Is Bulgakov a Christian writer or the author of the “Gospel of Satan”?
Dmitry Babich: It’s been 125 years since the birth of Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov, which gives us a reason to finally talk about him. After Gogol and Dostoevsky, Bulgakov is the third Russian writer in terms of the saturation of his creativity with Christian symbols. They often argue about these symbols, how legitimate, how canonically he used them... You can argue about this for a long time, but there is one undoubted fact: it is impossible to underestimate Bulgakov’s merits in the revival of Christianity in Russia.
Alexander Artamonov.: Mikhail Afanasyevich seems to me to be an extremely mysterious writer, and not only because of the extremely complex, hidden system of symbols, but also simply because I can’t determine for myself where we should classify him - among Christian writers or nevertheless, to authors who were Christians only conditionally, aesthetically.
D.B.: I think that, of course, Bulgakov is a Christian writer. But at the same time, he is a writer who in some ways has absorbed the traditions of the “Silver Age” of Russian literature, that is, the century of experiment, the century of doubt. The personality of the creator in this age was very important; she was often literally deified. This is probably why this century seems to many not entirely compatible with canonical Orthodox Christianity.
But Bulgakov himself, if we consider his political and philosophical views, of course, felt himself to be an Orthodox Christian, albeit not completely church-going and not ideal in every way in everyday life (after all, he changed three wives one after another, but with all of them the marriages were according to love and all three lived very long lives). All his life he was very scrupulous in matters of honor, in all situations he tried to behave like a true Orthodox Christian. For example, he tried to volunteer for the army during the First World War. He was not taken due to kidney failure, from which he died in 1940. Then he served as a military doctor in the White Army. Unlike many other armchair strategists and writers, he then did a lot PHYSICALLY to really not give Russia up to the Bolsheviks. But the Bolsheviks were not his only enemies. During the civil war, Bulgakov witnessed the horrors of Ukrainian nationalism and Petliurism. Bulgakov took this very tragically. For him, Petliura’s Russophobia, the bloody anarchist spirit of peasant rebellion, all kinds of Makhnovshchina - for him all this is worse than the Bolsheviks. In this he is close to many writers of his time - to Prishvin, who was an opponent of the Bolsheviks, but in the end preferred them to the peasant element. From my point of view, in his public actions, Bulgakov is an ideal person for his generation, because he never chickened out, never made a deal with his conscience. Personal life and creativity are another matter. Yes, he was an experimental writer. But here's what's interesting: he didn't like other experimental writers. Mayakovsky, for example, was ridiculed (in the guise of a poet with the funny name Barguzin). Bulgakov preferred Russian classics to the avant-garde, but he himself went much further than Russian classics in his experiments, as it seems to me. Nevertheless, Bulgakov felt some kind of mystery and otherness in comparison with the Russian classics. It was not for nothing that he called Gogol his teacher in literature, who, as we showed in the previous conversation, was a mystical experimental writer for his age.
A.A.: There are many among the intelligentsia who have not read “The Fatal Eggs” and “Diaboliad” and do not remember works dedicated to the white movement. There are those who do not remember the text of “The White Guard” (more often they remember the film or play), few remember “Running”. But the novel “The Master and Margarita” remains a recognizable work; it’s a shame not to know it even today. I remember, Dmitry Olegovich, in the eighties and nineties it was good form to engage in downright quotation of this immortal novel. You might not be accepted into the company if you did not respond to this or that passage quoted from memory. It was like a kind of “friend or foe” system...
D.B.: It seems to me that the novel “The Master and Margarita” was truly a collection of passwords in the seventies and eighties. In the nineties, Bulgakov’s works went to the people. Newspapers and television stole quotes from everyday jokes from Bulgakov’s works - “sturgeon of the second freshest”, “the housing problem has ruined people”, “I’m sitting here fixing a primus stove”. These are all very funny things, but it seems to me that the main thing with Bulgakov is different. It is not Soviet life that oppresses Bulgakov in the first place (although this life was terrible, and Bulgakov himself almost died of hunger in the twenties). Bulgakov the writer is depressed by the departure of contemporary man from God.
