Russian Westerners. Westerners are thinkers who advocate for the prosperity of Russia. V. S. Soloviev and his phases

RUSSIAN WESTERNITY

In Russian historical science, there is a desire to hold the view that the connection between Russia and the European West “started earlier and was stronger than is usually thought (Academician S. F. Platonov)” - this is much earlier than the era of Peter I. This thesis in general can be considered fully proven by our newest historians, who have cited a large number of facts to confirm that the desire to transform certain areas of Russian cultural life through Western borrowings, for example, the army, industry, trade, etc., of course, arose much earlier than the 17th century. However, all this was far from being “Westernism” in the ideological sense in which the named concept should be interpreted from the point of view of history and philosophy of culture. Westernism should not be called attempts to use Western culture for foreign cultural purposes, but the desire for theoretical and practical denial of the special world of one’s own culture in the name of Western culture. And there is no doubt that such a social movement within the Moscow state arose in the era of Peter I, who, with all his entourage, was its inspirer and guide. The main axiom of Russian Westernism in theoretical formulation was, as far as we know, first expressed by one of the figures of the Peter I era, the naval agent of Peter I in England, Fyodor Saltykov. “The Russian people,” he wrote to the emperor, “have the same feelings and reasoning as other peoples, only they are compelled to manage such matters.” In Russia, therefore, “everything should be done as in England.” This is the quintessence of Russian Westernism, which implicitly contains all of its philosophy, theory and practice.

Characterizing Russian Westernism as a well-known cultural and ideological movement does not seem to be an easy task. On the one hand, Russian Westernism was never a unified system; it did not have a doctrine or its own catechism. On the other hand, the West itself does not seem to be something homogeneous: one can talk about uniform principles of Western culture, but one cannot think that these principles had the same manifestation in space and time. Judging by the manifestations, there has never been one West. The Western world consisted of several small worlds, each of which built its own life in its own way, such as the Latin, Anglo-Saxon, and Germanic worlds. In addition, the West was experiencing general processes of historical change in which various successive historical forces struggled, for example, the Catholic and feudal West, the bourgeois-democratic West, the proletarian and socialist West. Just as there was never one West, there could never be one Russian Westernism. On the contrary, Russian Westernism reproduced and repeated the struggle of various Western principles and styles, and in Europe it was a struggle of organically emerging social, historical and national forces, while on Russian soil it was mainly a struggle of principles and theories that captivated the Europeanized, “intelligent” part of our country. society. Consequently, our field of struggle has narrowed significantly, but the struggle has become more concentrated and cruel. Real interests were often replaced by faith in the doctrines professed by individual intellectual groups. The everyday and vital content of the struggling principles was replaced by the internal logic of principles and theories. Hence our well-known desire for extremes, which requires carrying principles “to the end” - Russian radicalism, which does not stop halfway, is irreconcilable and unyielding. In a word, the historical drama of the West was repeated here on a more or less artificial stage, reproduced in a highly stylized spirit, in condensed tones, with the help of actors belonging to the educated class of Russian society during the empire, with the more or less passive participation of the people.

When it arose, Russian Westernism was created under the exclusive influence of German, military and absolutist Europe. It was not without reason that Herzen called Peter I “the first Russian German.” The state building, which he erected with such merciless perseverance, was supposed to resemble Prussia most of all in its style. “English liberty has no place here,” Peter said about Russia, “like peas on a wall.” He considered Dutch and German to be the “necessary” languages for us, “but we don’t deal with French.” The ideal soldier was the Prussian soldier. A new army was built according to the Prussian model, whose commanders were almost exclusively Germans. The Prussian style also dominated the civil construction of the empire. And since the time of Peter, this German influence has become the largest factor in our history. The era of not only the Germanization of Russia, but also the direct rule of the Germans began, which was especially noticeable under the heir of the first emperor. The period about which Herzen wrote with bitterness began: “There were Germans on the throne, Germans around the throne, Germans as foreign ministers, Germans as pharmacists, Germans as bakers, Germans everywhere - disgustingly so. German women occupied almost exclusively the positions of empresses and midwives.” It can be said that even the very Frenchization of the ruling class of Russia in the 18th century. proceeded in the forms in which the Frenchization of the then Prussia took place, combining its military-political regime with the French language and French fashion.

To understand the ideological meaning of this passion for Prussia, it is best to turn to the subsequent reigns of Pavel Petrovich, Alexander and Nikolai Pavlovich. Germany, or rather Prussia, seemed to Paul I “an example worthy of all imitation.” There was a time when he recalled with satisfaction “that, strictly speaking, very little Russian blood flows in his veins.” “He fell so in love with order, method, and regulation that even for the bride he drew up a 14-point Instruction, relating not only to religion and morality, but also to the details of the toilet.” He considered the Russian people trashy, just a dog - “ma chienne de nation,” as he said, according to one contemporary. As you know, Paul I was greatly impressed by Roman Catholicism, of which he sincerely became an admirer. He admired everything that the Jesuits did - their organization, their order, their discipline. Not getting along with representatives of the Orthodox clergy, the emperor openly encouraged French emigrants who were engaged in Catholic propaganda. He entered into a mysterious relationship with the Order of Malta, which confused his contemporaries. The Orthodox emperor, who tried to declare himself the head of the Eastern Church, became the commander of the Catholic monastic order. He viewed this order as an organization of pan-European nobility, created to develop a sense of loyalty and honor. With the help of such an order, he wanted to wage a pan-European struggle against the French Revolution, which he hated. And you involuntarily come to the conclusion that “Europeanizing” Russia for him meant building it according to the models of a Prussian barracks and a Catholic monastery, and with some additional universal mission - for the purpose of the world struggle against European revolutionary humanism.

It is a mistake to think that Pavlov’s understanding of Westernism completely died out with the accession to the throne of his son, infected in his youth with European liberal ideas. The principles of Paul I's policy made an indelible impression on his heir, intricately combining here with liberalism and giving a strange duality to the entire character of Alexander I - that duality that was brilliantly depicted in famous poems: “The hand of art brought a smile to the marble of these lips and anger to the cold gloss chela." Remarkable symbols of this duality were two outstanding figures of the said reign, denying each other, but at the same time hovering over Russia together: these are Speransky and Arakcheev. The first seemed to display a smile, the second served as “an iron fist necessary to establish discipline and order”). Therefore, the Russia of Alexander I "gives us a picture of a state educated by a liberal idealist for free institutions and a human way of life through cruel and distrustful despotism." And again with a pan-European, world mission, for “the true goal of the emperor” was “the desire to be a mediator in Europe and through this to play the first role.” In fact, even during this reign, especially at the end, the influence of Prussian principles noticeably prevailed. The period of infatuation with Napoleon did not yet mean a retreat from basic political principles: in Napoleon, Alexander Pavlovich was attracted precisely by the combination of external acceptance of liberal principles with despotism, which managed to cope with the revolution. However, the fascination with Napoleon passed, a struggle with him began, as a result of which we had to return again to something reminiscent of a mixture of a barracks and a Catholic monastery. The said reign ended with Arakcheevo military settlements. It was a strange prototype of military-agrarian communism: a long row of monotonous houses, monotonous and rewritten equipment, uniformed half-peasants - half-soldiers, detailed labor hours, planning and discipline taken to the limit. Here, personal life, family, personal property disappear and a state-communist tyranny is established, turning everyone into slaves and serfs.

It cannot be said that Emperor Nicholas I imitated his father and brother in everything. With his accession, official, conservative Russian Westernism is decisively freed from religious romance and clothed in the clothes of Russian, leavened patriotism. Nikolai Pavlovich was not keen on either Catholicism or mysticism, but under him another “terrible paradox” of Russian history happened - namely, that the idealized and Russian-stylized Prussia covered itself with the pompous titles of “Orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality” and began to pass itself off as real, genuine Russia. Herzen wrote about this bitterly, but rightly. “Once you have joined the Germans, it is very difficult to leave them... One of the most remarkable Russian Germans who wanted to become Russified was Nikolai. What he did not do to become Russian - he baptized the Finns, and flogged the Uniates, and ordered churches to be built again like a sudka, and introduced Russian legal proceedings where no one understood Russian, etc. and yet he still did not become Russian, and this it is so true that his nationality appeared in the manner of the German Teitchum, Orthodoxy was preached in the Catholic manner.” Never have Russian-Prussian relations acquired a character so idyllic in appearance as during this reign. In 1835, the famous Russian-Prussian gathering of troops took place in Kalisz, about which it was written: “Two great nations, different in language, morals, customs and religion, unite their troops in the middle of deep peace, not in separate corps, not in separated detachments, oh no...like identical members of the same body.” The Tsar called the Russian army “a strong reserve of the Prussian army,” he considered the Prussian army his own, Russian, and Prussian officers his comrades; the grand duchesses cooked potatoes in Kalisz together with the Prussian grenadiers. The Russian guard sang: “The Russian Tsar gathered a squad and ordered his eagles to sail across the sea to a foreign land to visit the good Prussians. We are not flying to battle, to fight, not to pacify the seditious, but to see friends, we are in a hurry to hug the Prussians.” All these praises do not at all indicate that actual relations with Prussia were excellent. On the contrary, they were often quite thin, precisely because Nicholas I considered only himself a real Prussian, and considered Prussia his province, often disobedient and not fulfilling his highest plans. Nikolai Pavlovich strongly opposed German unification, which brought upon him the hatred of many Germans. He disapproved of Prussian foreign policy and resorted to armed naval demonstration against Prussia during the Prussian-Danish War. But most of all, he could not forgive Prussia for its “liberalism” caused by the revolution of 1848. Nikolai Pavlovich considered the signing of the constitution by Friedrich Wilhelm to be real treason. He is credited with a characteristic saying spoken in this “liberal” era to General Rauch: “Now there are only three good Prussians left - me, you, dear Rauch, and Schneider.” It is known that the “good” Prussians greatly spoiled the tsar during the Sevastopol War and did not appreciate the historical mission of Russia - to be “good Prussia”...

In “foreign policy,” Nicholas I adhered to the precepts of his predecessors and tried to be the main guardian of European “order.” In domestic politics, the regime he practiced led to the complete militarization of the state. “Military people, as representatives of discipline and subordination, were of primary importance and were considered suitable for all branches of service. The hussar colonel sat at the synod as chief prosecutor. But the regimental priest, subordinate to the chief priest, was a servant in a cassock, independent of the bishop.” Thus, the Prussification of the army was the Prussification of the entire state. This Prussification, practiced over several reigns, was not only nominal and external; the German principle actually entered Russian state life and became its necessary attribute. In fact, our state apparatus was in the hands of foreigners and Germans, or at least people ideologically “Germanized.” A contemporary of the era of Alexander I wrote in his diary: “Russia is the only example in the world that its diplomatic corps consists mostly of foreigners. Not all of them know our language, and few of them have been to Russia further than St. Petersburg... This class of people usually receives a good education, but based on cosmopolitan rules. They know a lot, but they don’t feel anything towards Russia.” Under Nicholas I, according to calculations, in the diplomatic department, 1/5 Russian names accounted for 4/5 foreign ones. It was somewhat better in other departments, although the percentage of foreign names was significant both in the army and in senior positions. But what is important here is not the quantity, what is important is the worldview that has developed as a result of this foreign influence. Here is what a conservative Westerner, an admirer of Emperor Nicholas I, writes about this type of people: “Unfamiliar with either the language or the history of the Russian people, they were convinced supporters of that doctrine, quite widespread in Western Europe, which looked at Russia as a crude material force, an unconscious weapon in the hands of enlightened diplomats, directed by them in the sense of protecting and defending the so-called principles of “a higher order, serving the interests of the total Europe and its civilization.” Slavophile Yu. Samarin writes similar things about the Baltic Germans, who played a huge role in the administration of the Prussian empire: “They instilled and nurtured government egoism in Russia; they made the authorities feel the possibility of special interests, detached and contrary to the interests of the land. They say directly that they want to serve the government, not the land, they need the government as an obedient instrument, and in order to subjugate it, they flatter it and give it Russian land.” “The Germans, both real and fake,” writes Herzen, “took a Russian person for a tabuba rasa, for a sheet of white paper... and since they did not know what to write, they put their brand on it and made a stamp sheet out of plain white paper , and then covered it with absurd forms, titles, and most importantly, serfdom deeds.” Herzen considered Arakcheev to be an unsurpassed example of such a “fake” German. “Biron’s type pales here. The Russian, in the manner of the German, far surpassed him; we have a limit in this regard, a pillar of Hercules, beyond which “one born of a wife” cannot go - this is Count A. A. Arakcheev. A. is not a German at all, he didn’t even know German, he boasted of his Russo-pettism, he was, so to speak, a German in his service.”

Until now, too little thought has been given to the fatal influence this kind of Russian Westernism had on the entire history of Russia. Without him, the entire style of the Russian state, its entire domestic and foreign policy would have been different. Its entire history, including the modern period, would have been different. For the external break with Germany that occurred in the era of Alexander III did not at all mean the elimination of the policy of Russian reactionary “Westernism” that began with Peter I. Official Russia continued to be an idealized Prussia, covering itself with the titles of Orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality. And even in the period of its “constitutionalism” it typically repeated the history of the German principalities after 1848.

Reactionary Westernism was not a theory in our country, but a state practice. He can even be accused of lacking ideological justification, even of neglecting it, which deprives the entire official facade of the huge edifice of the Russian Empire of ideas, which, in order to have an ideology, was forced to rather artificially cover itself with slogans of a generally alien Slavophilism. It is very noteworthy that Russian Westernism found its ideological and theoretical formulation not in reactionary movements, but in Westernist trends in opposition to the Empire - in Russian liberalism and radicalism. As for liberalism, its ideological role in the history of Russian Westernism is enormous. It was in it that the “Petrovo case” found its ideological justification and its theoretical formulation. One can even say that Russian historiosophy and the philosophy of culture of the Westernist persuasion were largely built in various currents of Russian liberalism. But despite this outstanding cultural role, there was something artificial, hothouse, and insufficiently grounded in Russian liberalism. If Westernism of the reactionary style managed to become a huge actual force, able to organize the masses of the people and for a long time lead the destinies of the state, then Russian liberalism was always something armchair and abstract, did not know how to enter into life and therefore suffered a decisive collapse in the era of the revolution.

