Reformulating Russia

Georgii Fedotov’s Saints of Ancient Russia, Georgii Florovskii’s The Ways of Russian Theology, Nikolai Berdiaev’s The Russian Idea and Vasilii Zenkovskii’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, émigré 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.