"It has been the particular task of Central Europe to free Theosophy from the special characteristics it has acquired in Western Europe. Our mission was to purify Theosophy by removing any trace of special interests from it. And the further you delve into these matters, the more clearly will you see that to a certain extent I personally was well placed to detach my contribution to Theosophy from any particular interest. If I may put it symbolically, I needed only to allow myself to be guided by an impulse which sprang directly from my present incarnation. Please don’t misunderstand what I am saying here. I am merely stating facts. The people who were the physical bearers of the blood from which I am descended all came from the German districts of Austria, but I myself could not be born there. I was born in a Slavonic region which was entirely alien to the whole character of the environment from which my forefathers came. So from the very start of my present incarnation, it was impressed upon me - again in a symbolic sense - that our task in Central Europe is that of freeing Theosophy of any kind of special interest, so that Theosophy might stand before us as a goddess, untouched by any human bias, and as relevant to people living in one place as to those living in another.
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But the spirituality which belongs to this Theosophy can be found by those who long and thirst for it. And here I must tell you that I became acquainted with a soul out of the spiritual world, a soul with a great longing for the spirit that expresses itself through Theosophy. It was in the purely spiritual world that I came to know this soul. When we go through the ranks of the hierarchies and come to the individual Folk spirits, and then speak of the Folk souls within the Folk spirits, among the Folk souls who are, so to speak, still young and have to evolve further, as every being must, we find the Russian Folk soul. I know that this Russian Folk soul longs - longs with all its strength - for the spirit that finds expression in Theosophy. I have spoken here of the sense of responsibility because you, my dear theosophical friends, are children of this Russian Folk soul. It reigns and works within you, and you have a responsibility toward it. You must learn this responsibility! Do not take it amiss when I say that this Russian Folk soul was able to tell me many things. Most tragic of all was what it could show me in the year 1900 or thereabouts - because it was possible then to see something which I was not possible to interpret correctly until much later - how little the Russian Folk soul is understood today. We have learned much, very much, from Russia, and much of it has made a great impression on us. We have come to know the powerful impulses of Tolstoy, the psychology of Dostoevsky which sets its mark so deeply on Western Europe, and finally we have learned to know such a man as Solovyov, a man who makes us feel, if we let him work upon us, that as he wrote, so he was. And we see his writings in their true light only if we feel that behind him stands the Russian Folk soul. And this Russian Folk soul has far more to say than Solovoyov himself could say, for with him we still always feel that much - much too much- derives from Western Europe.
Think of this word - responsibility - and remember that your task is to make yourselves worthy of the Russian Folk soul and to recognize its longing for impersonal Theosophy. Then, having learned to know the innermost impulses of this Theosophy, you will find yourselves asking all sorts of questions which can be put to the spirit of Theosophy only by a Russian soul."
Reference GA 136, 11 April 1912, Helsinki, Finland. First Private Lecture to the Russians.
This Russian Folk soul is very much the drive of the present Consciousness Soul age in realizing the future Age of Philadelphia. From Soloviev, we have the important advancement to Gurdjieff and Ouspensky at the time of World War I, and which compelled them to leave their beloved Russia with the October 1917 Revolution. They went west for the thirty years from 1917 to 1947, when Ouspensky died bereft.
Rudolf Steiner began to sense an important future destiny for the Russian Folk Soul, and he would refer to it frequently. In Helsinki, Finland, where Steiner went to give lectures in 1912 and 1913, he spoke with urgency to the Russians about their mission, and the distinct possibility that it would have to come forth before the 6th Cultural Epoch. This happened with outbreak of World War I. For example, in this lecture from 1915, Steiner indicates that it is the imperative mission of Anthroposophy to prepare for the 6th Cultural Epoch. He further indicates herein about the Russian Folk Soul, and what can be seen even now that demonstrates a spiritual striving in support of the Consciousness Soul Age, and beyond.
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA159/English/Singles/19150615p01.html