The Russian Origins of the So-Called Post-Secular Moment: Some Preliminary Observations

Christopher Stroop - Senior Lecturer at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (Moscow, Russia), cstroop@gmail.com

This article is revised from a lecture given by the author at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, Austria on April 29, 2013 as part of the series Colloquia on Secularism. It argues that there are a number of paths through which we might investigate Russian connections to the emergence of post-secularity, the collapse of the USSR and the post-Soviet revival of Russian Orthodoxy representing only the most obvious. A thus far less developed but important approach involves unraveling an intellectual-historical trajectory focusing on the influence of anti-Bolshevik Russian religious thought in the West. The article shows that after the founding of the Soviet Union, the anti-Bolshevik Russian emigration emerged as a significant vehicle for the transmission of Russian ideas in the West, contributing to the development of an anti-secular discourse with roots in the nineteenth

Lecture delivered on April 29, 2013 at the Institute of Human Sciences (Institut fur die Wissenschaften vom Menschen) in Vienna (Austria) as part of the lecture series "Conversations on Secularism" (Colloquia on Secularism) with the support of the Austrian Science Foundation.

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century that was able to achieve some prominence thanks to the Cold War. This discourse associated religiosity with freedom and atheism with unfreedom. The author argues that this discourse, in the development of which Russian intellectuals played an important role, emerged in reaction against the perceived cultural threat of nihilism, and suggests that it is a similar concern over the possible consequences nihilism that has led to the emergence of the post-secular moment. The post-secular, then, might be defined as an intense confrontation with the problem of nihilism.

Keywords: religious, secular, post-secularism, nihilism, atheism, Communism, religion, freedom, Russian Orthodoxy, Russian religious philosophy, Russia and the West, Sergei Bulgakov, Nikolai Berdyaev, Lev Shestov, Russian emigration, Cold War, anti-secular discourse.

Problem statement

ALTHOUGH I will take a descriptive and interpretive approach rather than a normative one in this lecture, my scholarly interest in the Russian origins of the so-called "post-secular moment" is partly due to the belief that the content of the current debate about secularism and the role of religion in the public sphere (I note that these debates themselves are a matter of historical significance). a post-secular moment) can be enriched by a deeper understanding of the historical circumstances that gave rise to them1. I am convinced that post-secularism should be seen as an integral part of a broader rethinking of the concepts of "religious" and "secular/secular", which in recent years has represented one of the most important intellectual trends. I am equally convinced that if we want to enrich the research process, we will be able to-

1. For more information, see in the article: Stroop K. Historians in the service of the present time / / Experience and theory. Reflexion, Communication, Pedagogy: Proceedings of the Second Annual Conference of the Philosophical and Sociological Department of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration/Ed. by P. A. Safronov, Moscow: Delo, 2012. This article can be found on the Internet: http://www.academia/edu/26370 [accessed on 23.04.2013]. A similar claim is made by John Schmalzbauer and Kathleen Mahoney: "Through their training, religious researchers can play a special role in building bridges between the parties to conflicts in American society." See Schmalzbauer, J., and Mahoney, K. (2012) "Religion and Knowledge in the Post-Secular Academy", in Gorsky, Ph.. et al. (eds) The Post-Secular in Question: Religion in Contemporary Society. New York: New York University Press.

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In order to study Russian history and culture within the framework of such a broader project, and at the same time to enrich this project with Russian historical experience, we have a huge field of work to start right now.2 Today, this trend is already quite clear. For example, Jose Casanova was a keynote speaker at the conference "Post-Atheism: Religion, Society, and Culture in Post-Communist Eastern Europe and Eurasia" held at the Melikyan Center at Arizona State University on February 7, 2013.3 Also on June 7-9, 2013, we plan to host an international conference in Moscow, at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, which will be called "The Diversity of Russian Modernity: Rethinking Religion, Secularism and Russia's Influence in the Modern world"4.

As indicated in the subtitle of my lecture, the research I am presenting today is at a preliminary stage. I also work on thematically narrower projects, which I consider as integral elements of a larger work. I hope that today I will be able to combine a sufficient number of such elements in order to convince those present that our post-secular moment also has "Russian origins" that deserve to be studied. When I formulate the question in terms of Russian origins, I am not, of course, in any way claiming that the origins of post-secularism are exclusively Russian or Russian, although such a clarification may be disappointing for supporters of Russian messianism. The essence of my thesis is as follows: representatives of Russia and Russian ideas,

2. Although the question of which aspects of Russian historical experience should be considered "non-Western" is subject to further discussion, the attempts made by scholars to integrate a rethinking of secularism with Russian studies are seen as a response to the call of a number of leading researchers of secularism who consider the study of "non-Western" experience to be the most promising., articles by Charles Taylor and Jose Casanova: Taylor, Ch. (2011) "Western Secularity"; Casanova, J. (2011)" The Secular, Secularizations, Secularisms", in Calhoun, C., Juergensmeyer, M., and VanAntwerpen, J. (eds) Rethinking Secularism, pp. 36 and 73. New York: Oxford University Press.

3. This program can be downloaded from http://melikian.asu.edu/events/20130207/_Post-Atheism [accessed 20.04.2013].

4. At the time of publication of the text, the conference has already taken place. See: RANEPA hosted the conference "Diversity of Russian Modernity"//RANEPA website, http://www.ranepa.ru/news/item/417-mnogoobrazie-religia.html [accessed from 25.08.2013].

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along with the events of Russian history, they contributed to the emergence of a post-secular moment not only in Russia, but also far beyond its borders. And this Russian influence has not yet been fully appreciated.

I must emphasize that today I will offer only one possible approach to the broader problem of Russian origins and Russia's contribution. In the course of my presentation, I will point out other approaches. My presentation should not be considered as a complete presentation. Rather, it is an initial statement of an important problem that has arisen as a result of my previous research and current scientific work.

The story of the" Russian origins " of the post-secular moment, which I will discuss, actually consists of two interrelated stories. One of them is the story of the impact of the rise and fall of the Soviet Union. The second is an account of the trajectory of the intellectual and historical process, in which I try to trace the influence of Russian religious thinkers in the West who opposed the Bolsheviks. Of course, in order to link these two stories to post-secularism, it is necessary to define a term that has taken its place among such controversial concepts as "modernity" and "religion"over the past decade or so. These concepts are extremely important for the humanities and social sciences, but it is very difficult to define them. Let me, however, leave this in parentheses for the moment (I will return to this topic later) and first put forward a thesis that I think is relatively indisputable.

