СЕРГЕЙ РАЧИНСКИЙ И ЕГО «СВЕРХШТАТНЫЙ УЧЕНИК» ИВАН ЩЕГЛОВ

A current revival of spiritual life in Russia enhanced interest in the heritage of those public figures for whom religion was the highest value above all their activities. One of such figures was the public school reformer Sergey Alexandrovich Rachinsky (1833–1902). He did not left any theoretical works, expressed his ideas rarely in articles, as well as in his letters. This manuscript treasury attracts researchers’ attention, but only two correspondences have been published (with Vasily Rozanov and Stepan Smolensky). Worthy of special note is his epistolary dialogue with a man of a different generation, education and character. Ivan Leontyevich Leontiev (1856–1911), a writer and a theoretician of people’s theatre (the pen name Ivan Shcheglov), came to adopt the Orthodox faith and regarded Rachinsky as his spiritual teacher. The correspondence took place between 1891 and 1900 and contained 123 letters. What could bring together a St. Petersburg neurasthenic, as Shcheglov admitted himself to be, and the piously calm rural hermit? The present article is supposed to answer this question.