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The State in the Christian-Anarchist Ideology of the Tolstoyan Valentin Bulgakov: The History of a Pacifism
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This essay traces the evolution of the attitudes of Valentin Fyodorovich Bulgakov, a Tolstoyan Christian anarchist, pacifist, and Russian emigrant, towards the institution of the state, mainly during his interwar period of exile in Czechoslovakia. Its goal is to capture the way the following influences worked together in shaping his ideological conceptions: the Russian prerevolutionary and revolutionary milieu translated into the Central European reality of a national state with a liberal democratic regime; the influence of collaboration with western European pacifist organizations; the influence of the atmosphere in an interwar Europe split into defenders and implacable opponents of the Soviet regime; and of course the influence of the social and political development of Europe between the two world wars and during the second of them. The research methodology is based in an analysis of Bulgakov’s journalistic work, organizational activities, and correspondence which is found in the materials from his written estate that are stored in the Memorial of National Literature in Prague, and the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts in Moscow. These sources are examined in the context of the development of religiously and secularly-motivated pacifism. From the analysis, it is evident that despite his rigorous insistence of maintaining the principle of not participating in armed activities of the state in the interwar period; a time when, particularly in the 1930s, a substantial part of the pacifist contingent was inclined towards some form of armed resistance to the war, the shock of the Nazi expansion represented a turning point for Bulgakov that marked his retreat from ethical radicalism towards a more conformist defense of the purportedly peaceful politics of the Soviet Union.
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319-342
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- Katedra slavistiky Filozofické fakulty Univerzity Palackého Křížkovského 10, 771 80 Olomouc; Czech republic , V.Picha@seznam.cz
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bwmeta1.element.desklight-60a3f4dd-106c-4eef-bd92-49f93334a2f3