The post-secular moment would not have emerged if it were not for the persistent anti-secular impulses that have become increasingly visible over the past few decades. The rise of such sentiments has led to a crisis of secularism (which I see here as an ideology, not as a situation of disenchantment - i.e., the Weberian Entzauberung - or as an awareness of pluralism). If we take this into account, then the history of the Russian origins of the post-secular moment in its simplest version is the history of how the Soviet Union, with its persecution of religion and official atheist ideology, provoked the opposition of believers who increasingly opposed themselves to the communist Other. This process revealed an important link between antisecularism and anti-communism.

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The Cold War and the Rise of the Religious Right in the United States

The Cold War encouraged and supported an anti-secular discourse that associated religiosity with freedom and atheism with unfreedom. The United States, the former superpower rival of the Soviet Union in a bipolar world, has gone so far as to officially encourage moderate religiosity and civil religion.5 The most famous example of this is probably the introduction by the US Congress of the words "before God" in the oath of allegiance to the American flag. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed this version of the oath of office in 1954. But the idea of "Judeo-Christianity" or "America of the Three Faiths" came even earlier.6
Although not all believers in the United States were strongly anti-Soviet throughout the Cold War, many Evangelicals and Fundamentalist Protestants, as well as some Catholics, were definitely anti-Soviet, and American historians have recently linked the history of the American religious right (a group often associated with the current "resurgent religion") to the history of the United States. the Cold War. According to Angela Lahr, the anti-communism spread in the 1950s allowed evangelicals, who until then had mostly refrained from participating in American political life, to return to the American mainstream.7 The kind of anti-secularism that these evangelicals represented remained somewhat latent from the 1960s to the 1980s , at least from the point of view of the Western intellectual elite, which, in the spirit of classical secularization theory, considered religion increasingly less important. Therefore, the academic and intellectual elite tended to neglect the influence that evangelicals had on the revival of conservatism. However, the collapse of the USSR simultaneously gave

5. For the American civil religion, see Bellah, R. (1967) "Civil Religion in America", Daedalus 96 (1).

6. Herberg, W. (1955) Protestant-Catholic-Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology. Garden City, NY: Doubleday; Schultz, K. M. (2011) Tri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar America to its Protestant Promise. New York: Oxford University Press.

7. Lahr, A. (2007) Millennial Dreams and Apocalyptic Nightmares: The Cold War Origins of Political Evangelicalism. New York: Oxford University Press.

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He encouraged representatives of Christian political theology and drew them to the attention of non-religious elites and defenders of classical secular liberalism.

I am personally surprised that the collapse of the USSR, which can be interpreted in part as a reflection of the global crisis of secular political ideology, has not received more attention (and more detailed study) in interdisciplinary discussions on secularism and post-secularism8. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the revival of Orthodoxy in Russia are often discussed, but mostly in passing, while the exclusive religiosity observed in post-communist Poland is often emphasized. If less attention is paid to the end of the cold War in this respect than to the processes that unfolded in the Islamic world in the earlier period (especially the Iranian Revolution), this is probably partly because these earlier shifts, which aroused great interest among such prominent philosophers as Michel Foucault and John Rawls, are already quite significant they have convinced scholars and intellectuals of the continuing relevance of religion. The relevance of religion was recognized as a problem that philosophy must deal with9.

Other factors probably also play a role. For example, I suspect that this lack of attention is due to skepticism about the post-Soviet revival of Russian Orthodoxy. This revival is often seen simply as a formalization of Russian nationalism or as a cosmetic replacement for the ideology of Marxism-Leninism10. Our unspo-

8. In 1999, Peter Berger noted the post-Soviet revival of Russian Orthodoxy, as well as Samuel Huntington's suggestion that the cold War would be replaced by a clash of civilizations. However, Berger focused his analysis primarily on Islam, Catholicism, and the global spread of Evangelical Protestantism. Jurgen Habermas, in his recent comments, proposed a list similar to Berger's (Habermas does not mention the case of Russian Orthodoxy). See: Berger, P. L. (1999) "The Desecularization of the World: A Global Overview", in Berger, P. L. (ed.) The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, especially pp. 6 - 8, 14 - 15; Habermas, J. (2010) "An Awareness of What is Missing", in Habermas, J. et al. An Awareness of What is Missing: Faith and Reason in a Post-Secular Age. Maiden, MA: Polity Press, pp. 19 - 20.

9. См., например, Mendieta, E. (2012) "Spiritual Politics and Post-Secular Authenticity: Foucault and Habermas on Post-Metaphysical Religion", in Gorsky, Ph. et al. The Post-Secular in Question.

10. См., например: Young, С. (2013) "Putin Goes to Church", Reason Magazine, January [http://reason.com/archives/2012/12/26/putin-goes-to-church, accessed on 24.04.2013] и Mitrofanova, A. (2005) The Politicization of Russian Orthodoxy: Actors

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The lack of a deeper assessment of the role played by the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the development of post-secularism may well be due to a certain deplorable isolation that Russian studies sometimes demonstrate as a special area of academic studies.

In any case, the end of the Cold War helped to reveal the continuing social and political significance of Catholicism in Poland, as well as the revival of Christian political theology, not least in Russia itself. Back in 1973, Leszek Kolakowski suggested that regime change in Russia would lead to a revival of Orthodoxy. Although the breadth and depth of the real post-Soviet revival is debatable, it is impossible not to notice the fact of restoring the close relationship between church and state and establishing the right of the Russian Orthodox Church to a prominent place in the public life of Russia. 11 It is no coincidence that the topic of post-secularism attracts the attention of both the popular and academic Russian press and the blogosphere.12
But now I want to return to America and the anti-secular discourse that the Cold War helped foster. After giving some examples of the anti-Communist rhetoric of American Protestants, I will move on to the second part - the history of the Russian origins of the post-secular moment. This story is less specific, but it is probably more interesting, and I will try to connect it with the American processes. Here, however, history will become more fluent and fragmentary, and the question of the extent to which Russian ideas directly influence anti-communist rhetoric in the United States necessarily remains open. However,

and Ideas. Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society Series. Stuttgart: Ibidem Verlag. For an example of another approach, see Greely, A.M. (2003) Religion in Europe at the End of the Second Millenium: a Sociological Profile, pp. 80-121. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers (chapter 6 "Russia: The Biggest Revival Ever?").

11. Kolakowski, L. (1990) "The Revenge of the Sacred in Secular Culture", in Kolakowski, L. Modernity on Endless Trial, p. 67. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

12. See, for example, http: expert.ru/dossier/story/posselulearniyij-mir [accessed 20.04.2013]; State, Religion, Church in Russia and Abroad, No. 2 (30), 2012; Logos: Philosophical and Literary Journal, No. 3, 2011. The above-mentioned issue of the journal "State, Religion, Church in Russia and Abroad", edited by Dmitry Uzlaner, is devoted to the problem of "religion in a post-secular context", while the issue of the journal "Logos", of which Uzlaner was a guest editor, is devoted to post-secular philosophy.

