Theological Journal – September 9 Berdyaev again

 “Many think that the chief woe of Russia is that Russian society is insufficiently liberal or radical, and they expect much from a turnabout of our society leftwards in the traditional sense of this word... [But] the chief woe of Russia is not in any insufficiency of leftism, which can grow even without any essential changes for Russian society, but in a poor societal fabric, in an insufficiency of authentic people... It is in the weakness of the Russian will, in the insufficiency of societal self-nourishment and self-discipline. For Russian society there is an insufficiency of character, of the ability to define oneself from within. 

"The 'means' too easily entangle Russian man, and he is too wont to emotional reactions upon everything outward... Thus too, for example, our 'rightists' have been poor material for a true conservatism. They have always been sooner the destroyers rather than protectors of whatever the values. The patriotic, the national and state phraseology of the 'rightists' — is words, words and more words... The Russia of the 'right' had begun already to decompose when the Russia of the 'left' was still not yet fully matured... 

“Russia needs, first of all, radical moral reform, a religious rebirth of the very wellsprings of life. But, alas, even a religious renewal can become merely nominal and formal. The great power of words exists even in the religious life. The labels— 'Orthodox,' 'sectarian,' 'the Christian of a new consciousness' etc,—have assumed a significance in no wise corresponding to their real gravity. The 'Orthodox' nominalism has long since already poisoned the religious life in Russia. The religious phraseology of the rightist circles long since already has degenerated into an hideous hypocrisy and sanctimoniousness.”