The 1917 revolution in Russia became one of the largest historical events of the 20th century. It has attracted and continues to attract the attention of scientists, thinkers, artists and poets. Our attitude towards it influences our present and future, creating the symbolic space of meaning in which a person lives.

For some, the revolution of 1917 was the result of the objective development of the historical process. For others, this is just an accidental result of a conspiracy or simply a tragic coincidence of circumstances.

It is impossible to doubt the revolutionary nature of the events that began in February 1917. The question is to what extent these were necessary and natural phenomena. Weren't they simply the result of human cowardice, short-sightedness and betrayal?

If, quite recently, in Russian historiography the Revolution was treated as a result of objective historical development, now statements about it as a conspiracy or simply a coup are more often heard.

A seemingly random chain of events does not exclude a deep internal pattern of what is happening. Man-made does not exclude intervention from above; a conspiracy will not be able to achieve the desired result if there is no proper soil.

The answer to the question of whether the 1917 revolution was a simple change of power, or whether it was caused by the need for the historical development of Russia, will divide historians and thinkers for a long time. In many respects it depends on the historiosophical position of the defendant.

Romanticization and mythologization of the revolution, as well as its desacralization, do not contribute to understanding the essence of what happened. The awareness of such a systemic event must be as holistic as possible, which is hardly possible for an individual.

A hundred years ago, although the majority of the Russian population did not think about revolution, there were many who anticipated future changes. Some romanticized the revolution, others were dissatisfied with reality or strived for power. There was even special category people are professional revolutionaries.

Nowadays, there are also many dissatisfied with their financial situation and injustice. Russia has many enemies, just as they did then, who want to weaken it through internal strife. But it is difficult to find romantics of the revolution. Many want change, but most are afraid of change and are afraid to look into the future. Will they one day unexpectedly wake up in another world, built by a new revolution?

When people think of war, they picture it on the model of the great war that preceded it. The commanders are also preparing for the last war. Only the most far-sighted understand that the coming war will be completely different.

Cold, network, information, and hybrid wars have entered our lives. Many of them have been ongoing in the virtual space for a long time. However, the real war, with the death of people, the destruction of houses, blood, and real suffering, also remained. This war could be somewhere very close, in the next block. In one part of the city there is a peaceful life, and in the other, as the experience of Donetsk or Aleppo shows, mines are exploding. Maybe the coming revolution is also somewhere very close, but we try not to notice it, afraid of losing the comfortable feeling of real imaginary well-being.

As a systemic phenomenon, revolution cannot be viewed from any one aspect - economic, social or ideological. It affects all processes of society. A change of power by force is not yet a revolution. Nationalization, confiscation, redistribution of property are only external manifestations of revolutionary upheavals.

What changes as a result of the revolution? Economic structure, social relations or religious views? Everything changes! Revolution as a holistic and systemic phenomenon changes the world in which people live. This applies to both the material and symbolic side. The symbolic house of culture in which a person lives mentally is destroyed, rebuilt or rebuilt.

Separately, economic - ideological or social transformations do not necessarily have the character of a revolution. A revolution changes both the economic and social structure and the basic worldview.

The origin of many revolutionary ideas in European history has biblical roots. This is no accident. The nature of revolution is religious.

A true revolution is a religious matter, it is the reformatting of society according to a new religious faith. This is the overthrow of old and the erection of new deities. The English Revolution took place under the banner of Christian sectarianism. The French Revolution tried to create a new cult. The Russian Revolution was religious in its essence and built a religious society of absolute monism, although outwardly it looked like a fight against religion.

The execution of a monarch is a symbolic act, a sacrifice, and not just a triumph of the crowd. Even the introduction of a constitutional monarchy required completely different religious views than autocracy. While this may not have been realized by everyone in 1917, it was more obvious to most in the 17th century.

Revolution is always two-part. It contains both destruction and creation. Simple destruction, rebellion, change of power is not called a revolution. Revolution presupposes a dialectical struggle between old and new. The unity of destruction and creation constitutes the essence of the revolutionary process.

The establishment of the new or the death of the old may not always have an unambiguous ethical assessment, but struggle is always a tragedy.

Destruction is directed towards the past, the new fights with the old, overthrowing it. Creation is directed towards the future, paving the way for the development of society. Whether this path is good or not, it is necessary as a solution to the internal contradiction that plagues society.

It is internal contradiction that is a prerequisite for revolution. The revolution overcomes the insurmountable duality of internal division, often leading to dead end and death. Overcoming a tragic contradiction is akin to a creative act or a miracle. The archetype of the revolution can be considered the incarnation of Christ, who united the incompatible - divine and human.

An insoluble contradiction in society is the predominance of dualism as a system of worldview and organization of life. Dualism is always antagonistic: top - bottom, good - bad, old - new, slave owners - slaves. Dualism is a state of internal split, it is a conflict. Dualism in society is a civil war. It can also be virtual or real, cold or hot.

The contradiction may not only be of a socio-economic nature, but also ideological. When two irreconcilable worldviews collide in the same space, conflict is inevitable. Only something completely new can reconcile them.

Society as a whole presupposes in its structure not only difference, but also identity. Such a society is built on the principle of a triad. Unity as a whole is always a trinity. Therefore, the triad is the most ancient and sustainable model to create society as a whole, that is, a society united by one idea, values ​​and a common cause. Whether it is a three-class or three-caste society, the terms are not important in this case.

Otherwise, it will be a police state of individuals and social groups united together without common goals or a common meaning in life.

This does not mean, of course, that there cannot be some chamber groups in society that live within the framework of their identity. We are talking about society as a whole. The question is whether it exists as a whole or not.

Having reached the point of division within itself, society either destroys itself or is subjected to external enslavement.

A way out of the internal crisis, contradiction, and class antagonism is possible only through the triad, that is, through the search for a third force that would balance the antagonism of duality.

The maturation of an internal split leads to what is called a revolutionary situation, that is, it is not possible for the system to exist in its previous form. In one way or another, a revolution will have to occur, that is, the discovery of a new historical path.

Internal illness can develop and progress for quite a long time until some external crisis occurs. So a mild cold can lead to complications and death, if there are prerequisites for this. Therefore, external events that contribute to the breakthrough of the crisis are truly random. The revolution of 1917 was a surprise even for its main executors.

In our opinion, the conspiracy of the military and the bourgeoisie, the intrigues of the court and Western intelligence services - all this is the external outline of the revolutionary events of 1917. If there were no serious internal conflict in society, this would not have broken anything.

What was the insoluble contradiction in Russian society on the eve of 1917? Its origins should be sought in history.

The religious schism of the 17th century dealt a terrible blow to the integrity of the Russian worldview. However, despite its widespread occurrence, it did not become a determining factor in the bifurcation of society. Old Believers went to the periphery public life, believing that the world had completely fallen under the power of the Antichrist. Negative for inner life Russia was the fact that a large part of its population considered itself an enemy of both the state and the Russian Orthodox Church.

The most obvious manifestation of dualism in Russian society should be considered its division into two opposing classes - landowners and peasants. This confrontation grew gradually and began long before Peter the Great. One part of the population bore the tax, the other did not. The economic division was also accompanied by a legal one. For example, one part of the population was subject to whipping, the other was not. Before the reign of Catherine the Great, this confrontation was partly balanced by the clergy and the duty of the nobles to serve the state.

Starting from Peter the Great and especially after the reforms of Catherine the Great, when the Russian Orthodox Church deprived of economic independence, the clergy begins to lose its importance in the structure of society. It began to lose the qualities of a full-fledged priestly caste, carrying out its service - to preserve and pass on the truth to subsequent generations. Instead of being third independent force, the clergy began to occupy an intermediate position between peasants and nobles.

But a more serious blow to the clergy was dealt by the reform of higher education, as a result of which it split. Education is not just a system for transmitting knowledge, it is a system that performs the function of constructing the symbolic cosmos in which a person lives.

An attempt to establish higher educational institutions in Russia was made even before Peter the Great, since this problem had been brewing for a long time. The Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy, which opened in 1687, was an all-class educational institution in which there was no opposition between the secular and the religious. As in European universities, which preserved the medieval tradition, theology was taught there, among other disciplines. However, this path of education has not received further development in Russia.

Unlike Western universities, which still preserved the traditions of medieval education, the Academic University in St. Petersburg, founded by Peter the Great in 1724, as well as the Moscow University, founded in 1755, did not involve teaching theology. For the education of the clergy, other educational institutions were created both in Moscow and St. Petersburg. While in Western universities the future pastor could receive a theological education, in Russia he studied it outside the university system.

Thus, the opposition between the sacred and the secular, generally characteristic of the New Age, in Russia in the field of education acquired a complete and more radical form than in the West.

On the one hand there was the priesthood and monasticism, the scope of which was limited to the priesthood. The clergy, due to conservatism, began to isolate themselves into a class, participation in which was inherited.

Secular education became a factor in the creation of a new class - educated people- commoners. This class could include representatives of all other classes; first of all, it included people from families of clergy.

The so-called intelligentsia arose. The Russian intelligentsia created its own myth. The intelligentsia inherited the messianic idea of ​​the spiritual class, its calling to be the spiritual leader of society, to lead spiritual processes.

As a result, two centers of gravity emerged in the clergy, corresponding to two educational spaces. Competition arose within a single spiritual class. Both groups claimed messianic exclusivity, but the commoners took a more aggressive position.

The dualism of the clergy strengthened the ideological polarization of society as a whole. The ideological center of the intelligentsia began to gravitate towards the extreme opposition - atheism. As a result of the emergence of two centers of gravity in one symbolic space, conflict became inevitable.

The number of people who received higher education in pre-revolutionary Russia was constantly increasing. In the last third of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th until 1917, the number of educated people increased 10 times.

This means that the problem of the bifurcation of public consciousness should have soon reached a critical state. It needed to be addressed urgently. Any decision would be revolutionary, due to the conservatism of the population. Breaking established stereotypes, even if these stereotypes date back only a couple of decades, is always met with hostility.

Another, perhaps most important, contradiction in the spiritual and material life of Russia at that time was associated with the expansion of school education. In 1907, a plan for a law on universal primary education. Although this law was not adopted in its final form, nevertheless, everything was done in this direction in Russia. The number of schools increased every year. Another ten to fifteen years would have passed and all the children of the Russian Empire would have received school education, the meaning and quality of which would expand in the future.

It would seem a gratifying fact. However, we should not forget that school kills traditional culture. The school acts as a kind of filter, separating a person from his family and way of life, preparing him for a new society.

The peasant's way of life was based on principles established many centuries ago. This way of life was churched, and belief in the sacredness of the supreme power was part of it. School education violated the established principles of transferring traditional knowledge and gave a person the opportunity for a different initiation, outside the framework of traditional life.

Orthodoxy brought unity to a society divided socially and culturally. The schism in the spiritual class itself brought a split into this unity. And in Orthodoxy itself, as post-revolutionary events showed, especially the emergence of renovationists, there was a split. Society cannot exist simultaneously in two parallel symbolic worlds.

This schizophrenic state could either continue the mental civil war with increasing bitterness, or end with the victory of a revolution that would bring unity of worldview.

The Bolsheviks established ideological and sacred monism as part of their ideology. Whether there was any other way is anyone's guess. One can only assert in the abstract that the overarching task of society was both the preservation and renewal of tradition.

In the following decades, a real cultural revolution was to take place, regardless of whether the Bolsheviks came to power or not. This revolution was supposed to solve the problem of the unity of the symbolic space of Russia, and not simply endow the peasants with land and then take it away.

This revolution would also have to solve the problems of social equality of all strata of society. The demographic boom that Russia was experiencing and the movement of huge masses of the population caused by the war would have made these reforms inevitable. We should not forget the increasing urbanization.

This serious challenge required a creative, revolutionary solution. One can only guess what it could have been like if it had been implemented not by the Bolsheviks, but by another force.

In Russia, revolutions are always carried out from above; one can recall Peter the Great and Ivan the Terrible and other tsars. in Russia the main revolutionary is the supreme power itself. “From below” there is only rebellion. The new revolutionary reformer could also be a tsar. After victory in the war, which Russia was gradually heading towards, the tsar would have acquired colossal authority, necessary for serious state reforms. The leader of the country, a state-minded and strategic thinker, understood the depth of the problem. And Nikolai Alexandrovich certainly understood her.