The beginnings of Russian liberalism can be sought in the Catherine and Alexander eras of our history, but it took shape and fully revealed its face only in the generations of the forties - seventies of the last century. It was this period that gave birth to a whole series of outstanding Russian Westerners of a liberal way of thinking of various shades, among which can be named I. S. Turgenev, M. N. Katkov of the first period, when he dreamed of introducing English orders in our country and combining liberalism with conservatism, B. N. Chicherin, S. M. Solovyov, K. D. Kavelin and many others. A feature of Russian liberalism must be considered that its first representatives were always some “loners”, did not form a single group or party, and were even at enmity with each other, polemicizing and arguing. When, in the later “constitutional” era of our history, our liberalism formed into a party, the unification took place on much more left-wing, radical and socialist positions compared to the views of our early liberals. Such was our constitutional democratic party, which did not include either the Anglomanism of M. N. Katkov, or the economic liberalism of B. N. Chicherin, or in general everything that constitutes the essence of liberalism in its pure form. However, our constitutional democracy entirely professed the Westernized cultural philosophy and historiosophy that was formulated by our early liberalism. Therefore, to characterize our liberal Westernism, we should turn not to new, but to old representatives of Russian liberalism.

“Not out of Epicureanism, not out of fatigue and laziness,” wrote I. S. Turgenev in 1862, “I retired, as Gogol said, under the shadow of the currents of European principles and institutions.” It was not personal interests that called him to the West, but considerations of the people's good. “If I were 25 years old, I would not have acted differently, not so much for my own benefit as for the benefit of the people.” It was I. S. Turgenev, just like other Russian liberals, who believed that “the Russian people are conservative “par excellence””, that “left to themselves, they inevitably grow into an Old Believer, this is where they are oppressed, they are driven.” As another Russian liberal, Kavelin, argued, “we Russians are truly a half-wild people, with extremely weak rudiments of culture.” “Monosyllabicity makes the development of our state and social life slow, sluggish, colorless; there is no individual development, strict delineation of forms, precise legal definitions and responsibility.” This is precisely the view of the Russian people and Russian history that, to some extent, can be traced back to Chaadaev, although he was not a liberal, but rather one of the harbingers of our radicalism; a view that is repeated in liberal circles to this day. In his extreme formulation, he argues that Russian history is simply a white sheet of paper, covered with alien letters through alien forces; in a softer one - that it is similar to the Western one, but all processes in it are slow, devoid of colorfulness and late. Young Katkov once formulated this view perfectly: “It’s been almost a thousand years,” he wrote, “since the Russian people began to understand themselves. How many years!.. What were they used for? What was revealed by the life of the people during their course?.. A glance at ancient Russian history awakens a painful feeling in the soul. Indeed, a sad sight appears behind our giant. Far, far away the steppe stretches, far away - and finally disappears into a vague fog... There, in that foggy distance, some vague, indifferent ghosts appear, it is so joyless there, so empty; the coloring is so cold, so lifeless”... From here it is already clear how, according to Westerners, this carrion can be revived: by moving from the steppe to the sea. One of our most outstanding historians of the Westernist bent, S. M. Solovyov, quite curiously tried to justify the backward nature of our history by contrasting the steppe with the sea, from which his justification for Petrov’s case flowed. Our history was steppe, and the steppe is not conducive to the development of mental powers. In the steppe, the Russian hero could only encounter another, unspiritualized, “Asian” physical force, which could only be fought physically. On the contrary, one can fight the formidable elements of the sea “no other way than through knowledge and art.” At sea, inevitably, people met “the opposite of the nomadic barbarians” - people “rich in knowledge, art, who have something to borrow, and when you have to fight with them, it will require more than one physical strength.” Belonging to steppe Asia, we were inevitably alien to the “moral forces”, “European quality” and were necessarily mired in “Asian quantity” - this is what our Westerner says, forgetting that quantity is rather the principle of the new European culture, and deep Asia is represented by of her great religions served not quantity, but quality. However, for our Westerner, these Asians, like the Indians, are “the softest, most flabby people” who did not know how to “cope with progress”, wanted to get away from progress, from movement, to return to the original simplicity, that is, emptiness - to the state before progress former." And if, despite all our Asianness, we belong “both in language and in breed to the European family, genus Europaeum,” as Turgenev wrote and as all Westerners thought; if “there is no duck that, belonging to the breed of ducks, would breathe with gills like a fish,” then, truly, we are the very last European people, the most trashy European duck. In this case, what should we do if not to plunge into European currents or to plunge into them those who cannot plunge themselves. The program of liberal Westernism, therefore, differed only in methods from the program of reactionary Westernism. Peter Europeanized the Russian people with a belt, his descendants - with military settlements, the Russian liberal proposes to send them to cultural studies according to all the rules of Western humanism. "What to do? - asks Turgenev. “I answer like Scribe: prenez mon ours - take science, civilization and treat with this homeopathy little by little.” The European culture-tragers from the “Germans” who wanted to knock out the “Asian beast” from the Russians were, therefore, allopaths, and even mainly surgeons; the Russian liberal is a homeopath. This is the main difference in the common view of the Russian people as an object of cultural medicine.

All our Westerners were united by faith in the all-healing, educational power of human institutions, and our liberalism gave this faith a “scientific” formulation and turned it into a whole theory. This trait received its classic expression in the polemics that Russian liberal Westerners waged over Dostoevsky’s famous speech at the Pushkin Jubilee. Dostoevsky, as we know, expressed the idea that personal improvement is an indispensable condition for social perfection, from which it followed that there are no social ideals that “are not organically connected with moral ideals, but exist on their own, in the form of a separate half”; and that there are no ideals “that can be taken from outside and transplanted to any new place with success, in the form of a separate institution.” Our Westerners resolutely rebelled against such a thought, asserting that “morality and social ideas, personal ideals and social ideals have nothing in common with each other,” “that only confusion and chaos can result from their confusion” (Kavelin), that therefore, no social improvement cannot be achieved only through improving the personal qualities of people”, “cannot be achieved only by “working on oneself” and “humbling oneself” (Gradovsky). “That is why, to a very great extent, the social perfection of people depends on the perfection of public institutions that educate in a person, if not Christian, then civil virtues” (Gradovsky). The above words express one of the basic norms of Russian Westernism, which has guided it since Peter. It was Peter who began to build his empire in this way, based on the conviction that the institutions he introduced were quite sufficient for the re-education of the Moscow people, that their internal convictions and beliefs were completely unimportant. It was Peter who took institutions from outside, transplanted them to a new place, made them work like a machine, not suspecting that there was a deep organic connection between institutions and the inner life of people. Thus, here too, Russian liberalism comprehended the “Petrovo case,” justified it and followed its path. Only instead of a number of institutions borrowed from German countries, he intended to introduce institutions borrowed from other European countries, Anglo-Saxon or Romanesque. A special role was played here by a downright touching faith in the saving power of the constitutional regime - a faith on which entire generations grew up and were brought up. Some represented such a regime in the form of European class representation, others - in the form of an English constitutional monarchy, others - in the form of a democratic republic of the French type, etc. n. There were many nuances here, but the main thing remained unchanged: the conviction that the introduction of a constitution is a panacea for all Russian evils and the final means of Europeanizing Russia. What is the moral content of those ideals that our liberals wanted to bring to the Russian people from the West and which were called upon to liberate them from Asianism and civilize them? If Westernizing conservatism sought to instill in us the principles of the old European “order,” then liberalism was talking about the principles of a new “enlightened” Europe. “One way or another,” wrote one of our “moderately progressive” Westerners, Prof. Gradovsky, “but for two centuries now we have been under the influence of European enlightenment... Every Russian person who wishes to become enlightened will certainly receive this enlightenment from a Western European source in the complete absence of Russian sources.” In vain did Dostoevsky ask his learned opponent what kind of “Western enlightenment” this was? “Western sciences, useful knowledge, crafts or spiritual enlightenment?” Dostoevsky quite convincingly pointed out that if we talk about “enlightenment”, then it must be understood as “spiritual light, illuminating the soul, enlightening the heart, guiding the mind and showing the path of life.” What kind of “spiritual light” did Russian liberalism bring with it? What path of life did he want to teach the Russian people? The liberal and progressive I. S. Turgenev, in a letter to Herzen, once said that of the European philosophers he valued Littre most of all!.. He said to himself: “I have not fallen into mysticism and will not fall into it.” However, regarding religion Turgenev spoke more definitely. Arguing with Herzen about the special mission of Russia asserted by the latter, he wrote: “Now the question has really been raised about who will prevail, Science or Religion? Why on earth is Russia here?” If thus the strongly Frenchized Turgenev understood the “spiritual” of European enlightenment as the French positivism of the school of O. Comte, then other Russian liberals, brought up on German philosophy, adhered more to the ideas of the left Hegelians and L. Feuerbach. Such was, for example, the very sedate Kavelin, who proposed Hegel’s opinion that “die Natur ist das Anderssein des Geistes,” to be changed in this spirit: “Der Geist ist das Anderssein der Natur.” About him, V.D. Spasovich, from vivid personal memories and without unsympathy, wrote: “He loved Moscow and would be glad to get along with it, if only it weren’t for the Kremlin, which is disgusting to him.”

In a word, the “spiritual path” on which it was planned to lead the Russian people was the path of European humanism, that is, the path of more or less decisive affirmation of the human personality, above which there is nothing at all except itself. In itself, the protection of the human person was not a bad thing, but this was not the only protection we were talking about. One could read about personality by searching, and in the ancient Russian “enlightenment”, the Slavophiles also taught about personality. The center of gravity was that the human personality was affirmed as the highest, which was, of course, “Westernism” but which by no means illuminated with any special spiritual light. In essence, this was the same thing that Russian radicals were striving for, only in homeopathic doses. The main drawback of this method of “humanizing” Russia was its incomplete consistency, incomplete agreement. That is why Russian radicals have always been in a more advantageous position than liberals. If you enlighten, then enlighten. There is no God - so complete atheism, there is no soul - so materialism, to assert personality - so “bazaarism”. If you don't like the Kremlin, tear it down to the ground. “Whatever you say, friends,” wrote Bakunin, “great logic, I will say more, the only strong thing. Let's be logical and we will be strong." And I must admit, they were logical, and therefore superior in strength to the liberals.

The general socio-psychological atmosphere was by no means conducive to the flourishing of liberalism in our country. It is difficult to find words to characterize those feelings of disgust and hatred that were brought up in a certain part of the Russian intelligentsia under the influence of the political regime of the empire. These feelings arose quite early - in the first quarter of the 19th century. Observers of this era note the alienation that separated the youth of that time from the entire political and governmental system. This alienation explains the emergence in our literature of the type of “that unfortunate wanderer in his native land, that historical Russian sufferer who so historically necessarily appeared in our society cut off from the people” (Dostoevsky). “Fly the ship,” as this wanderer sang, “carry me to distant borders according to the formidable whim of the deceptive seas, but not to the sad shores of my foggy homeland! This Russian wanderer, who nevertheless wandered along Western paths, soon threw himself into the revolution, through which he thought of re-creating his sad fatherland. This is how the Decembrists came about, these forerunners of radical and revolutionary Russian Westernism, who tried in one stroke to transform the Prussian-Arakcheev empire into something like the American States or post-revolutionary France. The tragic failure of their attempt left an indelible mark on all subsequent development of oppositional Western thought, giving this latter a special character of gloomy, black, often impotent hatred of the existing one. A particularly favorable source of such sentiments was the atmosphere of the Nicholas Empire, when the philosophy of our radical Westernism was first formulated. It was then that the feeling of alienation from official Russia reached its limit” (Herzen), the “exclusively negative view of Russia, of life and literature, of the world” (K. Aksakov) reached its limit. “Tell Granovsky,” Belinsky wrote in 1839, “that the more I live, the more, the more deeply I love Rus', but I begin to realize that this is from its substantial side, but its definition, its real reality begins to lead me to despair: dirty, disgusting, outrageous, inhuman." “We are people outside of society, because Russia is not a society.” In this atmosphere, the emergence of Chaadaev’s pessimism is understandable, and the characters of Russian fugitives such as V. S. Pecherin are understandable. The environment is such that either you need to run away from it or you need to destroy it to the ground - perhaps both together - to run away in order to destroy this “Knut-German”, “Holstein-Tatar” empire. “My conversion began very early,” writes Pecherin, a Moscow professor who was sent on a business trip abroad, but did not return from it, remaining in the West and becoming not a revolutionary, but a monk of the Catholic order - “from the first rays of the sun, on his native soil, in Rus' , in the wilderness, in the Russian army. The spectacle of injustice and terrible dishonesty in all sectors of Russian life - this is the first sermon that had a strong effect on me. A longing for abroad has gripped my soul since childhood. To the West, to the West!.. - a mysterious voice shouted to me, and to the West I went at all costs.” When his superiors called him back to Moscow, he answered his trustee, Count Stroganov, with the following one-of-a-kind lines: “You called me to Moscow... Oh, Count, how much evil you have done to me. When I saw this brutally animal life, these humiliated creatures, these people without beliefs, without God, living only to accumulate money and fatten up like an animal... when I saw all this, I died!.. I plunged into my despair , I closed myself off in the loneliness of my soul, I chose a friend as gloomy, as harsh as myself... This friend was hatred. Yes, I swore eternal hatred, irreconcilable towards everything around me.” Pecherin owns the following poems, which were hardly written by the son of any other people who did not lose their fatherland: “How sweet it is to hate the fatherland! And greedily await its destruction... And in the destruction of the fatherland, see the worldwide day of rebirth.”

