01 — From Marxism to Priesthood

The first half of Bulgakov’s life: born in 1871 at Livny into a family of six generations of village priests, he lost his faith at the Oryol seminary, became a professional economist and a Marxist, sat in the Second State Duma, and then made the return journey — through idealism, through Vekhi, through Unfading Light — that ended at the altar in Moscow in June 1918, in the weeks when the Bolshevik state was closing on the Church.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (Imperial Russia and the Revolution)

What This Section Covers

Bulgakov is one of the few major theologians of any tradition who arrived at the priesthood from a professorial chair in political economy and a Marxist bibliography. The trajectory is not incidental to his theology: the questions that drove the economist — what is the standing of matter, of labor, of the created world; is the world merely raw material or is it in some sense already divine gift — are the same questions that the doctrine of Sophia was built to answer (Rowan Williams, ed., Sergii Bulgakov: Towards a Russian Political Theology, Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999, introduction; Catherine Evtuhov, The Cross and the Sickle: Sergei Bulgakov and the Fate of Russian Religious Philosophy, 1890–1920, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997).

This section tells that story in two files. The first covers the priestly family, the seminary crisis, the Marxist decade, and the Duma. The second covers the return: “From Marxism to Idealism” (1903), Vekhi (1909), the friendship with Florensky, Unfading Light (1917), the ordination of June 1918, the Crimean years, and the expulsion of 1922.

Files in This Section

File Description
From Livny to Marxism Six generations of priests, the loss of faith at the Oryol seminary, Moscow University, Capitalism and Agriculture (1900), Kiev, and the Second State Duma
From Marxism to the Priesthood “From Marxism to Idealism” (1903), Vekhi (1909), Florensky, Unfading Light (1917), ordination in Moscow (June 1918), Crimea, and the deportation of 1922

See Also