Landmarks Revisited: The Vekhi Symposium One Hundred Years On

The Vekhi (Landmarks) symposium (1909) is one of the most famous publications in Russian intellectual and political history. Its fame rests on the critique it offers of the phenomenon of the Russian intelligentsia in the period of crisis that led to the 1917 Russian Revolution. It was published as a polemical response to the revolution of 1905, the failed outcome of which was deemed by all the Vekhi contributors to exemplify and illuminate fatal philosophical, political, and psychological flaws in the revolutionary intelligentsia that had sought it. Landmarks Revisited offers a new and comprehensive assessment of the symposium and its legacy from a variety of disciplinary perspectives by leading scholars in their fields. It will be of compelling interest to all students of Russian history, politics, and culture, and the impact of these on the wider world.

Reviews of Landmarks Revisited: The Vekhi Symposium One Hundred Years On

"The various scholarly articles, some of which feature fresh research, others reassessments in the context of contemporary European political thought or of the Russian political, sociological and religious tradition past and present, and still others in-depth examinations of the polemics aroused by the 1909 publication, combine effectively to point up the compendium's continued resonance for today's readers."–Avril Pyman ""Rereading the 'Signposts'," Slavonic and East European Review, 92, 4, 2014 " "Vekhi (1909) was a collection of essays by major Russian thinkers who set out to examine and challenge the boundaries between social thought, epistemology, religion, and law. In its wide-ranging and stimulating papers, the present volume offers a rich and helpful contextualization of this important work and ponders its impact on later decades in political and moral philosophy."–Galin Tihanov "The chapters of Landmarks Revisited are of a uniformly high level of scholarship and sophistication. It will be profitably read by anyone with an interest in the intellectual, philosophical, and religious life of Russia in the early twentieth century."–David G. Rowley "The Russian Review, July 2014 (Vol. 73, No. 3) " "The volume is particularly strong on emphasizing the centrality of religion to these Russian thinkers and their thought systems, and the considerations of Vekhi's contributors on the 'inner self' a privileged realm separate from politics and vulgar materialism. As with Vekhi itself, the essays in this collection have many interesting things to say on the role of the intelligentsia and its relationship to wider society, and how both Russian liberals and neo-Slavophiles championed 'inner freedom', against what they saw as the crude didacticism of the revolutionary intelligentsia. This volume is, therefore, a solid accompaniment to the original volume of 1909, and will prove useful to those interested in Russian intellectual history, political philosophy and the relationship between religious and political thought in the late imperial period."–George Gilbert, Balliol College, University of Oxford, UK "European History Quarterly, Vol. 45 No. 2 "