Poems that are as prophetic for the history of Russian radicalism and the Russian revolution as the famous motifs from Chaadaev, who addresses all Russians: “ne vous imaginez point avoir vecu de la vie de nations historiques... vous ne viviez que de la vie de fossiles” , and at the same time confident that we are called to solve the greatest problems posed by the human race and, most importantly, social issues. After all, here in ovo is the entire Russian revolution, all communism, the entire International...

Away, away from her, from such a fatherland

“Oh, if so, then lose patience!

May this land be cursed

Where I was born by chance.

I'll leave so that at every moment

In a foreign country I could execute

My country, where it is painful to live,

Express everything that gnaws at your soul

All the hatred, or love, perhaps”...

It was not about building parliaments, not about convening a Zemsky Sobor, not about making moderate improvements to zemstvo institutions - here it was about an unprecedented, unprecedented disruption. Everything must be destroyed, there is nothing to regret!.. “Really, which stone, which street should we spare? Is it the one from which the Winter Palace was built, or the one that went to the Peter and Paul Fortress? Tsaritsyn Meadow - where soldiers were beaten with sticks every day for a hundred and fifty years, or Staraya Rusa - where they were spotted in dozens?”

“No, we won’t stumble over our Europe; we have paid too much for science to be content with so little” (Herzen). Yes, the Peter-Pavlov-Nicholas, Knut-German, Holstein-Tatar empire must be razed to the ground. “The first duty of us, Russian exiles, forced to live and act abroad, is to loudly proclaim the need for the destruction of this vile empire” (Bakunin). “And there, as in our state, there is nothing organic - everything is just a matter of mechanics, as soon as the breakdown begins, nothing will stop it. The empire will burst, I have no doubt about that, I only wish that it would burst with us.”

But why break? What will happen in place of the broken one? In a strange way, here the paths of our radical runners to the West meet with the primordial, Moscow, eastern paths, not quite accurately and very summarily called Slavophiles. Here are Russian young people, like, for example, Herzen and Ogarev, having made a terrible oath on Vorobyovy Gory near Moscow - an oath of life-and-death struggle against the damned empire - oh, such oaths are not in vain - they flee to a “foreign country” , to the West, and what do they find there, what do they see? It turns out that the same people live there as we do, in order, in the words of Pecherin, to “save money and fatten up.” It turns out that we knew only the abstract West “bookwise, literary”, “by festive clothes”, “by all the persistent thoughts”. In the real West, “we lack space, breadth of air, we are simply embarrassed.” It turns out that “a Russian goes to Europe... and finds what some Ostrogoth who had read St. Augustine and who came to Rome to seek the whole of the Lord”... “The naive savage took the entire set part, the entire mise en scene, the entire hyperbolic part for pure money. Now, having seen it, he doesn’t want to know anything; he presents as a promissory note for accounting all the written theories that he believed at his word: they laugh at him, and with horror he realizes the insolvency of the debtors”...

So it is not according to the models of this real, empirical, ideologically insolvent West to build a new world! He shouldn’t be taken as a model!.. For a person who does not want to leave Western soil, two outcomes are possible in such a situation: either from the current, empirical, bourgeois West, turn back to the past, to the Middle Ages, at least to its modern shadows; or try to discern some kind of future, non-empirical, non-existent, only anticipated and future West. In a word, either Catholicism or Western socialism. Perhaps the most consistent of the Russian runners in the West were those who found peace in the bosom of the Roman church, thereby joining the most ancient, primordial element of Western culture. As for the socialist-revolutionaries, they had to wander along the eastern routes for a long time before they finally found a reliable western harbour.

The Russian revolutionary, the destroyer of the “vile empire,” became a radical and a pan-European, international revolutionary. Ideologically, this was achieved by taking to the extreme all the basic principles that made up Western humanism. What was thrown out of Western humanism was, first of all, what was formative in it, and above all the Western, ancient, classical heritage, from which Western humanists could never tear themselves away. For the Russian radical, this historical connection of humanism with the Greco-Roman form, with Socrates and Plato, with Aristotle and the Stoics, with Hellenic art and the Roman legal idea of personality was completely incomprehensible. But take all this out of humanism, and you get nihilism, which is, in essence, a deformed cult of the same human personality. The result will be Bazarovism, Pisarevism, Dobrolyubovism, denial of Pushkin with all the accompanying phenomena. At the same time, the cult of personality itself was brought to an excellent degree, to the utmost maximum. “For me now the human personality is above history, above society, above humanity” - these words of Belinsky can be considered a classic introduction to the history of Russian humanism. That Belinsky, who, at the end of his philosophical romance with “Yegor Fedorovich” (Hegel), wrote that if he “had managed to climb to the top rung of the ladder of development,” then he would have asked him to give an account “of all the victims of living conditions and history, in all victims of chance, superstition, Inquisition, etc.; Otherwise I’ll throw myself headfirst from the top step.” “I don’t want happiness for nothing if I’m not calm about each of my blood brothers.” What familiar sentiments these are, what characteristic feelings for Russian radical humanism! It was not without reason that Dostoevsky forced his most humane Russian Westerner, Ivan Karamazov, to say almost the same thing. From the point of view of social forms of mood, these lead primarily to anarchism, which was really close to many Russian Westernized rebels - Bakunin, Kropotkin, and the Narodnaya Volya members of the 70s. However, this reveals a bizarre paradox into which our radicalism fell: if personality must be affirmed at all costs, then all means are suitable for its affirmation. Ivan Karamazov writes the legend of the Grand Inquisitor.

As for historiosophy, gradually the Russian radical began to discover a meaning in our history that was not clear to the liberal. In it he began to see manifestations of the primordial, popular, anarcho-socialist element that raged in Razinovism, Pugachevism, etc. In the Russian world, in the community, he found a prototype of a truly perfect social system. And therefore, for him, the world revolution was more likely a process of Russification and Asianization of Europe than a process of Europeanization of Russia. It was necessary to find only Pugachev, who had organizational talent. Herzen suggested that Alexander II become such a Pugachev king. Bakunin did not believe in this and believed that Pugachev the organizer would sooner or later be found on his own. These were the sentiments that Plekhanov aptly called “rebellious Slavophilism.” They dominated the radicals until the beginning of the 80s, when for the first time Russian radicalism began to take on a purely Western character. In this process, Marxism played a huge role, with the help of which Russian radicals broke away from the East and became truly Westerners.

Marxism created a philosophy of history, according to which the European type of social development became, as it were, a universal scheme for all cultures and peoples. And this was not justified by the assertion of a predominant influence in the history of economic relations - after all, economies can be different - this was justified by the confidence that, as a result of the special development of productive forces and technology, the whole world has now become involved in special economic conditions, which necessarily attract it to move along one historical path . “When any society has fallen on the trail of the natural law of its development, it is not able to skip over the natural forms of its development, nor to abolish them by decree.” This is the “trace” that the modern world has attacked, having entered the stage of a capitalist economy, the laws of which can neither be skipped nor abolished. And since the inexorable tendency from capitalism leads it to socialism, our future is thereby predetermined and conditioned. The only question is time and timing.

To determine the fate of Russia from the point of view of Russian radicalism, the question was now posed very simply. The main problem had to be solved: whether the Russian world had joined capitalist forms with all the immanent laws or had not yet joined. Russian radicals and revolutionaries of the 70s answered the question in the negative. They adhered to historical and sociological reasoning, “to which the Slavophiles so readily resorted in their literary skirmishes with Westerners.” Like the Slavophiles, they expressed the view that Western society was the historical product of centuries of class struggle and that “in the more or less near future, the class rule of the bourgeoisie must collapse under the pressure of the proletariat” (Plekhanov). As for Russia, we did not have such clearly defined classes and the state-organizational principle played a very special role. And therefore the whole course of our history is different, our society has not yet fallen on the trail of the law of European economic development and “the change in economic phases determined by this latter is not necessary for it.”

Thus, the socio-economic program of Russian radicalism until the beginning of the 80s remained Eastern - the same one that was set by “the titans of the people's revolutionary defense - Bolotnikov, Bulavin, Razin, Pugachev, etc.” This was the case until the moment when G.V. Plekhanov and his group decisively changed their minds on the main issue and came to the conviction that Russia had long ago entered the capitalist school and that “we do not possess any charter of identity given to us by history.” From that moment on, Russian radical Westernism broke with the last remnant of “Slavophile” traditions and finally entered the Western path.

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In the intense debate of the late 30s - 40s of the XIX century. about the place of Russia in world history, Slavophilism and Westernism took shape as opposite currents of Russian social and philosophical thought.

the main problem, around which the discussion ensued - this is the historical path of Russia. Is the historical path of Russia the same as the path of Western Europe, and the peculiarity of Russia lies only in its backwardness, or does Russia have a special path and its culture belongs to a different type? In search of an answer to this question, alternative concepts of Russian history have emerged.

Slavophilism

In his interpretation of Russian history Slavophiles proceeded from Orthodoxy as the beginning of all Russian national life, emphasized the original nature of Russia's development, while Westerners were based on the ideas of the European Enlightenment with its cult of reason and progress and believed that the same historical paths that Western Europe had traversed were inevitable for Russia. It should be borne in mind that neither Slavophilism nor Westernism represented any single school or single philosophical direction: their supporters adhered to a variety of philosophical orientations. Leaders of Slavophilism - Alexey Stepanovich Khomyakov (1804-1860), Ivan Vasilievich Kireevsky (1806-1856), Konstantin Sergeevich Aksakov(1817-1860), Yuri Fedorovich Samarin (1819-1876) came out with a justification for the original path of development of Russia.

The Slavophil understanding of Russian history is based on general views on the historical process, most fully presented in the unfinished fundamental work of A.S. Khomyakov under the playful title given to him N.V. Gogol, - "Semiramis".

The study of history among the Slavophiles was aimed at finding stable factors influencing the historical process. Such factors, according to the Slavophiles, could not be natural and climatic conditions, nor a strong personality, but only the people themselves as “the only and constant actor” in history.

Slavophiles believed that economic, political and other factors are secondary and are themselves determined by a deeper spiritual factor - faith, which determines the historical activity of peoples. The people and faith are related in such a way that not only faith creates the people, but also the people create faith, and precisely one that corresponds to the creative capabilities of its spirit. Based on this position A.S. Khomyakov analyzes the culture and history of Europe in comparison with the culture and history of Russia.

The development of the spiritual life and culture of Europe was determined by the fact that its peoples were introduced to Christianity by force, and in the form of imposing “Latinism”, i.e. Christianity, which, according to A.S. Khomyakov’s definition, expressed only the external unity of all Christians. This external unity was affirmed by the struggle of the Catholic Church, led by the Pope, for state power over all of Europe, the organization of military monastic orders, the Crusades, a single diplomatic and church language - Latin, etc.

Reaction to forcefully enforced unity and suppression of freedom became Reformation, as a result of which, after a long, painful and bloody struggle, arose Protestantism. Comparing Catholicism and Protestantism, A.S. Khomyakov came to the conclusion that Protestantism is as one-sided as Catholicism, but one-sided in the opposite direction; since Protestantism affirmed the idea of freedom and sacrificed the idea of unity to it.

I.V. Kireyevsky revealed the internal connection of Protestantism with Catholicism, which was expressed in the fact that during the Reformation in Protestantism the rational principles inherent in scholasticism of the Middle Ages. This led to the complete dominance of rationalism. For this reason, European culture has come to underestimate the spiritual foundations of life and atheism, which denies religious faith, that is, the very driving force of history.

Only Orthodoxy accepted and preserved, according to the Slavophiles, the eternal truth of early Christianity in its entirety, namely: the idea of the identity of unity and freedom (freedom in unity and unity in freedom). They included in historiosophy the most important concept characterizing Russian originality, which became part of the content of the “Russian idea,” “conciliarity,” expressing the free community of people. Sobornost was understood by the Slavophiles primarily as church conciliarity - the free unity of believers in their joint understanding of the truth of Orthodoxy and jointly finding the path to salvation. The free unity of Orthodox believers must be based on selfless love for Christ as the bearer of perfect truth and righteousness. Unity in freedom based on love is the essence of conciliarity as a manifestation of the Russian spirit.

Orthodoxy in the concept of the Slavophiles acted as the spiritual basis of all Russian life. In the history of Russia there has been a merger of the spiritual values of Orthodoxy with folk life. As a result of this, the “spirit of the people” took shape, thanks to which the people become genuine subjects of the historical process.

The Slavophiles saw the community as the structural unit of the organization of Russian folk life, the main characteristic of which was self-government. A communal structure based on the principles of common responsibility, the development of joint decisions in accordance with the voice of conscience, a sense of justice, and folk customs, would be for the Slavophiles the visible embodiment of a free community. The Slavophiles adhered to an organic view of society as a naturally formed community of people with its own principles of organization life. An organic view of society meant that its development was represented as a process of self-development by analogy with the phenomena of living nature.

Having researched and compared Western European and Russian history, features of religious faith, systems of spiritual values, Slavophiles showed that the life principles of Russia and Europe are different, which meant the unacceptability of European forms of life for Russia.

Slavophiles were often reproached and are reproached for idealizing the history of Russia and wanting to restore the old. These reproaches are completely unfair. They understood perfectly well that there is no return to the past, history cannot go back, that, for example, the changes that occurred as a result reforms of Peter I, are irreversible. They preached not a return to the past, but the restoration of the viable principles of Russian society in changed conditions.

The philosophical and historical concept of the Slavophiles is imbued with faith in the special historical mission of Russia, which is called upon to unite the opposite principles of life, showing the world an example of high spirituality and freedom. In their value system, Europe most likely needed to catch up with Russia. .

The influence of the Slavophiles on Russian thought was unusually strong. In the new historical conditions in post-reform Russia, pochvenism became a direct continuation of Slavophilism.

