History, Sophia and the Russian Nation
History, Sophia and the Russian Nation

Author: Manon de Courten

Publisher: Peter Lang

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 536

ISBN-13: 9783039104062

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Pp. 351-399, "The Jewish Question", deal with Solovyov's position vis-a-vis problems related to the presence of Jews in Russia, in particular his attitudes toward Judaism, the discussion on the rights of Jews in the Empire, and antisemitism. As a person who knew Hebrew and read the Jewish Scriptures and Talmud, thus being a specialist in Judaism unique in Russia at the time, Solovyov struggled against reductionist and pejorative views on Jews and Judaism, and defended the Talmud against slander by Rohling and other anti-Jewish scholars. Solovyov regarded the Jews as the key to the future world-unifying theocracy that he visualized. Although he shared some anti-Jewish cliches, Solovyov maintained that conflict with Jews resulted from a misunderstanding of their social role in Russia, and he was committed to improvement of their conditions. He claimed that the roots of the "Jewish question" lay in the Christian rather than the Jewish way of life and values.

Lost Kingdom
Lost Kingdom

Author: Serhii Plokhy

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2017-10-10

Total Pages: 470

ISBN-13: 0465097391

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From a preeminent scholar of Eastern Europe and the prizewinning author of Chernobyl, the essential history of Russian imperialism. In 2014, Russia annexed the Crimea and attempted to seize a portion of Ukraine -- only the latest iteration of a centuries-long effort to expand Russian boundaries and create a pan-Russian nation. In Lost Kingdom, award-winning historian Serhii Plokhy argues that we can only understand the confluence of Russian imperialism and nationalism today by delving into the nation's history. Spanning over 500 years, from the end of the Mongol rule to the present day, Plokhy shows how leaders from Ivan the Terrible to Joseph Stalin to Vladimir Putin exploited existing forms of identity, warfare, and territorial expansion to achieve imperial supremacy. An authoritative and masterful account of Russian nationalism, Lost Kingdom chronicles the story behind Russia's belligerent empire-building quest.

Russia
Russia

Author: Gregory Carleton

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2017-04-24

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 067497848X

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No nation is a stranger to war, but for Russians war is a central part of who they are. Their “motherland” has been the battlefield where some of the largest armies have clashed, the most savage battles have been fought, the highest death tolls paid. Having prevailed over Mongol hordes and vanquished Napoleon and Hitler, many Russians believe no other nation has sacrificed so much for the world. In Russia: The Story of War Gregory Carleton explores how this belief has produced a myth of exceptionalism that pervades Russian culture and politics and has helped forge a national identity rooted in war. While outsiders view Russia as an aggressor, Russians themselves see a country surrounded by enemies, poised in a permanent defensive crouch as it fights one invader after another. Time and again, history has called upon Russia to play the savior—of Europe, of Christianity, of civilization itself—and its victories, especially over the Nazis in World War II, have come at immense cost. In this telling, even defeats lose their sting. Isolation becomes a virtuous destiny and the whole of its bloody history a point of pride. War is the unifying thread of Russia’s national epic, one that transcends its wrenching ideological transformations from the archconservative empire to the radical-totalitarian Soviet Union to the resurgent nationalism of the country today. As Putin’s Russia asserts itself in ever bolder ways, knowing how the story of its war-torn past shapes the present is essential to understanding its self-image and worldview.

The Burning Bush
The Burning Bush

Author: Vladimir Solovyov

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess

Published: 2016-08-21

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13: 0268093040

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Vladimir Solovyov, one of nineteenth-century Russia's greatest Christian philosophers, was renowned as the leading defender of Jewish civil rights in tsarist Russia in the 1880s. The Burning Bush: Writings on Jews and Judaism presents an annotated translation of Solovyov's complete oeuvre on the Jewish question, elucidating his terminology and identifying his references to persons, places, and texts, especially from biblical and rabbinic writings. Many texts are provided in English translation by Gregory Yuri Glazov for the first time, including Solovyov's obituary for Joseph Rabinovitch, a pioneer of modern Messianic Judaism, and his letter in the London Times of 1890 advocating for greater Jewish civil rights in Russia, printed alongside a similar petition by Cardinal Manning. Glazov's introduction presents a summary of Solovyov's life, explains how the texts in this collection were chosen, and provides a survey of Russian Jewish history to help the reader understand the context and evaluate the significance of Solovyov's work. In his extensive commentary in Part II, which draws on key memoirs from family and friends, Glazov paints a rich portrait of Solovyov's encounters with Jews and Judaism and of the religious-philosophical ideas that he both brought to and derived from those encounters. The Burning Bush explains why Jews posthumously accorded Solovyov the accolade of a "righteous gentile," and why his ecumenical hopes and struggles to reconcile Judaism and Christianity and persuade secular authorities to respect conscience and religious freedom still bear prophetic vitality.

F. C. Baur's Synthesis of Böhme and Hegel
F. C. Baur's Synthesis of Böhme and Hegel

Author: Corneliu Simut

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2014-10-16

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 9004275215

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In this book, Professor Simuț shows how Christian theology started to be understood as a Gnostic philosophy of religion in the thought of the 19th-century scholar F. C. Baur. Although Baur was seen traditionally as a theologian and biblical exegete, Simuț argues that he was in fact a philosopher of religion, and it was his philosophical reading of Christian theology that informed his biblical preoccupations. Specifically, Baur’s perspective on Christian theology was heavily influenced by Jakob Böhme’s esoteric theosophy and Hegel’s religious philosophy in some key issues such as creation, Lucifer, dualism and the connection between spirit and matter coupled with that between philosophy and religion.