06 — The Scientist-Priest

Between the revolution and his first arrest, Florensky did what almost no one else did: he stayed. He refused every opportunity to emigrate, remained an ordained priest of the Russian Church, and took employment in the scientific institutions of the Soviet state — the electrification programme, the laboratories of the electrotechnical institute, the technical encyclopaedia of electrical materials — reportedly continuing to wear his cassock at his desk and at commission meetings. He published a monograph on dielectrics in 1924, filed patent applications through the late 1920s, and served on the commission for the preservation of the art and antiquities of the Trinity–St Sergius Lavra.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (Moscow Theological Academy; the Russian religious renaissance)

The decade from 1918 to 1928 is the part of Florensky’s life that most impresses people who have no interest in his theology, and it is also the part most easily sentimentalized. Two disciplines are applied in this section.

The cassock is reported as what it is: a well-attested and widely repeated detail whose most famous individual anecdotes are of varying reliability. The core fact — that he did not renounce his priesthood, did not lay aside his clerical dress, and was known in Soviet institutions as a priest — is solid. Particular exchanges attributed to Trotsky and others are reported with attribution and flagged.

The scientific work is reported as real work. Florensky was not a religious philosopher decorating a laboratory; he was a working researcher on insulating materials whose 1924 monograph was published by the electrification administration itself.

Files in This Section

File Description
The Refusal to Emigrate and the Cassock Why he stayed, what it cost, the Lavra commission and the “living museum,” and the cassock in the Soviet institutions
GOELRO, Dielectrics, and the Soviet Scientist Glavelektro and GOELRO, the electrotechnical institute, Dielectrics and Their Technical Applications (1924), the patents, and the teaching

See Also