The nobility in Russia, a military caste, was rapidly losing its authority. Feeling the loss of its influence in society, the court was in opposition to the sovereign, fearing for its power in the state. The sovereign's attempt to establish direct contact with the peasantry in the person of G. Rasputin aroused fear and hatred.

The bourgeoisie was also worried about their place in society, as the war revealed the need to further strengthen the role of the state in the economy. State capitalism scared private capital.

The clergy also were not confident in maintaining their position, as evidenced by the legend that Nicholas II had the idea of ​​becoming a patriarch, handing over the reins of power to his son.

Changes in the social, spiritual and economic life of the country could be quite significant.

In 1917, society was tired of the long war, but discontent alone was not enough for a total rebellion. The conspiracy of the military and the bourgeoisie, which was originally conceived according to the scenario of a palace coup, may not have led to subsequent chaos if power had passed to another monarch.

The overthrow of the monarchy became a sacred and symbolic act, the meaning of which was understood by few at that time. This was the beginning of a religious revolution, the victory of which, given the special position of Russia in world history, could not simply pass into random hands.

A special political system has developed in Russia.

Supreme power was the only factor keeping society from chaos. Thus, supreme power in Russia was the main sacred symbol. The king personified the divinity of law and world order. The overthrow of the king meant the end of the law as such.

Autocracy is the cornerstone that allows not only to contain contradictions in society, but also gives impetus for the creative development of various aspects of life. Faith in the White Tsar made it possible to integrate a variety of peoples, cultures and religions into a single space.

The Tsar in Russia is not just the supreme ruler. The king is the personification of power and law, it is a sacred symbol that gives the right to any boss or commander to lead his subordinates. When he disappears, their right to give orders disappears. A social norm, a law, loses its unconditionality in the public consciousness, or better yet, the subconscious.

That's why, with the fall of the tsar, the whole, that is, Russia, ceased to exist instantly. The subsequent rapid destruction of the state became inevitable. There was no force in society capable of holding him back.

Contradictions hidden in the depths of public consciousness came to light, plunging the country into the bloody chaos of a civil war. These contradictions became the front lines for military clashes, both intellectual and bloody.

The dualism underlying the social structure took shape in the form of class hatred, which became a justification for any action, that is, in fact, a new law.

Therefore, the activities of the Bolsheviks were aimed not only at redistributing property, but at reviving the sacred in society, which would keep it from collapse.

The state became the new sacred symbol that personified the whole under Soviet rule. An important role in the sacralization of the state was played by the doctrine of the possibility of building socialism in one country. Separation from everything else is a necessary condition for sacralization.

The collapse of the “United Mighty Soviet Union” is a symbolic action similar to the overthrow of the monarchy. With his fall, the sacred right of any force in the post-Soviet space to represent the law ended. More precisely, only might remains right. This sluggish turmoil and civil war, now flaring up and then fading, will continue until a new revolution occurs, returning the sacred symbol the whole into society.

IN recent years again the image of the supreme ruler is gradually being sacralized. This process is based on the main archetype of Russian, and even more broadly, Eurasian consciousness, the belief in the sacred source of supreme power. True, the current state of mind is far from admitting this directly. In addition, sacralization always requires symbolic design and actualization.

However, the disintegration of the whole can easily be provoked again through the desacralization of the supreme ruler. The struggle takes place at the level of symbols and images. The language barrier prevents total propaganda of slander from directly reaching Russia. It seems that the level of trust in the supreme power in modern Russia is higher than ever and nothing can shake it. But is this true? Will we not wake up one day again in another state, created by people unknown to us?

The pre-war year 1913 became the time of the highest triumph of the Romanov dynasty and the Russian monarchy. Celebrations of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty continued for a whole year. All the peoples inhabiting Russia, all classes, welcomed their king. Thanksgiving prayers were served, ceremonial receptions were given, and celebrations were held. No one could imagine that in a few years the dynasty, autocracy, and with it Russia itself would disappear.

In 1917, society was tired of the long war, but Russia knew many more difficult trials. There were also public performances. All this was not enough to start revolutionary upheavals. The detonator of subsequent self-destruction was the conspiracy of the elites.

Even today, no one is safe from a palace coup or an elite conspiracy. Even repression does not always save strong leaders. Often strong leaders are succeeded by weak ones. Any, even legal, change of power weakens the supreme power for some time. If the body is healthy, it will quickly regain integrity.

One disease can provoke a deeper one. A cold can awaken an underlying disease of the internal organs and lead to fatal outcome. If a society is split, it is easy to push it into chaos as a result of the weakening of the supreme power.

What kind of internal disease is gnawing Russia from the inside now?

Russia is cut into two unequal parts. A border has been drawn through the heart of the country - economic inequality. The course of restoring capitalism in Russia has brought and is bearing fruit. An endless string of fences, guards, curbs, turnstiles, controllers - strictly monitors so that no one passes through this border without proper payment.

The division of society is not only intensifying, it is taking on catastrophic forms. Two Russias emerged. One struggles for existence, degrades and dies out. Others drive expensive foreign cars to vacation, work or study abroad. Some go on vacation along toll roads, others take trains to their dacha. Some send their children to study in Europe, while others are completely deprived of the opportunity to provide higher education to their children. The economic split threatens to develop into an ideological one and become a source for the formation of mutual hostility and class hatred.

Polarization is aggravated by the emerging cultural split and confusion. Deprived of a common identity, which can only be given by a single sacred symbol common to everyone, people try to find their super-I, to find themselves in subcultures or in the global virtual space.

However, if 100 years ago there was a demographic boom that accompanied many revolutions, now there is a demographic decline. The population is degrading and dying out. Population extinction is not only a consequence of urbanization, destruction of traditions and total impoverishment, it is also a variant of class struggle and the enslavement of one part of the population by another. One part of the population is suppressed for the sake of the need to establish capitalist relations. The bitter truth is that one part of the population benefits from the total impoverishment and degradation of another part.

One of the ways to form a dualistic society was the defeat of the Soviet intelligentsia, the bearers of society's values.

On the one hand, scientists, teachers, etc. representatives of the class of educated people were pushed beyond the boundaries of economic survival. On the other hand, an attempt was made to turn teachers into merchants.

The idea that education is a service destroys the integrity and unity of society, as it destroys the mechanism for maintaining this integrity.

Scientists as producers of knowledge, and teachers as traders of this production, become simply mercenaries of the bourgeoisie. At the same time, the introduction of Western standards and values ​​turns educated people into cosmopolitans - mercenaries of Western civilization.

The idea that education is a service destroys the very foundation of the clergy. The independent status of educated people as carriers of ideas and traditions completely disappears. The teacher, as a seller of services, becomes a mercenary. It completely loses its sacred symbolic essence. Mercenaries do not train members of society, bearers of certain values, but the same mercenaries, whose meaning in life is to seek high pay.

All of the above can rightfully be attributed to both medicine and science, culture and art.

Return as values ​​of religion in the 90s. The old schism within the clergy also came back to life. On the one hand there is the Church, on the other the intelligentsia. However, ecumenism weakened the messianic pathos, and the intelligentsia generally lost their messianic idea. Therefore, conflicts within the modern clergy, or rather what is left of it, are not global, but economic in nature. But this is until a certain time.

The educated class must preserve the highest idea of ​​society and pass it on to subsequent generations. If this is not the case, then society disintegrates into many individuals deprived of connection with the Motherland. This cosmopolitan crowd of individuals automatically becomes part of a global civilization who view their stay in Russia as temporary and do not consider it fateful.

Thus, We are approaching one of the most important contradictions in modern Russia, which threatens to develop into a real revolution that will completely change consciousness. This is a contradiction between the global world and Russia.

A contradiction that can lead to revolution does not have to be of an economic or class nature. Ideology is the basis of revolutionary conflict. It is she who is the source of mutual hatred. Ideology draws a border in the mind, which then serves as a place of confrontation, armed or verbal.

Russia's steps towards self-identity so far are simply conservative and counter-revolutionary in nature. But they have already led to a civil war on the territory of Ukraine, which could become a model for the civil war in Russia.

The detonator was the national enmity between Lvov and Donetsk. For national conflict an ideological and civilizational conflict emerges, victory or defeat in which leads to a cultural revolution.

Symbolically, this is represented as the expulsion of red from the triad of colors, and the dominance of yellow-blue doulism. Through the presence of symbols, action is sacralized.

In Russia, what is more relevant is not the national, national-religious contradictions that became the main lines of confrontation after the collapse of the USSR.

If monism dominated in the USSR, now in Russia the prevailing desire is to establish pluralism. These two options for perceiving the world cannot be reconciled not only from the point of view of an integral religious consciousness, but also from the position of a liberal worldview. The basic values ​​of any state, even a liberal one, are dogmas that cannot be doubted.

Potentially, the very idea of ​​reviving the integrity of the state presupposes monism. Therefore, already at the state level a conflict between pluralism and monism began to arise. This problem becomes even more acute when it comes to the revival of religious society and the state. The revival of religious ideas as messianic inevitably leads to an aggravation of this contradiction. This applies to any religion and especially Abrahamic.

Nowadays, this contradiction has begun to intensify in the southeast, where it has also begun to take shape as a front line. The archaic idea of ​​a religious just society (Caliphate) collides with the European pluralism of postmodernism.

Here we see the same picture as in the struggle between Atheism and Religion. In fact, this is not a fight against religion, but a fight over which religion will dominate. Both require faith and unconditional obedience.

Victory or defeat in this war will be a real revolution, involving the rise and fall of deities.

Russia also acts in relation to this movement as an external counter-revolutionary force. But the contradiction between religious values and secular is characteristic of Russia itself. Therefore, the front line can, under a certain set of events, move inward.

This is not a war for territory or against terrorists. This is an ideological war, dividing two irreconcilable consciousnesses. In this war, Russia will either fight for its own values ​​or for Western ones.

As already noted, Russia is moving along the path of increasing the internal division of society. Economic and social dualism cannot but lead society to crisis and collapse. Since in Russia everyone is busy with survival or redistribution of property and few people think about revolution, it will come from outside.

The way out of the crisis is a systemic solution. Any system solution is complex. No matter from which side we begin to describe it, this does not mean that the tasks are arranged hierarchically. They act simultaneously. The order of words on paper is just a convention.

There are various theories and ways of how to overcome dualism, which is disastrous for society. You can approach this problem from both the economic and ideological sides. If we consider society as a whole, as a structure, it looks either like creating a space between two classes, or like creating a triad, a triumvirate of three classes.

Nowadays, due to the prevalence of materialism in society, the most common approach to this problem is economic. This approach proposes to create or strengthen the so-called middle class, which will be a buffer that softens the opposition of a two-class society.

Stolypin intended to create some semblance of a middle class among the peasantry as a result of his reforms. It is not known what the result of his reforms would have been if he had, as he wished, 20 years to implement them. Would he be able to stop the revolution in this case? In any case, the vast petty-bourgeois class could not overcome the ideological and spiritual split in society.

The idea of ​​the need for a middle class to create a stable society is quite popular in the West. And it is there, recently, that alarmed cries about the disappearance of the middle class have been increasingly heard.

This is not surprising. The middle class does not have complete economic independence. It is not a structural element of society. Small shops cannot compete with large retail chains. Most of the middle class are highly paid mercenaries. Any mercenary can easily be fired or replaced by a machine. The middle class in this understanding is the clerks and managers of the property of the bourgeoisie. Its main role is to service the movement of capital. Their function is intermediary in the movement of money and goods. Such a middle class does not overcome the dualism of society, the raison d'être of which is to increase global capital.

The middle class becomes a truly noticeable force in society when it becomes the bearer of a certain ideology. In this case, he occupies an empty vacancy in the clergy. As such, it receives a new name - creative class.

The birth of a new ideology and a class of its bearers is the driving force of the modern cultural revolution. The new ideology of the modern middle class in the West is based on a new doctrine of man, a new understanding of man, a new anthropology.

The cultural revolution, separating Western society from the heritage of Christianity, went through several stages, among which the turning point was the sexual revolution of the late 60s.

By the beginning of the 21st century, ideas about man that developed as a result of this cultural revolution reached a fundamentally new level. In a sense, in the new anthropology, man has lost his gender. Man has lost the duality that defined his existence for many millennia. A person now chooses for himself whether he is a man or a woman, or simply androgynous.