Soviet people, not very familiar with religious topics, often perceived Bulgakov in a simplified way - as a kind of laughing satirist. For example, back in the late Soviet Union, a wonderful film was made by director Vladimir Bortko based on the story “Heart of a Dog.” The film turned out to be funny, but not entirely reflective of the complexity of Bulgakov's story. Judging by his recent interview with the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, Bortko is still worried that the film was perceived simplistically by the public of that time as snobbish: every viewer then saw himself as Professor Preobrazhensky, and all the unworthy people around him as Sharikovs. But, in fact, if you read the story, you can see: you can laugh at Professor Preobrazhensky no less than at Sharikov. And it remains to be seen which of them is more to blame: the boorish dog-man or his creator, who decided to isolate himself from the surrounding life with “armor” received from patients to whom he restores sexual abilities. In general, the theme of the responsibility of a scientist and experimenter for what he creates is very typical for Bulgakov: let’s remember the same “Fatal Eggs”, when Professor Persikov’s experiments almost lead to Moscow being captured by lizard beasts.
A.A.: But the overall impact of the novel “The Master and Margarita” was positive, from your point of view?
D.B.: Absolutely. It is wonderful that, thanks to this novel, the gospel story has returned to the masses. After all, back then it was very difficult to get a Bible, and on the “black market” this book cost crazy amounts of money. It was easier to get hold of Bulgakov’s novel, and it reads like fascinating fiction. As a result, people often gained insight into the gospel from fiction. Because “The Master and Margarita” is still fiction, and not a canonical book. Moreover, there are even deviations from the history set out in the Gospel, while observing some details that many dedicated people did not know. For example, in Bulgakov’s book there is a character named Yeshua Ha-Nozri, that is, Jesus from Nazarene (Bulgakov knew what the ancient Hebrew language sounded like, and in Aramaic “Ha-Nozri” means exactly this: “from Nazarene”), Jesus - this is indeed the Greek reading of the Hebrew name Yeshua (the Greeks do not have a hissing sound in their language corresponding to our letter “sh”). Nevertheless, Bulgakov puts the following remark into the mouth of his hero: “I am an orphan. I do not have anyone". We know very well that the historical Jesus Christ had a mother and other relatives. It turns out that here Bulgakov certainly departs from the Gospel Sacred Tradition. I think that this was done intentionally: Bulgakov did not write a popular account of the Gospel events, he had a different goal. Therefore, there is no need to equate Our Lord Jesus Christ with the character in the novel.
But, nevertheless, I would say this: thanks to the novel, the plot of the Gospel again entered the life of Soviet people. And it was good!
A.A.: It turns out that the departure from the plot and the fictionalization of the sacred text here served a certain good mission - they really allowed people who were very far from the Christian tradition to find light, since at least two generations in Soviet times lost all connection with Christianity. By the way, exactly two generations, not three, since the original generation of the builders of communism, born in the Russian Empire, was baptized by their parents in infancy. Of course, you are right: the deviations from the canon in the text are endless, including some glorification of Pontius Pilate and the image of a faithful dog, although Woland slyly stipulates that the sacred texts cannot be trusted. And some dashing deacons in our time even declare that the text of the novel was not written by Bulgakov himself, but by Satan himself, who sang a panegyric for himself.
D.B.: I wouldn’t believe the paranoid deacons in everything, but Bulgakov wrote a lot of things, although, of course, very talentedly! And it just so happened that Bulgakov is a very good fiction writer, that is, the author of popular mass literature. But this is on the same level. And on another, higher level, existing in the same work, he is a deep philosopher, capable of writing in a language accessible to almost anyone, even a not very prepared person. Such a spiritually uneducated person will still read Bulgakov’s text with interest. Perhaps he will not understand the “message” of the biblical part, but he will find it both funny and interesting to get acquainted with Soviet life of that era. And in this way Bulgakov brought a huge number of “parishioners” to Christianity. These are people who became interested in Christianity simply because “The Master and Margarita” is a touching, fascinating and sometimes very funny book.
