1911

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"The Problem of East and West within the Religious Consciousness of Vl. Solov'ev" [1911-#053]

"The figure of Vl. Solov’ev remains for us quite enigmatic. He evokes towards himself a twofold attitude--he charms and he repulses. We sense his immeasurable, his prophetic significance as an event in Russian life and in the life of the world. It suffices but to glance at his face, to get a feel for all his unusualness, his strangeness, his uniqueness. But for the vexed and the critic there is the challenge of his philosophic-theological tractates. It is discomfiting to find in a mystic a rationalistic manner of writing, a sort of glibness, a dullness of contraction, the absence of acuity and the paradoxical. Everything is too smooth, felicitous and schematic in the philosophizing and theologizing of Vl. Solov’ev."

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"The Old and the New Testament in the Religious Consciousness of L. Tolstoy" [1912-#054]

"About Lev Tolstoy they have written very much, [too much]. It is indicative perhaps of a fastidious desire to say something new about him. Yet all the same it mustneeds be acknowledged that the religious consciousness of L. Tolstoy has not been subjected to sufficiently extensive an investigation. It was in essence considered of little value, independent of the utilitarian points of view [from its usefulness for the aims of the liberal-radicals or the conservative-reactionaries]. Some with their utilitarian-tactical aims have praised L. Tolstoy as a true Christian, while others, frequently from just the same sort of utilitarian-tactical aims, have anathematized him as being a servant of the Anti-Christ. In such instances, Tolstoy is employed as a means for their own ends, and by this they have given insult to the genius of the man."

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"Concerning Earthly and Heavenly Utopianism (As Regards the Book of Prince Evgenii Trubetskoy, The World-Concept of Vl. Solov'ev" [1913-#120]

"Just like other cultural nations, we also have begun to have our own great figures. Vl. Solov’ev, not so long ago still a solitary and unknown, has come to be at the center of spiritual attention. Around his enigmatic personality a sort of legend has formed. Around him they have begun to write much from various aspects. Soon there will be a whole literature concerning Vl. Solov’ev. And it is impossible not to acknowledge that his spiritual influence has quite grown. The appearance of the two-volume work of Pr. E. Trubetskoy, The World-Concept of Vl. Solov’ev, could not have been more timely."

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1914

"Picasso" [1914-#174]

"When one enters into the Picasso room in the gallery of S. I. Schukin, one is seized with a feeling of subtle terror. That what one senses is connected not only with the painting and the fate of art, but with cosmic life itself and its fate. In the preceding room of the gallery was the charming Gauguin. And it seems that one has experienced the ultimate joy of the natural life, the beauty all still of an embodied and crystaline world, the rapture of the natural rays of the sun. After this golden dream, one is roused wide awake in the room of Picasso. Cold, gloomy, frightful, the delight of an embodied and sun-bright life has vanished."

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"The Russian and the Polish Soul" [1914-#178]

"The old quarrel within the Slavic family, the quarrel of the Russians with the Polish, cannot be explained merely by the external forces of history and the external political reasons. The sources of the age-old historical dispute of Russia and Poland lie deeper. And at present it is especially important for us to be aware of the spiritual causes of this hostility and antagonism, which divides the Slavic world."

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"The Fate of Paris" [1914-#181]

"When the Germans advanced on Paris and Paris feverishly prepared itself for a defense, many a heart upon the earth experienced an acute agitation and disquiet. There was readied a blow not only at the heart of France, but also at the heart of modern mankind. And from the wound inflicted upon Paris there flowed the blood, as it were, not of France alone, but of all cultural mankind. Paris is a world city, a world city of modern Europe and of all modern European mankind."

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1915

"The Psychology of the Russian People" [1915-#07]

"The world war sets in sharp relief the question concerning the Russian national self-consciousness. Russian national thought senses the need and obligation to solve the enigma of Russia, to comprehend the idea of Russia, to define its purpose and place in the world. Everyone tends to sense in the present day world that great worldwide tasks face Russia. But this profound feeling is accompanied by a consciousness of the vagueness, almost the indefinableness of these tasks."

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 "On the Disputes Concerning German Philosophy" [1915-#185]  

"The practical manifestation of Germanism in the current war has set in sharp relief the question concerning the spiritual sources of German culture. And since philosophy occupies a central place in German culture, this has ignited disputes concerning German philosophy. At the Moscow Religio-Philosophic Society there was a conflict that raged, and it concentrated around a thesis put forth by V. Ern suggesting that the aggressive German militarism is an offspring begotten of German philosophic phenomenalism. For Ern, an extreme phenomenalism appears not only in the philosophy of Kant, but also in the philosophy of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel."

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"The Religion of Resusciative Resurrection (N. F. Fedorov's The Philosophy of

   the Common Task)" [1915-#186]

"An amazing, rare and exceptional man has passed away. About the lofty mind of Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov, about his varied and extensive knowledge, about his conscientiousness in work, and about the moral-ideal purity of his lasting impression on people, such as knew him, it is needless to speak: they do with one accord declare, 'This was a man wise and righteous!' And those even closer to him add, 'This is one of those few good men by which the very world is upheld and sustained!”

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"Concerning the 'Eternal Baba' in the Russian Soul (Rozanov)" [1915-#187]

"There has appeared a book by V. V. Rozanov, The War of 1914 and the Russian Renaissance. The book is brilliant and disturbing. Rozanov here is a foremost Russian stylist, a writer with genuine flashes of genius. In Rozanov there is a special and mysterious life of words, a magic word-collection, an attractive feel for words. In him there are no words that are abstract, or dead or bookish. All the words are alive, biological, full of blood in their veins. The reading of Rozanov is a sensuous delight."

