07/13/1944. – The philosopher Archpriest Sergius Nikolaevich Bulgakov died

(07/16/1871–07/13/1944) - economist, philosopher, theologian; political and church leader, priest; adherent of the religious-idealistic metaphysics of unity and sophiology. In his youth, he was a “legal Marxist” and went from an atheist to a clergyman and theologian.

Born in the city of Livny, Oryol province, into the family of a priest. After graduating from the Livensky Theological School in 1884, he entered the Oryol Theological Seminary, which he left in 1888 due to “the loss of religious faith for many, many years” (as he wrote). Bulgakov entered the 7th grade of the Yelets Gymnasium, after which he became a student at the Faculty of Law, where he studied political economy and became interested in Marxism.

After graduating from the Faculty of Law in 1896 in the Department of Political Economy, he became a teacher of political economy at the Moscow Imperial Technical School, actively collaborated in journals of the liberal-populist and Marxist directions ("Russian Thought", "New Word", "Scientific Review", "Nachalo" ). Fortunately, in 1898 Bulgakov was sent on a two-year scientific trip to Germany to prepare for a professorship. In Berlin, he communicated with the leaders of German Marxist Social Democracy Bebel and Kautsky. He also traveled to Paris, London, Geneva (where he met Plekhanov), Zurich, and Venice. Personal acquaintance with the West, the birthplace of Marxism, was beneficial. Having carefully studied the development data Agriculture in Germany and other countries of Western Europe, Bulgakov came to the conclusion that Marx’s theory in relation to the agricultural sector of the economy was erroneous. The economic refutation of Marxism was the result of his two-volume dissertation "Capitalism and Agriculture" (1900). Then he is a professor of political economy at Kiev University (1901–1906) and Moscow University (1906–1918).

Bulgakov recalled that he returned from abroad “already with decayed Marxism.” He soon met the followers of the man who died in 1900 and remembered his ancestors: he was, after all, the son of a priest in five generations and he himself studied at a theological seminary. A similar ideological evolution was characteristic of a considerable part of the then “Order of the Russian intelligentsia,” and soon Bulgakov became one of the recognized leaders of this return to Christianity; he was one of the initiators of the collection “Problems of Idealism” (1902). Bulgakov outlined his revision of his Marxist worldview in ten articles from 1896–1903, included in the collection "From Marxism to Idealism"(1903). In them, Bulgakov inextricably connects the socio-economic ideal with Christianity, which will continue to become for him the basis of economic views and the developing philosophy of economics.

Western capitalism was also an unprofitable and unChristian system for Bulgakov. In the report “National Economy and Religious Personality” (1909), Bulgakov gave an exhaustive critique of Western liberal political economy and capitalism as the fruit of Protestant Judaization (Calvinism, Puritanism) of Western Christianity. Referring to the relevant studies of W. Sombart and M. Weber, Bulgakov writes: “it is not for nothing that Puritanism was often called English Hebraism, meaning its assimilation of the Old Testament spirit... In Puritanism, the belief characteristic of Jewish messianism that the Anglo-Saxons are the chosen people of God, called to rule over other peoples for the sake of salvation and enlightenment, also awakened with tremendous force their own... Puritan asceticism stands at the cradle of modern “economic man” operating on the stock exchange and market. The era of the 17th century. bequeathed to her utilitarian heiress, first of all, an unusually calm, - we can safely say - a pharisaically calm conscience when making money, if only it is done in a legal form.”.

Marxism, in its criticism of capitalism, is not only economically erroneous, but also no less immoral from a Christian point of view, wrote Bulgakov. The Marxist doctrine of the class struggle for the same earthly goods is a petty hedonistic ideal of “progress”, for the sake of which Marx proclaims the selfish class struggle, violence and merciless destruction of the “old world”, that is, he allows the “temporary” application of evil (civil war) to modern generations that serve only as fertilizer for the “future bliss” of their descendants. Bulgakov gave a precise spiritual refutation of Marxism as a heretical utopia: “The basis of socialism as a worldview is the old chiliastic belief in the advent of an earthly paradise... The chosen (Jewish) people, the bearer of the messianic idea, was replaced by the proletariat”.

In 1919, Bulgakov went to Crimea to visit his family. In Simferopol, he accepted a position as professor of political economy and theology at the university. Here he wrote the following works: “At the Walls of Chersonesos”, “The Tragedy of Philosophy”, “The Philosophy of the Name”. In 1920, when the Reds took Crimea, Bulgakov did not want to emigrate, but as a priest he was expelled from the list of professors, and in 1922 he was arrested. Father Sergius was included in the lists of scientific and cultural figures subject to deportation abroad. On December 30, 1922, he left Crimea for exile.

After a short stay in Russia, he left for Czechoslovakia, where in May 1923 he took up the position of professor of church law and theology at the Faculty of Law of the Russian Scientific Institute in Prague.

In 1925 he moved to Paris, where he participated in the creation of the Orthodox Theological Institute. Until his death, Father Sergius was its permanent leader, as well as a professor of the department dogmatic theology. In 1927, the first part of the trilogy “The Burning Bush” was published, in the same year the second part – “The Groom’s Friend”, in 1929 the third – “Jacob’s Ladder”.

In addition, Fr. Sergius paid great attention to spiritual mentoring in the “Russian Student Christian Movement” and participation in the ecumenical movement, which was typical for the so-called liberal. "Parisian jurisdiction" of Metropolitan Eulogius, who broke away from . Until the end of the 1930s. Bulgakov took part in many ecumenical endeavors, becoming one of the influential figures and ideologists of this movement; in 1934 he made a long trip to the USA.

In 1939, Fr. Sergius was diagnosed with throat cancer. He underwent surgery and lost the ability to speak, serve, or lecture. The outbreak further limited the scope of his work in occupied Paris. However, before last days Throughout his life he never stopped working on new books. In 1933–1945 Bulgakov’s second trilogy was published: “Lamb of God” (1933), “Comforter” (1936), “Bride of the Lamb” (1945). He finished his last book, The Apocalypse of John, shortly before his death. He was buried in the Russian cemetery in Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois near Paris.

Having received from V.S. Solovyov’s philosophy of unity, Bulgakov developed the doctrine of “Sophia of the Wisdom of God” as a world soul pre-existing in the Divine plan, feminine in its essence, containing Divine love and radiating it into the world. These theological works of Bulgakov (which also contain elements of chiliasm) caused sharp criticism and accusations of heresy from both the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian Church Abroad (the most detailed criticism was given: “Defense of the Sophian heresy by Archpriest Sergius Bulgakov in the face of the Council of Bishops of the Russian Church Abroad ", 1937), and even among colleagues Fr. Sergius at the Institute. In particular, he gave his dean the following assessment:

“... having taken from Solovyov the basic concept of all-unity (with the inclusion of a sophiological theme), Bulgakov, under the influence of Florensky, completely goes towards sophiological reflections... However, in his purely theological works, Bulgakov remains a philosopher - the leaven of transcendentalism, the metaphysics of all-unity, even some general principles of philosophical thought, assimilated by Bulgakov at the dawn of scientific life, retained their force even in the years of pure theology... Bulgakov was often quite careless in his formulas - at every step we will find contradictions and difficult to agree expressions - and it is precisely about Sofia...

“Creation is total unity,” Bulgakov asserts in “The Non-Evening Light”: it is “one - many, everything,” “positive total unity belongs to it.” “The ontological basis of the world lies in the continuous, metaphysically continuous sophia of its basis”... Sophia, as the ideal basis of the world, stands between the Absolute and the cosmos, as a kind of “third being” that combines both divine and created nature... For Bulgakov the cosmos is a living, animated whole, and therefore he seriously and persistently puts forward the concept of the “soul of the world” - in “Philosophy of Economics”... “The secret of the world,” writes Bulgakov, “is in femininity... the origin of the world is the action of the entire Holy Trinity, in each of Her Hypostases extending to the receiving Being, the eternal feminine, which through this becomes the beginning of the world." And she is the “fourth hypostasis.” Bulgakov refers to Sophia as the Eternal Femininity and the maternal womb of existence as the “fourth hypostasis.” ... Sophia is actually “the world of ideas, that is, the ideal basis of the world.” “Sophia, in relation to the plurality of the world, is an organism of ideas, which contains the ideological seeds of all things” - it contains “the root of their being”...

Even in “Non-Evening Light,” Bulgakov associates evil with the fact that “nothing” “bursts into the already realized universe as a chaotic force” (God “did not stop before reconciling himself, giving room to a rebellious chaotic nothingness”). Thus, “the possibility of evil and sin, as the actualization of nothing, was given in advance by the universe.” It must be said that this is a very strange theory of evil, which is elevated to “nothing” - as if this nothingness (i.e. pure zero) can become a “chaotizing force”! ...

Bulgakov is of extreme importance in the development of Russian philosophy, primarily because he deepened the themes of cosmology, so essential for the understanding of existence. The concept of “creative Sophia” (if you don’t stand for the term itself, which for various reasons is not always successful) was most deeply and thoroughly worked out in Russian thought by Bulgakov - his analyzes in “Philosophy of Economics” are especially inspiring... [However] The synthesis of science, philosophy and religion was just as unsuccessful for Bulgakov as it was for Solovyov, just as it cannot succeed at all within the lines of the metaphysics of unity. But the metaphysics of all-unity stands in the closest proximity to that desired synthesis, which, being free from the basic error of all-unity, will give an appropriate and fruitful combination of science, philosophy and theology - the task of this synthesis is clearly irremovable for Russian thought, which has not lost intercom with Orthodoxy."
(Prot. V.V. Zenkovsky. History of Russian philosophy. T. II, pp. 430-457)

And another institute colleague, Fr. Sergius Bulgakov, prof. archm. Cyprian (Kern), wrote in a collection dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the Theological Institute about the views of his leader: “We must directly and decisively declare publicly: the Theological Institute has never considered the speculations of Fr. Sergius with his official theology. No school of his own. Sergius was never able to create it with us. Moreover, he did not leave a single student among his former listeners, and now teachers... His ideas will probably remain, in the apt word, “the product of the printing press and the dead inhabitants of library shelves...”. .