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As I will show, the parallels between the Russian Christian anti-communist rhetoric of the early twentieth century and the anti-communist rhetoric of mid-and late-twentieth-century American Protestants are striking. I think I can show that the idea of diffuse genealogical influence versus simple convergence is at least plausible.

But first, let's return to the examples of American rhetoric.

On September 27, 1958, "Pastor of America" Billy Graham preached a sermon on religious revival called " What's Going Wrong in the World?". In this sermon, Graham confidently stated: "The racial problem is one of the symptoms. War is a symptom. Crime is also a symptom. And the sociological problem is a symptom. The cause of the disorder is deeper." Graham continued, " Human nature is sick. Sinfulness, iniquity, falsehood, blasphemy, falsehood, and imprudence - combined, these evils cause wars and social tension. Jesus said that these vices are rooted within a person."

"This is where communism and Christianity come into a fierce clash." In Graham's interpretation, Marxism considered the problems of the world exclusively in social categories. Christianity, on the other hand, insisted that "social problems are just symptoms of a deeper problem" that comes from within. The problem that Jesus called sin. "G-R-E-H-O-M," Graham proclaimed in the booming voice of a Southern American, reminiscent of hellfire. 13 Although Graham's understanding of the sinfulness of human nature has a strongly Augustinian-Protestant tinge that is hardly compatible with the Orthodox view of original sin, the idea expressed by Graham in this fragment has a very different meaning. the idea that social problems are symptoms of a spiritual illness has its predecessors among the religious thinkers of late Imperial Russia. Nikolai Berdyaev wrote in 1909: "Political liberation is possible only in connection with and on the basis of spiritual and cultural revival." 14 Berdyaev's remark was part of a sharp criticism of the revolutionary intelligentsia.-

13. Graham, B. (1958) "What's Wrong with the World" [http://www2.wheaton.edu/bgc/archives/docs/bg-charlotte/0927.html, accessed on 21.04.2013].

14. Berdyaev N. Filosofskaya istina i inteligentskaya pravda [Philosophical truth and intellectual truth]//Milestones: A collection of articles on the Russian Intelligentsia, Moscow, 1909 (reprint: Frankfurt am Main: Posev, 1967), p. 22 (footnote added to the second edition).

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To use a phrase borrowed from Graham, Berdyaev clearly saw problems only as "social" issues, whereas Berdyaev, who would become known in interwar Europe as a Christian existentialist and philosopher of freedom, maintained the primacy of spiritual reality throughout his life.

Fast forward to the early 1980s and take a quick look at Francis Schaffer's Christian Manifesto. One of the intellectual founding fathers of the American religious right, Schaffer, who spent most of his adult life in Switzerland, was concerned at the time about the supposedly progressive godlessness that he believed was driving America toward totalitarianism. In formulating his position, Schaffer often referred to the Russian experience as a warning. According to him,

humanists strive for "freedom", but their" freedom", devoid of Christian consensus, leads to chaos or to slavery established by the state (or elite). Humanism, which lacks the ultimate, absolute foundation of values or law, always leads to chaos. Then chaos naturally leads to some form of authoritarianism, which is necessary to manage chaos... Humanism, with its erroneous conception of ultimate reality, has no intrinsic reason to be interested in the individual, the human being. The object of natural interest of humanism is two collectives: the state and society 15.

Schaffer went on to state:

But the humanistic worldview inevitably leads in the direction of statism. This is because humanists who do not have a God must put something at the center of their worldview, and this something inevitably turns out to be society, government, or the state. An ideal example in this regard is Russia 16.

15. Schaeffer, F. A. (1982) A Christian Manifesto. Wheaton, IL.: Crossway Books.

16. Schaeffer, F. A. A Christian Manifesto.

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Evidence of Russian influence on Western antisecular discourse

The above words are not just arguments about Russia. These are essentially Russian-born arguments - or at least arguments that were Russian some seventy years before Schaffer repeated them. Leading Christian intellectuals in pre-revolutionary Russia were deeply concerned with liberation and freedom and sought to prove that the freedom and dignity of the individual can only be based on a holistic religious worldview. 17 For example, in the same 1909 work, Berdyaev proclaimed: "After all, our intelligentsia valued freedom and professed a philosophy in which there is no place for freedom." Berdyaev also accused the revolutionary intelligentsia of adhering to a kind of ersatz religion, of trying to establish a Kingdom of God on earth, the utilitarian and atheistic premises of which would leave no place for the value of the individual. 18 When the real events of the Bolshevik coup and its consequences confirmed the correctness of these predictions and, apparently, the incompatibility of atheism with the protection of the dignity of the human person, the Russians Christian intellectuals did not hesitate to tell this to Russians and foreigners alike.19
Of course, not all of the ideas contained in the above statements of Schaffer were reproductions of the original Russian ideas. And by the time Schaffer came up with these ideas, they were already "in the air," making it difficult to talk about direct influences. If there was any direct Russian influence on Schaffer's view that without a system of higher values, the state would put itself in the place of God, this influence may have come, directly or indirectly,from Dostoevsky's work. 20 For example, you can recall Shigalev's statement from the 1872 novel

17. This was one of the main themes of the collection "Milestones" published in 1909, which enjoyed considerable popularity and was widely discussed. For the reception of this collection, see: Read, Ch. (1979) Religion, Revolution and the Russian Intelligentsia, 1900-1912: The Vekhi Debate and Its Intellectual Background. London: The Macmillan Press, Ltd.

18. Berdyaev N. Filosofskaya istina i inteligentskaya pravda [Philosophical truth and intellectual truth], pp. 18-20.

19. For an early example of such judgments, see in the book published under the editorship of P. B. Struve: From the Depths: A collection of articles on the Russian Revolution, Moscow, 1918.

20. After this suggestion was made, I was informed by Schaffer's son, Frank, that, according to his recollections, my father "never came across any of the Russian religious writers. He had

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"Demons": "Coming out of boundless freedom, I conclude with boundless despotism. I will add, however, that there can be no other solution to the social formula than my own " 21. Of course, in the 1980s of the nineteenth century, Nietzsche also warned about the dangers of the state as a "new idol" in his book "Thus Spake Zarathustra", and this idea (of course, in part as a reaction to Hegelianism) was borrowed directly from Nietzsche by numerous religious and atheist thinkers. I have no doubt that both Nietzsche and Dostoevsky had a direct impact on the discussions that developed among Russian Christians at the beginning of the 20th century.22
Meanwhile, Schaffer's suggestion that a secular liberal society cannot last is also reminiscent of the ideas expressed by T. S. Eliot in The Idea of a Christian Society, published in 1940. In this book, Eliot presents liberalism as a doctrine that has solved a useful historical problem, but a purely negative, critical problem. Fulfilling this mission has made liberalism inherently unstable and ultimately unviable. (This view of the entirely negative content of liberalism is also reminiscent of the thoughts of Thomas Carlyle, who had a significant influence on Russian Christian thinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.) Eliot identified either Christianity or "paganism," by which he meant totalitarianism, as candidates for the place of liberalism.23 The same concern about the inability to rein in the state and prevent it from deifying itself in the absence of religion was shared by many prominent French intellectuals

general knowledge of their names and works, but that was all " (Personal correspondence with Frank Schaffer). Francis Schaffer himself died in 1984.