Some of these parishioners returned to an ordinary godless life, while others became churchgoers, went further along the path of salvation, realizing that Christianity is interesting and poetic. And this is truly a wonderful effect!
A.A.: I think here, in terms of the strength of the effect, a parallel with Mel Gibson’s film “The Passion of the Christ” is quite appropriate. This film aroused enormous interest in Christianity among American society. Speaking about Bulgakov and his immortal novel, I cannot help but ask the following question: why does Bulgakov stubbornly want to present the world in black and white - here is a Masonic chess cage on the floor of the chambers of an unclean apartment, and an obvious Bogomil hint of a dialogue between two principles, without which - de the world is not complete, etc. And please note: a Master who has made a pact with the shadow side of existence ultimately does not deserve light, but only peace.
D.B.: Many people confuse Bulgakov with the Master, and even with Woland. But I wouldn’t do this; there’s no need to demonize Bulgakov and his texts at all. In terms of relations with evil in his earthly life, he was a very scrupulous person; he never compromised with evil. So you shouldn’t confuse Mikhail Afanasyevich with the characters in his novel. If we are to find out whether Bulgakov was on the side of light or on the side of darkness, then it would be useful for our intelligentsia to re-read the story “The White Guard”.
How many Poroshenko lovers and singers of a nightmarish coup on the banks of the Dnieper we have! And many of these people insist on their status as truly Russian intellectuals and lovers of Bulgakov, although they have not taken him into their hands for a long time. Bulgakov, by the way, in “The White Guard” has a phrase from the author, behind which Bulgakov himself is certainly guessed, that an intelligent person cannot be on Petlyura’s side. And even if he is not intelligent, but capable of composing a telegram correctly, even he cannot be a Petliurist. And let me remind you: the new Kiev regime now arranges “minutes of silence” for Petliura, and the founder of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), Yevgeny Konovalets, went to Petliura’s grave in Europe with a kind of pilgrimage (this is described in the memoirs of the Soviet agent Sudoplatov). It seems to me that this Bulgakov quote about the incompatibility of the intelligentsia with Petliurism says a lot about those of our pseudo-intellectuals who are more outraged by the shortcomings of our federal television channels than by the murders of policemen on the Maidan or the burning of “Novorossians” in Odessa and Donbass. Not only in Kyiv, but also in Moscow there are people who call priests who defend the connection between the Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox Churches “separatists in robes.” People who say this about priests are not intellectuals at all. To understand this, it is enough to re-read Bulgakov.
Of course, I foresee their argument that either Petliura or Poroshenko... For his time, Petliura was a figure quite comparable to today’s Mr. Poroshenko. Petlyura was admired not only by the founder of the OUN, Yevgeny Konovalets, who was later killed by the Soviet intelligence officer Sudoplatov. He was also admired by Bandera, whom the anti-Putin professor Zubov, who is running for a seat in our Federal Assembly, now respectfully calls Stepan Andreevich and even a hero. I think, by the way, that this professor Zubov would very well get on the good side of the satirist Bulgakov with his admiration for Bandera and his waxed mustache. And the current Kiev regime is growing quite logically from behind Stepan Andreevich’s back. By the way, in “The White Guard” Bulgakov shows all the horror of Petliurism, that is, provincial Ukrainian nationalism. Bulgakov also shows the multiplication of this horror, when the rural cruelty of the Petliuraites is superimposed by the indifference of the Kyiv man in the street, who, it turns out, both at the beginning of the twentieth century and at the beginning of the twenty-first, is capable of approving murders - as long as there is a cake on the table, and warm buns in the store... Kyiv Bulgakov shows an indifferent city: perhaps not villains live in it, but certainly people who indifferently look at how others are villainizing in their city. The Germans are villainous, the Sinezhupanniks are villainous, as Petlyura’s warriors were called, then the Bolsheviks are villainous... In “The White Guard” it is shown how the Sinizhupanniks enter the city. They enter and kill... Then the Reds will kill... And the people of Kiev will calmly look at all this and argue behind the “cream curtains” that so-and-so got what he deserved - the person he killed was once underweight or something... he said something wrong about politics...
