In order to find Christ,
you must take on yourself
the ascetic labor of searching for Him.
E.N. Trubetskoy
Prince Eugene Nikolaevich Trubetskoy
Prince Eugene Nikolaevich Trubetskoy was a religious philosopher, an art critic, a lawyer, and a public figure of the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. He belonged to the glorious galaxy of philosophers of the “Silver Age” and was among the founders of the original Russian philosophy. He is the author of over twenty books and a large number of articles on religion, philosophy, law, and politics.
E.N. Trubetskoy was born on September 23 (October 5), 1863 in Moscow. His father, Prince Nikolai Petrovich Trubetskoy (182–1900), belonged to one of the most enlightened and noblest families in Russia. He was a director of the Imperial Russian Musical Society at the Moscow Conservatory (1861–1876) and an amateur composer. His mother, Princess Sophia Alexeyevna, nee Lopukhina, was the spiritual heart of the family. She focused all her attention on the upbringing and education of her children: three sons and seven daughters, on whom she had a profound religious influence. His brother Sergei later became an Orthodox philosopher (died in 1905), and his brother Gregory became a diplomat, later an active politician in the White Movement and a prominent figure in emigration († 1930).
The Trubetskoy family would spend summers on their Akhtyrka family estate about nine miles away from the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra and three miles away from Khodkovo Monastery, where Sts. Cyril and Maria, the parents of St. Sergius of Radonezh, were buried. The Trubetskoys often visited these great holy places, which had a strong influence on the formation of their children’s religious views. Later Eugene Nikolaevich would write:
“It is known that St. Sergius set up the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity as an image of unity in love, so that, looking at this image, people would overcome the odious division of the world in themselves… The image of love that gathers people and organizes them in the cathedral was engraved on our souls forever.”1
Mikhail Mikhailovich Osorgin, 1880. Private collection, Paris After the appointment of Nikolai Petrovich to the post of the Vice-Governor of Kaluga in 1876, the Trubetskoy family moved to live in this city for ten years. M. M. Osorgin, a relative of the Trubetskoys, wrote in his Memoirs about their life at that time:
“Their house was always open to everybody who wanted to relax and live by something more interesting than provincial gossip and rumors. The prince himself could not live without music; he founded a musical society, and thanks to him Kaluga began to live a more interesting life than before their arrival.”2
The boys, Sergei and Eugene, were sent to study at the Kaluga Classical School, where they studied from the fifth to the eighth grade.
Recalling his years at the school, Eugene Trubetskoy wrote:
“We, both brothers, graduated from the Kaluga school with a well-thought-out and very definite worldview. In its main aspects it has not changed since then.”
The school also gave the brothers a thorough knowledge of ancient languages: E. Trubetskoy could read Latin fluently, and he read Plato and Aristotle in Greek.
Eugene Nikolaevich Trubetskoy In the late nineteenth century, materialism and atheism began to come into fashion. In the eighth grade, E. Trubetskoy experienced a spiritual crisis, expressed in the loss of faith in God and the denial of high spiritual values. Overcoming the crisis was facilitated by his serious study of philosophy and acquaintance with the legacy of the Slavophiles, and above all, with the teachings of A.S. Khomyakov about the Church as the Body of Christ and with V.S. Solovyov’s thesis, Critique of the Abstract Principles. As a result, he returned to the bosom of the Orthodox Church. His main idea at that time was as follows: “Either there is a God and the fullness of life in Him, or it is not worth living at all.” He came to realize that eternal peace is sent down to earth from above, and is the fullness of life.
In 1881, Eugene Trubetskoy entered Moscow State University (the Department of Law), although he was more inclined to religious philosophy. At that time, the young man was passionate about the music of Mozart, Beethoven, Borodin, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov.
“Philosophy and music— they were one thing for me in my experience at that time. Music gave me colors for speculation,” Trubetskoy wrote in his reminiscences.
Music contributed to the final development of his religious worldview, when faith was revealed to him as a source of supreme joy. One of the most intelligent people in Russia, E.N. Trubetskoy was a deeply religious man.