This is an attempt to achieve the divine, absolute in a simple earthly way, overcoming the innate duality, which, it would seem, cannot be overcome

If earlier a person was thought of as a bisexual being, now he becomes actually same-sex. This new IT overcomes the insurmountable dualism of male and female in itself. In addition, in this way the Western global consciousness is trying to overcome the division of the subconscious and consciousness.

Looking ahead, it is not difficult to see that the next stage of this revolution will be the crossing of man and machine. A person, like IT, is already ready for this. The cyborg will become the limit of development of the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bhumanity, rooted in ancient times. The revolution overcomes an insoluble contradiction, in this case the duality of human nature, giving rise to new person.

The idea of ​​\u200b\u200bhumanity, rooted in ancient times, reaches a new peak in the new anthropology. This new ideology will form the basis of the ideology of the new middle class in global society, also called the creative class.

The global world is, first of all, a unified information and intellectual field. Information and intellectual space is not just a means of transmitting information, but also a reflection of a certain picture of the world, based on certain values ​​and ideas.

New anthropology gives birth to new values ​​and its bearers. It becomes a standard, like a measure of weight. When the meter replaced the arshin, that was also a revolution. (In this case, for example, G is added to the usual M and F on toilet doors).

The Russian middle class, or some semblance of it, is also gradually becoming part of this whole. In Russia, this class feels “useless” due to the fact that its values ​​were formed in the global information field. Therefore, he easily leaves for his ideological homeland. In addition, in Russia there is no proper niche for the educated class.

In Russia there is no clearly defined spiritual and intellectual center capable of creating its own identity. Instead of the unified, multiplicity prevails. Instead of the integrity of a culture, we see many subcultures. AND subcultural identity dominates national identity.

Russia's technological, intellectual, cultural and ideological dependence on global Western civilization is obvious. The province can fight for its independence. But this is not the level of Russia as a great power, as a third Rome and a second Jerusalem. Russia's task is not to create its own plot in the Western field, but to build its own symbolic information field.

The expanding penetration of carriers of a global worldview into Rus' will sooner or later lead to a civil war in this mental plane. But only the bearers of their messianic idea, in which a different image of man clearly sounded, can resist it. It is impossible to resist them with the ideas of conservatism and the affirmation of tolerance. A cultural revolution can only be opposed to another cultural revolution, but not to a counter-revolution. Therefore, at the ideological global messianic level, the Western idea of ​​superman and supersociety is opposed only by the caliphate.

So, in our opinion, in modern Russia there are three global contradictions - socio-economic, characteristic of internal structure society, and two contradictions not only internal, but also external, ideological. All of them can lead to a revolution, that is, to a radical change in worldview, to a complete transformation of a person’s image, a change in basic values, lifestyle, etc.

Russia is kept from chaos and anarchy by the supreme power. However, if in Russian society internal and external contradictions develop into real dualism, then it will not be able to maintain society as a whole. Armed conflicts and population degradation indicate the gradual approach of this moment.

The outbreak of hostilities abroad is a sign of an aggravation of the general situation. This aggravation will only increase. Internal contradiction does not turn into fiery contact as long as there is a resource of trust in the supreme power. But this resource is not unlimited.

Russia's main ally is its army. But support alone is not enough for stability. At a minimum, one more is needed. Only a special new spiritual educational class will be able to change the dual structure of society and strengthen the integrity and unity of the country. Russia needs to overcome the duality of economic confrontation by creating a three-part structure of society, in which the principle of a common cause would be embedded.

The security forces have already begun to form themselves into some kind of special social group, whose social weight, unlike the 90s, is increasing. This is also facilitated by its own closed system education. But this is not enough.

Both the security and spiritual classes must gain economic independence from capitalist relations. This is only possible with a significant strengthening of the role of the state in the economy.

In solving military problems, the state relies on the security forces. And who will it rely on in solving ideological problems? The only organized force is the clergy. But without the participation of teachers and intellectuals, the state will not solve the problem of the ideological monolithic nature of society. And it cannot be solved by police methods either.

All representatives of the educated clergy should form a single social group, within which various ministries are possible - priests, doctors, scientists. They should be united by a basic idea and values.

The education system should be built not just as a way of transmitting knowledge, but as a form of symbolic self-reproduction of society. From the initial stage to the highest. The transfer of knowledge and values ​​goes hand in hand, as it does in secular states.

To form this new class, it is necessary to create your own symbolic space, which would be based on your own messianic idea. It is not difficult to understand that such an idea is not necessarily something completely new. No. But this idea must be about the absolute, about the one and the whole. And this idea has been around for a long time.

The absolute value of Orthodox thought is the doctrine of the trinity. The highest value and achievement of philosophy is dialectics. In their person, both philosophy and theology extend a hand to each other. The gap between theology and philosophy can be overcome only by reviving dialectics as a way of knowing absolute unity. Only creative thinking trinity can give rise to a new philosophy. Philosophy is necessary for theology, or more precisely, any philosophy about first principles is theology.

The modern tendency towards segmentation of science creates the illusion of professionalism, but at the same time the image of the whole is completely lost. A complete picture of the world cannot be built on fragments of scientific knowledge obtained using a microscope.

The main messianic meaning of the new philosophy should be to overcome the border between the sacred and the profane. They cannot mix, but a symbolic connection is necessary between them. Both on an individual personal level and on a public level.

In Russia, on a subconscious level, the sacred retains its power. Unlike the West, a crowd of thousands can still gather here to meet one or another shrine. But these are special cases.

Symbols began to be treated rather formally. Their sacred power should be revived. At the national level there must be a shrine that unites everyone. Even if it is an ordinary sign or symbol or banner. But it can also be a ruler, a law, a state, a revelation.

The sacred must be symbolically sacrificed, that is, taken beyond the boundaries of the profane, so that it can appear in integrity, in a new quality. The revival of the ancient sacred symbol of the unity of the people will be such a symbolic act.

In ancient times, real bloody sacrifices were made, now we are far from this, but this does not mean that the sacrifice should not be made at least symbolically. The return of the sacred also implies the return of the concept of sacrilege.

The messianic idea must bear a new image of the man of the future, the man revealed in his pristine beauty as the God-man. The discovery of the divine in a person is not only the ability inherent in him to be above the masculine and feminine. Creativity is the true purpose of man. The cult of the man-creator must rise above the cult of the man-merchant. A person can be like this if he remembers his symbolic role - to reflect the entire cosmos.

A holistic idea will not only create a symbolic space around itself, but will also create its own style in art. Monumental art, such as cinema and architecture, cannot exist without a global national idea.

Abstract tolerance cannot resist tolerance and global messianism. This requires a similar global messianic revolutionary pathos.

The new Russian revolution must be the same as it could have been a hundred years ago. She must realize the desire for the kingdom of truth, which the Bolsheviks intercepted. For it to happen, the consolidation of its supporters is necessary. But only the supreme power can implement it.

The approval or revival of an idea is always a revolution. A revolution in consciousness precedes a revolution in material life. Although for some it is the other way around. Once upon a time during the Renaissance, ideas appeared that turned the world upside down. They have two roots - Christianity and antiquity. The new always begins with the revival of the old. A small grain is an idea that, as it turns out, can turn all of humanity upside down.

The Russian idea is the idea of ​​universal brotherhood and love. Only such a messianic idea can challenge the religious revolution brought by Western globalism, a sexless mass of half-robot half-humans, or a caliphate where humanity merges into a single mass of depersonalized faithful opposed to the infidel. The idea of ​​brotherhood and love of all peoples in the face of the One God, the greatest idea of ​​the Bible - this is the true calling of Russia .

Zverev Alexander Sergeevich , art critic, cultural scientist, photographer

Graduated in 1996 from the Department of Art History of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov. He specialized in Byzantine art under O.S. Popova. In the 1990s. He worked in archaeological expeditions under the leadership of N.A. Makarova. In 1993-2003 worked at the Moscow Kremlin Museums (researcher at the Cathedral Museums department). In 2000-2014 taught at the Department of World Culture at Moscow State Linguistic University (taught courses on the history of world and Russian culture, culture and art of the Middle East). In 2011-2016 worked at the Orthodox Encyclopedia. The author of the book is “Prasymbol”.

Russian revolution. Book 3. Russia under the Bolsheviks 1918 - 1924 Pipes Richard Edgar

CONCLUSION OF REFLECTIONS ON THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

CONCLUSION

REFLECTIONS ON THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

The Russian Revolution of 1917 was not an event or even a process, but a sequence of destructive and violent actions, carried out more or less simultaneously, but involving performers with different and even contradictory goals. It began as a manifestation of open discontent among the most conservative elements of Russian society, outraged by Rasputin’s closeness to the royal family and the stupid conduct of military operations. From the conservatives, the indignation was transferred to the liberals, who opposed the monarchy out of fear that the existing regime would not cope with the impending revolution. At first, the challenge to the autocracy was not thrown out of fatigue from the war, as is commonly believed, but, on the contrary, out of a desire to wage it more effectively, that is, not in the name of revolution, but in an effort to avoid it. In February 1917, when the Petrograd garrison refused to shoot at the people, the generals, in agreement with Duma politicians, in order to prevent the spread of the rebellion to the front, convinced the tsar to leave the throne. Abdication in the name of victory in the war overturned the entire edifice of the Russian state.

Although at first neither social discontent nor the agitation of the radical intelligentsia played a significant role in these events, as soon as autocratic power fell, these factors immediately came to the fore. In the spring and summer of 1917, peasants began to seize and distribute non-communal lands among themselves. Then the excitement spread to the front units, from where deserters streamed in so as not to miss out on their share in the division; on workers who claimed their rights to the enterprises in which they worked; on national minorities seeking autonomy. Each of these groups pursued its own goals, but the cumulative effect of their opposition to the social and economic structure of the state led Russia into a state of anarchy in the fall of 1917.

The events of 1917 showed that, for all the immensity of the territories and ringing speeches about imperial power, the Russian state was a weak, artificial formation, the integrity of which was ensured not by the natural ties of the ruler with his subjects, but by mechanical bonds imposed by the bureaucracy, the police and the army. The one hundred and fifty million population of Russia was united neither by common economic interests nor by the consciousness of national unity. Centuries of authoritarian rule in a country with a predominantly subsistence economy made it impossible to establish strong horizontal ties: Imperial Russia resembled fabric without a base. This circumstance was noted by one of the leading Russian historians and political figures Pavel Milyukov:

“To understand the special character of the Russian Revolution, one should pay attention to the special features acquired throughout the course of Russian history. It seems to me that all these traits come down to one thing. The fundamental difference between the Russian social structure and the structures of other civilized countries can be characterized as the weakness or lack of strong ties or bonds between the elements that make up the social composition. This lack of consolidation in the Russian social aggregate is observed in all aspects of civilized life: political, social, mental and national.

From a political point of view, Russian state institutions lacked connection and unity with the masses they governed... As a result of their belated emergence, the state institutions of Western Europe inevitably took on certain forms different from those of the East. The state in the East did not have time to organize from within, in the process of organic evolution. It was brought to the East from outside" 1 .

If we take these factors into account, it becomes obvious that the Marxist postulate, which states that revolution is always the result of social (“class”) contradictions, does not work in this case. Of course, such contradictions took place in Imperial Russia, as in any other country, but the decisive and immediate factors in the fall of the regime and the ensuing anarchy were primarily of a political nature.

Was the revolution inevitable? One can, of course, think that if something happened, it was destined to happen. There are historians who justify such a primitive belief in historical inevitability with pseudoscientific arguments. If they were able to predict the future as accurately as they “predict” the past, their arguments would probably sound convincing. To paraphrase a well-known legal maxim, we can say that in a psychological sense, every event is 9/10 historically justified. Edmund Burke was considered almost mad in his day for criticizing the French Revolution, and seventy years later, according to Matthew Arnold, his ideas were still considered "obsolete and influenced by events" - so the belief in rationality and, therefore, in the inevitability of historical events. And the larger they are and the more severe their consequences, the more logical they seem to be a link in the natural order of things, to question which is stupid quixoticism.