The Turbin family in Bulgakov’s story is not like that. They are relaxing behind cream curtains, but in a moment of danger they go to the city - to save the cadets, the priests, each other, in the end. By the way, behind the Turbin family one can easily guess the family of Bulgakov himself - a large family, there were seven children. In no case and never in his life was Mikhail Afanasyevich a white-handed person; his aristocracy was in his intellect, and not in everyday snobbery. He was an educated, intelligent man and, by the way, a doctor by training. He did not disdain any, even the most unpleasant medical activities - in particular, he knew how to treat venereal diseases. He went through many horrors in his life, but if we look at his memories, then in his life Ukrainian nationalism was the greatest horror. According to his descriptions, it was much worse than Soviet rule.
A.A.: So what is behind this phrase “You deserve peace”?
D.B.: Our lost deacon, Father Andrei Kuraev, wrote a whole book about how this text was allegedly written by the devil, that the good man Bulgakov took the entire text of the book from the devil, and with his hints leads us to some kind of exposure of the evil.
I don't think so. Woland is a punishment for Soviet spiritual squalor, for trying to build a world where happiness will be brought not by kindness and not by faith, but by all these Soviet institutions (in the West and at the Higher School of Economics they are now called “institutes”) - all these house committees and housing associations. With Bulgakov, everything is very fair in his literary world. Sin comes with punishment! In The White Guard, Bulgakov shows the enormous sin of the Russian intelligentsia, including the military. Tsarist officers, like most educated people in Russia, did not engage in “politics” at all in peacetime. All these brilliant officers - Myshlaevsky, Alexey Turbin, Nai-Tours - all of them, obviously, did not read newspapers until the age of seventeen, just like Professor Preobrazhensky in Soviet times. As a result, a bunch of adventurers managed to defeat a huge mass of decent Russian people IN PARTS. And it’s not just about the newspapers – it’s generally about some kind of frivolous, sleepy attitude towards life. For example, Myshlaevsky read “War and Peace” because the book was written by an artillery officer. As a result, all these officers gave up the political sphere to infernal, hellish forces. And there is a punishment for this! In “The Master and Margarita,” this degraded “educated” intellectual, Berlioz, also receives punishment for his cynicism, for “to each one will be given according to his faith.” So Berlioz gets eternal death. Preobrazhensky receives the Poligraf Poligrafych at his home for his experimentation. Think, gentlemen, before you frivolously ruin your life! This is one of Bulgakov’s most important messages to both his contemporaries and descendants. So it seems to me that Woland in The Master and Margarita is more of an instrument in the hands of higher powers than an independent character. This is God's punishment that comes to this world, to the lost Soviet way of life, in order to punish all these down-to-earth Ivan Nikanorychs, Step Likhodeevs, MASSOLIT employees, members of the housing association. The juxtaposition of Soviet life with a biblical story has a satirical effect. From Bulgakov’s point of view, life should not be everyday life. That is, in the life of a believer, a highly intelligent person, life is spiritual. Another remarkable writer of the second half of the twentieth century, Yuri Trifonov, said: “No, we don’t write about everyday life - about life!” And so Woland punishes the characters in the novel for getting stuck in an unreal life.
A.A.: You raised another very interesting question here: in the episodes you selected, there is still some kind of non-canonical beginning visible. For example, the episode of the novel when Berlioz finally passes away. Bulgakov allows himself a downright Masonic deviation: no Woland can erase the soul of the same Berlioz - the soul of any person is immortal. It turns out that in Bulgakov, the devil acts as the demiurge of his universe, while clearly ridiculing God. It is impossible to take the unfortunate sick philosopher Yeshua for God, although Woland literally foaming at the mouth proves to the Patriarchs that this is exactly what happened. It turns out to be a kind of Gospel from Woland! After all, according to canonical theology, no one can “erase” a person’s soul from the world, throw him out of the memory of planet Earth!
