Vorontsova I.V. The journal “Zhivaya Zhizn” (1907-1908) and questions of Church “reformation”

Abstract: The subject of this research is the journal “Zhivaya Zhizn” (1907-1908), the specialty and content of which has not previously been systematized in the context of participation of its publishers in the church reforms movement of the Russian Orthodox Church in the early XX century. The work examines the reason of emergence of the journal, carries out a detailed review of its most important articles of Christian socialists V. P. Sventsinsky and V. F. Ern who published the journal along with S. N. Bulgakov and filled it with the articles by members of the Christian Brotherhood of Struggle. The author studies the social value of the journal, as well as analyzes the history of its publishing and reformist direction of the articles within the framework of succession of five publishers of the early XX century of the religious-reformist orientation (“Novyi Put”, “Voprosy Zhizni”, “Vek”, “Narod”). The author demonstrates that despite the declaration of opposition to “Neo-Christians”, the journal “Zhivaya Zhizn” carried out its part of the task among publishers that presented themselves as publishing bodies of the free religious thought. Namely in these periodicals of pre-revolutionary Russia, the ideology and philosophy of the “new religious consciousness”, social Christianity, and Church “liberation”, were the subject of the open discussion. This research shows that the journal “Zhivaya Zhizn” serves as the source for accumulation of facts that during the period of 1907-1908 the ideology of its publisher Christian Brotherhood of Struggle, despite the claimed opposition to “Neo-Christianity”, was in line with the religious reformism evolved in the early XX century in Russia.

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