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History of Russia XIX–XX centuries. What do the people need? Dead end of honest oligarchs

17.07.2023

"It's hard to beat her"

Victor Pelevin wrote a new book - "Secret Views of the Year of Fuji". I read everything that Viktor Pelevin publishes, because I include him, like Vladimir Sorokin, among the best writers of my contemporaries who write about modern Russia.

But even for Pelevin, the last book is an undoubted success. And it's not that it retains all the attractive features of Pelevin's work: language, style of presentation, deep generalizations. What is worth, for example, Pelevin's assessment of those "disputes" that fill the screens of all television channels. He writes that in telespores “there is no element of actual debate, that is, finding out the truth, - they become just a way to offer themselves to the information market ... demonstrating their service potential to potential employers. They have no other content. And how lonely among these smart, subtle, beautifully speaking, immaculately dressed sellers of the soul! Alas, the soul in our century is no longer bought. At best, it will be rented by the hour.” Pelevin has a lot of such generalizations.

True, I must honestly warn readers that Pelevin's new book is not easy to master. It is felt that not only the heroes of the book, but also the author himself are very tense by parting with the truths of Buddhism that they once acquired and their individualistic principles.

Writer and modernity

I have long been waiting for large, large-scale works of literary masters, in which there would be reflections on the great changes that our country and its peoples went through in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

I have long come to the conclusion that, firstly, it is the writers who give the true understanding of the era. And secondly, they do it only after at least a decade.

Thus, the best book about the civil war of the XIX century North and South in the United States - "Gone with the Wind" - appeared only at the beginning of the XX century. And the best books about the 1917 revolution in Russia - Quiet Flows the Don, Doctor Zhivago, Going Through the Torments - appeared years after the events described in them.

And now I was patiently waiting for the writers to start creating serious works about the Great Anti-Socialist Revolution of 1989-1991, about Yeltsin's attempts to look for ways out of Soviet socialism.

And here is Pelevin's book. Behind a competent analysis of the subtleties of Buddhist ideology, behind excessive attention to the erotic side of life (apparently to please those who are called the general reader), the writer makes an attempt to begin an analysis of the fundamental problems of the era of Russia's exit from socialism.

In general, the main problem can be formulated as follows.

Why, having freed itself from the shackles and dogmas of state-bureaucratic socialism, did our country not join the ranks of the first states of the era in terms of the level of economic efficiency and the standard of living of the population?

Why do we - as it was under the tsar in the 19th century, and in the 20th century under the communists - remain in the 21st century in the role of "catching up"?

Why did the people, who found the strength to abandon the most important, original foundations of their existence and crushed the seemingly eternal, incredibly powerful strongholds of the old system, at the same time could not replace the rejected with a new model of life that would be really effective in an economy free in political life, with all the social conditions for the development of the human Personality?

Why did the huge surge of popular enthusiasm and spiritual upsurge during the years of the revolution of 1989-1991 not become as powerful as the upsurge after 1917? How did it happen that this popular enthusiasm was nipped in the bud and practically suffocated?

Why in the people's consciousness and subconsciousness, which are the only basis for fundamental changes, the problem of what kind of future is needed was replaced by a passive, dependent expectation of something from someone, but not from one's own efforts?

Why was the dream of creating something completely new on the ruins of socialism replaced by the primitive idea of catching up with someone, equaling someone, fitting in with someone?

Apparently, because the denial of bureaucratic socialism in the popular mind could not ignore the fact that Soviet socialism included not only bureaucratic fetters and restrictions, but also some kind of bonds, some kind of support, albeit unsuccessfully made, but obviously necessary for modern society. The denial of the Soviet model in 1989 did not become as long and powerful as the denial of Russia's feudal past in 1917, apparently because Soviet socialism created separate blocks in the country, and even entire structures that the people needed for their life in the 20th century.

What was needed was not an elementary denial of the past, not only the renaming of streets and rehabilitation, but a denial along the dialectical triad of the great Hegel. "The negation of the negation". What the best Chinese communists are trying to realize in the light of the thousand-year experience of their civilization.