Westernism

As an ideological current of social thought Westernism was not united and homogeneous. Among Westerners, which include P.Ya. Chaadaev , A.I. Herzen , V.G. Belinsky , T.N. Granovsky , N.V. Stankevich , M.A. Bakunin and others, were thinkers of very different beliefs and political orientations. However, all of them were united by the rejection of serfdom, despotism, the backwardness of Russian life, the demand for democratization of public life, and faith in the European future of Russia through the assimilation of the historical achievements of Western European countries.

Many of the ideas of the Westerners were taken out by them from communication with the Slavophiles. Thus, M.A. Bakunin directly admitted that his anarchism with a complete denial of state power was initiated by K.S. Aksakov. A.I. Herzen, as the basis of “Russian socialism,” put forward the community, artel labor and secular government, which were first identified by the Slavophiles as features of the organization of Russian life.

One of the first Russian Western thinkers was Pyotr Yakovlevich Chaadaev (1794-1856). In “Philosophical Letters,” written in 1829-1830, Chaadaev outlined his views on the world historical process and Russia’s place in it.

The basis of the universe Chaadaev considered the world mind to be the highest reality underlying the visible reality of natural and historical existence. Divine reason, acting as Providence, determines all human history. The development of peoples is guided by “the divine eternal force acting universally in the spiritual world.” It is Providence that sets goals for peoples and determines the meaning of their existence in world history. It also determines the direction of the historical process as a process of the moral ascent of humanity to kingdom of god on the ground.

Based on these provisions, Chaadaev builds his philosophical and historical concept, which has a pronounced Eurocentric character. The peoples of Europe, according to Chaadaev, largely live in true history, that is, they maintain continuity in development, are animated by the life-giving principle of unity, and are guided by the ideas of duty, justice, law, and order.

The existence of Russia in world history, according to Chaadaev, is meaningless, since divine Providence denied the Russian people its beneficial influence. Due to the fact that Providence has abandoned the Russian people, they are an exception among other peoples, an “intellectual” and “moral” gap in humanity.

At the same time, the description of Russian history given in the Philosophical Letters does not deny the great future of Russia. According to Chaadaev, the Russian people did not yet have a history, they did not show all their creative powers, they lagged behind the peoples of Western Europe, but all this constitutes the advantage of virgin soil. Russia's backwardness makes it possible to freely choose its historical path.

Worldview P.Ya. Chaadaev is the worldview of a person who has largely severed spiritual ties with his native culture. And if in the first half of the 19th century. This attitude was quite rare, but later it became widespread.

In 1831, within the walls of Moscow University A philosophical circle arose, which became a significant milestone in the formation of Westernism. The main goal of the circle, the leader of which was Nikolai Vladimirovich Stankevich (1813-1840), was the study of German philosophy, especially the philosophical system Hegel. The circle included K.S. Aksakov, V.G. Belinsky, M.A. Bakunin, V.P. Botkin, M.N. Katkov, T.N. Granovsky, K.D. Kavelin and others. From this circle came figures of various directions, since, while recognizing the priority of Europe, they differed in their understanding of what exactly in Western Europe is the pinnacle of progress and civilization: whether a bourgeois parliamentary republic or the ideas of socialism. Belinsky, for example, like Herzen, believed in socialism, the idea of which, in his own words, became for him the idea of ideas, the being of being, the question of questions.

For Timofey Nikolaevich Granovsky (1813-1855) and Konstantin Dmitrievich Kavelin (1818-1885), the ideas of European liberalism. Granovsky and Kavelin, as representatives of the liberal trend in Russian philosophy, advocated the rational reform of society. They were opponents of “extreme measures” and rejected revolutionary methods of struggle, although they stated their inevitability in the historical process. Their ideal was the establishment of an "autocratic republic"

His views on the historical process T.N. Granovsky outlined it in a series of lectures on the history of medieval Europe, which he gave at Moscow University. In them, he argued that the historical process is of a natural nature, it occurs regardless of the “case of arbitrariness”, according to certain internal laws. The fulfillment of the law is inevitable, but the period of its implementation is not defined, “ten years or ten centuries, it doesn’t matter.” The law, in his opinion, stands “as a goal” towards which humanity irresistibly strives. In this case, the law does not care which road humanity takes and how much time it spends on the way.

Right here, those. in the question of how the historical law will be implemented, Granovsky considers the role of the individual in history. He believes that with the implementation of the historical law, an individual person comes into all his rights, while accepting responsibility for a whole series of events caused or delayed by it. From here comes his conviction that the meaning of Russian history lies in the formation and strengthening of the “beginning of personality,” which should ultimately lead to a genuine rapprochement between Russia and Western Europe and the gradual decline of the patriarchal (feudal) system in Russia. The historical progress of the non-moral development of a person with free will was unacceptable to him.

The moderate liberal position was quite common in the 40s and early 60s. XIX century, but the most widespread and influential among the Russian intelligentsia were more radical doctrines about ways to introduce Russia to Western European civilization.

Representatives of the revolutionary democratic ideology, initially formed within the framework of Westernism, were famous thinkers and public figures: Vissarion Grigorievich Belinsky (1811-1848), Alexander Ivanovich Herzen (1812-1870), Nikolai Platonovich Ogarev (1813-1877). (see question 50 on A.I. Herzen) One of the most radical representatives of Westernism in Russia was Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin (1814-1876), who preached an idea without state socialism, which he called anarchism.

A Rationale for Anarchist Ideas M.A. Bakunin leads from the position of anthropological materialism and Hegel's ideas about the dialectical value and internal inevitability of negation. Based on these fundamental principles of MA. Bakunin views the historical process as the result of the “struggle of principles” - animality and humanity. The basis of the historical process, in his opinion, is made up of the following three principles: human animality, thought and rebellion. History, he believed, represents a gradual denial of the primitive animality of man and the affirmation of humanity, which in turn is subject to oppression by the church and the state.

This contradiction will have to be resolved with the help of rebellion, rooted in the “natural nature” of man as the eternal desire of mankind not to be satisfied with the degree of freedom that is each time achieved in social life, but which in its essence cannot be complete. In order to bring the desired time of freedom closer, it is necessary to “unbridle popular anarchy” against the two main institutions of society - the church and the state.

Ideal socialism and Bakunin saw that on the ruins of the state a social order would be established, based on the principles of self-government, autonomy and a free federation of individuals, communities, provinces, and nations. Such was the revolutionary romanticism of M.A. Bakunin. His works, primarily the work “Statehood and Anarchy”, as well as the works of A.I. Herzen, V.G. Belinsky, had a great influence on the consciousness of the Russian intelligentsia. The theoretical works of these thinkers essentially formed the basis of the ideology of revolutionary populism.

From Masterweb

28.04.2018 08:00

In Russia in the middle of the 19th century, two philosophical trends clashed - Westernism and Slavophilism. The so-called Westerners firmly believed that the country should adopt the European model of development, basing it on liberal democratic values. The Slavophiles, in turn, believed that Russia should have its own path, different from the Western one. In this article we will focus our attention on the Westernization movement. What were their views and ideas? And who can be counted among the main representatives of this direction of Russian philosophical thought?

Russia in the first half of the 19th century

So, Westerners – who are they? Before answering this question, it is worth getting at least a little familiar with the social, economic and cultural situation in which Russia found itself in the first half of the century before last.

At the beginning of the 19th century, Russia faced a difficult test - the Patriotic War with the French army of Napoleon Bonaparte. It had a liberation character and provoked an unprecedented rise in patriotic feelings among the broad masses of the population. In this war, the Russian people not only defended their independence, but also significantly strengthened the position of their state in the political arena. At the same time, the Patriotic War claimed thousands of lives and caused serious damage to the Russian economy.

Speaking about this period of Russian history, one cannot fail to mention the Decembrist movement. These were mainly officers and wealthy nobles who demanded reforms, fair trials and, of course, the abolition of serfdom. However, the Decembrist uprising, which took place in December 1825, failed.

Agriculture in the first half of the 19th century in Russia was still extensive. At the same time, active development of new lands begins - in the Volga region and in the south of Ukraine. As a result of technological progress, machines have been introduced into many industries. As a result, productivity increased two to three times. The pace of urbanization accelerated significantly: the number of cities in the Russian Empire almost doubled between 1801 and 1850.

Social movements in Russia in the 1840-1850s

Social and political movements in Russia in the second quarter of the 19th century revived noticeably, despite the reactionary policies of Nicholas I. And this revival was largely due to the ideological legacy of the Decembrists. They tried to find answers to the questions they posed throughout the nineteenth century.

The main dilemma that was hotly discussed in those days was the choice of development path for the country. And everyone saw this path in their own way. As a result, many directions of philosophical thought were born, both liberal and radical revolutionary.

All these directions can be combined into two large movements:

Westernism.
Slavophilism.

Westernism: definition and essence of the term

It is believed that Emperor Peter the Great introduced a split into Russian society into so-called Westerners and Slavophiles. After all, it was he who began to actively adopt the ways and norms of life of European society.

Westerners are representatives of one of the most important trends in Russian social thought, which was formed at the turn of the 30s and 40s of the 19th century. They were also often called “Europeans.” Russian Westerners argued that there was no need to invent anything. For Russia, it is necessary to choose the advanced path that has already been successfully traversed by Europe. Moreover, Westerners were confident that Russia would be able to follow it much further than the West did.

Among the origins of Westernism in Russia, three main factors can be distinguished:

Ideas of the European Enlightenment of the 18th century.
Economic reforms of Peter the Great.
Establishing close socio-economic ties with Western European countries.

By origin, the Westerners were predominantly wealthy merchants and noble landowners. There were also scientists, publicists and writers among them. Let us list the most prominent representatives of Westernism in Russian philosophy:

Peter Chaadaev.
Vladimir Solovyov.
Boris Chicherin.
Ivan Turgenev.
Alexander Herzen.
Pavel Annenkov.
Nikolai Chernyshevsky.
Vissarion Belinsky.

Basic ideas and views of Westerners

It is important to note that Westerners did not at all deny Russian identity and originality. They insisted only that Russia should develop in the wake of European civilization. And the foundation of this development should be based on universal human values and personal freedoms. At the same time, they considered society as a tool for the realization of an individual.

The main ideas of the Westernization movement include the following:

Adopting the main values of the West.
Reducing the gap between Russia and Europe.
Development and deepening of market relations.
Establishment of a constitutional monarchy in Russia.
Abolition of serfdom.
Development of universal education.
Popularization of scientific knowledge.

V. S. Soloviev and his phases

Vladimir Solovyov (1853-1900) is a prominent representative of the so-called religious Westernism. He identifies three main phases in the course of general Western European development:

Theocratic (represented by Roman Catholicism).
Humanitarian (expressed in rationalism and liberalism).
Naturalistic (expressed in the natural scientific direction of thought).

According to Solovyov, all these phases can be traced in the same sequence in the development of Russian social thought in the 19th century. At the same time, the theocratic aspect was most clearly reflected in the views of Pyotr Chaadaev, the humanitarian aspect in the works of Vissarion Belinsky, and the naturalistic aspect in Nikolai Chernyshevsky.

Vladimir Solovyov was convinced that the key feature of Russia was that it was a deeply Christian state. Accordingly, the Russian idea must be an integral part of the Christian idea.

P. Ya. Chaadaev and his views

Far from the last place in the social movement of Russian Westerners was occupied by the philosopher and publicist Pyotr Chaadaev (1794-1856). His main work, Philosophical Letters, was published in Telescope magazine in 1836. This work seriously stirred the public. The magazine was closed after this publication, and Chaadaev himself was declared crazy.

In his “Philosophical Letters” Pyotr Chaadaev contrasts Russia and Europe. And he calls religion the foundation of this opposition. He characterizes Catholic Europe as a progressive region with strong-willed and active people. But Russia, on the contrary, is a kind of symbol of inertia, immobility, which is explained by the excessive asceticism of the Orthodox faith. Chaadaev also saw the reason for the stagnation in the development of the state in the fact that the country was not sufficiently covered by the Enlightenment.

Westerners and Slavophiles: comparative characteristics

Both Slavophiles and Westerners sought to turn Russia into one of the leading countries in the world. However, they saw the methods and tools of this transformation differently. The following table will help you understand the key differences between these two movements.

Finally

So, Westerners are representatives of one of the branches of Russian social thought of the first half of the 19th century. They were confident that Russia in its further development should be guided by the experience of Western countries. It should be noted that the ideas of Westerners were subsequently transformed to some extent into the postulates of liberals and socialists.

Russian Westernism became a noticeable step forward in the development of dialectics and materialism. However, it was never able to provide any specific and scientifically based answers to pressing questions for the public.

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The history of Russian philosophy is replete with bright and interesting pages, wonderful ideas and concepts, deep discussions on various problems, most of which have not lost their relevance, topicality, significance, not only philosophical and methodological, but also socio-political relevance today. These pages, of course, include the famous dispute between the “Westerners” and the “Slavophiles”, which constituted one of the key moments in the intellectual and spiritual evolution of the country, which attracted the close attention of the most outstanding thinkers of Russia, which passed through the entire 19th century. and in a significant, although time-corrected, form of the 20th century, loudly declaring itself today in passionate discussions of politicians, historians, sociologists, economists, cultural experts about further paths of development and the future of the Russian people.

It would, of course, be a mistake to completely identify the essence and meaning of the eternal dispute between “Westernism” and “Slavophilism” yesterday and today, for these concepts have now been filled with largely new content, for time inexorably forms other conditions of existence, places other accents, sets its own tasks . But an even greater mistake would be to completely ignore our history, its spiritual and ideological heritage, its lessons - the greatest minds created our national-historical and cultural tradition, paving our current paths to the future in the past. To be worthy of this future, we must still listen closely to them today, develop our rich heritage, highlighting in it what is important, relevant and modern.

The end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries turned out dramatically and tragically for Russia: the collapse of the USSR, Marxist-Leninist ideology and philosophy, political and economic crisis, impoverishment and extinction of the population, criminalization of society, confusion and vacillation in the construction of “wild capitalism”, in fact, Russia’s departure from the world-historical arena, its loss of the status of a great power, which was immediately taken advantage of by the United States and other leading Western countries in an effort to establish a “unipolar” world, globalization “American style.” Things have gotten to the point where quite recently the question was not even about Russia’s international status, but about whether it would even exist as a state and as a nation.