We have the right to say only that there were many reasons that made the likelihood of a revolution in Russia very high. Of these, apparently, the most significant was the decline in the prestige of the royal family in the eyes of the population, accustomed to being ruled by an unshakable, impeccable in all respects power - seeing in its unshakability a guarantee of legitimacy. After a century and a half of military victories and conquests from the middle of the 19th century until 1917, Russia suffered one humiliation after another from foreigners: defeat in the Crimean War on its own territory, the loss of the fruits of a military victory over the Turks at the Berlin Congress, defeat in Japan and failures in World War 2 . Such a series of failures could undermine the reputation of any government, but for Russia it turned out to be fatal. The disgrace of tsarism was accompanied by the rise of a revolutionary movement, which the regime was unable to pacify despite harsh repressive measures. The forced cession of a share of power to society in 1905 did not add to tsarism either popularity in the eyes of the opposition or respect from the population, who could not understand how an autocratic ruler could allow himself to be pushed around by some assembly government agency. The Confucian principle of the “mandate of heaven,” which in its original sense established the dependence of the ruler’s power on righteous behavior, was associated in Russia with strength: a weak, “defeated” ruler was deprived of his “mandate.” The biggest mistake is to evaluate the supreme power in Russia from the standpoint of morality or by its popularity; the only important thing was that the sovereign instill fear in enemies and friends, so that he, like Ivan IV, deserves the nickname “Terrible.” Nicholas II lost his throne not because he was hated, but because he was despised.

Another revolutionary factor was the mentality of the Russian peasantry, a class that had never integrated into the political structure. The peasantry made up about 80% of the population of Russia, and although it did not take any significant part in state affairs, due to its conservatism, reluctance to any changes and at the same time readiness to crush the existing order, it could not be ignored. It is generally accepted that under the old regime the Russian peasant was “enslaved,” but it is completely unclear what exactly his enslavement consisted of. On the eve of the revolution, he had all civil and legal rights; in his possession - his own or communal - were 9/10 of all agricultural land and livestock. Not very successful according to American or European standards, he still lived much better than his father, and freer than his grandfather, who, most likely, was a serf. On your own plot of land allocated by the peasant community, he should have felt much more confident than tenant farmers somewhere in Ireland, Spain or Italy.

The problem of the Russian peasantry was not its enslavement, but its detachment. The peasants were isolated from the political, economic and cultural life of the country, and therefore they were almost unaffected by the changes that had taken place in Russia since Peter the Great set it on the path to Europeanization. Many observers noted that the peasantry seemed to linger in the past, in the cultural layer of Muscovite Rus': in this respect, they had no more in common with the ruling elite or intelligentsia than the indigenous inhabitants of Britain's African colonies had with Victorian England. Most peasants came from the category of private or state serfs, who could not even be considered full-fledged subjects, since the government handed them over to the arbitrariness of owners and officials. As a result, even after the abolition of serfdom, the state, from the point of view of the rural population, remained something alien and hostile, collecting taxes and shaving recruits and giving nothing in return. The peasant was loyal only to his court and community. He had no patriotic feelings or attachment to the government, except perhaps an abstract admiration for the unattainable king, from whose hands he hoped to receive the coveted land. An anarchist by instinct, he never participated in the life of the nation and felt equally distant from both the conservative elite and the radical opposition. He despised cities and beardless townspeople: the Marquis de Custine, back in 1839, heard a statement that someday Russia would face a revolt of the bearded against the beardless 3 . And this alien and explosive mass of the peasantry constrained the actions of the government, which believed that it could only be controlled by instilling fear, and any political concession would be perceived as relaxation and a signal for rebellion.

The serf traditions and social institutions of the Russian village - joint farming by branched families uniting several generations, almost universal communal land use - did not allow the peasantry to develop the qualities necessary modern citizen. Although serfdom was not slavery in the full sense, it had with it general property: deprived serfs of legal rights, and therefore of the very ideas of law. Mikhail Rostovtsev, a leading Russian historian of classical antiquity and a witness to the events of 1917, came to the conclusion that perhaps serfdom is even worse than slavery, because the serf never knew freedom, and this prevents him from acquiring the qualities of a real citizen - this is the main reason emergence of Bolshevism 4. For the serfs, power by its very nature was undeniable, and in order to protect themselves from it, they did not appeal to the norms of law or morality, but resorted to crafty lackey tricks. They did not recognize government based on certain principles - life for them was a “war of all against all,” as defined by Hobbes. This attitude strengthened despotism: for in the absence of internal discipline and respect for the law, order must be established from the outside. When despotism loses its viability, anarchy takes its place, and after anarchy a new despotism inevitably comes.

The peasantry was revolutionary in only one respect: it did not recognize private ownership of land. Although on the eve of the revolution it owned, as already said, 9/10 of all arable land, it dreamed of the remaining 10% belonging to landowners, merchants and individual peasants. No economic or legal arguments could shake their views - it seemed to them that they had a God-given right to this land and one day it would be theirs, that is, communal, distributed among its members fairly. The prevalence of communal land ownership in the European part of Russia, together with the legacy of serfdom, was a fundamental factor in Russian social history. This meant that, together with a poorly developed understanding of the law, the peasant did not have much respect for private property. Both tendencies were used and inflated by the radical intelligentsia for their own purposes, turning the peasantry against the existing order. [Vera Zasulich, whose revolutionary career began in the 1970s and who witnessed Lenin's dictatorship, admitted in 1918 that the socialists bore some responsibility for Bolshevism, since they incited workers - and one might add, peasants - to seize property , but they didn’t tell them anything about civil responsibilities (Our Century. 1918. No. 74/98. April 16, p. 3)].

Industrial workers in Russia were an inflammable, destabilizing element not because they had internalized revolutionary ideology - there were very few of them, and even those were removed from leading positions in revolutionary parties. The point, rather, was that for the most part, having only superficially urbanized, they themselves, or at most their fathers, were peasants in the past; they brought with them to the city a village psychology, only partially adapted to the new conditions. They were not socialists, but syndicalists, who believed that just as their relatives in the villages rightfully owned all the land, so they had the right to own the enterprises in which they worked. Politics interested them no more than the peasants: in this sense, they were also in the grip of primitive, non-ideologized anarchism. Moreover, industrial workers in Russia were too small a group to play a significant role in the revolution - they numbered at most 3 million (of which a significant proportion were seasonal workers), that is, 2% of the population. In the Soviet Union and the West, especially the United States, hordes of history students, with the blessing of their professors, painstakingly combed the sources in the hope of finding evidence of labor radicalism in pre-revolutionary Russia. The result was weighty volumes of insignificant events and statistics that proved only that while history itself was never boring, history books could be surprisingly empty and dull.

The main and, perhaps, decisive revolutionary factor was the intelligentsia, which in Russia enjoyed greater influence than anywhere else. The strictly ranked system of the tsarist civil service did not allow outsiders into the administration, removing the most educated and placing them at the mercy of the most fantastic schemes of social reform that originated in Western Europe, but were never implemented there. The absence, until 1906, of the institution of popular representation and a free press, together with the widespread spread of education, made it possible for the cultural elite to speak on behalf of the silent people. There is no evidence that the intelligentsia really reflected the opinion of the “masses”; on the contrary, everything suggests that both before and after the revolution, peasants and workers experienced a deep distrust of educated people. In 1917 and subsequent years this became obvious to everyone. But since the true will of the people did not have ways and means of expression - at least until the establishment of the short-lived constitutional order in 1906 - the intelligentsia could more or less successfully play the role of its spokesman.

As in other countries where they had no legitimate avenues of political influence, the intelligentsia in Russia formed a caste of themselves, and since their essence and the basis of their community were ideas, they developed extreme intellectual intolerance. Having accepted the Enlightenment view, according to which a person is nothing more than a material substance formed under the influence of surrounding phenomena, the intelligentsia made a natural conclusion: a change in the environment must inevitably change human nature. Therefore, the intelligentsia saw in the “revolution” not the replacement of one system with another, but something incomparably more significant: a complete transformation of the human environment for the sake of creating a new breed of people - first of all, of course, in Russia, but by no means stopping there. The emphasis on the injustices of the existing situation was nothing more than a way of gaining widespread support: no elimination of these injustices would make the radical intelligentsia forget about their revolutionary claims. These beliefs united members of various left parties: anarchists, socialist revolutionaries, Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. For all their appeals to science, they were impervious to the arguments of the enemy and thus more like religious fanatics.

The intelligentsia, which we defined as intellectuals hungry for power, was in extreme and uncompromising hostility to the existing order: nothing in the actions of the tsarist regime, short of its suicide, could satisfy them. They were revolutionaries not for the sake of improving the living conditions of the people, but for the sake of gaining dominance over people and remaking them in their own image and likeness. They posed a challenge to the tsarist regime, which it, not yet knowing the methods subsequently invented by Lenin, could not evade. Reforms - both in the 60s of the last century and in 1905–1906. - only whetted the appetites of the radicals and pushed them to take even more daring steps.

Under the pressure of peasant demands and the attacks of the radical intelligentsia, the monarchy had only one way to prevent collapse - to expand the basis of its power, sharing it with the conservative elements of society. Historical precedents show that today's prosperous democracies initially allowed only the highest circles to power and only gradually, under pressure from other segments of the population, their privileges turned into universal civil rights. Involving conservative circles, which were much more numerous than radical ones, in the decisive and administrative structures was supposed to create some semblance of an organic connection between government and society, providing support for the throne in case of rebellion and at the same time isolating the radicals. This course was suggested to the monarchy by some far-sighted officials, and simply sensible people. It was supposed to be adopted in the 1860s, during the Great Reforms, but this did not happen. When, in the end, under the pressure of the uprising that unfolded throughout the country in 1905, the monarchy decided to establish an elected body, it no longer had this opportunity, because the united liberal and radical opposition insisted on holding elections on the most democratic principles. As a result, the voices of conservatives in the Duma were drowned out by the militant intelligentsia and peasant anarchists.

The First World War required extreme effort from all the warring countries, which could only be overcome through close cooperation between the government and citizens in the name of the patriotic idea. In Russia, such cooperation has not worked out. As soon as defeats at the front dampened the initial patriotic impulse and it became clear that the country would have to fight a war of attrition, the tsarist regime was unable to mobilize the forces of society. Even ardent supporters of the monarchy admitted that at the time of its fall it had no support.

What is the reason for the tsarist regime’s stubborn reluctance to share political power with its supporters that, ultimately, forced to do so, it took this step extremely reluctantly and not without guile? This is explained by a complex set of reasons. The courtiers, officials and professional military men in their hearts considered Russia, as of old, the personal fiefdom of the Tsar. A relic of patrimonial consciousness, despite the fact that the entire structure of Moscow Rus' in the 18th and 19th centuries was destroyed, it was preserved not only in official circles - the peasantry also retained the patrimonial spirit, believing in the strong, indivisible power of the tsar and considering the entire land to be the sovereign's possession. Nicholas II believed that he must protect the autocracy in the name of his heir: unlimited power was for him the equivalent of a property right that was entrusted to him and which he was not allowed to dissipate. He never left the feeling of guilt that, in order to save the throne, in 1905 he agreed to share his property rights with the elected representatives of the people.

The Tsar and his advisers were also afraid that sharing power even with a limited group of society would disorganize the bureaucratic mechanism and give rise to demand for even greater participation of the population in power structures. In this case, the winners will be mainly the intelligentsia, whose state abilities were poorly believed. In addition, there was a fear that the peasantry might misinterpret such a concession to power and rebel. And finally, there was opposition to the reforms from the bureaucracy, which, responsible only to the autocrat, ruled the state according to its own understanding, deriving various and numerous benefits from such a structure.

These circumstances may clarify, but not justify, the reluctance of the monarchy to give conservatives the right to vote in the government, especially since the various and confusing measures associated with this still deprived the bureaucracy of the most effective levers of power. With the emergence of capitalist institutions in the second half of the 19th century, control over most of the country's resources passed into private hands, overturning the last support of the patrimonial system.

