MIKHAIL EPSTEIN THE DEMISE OF THE FIRST SECULARIZATION: THE CHURCH OF GOGOL AND THE CHURCH OF BELINSKY 1 ABSTRACT. The article presents Gogol as marking the end of a century- long phase of secularism in Russian culture, from Peter the Great to Pushkin, and as the first writer to represent the cultural phenomenon of the ‘New Middle Ages’ and renewed religious zeal, first described by Berdyaev; further, it highlights some commonalities between Gogol and Belinsky and takes Belinsky as a leading instance of ‘religious atheism’. The article goes on to consider Russian culture’s need for neutral ‘middle ground’ between its multiple and extreme polarities and, in this context, highlights Sergej Averintsev’s plea for an orientation towards Aristotelianism. KEY WORDS: Gogol, Belinsky, secularization, ‘New Middle Ages’ (neo- medievalism), Merezhkovskij, Pushkin, Purgatory, Lotman, Uspensky, Averintsev, Aristotelianism The interrelation of religion and culture in Russia was defined by the historical difficulties of secularization in regions domi- nated by Eastern Christianity. As we know, Russia did not experience a Renaissance and Reformation and only entered the flow of European secularization at a relatively late stage, at the time of the Enlightenment. Thus, the organic link between Christianity and humanism, Christianity and individualism, the divine and the earthly, which was imprinted upon European culture during the Renaissance and the Reformation remained foreign to Russian culture, in which these two poles emerged only in their growing isolation. In the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth cen- turies Russian culture, coursing down the Pan-European channel, passed swiftly through its stage of Enlightenment sec- ularism – from Lomonosov to Pushkin. Essentially, Pushkin was the last representative of Russian secular literature in its Studies in East European Thought (2006) 58:95–105 Ó Springer 2006 DOI 10.1007/s11212-005-4621-y