At the end of 1875, a young Russian the same age as Sophia Perovskaya found himself alone in the Egyptian desert.He was wearing a top hat and a long black coat. He was taller than average, pale and thin. But his dark blue eyes were what people noticed. Beneath his thick, dark brows, they seemed both penetrating and mysterious. The young man was Vladimir Soloviev, the son of the historian.

Although as a young teenager he had rejected the religious beliefs of his parents and become an atheist and a nihilist, he by now had given up such views. He still sought the transformation of society, but now by the workings of both God and man. Only gradually had he worked out this religiously oriented philosophy. At sixteen, he entered Moscow University, where his sober hardworking father continued to serve as dean of the Historical-Philological faculty and then, after 1871, as rector of the university. But the learning that was most important to the young Vladimir was not that dictated by his professors, but by his own inner search for truth.

From his preference for reading Darwin, the nihilist Pisarev and the German materialist Büchner, he passed on to the philosophers Spinoza, Feuerbach,Mill, Kant and, especially, Comte and Schopenhauer. The latter helped lead him to other German philosophers such as Hegel and Schelling.He also became interested in Eastern religions and in mystical writings.