In short, if the fall of the regime was not inevitable, it became very likely due to the deep cultural and political fault lines that prevented tsarism from channeling the economic and cultural development of the country and proved fatal to the regime in the severe trials presented by the First World War. And if tsarism still had the opportunity to restore order in the country, it was strangled by the efforts of the militant intelligentsia, which sought to overthrow the government and use Russia as a springboard for the world revolution. It was cultural and political circumstances, and not “oppression” or “poverty” that led to the fall of tsarism. We are talking about a national tragedy, the causes of which go deep into the country’s past. And economic and social difficulties did not significantly bring the threat of revolution hanging over Russia before 1917 closer. Whatever grievances - real or imagined - the “popular masses” harbored, it was not revolution they dreamed of and it was not revolution they needed: the only group that was interested in it was the intelligentsia. And the placing at the forefront of popular discontent and class contradictions was determined not so much by the real situation as by ideological prerequisites, namely the false idea that political events are always and everywhere caused by socio-economic conflicts, that they are only “foam” on the surface of the currents that actually determine the fate of humanity.

A closer look at the events of February 1917 gives an idea of ​​the relatively small role social and economic factors played in the Russian Revolution. February was not a “workers’” revolution: the workers played the role of a choir in it, picking up and strengthening the actions of the main performers - the army. The mutiny of the Petrograd garrison stimulated unrest among the civilian population, dissatisfied with inflation and food shortages. The unrest could have been dealt with if Nicholas II had taken drastic measures, which Lenin and Trotsky did not hesitate to use four years later to suppress the recalcitrant Kronstadt and the peasant revolts that swept the country. But the only concern of the Bolshevik leaders was to retain power, while Nicholas II thought about the good of Russia. When the generals and Duma politicians convinced him that in order to save the army and avoid a shameful capitulation in the war, he should leave the throne, he agreed. If maintaining power had been his main goal, he could have easily made peace with Germany and turned his army against the rebels. Historical evidence leaves no doubt that the popular idea that the Tsar was forced to abdicate by rebellious workers and peasants is nothing more than a myth. The Tsar yielded not to the rebellious population, but to the generals and politicians, recognizing this as his patriotic duty.

The social revolution followed, rather than preceded, the act of renunciation. The soldiers of the Petrograd garrison, peasants, workers and national minorities, each group, pursuing its own interests, turned the country into something ungovernable. The persistent statements of the intelligentsia who headed the soviets that it was they, and not the Provisional Government, that was the truly legitimate government, did not leave a single chance to restore order. Kerensky's helpless intrigues and his belief that democracy has no enemies on the left hastened the fall of the Provisional Government. The entire country, with all its political bodies and resources, became the subject of division of a gang of robbers, which no one was able to stop on its predatory path.

Lenin came to power on the wave of this anarchy, to the creation of which he made a lot of effort. He promised each dissatisfied population group what it most desired. He appropriated the Socialist Revolutionary program of “socialization of the land” in order to win over the peasantry to his side. Among the workers he encouraged syndicalist ideas of “workers’ control” over enterprises. The military was promised peace. He offered self-determination to national minorities. In reality, all these promises ran counter to his program and were immediately forgotten as soon as their role in undermining the efforts of the Provisional Government to stabilize the situation in the country was played out.

A similar deception was used to deprive the Provisional Government of power. Lenin and Trotsky covered up their desire for a one-party dictatorship with slogans about the transfer of power to the soviets and the Constituent Assembly and formalized them with a fraudulently convened Congress of Soviets. No one except a handful of leading figures in the Bolshevik Party knew what stood behind these promises and slogans - and therefore few could understand what really happened on the night of October 25, 1917. The so-called "October Revolution" was a classic coup d'etat. Preparations for it were carried out so secretly that when Kamenev, a week before the appointed date, mentioned in a newspaper interview that the party was going to take power into its own hands, Lenin declared him a traitor and demanded exclusion from its ranks 5 .

The ease with which the Bolsheviks were able to overthrow the Provisional Government - as if, in Lenin's words, "lifting a feather" - convinced many historians that the October coup was inevitable. But it can only seem like that in retrospect. Lenin himself considered this enterprise to be very risky. In messages to the Central Committee in September and October 1917 from his hiding place, he insisted that success depended solely on the surprise and decisiveness of an armed uprising: “Delay in an uprising is like death,” he wrote on October 24, “now everything hangs by a thread.”6 . These are hardly the feelings of a person who relies on the inevitability of the driving forces of history. Trotsky subsequently admitted - and it is difficult to find a more knowledgeable person - that “if there had been neither Lenin nor me in St. Petersburg, there would have been no October Revolution” 7 . What kind of inevitability of a historical event can we talk about if its accomplishment depends on the presence of two people in any place?

And if this evidence is not enough, then we can take a closer look at the events of October 1917 in Petrograd, when the “popular masses” found themselves in the position of spectators, not responding to the calls of the Bolsheviks to storm the Winter Palace, where the confused ministers of the Provisional Government sat, wrapped in coats, who presented their safety to the cadets, the women's battalion and the disabled platoon. Trotsky himself assured that the October “revolution” was carried out by “hardly more than 25–30 thousand” people 8 - and this in a country with a population of one hundred and fifty million and in a capital with 400 thousand workers and a garrison of more than 200 thousand soldiers.

As soon as Lenin seized power, he began to uproot all existing institutions to make way for a regime that would later be labeled “totalitarian.” This term was not popular with Western sociologists and political scientists, who tried to avoid the language of the Cold War. It is worth noting, however, how quickly it became popular in the Soviet Union itself, as soon as the censorship bans were lifted. A regime of this kind, unknown before in history, established the power of one all-powerful “party” over the state, declaring its rights to every form of organized life in the country without exception and asserting its will through unlimited terror.

Today we can say that Lenin’s outstanding place in history was not secured by his very modest achievements in the field statesman, and his military merits. He turned out to be one of the greatest conquerors in history, even though the country he conquered was his own. [Clausevitz noted at the beginning of the 19th century that it had become “impossible to seize a great country with European civilization except by internal split” (von Clausevitz C. The Campaign of 1812 in Russia. London, 1943. P. 184).]. His true invention, which ensured his success, should be recognized as the militarization of politics. He was the first head of state who perceived politics, both foreign and domestic, as war in the most literal sense of the word, the goal of which was not to subjugate the enemy, but to destroy him. This approach gave Lenin a great advantage over his opponents, for whom war was the opposite of politics, and political goals were achieved by other means. The militarization of politics and, as a consequence, the politicization of war gave him the opportunity to first seize power and then maintain it. This, however, did not help him in creating a viable society and political order. He was so accustomed to attacking on all “fronts” that even after establishing unquestioned power in Soviet Russia and its colonies, he began to invent new enemies with whom he could fight and destroy: be it the church, or the Socialist Revolutionaries, or the intelligentsia in general. Such belligerence became an integral feature of the communist regime, which received its highest embodiment in Stalin’s famous “theory” that the closer to the victory of communism, the sharper the class struggle, a theory that justified unprecedented cruelty in the bloodbath. This forced the Soviet Union, sixty years after Lenin’s death, to get involved in completely unnecessary conflicts at home and abroad, which gutted the country physically and spiritually.

The defeat of communism, which since 1991 has become an indisputable fact, recognized even by the leaders of the former Soviet Union, is often explained by the fact that people did not live up to its supposedly high ideals. Even if the experiment failed, its defenders argue, the goals were noble and the attempt was worth it: in support of their words, they could quote the words of the ancient Roman poet Sextus Proportion: “In magnis et voluisse sat est,” that is, “in the great undertaking there is already one desire is enough." But how great must the undertaking be so that, without putting the interests of people at a penny, one resorts to such inhumane means to achieve it?

The communist experiment is often called utopian. Thus, a recently published quite critical work on the history of the Soviet Union is called “The Utopia of Power.” This term, however, is applicable in the limited sense in which Engels used it to criticize socialists who did not accept his and Marx’s “scientific” doctrines, turning a blind eye to historical and social realities. Lenin himself, at the end of his life, was forced to admit that the Bolsheviks were also guilty of not taking into account the cultural characteristics of Russia and its unpreparedness for the economic and social order they introduced. The Bolsheviks ceased to be utopians when, since it became obvious that the ideals were unattainable, they did not give up their attempts, resorting to unlimited violence. Utopian communities have always proclaimed competition between members in the creation of a “cooperative commonwealth.” The Bolsheviks, on the contrary, not only never cared about such competition, but also declared any group or personal initiatives counter-revolutionary. They knew no other way to deal with opinions different from their own except through prohibition and suppression. The Bolsheviks should not be considered at all as utopians, but as fanatics: for they refused to admit defeat even when it hit the eyes, they perfectly satisfy Santayan's definition of fanaticism as redoubling efforts in forgetting the goal.

Marxism and its offspring Bolshevism were products of a violent era in European intellectual life. Darwin's theory of natural selection was soon extended to social philosophy, in which irreconcilable conflict occupied a central place. “Without digesting the massive body of literature of the period 1870–1914,” wrote Jacques Barzun, “it is impossible to imagine what a continuous and drawn-out bloodthirsty cry it was and what a variety of parties, classes, nations and races whose blood was thirsted for together and separately.” challenging each other, enlightened citizens of ancient European civilization" 9 . No one absorbed this philosophy more enthusiastically than the Bolsheviks: “merciless” violence, eager to destroy all actual and possible opponents, was for Lenin not only the most effective, but also the only way to solve problems. And even if some of his comrades were offended by such inhumanity, they could not get rid of the harmful influence of the leader.

Russian nationalists described communism as something alien to Russian culture and traditions - like a plague brought from the West. The idea of ​​the virus of communism does not stand up to the slightest criticism, since, although this phenomenon was international, it first appeared in Russia and in the Russian environment. The Bolshevik Party, both before and after the revolution, was predominantly Russian in composition, taking its first roots in the European part of Russia and among the Russian population in the border regions. The theories that formed the basis of Bolshevism, namely the teachings of Karl Marx, were undoubtedly of Western origin. But it is equally certain that practice The Bolsheviks were completely original, because nowhere in the West did Marxism lead to totalitarian manifestations of Leninism-Stalinism. In Russia, and subsequently in Third World countries with similar traditions, the seeds of Marxism fell on fertile soil: the absence of traditions of self-government, respect for the law and private property. A cause that produces different effects under different circumstances is hardly a sufficient explanation. Marxism has both liberal and authoritarian features, and which of them will prevail depends on the political culture of the society. In Russia, those elements of Marxist teaching developed that corresponded to the patrimonial psychology inherited from Muscovite Rus'. According to the Russian political tradition that developed in the Middle Ages, the government - or, more precisely, the ruler - is the subject, and the “land” is the object. This idea was easily replaced by the Marxist concept of the “dictatorship of the proletariat”, in which ruling party declares its undivided power over the country's population and its resources. The Marxist definition of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” was vague enough to fill it with the content that was closest to local traditions, which in Russia was the historical legacy of the patrimonial way of life. It was the grafting of Marxist ideology onto the unfading tree of patrimonial mentality that brought totalitarian fruits. Totalitarianism cannot be explained solely by references to Marxist teachings or Russian history - it was the fruit of their close union.

No matter how significant the role of ideology in the formation of communist Russia was, it should not be exaggerated. In abstract terms, if a person or group professes certain beliefs and refers to them to explain their actions, we can say that they act under the influence of ideas. However, when ideas do not serve as guidance, but are used to justify the domination of some over others by persuasion or coercion, everything is much more complicated, because it is impossible to determine whether these beliefs or coercion serve the ideas or, conversely, the ideas serve to maintain or legitimize such domination. In the case of the Bolsheviks, there is every reason to suspect the validity of the latter assumption, for the Bolsheviks reshaped Marxism up and down as they saw fit, first to achieve political power and then to maintain it. If Marxism has any meaning, it boils down to the following two provisions: as capitalist society grows, it is doomed to death (“revolution”) from internal contradictions, and the gravediggers of capitalism will be industrial workers (“the proletariat”). A regime based on Marxist theory must adhere to at least these two principles. What do we see in Soviet Russia? The “socialist revolution” took place in an economically underdeveloped country, where capitalism was still in its infancy. infancy, and power was seized by a party that held the view that the working class, left to its own devices, was not revolutionary. Subsequently, at every stage of its development, the communist regime in Russia stopped at nothing to gain the upper hand over its opponents, not at all in accordance with Marxist teaching, although it hid behind Marxist slogans. Lenin succeeded precisely because he was free from the Marxist prejudices inherent in the Mensheviks. It is obvious that ideology can be considered only as an auxiliary factor - perhaps a source of inspiration and way of thinking of the new ruling class - but not a set of principles that determine its behavior or explain it to its descendants. As a rule, the desire to attribute a dominant role to Marxist ideas is inversely proportional to knowledge about the real course of the Russian revolution. [The debate about the role of ideas in history is not unique to Russian historiography. There have been heated battles over this issue in both Britain and the United States. The ideological school was soundly defeated, especially by Louis Namier, who showed that in 18th-century England ideas generally served to explain actions inspired by personal or group interests.]

