The Cross & the Sickle: Sergei Bulgakov and the Fate of Russian Religious Philosophy by Catherine Evtuhov (review)

360BOOK REVIEWS Dietrich provides exhaustive detaU of the religious positions that structured the reaction to the Revolution. He also shows that Protestants and Catholics had quite dUferent understandings of German nationaUsm. CathoUcs and Pietists still moved in the world of old régime patriotism; they were ready to offer sacrifice for the fatherland but were free of nationaUst excess. In the Protestant camp, by contrast, the beginnings of a confessionaUy-determined modern nationalism were already discernible. As Protestants beUeved their denomination to be an expression of German essence, they welcomed Prussia as the Protestant power fated to unify the nation. CathoUcs, for theU part, stiU saw the glory of the nation in the old Empire and were, as such, backwards-looking. If Dietrich is right, it also means that religion, more than South-German particularism , structured ideas of German nationalism in Württemberg in 1848. "The course of the Revolution," Dietrich writes, "led to a new confessionalization " (p. 336). Partly a product of dUfering reUgious interpretations of the Revolution, the new confessionaUzation also resulted from the missionizing attempts of both churches. But here the Catholics proved more aggressive, as Protestants (but not necessarily Pietists) resisted the "superficial" Christianity that seemed to come along with organization. Catholics, however, felt no compunction on this score. Through missions and the formation of increasingly dense organizational networks, they began to form the unified mUieu that would serve as the basis for CathoUc poUtics in the second haU of the nineteenth century. Dietrich's account is soUd and competent. He is also to be commended for writing even-handed interdenominational religious history. Yet he steadfastly refuses to compare his results with the conclusions of other scholars. Thus there is no comparison with Jonathan Sperber's work on WestphaUa or Clemens Rehm's interesting book on Catholics in the Diocese of Freiburg. Moreover, Dietrich bridles before even the most tentative engagement with wider conceptual issues, particularly in respect to the construction of national identity. Consequently, the work is a mine of judiciously organized detaU. But it wiU requUe historians who do more than stick to the facts to integrate this material into a more complex understanding of the intersection of reUgion, nationalism , and civil society in the middle of the nineteenth century. Helmut Walser Smith Vanderbilt University The Cross & the Sickle:Sergei Bulgakov and the Fate ofRussian Religious Philosophy . By Catherine Evtuhov. (Ithaca, NewYork: CorneU University Press. 1997. Pp. xU, 278. $42.50.) The tortured and tumultuous years of the early twentieth century, pervaded by the cataclysmic implosion ofthe ancien régime and the emergence of a new book reviews361 Bolshevik state, marked not only vast social and poUtical upheaval, but also a period of enormous cultural and inteUectual change. In particular, the UitelUgentsia —renowned for its monomaniacal devotion to the revolutionary ethos—underwent profound changes, as significant components shifted from a materiaUstic worldview to one deeply influenced by neo-Kantian, reUgious, and ultimately non-revolutionary perspectives. EspeciaUy in the inter-revolutionary years of 1907-1917, many in the intelUgentsia abjured the evolutionary mission and applauded the famous coUection of essays caUed Vekhi ("Landmarks") that became symbolic of the nonrevolutionary spiritual quest in the inteUigentsia. AU this has been the subject ofconsiderable research, especially in recent years, including such rich, archivaUy-driven studies as M. A. Kolerov's TVe mir, no mech. Russkaia religiozno-filosofskaia pechat' ot 'Problem idealizma' do 'Vekh; 1902-1909 (St. Petersburg, 1996). This book offers an inteUectual biography of Sergei Bulgakov (1871-1944) before his emigration in 1923. Over the past few decades, we have already had close studies of other seminal figures, such as P. B. Struve, and Evtuhov's biography now adds another key figure. More than most other members of the inteUigentsia , Bulgakov—son of a priest, former Marxist, Christian sociaUst, and firm beUever in the essential "religiousness" of the Russian people—laid great emphasis on the need for a "reformation" and fundamental renewal of the Russian Church. The author describes the development of his general phUosophical views, waxing interest in the Church, and role in the Church CouncU of 1917-18. This study draws upon a broad corpus of printed sources, some essential archival coUections (including the archives of...