Nine questions to the christian world. The polemic around Vladimir Soloviev’s theological ideas in french periodicals of the 1880s

This article deals with the reception of V. S. Soloviev’s ideas in the West, studies its specifi cs and its evolution beginning from the response to the publication in 1886 in the journal Revue de l’Église grecque-unie of “nine questions” of the philosopher to archpriest A. M. Ivantsov-Platonov. The article analyses the polemic between Soloviev and Ivantsov-Platonov that took place in 1883 in I. S. Aksakov’s newspaper Rus’ as the philosopher’s work Velikiy spor i khristianskaya politika (The Great Debate and Christian Politics’) was being published. The article discusses the most prominent directions in the debate regarding Soloviev’s “nine questions” in French press of the late 1880s in the journal Revue de l’Église grecque-unie (Revd. Emmanuel Andre), the newspaper L’Univers (Arthur Loth), and the journal L’Union Chrétienne (Revd. Wladimir Guettée). Special attention is paid to the further interpretation of the “nine questions” by the French authors, who, on the one hand, spoke in support of Soloviev’s theocratic project of the Christian “Universal Church” and, on the other hand, criticised it. It demonstrates the further interpretetation of Soloviev’s ideas in the West in the context of polemic of the mentioned authors among themselves that took place in their periodicals during 1887. The article also analyses the response to the western interpretations of Soloviev’s “nine questions” from the Russian press, which was predominantly negative and which in the end led to strengthening of censorship’s pressure of the Holy Synod on the Russian philosopher. Drawing on Soloviev’s letters and articles of the relevant period, the article shows his own attitude to both positive and critical comments on his views in the West. A conclusion is drawn about the decisive infl uence of the publication of Soloviev’s nine questions in French periodicals on the attitude to his ideas in the West (in the first hand, to his texts “Russian Idea” and “Russia and the Universal Church”), which significantly supported the image of Soloviev as the “Russian Newman” who converted from Orthodoxy into Catholicism.