Father Sergius Bulgakov on the Jewish Question

During the war years, reflecting on the fate of Jews who were experiencing persecution in Nazi Germany, Fr. Sergiy wrote:

“In Bolshevism, most of all, the willpower and energy of Jewry manifested itself, all those features that are already so well known from Old Testament, where they were the subject of God's wrath... In future events, the central place belongs to Russia and Jewry... Russia is under the yoke of Bolshevism,... Jewry is undergoing persecution once again in its history. But it itself still remains in a state of worshiping the golden calf and falling away from faith, even in the God of Israel. All these new disasters... punishment for that terrible crime and grave sin that they committed against the body and soul of the Russian people in Bolshevism... Jewry in its lowest degeneration, predation, lust for power, conceit and all kinds of self-affirmation, through the medium of Bolshevism committed if - in comparison with the Tatar yoke - and short chronologically (although a quarter of a century is not a short period for such torment), then the most significant in its consequences was violence against Russia and especially over Holy Russia, which was an attempt at its spiritual and physical strangulation. In its objective sense, this was an attempt to spiritually murder Russia, which, by the grace of God, ended up with unsuitable means. The Lord had mercy and saved our homeland from spiritual death.” So Bolshevism is not yet the victory of Satan over Russia. This is "the terrible victory of Satan over Jewry, accomplished through the medium of Jewry" ( "Racism and Christianity", 1941–1942).

“The power of money, mammon is the worldwide power of Jewry. This indisputable fact does not contradict the fact that significant, even most of Jews to this day remain in deep poverty, need, in the struggle for existence, which does not find a natural outcome for itself due to the absence of its own country, due to ahaspheric dispersion, the state of the “eternal Jew.” Another manifestation of the power of the prince of this world is expressed in false messianic pathos, in anticipation of the future, earthly messiah in the place of the Rejected and Crucified. Due to the strength of this messianism and all its ardor, the sons of Israel are among the inspirers of the godless materialist socialism of our days. ... in a state of anti-Christianity and anti-Christianity, Israel is a laboratory of all kinds of spiritual poisons that poison the world and especially Christian humanity" ( "Persecution of Israel", 1942).

As in the case of Saltykov, well-known photographs of Bulgakov do not convey his inner appearance. I would even say that there are no such photographs. The writer Bulgakov looks most like himself on his death mask. A thin, nervous face: with a pulsating vein on the forehead and an ironic half-smile, seemingly twisted into sarcasm, but balanced by the calm correctness of proportions. These are theatrical masks intricately superimposed on each other, which are a symbol of acting: a mask of crying and a mask of laughter. In life, Bulgakov always “put on a face” in front of the lens: a single complex image really turned into a theatrical mask, never conveying the complex depth of his inner life and the tragic fragmentation of his outer life.

I
The first published work that Bulgakov wrote was the play “Children of the Mullah” (1921). And the last thing he started working on was the play “Batum” (1939).

“Children of the Mullah” tells the story of the revolution in the Caucasus. All the characters in the play are divided into good Ingush and bad Russians. Some Ingush at the beginning of the play are also bad, but in the process of the revolution they are re-educated and become good. Bad Russians are arrested and kicked out along the way. This is a revolution.

"Batum" is a play about Stalin's youth. The very young Dzhugashvili is a knight in a tiger's skin, to whom a gypsy predicted to be a great man, and then the Russian nonhumans, out of envy and out of their own insignificance, begin to beat the young Georgian knight on the head with sticks.

These two literary facts exhaust the entire spectrum of Bulgakov’s relationships with communist aborigines. Who did a person consider people to be (and who they really were) and who did a person consider himself to be in the USSR.

Bulgakov wrote “Children of the Mullah” in order to use the received fee to bribe the captain of a foreign ship and escape to Europe. For this purpose he came to Batum, but there was not enough money for bribery.

This photograph of Bulgakov is now considered the most typical and successful. In fact, this is a joke and shocking. Bulgakov did not wear a monocle, he bought it for fun, and the resulting caricature of the German aristocrat of the interwar era does not at all resemble the real Mikhail Afanasyevich.

II
By origin, Bulgakov was from a priestly environment, but since we were talking about the end of the 19th century, this is of course not Chernyshevsky. In addition, Bulgakov’s father was not a simple priest, but a professor of theology. I wonder what he knew English language, which was rare then (the first foreign language was always French, the second was usually German). Afanasy Ivanovich wrote doctoral dissertation on Anglicanism (“On the legality and validity of the Anglican hierarchy from the point of view of the Orthodox Church”). This circumstance was probably one of the reasons why his eldest son had a relatively easy life in the USSR.

Bulgakov's parents. Mikhail respected his father, but did not know him. Mother - knew, but did not respect.
In addition, Bulgakov the father published, due to the conditions of the time, a rather liberal article about Freemasonry in the style of “we still don’t know much” (“Modern Freemasonry in its relation to the church and state”). This presentation of material was characteristic of Suvorin’s “New Time”, which indirectly indicates a possible affiliation with the order. (Let me remind you that Suvorin, who published neutral or moderately negative materials about Freemasonry in his newspaper, was himself a Freemason and, thus, advertised the order among readers.)

Bulgakov’s father was a distant relative of the philosopher Sergius Bulgakov (also from poor priesthood), who attracted him to the work of the “Religious and Philosophical Society,” led by the Merezhkovskys.

By his psychotype, Afanasy Ivanovich was a helerter and a workaholic. His work gave the family a decent income and a solid status, but he was not involved in raising children. Bulgakov's father died early: in 1907 at the age of 48, when Mikhail was 16 and the other children (six) were even younger.

Here Bulgakov convincingly imitates Mayakovsky. Also nothing in common - he hated Mayakovsky.
Of course, Mikhail Afanasyevich’s family was noble - in lifestyle, education, and circle of acquaintances. But we should not forget that Bulgakov’s parents were nobles in the first generation, and sometimes this made itself felt.

For example, a hereditary nobleman will never bully people in his circle for no reason. In attacks, he can lose face and act meanly, depending not on class, but on personal qualities, but unmotivated attacks are not his style. Such caution is in his blood, because he is genetically accustomed to the fact that the conflict can end very quickly and very sadly.

In this sense, Bulgakov did impossible things. For example, he simply brought out his sister’s husband, Leonid Karum, in the “White Guard” under the guise of a scoundrel and coward Talberg. Karum, a career officer from the Baltic Germans, was shocked by such meanness, his wife forever broke off relations with her brother. In his declining years, Karum wrote detailed memoirs, where he spoke very impartially about his deceased brother-in-law. It was unfair and petty, but understandable. Bulgakov’s action is incomprehensible. This is Sharikov’s atavism of seminary rudeness. Among other things, the transparent analogy with Thalberg in the USSR looked like a political denunciation (it described his connection with the German occupation regime, etc.)

"Bulgakov is a popular actor." One should also not delude oneself about the great similarity: this is an actor playing an actor.
Karum, by the way, was one of the representatives of red military Freemasonry. During the February Revolution, he participated in the arrest of General Ivanov, then served with the Whites, but was not shot in Crimea among other officers, but painlessly transferred to serve in the Red Army. During the extermination of military Freemasons (Operation Spring), he was arrested and spent several years in a camp, but, apparently due to the high degree, his life was spared and he was allowed to live in Siberian exile.

Karum was probably a slippery fellow, but this is too little reason to endanger the life of his relative and condemn him to torment sister and a little niece. And besides, Karum himself did nothing bad to him.

By the way, Bulgakov not only wrote plays, but also acted on stage. So my words about the social makeup of Bulgakov’s photographs are yet another “Galkovsky is right, as always.” That is, a thing for some reason not noticed, but objectively self-evident.

III
Bulgakov, which is generally characteristic of writers, but rare for Russian writers, had the gift of love, and - for Russian conditions this is already an extraordinary rarity - happy and mutual love. Normal. He was married three times, all three times out of great love. All three wives loved him very much; the meeting with Bulgakov was the main event in the lives of these women. All three were beautiful (or at least pretty), feminine and intelligent in a normal woman's way. All three suited him very well. In all three cases, on Bulgakov’s part there was an element of some calculation that normal love (if it exists) only helps.

“Normal love” is when a man falls in love, achieves favor, and then a period of happiness begins. Happiness-drug lasts for several months or years, then the relationship moves into the phase of a calm marriage - family happiness with kids. Bulgakov had no children, so a new cycle began. If there were, he would certainly have stopped at the first marriage or the second.

It is difficult to imagine “normal love” experienced by Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Chekhov, Gorky, etc. This is either sex, or an arranged marriage, or psychopathy, or onanistic fantasies, or God knows what else, just not normal human relationships. Which, I repeat, is not at all typical of writers. A writer is, by definition, a favorite of the ladies and a ladies' man, like an operatic tenor or, for our money, a rock musician. But, unlike musicians, writers are more rationalists and pragmatists: if there are no problems with the psyche or sexual orientation, they, as a rule, “settle in well.”

Perhaps the Russians did not succeed due to the general lack of formation of the life of the educated classes. Or maybe because there was a lot of abnormality in Russian literature from the very beginning. Let's start with the fact that Russian journalism was at a cave level until the year 17, and without noticing the year 17, it smoothly crawled on. Many writers became Soviet ministers, and club-headed “golden feathers” like Dobrolyubov became state-forming classics. There is still no Russian literary criticism. And this is in the presence of world-class literature.

Tatyana Lappa
Bulgakov's three wives exactly corresponded to the three stages of his creative biography. The first is Tatyana Lappa. From a wealthy noble family, she steadfastly endured all the hardships of the revolution and civil war, was next to Bulgakov during the most difficult period and saved her from morphine addiction in 1918 (she secretly reduced the dose to zero).

Lyubov Belozerskaya
Second wife – Lyubov Belozerskaya. Unlike the provincial Lappa, Belozerskaya lived in the capitals, studied ballet, entered literary circles, and after the revolution fled to Europe. In the early twenties, she returned to Russia from impoverished emigration and was a typical “half-finished potbelly stove,” that is, what the white settlers in Zimbabwe were after the first years of independence, but before their final disappearance. Such people formed a “white ghetto” in Soviet Russia in the 1920s. It was clear that this was temporary, life was difficult for them, but one must understand that the Black Reds themselves envied them and imitated them. “They copied words.” Belozerskaya deliberately chose Bulgakov as a brilliant young writer from “ours”, and introduced her into the circle of educated Russians who still lived in Moscow in the 20s.

