Philosophers' ships

Oberbürgermeister Haken

Philosophers' ships, also known individually as philosopher's steamboat is a term used for steamships which transported intellectuals expelled from Soviet Russia in 1922.

The main load was handled by two German ships, the Oberbürgermeister Haken and the Preussen, which transported more than 160 expelled Russian intellectuals and their families in September and November 1922 from Petrograd (modern-day Saint Petersburg) to the seaport of Stettin in Germany (modern-day Szczecin in Poland). Three detention lists included 228 people, 32 of them students.

Later in 1922 other intellectuals were transported by train to Riga in Latvia or by ship from Odessa to Istanbul.

Among the expelled

• Vladimir Abrikosov
• Yuly Aikhenvald
• Nikolai Berdyaev
• Boris Brutskus
• Sergei Bulgakov
• Semyon Frank
• Ivan Ilyin
• Abram Saulovich Kagan (university lecturer/publisher; father of architect Anatol Kagan)
• Lev Karsavin (the brother of ballerina Tamara Karsavina; arrested again in 1940 and deported to a gulag in Komi, where he died in 1952)
• Alexander Kiesewetter
• Ivan Lapshin
• Nikolai Lossky
• Mikhail Osorgin
• Pitirim Sorokin (train)
• Fyodor Stepun

Literature

• Catherine Baird. Revolution from Within: The Ymca in Russia’s Ascension to Freedom from Bolshevik Tyranny, 2013, ISBN 9780986219900 (with bio List of the Deported)
• Lesley Chamberlain, Lenin's Private War: The Voyage of the Philosophy Steamer and the Exile of the Intelligentsia, St Martin's Press, 2007; ISBN 0-312-36730-9
• V. G. Makarov, V. S. Khristoforov: «Passazhiry ‹filosofskogo parokhoda›. (Sud’by intelligencii, repressirovannoj letom-osen’ju 1922g.)». // Voprosy filosofii 7 (600) 2003, p. 113-137 [contains a list with biographical information on Russian intellectuals exiled 1922-1923].