“The day of the Lord cometh”: A Christian utopia by pastor Sederholm

Abstract

This paper presents a Russian translation and an interpretation of a manuscript by K. A. Sederholm, a Protestant pastor in Moscow, which contains the draft outline of his unpublished utopian novel “The Church. A story from the last quarter of the twentieth century” (“Die Kirche. Eine Erzählung aus dem letzten Viertel des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts”), together with a reconstruction of the connection between Sederholm's utopian vision, his religious and philosophical ideas and his claims to the distinctive role of a mediator between German and Russian cultures.