Today, fortunately, the healthy forces in the socio-political life of the country have noticeably strengthened and become stronger, Russia has moved away from the brink of the abyss, is successfully developing its economic, social, “human”, military potential, and has loudly and decisively declared its national interests in the world arena. The path to the revival of great Russia has become more real, closer. Not the least important place in taking this path is the revival of the national-historical and cultural tradition, including its philosophical, religious, spiritual, ideological components and, mainly, deep thoughts about the historical destinies of the country, about Russia’s place in the world, about future paths of development, its national-state interests, its friends and allies, opponents and adversaries. These reflections go far not only in the quiet of historical and philosophical offices, but above all - in broad circles of the public, among young people, politicians, in religious and church circles, party and parliamentary discussions, among the intelligentsia, in the media. And here it turned out that we cannot do without returning to the lessons of the great centuries-old debate between “Westerners” and “Slavophiles”, without a truly fateful discussion of the problem of the preference of our strategic orientation “here and now” to the “West” or to the “East”.

Another thing is that in form these disputes are now being waged, it would seem, between new “subjects”, parties: democrats, liberals, patriots, rightists, leftists, various party groups, etc. The words “Slavophile” and “Westernizer” seem to be today’s “disputants” are almost retrograde and are almost never used. But this hardly changes the essence of the matter, although the solution to pressing problems can be very confusing. If we today, fully armed with new knowledge and an objective assessment of new realities, the “challenges of the time,” do not turn to the experience and lessons of our great predecessors, confirmed by domestic and world history, then we can lose a lot. Some of their “tips” will be very useful to us now!

We, of course, are far from intending to reproduce and analyze all the main ideas and arguments of the classics of “Slavophilism” and “Westernism” of the 19th century in this short article. Our task here is more modest, but more important: to pay attention only to those ideas that, we are sure, are the most “conceptual” primarily in “Westernism” and have received their confirmation in history, have fully retained their relevance for modern Russia in philosophical, methodological and socio-political aspects. This will serve as a measure of our current responsibility, consciousness, understanding of the essence of a historically turning point, tribute to tradition and ability to rise to the occasion of a difficult situation in the implementation of fateful decisions for the country. Therefore, let us recall only a few necessary “key” ideas and arguments in the dispute between “Westerners” and “Slavophiles”, who have “survived” time and give us the right guiding thread in the intricacies of the current situation of Russia’s place and role in the world, its national interests and orientation in relations with “East” and “West” in immediate real politics, party struggle, determination of geopolitical and geostrategic priorities and values.

Classic domestic “Westernism” was formed in the first half of the 19th century. and counted in its ranks such outstanding thinkers as P. Ya. Chaadaev, A. I. Herzen, N. V. Stankevich, V. G. Belinsky, K. D. Kavelin, N. P. Ogarev, T. N. Granovsky, I. S. Turgenev and others.

If the “Slavophiles,” developing a Christian and, above all, Orthodox worldview, idealized the socio-political past of Russia, the Russian national character, sometimes absolutized the originality and peculiarity of Russian culture, arguing that domestic socio-political life has always developed and will have to develop in its own way their own path, fundamentally different from the path of Western countries, came to the conclusion that only Russia is called upon to heal the West with the spirit of its ideals and help it resolve its contradictions and problems, then the ideological argumentation of the “Westerners” was significantly different.

They were convinced (and unlike the “Slavophiles”, in arguing their convictions, they resorted not only and not so much to speculative, patristic-religious arguments, to the desired, but also to historical facts, world philosophical and methodological experience, analysis of “living” evolution reality, politics and economics, true and real, and not imaginary and ideal interests of the country and its people), that Russia in certain respects has lagged behind the West and should, going through, in principle, the same path of development, learn something from it , which is quite natural for all countries of the world and there is nothing wrong with it. They sought for Russia to assimilate the highest achievements of European sciences and the fruits of the Enlightenment, reach the same heights of socio-economic and political development, not exaggerate differences in traditions and psychology, the meaning and role of religion and the church, and learn to fully appreciate and recognize political freedom and the ideas of human rights and equality of people not only before God, but also in real social life.

The “pioneer” of “Westernism” was undoubtedly Chaadaev. In his famous “Philosophical Letters”, and later in “Apology of a Madman”, he defined his historical and philosophical credo in relation to Russia and the West: the state of affairs in Russia (socio-political development, economics, politics, law, rights and freedoms of the people , control system, etc.) is very bleak; Russia has lagged behind Europe in many respects and, subject to the universal laws of development, must go through the same main stages of development as the West, and therefore learn from it; Russia should strive not to “fall out” from the universal mainstream of development due to some of its “peculiarities,” but to organically “fit” into the global family of nations, into European history, making its “contribution” to the pan-European treasury of values and ideals. Turning to Russian history, Chaadaev sadly stated the lack of an organic connection between its stages, the underdevelopment of cultural and social traditions, and the negative consequences of Russia’s tragic refusal of the principles of Western civilization. As a result of Orthodox “isolationism,” Russia seemed to “fall away” from the human race and did not follow the path of the Western unification of different national cultures. The consequences of this pose a real danger for the future of Russia, the Russian people, for the very fact of their “physical” existence. “One of the most regrettable features of our unique civilization (Pushkin’s friend, like the “Slavophiles,” recognizes the “originality” and “peculiarities” of Russia, but sees them in a completely different way and with completely different consequences. – A.B.) is that we are still discovering truths that have become hackneyed in other countries and even among peoples much more backward than us. The fact is that we have never walked together with other peoples, we do not belong to any of the known families of the human race - neither to the West, nor to the East, we have no traditions of either one or the other. We stand, as it were, outside of time; the universal education of the human race has not extended to us. The marvelous connection of human ideas in the succession of generations and the history of the human spirit, which led it throughout the rest of the world to its modern state, have had no effect on us. However, what has long been the very essence of society and life is still only theory and speculation for us. ...Take a look around. Does anything stand strong? …No one has a specific field of activity, no good habits, no rules for anything. ...One can say about us that we constitute, as it were, an exception among nations. We belong to those of them who, as it were, are not part of the human race, but exist only to teach a great lesson to the world. ...The peoples of Europe have a common face, a family resemblance. ...In addition to the character common to all, each of these peoples has its own special character, but all this is just history and tradition. They constitute the ideological heritage of these peoples. ...Do you want to know what these thoughts are? These are thoughts about duty, justice, law, order. ...Here it is, the atmosphere of the West, it is something more than history or psychology, it is the physiology of European man. What do you see with us? ...All the peoples of Europe, moving from century to century, walked hand in hand. Whatever they do now, each in their own way, they still constantly converge on the same path...”

The most important role in the history of peoples belongs to religion, and Chaadaev’s conclusion is definite: it is necessary for faith to unite and not separate peoples (for example, Catholicism and Orthodoxy), it is necessary for Russia to return to the fold of a single pan-European Christianity, and not continue to insist on its “separateness” , “peculiarities”, “originality”: “It is clear that if the sphere in which Europeans live and which alone can lead the human race to its final destination is the result of the influence exerted on them by religion, and it is clear that if the weakness of our beliefs or the imperfection of our doctrine kept us out of this universal movement in which the social idea of Christianity developed and received a definite expression, and we were classified among the peoples who were destined to use the influence of Christianity in full force only indirectly and with great delay, then it is necessary strive in every way to revive our beliefs and our truly Christian impulse, for after all, Christianity accomplished everything there.”

Of course, the picture painted by the “Westernizer” Chaadaev even today cannot leave anyone indifferent; it cannot but shock a truly Russian person with its terrible revelations and often cannot but cause instinctive rejection. That is why the “witty” king Chaadaev was declared “crazy”! And he explained himself to the Russian people and to his descendants, writing a continuation of the “Philosophical Letters” - “Apology for a Madman”! This work is not only a great and courageous step of a thinker who was not afraid to tell the people the bitter truth, not only a comprehensive explanation and development of his position, but also a bequest to us, our descendants, a prophetic insight through the centuries. Here Chaadaev, in particular, clarifies what true patriotism is, which brings real benefits to its people, and what false (“Slavophile”) patriotism, harmful and dangerous for the people, is. “A beautiful thing is love for the fatherland, but there is something even more beautiful - it is love for truth... We live in the east of Europe - this is true, and, nevertheless, we have never belonged to the East. The East has its own history, which has nothing in common with ours... More than any of you, believe me, I love my homeland, I wish it glory, I know how to appreciate the high qualities of my people; but it is also true that the patriotic feeling that animates me is not at all similar to the feelings of those whose cries disturbed my calm existence... I did not learn to love my homeland with my eyes closed, with my head bowed, with my lips closed. I find that a man can only be useful to his country if he understands it well; I think that the time of blind love has passed, that now we first of all owe the truth to our homeland. I love my fatherland, as Peter the Great taught me to love it. I admit, this blissful patriotism is alien to me, this patriotism of laziness, which manages to see everything in a rosy light and rushes around with its illusions and from which, unfortunately, many efficient minds now suffer in our country. I believe that we came after others in order to do better than them, so as not to fall into their mistakes, into their delusions and superstitions... Moreover, I have a deep conviction that we are called upon to solve most of the problems of the social order, to complete most of the ideas that arose in old societies, to answer the most important questions that occupy humanity."

Truly - neither subtract nor add! Here, firstly, Chaadaev gave a rebuke, exhaustive in depth and thoroughness, to all modern and future “Slavophiles” and “blessed patriots” who, willingly or unwillingly, deceive their people and push them to the sidelines of history, and, secondly, to his interpretation of patriotism and true Westernism, Europeanism (without quotes!) there is nothing to add today - this is the only path to the future for our country and our people. Taking your rightful place in today's European civilization and fulfilling all your historical tasks is a duty and obligation to the Russian people!

A few more words about another great Russian thinker and “Westernizer” A. I. Herzen, who deepens and develops criticism of “Slavophilism”, bringing it to its logical and historical end, a completely relevant and modern champion of the greatness of Russia in the bosom of European civilization.

Actually, in criticizing “Slavophilism” Herzen was, perhaps, “sharper” and more decisive than the “crazy” Chaadaev. For example, his diary entries from the forties of the 19th century. are full of impartial terms such as “Slav-frenzy”, “Slav-frenzied”. “I’m surprised,” he writes in 1843, “how those who are Slav-rabid do not understand history, do not understand European development - this is insanity. The Slavs in the future will probably be called to many things, but what have they done with their upright Orthodoxy and alienation from everything human?” According to Herzen’s fair remark, the increased interest of “Slavophiles” in the Slavs is becoming not only caricatured and absurd, but also retrograde and dangerous; “Slavophilism” becomes, according to Herzen, “a bone in the course of education.”

Herzen also noticed the evolution of “Slavophilism” (not all of its representatives, of course - “Slavophilism” was by no means a single, homogeneous movement; there were titans of thought like Kireevsky, Khomyakov, but there were also “stinking little people” like Bulgarin) towards conservation , to pro-government officials like “what do you want?”, to direct betrayal of the interests of the people: “Slavophilism bears magnificent fruits every day, open hatred of the West is open hatred of the entire process of development of the human race... together with hatred and disdain for the West - hatred and contempt for freedom of thought, for law, for all guarantees, for all civilization. Thus, the Slavophiles, of course, side with the government and don’t stop there, they go further.”

The “harshness” of Chaadaev and Herzen towards the “Slavophiles” (similar “harshness” also occurred on the part of the “Slavophiles” towards the “Westerners”) can find its justification not in personal or any psychological, opportunistic reasons, but in objective circumstances. The “Westerners” deeply felt, prophetically guessed, saw the enormous and undoubted harm that the real and complete implementation of the principles of “Slavophilism” could bring to Russia in the present, and even more so in the future. That is why, analyzing the arguments and arguments of the “Slavophiles”, which they quite rightly regarded as incorrect and deceitful not only in the abstract and theoretical, but also dangerous, disastrous in practical terms, they could not perceive them academically calmly, being in fact true patriots, realists and pragmatists.

The failure of “Slavophilism” was demonstrated not only by “Westerners”, but also by domestic thinkers of various directions, and these were the majority, which in itself cannot but serve as an argument in favor of the unity of Russia and Europe. Thus, the well-known representative of Russian philosophy abroad, B.V. Yakovenko, emphasized already in the middle of the 20th century: “Slavophiles are increasingly showing themselves to be very short-sighted schismatics. These are fanatics, not tolerant people. They have created a world of chimeras for themselves and are trying, on the basis of two or three good thoughts, to build a doomed structure that should not exist. They look at the West with hatred, it is just as vulgar and absurd as the opinion that everything Russian is vulgar and disgusting. In fact, open hatred of the West means nothing more than outright hatred of the entire process of development of the human race, for the West, as the heir of the ancient world, represents the entire past and present of humanity. Therefore, hatred of the West is identical to hatred and underestimation in relation to freedom of thought, law, all guarantees, and all civilization in general.”

The famous Russian philosopher V.V. Zenkovsky wrote about the same thing in a number of his works, also published in the middle of the 20th century. under the general title “Russian Thinkers and Europe”: “The problems of the West, its destinies are not alien or uninteresting to us... We examined the development of Russian thought over the course of a whole century and became convinced of the inevitability of the problem with which we were occupied. Russian identity is inevitably connected with the problem of the West and its relationship with Russia - and this means our historical and spiritual inseparability from the West. Radical anti-Westernism, which has appeared in our country from time to time and has made itself known quite sharply in recent years, is incorrect and impracticable... It is now, when the centuries-old work of thought has touched all sides of this problem, that we can and must... approach the question of ways Russia, on the question of our relationship to the West." Even criticism of the West, a number of aspects of its politics, culture, etc. in the works of Russian thinkers is caused not by gloating and motives of “rejection,” but by the desire to eliminate the difficulties of greater rapprochement, to avoid the mistakes of the past and present.