D.B.: Well, you can erase a person from the planet Earth, but not from the uncreated world! You know, Berlioz destroys himself. His theory that there never was any Christ, his struggle with Ivan Bezdomny, behind whom the image of Yesenin can be discerned, are all terrible sins. Ivan Bezdomny, by the way, is not Demyan Bedny, as some were mistaken. Demyan was just a total cynic, a militant atheist, doomed to eternal destruction in Bulgakov’s world. In Bulgakov's artistic world, a person who does not believe in anything is a freak, inferior. Remember, the author pathetically declares, “Let them cut out his tongue!” about a man who believes that there is no more high love left in the world. What to do with a person who does not believe that there is faith in the world? “To each according to his faith” - this is so fair! For me, Bulgakov is somewhat related in his thinking to Archpriest Andrei Tkachev, a frequent guest of Radonezh. He is also a resident of Kiev, who, like Bulgakov, saw the self-destruction of Ukrainian life. Hence the requirement for a person to take a responsible approach to his life. In one of his sermons, Archpriest Andrei Tkachev said very well: “Sometimes God doesn’t wait, if you don’t respond to His voice in any way, he leaves you - and that’s all.” After all, what happens in the novel? Berlioz simply receives his punishment before anyone else. He behaves vulgarly - that’s why he dies.
If you ask me what Bulgakov fought against in general, I will answer that he did not fight against the Soviet regime. This may sound strange: due to Bulgakov’s sharp difference from the figures of “socialist realism,” he was perceived for many years as an “anti-Soviet” writer. And he was in fact a non-Soviet writer. Of course, he had a difficult relationship with the Soviet government: it is obvious that he really did not like the Bolsheviks of the twenties. Therefore, when in the nineties his diaries were published with impartial assessments of the early Bolsheviks of Jewish origin, many perceived his notes as anti-Semitic. I think this is incorrect. He had many Jewish acquaintances. He was friends with Anna Akhmatova, who could not stand anti-Semitism. No, he was simply disgusted by the vulgarity of these Bolshevik leaders of the twenties. What is vulgarity? According to Bulgakov, and Dostoevsky, and Gogol, and Nabokov, vulgarity is an attempt to appear to be someone you are not. Berlioz, for example, wants to seem like a literary critic and specialist in biblical history, who knows and understands everything. We still have such “Biblical scholars.” They know quotes, they know several phrases from ancient languages, but at the same time they insult the Church and treat the believing people in a condescending manner. I think Bulgakov would have prepared Annushkin’s tram for them in our time - naturally, a literary one.
But Berlioz is not the only example of vulgarity. Ge wants to seem like the father of the nation, but in fact he is not one. Poroshenko, the “pompous” Kravchuk, and even Yanukovych are visible here. By the way, the latter’s flight from Ukraine is very similar to the evacuation by the Germans of this very hetman in Bulgakov’s book, when the “father of the nation” was taken out of his residence in bandages, passing off as a wounded man. And here is Myshlaevsky’s phrase from “The White Guard”: “His Excellency the Hetman! If I came across this very Excellency and Lordship, I would take one by the left leg, the other by the right, turn it over and slam my head on the pavement until I got tired of it!” Bulgakov is a satirical writer precisely because he feels vulgarity very subtly. This is where his talent manifests itself. Despite the fact that most of the people he ridiculed were representatives of the intelligentsia, with whom he pinned his hopes for the future of the country. Let us recall his famous letter to the Soviet government, in which he said that he did not want to write about workers and peasants, but wanted to write about the intelligentsia, because he saw in them “the hope of my backward country.”
Thanks to memoirs, it has been absolutely proven that in his youth Bulgakov was a monarchist. And, as can be seen from The White Guard, he maintained reverence for the monarchy. This does not mean that he was a super-conservative, a guardian... No, he simply believed that for Russia, at the level of development at which it was, a monarchy was what was needed. The monarchy was organic to the vast majority of the people - the peasantry. There was nothing shameful about it. After all, there is a similar situation in the Bible. In the Old Testament history of Israel, there is a period when, as stated in the Old Testament, the rule of judges is suitable for the Jews, that is, theocracy as the highest form of government as the almost direct power of God through the state. And then comes the period of the reign of kings: it is perceived in the Bible as a regression - the reign of kings corresponds to a time when people sin more. That is, Bulgakov was not against democracy, dreaming of the arrival of old-regime gendarmes. By the way, he laughed a lot at those people who before the revolution all wanted changes, and when they came to them with pogroms and took away their property, they suddenly began shouting: “Dictatorship, my friend, we need it! Iron dictatorship! (This situation is described in The White Guard.)
