In his remarkable book Russia under Western Eyes. From the Bronze Horseman to the Lenin Mausoleum (1999) Martin Malia shows how the West's view of Russia, either demonized or idealized, is less revealing of Russia than of the internal demons and ideals of the West itself. Indeed, the West often projects its own questions on Russia. The contrary is also true.
The Oxford Handbook of Russian Religious Thought is precisely based on the idea that ‘whether we think of ‘Russia’ and ‘the West’ in terms of ontological opposition or of convergent and overlapping traditions, a deeper understanding and appreciation of Russia remains an important task for contemporary humanities scholarship’ (p.xxii). As its introduction makes clear, the volume is neither a book on Russian Orthodoxy nor on religions in Russia, but on how writers (novelists, poets, literary critics), artists (musicians, painters, iconographers, film makers), and thinkers (philosophers, theologians) have echoed the religious question – a question ubiquitous in Russian culture.
Part I of the Handbook sets the historical backgrounds and contexts, which were not only the framework, but also, very often, the object of Russian religious thought: Christianity in Rus’ and Muscovy (David Goldfrank), the Orthodox Church and religious life in imperial Russia (Nadieszda Kizenko) and in Revolutionary Russia (Vera Shevzov). A chapter on Russian religious life in the Soviet era (Zoe Knox) shows the diversity of religious experiences during the time of persecution.
Part II is dedicated to the nineteenth century, a period in which Russian religious thought develops its own distinctive cultural form. Essays are presented on Orthodox theology as developed by Metropolitan Filaret Drozdov (Oleg V. Bychkov), and in the context of the ecclesiastical academies (Patrick Lally Michelson), which became centres of Russian theological renewal. Besides these Church representatives are presented three currents that would mark the entire history of Russian thought: westernisers and slavophiles (G. M Hamburg and Randall A. Poole), but also nihilists (Victoria Frede). This part also offers reflections on the religious thought of the novelists Dostoevsky (George Pattison) and Tolstoy (Caryl Emerson), and ends with a reflection on the religious philosophy of Vladimir Soloviev (Catherine Evtuhov).
Part III deals with the era known as the ‘Silver Age’, marking the Russian religious-philosophical renaissance at the beginning of the twentieth century. This part includes movements such as the so-called God-seekers and God-builders (Erich Lippman), the theological notion of theosis or divinization (Ruth Coates), religious idealism and liberalism (Randall A. Poole), and the controversy over the glorification of the Name of God (imiaslavie) (Scott M. Kenworthy), all of which shaped belief patterns and artistic creativity of the period. Separate chapters are devoted to key theologians and philosophers such as Sergiei Bulgakov (Regula M. Zwahlen), Pavel Florensky (Christoph Schneider), and Nikolai Berdiaev (Ana Siljak), who assumed leadership of this renaissance. It is here too that the relationship between Russian religious thought and Judaism (Dominic Rubin) is considered.
Part IV is dedicated to art in Russian religious thought but also to the religious dimension in Russian art. Here are examined Russian religious aesthetics in the first half of the twentieth century (Victor V. Bychkov), as well as expressions of religious life in the music of late imperial Russia (Rebecca Mitchell), and the religious concerns of Russian poetry (Martha Kelly) and visual art (Clemena Antonova).
This religious-philosophical renaissance would be submerged by the revolutionary upheaval of 1917. Part V illustrates that it is in the Russian emigration that the religious ideas of the ‘Silver Age’ were preserved and built upon. Essays are dedicated to The Way, journal of the Russian emigration (Antoine Arjakovsky) and to representatives of the Neopatristic theological synthesis such as Georges Florovsky, Vladimir Lossky, and Alexander Schmemann (Paul L. Gavrilyuk). Other contributions are devoted to major émigrés figures: Berdyaev (George Pattison) and Sergiei Bulgakov (Robert F. Slesinski), who played a new role in the diaspora, but also figures such as Lev Shestov (Ramona Fotiade), Semyon Frank (Philip Boobbyer), and Lev Karsavin (Martin Beisswenger). A chapter is also dedicated to the Russian traditions of esotericism popularized through G. I. Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspensky and their followers (Steven J. Sutcliffe and John P. Willmett).
