"A Short Story..." Solovyov evoked imitations in the field of mass fiction: two editions of the poem by Svyashch. B. F. Sosunov "The Victory of Christ over the Antichrist" (Kazan, 1905, 1911); playwrights played on the phonetic rapprochement of the "anarchist" and the "Antichrist" ("The Antichrist's Coming. Dramatic Etude in One Act by A. V. Severyak". Astrakhan, 1907); a gigantic mystery poem was published in Tashkent by V. M. Gavrilov (Antichrist, 1915). In 1914, a story about the sect of Satanails by Pimen Karpov "Flame" was published (variants of titles: "Antichrist", "Prince of Darkness"). [31]

The apocalypse of the revolution and the apocalypse of culture, the historiosophy of the end times and the obsessive demonology of everyday life — in these processes Renan's Antichrist and Nietzsche's Antichrist (1895; Russian translation, 1907) played their sinister roles. Two readers of the book of the Patmos visionary appeared in genetically successive roles: Renan wrote a historical criticism of the Revelation — and thus the chronicle about Nero came out; Nietzsche expanded the object of criticism to the utmost and wrote a "curse on Christianity," as the subtitle of the treatise read. If Renan is still able to treat the text of the Apocalypse as a historical source saturated with eschatological symbolism and, while maintaining a safe and skeptical distance from it, to identify allusions to the real events of imperial Rome, then Nietzsche, with his shockingly nihilistic hermeneutics, presented Revelation as a testimony to the death of God and to Christianity as a grandiose historical failure. Needless to say, in the school of the "new religious consciousness," where "historical Christianity" was subjected to particularly fierce criticism, the essay of the Baden philosopher was read with the utmost sympathy. Russian Nietzscheans read this book as it should have been read: in the context of the author's conviction that the fullness of Christ's work must be assimilated through the fullness of his negation. "Christ through the eyes of the Antichrist" is Nietzsche's author's attitude, which could not have been more to the taste of Russian thinkers. The Church evaluated Nietzsche differently.

Nietzsche wrote to Malvida von Meidenburg on April 3-4, 1887: "Would you like to hear one of my new names? In the language of the Church there is such a thing: I am... Antichrist" [32].

Thus, the hero of the infamous novel-confession by V. Sventsitsky "Antichrist. Notes of a Strange Man" (1908) discovered in the spiritual contours of his inner being a great anti-god. The author-hero looks around in the emptiness of the godless world and, like Samael (one of the hypostases of Lucifer) of the famous myth, decides that he is God, i.e. man-worshipper, i.e. anti-God, i.e. Antichrist. Święcicki, not without horror mixed with aesthetic narcissism, observes how the soul of his hero from the depths of the fall seeks God in the midst of a mute, unrequited, graceless world. Thus, in Russian life, a Nietzschesian personal Antichrist appears.

Personal self-title is becoming fashionable: N. Klyuev and A. Scriabin called themselves antichrists. A. Bely spoke about the famous contemporary poet: "This is the forerunner of the Antichrist, this big guy Mayakovsky. There is something of Beelzebub in him. This is not even a boor, this is some kind of messenger from hell"[33]. The history of the Russian Nietzschesian personality enters a new stage. This stage of aestheticized human deity, about which so much has been said by such religious publicists as N. Berdyaev and S. Bulgakov. The first of them, in his article "The Spirits of the Russian Revolution" (1918), speaks of the political temptations of modern anti-Christianity: "Russian revolutionaries, apocalyptics, and nihilists have followed the temptations of the Antichrist, who wants to make people happy..." Dostoevsky, in his opinion, "understood that in socialism the spirit of the Antichrist seduces man with the guise of goodness and philanthropy." The main idea of Pyotr Verkhovensky, an aesthete in evil, is "an infernal passion for the universal equation<... >rebellion against God in the name of the universal happiness of people<... >the replacement of the kingdom of Christ by the kingdom of Antichrist." In similar intonations, Stavrogin is discussed in another work by Berdyaev ("Stavrogin", 1914) and in Vyach. Ivanov ("The Main Myth in the Novel "Demons", 1914); close to them in spirit is the lecture by S. Bulgakov, delivered in Kiev on November 21, 1901 "Ivan Karamazov (in Dostoevsky's novel "The Brothers Karamazov") as a philosophical type".