A.A.: It turns out that all of Bulgakov is a tragic event: the civil war, the wretched Soviet life, repressions, a rather early death in 1940...
D.B.: And yet: there is no need to perceive Bulgakov tragically! For some time now, we like to politicize everything - that passion-bearer, that martyr... The main thing in Bulgakov’s life was literature, and writing, by definition, is a fun, exciting thing, and with Bulgakov it’s also funny. Yes, Bulgakov had a hard life! After all, he almost died of typhus and didn’t even end up in exile because he was unconscious. His first wife Tatyana Lapa literally came out of him, pulled him out of the other world, but the front line had already left, and he could not go abroad... But then he wrote in his works that “there is no need to run at the pace of a rat.” By the way, it just so happened that he had three wives in his life. All three loved him very much! All three marriages, it seems to me, were successful, despite the fact that at times Bulgakov showed his rather difficult character. His last wife, Elena Sergeevna Bulgakova, did especially a lot, before her marriage Shilovskaya, who preserved his books and achieved the publication of a novel in 1966, which had lain on the shelf for almost 30 years. He, Bulgakov, and all of us were terribly lucky: in his 49 years he left us so much!
You know, I had a grandmother who, like her entire generation, lived a rather difficult and hungry life, but she told me that when in the 20s, during her youth, she ate ice cream for the first time in her life, she thought : “And what did these bourgeoisie want when they had such delicious ice cream!” I would like to tell our listeners: “Listen, you and I can read Bulgakov! Total! Full composition of writings! Compared to the seventies or early eighties, this is such happiness! What else do we need?
So I congratulate us all on Bulgakov! We will be sad about his difficult life and about the entire tragic twenty-fifth anniversary between 1917 and 1941 later - after reading.
Material prepared and interviewed by Alexander ARTAMONOV
BULGAKOV
Archive of the "Orthodox Encyclopedia"
BULGAKOV Sergei Nikolaevich [16(28).6.1871, Livny, Oryol province. – 13.7.1944, Paris], Russian. philosopher, theologian, economist, church and society. activist Born into a priest's family. He studied at the Livensky Theological School (1881–1884), then at the Oryol Theological Seminary, due to a crisis of faith he left it in 1888 and moved to the Yeletsk gymnasium. In 1890–1894 he studied law. Faculty of Moscow un-ta. Since 1895 he taught politics. savings in Moscow commercial school, adjoining the direction of “legal Marxism” (“On markets in capitalist production”, 1897). Analyzing the connection between money and commodity circulation under capitalism, B. came to the conclusion that in Russia the process of “separation of the city from the countryside” is still taking place. In 1898–1900, on a business trip abroad in Berlin, from where he traveled to Geneva, Zurich, Paris, London, Venice; spoke with german. Social Democrats (K. Kautsky, A. Bebel, E. Bernstein, V. Adler), met G.V. Plekhanov. In master's thesis. “Capitalism and Agriculture” (vol. 1–2, 1900) made a substantiation of the sustainability of small farming under capitalist conditions. organizations people economy and criticism of the law of concentration of production formulated by K. Marx. Since 1901 prof. Kyiv Polytechnic institute and privat-docent at St. Vladimir University. Acquaintance with the philosophy of I. Kant and neo-Kantianism cooled B.’s passion for Marxism; in addition, he came to the conclusion that “Marx’s forecast, which had a certain significance for its time ... is simply inapplicable for the present.” Public lectures “Ivan Karamazov as a Philosophical Type” (1901) and “What the Philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov Gives to Modern Consciousness” (1903) marked the beginning of the “idealistic” period in B.’s work, the perception of the ideals of Christian humanism in the spirit of F. M. Dostoevsky and