In 1885, he graduated from university and received a Master’s degree in law. Then he served in the Kiev Grenadier Regiment, situated in Kaluga. After receiving the rank of an officer, he retired to the reserves with the rank of second lieutenant. In 1886, Eugene Nikolaevich defended his thesis: “On Slavery in Ancient Greece”, and taught as an associate professor at the Demidov Juridical Lyceum in Yaroslavl (1886–1897), and then as a professor at Kiev St. Vladimir University (1897–1905). In 1889, Trubetskoy married Princess Vera Alexandrovna Shcherbatova (1867–1942), the Moscow mayor’s daughter. They had three children: Sergei, Alexander and Sophia.
Eugene Nikolaevich and Vera Alexandrovna Trubetskoy. 1889. Private collection, Paris Along with teaching at the Yaroslavl Lyceum, Trubetskoy worked on writing his master’s thesis: “The Religious and Social Ideal of Western Christianity in the Fifth Century. The Worldview of Blessed Augustine.” A year later, E.N. Trubetskoy defended his doctoral thesis: “The Religious and Social Ideal of Western Christianity in the Eleventh Century. The Worldview of Pope Gregory VII and Publicists Among His Contemporaries” (published in 1897). As we know, Pope Gregory VII was the initiator of the theocratic papal state in the eleventh century. In his thesis, Trubetskoy recognized Gregory VII’s idea of a worldwide royal priesthood, which should embrace not only the clergy, but also the secular world. The author attributed to historical Christianity an organizing role in the political life of modern civilized peoples. But since the medieval Church Fathers mixed the order of grace with the legal one, for Trubetskoy their teaching was a one-sided, legalistic Christianity, doomed to lose its power. Despite internal Church discord, the Western Church, according to Trubetskoy, often brought peace and unity into the chaos of medieval political powers and gave European peoples chances to preserve the fruits of universal spiritual culture amid the surrounding barbarism. In Trubetskoy’s view, the Christian Church should carry on this high mission even now, if it throws off the age-old fetters of shameful subservience to the secular authorities. Thus, the first steps in Trubetskoy’s philosophy were studying the works of the Western Holy Fathers.
In 1905, E.N. Trubetskoy left the professorial chair of philosophy at Kiev University and became a professor at Moscow State University. After the death of his brother Sergei (1905), he took up his place as head of the Department of Philosophy (1906–1911). According to one of his contemporaries, Trubetskoy “became a famous professor who captivated his listeners with his talent for presentation and oratory alike; undoubtedly, his talent was exceptional, and the purity of all his motives was undeniable.”
In 1905, the Trubetskoys acquired the Begichevo estate twenty miles from Kaluga. Begichevo had once belonged to the Kaluga governor Smirnova, who was a close friend of the author Nicholai Gogol and praised by Pushkin. The garden created in the poet’s memory had a “Pushkin Promenade” and a “Pushkin Pond” with a small island, on which, according to legend, Pushkin drew inspiration. Prince Trubetskoy opened a school on the estate for peasant children, in which his own children taught.
In the 1910s, Eugene Nikolaevich attended the Moscow Psychological Society at Moscow State University and the Religious and Philosophical Society in Memory of Vladimir Solovyov, which included such prominent philosophers as Fr. Pavel Florensky, Nikolai Berdyaev, Fr. Sergei Bulgakov and the then very young Alexei Losev. Trubetskoy met and became close to V. Solovyov, the most famous religious philosopher in the history of Russian thought, back in 1886. They became friends despite some differences in their philosophical views, although both paid special attention to the relationship between philosophy and religion. V. Solovyov developed the idea of the moral relationship between God, people and the Creation in a single whole. Trubetskoy was also a supporter of the philosophical teaching of universal unity, but he interpreted the absolute universal unity of his teacher Solovyov through the introduction of the concept of “Absolute Consciousness”. If, according to Solovyov, the Absolute is the essence of everything in the world, then, according to Trubetskoy, it embraces the world as omniscience, encompassing the real and the possible, truth and error.