21. Dostoevsky F. M. Demons //Dostoevsky F. M. Collected works in 15 vols. Vol. 7. Leningrad: Nauka, 1990, p. 252.

22. See, for example, E. Trubetskoy. State mysticism and the temptation of future slavery. Regarding articles by P. B. Struve and N. A. Berdyaev//Russian thought. 1917. N38 (1). For a broader context of polemics, see: Nationalism: Polemics 1909-1917 / Ed. by M. A. Kolerov. Moscow: House of Intellectual Books, 2000. See also: Nietzsche, F. (2005) Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Tran. by Graham Parkes, pp. 43 - 45. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005 (First Part, 11, "On the New Idol").

23. Eliot, T. S. (1940) The Idea of a Christian Society. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company.

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the interwar period and the mid-twentieth century (not least Albert Camus, who, of course, did not believe in God, but was deeply concerned about nihilism24).

In The Idea of a Christian Society, Eliot refers to the French intellectual, neo-thomist theologian, and personalist philosopher Jacques Maritain as a person who directly influenced his own thinking.25 This brings us back to the Russians, because, as we know from Catherine Baird's research, Maritain (whose achievements include his participation in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, later adopted by the United Nations) was directly influenced by Berdyaev, who played an important role in the intellectual life of France in the period between the World Wars.26
I am afraid that such a quick review of the ideas of several intellectuals may have caused some vertigo, but I did it to show that we are dealing with an anti - secular (some would say anti-modern) discourse that goes back to the 19th century. Russian intellectuals have undoubtedly contributed to the formation and development of this discourse, which has gained new strength in the current post-secular moment. I think that what connects the first half of the twentieth century most strongly (and at a fundamental level) with the present time is the anxiety that I have elsewhere described as "nihilism perceived as a threat to culture"27. I am not referring only to those currents of thought that explicitly defined themselves as nihilistic-of course, such currents were an important part of the intellectual history of nineteenth-century Russia. I am talking about the more fundamental problem of the unattainability of absolute truth, which could be used to justify absolute values.28
24. См., например, Camus, A. (1964) "Reflections on the Guillotine", in Kaufman, W. (ed.) Religion from Tolstoy to Camus. New York: Harper and Row. For more detailed comments on Camus, see Siljak, A. (2012)" What is Religion?", Sacramentals Symposium, October [http://sacramentalities.org/blog/october-2012-symposium, accessed on 27.04.2013].

25. Eliot, T. S. The Idea of a Christian Society, p. vi.

26. Baird, C. (1995) "Religious Communism? Nicolai Berdyaev's Contribution to Esprit's Interpretation of Communism", Canadian Journal of History 30 (1).

27. Stroop, Ch. (2013) "Nationalist War Commentary as Russian Religious Thought: The Religious Intelligentsia's Politics of Providentialism", Russian Review 72 (1): 100.

28. On nihilism in the context of 19th-century Russia, see: Kline, G. (1969) "The Varieties of Instrumental Nihilism", in Edie, J. M. (ed.) New Essays in Phenomenology: Studies in

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In the first half of the twentieth century, many intellectuals saw nihilism as the root of the social evils that caused the decline of Western civilization, and linked nihilism to the rise of communism and fascism. For example, Maritain is one of the Catholic thinkers quoted by James Chappell in a recent article entitled " The Catholic Origins of Totalitarianism Theory in Interwar Europe." As Chappell points out, the theory of totalitarianism, now largely overcome, but which provided the theoretical basis for a large number of scientific works, is considered, in general, a secular discourse.29
Thus, identifying the religious origins of the theory of totalitarianism is an exciting task, one of many new trends that have emerged with the "religious turn" in modern historiography. But this turn is itself a product of what is called "post-secular academia." 30 Of course, I suspect that theologians are well aware (and have always been) of the Christian critique of totalitarianism in the early twentieth century. We are at the very beginning of the process of introducing religious ideas taken from isolated seminaries and theological faculties into scientific circulation, and returning these ideas to intellectual history. And they definitely belong to intellectual history because of their social significance. In this sense, we still have a lot of work to do. In my own research, I have discovered some of the origins of the theory of totalitarianism in Russian Orthodoxy.31 It is quite possible that these Russian origins were the first in time. In the end, when in the 20s of the XX century and later, Europeans and Americans wanted to understand that about-

the Philosophy of Experience. Chicago: Quandrangle Books.

29. Chappel, J. (2011) "The Catholic Origins of Totalitarianism Theory in Interwar Europe", Modern Intellectual History 8 (3): 561 - 590.

30. Clayton, M. (2002) "Scholars Get Religion", The Christian Science Monitor, February 26 [http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0226/p12so1-leh1.html, accessed on 24.04.2013]; Howard, Th. A. (2006) "'A Religious Turn' in Modern European Historiography", Church History 75 (1); Schmalzbauer, J. and Mahoney, K. "Religion and Knowledge in the Post-Secular Academy"; Haberski, R. (2013) "Why Academia Found God", U. S. Intellectual History Blog, March 15 [http://s-usih.org/2013/03/why-academia-found-god.html, accessed on 24.04.2013].

31. One of the most interesting Russian texts that examines totalitarianism in detail (and this is the term used in the text) is the work of Sergei Bulgakov " The Apocalypse of John: an Experience of Dogmatic interpretation "(Paris: YMCA Press, 1948).

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coming from the USSR, they turned to Russian emigrants. Now I will briefly describe how this happened.

The politically unstable, revolutionary climate in Russia during the late Empire period caused the rise of anti-nihilistic and anti-secular discourse, a kind of Russian political theology that was socially important. In the last years of the old order, the barely established public sphere in Russia (especially in the conditions of greater freedom that came after 1905) was saturated with discussions about modernization, secularization, and the relationship between religion, state, and people.32 These discussions took place in the European context. Russian participants in these discussions have spent a lot of time abroad and attended lectures by leading European intellectuals like Wilhelm Windelband and Edmund Husserl. Russian intellectuals published their works in European periodicals. For example, it was at this time that Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov (1871-1944; since 1918 - a priest), who became one of the leaders of the ecumenical movement between the World Wars, took part in European disputes about the methodology of social sciences.33 It is known that prominent Western European intellectuals also visited Russian capitals.

