S. N. Trubetskoi's Weltanschauung

Abstract

HE NAME of Prince Sergei Nikolaevich Trubetskoi will be forever linked with the enlightened and liberal forces in Russia and with those who stood for freedom of the spirit. He was a revolutionary in the spiritual and moral rather than in the political sense, although he was not entirely indifferent toward the latter. His fame and popularity among the different sections of Russian society was the direct result of his general philosophico-religious Weltanschauung. Sergei Nikolaevich was a man of strong will who was dominated by a single purpose, namely, to preserve and protect the dignity of man in the face of opposition and tyranny. He was endowed with an extraordinary sense of sympathy for his fellowmen--a sympathy which forced him to burn all his energies for the cause of human freedom. It was this whole-hearted and genuine devotion to the cause of freedom that endeared him to all who came in contact with him. He was an aristocrat in spirit and not merely one by birth. Above all, he was a scholar and an original thinker whose erudition was put unstintingly to the service of his country and of his fellowmen. Sergei Nikolaevich Trubetskoi stems from a very ancient and illustrious family. Born on July 23, 1862, on the family estate of Akhtyrk in the Moscow province, he received his early education at the Kaluga Gymnasium, where he became interested in philosophy under the influence of Belinsky. For a period he flirted with positivism and nihilism, and at the age of sixteen he declared himself a con-