The article tells about one of the brightest religious exponents of Russian thought, “the Ascetic of the Russian Land”, the Orthodox Christian Nikolay Pestov (1892–1982). The integrity of his Christian worldview arouses a genuine interest in him. The theological works by Nikolay Pestov should be undoubtedly considered in inextricable connection with the study of his life journey. Therefore, special attention is paid to the biography of the thinker based on documentary sources and autobiography. The article observes Nikolay Pestov’s spiritual rebirth, his transformation from the external to the internal, “...from Saul to Paul...”. This approach allows to appreciate the significance of his own experience of Orthodox piety and to see the true value of his gift of writing. Focusing on modern readers, who might encounter difficulties in perception and understanding of literary forms typical for the fourth century, Nikolay Pestov managed to “write without saying anything new, but saying everything as if in a new way instead”. All this becomes possible thanks to the amazing bread th in quoting the “source of eternal truth — the Holy Scriptures”, the works by ascetics of piety of the late 19th–20th centuries, writers, philosophers, teachers, poets, as well as examples from the lives of saints. It is quite difficult to find an equally proper niche for Pestov’s guide in religious literature, since spiritual books were created primarily by monastics describing their own experience. Being a layman himself, Nikolay Pestov wrote a book for lay people, for those who are ready to perform a Christian feat in their family, in education, in friendship, at work, during the day, in conversations and in silence. Nikolay Pestov’s two-volume book shows the way to Christ. It would be a mistake to think that Nikolay Pestov only indicates “the way of salvation” for his readers. He himself is a wanderer, a fellow traveler, a companion on the way. He himself continues his spiritual ascent. The theologian called his series of books “a thesis research” on the topic “Experience of Building a Christian Worldview”. Today this work is called The Modern Practice of Orthodox Piety. The author Nikolay Pestov signed his works with ГБР (GBR) abbreviation meaning the Sinful Servant of God in Russian. The article attempts to show the eternity of Christian wisdom by repeated address to theological works by Nikolay Pestov.

The article introduces the personality and epistolary legacy of Schema-hegumen Ioann (Alekseev), who pursued asceticism at the Valaam Monastery of the Transfiguration of the Saviour from 1901 to 1958. After the revolution, the territory on which the monastery stood became part of independent Finland. Consequently, the Elder spent most of his life detached from his homeland. During the Winter War of 1939–1940 between the Soviet Union and Finland, the brotherhood was evacuated deep into Finland, where they founded the New Valaam Monastery. From 1945 to 1957, the monastery was under dual jurisdiction: administratively, it was under the Finnish Church Administration, while canonically, it belonged to the Moscow Patriarchate. Since 1938, Schema- hegumen Ioann had been fulfilling the duties of the spiritual father of the monastery, giving guidance to Russian-speaking pilgrims. At the New Valaam Monastery, the ascetic became widely known as an experienced spiritual mentor. His spiritual disciples included priests, laypeople, former members of the Imperial Court, representatives of the artistic community, and ordinary individuals. Many of them received spiritual guidance from him through correspondence, which was eventually published In 1956, a collection of his letters in Russian was released at New Valaam. From 1961 to 1963, the letters were published in the émigré journal L’Eternel (The Eternal) in France. In the USSR, the Elder’s letters became known in 1958 in samizdat (underground press) format, reproduced using typewriters. In 1985, a portion of the letters was presented in the “Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate”. The collection has been reprinted multiple times and translated into other languages. In Russia, starting from 2000, the Valaam Elder’s letters have been published almost every year, becoming a kind of “handbook for the modern Christian”. Schema-hegumen Ioann did not aim to construct a logically refined theological system; his service was focused on caring for those in spiritual need. When expounding on fundamental doctrines, he relied on the Gospel and the teaching of the Fathers of the Church. His theology was not an intellectual discipline or a theory of the world’s order but an experiential communion with God, rooted in personal transformation experience. In his letters, he sometimes touched upon the issues of the contemporary church life and politics. The article highlights and analyzes the principal theological and historical aspects of the epistolary legacy of the Valaam ascetic.