Elena Shilovskaya
Bulgakov's third wife is Elena Shilovskaya. She was also from a white ghetto, but a successful one - not Rhodesian, but South African. These people integrated into Soviet life and achieved material success in the new conditions. Bulgakov himself reached a phase of recognition from the South African leadership in 1930, when he turned into “The Writer Whom Stalin Called.” After that, he became his own man at the State Bolshoi Theater and the Moscow Art Theater.

In the “South African” ghetto there were many people of color - Shilovskaya herself, whose maiden name was Nuremberg, and her father was a baptized Jew (her mother was from the family of an Orthodox priest).

Ex-husband Elena Bulgakova, Soviet General Shilovsky is a major military freemason, like Karum, he survived after “Spring”, and, unlike him, even continued his career. This was largely due to the colored wife. For “former people” this was the most important marker of loyalty. Divorce in in this case did not mean anything, Shilovsky’s second wife was also a Jew - the daughter of Alexei Tolstoy and Sofia Dymshits. If not for his first wife, he would have been shot in 1929-1931, if not for his second - in 1937-1938. With a probability of 90%.

IV
There is a strong opinion that Shilovskaya served as the prototype for the main character of The Master and Margarita. This is not true. Margarita is the sexy imp of Belozerskaya, who went through the Constantinople emigration and Parisian variety shows, then flew to Moscow riding a forty-year-old Jewish pig, kicked her out, and found her Master. Margarita on a broom and with a hammer in her hands, smashing the apartments of Jewish “literary critics” is Belozerskaya 1:1.

The love of Bulgakov and Belozerskaya is the mature mutual passion of 30-year-old people, still full of strength and energy. Such love is described in “The Master and Margarita.” Bulgakov began writing this work in the late 20s, at the same time the main events took place there.

Bulgakov in the image of an Aryan superman with glass eyes. Totally unlike his character. Bulgakov was impressionable, nervous, loved to make himself look poor and press for sympathy. True, the photo well conveys one feature of his physical appearance. Bulgakov had regular, beautiful facial features, he was well built, but in some ways he looked like Chewbacca from " Star Wars- hair, eyes, eyebrows, eyelashes were the same dark yellow color.

As for Shilovskaya, of course Bulgakov was not the kind of person to live with an unloved woman. He loved Elena Sergeevna (there is nothing to say about her), they approached each other, over all the years life together they didn't have a single quarrel. But it was the love of people who are over forty and the love of tired people. Bulgakov was tired of “accidents at construction sites” (including periodic quarrels with Belozerskaya), Shilovskaya was tired of the boring, measured life of a gradually aging general’s wife. Bulgakov gave her the aura of a celebrity wife, and she gave him a guarantee of belonging to a successful literary nomenklatura.

But “The Master and Margarita” was completed in the 30s, during the period of his third marriage. Psychologically, Bulgakov was uncomfortable describing ex-wife, he added a number of Shilovskaya’s features to Margarita. After his death, Elena Sergeevna turned out to be the main holder of Bulgakov’s legacy and began to vigorously promote the thesis “Margarita is me.”

It must be said that there were reasons for this, not only because Bulgakov added and retouched something.

Bulgakov the actor again. This time it’s not Harlequin, but Pierrot. An actor playing a writer. For example, a very talented Russian emigrant writer.

Something like this.
Let's see what the plot of "The Master and Margarita" is? An aspiring writer writes a brilliant book. The book is not published, but receives a devastating review - a political denunciation that threatens the life of the author (“Master”). The Master's beloved (“Margarita”) sells her soul to the devil in order to save the writer and his creation. The end of the book is unclear. The Master’s literary enemies are “put to shame,” and he himself, together with Margarita, either dies, or is transported to another world, or leaves far, far away. The extent of the payment that Margarita, and even the Master himself, pays for this is also unclear. The agreement with the devil is softened by the fact that the devil is supposedly part of the divine world, and God himself, who is a character in the Master’s book, asks for the author. In general, “fleur”.

There are even cooler Babylons in literature, you never know the vagueness and conventions in belles-lettres. The problem is that such reticence is not typical for Bulgakov, and in general this author considered any kind of intricacy and ambiguity (not unreasonably) a sign of artistic helplessness.

The explanation can be found in the unfinished nature of the novel, which has to be. But, in general, “The Master and Margarita” has been completed to the stage of white-wash editing. Therefore, we are simply talking about censorship and Aesopian language.

Bulgakov wanted to say (and SAID) this:

The master writes a brilliant book. It is not published, but receives a devastating review - a political denunciation that dooms the author to death. Margarita sells her soul to the devil to save her lover and publish his book. The Master's literary enemies are punished, and he and Margarita are magically transported from the USSR to Europe. Where he publishes a book and lives happily ever after with Margarita (much like Nabokov). The agreement with the devil is justified. It is invalid, since the Master and Margarita lived in the hell of the USSR, and the book, which the USSR wanted to destroy (along with the author), calls for mercy and affirms the feat of Christ. Therefore, outwardly, the Master’s salvation occurs through the hands of the devil, but in reality it is the will and desire of God (Yeshua, who asks Woland, orders Woland).

Bulgakov in the image of a Western writer who achieved worldwide fame. For example, who fled by hook or by crook from the Chinese hell of the USSR and wrote a complex novel about it in the style of magical realism.
Marriage to the loyal Shilovskaya was for Bulgakov a change in the status of a writer restricted from traveling abroad. Bulgakov hoped that they would be released abroad, and the prospect of a trip abroad was her “dowry.” The trip was planned in the spring of 1934, through the Moscow Art Theater (where, by the way, Shilovskaya’s sister worked as Nemirovich-Danchenko’s secretary). The Moscow Art Theater was known as a “mobile ghetto” - theater employees constantly went on long business trips abroad - both on tour and on their own. This was not just empty talk; documents for visas were taken from Bulgakov and Shilovskaya - the refusal occurred at the last minute and made a stunning impression on Bulgakov. He developed a nervous illness.

Bulgakov's attempts to go to the West have long story. After the Batumi failure, he could have quite easily gone on a foreign business trip through the Smenovekhovites, but he missed this opportunity, spinning in the whirlpool of Moscow success. Then it seemed that the NEP regime would last quite a long time and would very likely follow the path of further liberalization.

In general, the authors thought so too “ new policy" The problem was that in 1917 powerful forces of Asianization were unleashed in Russia. The “bourgeois” February revolution was replaced by a revolution that was not social democratic, but anti-colonial, white people lost control of the situation, and the process of transforming the Roman Empire into the Turkish Empire began. Any actions aimed at tightening repression and primitivizing public life went with a bang and often slipped beyond the intended limits, and all attempts to soften and improve the situation required significant effort and often ended in failure. Here, as they say, I went myself. Stalin acted quite and even completely logically in 1920 and in 1925, and in 1930-1935-1940, but Stalin 1925 would have been very surprised and even angry if they had told him WHO he would become in 1937. I think he would have even laughed and ran to tell an amusing anecdote to Bukharin and other members of the Central Committee.

Eh, it went well!
Bulgakov came to his senses in mid-1926, when the GPU searched his place and seized an anti-Semitic and anti-Soviet diary. The case was not allowed to proceed, but from that moment on the investigator did not even have to invent anything - the eccentric gave himself a deadline.

By inertia, Bulgakov’s literary career continued, and he actually reached the peak of fame at the end of 1926, when two excellent plays were staged simultaneously by Moscow theaters: “The Days of the Turbins” and “Zoykina’s Apartment.” But the domestic political situation quickly deteriorated. In 1927, the plays were banned, then The Turbins were allowed again, then they were banned again, and a rigmarole began that would last until 1940. In 1928, Bulgakov tried to go abroad, but was refused. At the beginning of 1929, Stalin wrote a letter to the playwright Bill-Belotserkovsky, where he scolds Bulgakov (although he acknowledges the success of “Days of the Turbins”). As a result, all of Bulgakov's plays are banned. Bulgakov writes a series of letters to Gorky, Enukidze and Co. with a request to be released abroad. Then he writes a play about Moliere, which causes an explosion of hatred in everyone. Bulgakov loudly burns manuscripts and writes a final letter to the Soviet government in the “release or kill” style.

Suddenly, Stalin calls him on the phone, during the conversation it turns out that Bulgakov will not be released, but will be left alone and allowed to work normally. This happens partially, suddenly Bulgakov turns from an outcast White Guard into a respectable specialist fellow traveler. But Bulgakov no longer has any illusions - his manic goal is Europe. The following year he writes a letter to Stalin asking for a business trip abroad. There is no answer, although at the end of the year Stalin releases Yevgeny Zamyatin to the West, and then orders to ease the pressure on Bulgakov.

Both Zamyatin and Bulgakov are masons, as well as writers who have some fame in the West. But Zamyatin has a revolutionary biography. Before the revolution, he was engaged in discrediting the Russian army, was a member of terrorist organizations, and after the revolution he sharply distanced himself from the white emigration. A unique fact - Zamyatin was not only released to Paris forever, but already in Paris he was accepted into the Union of Soviet Writers and continued cooperation through public organizations.

Bulgakov is a “White Guard” and he will not be released from Soviet Russia on Zamyatin’s terms. But it seems to him that there is still a chance to go on a business trip, get to Paris and become a defector. His new wife should help him with this.

Bulgakov is a humble henpecked man. “I’m not being naughty, I’m not hurting anyone, I’m fixing the primus stove.”
Why did Shilovskaya have to have such a magical effect on Soviet power? Loyalty was not enough for this. Bulgakov hopes for Elena Sergeevna’s connections with evil spirits with the GPU. Her sister's husband was a secret police informant, Moscow Art Theater artist Evgeniy Kaluzhsky.

Evgeny Kaluzhsky.
He was a hereditary actor, the Moscow Art Theater troupe considered him one of their own, so he knew everything about everyone. Which is what I reported.

The situation is somewhat mitigated by the fact that Kaluzhsky, in general, could not tell the NKVDists anything new. Everyone understood that the Moscow Art Theater was a Masonic reservation for “former people,” and all these “former people” hated those who “became people.” But at the same time, due to their position and type of activity, they cannot do anything. So, in general, Kaluzhsky’s information was trivial.

