Disenchanted Wanderer

This book is the first comprehensive English-language study in over half a century of the life and ideas of Konstantin Nikolaevich Leontiev (1831–1891), one of the most important thinkers in nineteenth-century Russia on political, social, and religious matters. The book gives the reader a broad overview of Leontiev's life and varied career as novelist, army doctor, diplomat, journalist, censor, and, late in life, ordained monk. Reviewing Leontiev's creative work and his writing on aesthetics and literary criticism, the book goes on to examine Leontiev's sociopolitical writing and his theory of the rise and fall of cultures and civilizations, placing his thought in the context of his contemporaries and predecessors in Slavophile and Russian nationalist circles. It also examines Leontiev's religious views, including his ascetic brand of Orthodoxy, informed by his experiences of the monastic communities of Mount Athos and Optina Pustyn, and his late attraction to Roman Catholicism under the influence of the theologian Vladimir Solovyev. The book concludes with a review of Leontiev's prophetic vision for the twentieth century and his conviction that, after a period of wars, socialism would triumph under the banner of a new Constantine the Great. It considers how far this vision foretold the rise to power of Joseph Stalin, an aspect of Leontiev's legacy that previously had not received the attention it merits. The book demonstrates that Leontiev was a deeply moral thinker and a radical conservative.