The article examines the worldview of the priest Iosif Ivanovich Fudel (1864/1865–1918) through the prism of the Russian conservative thought at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. It shows his complex and dynamic views aligned with the chronology of his life and the historical context. Outlining the circle of Father Iosif’s fellow thinkers at different times (Slavophiles, Konstantin Leontiev, Mikhail Novoselov with his Circle of Those Seeking Christian Enlightenment, etc.), the author pays special attention to Fudel’s relationship with Lev Tikhomirov, a prominent representative of conservatism, who was Fudel’s close friend for more than a quarter of a century.
The friends were clearly unanimous about the need to nurture the church intelligentsia and restore the sobornost (conciliarity) of the church life, although Fudel throughout his whole life was much less concerned about the political agenda. The direction of the public thought that he represented can be defined as Neo-Slavophilism. It was characterized by switching from vast political topics to specific organization issues within the church with a common antirenovationist and anti-modernist vector. This said, the leaders of this trend advocated for the wider participation of the laity in the life of the church, for the development of fraternal life and the Slavophilelike collegiality and the convocation of the church council. Common to the Fudel’s circle were the criticism of the dominance of the bureaucracy, negative attitude towards Grigory Rasputin, support for Aleksandr Samarin and a certain opposition to the synodal administration. It was, in its own way, a conservative project of the church modernization. Belonging to the circle ideologically, Father Iosif acted not so much as a thinker, but as a doer, fulfilling the main task of his life, that of a pastor.
The author emphasizes that Father Iosif’s position had always been personal, not favoring any party, and in the last decade of his life he sought to stay out of politics, cutting his public comments on issues relating to the secular politics. He accepted neither the revolution of 1905–1907, nor the uncertain position of the church in it, nor the political concessions made by the authorities. Father Iosif immersed himself completely in the parish life of Moscow.

The article is dedicated to one of the most relevant issues in religious thought—the preservation of church tradition. The interest in this issue became particularly acute for Russian religious thinkers of the 20th century, who witnessed radical changes in living conditions and collective consciousness. The article examines the interpretation of the issue in the works by Sergey Fudel (1900–1977), a church writer and carrier of pre-revolutionary Russian culture. He had communication with outstanding spiritual figures spanning the late 19th to the 20th centuries, confessors of faith, and new martyrs. The church and historical context of Fudel’s works is explored, clarifying the connection between the writer’s views on the transmission of church tradition, his own biography, the figures of his mentors, and the existence conditions for the persecuted Church, evidenced in Fudel’s writings. The article sheds light on the writer’s response to changes in the conditions of church life in the mid-20th century and the feeling of a “generation gap” that emerged in him. It reconstructs Fudel’s notion of the “monastery in the world” as an environment where church tradition is preserved. The correlation between Fudel’s concept of church tradition and his ecclesiological views is illuminated. The research findings lead to the conclusion that the phenomenon of the “hidden Church” as an alliance of “two or three” disciples of Christ was not, in Fudel’s view, a temporary solution stemming from the era of persecutions. Instead, the writer regarded such an experience as an exposition of the Church’s original teaching about itself and an enduring model of church relations. Like many others, Fudel acknowledged the providential significance of trials undergone by the Russian Church. However, he insisted that the experience of the “hidden Church” revealed the original teaching of the Church about itself, preserved throughout the ages. The article also considers the relationship between Fudel’s views and other approaches to the “generation gap” problem. Fudel’s evaluation of previous eras, marked by the “external prosperity” of Christianity, allows characterization of his attitude towards various concepts of tradition, both classical, tracing back to the times of the Byzantine Empire, and those contemporary to the writer.

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Novoselov belongs to the cultural figures of Russia, whose inquisitive mind, towards the end of the 19th century, sought new meanings in personal and social life amidst the historical and cultural modernization of Russia and later affirmed these meanings within Christianity at the beginning of the 20th century. From a young age, Mikhail Novoselov was acquainted with Leo Tolstoy, getting carried away by the writer’s works and teachings, and adopting Tolstoy’s method of seeking truth in life as a role model. The history of their relationship was etched in Mikhail Novoselov’s letters from the 1880s to 1890s, and his collection of writings, “Letters to Friends”, details Mikhail Novoselov’s struggle against the Tolstoyan movement. Leo Tolstoy’s rational approach to Christianity, though admired by many of his followers and imitators, lacked the depth of thought and fervor for religious faith in the living God. At the same time, both aspects were conveyed to the world by the institutional Christian church, which Leo Tolstoy rejected. Genuine friendly relations linked Mikhail Novoselov and Leo Tolstoy, and even feeling that Novoselov was becoming more distant from him, the writer sought and suggested religious literature to his friend. In 1903, being already a former participant of the Tolstoyan movement, Mikhail Novoselov definitively severed ties with the person he perceived as his teacher, and embarked on an independent path of knowing God. This journey led him to the Orthodox Church, and he continued guiding others spiritually, who wandered in search of truth during an era when the apologetic paradigm of Russian Orthodoxy was threatened by the pressures of irreligious humanism.

