Searching for the origins of bolshevism in the emigre text of Nikolay Berdyayev and Antanas Maceina.

Both thinkers are certain that the origin of Bolshevism lies not only in the specifie Russian historical, cultural, and political context, but also in the much wider European context. Both Berdyayev and Maceina think that Bolshevism is a result of the last two hundred years of European history, which witnessed a turning away from God. Whereas Berdyayev pays great attention to the specifie Russian context of Bolshevism (the Russian religious idea, the history of the split in Russian society, spécifie features of the Russian intelligentsia, Russian maximalism, the weakness of Russian political institutions before the revolution, etc.), Maceina is much less interested in that. The status of these philosophers in emigration was different. Berdyayev never was such an authority among Russian emigrants as Maceina was among Lithuanian emigrants. The Lithuanian thinker was one of the intellectual leaders of the Catholic wing in Lithuanian emigration. His account of the genesis of Bolshevism depended much more on his ideology than was true of his Russian colleague. "The road from Liberalism to Bolshevism" is the title of one of Maceina's articles that perfectly illustrates his ideological engagement. This ideological engagement sheds a new light on Berdyayev's genesis of Bolshevism revealing it as a philosophically more conscientious analysis