Teokratia

<p>Inspired by the writings of Russian Orthodox priest theologian and philosopher of religion Sergei Bulgakov as well as Italian Catholic philosopher of history Augusto Del Noce's theory of the history of the twentieth century as the realization of the atheistic conclusions of nineteenth-century philosophy <em>Teokratia</em> offers a study in the collapse followed then by the apparently spontaneous regeneration of the so-called theocratic principle in Russian culture. This is the key both to what the author alleges is the primary ideational causation and fundamental religious meaning of the Russian Revolution and to the nature and underlying rationale of the authoritarian regime that exists today in Putin's Russia. </p><p></p><p>The book serves simultaneously as a spiritual biography of Russia's last (now sainted) tsar Nicholas II (1894-1917)<em> </em>exploring the theological sources of Nicholas's unwillingness even inability to grant Russia a constitution as a matter of faith and conscience-questioning as it does so the tensions in not only Bulgakov's political theology but also the meaning of the place of the basileus/emperor/tsar in Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Concluding that politics is as it were always already an act of sacred representation <em>Teokratia </em>argues that at stake in the Russian Revolution-and indeed in Russia's present-is not only different accounts of politics but also more fundamentally different accounts of Christianity.</p>