The article explores the work of Orthodox poets during the Soviet era, particularly focusing on Aleksandr Solodovnikov, Vasily Nikitin, Sergey Averintsev, and Elena Pudovkina. It formulates a general principle of the poetic style of these authors as the principle of soul, word, and world transformation, realized through prayerful and confessional expressions. The distinctive feature of the resurging Orthodox poetry in the 20th century primarily lay in its pursuit of maximum immediacy, simplicity, and originality, deliberately transcending “literariness,” which was particularly burdensome for individuals of the 20th century. In turn, the analysis reveals that due to this aspiration for the primacy of the word, it unexpectedly proves to be far more complex than it appears at first glance. It carries not only profound meanings of Orthodox faith but also the deep tradition of Christian “literariness” in the best sense of the term—an active continuity with the texts of predecessors, reaching back to ancient Russian and Byzantine heritage. Moreover, it strives to reproduce the spirit of the Gospel’s word, as far as it is humanly possible. Literary creation for an Orthodox person is justified and beneficial only when it constitutes a part of their spiritual self-improvement and transmits the experience of this work to others. It represents the work of soul transformation by the grace of God, captured in the word. Spiritual poetry is traditional not only in content but also in form, oriented toward classical poetry of the 19th century as its model. In cases when it diverges from this model, it does not tend toward the modernism of the 20th century but, conversely, delves into the deep archaism of the early centuries of Christianity, sometimes directly aligning with the structure of the Gospel’s word and canonical church hymns. This is logical since the breakdown of classical poetic structure in the 20th century was a consequence of secularization—the despiritualization of the world and language. Accordingly, the reverse process inevitably led to the revival of the style of classical poetry and even its earlier form—the church poetry.

The research of the history of the Russian Orthodox Church of the 20th century is largely based on the study of documents of that era drawn up in the church milieu. Since all kinds of church publications were prohibited, the reproduction of documents in private — by copying or retyping — gained ground in Russia of the 1920s and 1930s. These documents played the role of the church press — they introduced the events of church life, expressed beliefs in the rightness of the author or a group of like-minded people, unmasked ideological opponents, and also served to communicate with foreign church figures. The reproduction of such documents, in case of their discovery by authorities, could endanger not only the authors thereof and the persons mentioned therein, but also ordinary copyists and put them all to punitive measures such as purge. Thanks to the ascetics who preserved them, these documents remain the most important information sources in the field of history of the Russian Orthodox Church in the era of persecution. The article lists the documents that were taken abroad — letters of Bishop Damaskin (Cedric), the collection of church documents “The Case of Metropolitan Sergius”. Moreover, it analyzes documents both originating from the clerical office of Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) and generated by church figures opposed to Deputy Patriarchal Locum Tenens. A large number of documents was drawn up by Mikhail Novosyolov himself and the circle of his close associates. Also, the most important documents of that era are the letters of Metropolitan Kirill (Smirnov) and replies of Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky). The article pays special attention to the transfer abroad of the collection of church documents entitled “The Case of Metropolitan Sergius”, the role of the journalist Mikhail Brоndsted (pseudonym: Mikhail Artemyev), who left abroad in 1930, and his articles published abroad on underground literature in the Soviet Union. The problem of the authorship of anonymous sources, the authenticity of documents distributed in the church milieu is also raised here. The Joint State Political Directorate of the Soviet Union actively used church documents found during arrests to persecute believers. Fragments of these documents often became the basis for indictments, as evidence of the accused’s anti-Soviet activity. The article also mentions the role of collectors of church documents during the persecution against the Church — Archpresbyter Michael Polsky, Mikhail Gubonin, Metropolitan Manuel (Lemeshevsky).