The reality of revolutionary Russia is voiced for Russian philosophers by the voices of Dostoevsky's heroes and entwined with their demonic frenzy. "In every contented positivist of our day sits a little Grand Inquisitor, in the speeches of some believing Social-Democrats one hears the familiar voices of the little Grand Inquisitors." [34]

S. Askoldov looks at the revolution as the reality of the Antichrist's kingdom coming true. He gives a consistently detailed picture of the accumulation of the spirit of Antichrist in the experience of European revolutions, in the history of pseudo-human domestic "humanism." The new face of the Antichrist, according to his observations, was the "humanist social activist", the inventor of the utilitarian ethics of equality: "... benefit is something intermediate between the Kingdom of Heaven and hell, equally necessary in the period of human life for both the purposes of God and the devil<... >For Christianity, it is very important that the benefit be realized by religious forces. And if this fails, if the useful is filled with the powers of the devil, Christianity must renounce it, with all the outward coincidence of religious and useful norms. The kingdom of the Antichrist is precisely the organization of the most perfect, in the sense of the realization of benefit, social relations on the basis of man-worshiping principles. This seductive state of benefit will have to be rejected by those who remain faithful to Christ at that moment, in that which is primarily the Body of Christ, i.e., in the Church, there will be an obvious substitution of Christ, as her true head, by the protégé of the devil, i.e., the Antichrist" [35].

Askoldov was strongly impressed by one of the program articles by Vyach. Ivanov — "The Face and Faces of Russia" (1917). Here, based on the material of Dostoevsky's texts, the historical fate of Russia is shown as a confrontation of three principles: the grace-filled beginning of Holy Russia; the evil element of Lucifer (rebellion against God, the will to create) and the element of Ahriman (the spirit of catastrophe, the will to non-existence). In the context of Ivanov's mythology of history, for the tragic dialectics of the "soul of Russia", the Antichrist, as one of its crisis states, turns out to be quite organic and, in this sense, historically predictable. The Ormuzd-Ahriman opposition, which had been popular since the days of democratic criticism (see its relevance for the journalism of M. Saltykov-Shchedrin and the prose of V. Garshin), returned in a new capacity to the historical criticism of the reality of the Symbolists and to the religious philosophy of history: the Manicheanically simplified picture of the world was superimposed on the images of the end of this century revealed to the author of the Revelation.

Against the background of a multitude of works on the Russian trait and the Russian Antichrist, literary and philosophical exercises on the theme of Satan and the devil,[36] a special depth of sober analytism is noted in N. O. Lossky's article of 1922 "On the Nature of Satan (According to Dostoevsky)." By the centenary of the writer, his prose was firmly associated in the memory of publicists of the new century with the theme of the Antichrist.

A. Bely: "... Shatov is looking for an earthly god in the people; Verkhnovensky fabricates a god. The Russian Christ is confronted by the Antichrist."

S. Bulgakov: "The book "Demons"<... >written<... >About Russian Christ and about the struggle with Him, about resisting Him, about the Antichrist, and also about Russian Antichrist"[37]. Lossky discusses the possibility of intrinsically valuable Evil, driven by "direct hatred" of God, absolute Evil; his hypothetical incarnation is called SuperSatan. The answer is no: the presence of such a being in the world would lead to the self-destruction of the SuperSatan. Therefore, Lossky believes, only such evil is possible that is doomed to imaginary creativity and personified in the "great humanist," the Antichrist, by means of religious imposture and under the slogan "everything for man," erecting a mystification of paradise on earth. Hypocrisy and deliberate lies are the instruments for the elevation of the kingdom of the Antichrist. But in the existential sense, Evil, like Death, are fictions; The Antichrist by his nature is condemned to remain an ontological disease of the Cosmos and society.

As a religious philosopher, Lossky could not help but rebel against the man-worshiping spirit of Prometheism, which embraced the revolutionary-minded intelligentsia of his time. The fate of Gorky, the seeker of revolutionary antichrists, is especially remarkable in this respect: the ideal of antichrist humanism was realized before his eyes. The deacon in "Klima Samgnna" says: "People do not need Christ-Abel, people need Prometheus the Antichrist" [38].

In the 1920s, émigré journalism raised the question of the historical relevance of Solovyov's prophecies about the Antichrist. G. Fedotov's position here is as follows: "The enemy, the 'Antichrist', who is still strong, has ceased to wear the mask of humanism, i.e., human good. A civilization hostile to Christianity<... >becomes anti-humanistic, inhuman<... >The worldview that stood before Solovyov like an indestructible wall has already become dilapidated<. >These little ones are drawn to him because of the childishness of their minds, in discord with their hearts. But is this deception worthy of a subtle and intelligent tempter? Put against it the wise and profound theology, the aesthetic charm of the cult, the mysticism of the sacraments, the temptations of subtle pride, false humility, subtle eroticism, false asceticism—a church without love, Christianity without Christ—and you will feel that here is the ultimate deception, the ultimate abomination in the holy place. This is the only way to imagine the Antichrist" [39].

Today's incarnation of the Antichrist, according to Fedotov, is fascism and communism. For the contemporary of the philosopher Fedotov, the priest of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, B. Molchanov, the possibility of the Antichrist is the possibility of a world revolution. [40]