In addition, Kaluzhsky’s denunciations against Bulgakov (at least those that were made public) were written in a completely “relative” way. For example, he conveys Bulgakov’s words regarding the disruption of the trip as follows:

“I was terribly offended by the refusal of a visa to go abroad last year. I'm definitely still being bullied. I wanted to start working in literature again with a large book of foreign essays. I'm just afraid to come forward now with a Soviet novel or story. If this is not an optimistic thing, I will be accused of holding some kind of hostile position. If this is a cheerful thing, they will immediately accuse me of opportunism and will not believe me. Therefore, I wanted to start with a foreign book - it would be the bridge along which I need to step into literature. They didn't let me in. In this I see a lack of trust in me, as a petty swindler.

I have a new family that I love. I was traveling with my wife, and the children stayed here. Would I really have stayed or allowed myself to make some tactless speech in order to ruin my life here completely? I don’t even believe that it was the GPU that didn’t let me in. They’re just settling literary scores with me and trying to do little harm to me.”

On Bulgakov’s part, this could have been a “conversation on a given topic,” but in any case, Kaluzhsky’s report about his relative was favorable. Bulgakov’s words are not questioned, and this could be expressed in just one word (“allegedly”, “de”, “supposedly”, “claims that.”) And it is important that the report was written just at the moment of Bulgakov’s last attempt to leave abroad (the request was submitted on May 15, 1935, and Kaluzhsky’s entry is dated May 23)

It is likely that in 1934 Kaluzhsky wrote about Bulgakov in the same favorable spirit (“the son is like a hostage in Moscow,” “wants to work honestly, but is embarrassed,” etc.)

However, “it didn’t work out”... What if it had worked out?

Shilovskaya understood perfectly well that her husband most likely would not return from Paris. It was either discussed or not, but either way her interest was not served. She did not intend to emigrate to the West due to her pro-Soviet views. (To live - yes, who would refuse such happiness, to leave legally, as Zamyatin’s wife left - too. To run away - no.). In addition, her children, whom she loved, remained in the USSR. What was her interest? Her interest was to have her beloved husband nearby - in Moscow.

Therefore, the trip could not work out. And, as Bulgakov correctly noted, the issue here is not the GPU.

So who is the devil Margot in Bulgakov’s novel: the straightforward dragonfly Lyuba-Lube or the insidious ant queen Elena Sergeevna is a big question. In any case, Madame has earned the right to “Margarita is me.”

The beginning of the twentieth century, the so-called Silver Age, is a heyday in the history of Russian thought. The intellectual atmosphere at that time was full of searches in a wide variety of fields: philosophy, science, art, religion...

A special place among figures Silver Age belongs to Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov (later father Sergius). Having gone through the characteristic path of the intelligentsia of that time “from Marxism to idealism”, from atheism to faith, he reflected this in his work - first scientific, and then philosophical and theological. And although it was already clear to the contemporaries of Father Sergius that some of his works were not devoid of dogmatic errors and should be studied with caution, nevertheless, the burning of a caring spirit could be felt even in the economic articles of Bulgakov the Marxist. To a much greater extent, this can be said about the thinker’s later works - in particular, about his diaries, excerpts from which we present to our readers today.

Every day begins a new life, like this book, and reveals a new immensity of God's mercy. God makes it possible to love Him and pray to Him, to rejoice in love and to live. And how lazy is my heart, which wants to push away from the effort of this day and thinks to itself: not this ordinary day, but another... some tomorrow. Meanwhile, in every moment of life everything: God, the world, and our own soul. And it is only blindness and inertia of the soul to wait for some deliberate moment to stop him, telling him: you are wonderful!

Truly, every moment of life is so beautiful, for God gives it, and don’t be lazy, my soul, to know this and implement it... And when the moments are taken away, the lights of life go out, then we will see how beautiful, truly beautiful every moment is, and then it will be too late... Lord, expand my heart to know how wonderful the moment of life that You give is, so that, rejoicing, I can thank You, and in this joy all earthly sorrow will dissolve.

The Lord sends people, He gives meetings, He shows the way. There is nothing accidental in human relationships; people are made for each other. Pray for those who love you and friends, pray for those who hate you, pray for those who do not pray for themselves, who are burdened and blinded. After all, everyone needs your prayer...

Let no man proudly imagine that he knows his path and that this is the path of good, for through the work of prayer the knowledge of his paths is given from the Lord. Teach, Lord!

Don’t think about people, about your affairs, how they will work out, how your relationships with people will develop, how difficulties will be resolved. "Don't worry about it in the morning." You do not know the duration of your life, nor all the conditions that change with you. This confusion and anxiety that attack you, all this is like a rich man who wanted to provide for himself for the future, when God took away his soul. We need to know and firmly know what to do today: the Lord gives us today, always full of new, unknown, mysterious opportunities. Every day there is a new secret from God, a secret about our lives. God would not give days if they were not an unfolding mystery. And we must look for a place for ourselves among these opportunities, we must walk before Him, checking our next step. Be careless with the holy gospel carelessness, like children. Your over-concern is sinful, your desire to think about and arrange your life in such a way as to protect it from all circumstances is sinful. Give it up. An Angel is watching over you, the guardian of our souls and bodies, all the saints, the Mother of God, and you just watch and guard your heart, give it and bring it to God, fill it with the oil of love and joy.

Be ready to give everything to God - your will, your mind, your desires, so that, in spite of everything, and in the face of everything, you can say: Your will be done. Only this, no less, is required by love for God.

Lord, here I am beginning a new day of Your goodness, a new page of life. Help me so that it does not remain empty, due to my laziness, like most of the days of my life, and so that it does not become covered with my vile sins, voluntary and involuntary, knowledge and ignorance, but grant that even the smallest grain of service to You will mark this day , keep me and my close friends as holy angels on this day, cover them from all evil, let them all fulfill Your will on this day, may you not repent, most good Lord, for giving us, unworthy, this day of our life. In the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

It is this ordinariness of every day that constitutes the content of life, and it is necessary that the ordinariness be clear, serious, worthy, majestic.

After prayers, the Lord, through a guardian angel, places His word on the heart, and the hotter and more humble the prayer, the more powerful and clear this inner word sounds. We are looking for miracles and signs and do not see that hourly miracle that is constantly happening in the innermost heart. And this voice of the guardian angel, if we listen to it worthily, gives an answer to our difficulties and questions and anticipates those temptations and tasks that await us during the coming day.

The most important thing in our lives is human meetings, human hearts that are inflamed with love not by will or by their own strength; this is the divine destiny of man, who is given by God to love and be loved on earth and to suffer for the sake of love. Suffering can be different: illness, loss, separation, unevenness, but always love, which gives the highest, the only joys, is paid off by suffering, and do not complain about this suffering, if possible, love it as your love, only through suffering do you acquire the right to be unselfish, not self-pleasuring , but genuine sacrificial love. The Mother of God herself unites the human hearts of Her chosen ones. She protects them and overshadows them with Her Cover. And look at Her. What was Her love for Her Son? Was this purest and highest love a love of joy and pleasure? Therefore, cowardice, murmuring, and despondency are a sin against love, they are a rejection of the example of the Mother of God. And “don’t worry about it in the morning” - in days of imaginary hopelessness. The Lord miraculously removes heaviness from the heart, gives solutions, has mercy and saves. Thank the Lord for His gifts, especially for the great gift of love that He gave to His creatures, for without this gift, under the difficulty and weight of which we sometimes groan and complain, our whole life would be empty and dead. And if anyone is truly worthy of our sympathy and pity, it is the one who is poor in love, who has no one to love, who loves little.

The conviction of your uniqueness very subtly and inconspicuously takes root in the heart and reigns in it, and you need to go through a lot on the path of humility and repentance in order to actually accept with all your heart that you are not the only one or only the only one in your sins. The merciful Lord humbles each person, sending life lessons and circumstances that experimentally reveal to him his weakness. For gifted and strong people, “rich” people, it is more difficult to come to terms with, because they remain conscious of their strength longer, but every person inevitably faces such an insight on the path of life. But it is not yet humility; or rather, it is only a negative condition for it, requiring positive ones. In the absence of them, this disappointment in oneself poisons the soul with evil despondency, envy, and an underground develops in a person. It is necessary to overcome it with the subduing power of humility, which consists in acknowledging one’s weakness and accepting it as a well-deserved punishment for sins and as God’s will for oneself. You need to stop feeling your weakness as weakness, something that should not be for you, but as your own state - you cannot be anything else and you should not strive, you should not imagine yourself or yourself. Everything human is insignificant before the grace of God and everything human is not of equal value. Therefore, weakness is not essential for eternal salvation.

A person can interfere with his sins and his pride with the infusion of God's grace, but he cannot add anything to it. Anyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but anyone who humbles himself will be exalted. You need to get away from this very questioning about your human rights and properties, look up, not down, and this departure - into humility - will give true freedom, childlike lightness, peace and joy. There is no peace and joy without sincere and deep humility, there is no impartiality without it. Acquiring humility is the most important thing for a person, without which he cannot embark on the path of spiritual activity. Therefore, you must always be attentive to seeing the good in people, and, seeing yourself as poor, reproach yourself and consider yourself unworthy of the fact that you live by the grace of God.

M.V. Nesterov. Philosophers (Pavel Florensky and Sergius Bulgakov)

Anyone who has reached old age is freed by it from the passions of the flesh; while remaining in the body, he is alien to its passions; Through the experience of a long life, he comprehended what he needed in his youth, and the closeness to God, which is given by standing at the earthly threshold, gives special freshness to his spirit. Old age in God is the most precious asset of humanity, its spiritual sediment, pure moisture. But old age is the crown of all life: as life is, so is old age, you need to earn old age. People are afraid of old age, they don’t want it, but you need to love old age, want it as freedom in God. My youth will be renewed like an eagle, and old age is this eternal youth of the spirit renewed in God.

Another year has passed, a new page of the book of life, burdened with new sins and temptations, has turned over in eternity and will appear before my damnation on Last Judgment Christ. O Lord, my Lord, how long will I anger You and test Your patience? I see my weakness, my sin, I languish over it and remain in it. But I glorify Your miracles, O Lord, which You have shown me in this world. All life is a miracle, a miracle is Your gifts, my loved ones, family, friendship, all my joys. A miracle is work for You, for Your work on earth, which You have honored me with, unworthy. The miracle is Your mercies with which You crowned me. You will ask for an answer and justification for every year of life given to us, and what river? And yet, I see how great and beneficial this past year has been, how much God has given me, how many hopes and opportunities it contains. I surrender myself to Your will: whatever You want, do it, there is no my will, there is no desire, tell me Your path, I will go there.

