Enemies from the East? V. S. Soloviev on Paganism, Asian Civilizations, and Islam

Vladimir Wozniuk, ed. and trans. Enemies from the East? V. S. Soloviev on Paganism, Asian Civilizations, and Islam. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2007. xx, 227 pp. Index. $74.95, cloth.Vladimir Solov'ev, Russia's greatest religious philosopher, has exercised vast influence on Russian thought and culture, not only in philosophy and theology, but also in the creative arts, social and political thought, and history. The range of topics explored in this new and important collection of his writings - religion, myth, empire, Islam, Asia, and Russian national identity - attests to his dazzling erudition and will attract readers from all areas of Russian studies and beyond.This is the third volume of Solov'ev essays edited and translated by Vladimir Wozniuk. The first two volumes include some of Solov'ev's most important essays on politics, law, and morality (Yale University Press, 2000) and beauty, love, and ethics (University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), and they have been praised in the scholarly reviews. This new volume displays the same qualities as the previous two. The translation is lucid, accurate, and reads smoothly in natural English. There is good, succinct editor's introduction. Wozniuk's (defensible) editorial approach is minimalist, but in places he might have provided more annotations and references. In some cases I think he should have translated Solov'ev's quotations from the original (rather than back-translating from Russian) and checked them more closely in order to correct apparent mistakes in the original typesetting (e.g., placement of quotation marks). Finally I would have used the modern pinyin system of Romanizing Chinese rather than the old and largely discarded Wade-Giles system (e.g., Laozi instead of Lao-tzu, Dao Dejing for Tao-te-ching, Mozi for Mo-tzu, etc.). But these are quibbles about work of high quality.Enemies from the East? brings together six essays that span Solov'ev's entire career, from his first published essay (written when he was just twenty years old) to one of his last (written fours years before his death in 1900). The volume is thus remarkable record of the philosopher's intellectual development and will be of great interest to Solov'ev scholars. Beyond that it pertains to lesser known - but fascinating - dimension of Solov'ev's work, his interest in world religions and civilizations, including India, China, Japan, and Islam. Perhaps the most general way of assessing the volume's value is to say that it presents powerful perspective from one of Russia's most subtle and perceptive thinkers on the country's eastern neighbours. The essays can be read as reflections on Russia's own national identity, straddled between East and West. They explore the meaning of being Eurasian in the broadest sense of the term. They are also intriguing and revealing statements by Christian philosopher writing in multinational empire that included substantial Muslim minority. It is surely significant, as Wozniuk observes, that Solov'ev's essay on Muhammad and early Islam was republished in Russia in 1 994, in the midst of the Chechen war.In comparison with most of Solov'ev's other writings available in English, Enemies from the East? is more historical and cultural than speculatively philosophical. Particularly noteworthy is the essay on the founder of Islam. It is, as Wozniuk characterizes it in his introduction, a remarkably balanced, engaging, and accessible account of Muhammad and the theological foundations of Islamic culture and civilization (p. xvii). Yet Solov'ev was Christian apologist, albeit an ecumenical and tolerant one. The essays in the volume were written from his conviction that Christianity is the highest and truest of the world's religions. He believed that the goal of universal history is the self-realization of humanity 's divine potential in Godmanhood (bogochelovechestvo), which was for him the very essence of Christianity. …

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