At the beginning of the 20th century the Far Eastern Problem held one of the key positions in Russias foreign policy. Its remarkable that the Russian sophiologists of the late 19th and the early 20th centuries, such as V.S. Solovyov, S.N. Trubetskoy and E.N. Trubetskoy, V.F. Ern, warned of the danger coming from the East, from Japan in particular, as far back as the beginning of the Russian-Japanese War of 1904-1905. Though the notion of patriotism was interpreted by them similarly (they considered it to include the highest spiritual senses) and the ideas of all-unity were shared by all of them, they considered the events of the war differently. V. Solovyov insisted that in case Russia began war with Japan it would turn out to be a disaster. V. Ern, on the contrary, faced those events rather optimistically and found the war to stimulate the rise of the Russian national spirit. During the course of the war S. Trubetskoy and Eu. Trubetskoy came to the conclusion that the Russian army turned out to be unprepared for the war, he was convinced that the countrys bureaucratic system had made scandalous mistakes in ruling the country. They heartily hoped Russia would have a better future.