In this narrative analysis oftwo Soviet dissertations in philosophy Idiscuss the role of Solov'ëv as one of themajor characters in the Soviet academicnarration of Russian philosophy: I show how theauthors (Turenko and Spirov) cope with thenecessity of criticizing Solov'ëv from theMarxist position and protect him from Westernscholars as the latter attempted to reviseRussian philosophy. I also discuss the way inwhich this requirement both to criticize andprotect is represented in the dissertations inwhich the strong Marxist posture and loyalty tocommunist doctrine corresponded (...) to the authors'belief that Solov'ëv was a greatphilosopher who made mistakes, although hisphilosophy remains a part of Russia's culturalheritage. The main conclusion is that in spiteof their vision of the world as split into thecommunist and bourgeois camps, both authors tryto avoid straightforward Manichean assessmentsand, in 60s and 70s, were keen to find as manypositive elements in Solov'ëv's philosophyas possible. (shrink)

From the 1890s on, the atheist philosopher F. Nietzsche exerted a profound and enduring impact on Russian religious, cultural, and social reality. The religious philosopher V.S. Solov'ëv perceived Nietzsche's thought as an actual threat to Russian religious consciousness and his own anthropological ideal of Divine Humanity. He was especially preoccupied with the idea of the Übermensch since sometwo decades before the Nietzschean Übermensch was popularized in Russia, Solov'ëv had already developed his own interpretation of the sverkhchelovek.