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"The New Russia" [1915-#188]

"When the war began, we experienced moments of a happy faith, that there had ensued an end of the old divisions, the hostility of party, platforms and doctrines. That there no longer would be 'rightists' and 'leftists' like two races having no respect for each other as people, no 'Slavophiles' nor 'Westernizers,' no 'typical sorts' and 'intelligentsia.' It seemed that it is possible to have a sense of Russia, its sole visage, its whole organism. Indeed, all the doctrinizing as appended to life had been a falling away from the being of Russia into a wont for abstract thought. The initial impressions from the war capsized all the doctrinalizm. Granted, it was only in a single moment that we experienced the feeling of Russia outside the divisive categories."

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 "Nietzsche and the Modern Germany"  [1915-#189]  

"Since the very start of the war we have had many an attempt made to discern the spiritual fathers of modern Germany and to explain the origins of its fierceness and brutality, its unrestrained and unenlightened will to might. In these riddles of the mystery of modern Germany, each has begun to come up with his own account of where to lay the blame for those manifestations of spirit, which generally he has regarded as despicable and false. Pointed out as culprits in all the ugliness to begin with is Luther and Protestantism, and then Kant and critical philosophy, then Marx and economic materialism, then Nietzsche and the teaching about the superman. Others even reach back to the old German mysticism and already in Eckhardt they see the seed of that which will grow ultimately into the present-day world war."

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"Deadening Tradition (Vyach. Ivanov)" [1915-#192]

"Tradition can be alive and active even for our time. But tradition can also be ossified, deadening and moribund. Frequently even the words of a great tradition sound lifeless and dead, evoking nothing, except the memory. A tradition finds justification as a living, a creative energy. But as a mere remembrance, now already powerless to create life, it cannot make pretense to being a guide for life. And truly there is much in tradition of the ossified and vapid: from dead lips and already repeated dead words. The article of Vyacheslav Ivanov, 'Living Tradition,' written in reply to me, has produced upon me the impression of a refurbished stylization of the old, already moribund Slavophilism. The words no longer sound alive, they are neither energized nor dynamic. V. Ivanov has not succeeded in conveying the feel of a living tradition."

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"The End of Europe" [1915-#195]

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"The visionary dream about world unity and world dominion is an age-old dream of mankind. The Roman Empire was the greatest attempt at such unity and such dominion. And every universalism is bound up even at present with Rome as a concept spiritual and not geographic. The present-day world war, which is spreading all over and threatens to engulf all lands and peoples, would seem deeply contrary to this old dream about world unity, about a single world governance. Such a terrible war, it would seem, is destroying the unity of mankind. But this is so only for the superficial glance. From a perspective at greater depth the world war to the ultimate degree has brought into sharp focus the question concerning world order upon the earthly globe, about the expanse of culture upon all the surface of the earth."

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"Thoughts about the Nature of War" [1915-#197]

"Some reject war out of a dualistic point of view, according to which there exists a completely independent material sphere, external, given to violence, separate from and opposed to the spiritual, the inward and free. But everything material is however only a symbol and sign of spiritual activity; everything external is but a manifestation of the internal, everything coercive and by force is a falsely directed freedom. To inwardly make sense of war is possible only with a monistic, and not dualistic, point of view, i.e. seeing in it the symbolics of what transpires within spiritual activity. It can be said that war happens in the heavens, within other planes of being, within the depths of spirit, and upon the flat surface of the material are seen but external signs of what is transpiring in the depths."

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"War and the Crisis of the Intelligentsia Consciousness" [1915-#201]

"Across the wide masses of the Russian Intelligentsia, the war ought to generate a deep crisis of consciousness, a broadening of horizons, an altering of the basic values of life. The customary categories of the thought of the Russian Intelligentsia have proven completely unsuitable for judging about such large-scale events, as happen now in the present-day world war."

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"Slavophilism and the Slavic Idea" [1915-#202]

"The war has set fully before the Russian consciousness and the Russian will all the painful Slavic questions — the Polish, the Czech, the Serbian — it has led to momentum and has forced tormentive pondering over the fate of the Slavic world within the Balkan peninsula and Austria Hungary. Everything is ailing within Slavism at the present time. And sometimes it seems almost impossible to reconcile the old disputes of the Slavs amongst themselves. The worldwide clash of the Slavic race with the Germanic race, which the whole of history has led to and which was not unforeseen, cannot, it would seem, but lead to a Slavic self-awareness. The Slavic idea had to be conceived in facing the threatening danger of Germanism."

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"Society and the Ruling Powers" [1915-#203]

"The relationship between society and the ruling authority is entering upon a completely new phase. This new correlation first of all brings awareness of the unity of society and the army, which is an awareness all more and more. Russia has been led to ruination by those destructive circles, which the State Duma has acknowledged as worthy only to sit in the judgement dockets of transgressors. Russia will be saved and defended by all of society, by all the people. And that civil state position, which will in fact have been won by society, by a patriotic deed of saving the native land, cannot ever be taken away. This henceforth -- is greatest a reality and power, not an abstract fiction. The war has to cure us from the abstract formalism in politics -- it points to actual content, to the vitally factual. We have to leave off with the irresponsible boycott and the principle-entrenched opposition by people, standing as it were outside of Russia, outside the Russian state aspect, outside the national unity. We have to surmount the formal and on-principle opposition between society and the civil authority, have to conceive of ourself as a positive force, acting within the united Great Russia, as responsible citizens of their fatherland."
 

"The Prophecies of N.F. Fedorov Concerning the War" [1915-#204]

"Few, actually, have heard of the remarkable Russian thinker, Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov. A modest librarian of the Rumantsev Museum, he was well know in certain Moscow circles. There are preserved letters to Fedorov from Vl. Solov’ev, from L. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Fet, from which it is indeed apparent how deeply they esteemed him and with what significance they regarded his thought. Vl. Solov’ev at one period was under the direct influence of N. F. Fedorov and called him his teacher. And L. Tolstoy took pride in this, that he was alive at the same time as such a man, as Fedorov."

