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Abstract:

This publication reproduces the entries in Z.N. Gippius’s work notebooks and typewritten copies from the Merezhkovskys’ archive stored at the University of Illinois. It attempts to trace the writers’ work on projects of various religious unions. Their correspondence with contemporaries serves to restore the context and various details of this work as well as to correct inconsistencies made in prior publications of individual entries. The materials are grouped into two sections. The first section reproduces the typewritten copy of the text called «Foundations of Renewed Christianity» and its variants. The second section includes «Union or Circle of Irreconcilables (X 1)», its «Appendices» and variants. These texts, based on antitheses that describe primarily the contradictions in Russian social and political life, bear witness to the antinomic thought of the Merezhkovskys. The proposed way of reproducing the materials enables the examination of how the concept evolved and also illustrates its helpless and declarative nature. This publication is addressed to the researchers of Russian émigré literature and of the history of sociopolitical unions and associations.