O. A. Zhukova Is a Winner of the Competition of the Best Russian-Language Scientific and Popular Science Works of the Higher School of Economics

On June 10, 2024, an award ceremony for the winners of the competition for the best Russian-language scientific and popular science works was held in the Great Hall of the HSE Cultural Center

Olga A. Zhukova, a chief research fellow of the IL for the Study of Russian and European Intellectual Dialogue, Doctor of Philosophy, has become the winner of the competition in the scientific nomination (section − 'Philosophy and Religious Studies'). O. A. Zhukova's research work is Russian Intelligentsia Faces the Philosophical Truth: Historical and Moral Choice (History of Philosophy. 2023. Vol. 28. No. 1. pp. 29-40).

The abstract of the article is below:
The intellectual experiments of Russian philosophers of the XIX – first half of the XX centuries demonstrate the intensive work of national self-knowledge. The concentration of thinkers on a certain range of topics – freedom and revolution, state and society, culture and politics, religion and ideology – indicates a high density and polemical intensity of discussion. The thematic focus of Russian thought on national and cultural issues creates a cross-cutting narrative with an open structure, where texts are dialogically intertwined with each other, often indicating value and ideological conflict between various actors in the social history of Russia. This historiosophical narrative can be read and interpreted as a meta-text of Russian social and religious-philosophical thought, which in many ways is the practice of self-description of the national intelligentsia. This narrative testifies the spiritual and ideological quest of Russian intelligentsia, the struggle for a social ideal – the moral choice of thinking Russian people, which stands behind the self-criticism of the historical experience of Russia. The main problem of this pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary discourse is the question of the moral and political responsibility of the educated class for the historical choice of Russia and its fate. The most important thing from a historical and philosophical point of view is the texts of Russian thinkers of the Silver Age, whose arguments about Russia include both a reaction to the events of the three Russian revolutions and the Great War, which traumatized the consciousness of the intelligentsia, and a painful, post-traumatic reception of their own intellectual tradition – the moral deformation of ideals committed in it, the basis of which is the idea of freedom and philosophical honesty in achieving the truth.