Two Condemnations of Sergei Bulgakov

ABSTRACT This article uses the personal diaries and memoirs of Archpriest Sergius (Sergei) Bulgakov to examine the circumstances of his expulsion from Bolshevik-occupied Crimea in late 1922. At the time, he was rector of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Yalta. The expulsion of Fr. Sergius was part of a large-scale operation to expel the humanist intelligentsia, who did not fit within the ideological contours of the new government. We will examine the political aspects of the condemnations of Fr. Sergius’s doctrine of Sophia, the theological development of which he began in exile. We will also examine aspects of Fr. Sergius’s attitude to monarchy and his belief in the “white tsar,” noting that Bulgakov’s position as an émigré could hardly be characterized as monarchical. Sophiology may be the political equivalent of ecclesiastical democracy, of faith in the ecclesiastical people and the Christian community, which was alien to the conservative monarchism of Orthodox believers abroad, centered in Serbia’s Sremski Karlovci. We will examine the circumstances of the church’s condemnation of Fr. Sergius, which took place against the context of canonical uncertainty, and we will touch upon some aspects of the contemporary reception of Sophiology in Russia in a political context (V. Bibikhin, O. Kirichenko).