Berdyaev Nicolas (1874–1948), Russian religious thinker. He began as a ‘Kantian Marxist’ in epistemology, ethical theory, and philosophy of history, but soon turned away from Marxism (although he continued to accept Marx’s critique of capitalism) toward a theistic philosophy of existence stressing the values of creativity and ‘meonic’ freedom – a freedom allegedly prior to all being, including that of God. In exile after 1922, Berdyaev appears to have been the first to grasp clearly (in the early 1920s) that the Marxist view of historical time involves a morally unacceptable devaluing and instrumentalizing of the historical present (including living persons) for the sake of the remote future end of a perfected communist society. Berdyaev rejects the Marxist position on both Christian and Kantian grounds, as a violation of the intrinsic value of human persons. He sees the historical order as marked by inescapable tragedy, and welcomes the ‘end of history’ as an ‘overcoming’ of objective historical time by subjective ‘existential’ time with its free, unobjectified creativity. For Berdyaev the ‘world of objects’ – physical things, laws of nature, social institutions, and human roles and relationships – is a pervasive threat to ‘free spiritual creativity.’ Yet such creativity appears to be subject to inevitable frustration, since its outward embodiments are always ‘partial and fragmentary’ and no ‘outward action’ can escape ultimate ‘tragic failure.’ Russian Orthodox traditionalists condemned Berdyaev for claiming that all creation is a ‘divine-human process’ and for denying God’s omnipotence, but such Western process theologians as Hartshorne find Berdyaev’s position highly congenial. See also RUSSIAN PHILOSOPH. G.L.K.