Russian religious philosophy, which is not as exotic as it is sometimes portrayed, was deeply involved in these discussions. Leading representatives of Russian religious philosophy were Christian apologists who tried to defend the validity of faith against the onslaught of growing atheism, as well as defenders of a kind of Russian civil religion: they believed that only a State based on religious and moral principles could ensure the well-being of its citizens. Finding the roots of social evils in secularization and nihilism, these thinkers longed for the reunification of the Christian churches and the re-Christianization of Europe. For many of them, these goals were associated with the neo-Slavophil Russian national messianism, with the belief that Russia was called to the world.-

32. On the relative freedom of the press in Russia after 1905, see Costello, D. R. (1978). "Novoe Vremia and the Conservative Dilemma, 1911 - 1914", Russian Review 37 (A): 31.

33. For Sergey Bulgakov's participation in the European discussion of methodology, see Evtuhov C. (1997) The Cross and the Sickle: Sergey Bulgakov and the Fate of Russian Religious Philosophy, p. 184. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

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on Providence for the awakening of the spiritual life of the West and ultimately of the entire world. As evidence that these thinkers, or at least the Russian literary tradition, had a certain and lasting success in popularizing the idea of a special mission for Russia, we can point to references to this idea in popular culture, for example, in the series of comics and films "Hellboy". The fate of the hero of these comics and films, apparently, is that he will have to start the apocalypse, which can only be done in Russia.

In any case, this Russian national messianism, justified by references to Providence, led to the fact that representatives of this trend perceived the First World War as a battle between Christianity (embodied primarily in Russia) and the nihilism of modern civilization (embodied primarily in Germany).34. Of course, the October Revolution quickly changed this formula. According to Russian religious thinkers, the war was God's punishment inflicted on the modern godless civilization, and this view of the war was widespread among believers not only in Russia. In 1917, the revolution was a continuation of this punishment that fell on Russia. As is well documented, these events prompted Christians of various faiths to seek means and methods of cooperation between the two world Wars in order to counter common threats, not the least of which was communism.35
When the Bolsheviks came to power, they did not so much suppress these ideas, which were already part of broader European intellectual trends, as they sent them abroad. At the end of 1922, the Bolsheviks expelled more than 100 prominent intellectuals from Russia. The intellectuals expelled from Russia continued to develop their ideas not only in the circles of the Russian Orthodox Church.

34. For the responses of leading Russian Christian intellectuals to the First World War and other events described in the preceding paragraphs, see Stroop, Ch. (2012) Providential Empire: Russia's Religious Intelligentsia and the First World War. Ph. D. Diss. Stanford University. The text can be downloaded from http://searchworks.Stanford.edu/view/9616719.

35.For the war as a powerful incentive for ecumenical cooperation and efforts to reunite churches, as well as for the Russian interpretation of the Bolshevik triumph as God's punishment, see Geffert, B. (2010) Eastern Orthodox and Anglicans: Diplomacy, Theology, and the Politics of Interwar Ecumenism. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press (especially ch. 2, "Outbreak of Ecumenism", pp. 30-48).

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Many Europeans were willing to listen to the Russian intellectuals ' interpretations of the unfolding events, but also in European intellectual and religious circles. 36 For example, the brilliant Russian-Jewish existentialist Lev Isaakovich Shestov, in a letter from Geneva in 1920, described the situation around Russian intellectuals in Europe as follows::

Ever since I arrived in Europe, everyone, both compatriots and foreigners, with whom I meet, invariably asks the question: what is Bolshevism, what is happening in Russia? You have seen everything directly, with your own eyes-tell us, we do not know anything and do not understand anything. Tell us everything and, if possible, calmly and impartially 37.

Although Shestov wrote in Russian,this book became available in French in the same year.

Another indication of Western intellectuals ' interest in Russian emigrants is a letter written by Oswald Spengler to Berdyaev on May 22, 1923: "During my next stay there [in Berlin] I will be very happy to meet you and your friends, and especially to talk to you about the religious problems of modern and future Russia. " 39
So, if you were to ask these Russian emigrants about Bolshevism, what answer would you get? If Shestov's pamphlet " What is Bolshevism?" If it can serve as an indication here, then you would hear from Shestov that Bolshevism is parasitic, bureaucratic, reactionary, incompatible with freedom, essentially destructive and incapable of creation. Shestov would have added a warning that the troubles caused by Bolshevism could soon befall Europe. From Berdyaev, you would hear (most likely, with many incoherent repetitions) that " re-

36. For a detailed scientific report on these expulsions from Russia, see Finkel, S. (2007) On the Ideological Front: The Russian Intelligentsia and the Making of the Soviet Public Sphere. New Haven: Yale University Press.

37. Shestov L. What is Bolshevism? Berlin, 1920. p. 5.

38. Chestov, L. (1920) Quest que le bolshevism? Berlin: O. Eisner.

39. Oswald Spengler's letter to N. A. Berdyaev, May 7, 1923. RGALI, fund 1496, inventory. 1, документ 833, лист 1. "Ich wurde mich sehr freuen, bei meinem nachsten Aufenthalt dort Sie und Ihre Freuende kennen zu lernen und insbesondere mit Ihnen fiber die religosen Probleme des heutigen und kommenden Russland zu sprechen".

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religion cannot be a private matter, as modern history would have it, " and that communism understood the all-encompassing nature of religion. Thus, communism "requires a' sacred 'society, a 'sacred' culture, subordination of all aspects of life to the religion of the devil, the religion of the antichrist." In this respect, communism has already gone beyond the present and entered the "new Middle Ages", a religious, in fact, era, during the transition to which, according to Berdyaev, the world was entering the 20s of the XX century.40
From some Russian Christians, you would probably get the answer that without faith in God, a person is just an animal and behaves like an animal. This idea has its roots in public discussions in Russia in the last years of empire 41. Of course, you might find a similar thought directly in Dostoevsky, a religious thinker who had a profound influence in the West, not least in connection with his critique of nihilism. Dostoevsky's famous suggestion that if there is no God, then everything is allowed posed a problem that many believers and non-believers took very seriously.

