FEDOROV (pron. Fiódorov), Nikolaj Fedorovič. - Born in 1828, died in 1903. A solitary Russian thinker, little known during his lifetime. The illegitimate son of a Prince Gagarin, he studied at Tambov and Odessa. Between 1854 and 1868 he taught history and geography in various Russian cities. Important are the 25 years he spent in Moscow, as an employee in the reading room of Count Rumjancev's library (the Rumjancev Museum). There he gathered around himself a group of friends, a veritable club of scholars in the Moscow of that time. F. had very extensive knowledge in the most varied subjects. He was in contact with Dostoevsky, Solov'ev and Tolstoy, exerting among other things an influence on the first two.
Almost all of F.'s works were published only after his death; they are insignificant from a literary point of view. His central idea, perhaps dependent on A. Comte's « grand-être », was that of the « reanimation » of all ancestors, to be attained through « the common work », that is, by availing himself of all natural and supernatural means (as, for example, the liturgy). With his trust in the development of the natural sciences, F. surpasses the dreams of the alchemists of the Middle Ages. His principal work is The Philosophy of the Common Work. In F. there are mingled utopian, naturalistic and Pelagian ideas, which do not admit death as a consequence of sin, nor the necessity of redemption. Nevertheless, there is no lack of profound reflections on the value of Holy Communion and of the liturgy.
Bibliography2 works
Chorbin 1928 ff. Studies: A. Ostromirov, N. F. Fedoroi i sovremenossi? (N. F. F. and the present time), Chorbin 1928; G. Florovskii, Puti rumbami kogutovalo (The Ways of Russian Theology), Paris 1937, pp. 322-30, 357.
Bernardo Schulze