Despite all their differences, modern Russian nationalists and many liberals agreed in denying ties between Tsarist Russia and Communist Russia. The first because recognition of such a connection would make Russia responsible for its own misfortunes, which they preferred to attribute to foreigners, primarily Jews. In this they are very reminiscent of conservative circles in Germany, which present Nazism as a pan-European phenomenon, thereby denying its obvious roots in German history and the special responsibility of their country. This approach easily finds supporters, because it shifts the blame for all consequences onto others.

The liberal and radical intelligentsia, not so much in Russia as abroad, also denies the related features of tsarism and communism, because this would turn the entire Russian revolution into a meaningless and overly expensive enterprise. They prefer to focus on the stated goals of the communists and compare them with the realities of tsarism. This method gives a striking contrast. The picture naturally smoothes out when the two modes are compared in reality.

The similarity between the new, Leninist, and the old regimes was noted by many contemporaries, among whom were the historian Pavel Milyukov, the philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev, one of the oldest socialists Pavel Axelrod 10 and the writer Boris Pilnyak. According to Miliukov, Bolshevism has two aspects:

“One is international; the other is originally Russian. The international aspect of Bolshevism owes its origin to a very progressive European theory. The purely Russian aspect is associated mainly with practice, deeply rooted in Russian reality, and, without breaking with the “old regime,” it affirms Russia’s past in the present. Just as geological shifts bring to the surface the deep layers of the earth as evidence of the early eras of our planet, so Russian Bolshevism, having destroyed the thin upper social layer, exposed the uncultured and unorganized substrate of Russian historical life."

Berdyaev, who looked at the Russian revolution primarily in a spiritual aspect, denied that a revolution had occurred in Russia at all: “The whole past is repeating itself, only appearing under a new guise” 12.

Even without knowing anything about Russia, it is difficult to imagine that one fine day, October 25, 1917, as a result of a military coup, the course of the thousand-year history of a huge state underwent a complete transformation. The same people, living in the same territory, speaking the same language, heirs of a common past, could hardly turn into different beings solely due to a change of government. One must have a truly fanatical belief in the supernatural power of decrees, even those enforced by force, in order to allow the possibility of such radical and previously unprecedented changes in human nature. Such absurdity can be assumed only by seeing in a person nothing more than weak-willed material, formed under the influence of external circumstances.

To analyze the essence of both systems, we will have to turn to the concept of the patrimonial way of life, which underlies the way of government of Muscovite Rus' and in many respects has been preserved in state institutions and the political culture of Russia on the eve of the fall of the old regime 13. Under tsarism, the patrimonial system rested on four pillars: first, autocracy, that is, individual rule, not limited by either the constitution or representative bodies; secondly, autocratic ownership of all the country’s resources, that is, in essence, the absence of private property; thirdly, the absolute right to demand from their subjects the performance of any service, depriving them of any collective or personal rights; and fourthly, state control over information. A comparison of the tsarist regime at its zenith with the communist regime, as it appeared at the time of Lenin's death, reveals their similarities.

Let's start with autocracy. Traditionally, the Russian monarch concentrated in his hands all legislative and executive power, exercised without the participation of any external bodies. He ruled the country with the help of the serving nobility and bureaucracy, devoted not so much to the interests of the state or nation as to him personally. From the very first days of his reign, Lenin applied the same model. True, yielding to the principles of democracy, he gave the country a constitution and a representative body, but they performed exclusively ceremonial functions, because the constitution was not a law for the Communist Party, the true ruler of the country, and the people's representatives were not elected by the people, but selected by the same party. In carrying out his duties, Lenin acted in the manner of the most autocratic of the tsars - Peter the Great and Nicholas I - personally delving into the smallest details of state affairs, as if the country were his patrimony.

Like his predecessors in Muscovite Rus', the Soviet ruler claimed his rights to all the wealth and income of the country. Starting with decrees on the nationalization of land and industry, the government subjugated all property, except for items of personal use. Since the government was in the hands of one party, and the party, in turn, was subject to the will of its leader, Lenin was the de facto owner of all the material resources of the country. (De jure, the property belonged to “the people,” synonymous with the Communist Party.) Enterprises were run by government-appointed bosses. The Kremlin controlled industrial and, until March 1921, agricultural products as if it were its own. City real estate was nationalized. Private trade was prohibited (until 1921 and again after 1928), and the Soviet regime controlled all legal retail and wholesale trade. Of course, these measures do not fit into the practice of Muscovite Rus', but they fully correspond to the principle according to which the Russian ruler not only governs the country, but also owns it.

People were also his property. The Bolsheviks restored compulsory civil service, one of the hallmarks of Moscow absolutism. In Muscovite Rus', the tsar's subjects, with few exceptions, had to serve him not only directly, but also military service either in the official capacity, but also indirectly, by cultivating the land belonging to the king, or granted by him to his nobles. Thus, the entire population was subject to the throne. The process of emancipation began in 1762, when the nobility was granted the right to retire from government service, and ended 99 years later with the abolition of serfdom. The Bolshevik regime immediately introduced the practice of government work, which was characteristic of Muscovite Rus' and unknown in any other country, and which was obligatory for all citizens: the so-called “universal labor conscription,” announced in January 1918 and supported, at Lenin’s insistence, by the threat of punishment, would be quite appropriate in Russia of the 17th century. And with regard to the peasantry, the Bolsheviks essentially revived tax, author Pipes Richard Edgar

Reflections on the Russian Revolution 1 Miliukov P. Russia To-day and To-morrow. New York, 1922. P. 8–9.2 For more information, see: Fuller W.C. Strategy and Power in Russia. 1600–1914. New York, 1992.3 Custine Marquis Russia. London, 1854. P. 455.4 Rostovtsev M. // Our century. 1918. No. 109(133). July 5th. P. 2.5 Pipes R. Russian Revolution. Part 2. pp. 158–159.6 Lenin V.I. Full collection op. T. 34. S.

From the book Memories author Makhno Nestor Ivanovich

Appendix 1 Gulyaypole in the Russian Revolution The village of Gulyaypole is one of the largest and, perhaps, one of the most popular villages among workers in the entire Aleksandrovsky district of the Ekaterinoslav province. This village has its own special historical fame. It contains labor

author Pipes Richard Edgar

CONCLUSION. REFLECTIONS ON THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION The Russian Revolution of 1917 was not an event or even a process, but a sequence of destructive and violent actions, carried out more or less simultaneously, but involving performers with different and even

From the book Russian Revolution. Russia under the Bolsheviks. 1918-1924 author Pipes Richard Edgar

Reflections on the Russian Revolution 1 Miliukov P. Russia To-day and To-morrow. New York, 1922. P. 8-9.2 For more information, see: Fuller W.C. Strategy and Power in Russia. 1600-1914. New York, 1992.3 Custine Marquis Russia. London, 1854. P. 455.4 Rostovtsev M. // Our century. 1918. No. 109(133). July 5th. P. 2.5 Pipes R. Russian Revolution. Part 2. pp. 158-159.6 Lenin V.I. Full collection op. T. 34. S.

author Yazov Dmitry Timofeevich

Reflections and memories History of the Cuban Revolution On August 3, 1492, the expedition of Christopher Columbus, equipped by the royal court of Spain, on three ships “Santa Maria”, “Pinta” and “Nina” set off on a long journey in search of the western sea route to

From the book The Cuban Missile Crisis. 50 years later author Yazov Dmitry Timofeevich

Reflections and memories At the forefront of the world revolution During the years of my service I had to communicate a lot with the Cuban military - soldiers, officers and generals. I can directly say that the best soldiers need to be looked for. By the 70s of the 20th century, the armed forces of Cuba

author Nikolsky Alexey

II. The meaning of the Russian revolution Before moving on to the figure of the next hero of the Russian revolution, let's try to speculate a little about the meaning of the Russian revolution in general. It is clear that there was a “successful” combination of objective and subjective circumstances that ensured victory

From the book Heroes and Antiheroes of the Russian Revolution author Nikolsky Alexey

X. The main anti-hero of the Russian revolution Despite the blatant case of A.I. Guchkov, who fell for the bait of narcissism and unwittingly gave his considerable political weight and talent to the service of the revolution at the most critical moment for it, he should not be considered the main

From the book Heroes and Antiheroes of the Russian Revolution author Nikolsky Alexey

XVI. Symbol of the Russian Revolution Well, now the time has come to turn to one of the most amazing figures in Russian history, who flashed through it so brightly, so quickly, but who nevertheless managed to leave the brightest mark on it. This wonderful character is rightfully so

From the book Mission of Russia. National doctrine author Valtsev Sergey Vitalievich

Causes of the Russian Revolution If the ruling class is unable or unwilling to resolve the problems posed by life to society, then a new elite may mature in society, adequate to the given stage of social development. This happened in Western Europe, and this is how it happened later

From the book Empire and Freedom. Catch up with ourselves author Averyanov Vitaly Vladimirovich

On the causes of the Russian “revolution” Every civilization should write a special social science. Globalization as a process, no matter how we treat it, does not change anything in this sense. Even if somewhere and someday all human cultural streams merge together, this will not

author Lenin Vladimir Ilyich

About the “nature” of the Russian revolution Drive nature through the door, it will fly through the window, exclaims the Cadet “Rech” in one of its recent editorials (6). This valuable recognition by the official organ of our counter-revolutionary liberals must be especially emphasized, because we are talking about

From the book Complete Works. Volume 17. March 1908 - June 1909 author Lenin Vladimir Ilyich

Towards an assessment of the Russian revolution (38) No one in Russia will now think about making a revolution according to Marx. So, or approximately so, one liberal, - even almost democratic, - even almost social democratic, - (Menshevik) recently proclaimed

From the book Complete Works. Volume 14. September 1906 - February 1907 author Lenin Vladimir Ilyich

The proletariat and its ally in the Russian revolution This is what K. Kautsky entitled the last chapter of his article in the just published issues of Neue Zeit (106): “The driving forces and prospects of the Russian revolution.” Like Kautsky's other works, this article will undoubtedly appear soon in Russian

From the book Nestor Makhno, anarchist and leader in memoirs and documents author Andreev Alexander Radevich

Gulyai-Pole in the Russian Revolution The village of Gulyai-Pole is one of the largest and, perhaps, one of the most popular villages among workers in the entire Aleksandrovsky district of the Ekaterinoslav province. This village has its own special historical fame. It has a working peasant population

