Vladimir Soloviev on Nationalism

The name of Vladimir Soloviev, insofar as it is familiar to the Western world, is known as that of a philosopher and religious thinker. This was, of course, the field in which he was particularly prominent. Russia can boast only a few formal philosophers (as distinguished from philosophizing novelists, poets or historians), and among those Soloviev is probably the most outstanding. Moreover, in the history of modern Russian religious thought, he occupies a central position, serving as a connecting link between the mid-nineteenth century Slavophils and such contemporary writers as Berdiaev and Bulgakov.But Soloviev's was a versatile and many-sided nature, and many other aspects of his life and activity deserve attention and study. He wrote interpretive essays on Russian poetry, some of which were landmarks in Russian literary criticism, and he was a poet himself—not a great poet, perhaps, but one with a strongly marked individual character.