Vl. S. Solovyov (participation in the program collection “Problems of Idealism”, 1902; author’s collection “From Marxism to Idealism”, 1903). One of the organizers and member of the Liberation Union. Since the autumn of 1904 he participated in the railway. “New Way”, in 1905, together with N. A. Berdyaev, edited the journal. “idealistic direction” “Questions of life”. Since 1906 in Moscow, prof. political economy Moscow. commercial institute and privat-docent Moscow. University (“A Brief Essay on Political Economy”, 1906; courses of lectures on the history of social and economic doctrines). B. actively developed the ideals of “Christian politics”, in the beginning. 1907 elected deputy of the 2nd State. Duma, called himself a non-party “Christian socialist”. Since 1906 he took part in the work of St. Petersburg. "Brotherhood of Zealots of Church Renewal", Moscow. Religious and Philosophical Society in Memory of Vl. Solovyov, the Circle of Those Seeking Christian Enlightenment, in 1910 - in the creation of the publishing house “The Path”. Participated in Sat. “Milestones” (article “Heroism and Asceticism”), published in 1911. articles “Two cities. Studies on the nature of social ideals" (vol. 1-2; in the article "Karl Marx as a religious type" Marxist philosophy of history was considered as a type of secularized Judeo-Christian apocalypticism). In 1910 he met P. A. Florensky, whose friendship gave rise to intellectual and creative cooperation. In 1911, among a large group of teachers, B. left Moscow. university in protest against the dismissal of the university board.
During this period, philosophy. B.'s system - a unique version of Christian Platonism, which he defined as "panentheism" (from the Greek πᾶν ἐν θεᾦ - everything is in God) - was expressed in his works "Philosophy of Economics" (1912, doctoral dissertation, soon translated into Japanese. lang.), “Non-Evening Light. Contemplation and Speculation" (1917, new edition - 1994). In the spirit of the ideas of the early Slavophiles and Vl. Solovyova B. examines socio-cultural phenomena - depending on the type of farm. activities up to philosophy. constructions - in their correlation with the nature of the professed religion. Religion as a conciliar experience of connection with God is given by the experience of life in the Church and gives rise to dogma - truth, which is the fruit of a conciliar decision. Philosophy is based on myth, religious in nature; myth allows one to overcome the limitations of criticism. philosophy of the Kantian type, opening up the possibility of “intelligent vision”, akin to Plato’s contemplation of ideas. The creation of the world by God is conceived by B. as “the self-division of the Absolute... the sacrifice of the Absolute for the sake of the relative, which becomes “other” for him... a creative sacrifice of love” (“Never-Evening Light”. M., 1994. P. 159). The first act of creation is the transformation of “nothing” (absolute non-existence, “ukon”) into the matter of creation, the “Great Mother of the natural world” (relative non-existence, potential of being, “meon”). The search for a way out of the ancient dualism of spirit and matter leads B. to philosophy. understanding the Old Testament image of Sophia - the Wisdom of God, which was embodied in Orthodox iconography and architecture of Kyiv and Moscow. Rus'. B.'s Sophia plays the role of a living mediator between the divine and created world, he understands it as a personal being, a special - fourth - hypostasis, which is the beginning of a new created multihypostasis, as the world soul, creative nature, ideal humanity, guardian angel of creation, in economic terms – as a single transcendental subject of the economy. Christianity is understood by B. primarily as a religion of incarnation, a center. The task of Christian activity in the world through the Church is the sanctification of all material existence. Human activity in the world is “sophian”, cosmic. character, it is called upon to bring the world into conformity with God’s plan and Providence for it.