Despite persecution, religious thought did not perish entirely in the Soviet Union. Part VI looks at some of the manifestations of such thought in this period. Chapters are devoted to Alexei Losev, who maintained a public profile as a theorist of aesthetics, whilst also continuing to advance the agenda of the ‘Silver Age’ thinkers (Sr. Teresa Obolevitch), and to the religious and metaphysical aspects of Mikhail Bakhtin's thought — called his ‘theological anthropology’ (Caryl Emerson). In late Soviet times, the charismatic teaching of Alexander Men (Kateřina Kočandrle Bauer and Tim Noble) and the films of Andrei Tarkovsky (Alina Birzache) made Christian and other spiritual resources available to a wider public. The Gulag was a constant, if veiled, presence on the horizon of religious life (Andrea Gullotta).
As recognised by the editors of the Handbook, ‘the volume does not and cannot come to a conclusion’ (p.xxv). However, the last part offers three overall assessments: while Rowan Williams considers the theme of tradition in Orthodox theology, Paul Valliere examines the reception of Russian religious thought in Western theology, and Igor I. Evlampiev, offering a critical appreciation of the volume as a whole, highlights the most important characteristics of Russian religious thought – among them, the fact that Christianity itself is understood by Russian thinkers ‘as a teaching not so much about God as about the divine nature of man’ (p. 677).
Particularly interesting from an ecumenical point of view is what can be called the ‘exchange of gifts’ between Russian and Western thinkers illustrated by the chapter of Valliere on ‘The Influence of Russian Religious Thought on Western Theology in the Twentieth Century’, but present in all the volume. Valliere assesses the influence of Russian Orthodox thinkers on various streams of modern Western theology: Karl Barth and Evangelical theology, liberal Protestantism, Anglicanism, Yves Congar and early Roman Catholic ecumenism, the Nouvelle théologie and Ressourcement, and liberation theology. The essay argues that one of the most important loci of Russian influence on Western theology was the Second Vatican Council, mostly thanks to an informal dialogue between Orthodox theologians of the Russian emigration and Catholic theologians such as Congar.
As Valliere affirms, the influence of Russian thinkers on Western theology in the twentieth century ‘testifies first of all to the intellectual sophistication and spiritual depth the Russian Orthodox tradition had attained by 1917’. Second, ‘it shows how well prepared the Russians were for dialogue with the West thanks to the diligent study of Western thought by Russian thinkers of the previous century’. Finally, ‘the fruitfulness of the encounter on both sides demonstrates the charisma of working for East/West unity’. Indeed, ‘many obstacles still block the way to reunion of the churches and lasting solidarity between Russia and the West, but the prophetic work of twentieth-century Russian religious thinkers and their Western partners justifies the hope that these goals could in fact be achieved’ (p.672).
One can only welcome the publication of this Handbook, which illustrates the vitality of English-speaking scholarship on Russian cultural and intellectual life, and which will undoubtedly become a point of reference concerning one of the most distinctive aspects of this life – its religious ideas. It is particularly opportune to have included not only studies on philosophers and theologians, but also on artists and writers, who were also essential mediators of this ‘religious thought’. Indeed, as rightly notes Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev in his foreword, the book illustrates ‘how religious thought in Russia was formed without the institutions of learning familiar to the medieval West and how the Orthodox Church expressed, to use Eugene Trubetskoi's phrase, a ‘theology in colours’, a spiritual vision embodied more in images than in letters’ (p.v). In the conviction that the materials covered in this Handbook ‘are important, even essential, for understanding much of what is at issue in contemporary relationships between Russia and the West’ (p.xxvi), let us hope that it will promote also a further ‘exchange of gifts’ between Russian and Western thinkers, a requisite on the path towards Christian unity.
