Aleksandra Bessonova

In my doctoral research project, I intend to explore intellectual history of ‘intuition’ in Russian and Soviet thought starting in the pre-revolutionary decade and covering the 1920s and 1930s. In early twentieth-century Russia, intuition’s position in relation to rationality, as well as its nature and importance in the process of comprehending reality, was debated among philosophers, adherents of esoteric doctrines and their opponents, psychologists, artists, literary critics, and writers. With the 1917 revolution, intuition as a legitimate mode of learning about reality and human nature was to become obsolete. The new Soviet state was supposed to be guided rationally and scientifically, while special emphasis was placed on cultivating consciousness (soznatel’nost’) within the new Soviet citizens. Nevertheless, intuition was addressed by some of the leading Bolsheviks, like the literary critic Aleksandr Voronsky, while some psychologists and philosophers attempted to define intuition scientifically.

Supervisor: Professor Emma Widdis.

Scholarships/Prizes 

German Historical Institute Moscow archival research scholarship (2021). 

Hill Foundation scholarship (2024–2027).

Conference papers 

2 December 2021: Body and Spirituality in Soviet Autobiographic Writing: Diaries of a Devoted Anthroposophist, ASEEES 2021 Annual Convention. Co-organizer of the panel Bodies, Boundaries, and the Beyond in Soviet Autobiographic Writing.

26 June 2021: Intuition and the Irrational in Early Twentieth-Century Russia: The Case of Theosophy, Journal of the History of Ideas Graduate Symposium Irrational Ideas: Thinking Against Conventions.

Publications 

Bessonova A. “Barbara Walker. Maksimilian Voloshin i russkii literaturnyi kruzhok: kul'tura i vyzhivanie v epokhu revoliutsii. Boston; Sankt-Peterburg: Academic Studies Press / Bibliorossika, 2022.” Laboratorium: Russian Review of Social Research 15, no. 1 (2023): 114–118. https://www.soclabo.org/index.php/laboratorium/article/view/1338/2573

Bessonova A. “On Intuition and Creativity: Invention in Early Soviet Thought.” Journal of the History of Ideas Blog (2021). https://jhiblog.org/2021/12/01/on-intuition-and-creativity-invention-in-early-soviet-thought/