alive.
- Peter KropotkinPeter Kropotkin was born in Moscow on the 9th of December 1842, in the Konyushennaya district, which translates as the Equerries district.
- Vasily RozanovVasily Rozanov died of starvation in a monastery in the hungry years after the Russian Revolution, which is a fitting end for a man who spent his life…
- Alexander HerzenAlexander Herzen was born in Moscow in 1812, just weeks before Napoleon's armies marched into the city. His very name was invented by his father, a rich…
- Lev ShestovLev Shestov died in a Paris clinic on the 19th of November 1938, still writing. He was seventy-one years old and in the final weeks of his life had been…
- Vladimir Solovyov (philosopher)Vladimir Solovyov was born in Moscow in 1853, the second son of one of Russia's most prominent historians, yet he spent his final days as what witnesses…