Representatives of the Westernizing tendency, in all the diversity of their concepts and ideas, subjected with deadly criticism not only “pure” “Slavophiles”, nationalists, retrogrades, but also adherents of other systems, one way or another leading to Russia’s separation from the West, to its civilizational and cultural isolation (for example , “Eurasianism”, very widespread, fashionable even today).

Here, in particular, is the “sentence” of “Eurasianism” by G. V. Florovsky in an article with the significant title “Eurasian temptation” (1928): “The fate of Eurasianism is a story of spiritual failure... In Eurasian dreams, little truth is combined with great self-deception.. Eurasianism failed. Instead of a path, a dead end is proposed. It doesn’t lead anywhere...” But here is an even more authoritative opinion of N.A. Berdyaev, who, also referring to the experience of analyzing the “West - Russia” problem by so many great Russian thinkers, often wrote about the need for organic unity of Russia with Europe, not for the purpose of “imitation”, final and unambiguous “Europeanization” of Russia, but in order to save culture, peoples, the beneficial influence of the “Russian idea”, domestic spirituality on the life of the West: “In Eurasianism there are also harmful and poisonous elements that must be counteracted... The attitude of Eurasians to the West and Western Christianity fundamentally false and unchristian."

And finally, perhaps the most authoritative arguments in favor of a constructive solution to the West-Russia problem we find in the greatest thinker, by the way, a soil scientist, F. M. Dostoevsky; We will only briefly mention some of them here, because they, in view of their exceptional relevance and significance for our task, must be analyzed in detail and separately.

Let’s take just one passage from the writer’s essentially spiritual testament, his famous speech about Pushkin in 1880, where he, in particular, speaks of the great significance of Peter’s reforms for both the Russian people and the peoples of the West: “The Russian people are not from utilitarianism alone accepted the reform... After all, we then at once rushed towards the most vital reunification, towards the unity of all mankind! We did not hostilely (as it seemed that should have happened), but in a friendly manner, with complete love, we accepted into our souls the geniuses of foreign nations... we showed our readiness and inclination... for a universal universal reunification with all the tribes of the great Aryan family. Yes, the purpose of the Russian person is undoubtedly pan-European and worldwide... For a true Russian, Europe and the destiny of the entire great Aryan tribe are as dear as Russia itself, as well as the destiny of their native land... If you want to delve into our history after Peter’s reform , you will already find traces and indications of this thought... in the nature of our communication with European tribes, even in our state policy. For what did Russia do in all these two centuries in its politics if it did not serve Europe, perhaps much more than itself?.. Oh, the peoples of Europe do not even know how dear they are to us! And subsequently, I believe in this, we, that is, of course, not we, but the future future Russian people, will understand, every single one, that becoming a real Russian will mean precisely: striving to bring reconciliation to European contradictions completely, to indicate the outcome of the European longing in your Russian soul... to utter the final word of great, general harmony, fraternal final agreement of all tribes according to Christ’s gospel law!”

In fact, Dostoevsky here expresses a very deep, universal thought about the unity of the main conclusions of “Westernism” and the “Russian idea”, which consist primarily in the tendency to unify Russia and Europe, in the “philosophy of unity” (V.S. Solovyov), in the fulfillment of Russian people, the people of the “soil”, their world-historical mission for all-human unification on the basis of faith, spirituality, and justice. What could be even more relevant today, right, significant?!

The above statements of the classics of “Westernism” and not only (which, however, were probably too voluminous and capacious for a short article, but the foundations of these principles that are fateful for the country are so “responsible” and important that it seemed to us not very correct to simply retell them briefly) For now it's enough for our purposes.

Let’s summarize some results and draw a number of conclusions, focusing on the current methodological “lessons” of the “Westerners”, on the modern significance of their most important ideas, leaving for the future the analysis of many very important aspects of research into “Westernism” in history and modern Russia.

The noted exaggeration (or even absolutization) of ethnic and geographical factors in “Slavophilism” and “Eurasianism”, their negative and dangerous significance for theory and practice, especially in the modern world, is very instructive today and methodologically important. In a world in which the factors of survival, security, the need to solve global problems and problems of globalization, universal human values (one of the main guardians of which is Europe) - faith, spirituality, principles of freedom, justice - come to the fore. It is bad, in particular, when Orthodoxy in the speeches of some politicians and theorists appears as simply an ethnic characteristic of the Russian people. Here one inevitably recalls the words of one of the characters in I. Bergman’s famous film “Strawberry Field”: “Catholicism is a means of self-preservation.”

A number of more general conclusions.

Russia has always been and remains an organic, integral part of Europe; disputes about Russia’s place in the world and its future objectively led to the theory and practice of its rapprochement, unity (including “legal”, formal) with Europe - “criticism” of Europe often served as a “negative” basis for such rapprochement . The prevailing and ultimately victorious concept of “Westernism” is direct and immediate, and all other systems (“Slavophilism”, “Eurasianism”, “theory of cultural-historical types”, “Russian idea”, “Russian cosmism”, “soilism”, etc. , as we saw, in particular, in the example of the ideas of such different, but equally profound thinkers Chaadaev, Herzen, Dostoevsky, Lossky, Zenkovsky, Yakovenko, Florovsky, Solovyov, Berdyaev) - indirectly, indirectly could not help but lead, ultimately, to XX century to the main thing - the conclusion that unification with Europe is natural and necessary, that there is no alternative. The specific forms and stages of such a unification are a complex problem for the near future; along this path we will have to overcome many difficulties, solve many problems of an objective and subjective nature, fight superstitions, biases, prejudices, enemies of Russia who oppose such a unification (“tips” from our thinkers here and will be very useful now!). Russia's entry into the EU in this regard is only the first, albeit an extremely important step. But this is a global problem of Russia’s path to the future, the revival of its greatness, the problem of saving world culture and civilization.

One of the important lessons of the great debate that began in the 19th century is that it is not a matter of words or terms at all. So, for example, it turns out that the content and essence of the phenomenon of “Westernism” is much broader and deeper than the term itself. In essence, the deep ideas of “Westernism” were shared by virtually all outstanding Russian thinkers, without limiting themselves to the framework of any formal direction. This methodological point must be remembered today, when much is confused and mixed, scholasticized and hackneyed, including in the field of terminology.

It is no accident that we put the terms “Westernism” and “Slavophilism” in quotation marks almost everywhere. There are several reasons for this, and they have not only theoretical, but also practical meaning and significance. First of all, these terms represent certain conventional symbols, diagrams, which do not in all ways coincide with the real, actual content of the phenomena under consideration. Life is always more complicated than any schemes; Absolutizing “schemes” and “symbols” is a thankless and dangerous task, which we can see, in particular, in the example of Marxist-Leninist historiography of our topic. Further, the views and concepts of the formal and recognized representatives of these movements do not fit into the “Procrustean bed” of “Westernism” and “Slavophilism”: both Chaadaev and Herzen, as well as Khomyakov and Kireyevsky, are much deeper and broader than any schemes. And finally, perhaps most importantly: the real phenomena of “Westernism” and “Slavophilism” never remained equal to themselves, they were constantly changing, evolving, filling, following historical changes, with new content, new arguments, aspects, conclusions, bringing them to the historical arena in different eras of the life of Russia new figures of their adherents (philosophers, politicians, economists, historians, lawyers, etc.), receiving a different socio-political sound, a different meaning, role, importance, public and international resonance.

Today, probably, in our science and socio-political reality it is difficult to find “Westerners” and “Slavophiles” in their “pure form,” especially the ones we had in the 19th century. The main trends, essential meaning and direction, of course, have been preserved, just as the core of a national-historical and cultural tradition must ultimately be preserved, otherwise the country and the people will simply cease to exist as such. But only analogies, essence, trends, problems have been preserved. Ideas, concepts, arguments, conclusions, goals, social and political contexts have changed both in form and content. Today's “Westerners” and “Slavophiles” appear in modern clothes and roles of other subjects of socio-political action from a different time. Today they can be representatives of various parties and movements, legislative and executive authorities, educational systems, be democrats and liberals, monarchists and communists, right and left, patriots and cosmopolitans, economists, politicians, philosophers, lawyers, historians, etc. etc., theorists and practitioners. Disputes between them can take a serious turn, and great confusion can arise (including “verbal” and terminological). Conclusions and recommendations can be very different and multifaceted.

But the most important thing, which forces us today to necessarily turn to the lessons of history, is that with all the pluralism of ideas, a wide palette of “colors”, in the end, as in the times of Chaadaev and Herzen, we are talking about destinies and Russia's paths to an even more crucial, turning point in history: who are we? where we are going? who are we with? who are our allies and opponents? what to do? We are talking (in the context of the objective processes of current globalization) about fundamental and far-reaching geopolitical and geostrategic problems, about problems of national-state interests and state security, about the place and role of Russia in the modern world, about the future of the country and the people, about whether we will exist tomorrow and how, in what “quality” we will exist, about the revival of the greatness of Russia. And in this regard, with all the “hugeness” of problems, the great lessons of domestic “Westernism” allow us today to formulate a very specific, specific, most important and primary task, to draw the main conclusion: our Westerners are right - Russia, being an integral and most important part of Europe, must, undoubtedly, to unite with it politically, economically, etc., pursuing their national interests, for the purposes of national-state security, for the preservation of Russia and the Russian people, for the fulfillment of the survival tasks facing all humanity. This task and this conclusion must, of course, be specified, supplemented, and developed taking into account modern realities, using the entire complex of achievements of modern culture and science, using the efforts of specialists in all fields of theory and practice to conduct, in particular, a large number of studies, relying, naturally, not only on domestic, but also on Western European experience.

In terms of prospects and directions for such research, I would like to briefly note the following.

Detailed development is necessary, and at the international level, because both sides and the whole world are interested in the rapprochement of Russia and Europe: this is not only a “natural historical” process, the restoration of historical tradition, organic unity and integrity of Europe, but also a guarantee of security and prosperity of its peoples, the most important factor in ensuring the future of humanity - the paths and stages of unification, the elimination of difficulties and obstacles, the creation of institutions and organizations of a new, united Europe.

Already today the first, very encouraging “swallows” of such a unification have appeared. For example, a program initiative The Democratic Party of Russia to join the European Union as the final and logical goal of the program of this oldest party of the new Russia. Or the statement at the end of October 2007 by the then current President of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin on the eve of the Russia-EU summit in Portugal about the creation of the “Russian-European Institute of Freedom and Democracy.” This institute will be opened in Europe with Russian money. It is already clear that important areas of activity of such institutions can and should be, in particular, the elimination of errors and shortcomings, negative aspects in the theory and practice of relations between Russia and Europe (for example, identifying the roots and consequences of prejudices and superstitions such as Russophobia); preventing misleading or provocative interpretations of the aggravated periods of the above-mentioned relations in the past; the danger of going to extremes, absolutization when analyzing the problems of patriotism, “Eurocentrism”, modern “Westernism”, liberalism, the diversity of forms of democracy, international law, etc.

Chaadaev, P. Ya. Complete works and selected letters. – M., 1991. – T. 1. – P. 323, 326, 334.

Russia between Europe and Asia: the Eurasian temptation / ed. L. I. Novikova, I. N. Sizemskaya. – M., 1993. – P. 237

Russian Westernism

Let's start with it, since it took shape more than a century before the Russians entered the phase of breakdown, and first of all, let's make a reservation about what we call Westernism. In a strictly scientific sense, Westernism without quotation marks is a movement of philosophical and social thought in the mid-19th century. (period of disputes between Westerners and Slavophiles). It is very short in life and in its impact on society, covering only two generations of thinkers and political figures.

However, Westernism (as, by the way, Slavophilism) has been interpreted by publicists in a very broad way since the end of the last century. Sometimes this happens in polemical fervor, sometimes out of ill will, for the sake of distorting the opponent’s historical views, often out of ignorance.

We are in no way inclined to mean by Westernism the desire for socio-economic or political modernization of Russia and certain aspects of its life. Upon closer examination, such modernization may not be Westernized at all, but, on the contrary, represent something traditionalist, which is not always noticeable. Westernism is not the borrowing of individual features, forms, manifestations, even those with a clear targeted origin, tied specifically to the national tradition of one of the countries of the European West. Such borrowing should be considered in the paradigm of cultural influences. Throughout world history, similar influences have been exerted on each other by a variety of countries and, by the way, great cultures too.

By Westernism we mean the desire of a representative of this tendency to move entirely in his tastes, views, system of thinking (including socio-political) to another great cultural area, to move from the Eastern Christian culture (to which, in particular, Russians and the majority of ethnic groups of Russia belong) into Western Christianity, into the culture of the West. We will also consider Westernism to be the desire to move Russia from its super-ethnic area to another – the Western one.

Based on the above, the powerful influence of the culture of the Italian Renaissance on Russian culture at the end of the 15th century. during the reign of Ivan III or at the end of the 16th century. in the Godunov era cannot be considered Westernism. Moreover, in Russian society and culture before the era of Peter I, there was no Westernism as a constant factor. Unfortunately, very often (this is a tradition of the last century) historical reformers are considered Westerners, although they remained people of their own culture.

In Russia, two prerequisites for the emergence of Westernism arose in the pre-Petrine era.

The first - at the end of the 15th century. Russia should have created its own higher school, but it did not do this, which, undoubtedly, was our national mistake.

The university is a rather late phenomenon. The oldest universities in the West begin their history at the beginning of the 13th century. The Byzantine tradition has known universities since the 5th century, the Muslim tradition (on the far outskirts of the Muslim world - in Moorish Cordoba) - from the 8th century.

Before the emergence of regular higher schools - universities, higher education most often existed in the form of large episcopal schools. They are sometimes considered the direct predecessors of the universities of those times. We can conditionally call such irregular higher schools proto-universities.