Humble yourself to the will of God. If you see that circumstances are developing in a powerful and commanding way, but not the way you want in your most sincere, ardent and pure wishes, submit to the will of God in this, humble yourself. Force yourself to love the right hand of God, who leads you, to want not what you want, but what God wants for you, even if your heart ached and was weak. This is the highest wisdom and the highest humility. Maybe not soon, but sooner or later the truth of God and the love of God leading you will be revealed to you, you yourself will understand the limitations of your current desires and thank the Lord. Therefore, don’t let your heart be troubled if things don’t go your way. If you have done everything that you could and considered useful and necessary, wait for a test from the Lord and submit to Him. Do not torment your heart with excessive concern for the future; you don’t know if or how this future will be for you. You darken your heart with sadness, which is always sinful, and you do not rejoice at the joy given to you now. Cast your sorrow on the Lord, and He will nourish you. Calm your troubled heart.

It is truly scary to see yourself, and you should neither be frightened nor poisoned by fear, falling into despondency and despair about yourself. This will only be new pride in reverse; you must endure yourself, and acquire the spirit of patience.

You yourself - alas! - you need forgiveness and leniency from everyone. And most of all, most immeasurably of all, your guilt is not before those who sting you or are at enmity with you, but before those who love you. O terrible and unpayable debt, the guilt of love, the poverty of love, selfishness, the mediocrity of love, its ingratitude! Turn your gaze to yourself, take it away from those who tempt you, and cry, cry for the sins of love before your loved ones, those who love you undeservedly, ungratefully. And can anyone say to himself that he is not a debtor in love, that he loves as his conscience tells him? At the hour of death, at the Last Judgment, we will see this powerlessness and coldness of our love and callousness, we will cry and be horrified, but it is too late. Burn, my heart; God, light it, light it with Your love, and in the fire, like garbage, all the tares of the heart, all its sinful splinters, will burn and be scorched.

Only love gives wisdom, only love gives insight, only love gives forgiveness. The lover gains the ability to look at the other from within himself. We are separated from each other by a wall of selfishness, self-care, self-interest. Our gaze is obscured by the partiality of our judgment and vision; we always, when thinking about others, mean ourselves, we feel ourselves, but not him. We must feel him himself, and then our eyes will open. And the experience of love gives this experience of wisdom, knowledge of another, one’s loved one, one’s friend. God gives us this miracle of love, so that our lives are constantly enriched by it, becoming richer in God. When you experience a painful heaviness and dryness in your heart, when your addictions cloud your spiritual eyes, try to lose your temper, pray, tearfully pray to the Lord for love, for the one for whom your soul hurts, for whom it is wounded. And God will give you, in response to your prayer, the wings of your soul, all your burdens will melt away, and you will find the joy and bliss of love. Love does not seek its own, it is selfless; the only self-interest she wants is for the good of your neighbor. If your love is selfish, then it is not love; your selfishness is still strong in it. Be brought up in the love of love, bear the labor of love, lift up the cross of love, and it will become easier and more joyful for you. This is the mystery and power of the cross, the power of the meekness and humility of Christ, which makes the yoke good and the burden light. You will see the illness of your love and the movement of your heart: if it is light and clear and joyful, full of the joy of love, it means that it is free from the attack of selfishness, but if it is darkened, offended, then it is sick, a loving heart knows no offense, it does not only forgives them, but it simply does not feel them. Learn to love, work in love.

Love does not seek its own. And we are always looking for our own and ourselves, even in love. And only the grace of love frees us from ourselves. You can make sacrifices, give up your own, but still fundamentally seek and want your own, no matter how sublime and subtle it may be. But the law of love is: let him deny himself. You need to want in your loved one and for your loved one only what he needs, and not what you want, you need to crucify yourself in love, cut off your will, deny yourself... This is the way of the cross of love, without which it cannot ripen and bear its fruit. Why does the Lord require everyone to follow the way of the cross in His footsteps? Why does He place such a seemingly unbearable burden on our shoulders? Because without this fiery test, love would not have been born in us, it would not have realized its strength, its inspiration, its fearlessness. Perfect love conquers the fear of sacrifice. Perfect love is ready to do anything for the sake of love, for it knows itself and knows its eternal nature. But from human love - which usually represents an indistinguishable mixture of selfishness, passion, battles with pure love - a long and difficult path leads to the victory of love in love. This path is long and painful for a person, but every step in it, internally justified, is rewarded. Love is a talent that constantly multiplies if it is given to the growth of love and is not left in the ground. O God, strengthen the weak heart, overcome exhaustion. You see our hearts. Thy will be done!

Archpriest Sergius Bulgakov

And kissed all the things of the universe.
And only then did he depart into the unspoken verb.

V. Rabinovich.

If I had to express in one word the impression of the personality of Father Sergius Bulgakov, I would, without hesitation, choose the epithet “inconceivable.”

This is how a person works: we feel comfortable and cozy when everything is conveniently classified, laid out on shelves, distributed according to roles, categorized under the closest genus and corresponding species. Spinoza is a pantheist, Montaigne is a skeptic, and Fichte and Hegel are idealists: one transcendental, the other absolute. And everyone is fine. And everyone is calm. The chicks were placed in nests.

But there are always uncomfortable people, uncomfortable ideas, uncomfortable thoughts that refuse to be distributed, do not want to take their places, because these familiar nests do not accommodate them, never fit, their size or narrowness only emphasizing the inappropriateness and inconvenience of a person or a teaching. This is Father Sergius Bulgakov. An incongruous thinker, an inappropriate theologian.

He himself felt homeless and placeless. In his “Autobiographical Notes” he repeatedly complains that all his life he was “a stranger among his own, a friend among strangers, but essentially not a friend anywhere... Alone in the field is not a warrior, but always and everywhere alone.”

They will certainly object: firstly, any philosopher can lay claim to originality and incompatibility, and secondly, what is not clear about Bulgakov? A talented economist and sociologist who made the path from Marxism to idealism, and then from idealism to Orthodoxy, and eventually took ordained last decades of his life writing cumbersome theological opuses. That is why his biography is usually divided into three unequal periods: economic, philosophical and theological. What is the mystery here? He himself does not resist classification.

Of course, any thinker, if he is a real, honest and fearless philosopher, as Plato painted a portrait of a true philosopher in ancient times, is simply obliged to be “incontainable,” and all our classifications are very conditional and are necessary, to a greater extent, for educational purposes. But Father Sergius, indeed, never belonged among either philosophers or theologians.

Attempts to “tame” Father Sergius continue and will continue. One camp or another is trying to classify him as a friend or an enemy. They want to make him a champion of democracy, but Father Sergius was a convinced monarchist or, as he called himself, a “tsar lover,” who mystically reverently experienced the Sofian truth of autocracy. But even in the monarchist camp, he was a loner, because he saw the tragedy of the Russian Tsar and painfully recognized and experienced all the mistakes and vices of the Russian autocracy.

He was a real Russian intellectual with that very “Russian intellectual complex” that remained with him throughout his life: as a high school student, as a student, as a professor, as a priest, he always felt guilty for his well-being, guilty before those who are now starving and suffering who couldn't get good education, responsibility for everyone oppressed and humiliated. But he didn’t belong among the intellectuals either, because he saw and courageously denounced the lies of the intelligentsia.

Was he one of the philosophers? Of course, he was respected and his circle of friends and associates included the best minds Russia at that time. But even among them he was rather a holy fool. Most of them saw in Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov a well-educated person, a hard worker, a loyal friend, but for them he was more like “Salieri from philosophy”, “a pygmy from Zubovsky Boulevard”, not a genius, but a talent who achieved everything through painstaking work and gained fame. an eccentric because of his excessive passion for Orthodoxy.

Vera Mordvinova, muse and interlocutor of Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov, in 1915, after meeting with Bulgakov, wrote to her “spiritual mentor” that Bulgakov, of course, good man, but he has no “I”, no future, and his son Fedya is much more talented than his father and in due time will eclipse his learned ancestor.

But most of Father Sergius’s refined friends did not understand his love for church Christianity with all its rituals and rules. And one day Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov became Father Sergius, the real Orthodox priest, a genuine Russian priest. And this is a fact that should be taken seriously.

There is a temptation to see in Father Sergius such a liberal priest, a salon abbot-intellectual, a critic of church inertia, an enlightened clergyman-intellectual. Father Sergius was a real father. He knelt before the Throne in the altar, kissed the icons, and had his hands kissed.

He was not a reformer at all; rather, his fiery devotion to tradition was striking: he strictly kept all his posts, read endless prayer rules, prescribed by the Church, strictly monitored the fulfillment of the rules of worship, and did not allow any omissions in his service.

He prayed. He did not meditate, but rather prayed, as people pray before him and after him Orthodox people. His theological texts are the fruit, among other things, of prayerful efforts.

Sometimes Father Sergius is called either the Russian Aquinas or the Russian Origen. Both options are quite arbitrary. He was neither a system creator, like Aquinas, nor a heretic, like Origen. Due to the prayerful ardor and touching confession of his texts, he could bear the name of the Russian Augustine. But he does not need such honorary names at all. The name “Father Sergius Bulgakov” is glorious in its glory and wonderful in its dignity.

Father Sergius Bulgakov was not just an armchair scientist, or rather not only a scientist. He was a mystical theologian, a prayer theologian, and a truly church thinker.

I think that Father Sergius opened a new genre of theological works, at least the texts of the “Small Trilogy” are a monument to spiritual exercises, thinking about God and prayerful theology. Each book begins and ends with a prayer, sometimes so poignant that it seems as if the author wrote it with his own tears. “The Burning Bush” is, so to speak, the first theological akathist Mother of God.

However, this obvious, and sometimes even offensive, churchliness did not make Father Sergius one of the people among the Orthodox clergy. Father Sergius experienced this loneliness among his own people especially hard. He was suspected of being unreliable back in Russia, when he was simply Sergei Nikolaevich, but in emigration this suspicion gradually grew into persecution, which has not ended yet.