In 1917–18 B. as a representative from Tavrich. diocese in Vseros. At the local cathedral, he participated in the work of the subcommittee to study the issue of name-glorification. The desire for church rehabilitation of the Athonite Imyaslav monks convicted by the Holy Synod served as the impetus for writing the book. “The Philosophy of the Name” (1917–19, published in Paris in 1953), where language is considered as ontological. a reality in which “the voices of things themselves shine through.” On Sat. “Quiet Thoughts” (1918, reprinted 1996) collected journalistic works. articles by B. 1900–10s, in collection. “From the Depths” (1918) published B.’s historiosophical dialogue “At the Feast of the Gods.” Soon after accepting the priesthood in June 1918, B. left for Kyiv, and from there to the Crimea; parish priest in the churches of Koreiz and Gaspra, from Sept. 1921 in the Cathedral of St. Alexander Nevsky in Yalta. In 1919–20 prof. political economy at the Tauride University in Simferopol. “The Tragedy of Philosophy” (published in German in 1927, Russian edition – 1993) and the dialogue “At the Walls of Chersonese” (published in 1993) were written in Crimea. Beginning from this period, B. sought to overcome philosophy, believing that “philosophy stems from that splitness of being, its untruth, in which thinking turns out to be a separate region of the spirit”; he thinks of the history of philosophy as “religious heresiology,” and philosophy. systems as an arbitrary hypostatization of one of the elements of the trinity being - personality, nature or existence. For B., the antinomy of human knowledge is its ineradicable feature, for the fullness of truth is elusive to logic. deductions.
In 1922 he was arrested by the GPU and accused of being a counter-revolutionary. activities “indefinitely exiled abroad”, to Constantinople. In 1923–25 prof. church law and legal theology. Faculty of Russian Scientific institute in Prague. Here B.'s collaboration with the Russian Student Christian Movement began, in whose congresses he regularly participated. B. headed the Brotherhood of St. Sophia recreated in Prague, in which V. V. Zenkovsky, A. V. Kartashev, P. B. Struve and G. Florovsky took part. Since 1925 in Paris, prof. dogmatic theology, then dean of the Theological Institute created with his participation in the name of St. Sergius, where the “Parisian school” in theology was formed, represented by the names of P. N. Evdokimov, V. V. Zenkovsky, V. N. Ilyin, bishop. Cassian (Bezobrazov), archbishop. Cyprian (Kern), A. V. Kartashev, G. P. Fedotov and others.
In the theological trilogies - the small one - “Friend of the Bridegroom. On the Orthodox veneration of the Forerunner (Io. 3, 28–30)" (1927), "The Burning Bush. Experience of dogmatic interpretation of certain features in the Orthodox veneration of the Mother of God" (1927) and "Jacob's Ladder. About Angels" (1929), and the big one - "On God-Humanity": "Lamb of God" (1933, reprinted 2000), "Comforter" (1936, republished 2003) and "Bride of the Lamb" (1945) B. sought to give a sophiological . interpretation of the main church dogmas, devoting two parts of this trilogy to the hypostases of the Most Holy Trinity - the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the third - to the Church. To Europe Readers are drawn to the book published in French. lane book “Orthodoxy” (1932, Russian edition 1965) and in English. lane – “Sophia, the Wisdom of God” (1937).
B.'s understanding of Sophia during this period underwent a significant evolution: he abandoned the interpretation of Sophia as a personal being and began to conceptualize it as a divine nature-ousia, making the Trinity the one God. At the same time, he did not exclude the interpretation of Sophia as a set of divine energies in the spirit of the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas. In 1935 sophiological. the views of Father Sergius were condemned by the Council of Bishops of Rus. Orthodox Church abroad and two Decrees of Moscow. Patriarchate, published by Metropolitan. Sergius (Stragorodsky). The Theological Commission created by Metropolitan. Evlogiem, dismissed B.’s charge of heresy, but he was forbidden to lecture on sophiology.
B. actively participated in ecumenical movement, in the work of the Orthodox Anglican Brotherhood of St. Martyr Albania and St. Sergius. He spoke at theological congresses and conferences in Lausanne, Muirfield, Oxford, Edinburgh, and Athens. In 1939 he suffered from throat cancer and, as a result of the operation, almost completely lost his voice, but continued to serve the liturgy in a whisper and even give lectures. In B.'s latest works (“Bride of the Lamb”; “Apocalypse of John,” 1948) much attention is paid to the problem of apokatastasis (restoration) of the fallen creature in eschatology. perspective. Buried in Russian cemetery in Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois.