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"On the Abstract and the Absolute in Politics" [1915-#205]

"An SD representative has declared that the Social Democrats are refusing participation in the military-naval commission and that they will not take upon themselves responsibility for the defense of the land, since in the defense ought to participate all the whole people. With equal success he might as well have said that there ought to participate all mankind or even all the animal and vegetative world. And still more he might have said that the Social Democrats will be in whatever way positive about participating, only when the end of the world ensues and the Kingdom of God transpires, since beforehand it is difficult to expect absolute justice upon the earth. This is a classic model of the modern abstractness and formal absoluteness in politics."

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"Words and Reality in Societal Life" [1915-#206]

"Words possess an enormous power over our life, a magical power. We are under the enchanting spell of words and to a remarkable degree we live in their realm. Words act like independent powers, and independent of their content. We are accustomed to pronounce words and to hear words, not rendering ourselves an accounting of their real content and their real gravity. We take words on faith and provide them limitless credit. At present I propose to speak exclusively about the role of words in societal life. And in societal life it is a conditional phraseology, having become customary, that acquires sometimes a power almost absolute."

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"The Tasks of Creative Historical Thought" [1915-#218]

"One of the saddest things made evident during the time of the war is something that brings little attention upon itself. I have in view the almost complete absence among us of creative historical thought. The traditional character of our thinking is very poorly adapted to the positing of creative historical tasks, to world perspectives. Our national thought is all still stuck in its provincialism, and its direction chiefly is in reporting negative accounts. Russia has been too inwardly torn apart and absorbed with trifling political disputes, with party considerations, with social group antagonisms, obscuring moreso all the world historical perspectives. The unempowered Russian society cannot feel a sense of responsibility for deciding the world destiny of Russia."

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"Concerning the Spirit of Despondency" [1915-#xxx]

"During Great Lent we pray the Prayer of St. Ephrem the Syrian — that the Lord grant us not the spirit of despondency, of despair. In Christianity, despair has always been considered a great sin. People that are non-believers, the positivists and materialists, often think that despair is an objective condition, is connected with some unsightly activity, a scrupulous admitting of it without any prettying or idealization. This is a self-deception and self-justification. A despondent apperception of life is an indicator of a despondent spirit, of a lowered vitality, weakness and infirmity. One to whom everything seems depressing is himself depressed. And for one to whom everything in the world is a matter of despair, he himself in despair, his soul is enveloped with darkness."

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1916

"On the Prestige of Holding Power" [1916-#221]

"One of the paradoxes of Russian life can be formulated thus: our ruling power does not have prestige namely because they are so obsessed with the idea of the prestige of power that it discredits itself, namely because it is so afraid to harm itself. This almost maniac-like and choking idea of the prestige of power has very ancient sources. The religious sources of the idea have already become parched and withered, but the idea itself continues still to hold sway over souls. That which already has ceased to be organic tends mechanically to choke. In suchlike the view, in whatever the idea of prestige at all still prevails in Russia, it presupposes an almost metaphysical opposition between the power and the people, the society, man."

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"Power and Coercive Violence" [1916-#225]

"Particularly acute in our day arises the question concerning the nature of power and its relationship to coercive violence. The problem of power agitates Russian thought and nudges it along a new direction. With Russians there is no love for power, no cult of power, there is always a morally contemptuous attitude towards it. Power seems sooner diabolical than Divine, and it readily gets confused and identified with coercive violence. The love for power, the religion of power we tend to imagine of the Germans and we see in this a lower spiritual type. But it cannot be said that we have been altogether alien to coercive violence, that nowise possible is it to say this for all the austere Russian state aspect. We tend to be proud that the ideology of power is foreign to us. The violence amongst us has to be examined as a fact, and not as an idea, as our sin, and not as our heresy."

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"An Astral Novel: A. Bely's Peterburg" [1916-#233]

"Peterburg no longer exists. The life of this city was a bureaucratic life predominantly, and its end was a bureaucratic end. What has arisen is the unfamiliar and to our ears still strange sounding Petrograd. There has ended not only an old word and in its place arisen a new word, there has ended an entire historical period, and we find ourselves entering upon a new and unknown period."

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"The Apotheosis of Russian Lethargy (Rozanov)" [1916-#234]

"V. V. Rozanov wrote in 'Novoe Vremya' (No. 14461) a sharply satirical and at places brilliant article, 'The Idea of Messianism,' in which he pokes fun at the pretensions of messianism. The article was written as regards my book, The Meaning of Creativity [engl. The Meaning of the Creative Act], although essentially about the book nothing is said in it and only in its lines of summation is there given a general consideration of its spirit and direction. Rozanov rises up against the idea of the messianism of peoples, against all the universal pretensions, the worldwide missions, the historically great, against all the driving impulses and quest for supremacy. In the opinion of Rozanov, 'this is dangerous a spot to be in.' 'It makes heads giddy, gives birth to bewitchments, stirs up powers, makes for a positive craziness."'

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"The Cosmic and the Sociological World-Sense" [1916-#235]

"The World War conveys with it for humanity a profound spiritual crisis which can be judged about from different sides. The consequences of such an unprecedented war are incalculable and cannot completely be anticipated. There is much a basis to think that we are entering upon a new historical epoch. And if we cast our glance at the changes in the external aspect, the international, the political and the economic, then the inward and spiritual changes tend to proceed unnoticed. This is always a subliminal process. Our foresight into the future ought to be totally free of the customary optimism or pessimism, free from estimates in accord with the criteria of happiness. It would be shallow-minded to think of life for oneself after such an exhaustive war in any especially cheerful and happy light. One might the sooner consider that the world is entering upon a period of prolonged woe and that its tempo of development will be catastrophic. But the values discovered by man in the worldwide struggle are not to be defined by any increase or diminishing of happiness."

