Religious philosophers of Russian emigration in search of a social Christian alternative to the socialist and capitalist structure of society

Abstract

Representatives of the “Vekhi” direction of Russian religious philosophy (Fr. Sergius Bulgakov, N. A. Berdyaev, S. L. Frank, P. I. Novgorodtsev) and “Novograd residents” close to them (G. P. Fedotov, F. A. Stepun, I. I Fondaminsky) occupy a prominent place in the ideological life of Russian emigration in the period between the two world wars. An important direction of their spiritual and intellectual efforts was the desire to find and express the most adequate social embodiment of Christianity, free from both the shortcomings of capitalism and socialism — the so-called “social Christianity”. From this angle they viewed the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church and the corporate system. Currently, there are serious studies of various aspects of the activities and ideological heritage of thinkers of the “Vekhi tradition”. However, there is still no special study of the social meanings of Christianity in their works. The purpose of this article is to begin to fill this gap and show how these thinkers, within the corresponding historical context in the interwar period (from 1922 to 1940) and in correlation with the views of their Western colleagues, understood the social meanings of Christianity, and how they saw their most optimal implementation in the life of society.

Keywords

• russian religious philosophy
• russian post-revolutionary emigration of the first wave
• social christianity
• third way
• corporate system
• journal “put’ ”
• journal “novyi grad”