Solovyov, the son of the celebrated historian Sergey Solovyov, was a charismatic and influential philosopher and theologian. His poetic works are for the most part without great importance. The poem included here, however, evokes the dilemmas of the age: the demise of the empire, the perceived “yellow peril” from the East, and the intoxicating urgings of Russian messianism. Aleksandr Blok would later use the first four lines of “Panmongolism” as the epigraph to his poem “The Scythians”.