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"The Church Question in Russia" [1916-#240]

"The question concerning church reform has caught us in sort of an impasse. It seems impossible to find a mechanism, rendering it possible to move forward out from the point of inertia in matters of external churchly issues. They seem clueless, regarding as from what sides to approach church reforms. Too entangled have become the churchly and the civil, the heavenly and the earthly, the spiritual and the material. How is the breath of the Spirit to become embodied within the external, the material churchly transformations? And indeed, do we even have suchlike a breathing of the Spirit which can be brought into church renewal? Has not everything gotten too ossified within churchly life, living by the laws of inertia, the lifeless mere imitator of the old life of the Spirit, rather than a living tradition, eternally creating life anew? There has been worked out an entire system of Orthodoxy as exclusively a system of safe-guarding. But has not this safe-guarding gone too far, and reached the point of ossification?"

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"The New Religious Consciousness and History" [1916-#244]

"The article by A. Meier [or Meyer, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich; 1875-1939] concerning my book, The Meaning of Creativity [Engl. title: The Meaning of the Creative Act], impels a reply. It demands explanations on my part. I am fully in agreement with A. Meier on this, that the new religious consciousness can be based only upon a new aspect, a new fact within the religious life of mankind, and outside of this fact it would totally remain an abstract ideology. I also have a sense of basing myself upon suchlike a fact, upon a certain creative surge within human nature, within the structure of the spiritual experience of man, of mankind in general, of Man with a capital letter. But, as it always happens, this fact, stirring up within the mysterious depths, is not known by all, is not a conscious matter for all. For A. Meier it remains unnoticed, and therefore his discussion with me relates totally to the external. And his objections to me involve objects more visible and even on the side of being more perceptible."

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"On Citizenship" [1916-#245]

"Facing the Russian people and society stands the urgent task of working out its type of citizenship, the strengthening of a consciousness as citizen and the feelings for citizenship. For Russia this is a vital question — the surmounting of those of its traits which forever have been acknowledged as Russian and which forever have been contrary to citizenship. The idealizing of these traits, admitting them as of a higher condition in contrast to that of the citizen, is a most extreme danger for Russia. The training towards citizenship proceeds with us very slowly. There have been enormous hindrances against it both in the composition of the Russian character and in the composite of Russian history."

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"An Account about Heavenly an Origin (A. N. Schmidt)" [1916-#248]

"There has appeared a book under the unobtrusive title, From the Manuscripts of A. N. Schmidt.  The name of Anna Nikolaevna Schmidt tends not to attract attention. It is nearly unknown to anyone. In her life and in her appearance, apparently, there was nothing remarkable. She spent her whole life at Nizhnii Novgorod, was an unassuming contributor to the Nizhegorod newspapers, she provided reports on Zemstvo gatherings, wrote theater reviews, and on almost everyone in meeting her she produced the impression of a good woman, a bit eccentric, drab in the externals. They noticed nothing extraordinary, prophetic, nor visionary in Schmidt.... But the Spirit breathes whence it will, and it can breathe also in an unassuming woman from Nizhnii Novgorod, earning her bread with newspaper articles.... Without any exaggeration it can be said that the book of Schmidt will come to be considered one of the most remarkable works of world mystical literature. This is the first mystical book in Russia in the strict sense of this word, a mystical book great in style, like to the creative works of Boehme, Swedenborg, Saint-Martin and other classic mystics."

​

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"Spiritual Christianity and Sectarianism in Russia" [1916-#252]

"The type of religious thought which conditionally might be called Spiritual Christianity possesses a great significance and occupies a large place in Russian national life. But it is not [yet] altogether possible for it to be defined through purely bookish sources or separate religious thinkers. This current is from life, but not literary, and it is moreso a matter of the people, rather than cultural. Much is shady in this current, but it is possible all the same to discover in it a characteristic type of religious thought and a religious sense of life. This religious movement subsists within the very sediment of national life, in sectarianism, in the popular search for God and the Divine pravda-truth in life. This is a withdrawal from cultural life, a flight from the sins of civilization, a search for Divine simplicity. This is wandering Rus’, a total absorption by questions of faith and righteous life."

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"Theosophy and Anthroposophy in Russia" [1916-#252]

"The trend of this type, which I should want to characterize, only conditionally can be called religious thought. It does not have any separate outstanding representatives in Russian literature and it is impossible to define it regarding any particular one thinker. We do not here meet with the psychology of an individual’s thought, [as with Bulgakov and Merezhkovsky], but we endeavor to uncover the psychology of a thought typically impersonal. The founder of the Theosophic society was the notable Russian woman, E. P. Blavatskaya, but the theosophic trend itself cannot be called characteristically Russian or essential to our religious thought. And if all the same I want to speak about theosophy in the characterizing of the types of religious thought in Russia, then it is only because theosophy has begun to play a remarkable role in Russian spiritual life, within our cultural strata, and its role undoubtedly will grow."

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1917

"The Strength of Russia" [1917-#254]

"It is said the Germans, only now during the time of war, have gotten a sense of the strength of Russia and admit that it is great a power. Prior to the war they tended to look down on Russia. This will sound paradoxical. The Germans all the while sense themself as victors, they have occupied our land. And yet it would seem, that not only the Germans, but all the peoples of the West in perplexity also will have to halt afront the enigma of Russia and admit the power of Russia forever by all the evidence."

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"Reform of the Church" [1917-#xxx]

"A. V. Kartashev, in his talented and interesting brochure, 'Reform, Reformation and the Manifestation of the Church,' says 'the reform of the Russian Church, in the precise and technical sense of this word, is of especially vital and intense interest to people either irreligious (upon societal-liberal motives), or of that religious type which perceives religion as something not subject to any sort of creative experience and of interest merely from the point of view of the practical organization of churchly life upon the best of principles…. Genuine mystics in the church are little interested with what is called church reform.'"