But if in the first half of the 20th century you were a person who was so deeply interested in Dostoevsky that you read not only his books, but also books about him, your understanding of Dostoevsky might well have been shaped by Berdyaev's influence. In 1918, Berdyaev called Dostoevsky "a prophet of the Russian revolution" who "understood that revolutionary moralism has its reverse side, revolutionary immoralism, and that the similarity of revolutionary holiness to Christian holiness is the deceptive similarity of the Antichrist to Christ."42 A few years later, in 1923, Berdyaev developed similar theses in a book about Dostoevsky's worldview. This book has a chapter on revolution and socialism. The book was translated into German in 1925, French in 1929, and English in 193443.
40. Berdyaev N. A. New Middle Ages//Berdyaev N. A. Smysl istorii [The meaning of history]. New Middle Ages, Moscow: Canon+, OI "Rehabilitation", 2002, pp. 229-230.

41. See, for example, the work of Prince Evgeny Nikolaevich Trubetskoy "Return to Philosophy" in the book: Philosophical collection to Lev Mikhailovich Lopatin on the thirtieth anniversary of scientific and pedagogical activity. From the Moscow Psychological Society. 1811-1911. Moscow: Kushnerev, 1912. p. 9.

42. Berdyaev N. Spirits of the Russian Revolution//From the depths [http://www.vehi.net/berdyaev/duhi.html, accessed from 14.05.2013].

43. Berdyaev N. The worldview of Dostoevsky. Prague: YMCA-Press, 1923; Berdjaev, N. А. (1925) Die Weltanschauung Dostojewskijs. Transl. Wofgang E. Groeger. Munich: Beck; Berdiaeff, N. (1929) L'Esprit de Dostoievski. Tr. Lucienne Julien Cain. Paris, Saint-Mi-

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If you had asked Bulgakov your question about the meaning of the Russian revolution, you might have been told that the revolution was "an unqualified judgment of history" and a spiritual disease, but these words would have been accompanied by a hopeful statement: "Every serious illness that cannot be stopped has a crisis, dangerous and debilitating, but if everything goes well, the crisis finally leads to recovery." On the other hand, this analysis could well be combined with a plea for financial help and a stern warning: "If... if you do not want the red leprosy to consume you, the peoples of Europe and America, sooner or later, you must even now give us Christian help."44 And there were Christians in the West who were ready to provide such help.

Everything I have just quoted from Bulgakov is taken from an article published in 1924 in English. These quotes show that the Russian emigration had, according to Mark Raev, an internal mission, "which was to preserve the values and traditions of Russian culture and continue their creative life for the sake of the spiritual progress of the motherland." 45 But the fulfillment of this mission inevitably brought leading Russian emigrants into contact with representatives of the West, who, as I have already shown, often sought such contact themselves. One of the most important partnerships was the collaboration of Russian Christians with the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), which played an important role in the ecumenical movement.

Thanks to recent research by Matthew Miller, we have a good general understanding of the relationship between the YMCA and Russian emigration.46 In addition to providing direct humanitarians-

chel; Berdyaev, N. (1934) Dostoevski/: An Interpretation. Tr. Donald Attwater. London and New York: Sheed & Ward.

44. Bulgakov, S. (1924) "The Old and the New: A Study in Russian Religion", The Slavonic Review 2 (6): 507, 512 - 513.

45. Raeff, M. (1990) Russia Abroad: A Cultural History of the Russian Emigration, 1919-1939, p. 4. New York: Oxford University Press [Raeff M. Russia Abroad: A Cultural History of the Russian emigration. 1919 - 1939. М.: Прогресс-Академия, 1994-С. 14 - 15]. См. также: Finkel, S. (2010) "Nikolai Berdiaev and the Philosophical Tasks of the Russian Emigration", in Hamburg, G. M., and Poole, R. A. (eds) A History of Russian Philosophy, 1830-1930: Faith, Reason, and the Defense of Human Dignity. New York: Cambridge University Press.

46. Miller, M. L. (2012) The American YMCA and Russian Culture: The Preservation and Expansion of Orthodox Christianity, 1900-1940. New York: Lexington Books.

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The YMCA helped Russian expats preserve and develop Russian culture and Orthodox traditions through the publication of books, as well as the Path magazine. The editor of Puti and the Russian section of YMCA-Press was Berdyaev, who in this capacity worked closely with leaders of the American Youth Association (these people, who held the positions of "secretaries", had connections in sponsorship and government circles).

My own current research project, based primarily on materials from the University of Illinois archives of Paul Anderson and Donald and Helen Lowry, is dedicated to demonstrating how much influence Berdyaev had in shaping American philanthropists ' understanding of communism from a Christian perspective. Time does not allow me to go into details, but I want to note that Lauri, who translated some of Berdyaev's works into English, was deeply devoted to popularizing Berdyaev's ideas in the United States, and this story takes us back to the Cold War period.

The YMCA was a moderate religious organization with a penchant for ecumenism, and Lauri can be described as a moderate anti-communist. For example, working with Soviet refugees from German concentration camps in the 1940s, Lauri could admire their Soviet patriotism, which he called " the burning flame." Concerned that the young soldiers were missing out on school education, Lauri encouraged the Swiss government to set up a Russian school based on Soviet textbooks. But at the same time, Lauri remained a devout Christian who opposed Soviet atheism.47 Berdyaev, whom Lauri represented in the United States, had a very similar worldview. And this cannot be considered a serious distortion of the" real " Berdyaev: one can understand why these two people became close. After all, Berdyaev never accepted that a nihilistic worldview could serve as a fundraising tool.-

[Robert Bird]. YMCA and the Fate of Russian religious Thought (1906-1947) / / Research on Russian Historical Thought. Yearbook for 2000.

47. Letter from Donald A. Lowry to unidentified friends, 3 May 1944, Geneva. The email is stored in the University of Illinois University Archives (UIUC). Donald, A. and Helen, O. Lowrie Papers 15/35/53, box 4, folder "1944". According to this letter, when Lauri came into contact with Russian refugees, he discussed religious issues only when they were raised by the refugees themselves.

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Yes, a healthy society, but he also always opposed military intervention in the USSR and was convinced that Russian culture should be renewed from within. After Berdyaev's death in 1948, Lauri, with the support of the YMCA, founded an organization called the Berdyaev Society. Among the statutory goals of this society was to support people devoted to the development of Berdyaev's "ideology" .48 Despite Lauri and Berdyaev's reticent attitude toward the Soviet Union, it is likely that more conservative anti-communists read their work to understand communism.

In the 1960s, Lauri published an anthology of Berdyaev's works with commentaries, as well as his biography, which is often criticized for its hagiographic (hagiographic) character49. In my opinion, we can make the best use of Berdyaev's biography written by Lauri if we stop treating it primarily as a secondary source that has certain shortcomings, and start treating it as a primary source that contains not only first-hand memoir information, but also information about the impact that Russian Christian ideas have on the world. provided in America and Great Britain during the Cold War. How successful was Lauri in his project to spread Berdyaev's ideas? I think that this issue should be left open at the moment. As for me personally, I plan, if possible, to study the reception that Berdyaev received in the United States and Europe.