What distinguishes them from a university is their unstable character (a prominent professor lives in a city or abbey, students and followers gather around him - there is a school, but if he dies or leaves, there is no school). It was precisely this kind of unstable character, long before the emergence of universities, that gave rise to the emergence in the West of a broad category of vagrants—wandering students.

Russia also knew proto-universities in its history. The first higher school of an irregular type was opened in Kyiv at the cathedral church by the Baptist of Rus', Saint Vladimir. The higher character of this school is evidenced by the appearance in the next generation of a number of Hellenistic-educated intellectuals. Even in the darkest years of fragmentation and foreign enslavement, proto-universities persisted. So, in the 14th century. This role was played by the Rostov monastery “Grigorievsky Shutter”, which, for example, gave a perfect Hellenistic education to one of the brilliant philologists of the High Middle Ages - Stephen of Perm. But a monastery cannot replace a university, not even because a monk is not suitable as a professor (history knows thousands and thousands of famous professors who were monks), but because a university is a completely special environment, completely subordinated to science and the tasks of education.

Until the end of the 15th century. There was no way a university could appear in Russia, because there was simply no one to found it. All the largest universities in the West were founded by powerful sovereigns. Before the creation of a united Russia by Ivan III, there was no demand for a large number of highly educated people. However, when this demand arose, education in Russia remained monastic. It is difficult to overestimate the consequences of this tragic mistake.

At the end of the 15th century. academic science in Eastern Europe was in the same rudimentary state as in the West. There could be no talk of any priority. But, having desired to found a university, the Russian authorities could have acquired as many highly educated Greek professors as they wanted, who were then lured in huge numbers to Italy. And the first university (even with a foreign professorship) would, nevertheless, be the highest school of our regional culture. A higher school of its own superethnos, a higher Eastern Christian school, would arise. But the moment was lost, the Greeks left to educate the Latin West.

And at the end of the 16th century. Tsar Boris, seeking to establish a university, had already encountered powerful opposition from the higher clergy, who rightly feared Latinization. The fact is that over the past century, the academic lag has acquired monstrous proportions, and in order to found a university in the era of the Godunovs, it was necessary not only to invite Latin (mostly Catholic) teachers, but also to introduce Latin as the language of teaching, the language of science. There was no other way. However, even in Godunov’s time, regrettably, the university was not founded.

The first higher school in Eastern Europe appeared in the form of the Kyiv College (then still part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) in the 30s. XVII century With the transition of Hetman Ukraine under the jurisdiction of the Moscow sovereigns, the Kiev College becomes the only Russian university. In Moscow, its own university was founded even later (in 1685) as the Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy.

Latin was introduced in Kyiv and Moscow and remained throughout the 18th century the main language of teaching and, to a large extent, of thinking at all universities in Russia (including Moscow, founded in 1755). As a result, being late for a century and a half with its appearance, higher school Westernized Russian intellectuals. This did not make them Westerners, they were too tied to the Eastern Christian culture by their own religion, but the prerequisite was created. I must say, a tragic mistake of the 15th century. was overcome only towards the end of the 19th century. We finally received not only national, but also Eastern Christian higher schools. However, the revolution of modern times has again thrown us back. National mistakes take centuries to pay for.

The second prerequisite for the emergence of Westernism was a consequence of the direct, but very extended over time, aggression of the Latin West into Western Russian lands, i.e., the lands of present-day Ukraine and Belarus. The aggression took place not so much in a political as in a cultural form within the framework of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Russia, united with the Kingdom of Poland by a personal union long before Poland absorbed the Lithuanian state. This Westernization was directed exclusively at the Lithuanian-Russian nobility. It was the nobility (in full accordance with the gentry concept of the Polish state) that was subject to Catholicization and gradual Polishization.

The process, which began at the end of the 14th century, slowly continued during the 15th - first half of the 16th centuries. It set the stage for the eventual absorption of Lithuania by Poland, which occurred in 1569, and from that point on it became breakneckly fast. Two more generations, just half a century, and the ancestors of today’s Ukrainians and Belarusians were left without a national nobility. At that moment, thanks to the activities of the nobility of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth on the one hand, and the Jesuits on the other, the question of Latinization (i.e., Westernization on the scale of that time) of the common people of the former Grand Duchy was raised. This has been carried out, since 1596, in the form of Union, which we are inclined to view as an instrument of cultural aggression of the West into the Eastern Christian lands of Western Rus'.

If the Western Russian nobility had survived, the arena of confrontation between the West and East of Europe would have been not Ukraine, but Poland. But this did not happen, the nobility was lost to the Western Russians, and resistance was organized by the middle strata of society: the Cossacks, petty-bourgeois brotherhoods and intellectuals (mainly from the Kiev Academy and monasteries), who turned to the Russian state for help.

All this left a powerful imprint of Westernism on the Western Russian population, which gradually became part of the Russian state. Of course, this is not full-fledged Westernism, if only because, for example, the Kiev Collegium (the future academy), where teaching was conducted in Latin, where Jesuit educational drama was introduced into Orthodox use as educational drama, still resisted Latinization and Jesuit influence in Ukraine . But let's pay attention to one typical option.

In Western Rus', for several decades, higher and secondary education was largely monopolized by the Jesuits and, to a lesser extent, by other Roman Catholic circles. To get an education, a wealthy Little Russian or Belarusian often feigned conversion to Catholicism, entered a Jesuit college, sometimes graduated from the University of Bologna, and then returned to his homeland and repented to the Orthodox priest. But several years of pretense could not help but leave a deep mark on the psychology and worldview of such a person!

However, real Westernism could and did develop within the framework of the Russian state only under Peter I. By that time, Russia remained the only state of Eastern Christians. All other Eastern Christian peoples had already been enslaved either by Muslims or Western Europeans.

Another historian, Sergei Solovyov, noted that by the time Peter I came to power, Russian society was split between three parties: the Old Believers Party; the so-called Old Moscow Party, which sought to preserve official Orthodoxy and the Moscow, by this time already imperial, tradition; and the Party of Westerners-Reformers.

The latter belonged to the Naryshkin clan, from which came the future “cutter” of the window to Europe. Let us beg to differ with Solovyov. There were not three, but four parties.

Of course, there was the Old Believers Party. The Old Believers are the heirs of those Russian circles that strived for national exclusivity and, consequently, isolationism back in the 16th century. Their apotheosis was the Stoglav Cathedral of 1551. It is no coincidence that the Old Believers still honor Stoglav to this day. The emergence of the Old Believers was due to political events. Constantinople fell under the blows of the Turks, and before that it was forced into a union with the Latin West. The Greeks wavered in their faith. This gave some grounds for the proclamation of national-religious exclusivity. The Old Believers created the cultural paradigm of “Russia and Europe”. Russia could never win such a competition, because Russia is not at all equal to the entire West. You can contrast, say, Russia and France, or Western Europe and Eastern Europe, but contrasting Russia and Europe is equivalent to contrasting the Byzantine world with the Netherlands - this is the Old Believer idea reduced to absurdity.

The Old Moscow Conservative Party, like all conservatives, guaranteed peace and prosperity for their country and culture. However, due to the lack of a national higher school (its own Russian University), the Old Moscow Party lost by the end of the 17th century. brilliant intellectuals who could resist even the reprimand of the Old Believers. The leader of the Old Moscow Party was rightfully Patriarch Joachim, a man of service origin, a petty nobleman, a conservative of a protective nature.

The reformer party was represented by such names as Prince Vasily Vasilyevich Golitsyn and Archimandrite Sylvester Medvedev. Book V.V. Golitsyn - Chancellor of the State. An anti-serfdomist, he relied on private economic freedom and the liberal development of the country. Archimandrite Sylvester Medvedev is a universal scientist, poet, writer of Latin and Russian poetry, historian, astronomer, mathematician, theologian.

The reformer party was associated with the brilliantly educated Tsar Fyodor Alekseevich (whose reign was short), and then with the government of Princess Sofia Alekseevna. This party would be commonly called moderate Westerners, but we (as already said) do not consider supporters of cultural influence to be Westerners.

The Reform Party was very prominent in the 1980s. XVII century its cultural activities, the organization of a regular army, large construction, in particular, in the Naryshkin Baroque style. This style is characterized by the preservation of national tradition and the active borrowing of certain forms of Western European architecture. The same can be seen in literature, painting, philosophy, and school affairs. The brainchild of these very circles was the Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy.

It is extremely important that the so-called “Sofia’s party”, represented by its best representatives, appealed to the public, social progress and believed that cultural borrowing from the West was necessary, but not by the state, but by society.

Thus, their activities lay within the normal paradigm of cultural influences. We would not dare to say that they were democrats. There is perhaps more of an aristocratic element in the activities of this group. But they are, of course, anti-bureaucrats and, therefore, anti-statists.

The centuries-old Russian tradition has always remained anti-bureaucratic. It is difficult to imagine a country in the Mediterranean region in which, like Russia, so little space was given to bureaucratic rule. The only exception is England. She, too, survived her bureaucratic rule and even her tyranny. And yet, throughout the Middle Ages, England was a country of class representation. Following England, ahead of Spain, Russia was the country of class representation. Etatism in Russia has always been associated only with the bearer of central power. But even the bearers of statist tendencies were anti-bureaucrats, therefore statist tendencies in Russia, not to mention anti-statist ones, were anti-bureaucratic.

The bureaucracy in Russia in the 17th century, represented by the classical figure of the clerk, was perceived by the entire population, starting from the bottom, only as an administration. Power, with the exception of the supreme power of the autocratic Sovereign, was represented by an elected element. The “best people” were tried together with any judge (the rudimentary form of jury trial, which was first noted in the Code of Laws of 1497, but undoubtedly goes back to the deeper Middle Ages). Elected officials ruled the volosts (zemstvo elders and kissers), elected officials like Anglo-Saxon sheriffs were responsible for police order and lower criminal legislation (zemstvo elders and kissers). In fact, the government had a powerful democratic base. One can argue about the development of this democracy, but it was not a bureaucratic, but an anti-bureaucratic system of government.

At the highest level, even before the convening of the first Zemsky Sobor (parliament of the Russian state), a strong aristocratic tradition was preserved, because the government of the state (Boyar Duma) was aristocratic.

The bureaucratic element in the Duma was represented by only a few clerks. In comparison, France, for example, created its bureaucratic government back in the time of Philip the Fair. A number of small German states had a long medieval tradition of bureaucratic governance. There was no such tradition in Russia.

But there were statists in Russia, and this is the fourth party, the Naryshkin Party. Apparently, initially they were not Westerners, but they became them due to statist thinking, due to the fact that the West was precisely in the 17th century. offered models of bureaucratic government.

In the 17th century in the West, especially in Central Europe and France, it was necessary to study the models not of democracy or aristocracy, but of bureaucracy, since absolutism was advancing in Europe. He defeated the traditions of medieval class representation and aristocratic traditions, and crushed urban communes under himself. Absolutism is one of the most naked variants of statism.

The Naryshkin party rushed into the arms of the West and the foreigners of the Kukuy settlement in Moscow not out of primordial or doctrinal Westernism, but of its statism, for they found ready-made models there. This happened when Peter I was still young, influenced and played with soldiers (first with toy soldiers, then with live ones). He played for a long time, not taking part in solving state affairs until the coup of 1689 and even for some time after.

Methodologically, Peter I was a tyrant who fit into Aristotle’s schemes, but not a classical tyrant, for he proceeded not from an egoistic tyrannical will, but from the primacy of the state. Among the panorama of statists in world history, Peter was one of the most outstanding. It was no coincidence that he played service all his life and received ranks; he sincerely served the state, like Hobbes’ Leviathan. Hobbes's theory had to do with time and personality.

Peter's anti-church reforms were, of course, not born out of his conscious anti-Orthodoxy. Peter simply could not imagine not only the mystical nature of the Church, but also the social nature; he was deprived of the concept of “society”. For him, the concepts of “nation” and “people” also did not exist.

All these were attributes of the state. Man and state – there are no other categories! In this situation, it is quite natural for him to borrow bureaucratic forms from the West (primarily from Russia’s main enemy in the Northern War - Sweden). For him it was not Westernism either. He simply improved his state, constructing it as a kind of apparatus or organism, the element of which was any person, including himself.

This is not the place to note the exceptional ineffectiveness of Peter’s reforms - written on paper, they did not work in reality. Another thing is more interesting - in the sphere of state creation, Peter is a greater follower of Hobbes than Hobbes himself. He creates one of the most bureaucratic systems in world history. Peter's reforms led to a monstrous growth of the bureaucratic apparatus. Corruption also increased, as informal connections that were normal in democratic and aristocratic societies, outlawed by the bureaucratic system, became illegal informal connections. Peter's super-bureaucratic system could not work, therefore, throughout the 18th - first half of the 19th centuries. There was a constant softening of the bureaucratic character of the state.

Pre-Mongol Rus' was ruled by a princely monarchy combined with a boyar aristocracy and veche democracy. In 1211, trying to achieve the consolidation of the Russians into a single state, Grand Duke Vsevolod III convened the first class representation - the prototype of future Zemsky Sobors. This happened 54 years before the convening of the first English parliament. Democratic traditions did not die in Russia even during the period of foreign domination and fragmentation: hundreds and settlements were preserved in the cities, and rural and volost assemblies were preserved among the peasants, and the tradition of judging together with the “best people” was preserved.

Peter I was a terrible destroyer of democratic Russian traditions. He not only stopped convening Zemsky Sobors, he destroyed their basis - the lower Zemstvo, self-government, bureaucratizing the lower sphere of self-government. It’s interesting to follow Evgeniy Anisimov to see how Peter worked with Swedish prototypes.

In Sweden at the end of the 17th century. there was a three-member system of regional government: the parish (Kirchspiel), then the districht (Herad) and, finally, the land - Lanz. The higher levels of bureaucratized absolutist Sweden were, of course, bureaucrats, while the lower (very important) level of Swedish government was the kirchspiel - a self-governing parish headed by a headman (voht). The activities of the parish were based on the active participation of the people and peasants in the management, which in the future became the core of the restoration of Swedish democracy.

