The Ideological Foundations of the “Orthodox Intelligentsia” Project by N.A. Berdyaev

Abstract

This article is devoted to the “Orthodox intelligentsia” project by N.A. Berdyaev. The question of the possibility of its existence was raised by Berdyaev in the article “Does Freedom of Thought and Conscience Exist in Orthodoxy?” (1939), published in defense of G.P. Fedotov in the situation of his conflict with the St. Sergius Institute. The aim of the paper is to identify what ideological foundations underlie Berdyaev’s project of a new spirituality, the bearer of which should be the intelligentsia. The author of the paper applies the methodology of intellectual history, which allows considering Berdyaev’s “Orthodox intelligentsia” project as a way of substantiating the creative meaning of Orthodoxy and the need to reform the church community on a different meaning
of sobornost, which should include the values of Christian humanism. The article examines Berdyaev’s historiosophic arguments that allow him to affirm the spiritual and cultural significance of the phenomenon of the intelligentsia as the true bearer of humanized creative Orthodoxy. The author concludes that Berdyaev brings the idea of creativity in Christ closer to the cultural tasks of the intelligentsia and insists that an Orthodox intelligentsia is possible only through an inner spiritual reform of Orthodoxy as a religious tradition and the church as a social institution.