Trubetskoy also considered the problems of Sophiology. By “Sophia”, the Wisdom of God, traditional Orthodoxy understands the Second Person of the Holy Trinity—Jesus Christ, God the Word—by Whom God the Father created the world. But Solovyov tried to present “Sophia” as a person separated from the Holy Trinity. In his view, “Sophia” is the Heavenly mediator between the Creator and His Creation. He thought that through “Sophia”, humanity will in the future become a universal body—God-manhood. Unlike Solovyov, Trubetskoy correlated “Sophia” with an ideal plan for the world, an opportunity that man can accept or not. “Sophia” is not an essence, but just an ideal image. Later Trubetskoy tried to reconcile and harmonize Solovyov’s ideas with the Church dogmas, thus developing an Orthodox philosophical worldview. The Questions of Philosophy and Psychology journal contains the following articles by Trubetskoy: “The Worldwide Historical Significance of the Political Ideals of Plato and Aristotle” (1890), and “Philosophy of Christian Theocracy, Freedom and Immortality, etc.” Trubetskoy’s essays on Nietzsche’s philosophy were published in a separate book.
Eugene Nikolaevich and Vera Alexandrovna Trubetskoy with their sons Sergei and Alexander. Menshovo. 1892. Private collection, Paris Trubetskoy was engaged not only in philosophy, but also in politics, considering his political activity to be his moral duty to Russia. He played a prominent role in the Russian liberal movement, which aimed to limit the power of autocracy. As we know, a split in society matured in the early twentieth century and resulted in the Revolution of 1905–1907. Trubetskoy was likewise carried away by the wave of revolution. He wrote:
“What could be more important for a philosopher than going into the inner ear with which he hears the world?... You can’t go into a wonderful inner world when a creature infinitely dear to you is languishing next to you in prenatal agony. And what if this creature is not even your wife or mother, but something even greater—your motherland?”
At first he was a member of the Cadet Party, and then became one of the founders of the Union for Peaceful Renewal. After the Government’s failure in the Russo-Japanese War, he wrote an article entitled, “War and Bureaucracy”,3 which bitterly denounced the negligence of our bureaucrats in Port Arthur. The article was written so vividly and ably that it made a dangerous impression on the public, giving rise to distrust of the Government, whereas trust was vital in that difficult time for Russia. Trubetskoy belonged to the group within the Russian intelligentsia, which, wishing its beloved Motherland reforms for the sake of its prosperity, nevertheless by its “progressive-liberal” speeches unwittingly contributed to the collapse of Russia in 1917.
E.N. Trubetskoy endorsed the idea of separation of Church and State. In his article, The Church and the Liberation Movement,4 he expressed his confidence that the Russian clergy could “ring the bells to proclaim the universal celebration of renewal” and rejoice in the success of the political opposition. According to Trubetskoy, to do this the clergy of our state religion must abandon the principles of servile opportunism and return to the high precepts of the holy Metropolitan Philip, who dispassionately denounced Government falsehood. Here we see an image of Prince E.N. Trubetskoy as a Russian citizen and a patriot. He was highly respected in society and therefore in 1903 and 1915–1917 he was elected member of the State Council from the Zemstvo of the Kaluga province.
Between 1906 and 1910, Trubetskoy published and edited the Moskovsky Ezhenedelnik (Moscow Weekly) magazine, which was the organ for the Party of Peaceful Renewal. In this magazine he published a number of articles on the first Russian Revolution.
E.N. Trubetskoy was one of the initiators, ideologists and main contributors for the Put’ (“Way”) publishing house in Moscow in 1910–1917, which ran on religious and philosophical lines. The works of famous Russian religious philosophers, including I.V. Kireyevsky, were published there, and the views of peaceful renewal were also promoted. The Put’ publishing house published the book by Fr. Pavel Florensky, The Pillar and Ground of the Truth.
In 1911, Trubetskoy left Moscow State University and moved with his family to his Begichevo estate. He was elected councilor for the Kaluga District in the Provincial Zemstvo Assembly and an honorary justice of the peace of the Kaluga District Court. In Begichev, he began working on the book, The Worldview of Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov, which was published in 1913 by the Put’ publishing house in Moscow. In this work, Trubetskoy argues that the creation of the world was an absolutely free act—a creation out of nothing.
In the late twentieth century, restoration workers opened for the first time the bright palette of the old Russian icon to the world. Icons, which had previously been just gloomy, black spots against the background of gilded vestments, began to gleam with Heavenly colors, and Trubetskoy wrote the works, Speculation in Color (1916), Two Worlds on Old Russian Iconography (1916) and Russia in Its Icon (1917), which brought him fame as a philosopher of Orthodox icons. These three booklets marked the beginning of an understanding of the artistic and mystical richness of old Russian iconography.