He lived by Orthodoxy, but passionately denounced Orthodoxy. He was an obedient cleric, but was an implacable enemy of church lackeyness and bishop-worship. He was faithful to tradition, but fearlessly opposed the stifling of church creativity and freedom of theological thought. And yet this devotion to freedom did not make him the dissident we would like to imagine him to be. This man had too much of a noble knight who devoted himself entirely to serving the Truth.

For his age he was too holy a fool. The scientist's endless erudition and high qualifications placed him on a par with respectable theologians of that time. And yet Father Sergius was by no means a respectable theologian. He frightened his respectable colleagues with his fiery piety.

At the Lausanne Conference of 1927, Father Sergius unexpectedly spoke out in defense of the veneration of the Mother of God. This was so natural for his ardent chivalrous heart, but so inappropriate that even the Orthodox participants in the conference were literally embarrassed by the Parisian professor. Such chivalry looked eccentric and was completely inappropriate in the 20th century.

It would be easier to say that Father Sergius was born at the wrong time. But the priest himself categorically did not accept this romantic phrase. “There is a certain pre-established harmony between who is born and where and how he is born,” he wrote in The Bridegroom’s Friend. And in a later work, The Bride of the Lamb, he developed the idea that man is his own co-creator, a co-worker with God in his own creation, self-creation.

In a sense, God pre-eternally asks man for consent to exist, and if we exist, we ourselves have chosen not only be, but also how, who and where to be. Just like Tarkovsky:

I selected my age according to my height.

Father Sergius chose his age and his homeland, and although he seemed inappropriate to some of his contemporaries, it was still his time, his place and his beautiful and grateful life.

Sofia's smile

Years of life of Archpriest Sergius Bulgakov: 1871 - 1944. Born in Livny, died in Paris. Between Paris and Livny there are three thousand kilometers. Between 1871 and 1944 - seventy-three years of life. But the figure “doesn’t help at all.” Whatever temporal and spatial coordinates we occupy in our lives, its living tissue is made up of simple but unexpectedly significant moments. It is all woven from sounds and smells, sweet or frightening images, from the rejoicing of the heart and the memory of the skin.

The city of Livny, Oryol province. The family of a poor cemetery priest. Seven children, two parents and an old grandfather. Ten people in a five-room house. Father Sergius loved this place and these people very much, he loved his homeland.

His childhood sounded with the soft tenor of his father, the bass of the singing Stepanovich, to whom parishioners came to listen with excitement, the bell ringing of little Seryozha’s favorite church - the St. Sergius Church - the white St. Sophia Church, the image of which is saturated with the smell of mignonette and marigolds, wonderful night services and the playing of lamps, and also - a modest river where the Livonian children fished, a small forest, the evening steppe and the nanny’s bedtime stories - scary, Sofia tales.

Father Sergius recalled his childhood with gratitude, despite the fact that the nature of his homeland was poor and meager, the city of his childhood was poor and dusty, his father, a hereditary priest, a strict and responsible person, sometimes drank and made scandals at home, his mother was a natural nervous and anxious, smoked a lot, was suspicious and prone to depression, and for my grandfather Sergei was not his favorite grandson.

But for Father Sergius, this poor Livensky childhood was the time of Sophia’s first revelation, under the sign of which his whole life passed, all his works were written. And there is no need to be afraid of these words - “Sophia”, “sophiology”. For many, this is an unnecessary complication of Orthodox theology, an annoying excess or a theological whim.

The sophiology of Father Sergius Bulgakov originates in his childhood. Sophia, first of all, is not the fourth hypostasis, not ousia, not a philosophical concept or an element of a theological structure. Sofia is an event. And this is precisely where the root of Bulgakov’s theology lies. Sophia had to be experienced first, so that later, by comprehending Sophia’s experience, she could build an elegant ontological model that would justify this experience.

The childhood of Father Sergius was a revelation to Sophia. What Father Sergius experienced in his childhood, and then encountered throughout his life, he called Sophia. The experience of the revelation of the beauty of this world, its humanity, the experience of the revelation of the divinity of man and the humanity of God - this is what Sophia is, and the biography of Father Sergius should be called existential sophiology. The life of Father Sergius was dedicated to understanding this experience and its theological rationalization. And Sofia’s first experience is the experience of her Liven childhood, which was a truly church-based childhood.

But one day this holiday of Sofia was interrupted. At the age of fourteen, Sergei lost his faith. At that time, such biographical turns were not uncommon. We are well aware of the fates of Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov and many other disinterested truth-seekers who lost their faith in adolescence, protesting the forced piety and loyal Christianity of the Bursa.

The son of a Liveni priest went the same way. But he saw the reason for his godlessness not only in the lies of seminary Orthodoxy, but also in his own depravity. As an elderly priest, he confessed his teenage selfishness and arrogance, which burned his family and friends.

Much later, Sartre would write in his autobiography that the reason for his loss of faith was childhood pride. Here Father Sergius also saw the source of his spiritual fainting. From the age of fourteen to thirty—a whole sixteen years—Fr. Sergius lived without God and the church, but not without Sophia. He admitted that even in the darkest years of Bursat prose, his soul was still touched by the lines of the Gospel or the life of Mary of Egypt. He was looking for faith, and although godlessness and nihilism became his faith, he longed for the authentic, the real, without which he literally suffocated, several times trying to kill himself in despair.

One smart person said: “If the people don’t have God, they should at least have Pushkin.” And Sergei Bulgakov, a capable seminarian, and then a graduate of the Yelets Gymnasium and Moscow University, saved himself in his godlessness by his love of literature and art. Beauty saved him and justified the world. And this experience of beauty was also a Sophia experience. The future theologian experienced several mystical revelations during this period of his life. At the age of 24, on the way to Crimea to visit his wife’s relatives, while contemplating nature, Sophia’s face of the world suddenly opened to him:

“It was evening. We drove along the southern steppe, surrounded by the fragrance of honey herbs and hay, gilded with the crimson of a blissful sunset. In the distance the nearby Caucasus Mountains were already turning blue. It was the first time I saw them. And fixing greedy gazes on the opening mountains, drinking in the light and air, I listened to the revelation of nature. The soul has long been accustomed, with a dull, silent pain in nature, to see only a dead desert under a veil of beauty, as if under a deceptive mask; Apart from her own consciousness, she did not put up with nature without God. And suddenly at that hour the soul became agitated, rejoiced, trembled: and if there is... if not the desert, not a lie, not a mask, not death, but He, the good and loving Father, His robe, His love... My heart was pounding to the sounds of a pounding train, and we rushed towards this dying gold and these gray mountains".

This was the first meeting with Sofia, or better to say, the first event of Sofia, when Sergei Nikolaevich, after ten years of godless life, suddenly revealed the true face of this world, in which the face of God was reflected, the reflection of the eyes of God the Lover of Mankind.

But the return to the Father’s house did not happen. Life was busy with other things. Sergei Bulgakov plunged into academic studies. After graduating from the university, he was left at the department of political economy and statistics to prepare for a professorship; in 1895 he began teaching, and in 1896 he made his debut in print. Having published his first book, “On Markets in Capitalist Production,” in 1897, Bulgakov went on a business trip abroad for two years. Berlin, Paris, London, Geneva, Zurich, Venice.

He worked in libraries and met with German Social Democrats. But there, abroad, a new revelation of Sophia happened to him. On a foggy autumn morning, Marxist scientist Sergei Bulgakov visited the famous Dresden Gallery, not expecting that he would leave the museum as a completely different person. Then he first saw the Sistine Madonna with the Eternal Child in her arms.

“They had immeasurable power of purity and insightful sacrifice - knowledge of suffering and readiness for free suffering, and the same prophetic sacrifice was seen in the non-childish wise eyes of the Infant. They know what awaits Them, what they are doomed to, and they are freely coming to give themselves, to do the will of the Sender: She “accept the instrument in the heart,” He Golgotha...

I didn’t remember myself, my head was spinning, joyful and at the same time bitter tears flowed from my eyes, and with them the ice in my heart melted, and some kind of vital knot was resolved. It was not an aesthetic excitement, no, it was a meeting, new knowledge, a miracle... I (then a Marxist!) involuntarily called this contemplation a prayer and every morning, trying to get to Zwinger, while no one else was there, I ran there, in front of Madonna, “pray” and cry, and there are few moments in life that would be more blissful than these tears.” .

This is how the “will to believe” began to mature in the soul of Sergei Bulgakov. Almost a quarter of a century later, being a priest and theologian, Father Sergius again visited Dresden, visited the gallery with excitement, but the miracle of the meeting did not happen. Why? Because Sofia is an event, and like any significant event, it is unique and inimitable. Sophia is what happens between God and man, a miracle of meeting, a very personal and intimate event that cannot be programmed, deserved, or in any way force one of the parties to revelation.

Be that as it may, in 1900 Sergei Bulgakov returned to his homeland. But he returned a changed man.

World "and"

November 21, 1901. Kyiv. An extraordinary professor at the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov, gives a public lecture “Ivan Karamazov as a Philosophical Type.” The audience greets the performance with an ovation. Students carry the professor in their arms. This was the first triumph of Bulgakov as a lecturer.

He had a talent as an orator. He spoke warmly and with feeling. He spoke with his heart. During this Kiev period - from 1901 to 1906 - Sergei Nikolaevich became famous throughout Russia. He teaches, actively publishes, participates in various magazines, gets acquainted with famous philosophers, scientists and writers.

In 1902, the next public lecture that brought him fame was “What does the philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov give to modern consciousness?” The lecture has been published. The author is invited to give performances in different cities of Russia. Thus began the “idealistic” period in Bulgakov’s life.

This time was marked by many gratifying achievements in the life of the thinker: in 1903 the collection “From Marxism to Idealism” was published; in 1904, together with N.A. Berdyaev Bulgakov is working on the magazine " New way“, but the most gratifying thing happened in 1905 - Sergei Nikolaevich, after a long break, goes to confession and receives communion. So modestly and meekly, on a quiet autumn day, in a small monastery church, a return to God and reconciliation with childhood took place.

