ABSTRACT
Born in Livny, Russia (1871) to the family of a provincial priest, Sergii (Sergius, Sergei) Nikolaevich Bulgakov began his education at church-run schools, the Livny Orthodox gymnasium (1881–84) and Orel Orthodox seminary (1884–88). Having experienced a crisis of faith, he left the seminary and finished his studies at a state-run Eletsk gymnasium (1888–89). Attracted to Marxism, he went on to study law and economics at the University of Moscow (1890–94). He started his teaching career first in Moscow (1895–1901) and then, upon defending his master’s thesis, in Kiev (1901–6). Over these years, Bulgakov came to distance himself from Marxism and embraced a form of religious idealism. This intellectual evolution, also followed by a number of leading Russian intellectuals, is charted in his collection of essays From Marxism to Idealism (1896–1903). As he explains, such aspects of Marxist philosophy as materialist metaphysics, social determinism, and the reduction of persons to socio-economic laws, seemed untenable in light of the Neo-Kantian critique.