“And now the discovery of the icon gives us an opportunity to look deeply into the soul of the Russian people and overhear its confession, expressed in wonderful works of art,” E.N. Trubetskoy wrote in his article, Two Worlds in Old Russian Iconography. “When we penetrate into the mystery of these artistic and mystical contemplations, the discovery of the icon will illuminate not only the past, but also the present of Russian life. More than that—[it will reveal] its future...”
"Speculation in Color" His work, Speculation in Color, is a profound study on the religious and philosophical understanding of old Russian art. According to Trubetskoy, an Orthodox church is a complex whole, whose parts combine to create an image of the unity of the Creator and His Creation. A church building does not bear the idea of today’s real world, but of “coming church humanity”. Eugene Nikolaevich suggested a symbolic interpretation of the shape of church domes as frozen candle flames, because a candle is a symbol of the human soul, prayerfully aspiring to God.
The close connection of church architecture with the art of frescoes and wall icon-painting is well known. Trubetskoy wrote about the amazing “architecturality” of religious painting, “when subordination to architectural form is felt not only in church as a whole, but also in every individual iconographic image.” It is expressed in the fact that the saints’ poses sometimes repeat the lines of vaulting, and oblong proportions direct their figures upwards. Trubetskoy believed that it is this feature of the traditional icon that distinguishes old Russian art from the artistic realism of modernity, including the so-called “new style” in religious painting.
“There is an ‘incomparable joy’ in Russian icons,” Trubetskoy wrote. He called the old Russian icon a blessing, “inherited from our distant ancestors,” in which “the sunny image of Orthodox Holy Russia is combined with the beauty of Heaven.”
The meeting of the Local Council. Among the participants is Eugene Nikolaevich Trubetskoy
In October 1917, Eugene Nikolaevich took an active part in the preparation and holding of the All-Russian Local Church Council, convened to restore the Patriarchate in Russia, which had been abolished under Peter I. At the Council, he was a deputy of the chairman from the laity, and after the election of the holy Patriarch Tikhon and the formation of the higher administration of the Church, Eugene Nikolaevich joined the Supreme Church Council.
“The Meaning of Life” In 1918, Trubetskoy was an opponent in the defense of Ivan Ilyin’s thesis on Hegel’s philosophy as the teaching of the concreteness of God and man. The essay, “The Meaning of Life”, was the result of many years of creative research by Prince Trubetskoy. The reason for writing it was, in his words, “painful suffering at the meaninglessness of the world.” In it the thinker examined the eternal theme of the purpose of life and proved the reasonableness of being. According to Trubetskoy, the meaning of the life of an individual and humanity lies in the path of the cross towards God. This path leads to the attainment of the ideal fullness of being or perfect God-manhood, the hope of all Creation. Trubetskoy was completing his work during the October uprising of 1917, when Bolsheviks were firing at the Kremlin.
“Now that it [his work.—Auth.] is finished,” Trubetskoy wrote, “Russia lies in ruins; it has become a hotbed of a global conflagration threatening the destruction of world culture.”
After the Revolution, Trubetskoy took an active anti-Bolshevik position. In 1918, he was one of the initiators of the “Right Center” in Moscow, and in Kiev he was a member of the Council of the State Unification of Russia. The threat of arrest made him leave Moscow. During the Civil War, he collaborated with the headquarters of the Volunteer Army. Together with the retreating army he reached Novorossiysk. At the end of December 1919, Trubetskoy gave a lecture, “On the Religious Revival of Russia”, at the People’s House of Novorossiysk.
After the lecture he was asked questions.
“How can you explain the disasters that befell Russia after 1917?”
“I explain the severity of the disasters by retribution... for our attitude to the religious question and especially for the attitude of the Russian clergy towards their religious and social mission... Of course, I will never believe in the triumph of atheism among us Russians... Russian religious thought will find its way to revival.”
“Are you going to leave Russia?”
“I will stay here... to leave now would be to abandon a dearly loved one who is terminally ill.”
Shortly after that conversation Trubetskoy contracted typhus and died on January 23, 1920 in Novorossiysk.
Eugene Nikolaevich Trubetskoy was a passionate champion of the idea of Russia as a State of a great nation. He held to strong Orthodox Church foundations until his last breath, and his final unconscious words before his repose were: “It’s time to begin the Great Liturgy. Open the royal doors!”