​

"The Free Church" [1917-#013]

"In the life of the Russian people there has occurred a turnabout which entails beyond it enormous consequences, not only material, but also spiritual. Such catastrophes do not happen often in the history of a people. Something had to have changed in the soul of the people, in its spiritual composition, in order for it so suddenly to alter the foundations of its historical existence. It is only on the surface level that such changes seem sudden and instantaneous. In actuality they are the result of a prolonged and profound inner process. Religious life always serves as the primal basis of every people, it is the basic wellspring of its nourishment. And the organic complex of the life of a people begins to crumble away then when in the religious life of a people there has occurred a crippling fracture, when some sort of lie has penetrated into religious life and idolatry has poisoned the soul of the people."

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"Concerning the Relationship of Russians Towards Ideas" [1917-#256]

"Much in the mentality of our social and populist psychology leads to sad considerations. And one of the saddest facts needful to recognize is the indifference towards ideas and towards ideational creativity, to recognzse the ideational backwardness of broad segments of the Russian Intelligentsia. In this is evidenced a desiccation and inertia of thought, a dislike for thought, a disbelief in thought. The moralistic frame of mind of the Russian soul begets a suspicious attitude towards thought. Life amidst idea is accounted by us as a luxury, and in this luxury they do not see any essential relationship to life. In, Russia from quite contrary points of view, is preached an ascetic abstinence from ideational creativity, from the life of thought, from going over beyond the limits of the necessary useful for goals social, moral and religious. This asceticism in relationship to thought and to ideational creativity is affirmed for us simultaneously both from the religious perspective and from the materialistic perspective."

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"Khomyakov and Fr. Florensky" [1917-#257]

"The article of Fr. P. Florensky concerning Khomyakov (in the “Bogoskovskii Vestnik” (“Theological Messenger”) for July-August 1916), written in the form of a review upon the tremendous research of Prof. V. Zavitnevich, is not only the larger of the two events, but reflects also the present scandal within the Orthodox Slavophilizing camp. Here this teacher of the Church of the Neo-Slavophils, this head and inspiration of the Moscow circle of the revivers of Orthodoxy, has made an act of renouncing the teacher of the Church of the old Slavophils — Khomyakov. Fr. Florensky has not only repudiated Khomyakov, but also has called his ideas dangerous in their consequences for the Orthodox Church, and has proclaimed him an immanentist of the German type. In Orthodox circles up to the present time they have considered Khomyakov the greatest and perhaps even the sole Orthodox theologian. Fr. Florensky now denounces his theology as non-Orthodox, and accuses him of a Protestant proclivity."

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"Theocratic Illusions and Religious Creativity (Kartashev)" [1917-#258]

"The paper of A. V. Kartashev, 'Reform, Reformation and the Fulfilling of the Church,' read at the Petrograd Religio-Philosophic Society and not long ago appearing as a separate brochure, is very interesting. In this brochure can be sensed the spoken version, expressed with great enthusiasm. Kartashev is excellent an orator. Particularly precious in Kartashev is his passionate push towards a new religious life. His theme is poignant and fiery. But the thought of Kartashev is unclear and confused, it is laced with contradictions, and is all the time twofold. Kartashev uniquely and with great a religious seriousness tends to posit the theme of Merezhkovsky. He is infected with all the poisons of Merezhkovsky, is fascinated with his setting of religious themes, and has an inclination towards his heresies. Yet Kartashev himself is nonetheless altogether different, he has different sources and a different religious nature. In him is sensed a man truly Orthodox and churchly both by flesh and blood, and by spirit."

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"The Psychology of a Survivable Moment" [1917-#259]

"Still quite recently, yesterday, it would seem, some very wise Russian people had gathered and they held agonizing conversations on how to find a way out of the mess into which Russia has fallen. And in a sort of inescapable gloom the wise people left it all up to chance and to fate. In only but few remained faith in the instinct of the Russian people, which always has managed to find a way to save in the difficult moments of historical life. And the Russian people in so doing has proven that it is a great people and worthy of a great future. On the brink of destruction, in an inescapable position, under the threat of a terrible enemy, with inspiration and genius it managed a most brief, bloodless and harmless revolutions. Everything happened unforeseen, not by plan, not by calculation. The Great Russian Revolution did not resemble typical revolutions. This was a sort of impulse amongst all the people, an upheaval of the nation in general."

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"The Position of Russia in the World" [1917-#263]

"There are those who turn their gaze upon Russia as comprising a certain sort of reality. Upon its national unity, and the question concerning its position in the world, amongst other peoples tends to alarm and disturb them. For people of a firm national awareness and patriotic mindset the questions of international politics always hold great significance, they cannot in this regard remain unconcerned. The honour and dignity of Russia, its position in world life, its historical vocation and the strength for its fulfilling — all these questions are very real, very complex and responsible. And to these questions, always the people of an international socialistic mindset have tended to be indifferent."

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"Power and Responsibility" [1917-#264]

"Prior to the revolutionary turnabout we had a prolonged crisis of power. The old powers had ceased to be national and statelike, had assumed a hostile attitude towards all the nation, and were overthrown into non-existence on an impulse by all the nation. The entire people’s revolution has had to put forward a provisional government, to express a maximum of national and state unity, and to lead in line with the historical tasks, corresponding to the level of the societal development of Russia. The old Christian wisdom taught that all power is from God [Rom.13,1]. It would be inaccurate to interpret this truth merely in the context that an autocratic monarchy or some other defined form of state power is something mystical and divine. This truth mustneeds rather be understood thus, that every power of authority by its nature is mystical and divine if it fulfills its objectively destined purpose, if it is expressive of the civil and national nature in general, if it transforms chaos into ordered cosmos, sets limits to the triumphing of an evil will, and organizes the people’s life."