For now, I can only say with certainty that the ideas that Berdyaev expressed were part of a broad anti-secular and anti-nihilistic discourse dating back to the 19th century, the content of which seemed true to many people after the horrors of the first half of the 20th century. For many representatives of this discourse, the Soviet Union has over time become the most threatening, real-life political and social embodiment of nihilism. This happened even though anti-secular discourse has quietly left the mainstream of public life. But today, during our post-

48. Constitution of the N. Berdiaev Society. UIUC, Paul B. Anderson Papers 15/35/54, box 5, Folder "Nicholas Berdyaev Society, 1946, 1946 - 53, 1956 - 61".

49. Lowrie, D. A. (i960) A Rebellious Prophet: A Life of Nicolai Berdyaev. New York: Harper & Brothers; Lowrie, D.A. (ed.) (1965) Christian Existentialism: a Berdyaev Anthology. London: G.Allen & Unwin.

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at a time of a secular moment, in a period of economic crisis and simultaneously identity crisis (the emergence of which, in my opinion, can be partly attributed to the end of the cold war), in an era of uncertainty associated with globalization and the emergence of a multipolar world, this discourse is returning in full force.

Concluding remarks on postsecularity

At the beginning of this lecture, I promised that I would not leave the term "postsecular" without a definition. Therefore, instead of the traditional conclusion, I would like to share my thoughts on the concept of the post-secular. In the course of writing the text, I have become more comfortable with this concept, which does not necessarily imply that the "immanent frame" described by Charles Taylor has generally ceased to define the parameters of modern experience, or that pluralism is no longer a fundamental condition of modernity, in which religious faith is only one of the most important elements of modern life. there are 50 different options to choose from. Nor is it necessary to associate the term with a defense of antisecular ideology, although the potential for such a link is alarming to some. Thus, Eduards Mendieta notes that "the use of the term' post-secular ' in a positive sense causes an involuntary reaction of rejection, since this term is considered to imply the possibility and necessity of merging religion with the state "51. And although Mendieta is one of those who believes that post-secularism is compatible with post-metaphysical and post-fundamentalistas a post-foundational philosophy and even an integral part of that philosophy, political theology is becoming increasingly attractive in periods like the one we are living in.52
50. Taylor, Ch. (2007) A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

51. Mendieta, E. "Spiritual Politics and Post-Secular Authenticity". Refutation of the simplified equalization of post-secularism with antisecular ideology, see: Uzlaner D. Once again about the post-secular [http://religo.ru/columns/12352, accessed from 20.04.2013].

52. That" where large-scale cultural transformations pose a threat to identity, religion can provide resources to overcome such transformations " has long been known by sociologists of religion. See: Wallis, R. and Bruce, S. (1992) "Secularization: The Orthodox Model", in Bruce, S. (ed.) Secularization and Modernization: Sociologists and Historians Debate the Secularization Thesis, p. 18. Oxford:

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At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, European intellectual life was experiencing what the intellectual historian H. Stuart Hughes called a "revolt against positivism"53. This period was similar to our time in at least one very important respect. At that time, as now, many were gravely concerned that the secularization that accompanied modernity had led Western civilization astray - as well as Russia, to the extent that it followed the Western path - and that this threatened disastrous moral consequences associated with the decline of traditional faith, traditional families, and strong communities. Take, for example, the views of Sergei Bulgakov (1912) on "the disintegration of the old foundations - religion, family, morality, and everyday life." Bulgakov attributed all this directly to the spread of atheism among young people under the influence of "intellectual nihilism." 54
Leaving aside the phrase "intellectual nihilism", these considerations do not seem out of place today. This is what Mendieta and Jonathan Van Antwerp point out when they speak of the "recent and resounding return of political theology." 55 Indeed, political theology is now the focus of intellectual history specialists, philosophers, and adherents of secular liberalism, including, for example, Mark Lill, who discovers the predominantly Protestant origins of twentieth-century political theology, or Jurgen Habermas, who speaks of political theology in relation to Catholicism in general and to the ideas of Karl Schmitt in particular. particulars 56. Both Lilla and Habermas recognize that-

Clarendon Press. For more information on the important relationship between religious rhetoric and shared identity in a sense of crisis, see Murphy, A. R. (2009) Prodigal Nation: Moral Decline and Divine Punishment from New England to 9/11. New York: Oxford University Press.

53. Hughes, H.S. (1958) Consciousness and Society: The Reorientation of European Social Thought, 1890 - 1930. New York: Knopf. I am not the first to point out Russian involvement in this European phenomenon. See Evtuhov, C. The Cross and the Sickle, pp. 16, 153, 246.

54. S. Bulgakov At the elections. (From the diary)// Russian Thought. 1912. 33. N 11. pp. 189-190.

55. Mendieta E., and Van Antwerpen, J. (2011) "Introduction", in Mendieta, E. and Van Antwerpen, J. (eds) The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere, p. 4. New York: Columbia University Press.

56. Lilla, M. (2007) The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West. New York: Alfred A. Knopf; Habermas, J. "'The Political': The Rational Meaning of a Questionable

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the appeal of political theology in times like this-times of crisis and the breakdown of public relations. But by pointing out the connection between anti-liberal political theology and Nazism, Lilla and Habermas are, of course, trying to warn us of the danger of falling prey to the temptation that lurks in political theology.

This temptation is real. Some scholars who reinterpret secularism question the essential relationship between secularism and democracy, while others who want to" rehabilitate " secularism go far beyond what Habermas and other classical liberal theorists are willing to endorse in terms of the relationship between religion and the state. 57 I am inclined to think that there is good reason to change the clear boundaries established by early Rawls, but the very important question remains: where should we stop?

However, there are people who, contrary to Habermas, argue that as a result of postmodernism's subversion of all absolutes, there is now no rational basis for making a clear distinction between philosophy and theology. This is the position of Dmitry Uzlaner, one of the leading contemporary Russian researchers on the relationship between religion and secularism. Since my lecture focuses on the Russian origins of the post-secular moment, I should probably note in passing that very similar arguments were made by Russian Christians in the early twentieth century.58 Uzlaner is one of the main participants of the research project "Rethinking the Secular in the Russian and Western context", implemented with the support of the John Templeton Foundation (the Foresight project-

Inheritance of Political Theology", in Mendieta, E. and VanAntwerpen, J. The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere (о Карле Шмитте см. особенно pp. 19 - 23). См. также: Poole, R. A. (2013) "Russian Political Theology in an Age of Revolution", in Aizlewood, R. and Coates, R. (eds) Landmarks Revisited: The Vekhi Symposium One Hundred Years On. Academic Studies Press.