In the fall of 1906, Bulgakov moved to Moscow, where he lived until 1918. This is one of the most intense periods of Bulgakov’s creativity - twelve years of active writing, teaching and socio-political work. He moved to Moscow to participate in the Second State Duma, which he entered at the beginning of 1907 as a “Christian Socialist” without joining any of the parties. Deputy Bulgakov rose to the podium nine times, each time plunging his listeners into bewilderment, because the tsarist government, reformers, and revolutionaries got it from him. He did not become a member of either party, and four months of active work in the Duma resulted in deep disappointment in politics.

“I have never known a place in the world with a more unhealthy atmosphere,” recalled Father Sergius , – rather than the common hall and lobbies State Duma, where the demonic games of Soviet deputies then reigned with dignity.”.

But the Moscow Twelfth Anniversary is not only a thought. Here Bulgakov meets Father Pavel Florensky, E.N. Trubetskoy, P.I. Novoselov, V.F. Ern and many other bright thinkers and publicists. In 1909, Bulgakov’s famous work “Heroism and Asceticism”, which caused a lot of controversy, was published in the collection “Vekhi”, in 1911 - a collection of articles “Two Cities”, in 1912 - “Philosophy of Economics”. However, the crown of the Moscow period was the book “Non-Evening Light” (1917) and the collection “Quiet Thoughts” (1918).

Bulgakov is no longer an idealist, but a religious philosopher, “a seeker of the religious unity of life, sought but not found.” In “Philosophy of Economics” the theme of Sofia is heard for the first time, which is not easy for Bulgakov. He is strongly influenced by Vladimir Solovyov and Father Pavel Florensky. Their sophiological experiments have a bright Gnostic coloring.

Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov had a healthy church intuition, instilled in childhood, and therefore he resisted this influence, tried to overcome it, and being already a priest, he largely corrected the mistakes of his early teaching, and even repented of some experiences. But the general tone of the “Moscow” texts is truly Sophia.

Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov, reflecting on the pages of The Brothers Karamazov, spoke about two types of attitude to life: “peace-loving” and “peace-spitting.” Bulgakov's texts are joyful and comforting to read. This is a thinker with a “world-loving” look. Whatever he writes about - whether about Marx, Feuerbach, Carlyle or Picasso, the work of Golubkina or Chekhov, he finds his truth everywhere, and before condemning or rejecting, he tries with all his might to justify. Justification of peace - this is the main pathos of his “Moscow” texts. And that is why they are sophia.

Much later, Father Sergius said to his faithful disciple Lev Zander, “that in the word “and” the whole secret of the universe is hidden, that to understand and reveal the meaning of this word means to reach the limit of knowledge. For “and” is the principle of unity and integrity, meaning and reason, beauty and harmony; to understand the world in the light of “and” means to embrace it with a single all-pervading view; and to see this connection that connects the world with God means to understand it as God’s “kingdom and power and glory,” existing “always, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages.” In Bulgakov’s philosophy and theology, this world “and” is Sophia, the principle of comprehensive unity.

But before entering into philosophical discourse, becoming a problem or concept, Sophia is an event and revelation, a living experience of the unity of the world, man and God, and Bulgakov experienced this experience not only in the phenomenon of beauty, glimpses of truth and truth that he noticed in the works of the characters his articles, but also in personal, often very tragic experiences.

On August 27, 1909, Sergei Nikolaevich’s beloved son Ivashek, the “white boy,” as his father called him, died. The pages of “The Never-Evening Light,” where Bulgakov describes this tragedy, are perhaps the most piercing and touching in his work. The boy was just over three years old, but he was a joy to his parents. “Carry me, dad, up, - we’ll go up with you!” - the last words of the baby, which are impossible to read without excitement. However, Bulgakov experienced this terrible experience of dying together with his “white boy” as a Sophia revelation.

This is where the sophiology of death begins, and for me this is the strongest evidence of the presence in Bulgakov’s philosophy of its existential dimension, without which it is impossible to understand the Sophia ontology of Father Sergius. And this sophiology of death also comes from Bulgakov’s childhood revelations.

Of the seven children of Father Nikolai, only two survived. Death is especially imprinted in the memory of Father Sergius younger brother, five-year-old Kolya, “a common favorite, with the seal of a cherub, the predecessor of our Ivashechka.” But Father Sergius knew how to see Sophia in both death and funerals, and therefore said that in Livny they “bury Sophia.”

Bulgakov also experienced one of the most sophistic experiences of dying in Moscow. In June 1918 he took holy orders. For the philosopher Bulgakov, this was a feat of death and resurrection. Bulgakov was a hereditary “Levite”; the blood of five generations of priests, “Levitical blood” flowed in his veins. This is on my father's side. The mother's ancestors were also priests, and one of them was the famous Saint Theophan the Recluse.

Holy orders and theological ministry were the natural outcome of Bulgakov's ideological evolution. Reading his works of the 1910s, we see how Bulgakov’s thought gradually becomes ecclesiastical, how he persistently begins to be curious about theological issues, and countless quotes from the Fathers of the Church and good excursions into patristic theology appear in the books.

Bulgakov was involved in church issues both as a publicist and as a public figure. He took a keen interest in the course of the name-glorifying dispute, and in 1917 he became a member of the Local Council and a close friend of Patriarch Tikhon, to whom His Holiness entrusted the writing of his messages.

The events associated with the ordination were described in detail by Father Sergius in his notes. In these recordings one is struck by the amazing atmosphere of meek tranquility, “silence unspeakable.” And this is also Sophia, the experience of sacrificially devoting oneself to the service of God and people, of priestly dedication to service, sanctifying and healing this world, creating the Church Body through the sacraments, through the transformation of the world.

Two weeks after his priestly consecration, Father Sergius left Moscow forever. He went to Crimea, worried about his family, hoping to return again. But Crimea was captured for a long time. From 1918 to 1922 - four years of the Crimean prison - a period of trials, temptations and horrors of the civil war.

In Crimea, Bulgakov’s main philosophical works were written and completed – “The Philosophy of the Name” (1918) and “The Tragedy of Philosophy” (1921), as well as the dialogue “At the Walls of Chersonissus” (1922), which reflected the painful struggle of Father Sergius with the temptation of Catholicism. There was such a temptation in Bulgakov's biography.

When he found himself in Crimea, cut off from the world, and from there, from Bolshevik Russia, news came one more terrible than the other, and it seemed that Orthodox Church had already fallen, physically destroyed, Father Sergius turned his thoughts to the West, there looking for answers and a revival of the church. However, Bulgakov was cured of Catholicism as soon as he found himself in a foreign land and encountered living, and not speculative, Catholics.

At the end of 1922, Archpriest Sergius Bulgakov with his wife and two children was expelled from Russia. He was fifty-two years old, and life seemed to have ended and stopped. In Crimea, Father Sergius began keeping a diary. This is the most bitter and saddest thing he wrote in his life. And the most anti-Sophia thing. And indeed, during the Crimean period, the theme of Sophia, as well as the term itself, completely disappeared from Bulgakov’s texts.

But when joy returned, Sophia returned. In the spring of 1923, Father Sergius and his family were warmly received in Prague and took the chair of church law. At fifty-two years old, life not only continued, but opened the most fruitful and interesting period in the work of Father Sergius.

Duty of Freedom and Service

Sophia is the event of revelation of the unity of God and the world. Highest degree This revelation is the Eucharist as the ongoing Incarnation of God, the sacrament of deification and justification of the created world. Therefore, it is not surprising that Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov one day became Father Sergius, an Orthodox priest whose main task was to celebrate the liturgy. He was Sophia's seeker, now he has become her witness and servant.

It is very important to find the correct answer to the question: why did Bulgakov take holy orders? After all, this was not uncommon among the friends of Father Sergius. Florensky was ordained, and Durylin became a priest. But for Father Pavel, the first place was not the ministry of the priest, but science in all its manifestations, and Durylin eventually left the priestly ministry.

The recognition of Father Sergius himself is very important: “ I entered the priesthood solely for the sake of serving, i.e. primarily celebrate the liturgy» .

Notice how the emphasis is placed: he is a priest not for the sake of shepherding, missionary work, theology, or social activities, - no, - the main thing is the Eucharist, the core of which is not just the sacred magic of the transformation of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of the Lord, but the communion of the faithful with these Holy Gifts, the realized unity with God in the sacrament of communion. Therefore, Father Sergius loved not only to perform the liturgy, but also to simply give communion to the sick at home, and for him this was the most significant moment of his life.

Reflecting on his life path at the end of his days, Father Sergius recognized that taking holy orders was the most important event of his life, and therefore he divided his biography not into economic, philosophical and theological periods, but into two parts: before taking orders and after. And, no matter how strange it may sound, the priorities set in this way - first liturgy, then theology - turned out to be very fruitful for his work.

In the last twenty years of his life, Father Sergius wrote more than in his youth. He perceived his theological creativity as a continuation of the liturgy outside the walls of the church. Actually, this is how it always was in his life - first the event of Sophia, then a philosophical or theological understanding of the experience.

When we reflect on the life of Father Sergius Bulgakov and explore the sources of his biography, one important piece of evidence of his life is usually overlooked - photographs. There are quite a few of them left. But here’s what’s surprising: in his priestly photos, Father Sergius looks younger than on the cards, where he is still a secular philosopher in a frock coat. He was even embarrassed that he had too little, indecently little gray hair for a fifty-year-old “grandfather.”

But the priestly photos amaze not only with their youth, which seems to have been renewed with the adoption of the priesthood, but with a truly prophetic facial expression and the mesmerizing ardor of their gaze. Looking at these photographs, you remember the same phrase from the prophet Isaiah: “Here I am, send me.” The greatest righteous man and prophet of the Old Testament era, Isaiah, seeing the glory of God, exclaimed: “Woe is me!” I'm dead! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people also of unclean lips; and mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (Isaiah 6:5). However, when the Lord cried out: “Whom shall I send?”, the humble prophet, so anxiously aware of his unworthiness, offered himself as a sacrifice: “Here am I, send me” (Isaiah 6:8).

The entire appearance of Father Sergius screams with this ancient sacrificial cry. And this is not only the impact of old photographs. Many evidences of this fiery service of Father Sergius have been preserved. He was a true ascetic, and if his life is ever compiled, the biographer will not lack evidence. He was a man who devoted himself entirely to serving the Church. First, he was a true ascetic of science who subjected himself to the strict discipline of a thinker and writer.