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"About Bourgeoisness and Socialism" [1917-#266]

"Many a word now enjoying wide currency on the streets bears a character of magical effect; many a formula, now wending its way, assumes a sacral guise and is accepted by the masses not only without criticism, but also without understanding. The word falls into a dark obscurity, not prepared to encompass complex meanings, and it does not enlighten the darkness, but instead only increases it. The incantation arouses some sort of dark instincts, corresponds to some sort of interests, but no sort of clear concepts and ideas can be connected with it. What is the understanding of 'bourgeois' at the present day? Under 'bourgeois' is understood not simply the industrial class, not simply the capitalists, not the 'third estate.' With us at present the category of 'bourgeois' is employed in immeasurably more broad a sense."

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"Truth and Lie in Societal Life" [1917-#269]

"During the final years before the Revolution we were smothered with lies. The provocation was made at the instigation of the Russian statecraft of the Old Regime. The atmosphere was thick with betrayal. Azephovism, Rasputinism, Sukhomlinovism — all this poisoned the life of the people and rotted the Russian state. In the final months before the turnabout, the muddled air became intolerable, it was impossible to breathe, and everything became ambiguous. The image of the old powers became twofold. The Old Regime a long time already had lived by the lie. It continued to exist through inertia, and the passivity of the people sustained it. The moral disintegration had reached unprecedented dimensions."

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"The Religious Foundations of Bolshevism" [1917-#275]

"Such a setting of theme might evoke astonishment. What relationship has Bolshevism to religion? The Bolsheviks, just like the overwhelming majority of the Social Democrats, are materialists, positivists, atheists.... Foreign to them is every religious interest, and they mock at any religious setting of themes. Everyone tends to say, that Bolshevism is a phenomenon totally non-religious and anti-religious. All this is indeed so, if we stay at the surface and regard as conclusive those word formulas in which people tend to cloak their consciousness. But I think that the Bolsheviks themselves, as so often transpires, know not the final truth about themselves, do not perceive of what sort of spirit they are. To recognize about them a final truth, to recognize of what sort of spirit they are, is possible only for people of a religious consciousness, endowed with a religious criterion of distinction. And here, I am wont to say, that Russian Bolshevism is the manifestation of a religious order. In it are active certain ultimately religious energies oriented towards God."

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"Who is to Blame?" [1917-#276]

"One can consider it already apparent that if the Russian Revolution has also been something good, insofar as during its first days it freed Russia from the nightmare of the collapsing autocratic power, then subsequently all the “development” and “deepening” of the Revolution has marched off along a false path and has not produced any sort of good fruits for Russia and the Russian people. Fatal mistakes were made, the consequences of which many of us had foreseen and predicted. It was a repeat on a larger scale of 1905, and can anticipate a largescale reaction. In the Russian Revolution there has very quickly begun a process of disintegration and decay. Its moral visage becomes all more and more repulsive. The Revolution was inspired not by any sort of creative and original ideas. There tend to predominate long ago discarded and decayed socialistic ideas. These moribund ideas have lost any moral hue and have been stoked by the unrestraint and fury of greedy interests and passions."

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"The German Influences and Slavism" [1917-#277]

"The struggles among parties and classes, with their political and social passions, is causing many to forget that the Russian revolution is transpiring under the atmosphere of a terrible war, and that all the party groupings with their loud slogans are taking place under the pressure of the war. The parties with their programs and tactics cannot at present appear in their pure form. They are all dissimilar to how they were in peacetime, in the calm conditions of political activity and the social reformation of society. At the present tragic moment of Russian history, all the parties are determined first of all by their attitude towards the war and towards international politics. In Russia at present there exist really only two parties — the party of the patriots, wanting to save their native land, not having lost the healthy sense of the nation and the state, aware of their responsibility of all the future of Russia, and conversely, the party of the non-patriots, denying the independent value of nationality, indifferent towards their native land, to its honor and worth, betraying it either from a fanatical adherence to abstract utopias and false internationalistic ideas, or from a craven mercenary greed."

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"The Free Church and the Sobor" [1917-#278]

"The Russian people have always sensed itself a Christian people. Many Russian thinkers and artists have been inclined even to regard it as a Christian people preeminently. The Slavophiles thought that the Russian people lived by the Orthodox faith, which is the sole true faith, having within it the fullness of truth. Dostoevsky preached that the Russian people are a God-bearing people. The finest of Russian people believed that in the hidden depths of the Russian people lay concealed the possibility of higher religious revelations. But here now has burst forth the Revolution and led to tempestuous stirrings within the immense sea of the people’s lives. The people, silent a thousand years, have wanted, finally, to speak out, and here, in hearkening to the multi-voiced people amidst the raging elements of the Revolution, it has to be admitted that the Name of Christ is not to be heard within this din."

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"Patriotism and Politics" [1917-#279]

"We, as Russians, are all too accustomed to say that our native land is on the brink of ruin. We have been talking about this for so long, and our words are of such little effect, and their practical consequences so unremarkable, that soon there will be no one left to believe in the sincerity of our words. All the words have lost their allotted gravity and ceased to be effective. There occurs only a quick shuffling of ministers, who spasmodically try to form a strong national government, but this reconfiguration of the atoms produces the impression of a sickly impotence, and nothing essential is changed by it. This phenomenon, fully analogous to a 'ministerial leap-frogging,' happened too in the final period of the existence of the old regime. The basic thrust of the societal will remains the same. To get out from the condition of this tragic impotence we need an inner psychical push, a different spiritual atmosphere to the ruling authority, more free, more loving of rights, inspired not by the greedy, by class and the all too human ideas, but by objective national and state ideas, such as are not dependent upon human caprice."

