Reformulating Russia (Russian History and Culture)

BRILL, 2011 - 328 p. ISBN10: 9004192867 ISBN13: 9789004192867 (eng)Georgii Fedotov's Saints of Ancient Russia, Georgii Florovsky's The Ways of Russian Theology, Nikolai Berdiaev's The Russian Idea and Vasily Zenkovsky's History of Russian Philosophy - these are among the most well-known and widely-read historical studies of Russian thought and culture. Having left their homeland after the Bolshevik Revolution, these four authors aimed to present their readers with a common past and thus with a common identity, and their historical works emerged out of the need for reorientation in a post-revolutionary, emigre situation. At the same time, they were to elaborate highly contrasting versions of the Russian past. By means of in-depth narrative and contextual analyses, Reformulating Russia provides a detailed examination of the visions of Russia contained in these four works.