Analyzing the Swedish model, the Senate, naturally at the suggestion of Peter, decided: “Kirchspielfokht and among the peasants should not be elected at the courts and appanages. Besides, there are no smart people from the peasantry in the district.” This is about Russia with its centuries-old zemstvo democratic system! Democracy is built only from below. By destroying grassroots democracy, Peter I for a long time eliminated the possibility of its restoration at higher levels.

The most complex society of the 17th century. Peter destroys it by simplifying it. Konstantin Leontiev was the first to formulate a universal cultural historical thesis: “Every simplification is degradation,” which in our time was developed in detail by Lev Gumilyov. We believe this thesis is truly demonstrative and universal.

In Russia in the 17th century. The highest class was not the nobility, but the boyar aristocracy. But the most prominent bourgeoisie in Russia even have a special title of “guests,” and even higher are “eminent people,” who can be compared in their position with insignificant boyars. Not only the most prominent merchants, but even wealthy artisans (“townspeople” in the terminology of the 17th century) and many peasants could in real life be more prosperous, and even more influential than the lower-ranking service nobles.

It was an exceptionally complex system, including horizontally the categories of service people, townspeople and tax peasants. Vertically, they were quite shifted relative to the axis, so that the highest layer of each category was much more influential and richer than the lower layer of the higher category (the richest townsman was richer than the ordinary nobleman).

Peter I compressed five different categories of farmers into one category of “peasants,” which was brilliantly proven by Vasily Klyuchevsky. But an outstanding historian of the early 20th century. did not pay attention to the fact that Peter was a simplification of the aristocracy, mixing the domestic aristocracy in the ranks of the lower nobility. The equalizer cannot elevate. Peter did not elevate the serving nobleman to the level of a boyar, but only promised this, but he demoted the aristocratic boyar to the level of a serving nobleman, securing the equalization system with his Table of Ranks of 1721.

Peter was extremely active in his cultural policy. It is no coincidence that he built the capital on a bare swampy place.

It should be noted that Russian culture of the 17th century. (especially in art forms, although also in political and social forms) is already entering the forms of the Modern Age. Stylistically, this is manifested in the baroque category. Baroque is the first style that can be accurately described in the history of Russian culture. Russian architecture already in the first half of the 17th century. quite baroque. Other types of Russian art became baroque in the middle of the 17th century. The Baroque style was not borrowed from the West. There are very few Western features in him. This is cultural influence at the level of stage proximity. The entire 17th century, including the Naryshkin Baroque (the last twenty years of the 17th century), preserves the national tradition. Art remains Russian. But among the perception of Western forms, aesthetic preferences are clearly felt.

Russians like the art of the Catholic South European circle, and reject, with rare exceptions, the Protestant circle.

Peter I, with his commitment to art, political and social forms of Northern European, Protestant, Dutch-German countries, opposed both national tradition and national taste. What he liked about the West was not what his subjects liked. Of course, cultural influence is possible, but is it so indifferent - what kind? In the Petrine era, Russian class anti-bureaucratic forms of self-government most closely corresponded to English models. Peter I looked closely at England, however, absorbed in his statism, he did not find anything interesting. Italo-Flemish forms corresponded to Russian artistic taste; they could have been borrowed, but Peter forcibly imposed Dutch-German ones.

Thus, Westernism, apparently, is also the imposition of forms of Western culture, social practice, and political structure that are not in tune with the domestic tradition. But culture is unusually diverse and multifaceted if domestic tradition is put at the forefront, so in the West you can always find examples worthy of imitation, without destroying the system of national and super-ethnic preferences.

So, firstly, Peter, like a true tyrant, hated and destroyed the domestic aristocracy. Secondly, Peter destroyed domestic democracy, destroying its basis at the municipal level, at the level of grassroots self-government. Thirdly, Peter violated the tradition of normal interaction with other cultures, imposing something that was not organically suitable for the majority of his subjects. He imposed on Russia the image of Holland, not the real one, but one created by him. Fourthly, Peter created, perhaps, the most bureaucratic state of his era.

Many countries went through a period of absolutism and bureaucracy. England had its own tyrant, Henry VIII, and the parliament, which had already become traditional among Europeans, obediently voted for all the tyrant’s follies. In Sweden, under Charles XI, the Riksdag did not dare to make a word. But tyrants go away, and the municipal tradition of grassroots democracy and even the parliamentary tradition tend to be restored. What is happening in Russia?

Zemstvo councils and zemstvo self-government belong, after Peter I, to the unenlightened past of Russia. When certain sharp minds strive to restore class representation (even modest, grassroots), they begin to look for forms in the West, and arbitrarily choose the most noticeable or fashionable. The Swedes did not instill in themselves the tradition of zemstvo councils. The Spaniards did not try to introduce a Diet. Everyone was restoring their representative tradition. And the Russians always after Peter tried to restore someone else’s, which is associated with difficulties. But even this is not the worst thing.

There are many examples of how states belonging to different great cultures live side by side and do not fight. Often, representatives of different superethnic groups (for example, Christians and Muslims) coexist peacefully in one state for centuries. But Peter I creates a rare situation: he draws a super-ethnic border not between different peoples, but along the leading Great Russian ethnic group in Russia. The upper class of the new Russia is now beginning to consider itself a Western European culture. All other classes (the richest merchants, the clergy, not to mention the lower-ranking circles) remain within the framework of their tradition, their great culture - Eastern Christian. Petrine reforms gradually dug a ditch that divided the ethnic group into two polar cultural orientations. True, under Peter it was still a ditch, and not an abyss.

Second half of the 18th century. passes mainly under the sign of Catherine II. This is a special era, the Golden Age of the Russian nobility, one of the most pro-noble reigns in Russian history. Pre-Petrine Russia was not aristocratic. Peter I carried out his reforms with the support of the nobility, offering provincial service people dominion in the country. It is no coincidence that under Peter the widely used term “noble gentry” arose in relation to the nobles.

But why the Catholic Polish term? Peter did not like Poles, did not tolerate Catholicism, and sympathized with the Protestant world. The fact is that Poland is the most feudal country of late medieval Europe. It was Poland that divided its subjects into nobility and serfdom - those with full rights and those without rights. Calling his nobility gentry, Peter unambiguously gave certain guarantees: “Serve tirelessly, without sparing your life, and you will be as omnipotent in Russia as the gentry is omnipotent in Poland.” Of course, the aristocracy was not tempted by this - it is patriarchal. But for provincial service people, who in their real position were less significant than the richest merchants and even other peasants, this was a temptation. Socially, the Petrine era may have produced a revolution.

Catherine II multiplied this trend by restoring self-government, but self-government was purely noble. This is not the ancient zemstvo, where tselovniks were elected from wealthy peasants, and at the head of hundreds and settlements were bourgeois from these hundreds and settlements. This is a system of elected positions that can only be held by nobles.

Moreover, Catherine’s reign takes place under the sign of the Decree “On the Liberty of the Nobility.” Even if she did not accept it, it was approved four months before his death by her husband Peter III in 1761, but this Decree could have its effect precisely under Catherine. With this Decree, the Russian peasantry came under an extremely heavy tax pressure, and highly developed, by the standards of the 18th century, Russian industry lost further impetus to its development due to huge foreign exchange deductions (from the labor of the Russian serf peasant) to finance not Russian, but (in pursuit of for luxury goods) of French, Flemish, Italian industry. The main thing, however, is not this.

The Russian peasant worked for his master for centuries, which is natural, since the master defended the Russian peasant all his life. The relationship between a serviceman and a farmer in Russia should not be idealized. They were all kinds, but they were normal. If a serviceman crossed the boundaries of what was permitted, he could run into the peasants' pitchforks. As a rule, this did not happen, because the relations were, in the concept of their time, fair. It was not the king who decided that the nobleman did not pay the tax, because he paid the tax with blood. The peasant himself knew that his master was a warrior, and he was being kept as a warrior.

But now the peasant has learned that there is a slacker sitting on his neck, to whom for some reason he, the peasant, belongs. He also owns the peasant land, which the peasant has been accustomed to consider as his own for centuries. And yet, he, the peasant, must feed this slacker. It is not surprising that the peasantry responded to this with Pugachevism.

Starting from the Petrine era, the peasant retained the old traditional responsibilities, but new ones were added, since from now on he was subject to conscription and replenished the regular Russian army. From this era, when the peasant continued to serve his twenty-five years, being separated from his family, in the Russian troops, and the nobleman got rid of this service by the Decree on Liberty, the ditch dug by Peter turned into an abyss.

The attempt of Emperor Paul I to eliminate some inter-class imbalance led to the death of Paul himself and to a long-term, ongoing hatred of his memory among representatives of the same Westernism that arose a hundred years before his reign. Anti-national, without a doubt, especially since the time of the Congress of Vienna, the policy of Alexander I caused national indignation. The conflict became even more complicated because the Westernizing nobility acted as the defender of national interests. Attempts by the Russian government and influential intellectuals who had the opportunity to influence public policy to return to their super-ethnic channel, to the framework of Eastern Christian culture, could not succeed.

Such a policy arose already under Nicholas I, but was doomed to failure. The government and circles close to the government are striving to restore cultural unity with society, which is met with hostility by the educated part of it, because it views the government’s policy as anti-national, from its Westernized positions. The same historical figure of the 19th century. may, as a result of an imbalance, XVIII turn out to be a champion of national traditions and an enemy of national interests, and vice versa. This is not only the tragedy of Nikolai Pavlovich’s thirty-year reign, it is also the insufficient effectiveness of Alexander’s Great Reforms of the 1860s.

The Decembrists represented a national reaction to the anti-national policy of Alexander I. The emperor and bureaucratic state policy were to blame for the emergence of Decembrism (the behavior of Alexander I at the Congress of Vienna and in Paris, his behavior towards the defeated Poland). But at the same time, criticism and the very speech of the seemingly national aristocracy were not carried out at the national conceptual level. The historian Vasily Klyuchevsky also drew attention to the education of the Decembrists. They went through successive waves of educational-classical, Freemasonic and, finally, Jesuit education. These waves did not add up to a whole. Freemasonry was associated with romanticism and in many ways already at the end of the 18th century. rejected the Enlightenment. Jesuitism (the last wave of the Counter-Reformation) is undoubtedly deeply hostile to Freemasonry. But all these waves, colliding in the most educated Russian officer, took him further and further away from understanding national problems.

Alexander I said when he was informed about the existence of secret societies: “It’s not for me to judge them.” This phrase is usually explained by the torment of his conscience due to his involvement in the regicide and parricide of 1801. I think this is not so. His phrase probably meant: “It’s not for me to judge them, because I’m the same with my Laharpean upbringing, the desire to make all people happy, which is why I made many unhappy.” Alexander I was characterized by high ethical self-esteem.

Russia did not explode a hundred years earlier not because it was accustomed to slavery. There were three reasons for this.

1) Oddly enough, the involvement of peasants in the service. Every serf recruit knew that yesterday he was a lordly man, and today he was a royal man. At all times, from the beginning of the 18th century. and before the end of the history of Russia in its historical forms, an ordinary soldier of the lowest origin could achieve the rank of officer and even general. If not in his own regiment, then in the neighboring one he could see an officer from among the soldiers.

2) Russia, both in the 18th and 19th centuries, despite all the paradoxes of its rule, continues to fulfill its historically established imperial function: it protects Eastern Christians. The so-called three partitions of Poland - the liberation of Orthodox Christians from Western rule. Russian-Turkish wars (two under Catherine II, then under Alexander I, two under Nicholas I, under Alexander II) - the liberation of the Slavs, Greeks, Georgians and Armenians belonging to the same culture, even Arabs and Copts from Turkish rule. This cultural unity is felt by a simple uneducated person, and indeed by any person - not a theologian - much more acutely than belonging to a strict dogmatic religion. The opportunity to benefit one’s culture to some extent preserved, despite the split, national and cultural unity.

3) All the tyrants of Russian history tried to destroy the Russian aristocracy, but there were only two of them: Ivan IV and Peter I. The aristocracy after Peter was restored, especially in Catherine’s time, and then in Alexander’s time. The aristocratic tradition, in contrast to the bureaucratic one, is inherent in the mentality of the Russian people. They tried to make the Russian aristocrat the same official as any provincial nobleman. But the peasant wanted to see in him an aristocrat, responsible for the destinies not of the state, but of the nation, society, culture (it is no coincidence that the popular “barin” goes back not to the nobleman, but to the ancient term “boyar”). Hence, the patriarchal relations between the landed nobleman and the peasant farmer continued to exist (albeit to a lesser extent). This inertia could also have preserved national-cultural unity for quite a long time and resisted destruction if adequate reforms had managed to overcome the Petrine split that arose in the ethnocultural field, but this did not happen. The more the aristocratic (more broadly, local) nobility sought to return to the national tradition, the more actively new categories of Westerners were formed in society.

Westerners of the 19th century - these are the marginalized. They are usually called intellectuals, but this term in no way corresponds to that of the 20th century. Nowadays, an intellectual is considered to be a person belonging to the educated part of society. In the 19th century an intellectual is an educated person, but not an aristocrat, not a landowner, not an officer, not a priest (and the priesthood in the 19th century became more and more educated and influential), not a bourgeois (more and more noticeable in the cultural life of the 19th century). 19th century intellectual - This is an educated marginal.

If society had preserved the ethnocultural tradition, educated marginalized people would have been attracted to the national elite (this happened in the military service, where a soldier could rise to the rank of general). But the national-cultural tradition was torn, and the marginalized remained “suspended” with their Westernized upbringing, with society’s rejection of the state, with the consciousness of commonality not with their ancestors, but with all the “oppressed.” Rising, the marginal was a ready destructor. This destruction is the result of a split in the ethnic field that occurred in the 18th century. The number of marginalized people in the 19th century. is steadily increasing due to a completely objective reason: the Russians are entering a phase of breakdown.