The history of mankind knows many social revolutions. Addressing this topic, Berdyaev notes that a long historical path leads to revolutions, and in them national characteristics are revealed even when they deal a heavy blow to national power and national dignity. Every nation has its own style, revolutionary and conservative. Each people makes a revolution with the spiritual baggage that it has accumulated in its past; it brings into the revolution its sins and vices, but also its ability for sacrifice and enthusiasm. The Russian revolution is anti-national in nature; it turned Russia into a lifeless corpse.
“Revolutions that take place on the surface of life,” writes the philosopher, “never reveal anything essential; they only reveal illnesses hidden inside the people’s body...
A catastrophe happened to Russia. She fell into a dark abyss. And it begins to seem to many that a united and great Russia was just a ghost, that there was no true reality in it. The connection between our present and our past is not easy to grasp. The expression on the faces of the Russian people has changed too much; in a few months it has become unrecognizable."
80 Berdyaev N.A. Spirits of the Russian Revolution // Uriyna in the USSR. 1991. No. 1. P. 41
In his work “The New Middle Ages” (1924), combining three studies on the destinies of Russia and Europe, Berdyaev reflects on the Russian revolution, its nature and consequences: “It is possible to discover an innumerable number of reasons for the Russian revolution, - terrible -
295
a war that the Russian people could not withstand spiritually and materially, the weak sense of justice of the Russian people and the lack of real culture in them, the land instability of the Russian peasantry, the infection of the Russian intelligentsia with false ideas - all these, undoubtedly, are the reasons for the Russian revolution."
However, the thinker connects the main meaning and causes of the Russian revolution with the religious and cultural characteristics of the Russian people. According to Berdyaev, Russian culture was predominantly aristocratic. The Russian people could never not only socially, but also religiously accept the Russian cultural layer and the Russian nobility. In Russia there has always been a split between the upper and lower strata of society. The people did not accept the war, nor did they accept the democratic rule that followed it. And the revolution was primarily predetermined by this spiritual rejection of the people. The monarchical principle of government was supported by the religious beliefs of the people. However, this reign was cursed and contributed to decay within a century. “When religious beliefs decay, the authority of the authorities wavers and falls,” writes Berdyaev. “This is what happened in Russia. The religious beliefs of the people changed. Semi-enlightenment began to penetrate the people, which in Russia always takes the form of nihilism... When the spiritual foundations of war collapse, it turns into a bloody anarchy, into a war of all against all. And then only a brutal and bloody dictatorship turns out to be possible. All the principles that protected the cultural layer in Russia collapsed. This cultural layer, this subtle culture, was possible only thanks to the monarchy, which did not allow violent spills. people's darkness."
81 Berdyaev N.A. New Middle Ages. Berlin, 1924. P. 84.
82 Ibid. P. 73.
With the fall of tsarist power, the philosopher believes, the entire social structure of Russian society was destroyed, a thin cultural layer that did not have strong social roots was destroyed. In these conditions, the strong monarchical power had to be replaced by an equally strong power, which it appeared to be Soviet power. A terrible coarsening of life has occurred, everything
296
of life, the soldier-folk style reigned. The Bolsheviks not so much created this rough life, harsh rule, but rather reflected and expressed the brutalization that was taking place folk life. A government that wanted to be more cultural could not exist and would not correspond to the state of the people.
Assessing the tragic situation in Russian society, Berdyaev admits that, like any real revolution, the revolution in Russia, with all its features and prerequisites, is an inevitable fact, moreover, an accomplished fact. On the one hand, the Russian Revolution as a social event is quite logically intertwined with the general course of the aggravation of the European socio-cultural crisis, on the other hand, it is a national event. The revolution took place in Russia when liberal democracy had already outlived its usefulness, when the humanism of new European history had come to its end. The Russian Revolution, Berdyaev believes, demonstrated the triumph of extremely anti-humanistic socialism. “The Russian people,” the philosopher believes, “according to the characteristics of their spirit, sacrificed themselves to an unprecedented historical experiment. It showed the ultimate results of well-known ideas. The Russian people, as an apocalyptic people, cannot realize a central humanistic kingdom; they can either realize brotherhood in Christ , or comradeship in the Antichrist. If there is no brotherhood in Christ, then let there be comradeship in the Antichrist. The Russian people presented this dilemma with extraordinary severity to the whole world."
83 Ibid. pp. 141 - 142.
Berdyaev believes that the Russian revolution must be experienced spiritually and deeply. There must be catharsis, internal cleansing. The spiritual and in-depth experience of the revolution clarifies the seriousness of the social crisis, Russian and world. You can't continue to pretend that nothing special happened. There is nothing more pathetic than the self-consolation of people who have been knocked out of the forefront of life, expressed in the denial of the very fact of revolution, in the desire to call it unrest and rebellion. “I think,” writes Berdyaev, “that not only has a revolution occurred in Russia, but a world revolution is also taking place.
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a global crisis is emerging, similar to the fall of the ancient world. And to desire a return to the state of the world that was before the catastrophe of the World War means to be completely unaware of what is happening, to have no historical perspective. The foundations of an entire historical era have been eradicated. All the foundations of life were shaken, the lies and rottenness of the foundations on which the civilizational society of the 19th and 20th centuries rested were revealed. And they want to restore these foundations, which in their decay gave rise to terrible wars and revolutions... Both in Russia and in Europe there is no return to pre-war and pre-revolutionary life and there should not be."
So, the revolution does not create a new, better life, it only finally completes the destruction of what is already practically destroyed and perishes. The spiritually lived experience of war and revolution should lead to a new life. And every person needs to find within themselves the possibilities of spiritually experiencing this situation and finding a new, better life, since, according to Berdyaev, a better life is, first of all, a spiritual life. And the revolution brings a person to this experience and understanding of revaluation, rethinking of life.
Berdyaev sees that in Russia the cultural tradition is being interrupted, the level of culture and the quality of culture are decreasing. The class of civilized peasantry comes to the fore. The new Russian bourgeoisie will not need higher culture, but will first of all present a demand for technical civilization. Russia faces inevitable “barbarization.” Berdyaev considers this process to be common for Europe as a whole. The revolution hastened the end of the existence of such social phenomenon like the Russian intelligentsia. “The intelligentsia dreamed of a revolution for a century and prepared for it,” writes Berdyaev, “but the revolution became its death, its own end. One part of the intelligentsia became power, the other part was thrown overboard of life... A new intelligentsia should be born, but it will be greatly reduced in its cultural level, it will not be characterized by the highest demands of the spirit."
84 Berdyaev N.A. New Middle Ages. pp. 90-91.
85 Ibid. P. 96.

The articles in the collection “From the Depths” were written by the best Russian intellectuals, not only of that revolutionary time, but of any time in general. Each of the authors speaks simply superbly.

This collection is both an eyewitness account and an understanding of the collapse of Russian life that occurred as a result of the revolution.

To write this in 1918, during the growing Bolshevik terror day by day, was unusually courageous. For such thoughts, many authors were later simply loaded onto a ship and thrown out of Russia.

Today “From the Depths” is not only a wonderful and useful read, it is a highly relevant book.

This is a deep, and most importantly, spiritual look at the tragedy, which will help readers of our time understand what 1917, Bolshevism and the real, not the mythologized, Russian Revolution were.

Authors

The authors of the collection are eleven famous Russian philosophers, scientists and publicists of the early twentieth century - Sergei Askoldov, Nikolai Berdyaev, Sergei Bulgakov, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Aron Izgoev, Sergei Kotlyarevsky, Valerian Muravyov, Pavel Novgorodtsev, Joseph Pokrovsky, Pyotr Struve and Semyon Frank.

Time of writing

1918

Publication history

The collection “From the Depths” was conceived by the philosopher Pyotr Struve in 1918, and in August of the same year it was published as a continuation of the literary and political magazine “Russian Thought”, which had been closed by that time. However, the distribution of the collection was prevented by the atmosphere of the Bolshevik Red Terror. The circulation lay in a warehouse until 1921 and was confiscated, and all copies were destroyed. Many of the collection’s authors were expelled from Russia on the “philosophical ship.” However, one of the authors, philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev, managed to preserve and export abroad a copy of the collection, which was republished in Paris in 1967. Thus, it became available first to foreign readers. In the Soviet Union, the book was banned almost until the collapse of the USSR and was distributed illegally in samizdat. The collection was officially published only in 1991.

What is the book about?

The collection “From the Depths” is dedicated to the problems of the Russian revolution and, in general, the entire Russian history for almost ten centuries. The authors of the collection united to express their thoughts about the events of February - October 1917, which resulted in the Bolsheviks coming to power. All the creators of “From the Depths” have a common conviction that all the positive principles of social life are rooted in the depths of religious consciousness and that the breakdown of such a fundamental connection, which occurred in the revolutionary and pre-revolutionary years, marked the beginning of the trials that befell Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century .

The revolutionary events of 1917 are criticized: “a terrible catastrophe,” an “anti-national” phenomenon that turned the country into a “lifeless corpse,” writes Nikolai Berdyaev, an event “mediocre,” “ugly,” where everything is “stolen, banal, vulgar,” - notes Sergei Bulgakov, “days and months full of painful anxiety”, “an unprecedented state defeat,” continues Aron Izgoev. According to Sergei Kotlyarevsky, the revolution is “the greatest shock to all the moral foundations of the Russian people”, “an unheard-of disorder of life”, which “threatens with the most terrible, most disastrous consequences” (Pavel Novgorodtsev), “national bankruptcy and world shame” (Petr Struve) , “a terrible catastrophe of our national existence” - this was the diagnosis announced by Semyon Frank in 1917.

The authors of “From the Depths” believed that the insults, humiliations and ridicule to which religion was subjected led to an incredible decline in morality and the inculcation of class hatred and struggle. It was faith in God, the internal support, according to the authors of the collection, that was decisive in the life of the state, so thinkers looked for the basis of the revolutionary upheavals of 1917 in the spiritual sphere.

“Every nation makes a revolution with the spiritual baggage that it has accumulated in its past,” stated Nikolai Berdyaev. The healthy or unhealthy state of society depends precisely on people’s attitude towards religious issues, since religion is “the highest foundation and sanctuary of life” (Novgorodtsev). “Religion has always been a force that binds the state from its organic unity, no matter in what political form it is expressed,” Askoldov pointed out. - And that is why every revolutionary movement usually has before it, as a preparatory phase, one or another process of withering of religion, sometimes a kind of“age of enlightenment” ", "Revolutions are usually prepared and come on the basis of a weakening of religious consciousness." This happened in Russia under the influence of the ideas of positivism, materialism and socialism adopted from Western Europe.

Title "From the Depths" taken from initial words Psalm 129 of David: From the depths I have cried to You, O Lord!

The final article in the collection, written by Semyon Frank, is entitled De profundis- the Latin version of the phrase “From the Depths” (De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine!) It was Frank who came up with the final title of the collection. Initially it was called “Collection of “Russian Thought”.

"From the Depths" is the final part of a trilogy of collections of articles, in which ideological continuity can be traced. The previous parts are the collections “Problems of Idealism” (1902) and “Milestones” (1909). This connection was directly pointed out by the publisher himself (Peter Struve) and some of the authors of the collection “From the Depths”. “Vekhi” (Collection of articles about the Russian intelligentsia) was a “call and warning” addressed to the educated part of society, a diagnosis of the country’s vices and a premonition of “a moral and political catastrophe, which ominously emerged in 1905–1907. and broke out in 1917."

The collection was compiled in a very short time, for four months - from April to July 1918.

The four authors of the collection “From the Depths” (Nikolai Berdyaev, Sergei Bulgakov, Semyon Frank and Aron Izgoev) were expelled from Russia in the fall of 1922, along with many other outstanding scientists, doctors, artists and cultural figures, whom communist party considered opponents of Soviet power.

During the ban on the collection, several of its articles were published separately. Thus, in 1921, Peter Struve in Sofia published the brochure “Reflections on the Russian Revolution,” based on the text of his article from the collection. "Spirits of the Russian Revolution" by Nikolai Berdyaev was published in 1959 and 1965. Sergei Bulgakov’s dialogues “At the Feast of the Gods” were published as a separate brochure in Kyiv in 1918 and in Sofia in 1920. The original version of Vyacheslav Ivanov’s article “Our Language” was published in the second issue of the magazine “Grani” for 1976.

The deceptive sanctity of revolution

P.K. Sternberg directs the shelling of the Kremlin. V. K. Dmitrievsky, N. Ya. Evstigneev

Excerpt from the article by N. A. Berdyaev “Spirits of the Russian Revolution” (“From the Depths.” Collection of articles about the Russian Revolution)

Russian revolutionary morality is a completely unique phenomenon. It was formed and crystallized in the left-wing Russian intelligentsia over a number of decades and managed to acquire prestige and charm in wide circles of Russian society. The average intelligent Russian person is accustomed to bowing before morally revolutionaries and before their revolutionary morality. He was ready to admit himself unworthy of this moral height of the revolutionary type. In Russia, a special cult of revolutionary holiness was formed. This cult has its saints, its sacred tradition, its dogmas. And for a long time any doubt about this sacred tradition, any criticism of these dogmas, any disrespectful attitude towards these saints led to excommunication not only from revolutionary public opinion, but also from radical and liberal public opinion.

Dostoevsky fell victim to this excommunication, because he was the first to reveal the lies and substitutions in revolutionary holiness. He realized that revolutionary moralism has its reverse side, revolutionary amoralism, and that the similarity of revolutionary holiness with Christian holiness is a deceptive similarity of the Antichrist with Christ.<…>The external persecution instituted by the old government against the revolutionaries, the external suffering that they had to endure, greatly contributed to this deceptive appearance of holiness. But never in revolutionary holiness did a true transformation of human nature, a second spiritual birth, victory over internal evil and sin take place; It never even set out the task of transforming human nature. Human nature remained old, it remained in slavery to sin and bad passions and wanted to achieve a new one, higher life purely external, material means.

