If my entire argument could fit under this rubric: Russia is a Christian nation and therefore should always act in a Christian way, my opponents’ argument can be expressed in the following formula: The Russian nation…is the only truly Christian nation, but nevertheless, it should act in a pagan way in all of its affairs.
—Vladimir Solov'ev, Preface to The National Question in Russia, Part II (1891)In the 1880s and 1890s, Vladimir Solov'ev worked out a Christian approach to nations and nationality, and a moral critique of nationalism, while waging a polemical battle against the Russian conservative nationalists of his day. His ideas emerged primarily from his own social gospel theology, but they were marked by both the Slavophile romanticism of his early career and the western liberalism of his later years. Solov'ev is most often treated as a philosopher, a mystic, or a literary figure, and as a result, his journalistic writings on nationalism and other topics have often been overlooked by scholars, even though they constitute at least a third of his published output.