After having read the article by A. P. Butenko entitled "Theoretical Problems of Perfecting the New Order: the Socioeconomic Nature of Socialism" [Teoreticheskie problemy sovershenstvovaniia novogo stroia: o sotsial'no-ekonomicheskoi prirode sotsializma],† I think it my duty to share with you certain thoughts.

The topicality and timeliness of the appearance of a book in which the philosophical apologetics of Orthodoxy is critically analyzed is beyond doubt. The increased popularity of Russian religious philosophers among contemporary Orthodox theologians, and the incorporation of some elements of their intellectual legacy into the arguments of our ideological adversaries in their attempts to enhance the prestige of religion, and of Orthodoxy in particular, make this topic a burning issue.

There is a very lively discussion going on in the contemporary literature of physics and philosophy concerning the extent to which a postulate flowing from classical electrodynamics, and now one of the basic postulates of the special theory of relativity, is obligatory; this postulate states that the speed of light in a vacuum in an inertial system of coordinates is the greatest possible velocity for physical bodies and the transmission of informative material interactions.

In publishing this article the Editorial Board considers it necessary to mention that it does not share a number of the author's positions, and above all his treatment of ethics as a strictly normative science.