He devoted every morning until noon to writing. He got up at the same time, despite the insomnia that tormented him all his life, served the liturgy, wrote or went to a lecture, and after dinner he always read. He also found time to receive visitors, confess to his spiritual children, and participate in numerous conferences and grueling symposiums. Being among the most refined society, he always remained a priest.

Once he exchanged his frock coat for a cassock, he never took it off; he was faithful not only to his priestly appearance, but also to the rhythm of church life, which all grew out of the liturgy. His theology also grew from the experience of the Eucharist. “My theology,” Father Sergius told his students, “has always been inspired by standing at the altar.”

Father Sergius wrote his main theological works in Paris, where he moved with his family in July 1925. There the “Small Trilogy” was completed, countless theological articles were written, the monumental “Big Trilogy” was created, and an interpretation of the Apocalypse was written.

In Paris, he became a professor of dogmatic theology at the newly opened theological institute of St. Sergius of Radonezh and gathered around him a whole constellation of outstanding Russian thinkers. It was Father Sergius Bulgakov who convinced Georgy Florovsky to engage in patristic research and inspired Father Cyprian Kern to study the work of St. Gregory Palamas, had a strong influence on the ideas of Father Nikolai Afanasyev and the work of Father Kassian Bezobrazov.

He was the first Russian theologian to draw attention to worship, liturgical texts and iconography as an important and reliable source of theological thought. He was the first to actively quote liturgical texts in his works, not for the sake of decoration, but precisely as a source of theology. In his relatively small work, “The Friend of the Bridegroom,” he used more than one hundred and seventy quotations from the church services of the Forerunner. Actually, it was Father Sergius Bulgakov, long before Father Alexander Schmemann, who became at the origins of liturgical theology.

Father Sergius devoted a lot of time and attention to young people. While still in the Czech Republic, he took an active part in the creation of the Russian Student Christian Movement. It was Father Sergius Bulgakov who forced the participants in the movement to build their work around the Eucharist, and this simple church idea became a real revelation for many who experienced, for example, the student congress in Psherow in 1923 as a real Pentecost, because, at the insistence of Father Sergius, all meetings were accompanied experience of communal prayer and communion.

On October 8, 1923, on the last day of the Psherovsky Congress, Father Sergius called on the participants to realize the new Eucharistic era. The Eucharist should inspire us not only in church, we must carry this inspiration into the world, striving for the ecclesiasticalization of all life, turning it into a liturgical hymn, an extra-church liturgy. For Father Sergius himself, this meant the transformation of his theological creativity into a liturgical hymn, a liturgical song. He perceived his theology as a service, as his duty to the Church. How much of a theologian he was can be judged by a small quotation from “The Bride of the Lamb”:

“The truths contained in the revelation of God-manhood, in particular in its eschatological revelation, are so unshakable and universal that even the most stunning events of world history, which we are now witnessing, pale in front of them, as if destroyed in their ontological meaning, because we we comprehend them in the light of the Coming" .

Father Sergius recorded this phrase on June 24, 1942. The most terrible war in the history of mankind was raging around, people were dying, cities were burning, and Father Sergius was too well aware of all the horrors of war, but his gaze extended further, he saw more than ordinary people see, he had the eyes of a prophet.

However, like all prophets, he was stoned. They didn't trust him. Bishop Feofan (Bystrov) in 1923 was indignant at the decision to allow a former Marxist to teach church law.

And in 1924, an article by Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) appeared, accusing Father Sergius of quadrupling the Trinity. One after another, brochures and books were printed, “scientifically” exposing the errors of Archpriest Bulgakov.

The peak of this persecution occurred in 1935. Then Father Sergius was directly accused of heresy. It was cruel and unfair. In 1936, a special theological commission was created, which included the most prominent representatives of Russian theology. For almost two years, theologians inquisitively read the texts of Father Sergius, but they never found heresy.

Bulgakov's texts are very demanding of the reader. If you want to understand the author, you should make the same ascetic effort, allow yourself the same tension of thought in which Father Sergius himself worked. Otherwise, with a superficial acquaintance with these theological works, confusion may arise and incorrect conclusions and suspicions may ripen. Bulgakov was a disciplined and educated thinker and writer. He expects the same discipline from his reader.

Sunset Joy

One should, perhaps, begin to get acquainted with the work of his father Sergius Bulgakov not with his voluminous trilogies, but with a small work from 1939 - “The Sophiology of Death”. This is an extremely autobiographical work, a confession of the experience of dying and an attempt to comprehend it in a Sophia way. For Father Sergius, everything is like this: first life, then philosophy, first liturgy, then theology. Therefore, autobiographical works are the real key to Bulgakov’s work. “The Sophiology of Death” was written by Father Sergius about the serious illness that overtook the priest.

In 1939, he was diagnosed with throat cancer. Father Sergius had to endure several terrible operations, and when you read his memoirs, it seems that you yourself begin to suffocate and fall into unconsciousness.

For a man who spent his entire life giving lectures and sermons and reverently loved worship, the loss of the ability to speak was a monstrous test. But by some miracle the priest learned to speak without vocal cords. Until the end of his days, he lectured and conducted services, although no one will ever know what it cost him. There are people who see this illness as God's punishment for heretical views. Without examining the ethics of such statements and the very possibility of finding out the will of God about each of us, I will still express my point of view.

Father Sergius considered it his duty as a theologian to say everything that could be said. He wanted to exhaust all the possibilities of theological speech, and he was guided in this daring not by pride, but by the duty of freedom and service; he saw this as his duty. Maximillian Voloshin has these lines:

But the chest is narrow for this breathing,
My larynx is too tight for these words.

Father Sergius in his theological work reached the limit of speech, and it seems to me that this terrible illness, which was not to death, but to the glory of God, served as a sign of this limit, and therefore a sign of the fulfillment of his mission as a theologian. And the sign of this glory is the vision of the Tabor light, witnessed by the spiritual children of Father Sergius.

Of course, Father Sergius Bulgakov was a holy man. He didn't perform miracles. As the priest once said about the Forerunner, whose personality he considered the norm human life: “he was so great that he did not perform “signs.” Father Sergius did not perform signs, did not perform miracles. The Lord Himself glorified His servant.

Father Sergius greatly honored the day of his ordination. It was Spiritual Day. In 1944 it fell on June 5th. Father gathered all his spiritual children. Confessed them. He gave communion. And then they drank tea and consoled themselves with conversation. On the night of June 6, there was a stroke, and Father Sergius spent almost a month unconscious.

On the fifth day of the agony, the sisters who were caring for the priest witnessed the appearance of the Non-Evening Light, which Father Sergius served all his life. His face lit up with an unearthly radiance and sparkled with the joy of unearthly visions. This phenomenon lasted about two hours, and for a short time the priest regained consciousness, and he consoled his loved ones.

Father Sergius Bulgakov died on July 13, 1944. He was buried in the Russian part of the cemetery in Saint-Genevieve de Bois, putting two handfuls of earth in the grave: from Gethsemane and from the grave of his beloved son Ivashechka. French soil mixed with the land of Palestine and Crimea.

Was walking Great War. On the day of the priest’s death, our troops liberated Vilnius, and the next day Pinsk. The Allies, who landed in Normandy on June 6, successfully liberated France. And Father Sergius stood at the throne of God, where he stands now, performing the heavenly liturgy.

How beautiful and rich life! He survived the murder of Emperor Alexander the Liberator, his nanny was a serf, and little Seryozha enthusiastically listened to her stories about the serf theater and the old days. In October 1905, he walked with a crowd of students to a demonstration wearing a red bow in his buttonhole. He was a member of the Second Duma. An active figure in the Local Council of 1917 and even the author of the patriarch’s speeches. He met both revolutions of 1917 in Moscow. Civil War went through Kyiv and Crimea for him.

He experienced hunger, poverty, imprisonment, exile, and separation from loved ones. Second world war he met in Paris, without leaving church and institute, without ceasing to serve, write and teach. His friends and acquaintances were not only protagonists of Russian culture, science and politics of the early 20th century, but also eminent foreigners.

The geography of his trips is impressive: in childhood: Livny, Orel Yelets; in his youth: Moscow, Crimea, Berlin, Paris, London, Geneva, Dresden, Zurich, Venice; in mature years: Kyiv, Poltava, Chisinau and lectures in other cities of Russia; later: Crimea, Istanbul, Prague, Paris, and from there Father Sergius traveled on church affairs to Serbia, Greece, Germany, Sweden, England, and the USA. He managed to publish twenty-eight volumes of his original works during his lifetime.

One day he completely admitted to a stranger: “I have never loved anything in my life more than throwing a Christmas tree for my children.” Of all the statements of Father Sergius, of all his numerous and brilliant works, this is the most dear to me.

I know and believe that the Lord fulfilled the desire of his faithful servant and prophet. And one wonderful morning we will all meet there, in the Kingdom of Sophia, at Christ’s Christmas tree.

1. Bulgakov S., prot. Autobiographical notes. Paris, 1991, p. 33.
2. Ibid., p. 82.
3. Letters from S.N. Bulgakova V.V. Rozanov // “Vestnik RKhD”, No. 130, 1979, pp. 175 – 176.
4. Bulgakov S., prot. Friend of the Groom // Small trilogy. M.: Public Orthodox University, founded by Archpriest Alexander Men, 2008, p. 208.
5. Bulgakov S., prot. Non-Evening Light. M.: “Respublika”, 1994, p. 13.
6. Ibid., S. 14.
7. Autobiographical notes, p. 80.
8. Never-Evening Light, S. 3.
9. Zander L.A. God and the world (the worldview of Father Sergius Bulgakov). Paris, 1948, volume 1, p. 181.
10. Autobiographical notes, p. 21.
11. Ibid., S. 18.
12. Bulgakov S., prot. Autobiographical notes. Paris: YMCA – PRESS, p. 53.
13. Zander, S. 14.
14. Bulgakov S., prot. From the memory of the heart. Prague // Studies in the history of Russian thought. Yearbook for 1998. M., 1998, S. 163.
15. Bulgakov S., prot. Bride of the Lamb. M.: Public Orthodox University, founded by Archpriest Alexander Men, 2005, p. 5.
16. Friend of the Groom, p. 272.
17. The legacy of Ariadna Vladimirovna Tyrkova: Diaries. Letters / Comp. N.I. Kanishcheva. – M.: ROSPEN, 2012, P. 251.