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]

When, in 1930, a specialist in Marxist poetics wrote that the image of the Antichrist had "a tendency in the work of representatives of particularly reactionary groups to turn into a mystical symbol of Bolshevism," he was, of course, right, especially since this article quotes the remark of the hero of "The Road to Torment." We are talking about Lenin: "In one plane, physically, he is a monstrous provocateur... In the other, the Antichrist. Do you remember the predictions? The terms come true" [41]. The theme of Lenin as the Antichrist was also mastered by the political journalism of the century. Of particular interest here is its nuance: the pseudo-asceticism of the revolutionaries (in a similar way, G. Hesse, peering at Alyosha Karamazov, spoke of "dangerous holiness", and Askoldov spoke of the "bestial saint" in the composition of the Russian soul). As a close example, let us point to the recently published memoirs of P. Struve. "Even from a religious point of view," he writes of Lenin, "his personality poses the problem of rational and diabolical righteousness. It is as far from the righteousness of Christ as the fantastic image of the Antichrist is from the legendary image of Christ." [42]

A monument to a rare synthesis of socio-philosophical analysis and theological hermeneutics was Bulgakov's book on Revelation, which the author considered to be the fourth volume of his trilogy On God-manhood. The word "Antichrist", in addition to its usual meanings, here takes on the role of a tsdeologem, generalizing the anti-human pathos of fascist, racist and communist doctrines. [43] However, it was not only Russian thinkers who thought in the mode of such analogies. For example, in 1934, an anti-fascist essay by the Austrian writer J. Roth "Antichrist" was published.

The completion of the classical ideas of the Antichrist for Russian thought was in the 20th century D. Andreev's book "The Rose of the World" (completed in the 50s). The personality of Stalin is presented here in the attributes of the "preliminary" Antichrist. If Lenin is only a draft of the Antichrist for the author, then Stalin is a decisive rehearsal for the future and the last Prince of Darkness. "Behind the images of the two leaders of the Russian Revolution," Andreyev asserts, "the shadow of a more terrible creature clearly appears, a planetary being< ... >the executor of a great demonic plan." [44]

Andreev's visionary meta-historical philosophy builds its reality in the space of other-being layers: what Blok, following Nietzsche, called "eternal change", takes place there: the powerful demons of Evil and the primates of Light converge in a duel for the integrity of history and culture. Like Fedotov, Andreev believed that the cultural memory of mankind does not end beyond the boundaries of this existence, but passes beyond the boundaries of this century, receiving metaphysical embodiments in the forms of pure meanings. The Antichrist in The Rose of the World is first and foremost a culturophobe and a hater of the creative initiations of the Holy Spirit. His dark genius creates a world of false values on earth, to the joy of a self-deceiving human mind. However, at the end of time, the spiritual Council of historical cultures will form the Rose of the World, the providential architecture of God's Cosmos will be completed, and the Antichrist will cease to exist quasi-existing.

Below we will try to summarize the ideas about the Antichrist in the Russian tradition. The word "Antichrist" will be used (1) as the name of a mythological character (an opponent of Christ and a human medium of dark forces); (2) as the name of the evil substance of the world (in the schismatic tradition: "spiritual Antichrist"); (3) as a summary designation of the demonic reality behind the names: devil, Satan, Lucifer, devil. The Prince of Darkness, Beelzebub, Samael, Behemoth, Abraxas, Woland and others of this series. Since the opponent of Christ (the Antichrist) and the opponent of God (Satan, Lucifer), for all the difference in their natures, are functionally equal (the man-Antichrist is an anti-man and not quite a man; the anti-angel Lucifer is an anti-god, but his power is limited precisely by the fullness of his protest), it would not be too risky to bring these hypostases of evil closer together. Let us try to understand their place in the national picture of the world.

The birth of the mythologem of the "inner ("spiritual) Antichrist" was the first attempt to understand him structurally. But along with the emerging knowledge of the substantialized Antichrist, another – and also "spiritual" – idea of the inner space of the "I" grows quite quickly, into which the little Antichrist can enter. This is the space of proud self-consciousness, egoistically rejected from the "other". The mirror broke, and a fragment hit the eye. A well-known parable tells us about a "me" divided into irreducible points of view; Skepticism and disbelief, despair and nihilism become his lot. The loss of the integral "I" is the loss of the face and its grace-filled opportunity to become a face (as it was supposed to be in the providential fate of man, a god-like being). The face turns into a mask, through which the confused and morally blinded "I" looks at the world.

The triad "face-face-mask" was discussed in detail in Russian ethical thought, when it posed (especially energetically in the neo-Kantian tradition: A. Vvedensky, I. Lapshin) the problems of "I" and "other", "alien "I", "I" and "you", etc. (N. Berdyaev, N. Lossky, P. Florensky, L. Karsavin, S. Frank). Through the mirror shard, the external world is also seen in a mirror sense, and either in the literal sense (as in the story-parable by A. Platonov, the girl, due to the flaw in her inner vision, takes the disgusting for the beautiful and avoids the good), or in the sense of a double inversion of true values. On the paths of evil, this cunning double inversion of the picture of the world is possible: it is brought to the desired wholeness, but in a "reversed" form (not eliminating the primordial mirroring). The mimicry of Good becomes even more convincing because of this. Evil, turned around its axis, does not show the Good, but the other side of the same Evil. Evil has no "good" underside, it itself is "back" to the meaning commanded by the Cosmos, "perverted" "from" it. Evil can be represented as a whimsically curved plane of a one-dimensional world, an ethical Möbius strip. Evil is doomed to a one-dimensional, hopelessly flat topology, all the more capricious its configurations in the planes of existence. Deprived of "its own" eternal place in being, Evil can only ontologically parasitize and exploit the Good, copy it in the forms of imaginary. Evil is an ontological epidemic of being, it is hidden in the pathological twists and turns of the world's flesh.