Sergey Bulgakov

The Reverend Sergei Bulgakov
Mikhail Nesterov's Philosophers (1917), Pavel Florensky and Sergei Bulgakov (right)
Born	28 July 1871 Livny, Oryol Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	12 July 1944(1944-07-12) (aged 73) Paris, France
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Russian philosophy

Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov (/bʊlˈɡɑːkəf/;Russian: Серге́й Никола́евич Булга́ков; 28 July [O.S. 16 July] 1871 – 13 July 1944) was a Russian Orthodox Christian theologian, philosopher, and economist.

Sergei Nicolaevich Bulgakov was born on 16 July 1871 to the family of an Orthodox priest (Nikolai Bulgakov) in the town of Livny, Oryol guberniya, in Russia. The family provided Orthodox priests for six generations, beginning in the sixteenth century with his ancestor Bulgak, a Tatar.Metropolitan Macarius Bulgakov (1816-1882), one of the major Eastern Orthodox theologians of his days, an one of the most important Russian church historians, was a distant relative.

He studied at Orel seminary, then at Yelets gimnasium. In 1894 he graduated from the Law School of Moscow University, where he had also undertaken a serious study of political economy.

During his study at the seminary Bulgakov became interested in Marxism and took part in the Legal Marxism movement. Under the influence of works of Russian religious thinkers (Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Vladimir Solovyov, etc.), in the course of his meetings and arguments with Leo Tolstoy he found his religious beliefs again. He wrote a book about his evolution (Sergey Bulgakov, From Marxism to Idealism, 1903). Such an evolution was common for the Russian intelligentsia of the time, and he soon became one of their recognised ideologists. A primary contributor to the books Problems of Idealism (1902), Vekhi, Problems of Religion, About Vladimir Solovyev, About the Religion of Leo Tolstoy, The Religion of Solovyov's Philosophical Society, he participated in the journals New Way (Новый Путь) and Questions of Life (Вопросы Жизни). He was a leader of the publisher Way (Путь, 1911–1917), where he printed many important works of contemporary Orthodox theology.