Teokratia: The Theocratic Principle in Russia, 1917 and Today

Inspired by the writings of Russian Orthodox priest, theologian, and philosopher of religion Sergei Bulgakov, as well as Italian Catholic philosopher of history Augusto Del Noce's theory of the history of the twentieth century as the realization of the atheistic conclusions of nineteenth-century philosophy, Teokratia offers a study in the collapse, followed then by the apparently spontaneous regeneration, of the so-called "theocratic principle in Russian culture." This is the key both to what the author alleges is the primary ideational causation and fundamental religious meaning of the Russian Revolution, and to the nature and underlying rationale of the authoritarian regime that exists today in "Putin's Russia."

The book serves simultaneously as a spiritual biography of Russia's last (now sainted) tsar, Nicholas II (1894-1917), exploring the theological sources of Nicholas's unwillingness, even inability, to grant Russia a constitution as a matter of faith and conscience-questioning as it does so the tensions in not only Bulgakov's political theology but also the meaning of the place of the basileus/emperor/tsar in Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Concluding that politics is, as it were, "always already" an act of sacred representation, Teokratia argues that at stake in the Russian Revolution-and, indeed, in Russia's present-is not only different accounts of politics, but also, more fundamentally, different accounts of Christianity.