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"The Ruin of Russian Illusions" [1917-#280]

"The catastrophe termed the Russian Revolution, through all the degradations, tribulations and disappointments, has to lead to a new and better awareness. Such an experience in the life of a people cannot but enrich and sharpen our perceptiveness. But a crisis of soul will have to precede this perceptiveness with a readiness for repentance and humility. The light will be begotten after an inward cleansing and ascesis. This is a law of spiritual life. And it is needful to be aware that all the whole thinking portion of Russian society, that which has esteemed itself as the bearer knowingly of ideas, has within it something to repent and be cleansed of. Beliefs and ideas are answerable matters. From them come emanations of liberating truth or enslaving ideas. The greatest responsibility for the evil triumphing in life is born by those who conceived of it initially in idea, those first few who in their distorted spiritual experience gave in to deceitful and false illusions."

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"Concerning Freedom and the Integrity of the Word" [1917-#281]

"When they speak with pathos about the freedoms won by the Revolution, then first of all they ought to have in view those rights of man which cannot be taken away in the name of whatever the earthly blessings. But it is about these sacred and inalienable rights of man among us that they least of all think and least of all care about. Pathos for the freedom of man does not exist within the elements of the Russian Revolution. There is a strong basis to think that Russians do not love freedom and do not value freedom. Our so-called 'Revolutionary Democracy' is obsessed with a passion for equality such as the world has never seen, but under freedom it however understands the right of violence against neighbors in the name of its interests, and arbitrariness in the overall leveling. In the name of equality it is ready among us to destroy whatever freedom pleases it. And the moral source of the denial of rights such as guarantee freedom mustneeds be sought in the weak awareness of the sense of duty and in an undeveloped sense of personal dignity. The rights of man presuppose first of all a sense of duty in a man."

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"Has There Been in Russia a Revolution?" [1917-#284]

"The seizure of power by the so-called Bolsheviks for many would seem some sort of a terrible catastrophe, something completely unanticipated in the destinies of the Russian Revolution and of Russia. There are to be found even people, who out of naivete or out of deceit, declare that there has ensued the final stage of the struggle of the workers and peasants against the capitalists and land-owners, the final clash of the people against the possessor classes. Mr. Lenin has regarded it possible to declare that at the end of February in Russia it was a bourgeois revolution, overthrowing tsarism, and at the end of October there occurred the socialistic revolution, overthrowing the bourgeoise, i.e. a process which amongst the advanced Western peoples takes centuries, but which in backwards Russia happened in some several months. Since our life has begun to become reminiscent of a nightmare, everything appears to us in an exaggerated form."

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"The Germanisation of Russia" [1917-#286]

"We live from day to day not knowing what tomorrow will bring. The dark abyss stretches open beneath us and at any moment it can swallow up all our blessings and values. It would be difficult to establish some measure of law within the swirlings of these dark chaotic elements and foresee the future. Actually, all is occurring not thus, as we would think. But it would be improper to forget one thing. Russia is not an isolated island. It is an inseparable part of the world organism, connected by a thousand threads with the life of other peoples. The collapse and ruin of Russia cannot be a matter of indifference for the rest of the world, for all the great powers and for all the cultural peoples. All are interested in the fate of such a gigantus, as is Russia. If the weakening of Russia can cheer many, then its total collapse has to be disquieting. This collapse is disquieting not only for our allies, but also for our enemies. Germany has done all it could for the weakening of Russia and its collapse during the time of war: it has played upon Russian weakness and Russian ills, the Russian darkness and Russian baseness, it has stopped at nothing in deceitful struggle, has not been squeamish about stooping to the vilest, most repugnant methods. And it has succeeded; it has found a favorable soil in the passivity among elements of the Russian people, in the corrosive ideas of the Russian intelligentsia, in the betrayal by bunches of riff-raff. Germany will have defeated Russia in close alliance with the destructive and corrupt forces acting within Russia itself, through a betrayal by the Russian people of itself, its native land and its idea in the world."

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"On Love for Russia" [1917-#289]

"The love for one’s rodina — one’s native land — is so immediate and elementary a feeling that it would seem unnecessary to appeal to it, and necessary though merely to clarify and ponder it. But for us in Russia this is a total problem, altogether not so elementary a matter, and even we have disputes possible upon this theme. The question regarding the love for Russia, about the immediate instinct, the impelling to defense of native land and service to it, evokes a struggle of various currents and teachings. The present day war has revealed a vexing dichotomy within the national consciousness. Very characteristic for Russian man is that for him it is indispensably necessary to find justification and a basis to his love for Russia, though the justifications be quite very contradictory. We have great difficulty to find that primal instinct and primal consciousness, by virtue of which each Russian would essentially want to devote all his powers to Russia, its security, its unity, its greatness. We, as it were lack, that assertiveness of a national will in its primordial proclivity without which there cannot be any sort of a national consciousness, any sort of national purposes worthy of world significance. The disputes over the national consciousness and the national question show the impairedness of our national sense of self. It is quite abnormal a thing that the attitude towards one's native land should be rendered an object of struggle involving political parties and state ideologies, that a national issue should assume so subordinate a position in relation to the state-political issue."

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1918

"The Crisis of Art" [1918-#14]

"Art has survived many a crisis over its history. The transitions from antiquity to the Medieval and from the Medieval to the Renaissance betoken such profound crises. But that which is occurring with art in our epoch cannot be termed merely one crisis in a series of others. We are present at a crisis of art in general, amidst the deepest tremors within its thousand year old foundations. The old ideal of the classically beautiful art has become ultimately tarnished, and there is a feeling for a return to its images. Art has convulsively striven to go beyond its limits. The borderlines have shattered such as distinguish one art from another and indeed art in general from that, what yet already is not art, from what is higher or lower than it. There has never yet been so acutely put the problem of the relation of art to life, of creativity and existence, never yet has there been such a thirst to pass over from the creativity of producing art to a creativity of life itself, new life."

