Prince Yevgeny Nikolaevich Trubetskoy belonged to the innermost circle of Vladimir Solovyov — that circle in which the idea of all-unity was not a scholastic abstraction but a matter of one's life. Together with his brother, Prince Sergei Nikolaevich Trubetskoy, rector of Moscow University and Solovyov's closest friend, he pondered this idea, which Russian thought had inherited from Plato and Plotinus by way of Solovyov.
The chief monument of this closeness was Yevgeny Trubetskoy's great work — the book "The Worldview of Vladimir Solovyov," which to this day remains one of the most reliable guides through the world of his teacher. It was Trubetskoy who gave the formula that captures the very essence of Solovyov's thought: "from the beginning to the end of Solovyov's philosophical activity, the practical interest in the actual realization of all-unity in life stands foremost for him."
In these words lies the key to everything. All-unity, for Solovyov as Trubetskoy understood him, is not contemplated in the abstract but realized — through right thought, right action, and right word. Philosophy here is not content with truth as an object of knowledge: it wants truth to become life, to transform both the human being and society. This was a faith that thought can and must change the world.
But that same seriousness made Trubetskoy a clear-eyed witness to the crisis of his generation. His name stands among the authors of the celebrated collection "Landmarks" (Vekhi) — alongside Sergei Bulgakov, Nikolai Berdyaev, and Semyon Frank. All of them spoke with one voice the bitter truth of the day: love for the people had turned into idolatry, struggle had eclipsed truth, and the very search for truth had been pushed into the background. It was a call to restore to truth its primacy.
Thus the figure of Yevgeny Trubetskoy unites two undertakings at once — the faithful interpretation of Solovyov's legacy and the courageous self-criticism of the Russian intelligentsia. Both grew out of a single conviction: that all-unity is not a beautiful idea but a task that each person must resolve with his own life.