in the destinies of the prophets a kind of Retaliation, heavenly vengeance for betraying the humanist cause, for supporting the demonic forces of violence and terror. Only God punishes like this his prophets, who have abandoned the path of truth. Retaliation for the delusion and apostasy overtook others as well — those who deserved it claiming to be a real prophet in his country. Gumilyov, who accepted the new reign and who was happy to become the head of the Poets’ Gild in St. Petersburg, was arrested and executed. Bryusov, a favorite of the Soviet regime, fell ill and suddenly died in his prime. Esenin, who had proclaimed the advent of the idyllic Soviet-peasant paradise and who was on friendly terms with the executioners from Cheka, put an end to his life with a razor and a rope or maybe was murdered by his communist friends. Mayakovsky, this «revolutionary ring-leader», who stated that «he couldn’t pull the trigger at the temple», shot himself in the heart. Mandelstam accepted «a new turn of the wheel» and a new pilot. Several years later he wrote a suicidal satirical poem about Stalin, was sent to exile, and after a few years of humiliation and suffering, was lost in the labyrinths of GULAG.
Many of those poets and artists who stayed in Russia voluntarily or just by chance had to pay for the illusions by their lives. All the rest who tried to accept the new rules of the game were compelled to collaborate with the most inhuman regime on earth almost never daring to say a word of protest. Prophetic ideals were destined to be profaned, sacrificed to the cause of survival. That was the crash of Russian messianic ideology, the end of the era of the prophets in the history of Russian culture, which had been temporarily pushed aside from the main road of the world civilization. Still the vague reminiscences of that era live on in our hearts making us turn again and again to the words of the prophets in the vain expectation of a new Messiah.
