Solovyov, Vladimir (1853–1900)
KONSTANTIN GAVRILKIN
Russia’s most significant religious thinker, Vladimir Solovyov experienced a crisis of faith in his youth but returned to Christianity through the study of philosophy. His teaching career was short: after graduation from Moscow University in 1874, he taught until late March 1881, until the occasion when, during a public lecture, he challenged the government of Alexander III to spare the lives of the terrorists who had assassinated his father, Alexander II, earlier that month. Shortly afterwards, he left university life and dedicated himself to writing.
His early texts focus on western rationalism, and only in the Lectures on Godmanhood (1878–81) did he turn to the problems of religion. There he presents the history of humanity as leading inexorably to the incarnation of Divine Logos in the person of Jesus of Nazareth (cf. Alexander Men’s History of Religion, which was inspired by Solovyov). The next important work, the Spiritual Foundations of Life (1882–4), deals with Christology and the sacramental and spiritual life of the church, as well as the realization of salvation in human history. The union of divine and human natures in Christ, or his Godmanhood, given through the church to the world, is viewed by Solovyov not as an abstract principle, but as a living source of political, social, and cultural transformation of the world through a free choice of autonomous human beings. This vision would inform Solovyov’s approach to all problems related to Christianity. The assassination of Alexander II, the wave of anti-Jewish pogroms of 1881–2, and the counter-reforms ofAlexander III prompted Solovyov’s turn to the question of religion and politics. Ancient Israel, Byzantium, Roman Catholicism, Poland, and Russia were interpreted by him as a series of failed theocracies (The Great Debate and Christian Politics, 1883; Jewry and the Christian Question, 1884; History and the Future of Theocracy, 1885–7). At the same time, while raising many of the problems of the later ecumenical dialogue, Solovyov saw relations between Russia and Roman Catholicism in the light of their mutual responsibility for the realization of Christian mission in history (Solovyov 1966–70, Vol. 11).
During the 1880s and 1890s Solovyov wrote extensively on Russian identity, Slavophilism, nationalism (Solovyov 1966–70, Vol. 5), the religious traditions in Judaism, Islam, and China (Solovyov 1966–70, Vol. 6.), Russian literature, and philosophy, especially in relation to the multi-volume Brockhaus-Ephron Encyclopedic Dictionary, then appearing, for which he wrote numerous entries as chief author responsible for the philosophy section. In the 1890s he also published his key works: The Meaning of Love (1892–4) and the massive Justification of the Good (1897), which was his magnum opus on ethics. His collection of poetry, including meditations on the encounters with what he called Sophia, the divine feminine (Solovyov 1966–70, Vol. 12), were published in the 1890s as well. Finally, in his last year of his life Solovyov wrote Three Conversations on War, Progress, and the End of History, an apocalyptic drama inspired by the philosopher’s premonitions of the disasters facing the 20th century.
Although his writings played a key role in the Russian religious renaissance of the 20th century, Solovyov’s legacy was viewed rather negatively within conservative ecclesiastical circles because of his sympathy for Roman Catholicism, his mysticism, and his sometimes sharp criticism of the Russian Church and of Slavophilism. While Sophiology has been sometimes attributed to him retrospectively, its significance in Solovyov’s own corpus of texts is often overrated.
SEE ALSO: Russia, Patriarchal Orthodox Church of; Sophiology
REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS
Solovyov, S. M. (2001) Vladimir Solovyov: His Life and Creative Evolution, trans. A. Gibson. Fairfax, VA: Eastern Christian Publications.
Solovyov, V. S. (1966–70) Sobranie sochinenii, 13 vols. Brussels: Zhizn’s Bogom.
Sutton, J. (1988) The Religious Philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov: Towards a Reassessment. Basingstoke: Macmillan.