Setting: A quiet study in a St. Petersburg townhouse, winter evening, 1893. Snow taps softly against the windowpane. The fire crackles. Two chairs face one another. On a small table: tea, black bread, and a Russian translation of Progress and Poverty.

Henry George:

Fyodor Mikhaylovich, your vision is grand—sublime even. The resurrection of the dead, the collective immortality of mankind through science and duty—who could not be stirred? But you lean heavily on the State, on hierarchical obligation. Have you considered that freedom, especially economic freedom, must precede such moral transformations?

Nikolai Fyodorov:

And I say, Henry, your notion of freedom lacks depth if it begins and ends with property and markets. Your land value tax—elegant, yes, just—but too earthly. It rights a wrong, yet leaves man bound to death, to decay. The brotherhood I seek begins not in ownership, but in filial duty to all ancestors—past and future. The dead cry out not for land reform, but for life itself.

George:

I do not dismiss their cry, Fyodor. But consider this: how shall we raise the dead—or even feed the living—when land monopolists deny the worker his natural birthright? Before we attempt to conquer death, must we not first conquer poverty, which slays daily?

Fyodorov:

Indeed, poverty is a kind of death. But your solution, while moral, addresses symptoms. You assume nature is fixed—scarcity eternal. I propose that reason and will can overcome it. That man’s destiny is to transform nature, not merely redistribute it.

George:

And yet redistribution is transformation, when justly done. If men were secure in access to land—if no one profited by mere ownership—we might unlock vast energies, scientific and spiritual. Perhaps even yours. Your resurrection, in time, may require the very equity I preach.

Fyodorov (leaning forward):

Ah! And perhaps your equity, to endure, requires a higher aim—something beyond consumption and comfort. A moral horizon. Without purpose, even freed men may fall into decadence, distraction. The common task must be more than eating fairly—it must be overcoming death together.

George (smiling):

Then let’s say this: your cosmism needs my justice, and my justice needs your vision. You would raise the dead; I would free the living. Perhaps one day both shall be done—by the same act.

Fyodorov:

Let that be our hope. And in the meantime, let us labor—each in our field, but with shared purpose. Not for utopia, but for duty. Not for ourselves, but for all.

George:

To life—just, and everlasting.