Intelligentsia and the Church: the Issue of the Correlation of the Ideal and Spiritual in Leadership (late XIX – beginning XX centuries)

Abstract

The question of the relationship between the intelligentsia and the Church in Russia during the period of large-scale socio-economic and political changes at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries (including the February Revolution of 1917) is considered. The relevance of the study is determined by the recent appearance of works devoted to the perception of the intelligentsia in the church environment. At the same time, the ideas of the intelligentsia about the Church in the scientific literature have not yet been fully disclosed. The study is based on journalism, office work (materials of the Religious-Philosophical Meetings and the St. Petersburg Religious-Philosophical Society), periodicals, and sources of personal origin. It is concluded that during this period, the intelligentsia in its own environment was already considered as a project parallel to the Church, which inevitably endowed the intelligentsia itself with the appropriate features (messiahism, sacrifice, eschatology, the cult of saints). At the same time, it is shown that the primary was not the spiritual, but the social and, in particular, the ideological role of the intelligentsia, which was reflected in the works of the populists (G.I. Uspensky, N.K. Mikhailovsky). It is shown that D.S. Merezhkovsky developed this tradition, but gave the intelligentsia a global and mystical sound. It is noted that the critics of this approach were V.A. Ternavtsev, A.A. Blok and Vyach. Ivanov in the 1900s; these thinkers spoke of the need for the intelligentsia to enter the Church. It is concluded that after the victory of the February Revolution of 1917, the intelligentsia began to implement their own project of transforming the church system on democratic grounds.