But a person fanaticized by a false idea is able to endure external deprivation, need and suffering; he can be an ascetic not because by the power of his spirit he overcomes his sinful and slavish nature, but because the obsession with one idea and one goal crowds out for him all wealth and the diversity of existence makes it naturally poor. This is graceless asceticism and graceless poverty, nihilistic asceticism and nihilistic poverty. Traditional revolutionary holiness is godless holiness. This is a godless claim to achieve holiness by human beings alone and in the name of human beings alone. On this path, the image of man is crippled and falls, for the image of man is the image and likeness of God. Revolutionary morality, revolutionary holiness are deeply opposed to Christianity. This morality and this holiness pretend to replace and replace Christianity with its faith in the sonship of God and in the grace-filled gifts acquired by man through Christ the Redeemer.

The Icon of the Mother of God “Kazan” on the Trinity Gate of the Kremlin, riddled with bullets. 1917

Revolutionary morality is just as hostile to Christianity as Tolstoy’s morality - the same lies and substitutions poison and weaken them. Deceptive Appearances Revolutionary holiness was sent to the Russian people as a temptation and a test of their spiritual strength. And the Russian people could not stand the test of this. Those who are sincerely carried away by the revolutionary spirit do not see realities and do not recognize spirits. Deceptive, deceitful and double images captivate and seduce. Antichrist temptations, antichrist morality, antichrist holiness captivate and attract Russian people.<…>

In the Russian revolution, Russian sins and Russian temptations are overcome, what was revealed to the great Russian writers. But great sins and great temptations can only occur among a people great in their capabilities. Negativity is a caricature of positivity.<…>The idea of ​​the people, God’s plan for them, remains even after the people have fallen, changed their goals and subjected their national and state dignity to the greatest humiliation. A minority can remain true to the positive and creative idea of ​​the people, and from it a renaissance can begin. But the path to revival lies through repentance, through the consciousness of one’s sins, through the cleansing of the people’s spirit from demonic spirits. And first of all, it is necessary to begin to distinguish between spirits.

Old Russia, in which there was a lot of evil and ugliness, but also a lot of goodness and beauty, is dying. The new Russia, being born in the throes of death, is still mysterious. It will not be the way the leaders and ideologists of the revolution imagine it. It will not be whole in its spiritual appearance. In it, Christian and anti-Christian principles will be more sharply divided and opposed. The anti-Christian spirits of revolution will give birth to their dark kingdom. But the Christian spirit of Russia must also show its strength. The power of this spirit can work in a minority if the majority falls away from it.

Thinkers of Russian diaspora

about the Russian revolution.

Literature:

1) Frank S. From reflections on the Russian revolution.\\ Russian idea. - M.: Art, 1994 - T.2.S.8-46.

2) Miliukov P. Why was the Russian revolution inevitable?\\ Russian Idea. T.2.S.119-128.

3) Ilyin I. The Russian Revolution was a disaster.\\Russian Idea.T.2.S.286-297.

The problem of the “revolt of the mob” or revolution, as the events that happened in Russia and the beginning of the twentieth century are more often called, interests, has interested and will interest every Russian person who has even a drop of interest in his own Motherland. And this especially applies to representatives of the humanities - philosophers, historians, politicians.

Each of them relates in its own way to both the revolution itself and the results that resulted from it. Most of them try to present it as a chaotic manifestation of the Russian mentality, not supported by any historical premises. Only the reasons for this..victorious and fully realized all-Russian Pugachevism of the beginning of the twentieth century are of interest to researchers. Implying a system in all revolutions, be it Russia or France, they highlight specific features in the Russian one that made the victory of the mob in Russia possible.

“What is the Russian revolution? How to comprehend and understand this terrible catastrophe, which to our contemporaries and its victims, easily seems like something unprecedented, hitherto unprecedented in its devastation, which even a dispassionate objective historian would have to recognize as one of the greatest historical catastrophes experienced by humanity! "- wrote S. Frank in 1923, and Ilyin, agreeing that "... the Russian revolution is the greatest catastrophe not only in the history of Russia, but in the history of all mankind, answers him in 1954 that it was the result of madness all residents of the great state, be it the peasantry, which by 1924 (according to Ilyin) should have become completely equal in rights with the rest of the population due to the fact that "... The land was given to them as private property (P.A. Stolypin’s reform, 1906 ")..." or the proletariat, which would have received the right to trade unions if the revolution had not occurred, there was also madness on the part of the industrial and commercial class, exterminated after the victory of the Bolsheviks, "... but the greatest madness of the revolution was for the Russian intelligentsia, who believed in the suitability and even salutary value of Western European state forms for Russia and failed to put forward and implement the necessary new Russian form of participation of the Russian people in the exercise of state power...".

What is the reason for such unprecedented madness, which led to millions of losses in the number of Russians, and indeed all the peoples inhabiting Russia? Is it possible to call madness that "... the basic Russian peculiarity, running like a red thread through all aspects of the historical process - political, social, intellectual and national -... a certain weakness of cohesion and cementation of the components of the social aggregate..." - as Milyukov writes ? In his work, he tries to find an explanation in historical material for the anarchic nature of the Russian peasantry, which, according to most historians, is the cause of all manifestations of rebellion in Russia. The political discrepancy, in his opinion, lies in the paradox of the development of the state’s economy, which constantly fails to keep up with the general level state development, which constantly "... created an objective need to resort to force." The lack of cohesion among social elements is due to the absence of "...groupings of population dense enough to limit governmental power." There was no "...intellectual cohesion between the top and bottom of Russian society" in Russia either. Although Miliukov does not deny the unity of the national way of thinking and feeling - a unity that passes through all social strata..., but here too, history for a long time separated the upper and lower classes in different directions and prevented their continuous interaction...". The fourth manifestation of the lack of cohesion was the centrifugal aspirations of the nationalities inhabiting the Russian Empire.

But where did the revolution come from? What forces gave birth to it? Frank argues that "... Ideologically, it comes at least from the Decembrists and quite clearly from Belinsky and Bakunin. The two trends intertwined with each other and in their unity formed a powerful revolutionary force that attacked the old Russian statehood and culture and destroyed them Freethinking

a small handful of madmen fell like an avalanche on the “frail” minds of representatives of the Russian intelligentsia. The desire to help the Motherland, the people and oneself won a convincing victory over prudence. Moreover, the example of the Narodnaya Volya perfectly shows that revolutionaries are ready to use any means to achieve their own goals. At the same time, as in the case of the Decembrists, the people were distanced from revolutionary activities. Subsequently, this “lordly complex” led to the gradual removal of non-peasant and non-proletarian parties and individual politicians from the helm of power in mid-1917 with their subsequent destruction. But this was already in the twentieth century, and the revolution itself matured at the end of the nineteenth. Without any doubt at that time, "... the true foundation of Russian statehood was not the social class system and not the dominant everyday culture, but was its political form - the monarchy." The ideal of the “tsar-father” at the same time slowly but uncontrollably faded away in the people’s soul; and it was replaced by a vague but acute longing for democracy, self-determination, and social autonomy. This conflict had already fully emerged after the unsuccessful Japanese war and led to the revolution of 1905. The immense test of the world war finally shook the unstable balance of the country.

All this led to a blow to the weakest point in the Russian social structure - to the confrontation between the Russian peasant and the master "... The Russian revolution in its basic, underground social essence is the uprising of the peasantry..." And this peasantry was a product that was not expected get enlightened Russian men who sincerely cared about the education of their subjects. The ideas of enlightenment that fell on the fertile Russian soil led to rather strange consequences: humanism, proclaimed as the main doctrine, was distorted beyond recognition, turning, of course, involuntarily, into the most terrible manly crime. A simple Russian man found himself hostage to an equally simple Russian master, who, taking advantage of his own misunderstanding of human nature, drove the peasant to the madness of revolution. And there is not a single opportunity to justify a member of any political group that represented the Russian people in 1917. The Cadets and Octobrists, the Black Hundreds and Trudoviks, and not only the Social Democrats, are responsible for the millions of victims of “progressive” madness. It is necessary, of course, to remember that... the identification of the main culprit of the revolution in the intelligentsia and its ideas is methodologically on the same level with the assertion that the revolution was created by foreigners, Jews, or with the assertion that Russia was ruined by the weakness and lack of will of the provisional government, the frivolity and irresponsibility of Kerensky etc. All such statements are both true and false. Of course, we must not forget that "...at the core revolutionary mood and the intelligentsia had the same basic feeling of social, everyday and cultural “resentment”, the same hatred for the educated, ruling... “lordly class”, the same dull anger towards the bearers of power, in a word, the same ressentiment that lived in masses of the people in a more hidden and for the time being inactive form." In its social, everyday and educational level, it stood much closer to the lower strata than to the ruling class. And therefore, it was the first to raise the banner of rebellion and was the vanguard of the invasion of internal barbarians that it was experiencing and Russia is experiencing.

When considering the positions of Russian diaspora authors, it is worth paying attention to the term “progressive”. Frank uses this word to distinguish between two similar phenomena; This is what he writes: “...by revolution we mean a shock caused by “progressive forces” and leading to “progress”, to an improvement in social life, while by turmoil we mean a shock in which the forces carrying out social “progress” do not participate. But at the same time, two pages earlier, the same author says something completely opposite: “Revolution is never and nowhere an expedient, meaningful way to satisfy them (the needs of society). It is always only “turmoil,” that is, only a disease that breaks out as a result of the failure of the old order and reveals its inconsistency, but in itself does not lead to the satisfaction of organic needs, to something better... revolution is always pure destruction, and not creation. True, on the ruins of what was destroyed, after the end of the destruction or even simultaneously with it, the restoring creative forces of the organism begin to act, but these are not the essence of the forces of the revolution itself, but hidden living forces preserved from destruction..."

These are the main points, deeply rooted in the history of centuries, which could not help but come to light at the first serious shake-up and not have a corresponding impact on determining the physiognomy of the Russian revolution. The special features that distinguish this revolution, its national face, are thus reduced to 1) the original anarchism of the masses, kept by the regime of violence in a state of passive submission, 2) to the decline of the influence of the ruling class, condemned to death and clinging to the same for its salvation a force tending to fall - autocracy, 3) to the theoretical maximalism of the revolutionary intelligentsia, prone to utopian solutions and devoid of political experience, and 4) to the separatist aspirations of the intellectual leaders of national minorities. The combined result of the action of these factors was Russian Bolshevism - a specific Russian product that grew on national soil and was impossible in this form anywhere except Russia.

These very basic moments, which the philanthropist Miliukov would hardly dare to call madness, are in fact just that, and “... when the people fall into madness, then something absolutely meaningless from a rational point of view occurs: a chaos of self-destruction ensues - turmoil ensues,” - as S. Frank accurately noted." But on the other hand, every unrest is a revolution. This means: the madness of self-destruction always has its own organic, internal cause, always caused by overstrain and painful irritation of underground creative forces that do not find a way out in a normal, healthy development, not being in the slightest degree a satisfactory and meaningful form of development and not realizing any positive development, unrest is still always an indicator and symptom of the accumulation of historical forces of development, which, thanks to some unfavorable conditions, have turned into destructive, explosive forces,” he writes, and continues, “Trouble is undoubtedly a disease, a pathological phenomenon. But in the life of peoples there are no purely contagious alluvial diseases; every historical disease comes from within, determined by organic processes and forces." Of course, there is also protection from any disease, even historical. Each manifestation of chaos is opposed by a certain sinking fund that accumulates healthy

cells ready to fight the disease. These living forces are not generated by the revolution and are not even liberated by it: like all living things, they have organic roots in the past, they acted already under the “old order,” and no matter how difficult their action was then, it is, in any case, no less weakened by the destruction and emptiness caused by the revolution.

Thus, summing up the work, we can talk about an ambiguous position in relation to the Russian revolution among the emigrants. On the one hand, it is easy to notice the authors’ complete denial of revolutionary ideas and it would hardly be possible to imagine another option, but on the other hand, there is a special interest in this problem at a strictly scientific level. An attempt is made to understand the problem by discarding feelings and emotions. But only Frank and Miliukov succeeded in this, although Ilyin’s work was written somewhat later. In Ilyin, the religious element is more clearly visible and therefore the work is written in a more expressive manner.