War as a katálysis of Ideas. The Philosophical Concept of Dmitry Merezhkovsky during the First World War

Abstract

This article analyses the impact of the First World War on the evolution of the philosophical worldview and especially on the historiosophical idea of Dmitry Merezhkovsky’s theocratic anarchy. According to the author, the war is seen here as a katálysis, due to which the division, exposition, and radicalization of the constitutive elements of this concept takes place. Through the analysis of texts 1914–1917. Merezhkovsky’s attitude to such key concepts as war, revolution, intelligentsia, religion, violence, patriotism, nationalism, universalism, neo-Slavophiles, and the authors of the almanack “Milestones” is determined.