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"Class and Man" [1918-#290]

"The struggle of classes fills the whole history of mankind. It is not a discovery of the XIX and XX centuries, although in these centuries it assumed new acute forms. This struggle occurred way back in the ancient world and there already it had quite varied appearances. Much that is instructive can be gleaned from the book of [Robert von] Pohlmann [1852-1914], History of Ancient Communism and Socialism. Certain pages bring to mind the chronology of our own days. The social uprising of the masses always and everywhere was alike as regards its psychological atmosphere. Too much gets repeated in social life and it is difficult to imagine new combinations and settings. There was many a class communistic movement in the past, and they often assumed a religious hue. Suchlike communistic movements were especially characteristic of the era of the Reformation. The elemental communism of the lower classes is one of the oldest principles, periodically arising and making an attempt to topple the individualistic and hierarchical principles. Communism is as old as the world, it was there at the cradle of human civilization."

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"The Power and Psychology of the Intelligentsia (Written prior to the Bolshevik Turnover)" [1918-#292]

"Here already it has been several months, with Russia facing unresolved tasks — to create a strong state power from human material totally unprepared for the holding of power and for determining the fate of the state, unprepared as regards all its past, unprepared as regards its mental frame of mind to not be called to power nor rule in the state. Over the course of the “unfolding” of the Revolution the power gradually passed over to the Russian revolutionary intelligentsia, to the Russian Social Revolutionaries and the Social Democrats, i.e. to people, who in their dreams never imagined, that they might actually come to power, and whose whole world-outlook and psychology denies the very principle of holding power. The tumbling over from the underground into a ministry is no easy thing; it can be mentally maddening. The Russian socialistic intelligentsia had no presentiment, had no thoughts, which might have prepared it for holding power. The Russian revolutionary-socialistic intelligentsia had crystalized into a peculiar race, into a peculiar variety of people, which could be recognized even by its physical appearance, and this race was incapable of governance. Its governing and holding of power is anthropologically, psychologically and morally something ridiculous."

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"The Revelation about Man in the Creativity of Dostoevsky" [1918-#294]

"Many a truth has already been written about Dostoevsky and much has been said about him which has come to be almost banal. But people also of another spiritual dimension wrote about Dostoevsky, they were more akin to him, of another generation, those peering into the spiritual distances: Vl. Solov’ev, Rozanov, Merezhkovsky, Volynsky, L. Shestov, Bulgakov, Volzhsky, Vyacheslav Ivanov. All these writers, each in his own way, attempted to get to the bottom of Dostoevsky and to disclose the profundity in him. In his creativity they beheld the utmost revelations — the struggle of Christ and the Anti-Christ, of the Divine and the demonic principles, of the disclosing of the mystical nature of the Russian people, of the uniqueness of Russian Orthodoxy and Russian humility. Thinkers of the religious tendency saw the essential content of all the creativity of Dostoevsky in the singular revelations about Christ, about immortality and about the God-bearing Russian people, and they bestowed on his ideology a special significance. For others still, Dostoevsky was first of all a psychologist, disclosing the underground psychology."

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"Russia and GreatRussia" [1918-#296]

"The nucleus of Russia has been subjected to a maximum of disintegration in the process of revolution. It has become the hearth of Bolshevism. Many see in Bolshevism even a characteristically GreatRussian phenomenon. In the GreatRussian tribe there is a metaphysical sense of hysteria and tendency towards an impaired obsessiveness. And this has always been sensed in the GreatRussian sects, in the self-immolators [samosozhigiateli], in the khlysty; with genius it was reflected in the creativity of Dostoevsky. This belongs to the inability to admit of a relative right, in an exceptional tendency towards the extreme limits. LittleRussians [i.e. Ukrainians] are more reasonably inclined, in them is a strong instinct for self-preservation. In LittleRussia was not that spiritual tension evoked by the Mongol Yoke, and always there too have been stronger Western influences. There is no GreatRussian nationality, just as there is no LittleRussian nationality. There is only a Russian nationality. But there exist tribal peculiarities, which to deny is impossible. And the GreatRussian peculiarities have proven fatal during the course of the Revolution."

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"The Recuperation of Russia" [1918-#297]

"Russia is grievously sick. This sickness has as its material symptoms the disintegration of our state and social organism. But at its core this is a spiritual, and not physical, sickness. The visibly material roots of the societal life of the people are hidden in the invisible depths. These depths always involve the spiritual life. Russia cannot be healed by material means alone. Not only the body, but also the soul is sick. Russia’s restoration to health presupposes first of all the healing of the spiritual foundations of life for the Russian people and the guiding circles of the Russian Intelligentsia. The false ideas of the Intelligentsia have yielded their poisoned fruit. The Intelligentsia now is bound to realize its sins and mistakes and convey to the people healthier ideas in which there will be a rebirth of energy. We know those which are the ideas that have devastated Russia, and we know that the rebirth of Russia can only be with ideas the opposite to these. To the spirit causing the decay there needs to be opposed a spirit life-creating. At the groundworks of the material life of peoples therein lies the spiritual principles of their life, and this is a truth deeper than that superficial truth which is preached by economic materialism."

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"Spirits of the Russian Revolution (Gogol, Dostoevsky, L. Tolstoy)" [1918-#057/#299]

"A terrible catastrophe has happened with Russia. It has fallen into a dark abyss. And for many it begins to seem that the unified and great Russia was merely a phantasm; that in it was not an authentic reality. Not easily is detected the connection of our present with our past. The expression of face for Russian people has quite changed. In some few months it has been rendered unrecognizable. At superficial a glance it would seem that in Russia has happened a turnabout unprecedented in its radicalism. But deeper and more pervasive a perception would tend to discern in Russia the revolutionary spirit of old Russia, of spirits long since detected within the creativity of our great writers, of devils long since already having taken hold within Russian people. Much of the old, the long since familiar, appears merely under a new guise. The lengthy historical path leads to revolutions, and in them are discernible national particulars even then when they inflict a grievous blow to the national might and the national dignity."

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