Anton Kartashev and “new Christianity”: the intellectual biography of the historian

The article continues a series of publications about the participants of the religious movement for the church reform that unfolded in Russia at the beginning of the XX century. The author analyzed the intellectual biography of Anton Kartashev between 1902 and 1911, when Kartashev was fascinated by the “new religious consciousness”. During these years, he formed his views on the role of the Church in the religious revival of Russia after the dominance of positivism since the 1860s. In 1902, Kartashev, among other representatives of St. Petersburg Theological Academy, attended religious and philosophical meetings in St. Petersburg (1901-1903). The young associate professor of the Academy was fascinated by the freedom of religious quest by the near-church intelligentsia and imbued with the pathos of the “prophetic service” for Russia. It was during these little-studied years of his life that the metaphysical features of his concept of the “new incarnation” of the Russian Church for the sake of the future theocracy - Holy Russia - were laid. The “new Christians” religious movement with its reformist type doctrine left its traces in one form or another on the consciousness of many people who supported it in the early years of the XX century. Anton Kartashev was no exception - for a long time he criticized the Russian Orthodox Church for not being ready for internal religious reform, and for its inability to fit into modern society.