“The mystery of coercion”: Sergei Durylin's report on Konstantin Leontyev entitled “Pisatel-poslushnik” (“The obedient writer”)

The author of this article discusses Sergei Durylin's report “Pisatel'-Poslushnik” (“Te Obedient Writer”), presented in 1916 at the Moscow Religious and Philosophical Society. In the introduction, the author briefly presents the history of this report and its discussion and overviews Durylin's scholarship of the work of Konstantin Leont'yev. Durylin's point of view is radically different from the position of many of his contemporaries. According to Durylin, the source of Leont'yev's philosophy was not Russian political conservatism, but the religious character of literary creativity, connected with Letont'yev's conversion to Orthodoxy. The sociological and historiosophical views of Leont'yev proceed from his understanding of Christianity as personal salvation. In the introduction, the author presents a similar view of Leont'yev's philosophy due to Peter Struve.