THE RUSSIAN -JAPANESE WAR OF 1904-1905 THROUGH THE PERCE PTION OF RUSSIAN PHILOSO PHERS OF THE END of the 19th century - beginning of the 20th century

Abstract

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.