57. См., например, Bhargava, R. (2011) "Rethinking Secularism"; Stepan, A. (2011) "The Multiple Secularisms of Modern Democratic and Non-Democratic Regimes", in Calhoun. C. et al. (eds) Rethinking Secularism.

58. Uzlaner D. Introduction to Post-secular Philosophy//Logo. 2011. N3-An example of the statement made in Russia at the beginning of the XX century that the religious way of cognition is equivalent to secular reason, see: Ern V. Nature of thought//Theological Bulletin. 1913. 22. N3. pp. 530-531; 22; 1913. N4. pp. 800-43; 1913. N5. pp. 107-120.

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It includes academic visits by leading Western secularist theorists, including Ch. Taylor, to Russia and Ukraine)59.

Undoubtedly, the current post-secular moment is associated with the blurring of the boundaries between "autonomous" scientific disciplines and the desire for interdisciplinary research, which often turns out to be fruitful. As for the boundary between philosophy and theology, it should be noted that John Schmalzbauer and Kathleen Mahoney put forward arguments similar to those of Uzlaner. They write: "In the postmodern era, scientists are challenging the boundaries between faith and knowledge, recognizing the importance of religion as a human phenomenon and mode of cognition." Noting the increasing presence of religion "across the entire spectrum of the humanities," they note, " Nowhere is the return of religion more impressive than in philosophy." Still, we should be careful here, since at least two-thirds of American philosophers are not theists, and although I do not have the relevant data for European countries, I would be very surprised if there are more theists among the philosophers of any European country than in the United States 60.

Discussing the question of the relationship between philosophy and the phenomenon of post-secularism, Uzlaner focuses on the history of philosophy as such, although he notes that the question of the post-secular can be considered from a political and sociological point of view. I have no doubt that the post-secular has an extremely important history that concerns philosophy itself. Within this history, one can even look for Russian origins-beyond those already mentioned; especially with regard to existentialism, in which Berdyaev played a prominent role, as well as Russian followers of phenomenology - such as Gustav Shpet, who remained in the Soviet Union, and Yevsey Shor, who left the USSR. By the way, Schor was not only a phenomenologist and a student of Husserl, he actively promoted Berdyaev's ideas in the German-speaking world and translated some of the works of this thinker into German. Russian Jew and passionate pochita-

59. For more information, see: http://russ.ru/Mirovaya-povestka/Pereosmyslenie-svetskogo-v-rossijskom-i-zpadnom-konteks te (accessed from 20.04.2013).

60. Schmalzbauer, J. and Mahoney, K. "Religion and Knowledge in the Post-Secular Academy", in Gorski, Ph. et al. (eds) The Post-Secular in Question.

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A professor of German philosophy, Schor left for Palestine after the Nazis came to power, from where he continued to correspond with Berdyaev. 61
Finally, returning to the question of what is post-secular, I would like to say that, although I recognize the importance of the "philosophical history" outlined by Uzlaner, I am not ready to recognize the absolute primacy of this approach. According to Uzlaner, "the event is post-secular in nature... a more fundamental philosophical dimension, without which no public or political discussion would have any basis. " 62 For my part, while I believe that ideas are critical to understanding the post-secular, I would prefer to benefit more from the neo-Weberian approach, which requires looking at the interplay of ideas, institutions, and economic systems. environmental conditions and other social factors. And yet, while I do not go as far as Uzlaner in recognizing the primacy of philosophy in the event of the emergence of the post-secular (while simultaneously emphasizing the blurring of the boundaries between philosophy and theology), I would go further than Habermas in recognizing the pervasive influence of religious ideas in post-secular science and post-secular society.

Habermas ' interpretation of post-secular society seems to be based on what Michael Roeder and Josef Schmidt call "the fact that modern societies should be able to create a new society.".. religions should be expected to continue to exist and should engage religions in constructive dialogue. " 63 This formulation makes religion different from modern society, which, given the empirical basis, is egregiously inaccurate. Rather, religion remains a part of modern societies, a part of that internally dialectical phenomenon that we call modernity.64 During periods like the beginning of the 20th century

61. Some letters can be found in RGALI, fund 1496, inventory 1, doc. 831 (Letters of Shor Evsey Davidovich to N. A. Berdyaev). On Schor, see also: Segal, D. (1994)" Vyacheslav Ivanov and the Schor family", Cahiers du monde russe: Russie, Empire russe, Union sovietique, Etats independants, 35 (1-2); Jantzen, V. Russian students of E. Husserl from the Freiburg"Holy Community". Fragments of correspondence between D. I. Chizhevsky and E. D. Shor//Logos. 2006. N52.

62. Uzlaner D. Introduction to Postsecular Philosophy, p. 3.

63. Reder, M. and Schmidt, J. (2010) "Habermas and Religion", in: Habermas, J. et al. An Awareness of What is Missing, p. 7.

64. On modernity as a dialectical phenomenon, see Pippin, R. (1991) Modernism as a Philosophical Problem: On the Dissatisfactions of European High Culture. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell.

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and to the present day, the discomfort caused by the Art Nouveau project comes to the fore. An ideal-typical interpretation of the post-secular should take into account both the persistence of anti-secular religious discourse and (to borrow Habermas ' phrase)the persistence of anti-secular religious discourse. "awareness of what is missing, what is missing" by non-believers. We can see this awareness in mid-twentieth-century interwar thinkers like Camus, and in modern thinkers like Alain de Botton, one of the leading representatives of the so-called "new new atheists", who, when studying religion, are interested in what religion could offer non-believers.65 If I were to attempt to describe such an ideal type, I would describe the post-secular as fundamentally in sharp confrontation with the problem of nihilism. When it comes to nihilism, the history of Russia gives us plenty of food for thought.

Bibliography/References

Archived sources

Oswald Spengler's letter to N. A. Berdyaev, May 1, 1923. RGALI, sheet 1496, inventory. 1, document 833, 1-1.

Letter from Donald A. Lowry to unidentified friends, 3 May 1944, Geneva. The email is stored in the University of Illinois University Archives (UIUC). Donald A. and Helen O. Lowrie Papers 15/35/53, box 4, folder "1944".

Shor Evsey Davidovich's letters to N. A. Berdyaev. RGALI, fund 1496, inventory 1, doc. 831.

Constitution of the N. Berdiaev Society. UIUC, Paul B. Anderson Papers 15/35/54, box 5, Folder "Nicholas Berdyaev Society, 1946, 1946 - 53, 1956 - 61".

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65. Derbyshire, J. et al. (2013) "After God: What Can Atheists Learn from Believers?",The New Statesman, March 27 [http://www.newstatesman.com/lifestyle/religion/2013/03/god-dead-long-live-our-souls, accessed on 27.04.2013]. Thanks to Eric Lippmann for the link to this article.

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