The historical weakness of the popular masses allowed the bloc of reform-minded bureaucracy and emerging business that became the head of the new Russia to dampen the popular enthusiasm for the revolution of 1989-1991.

Pelevin takes from the whole mass of problems one, but an important one. He does not analyze the intelligentsia. Does not consider bureaucracy and nomenklatura. He also has no foreign policy. Pelevin took only one problem of our recent past - the problem of Russian business, or rather, the upper layer of this business. The one that is called monopoly and oligarchic.

Pelevin is very logical. After all, it was precisely the top of the emerging business that was to become one of the main driving forces for the creation of a new society. After all, one could not expect leadership in the creation of a new system from the decomposed Soviet bureaucrats and the intelligentsia, which has been settling down for decades at the state trough.

Both me and any thinking contemporary are keenly interested in such questions. Why, like a hundred years ago, in 1917, big Russian business was unable not only to lead the transformation of Russia, but even to make a significant contribution to these transformations? Why did the smart, thinking and responsible part of the top of the Russian business find itself somewhere in the backyard of history, or, using the bright image of Pelevin, settled on yachts in the oceans far from Russia?

Pelevin does not take those uneducated oligarchs who hire a plane and take a squadron of beauties to Courchevel. He does not even consider those nimble oligarchs who are rushing into the offices of the Kremlin and the White House in order to cover up power with tinsel, in the words of Chatsky from Woe from Wit, "reason poverty." Pelevin is also not interested in fans of auto racing, sports competitions, or art collectors. There are many among the top business. But, Pelevin correctly believes, something serious cannot be expected from them.

Pelevin takes those owners of billions who have realized the meaninglessness of both their success and their very existence.

Pelevin takes three. Takes a typical alignment for Russia. One Russian, one Jew, one Muslim. They are connected not by a common business, but by a common ideological position: why and for what now, having made millions, to live?

Pelevin in an artistic, most convincing form gives his answers to this question.

Dead end of honest oligarchs

All three heroes of Pelevin are at the top of wealth and at the bottom of a deep crisis.

Although the third, Fedor, did not reach the level of a billionaire, he almost became one. All three have a symbol of Russian wealth - luxury yachts. All three have women and drugs.

All three are away from the Russian authorities, from the Russian nomenklatura. Again, it is not clear: did they "go" to "government"? But neither the offices of the White House nor the corridors of the Kremlin are of interest to them. Why is not clear, but it is a fact. And here is a dead end for them.

They are looking for a way out in the ancient philosophies of Buddhism.

This is a very characteristic phenomenon of the late XX - early XXI century. For the main part of the 20th century, mankind saw the meaning in organization, structure, collectivity. In organizing a society for the elite. For the chosen class - the proletarians - in the communism of Marx and Lenin. For the chosen nation of the Aryans - in National Socialism. Yes, and capitalism plunged into the collectivism of the conveyors of Ford or Bathy, into the state regulators of Roosevelt and the European Social Democrats.

All these models of collectivism hated both the Personality and its Freedom. I remember my student days. In order to move on to a bright future - communism - it was necessary to destroy everything that required an independent and active Personality. To overcome the differences between town and country and to abolish the independent peasantry as a class. Overcome the differences between physical and mental labor and destroy any intelligentsia.

But the scientific and technological revolution of the late twentieth century began to drastically reduce the proportion of workers among the population. She demanded creative people. As a result, Personalities were required. There was a basis for the revival of a new Individualism.

But the centuries-old ideology of individualism, which included Fichte's "Clear as the sun message ...", Stirner's "The Only One" or the teachings of Zarathustra Nietzsche, did not correspond to the realities of the twentieth century.

But in Eastern ideologies, primarily in Buddhism, there was more material for finding answers to the question of what a Personality should do when left alone with God. Pelevin just writes about the attempts of the Personality to find himself on the platform of Individualism. He, demonstrating deep knowledge of Buddhist wisdom, nevertheless admits that his heroes remain at an impasse. The general problem of all individualist philosophers is "if I am the only one, then why should I live?" - even the janas of Buddhism do not decide. Pelevin leads us to the conclusion that behind the personal crisis of the three Russian oligarchs are the most important crises of the era of globalism of the twentieth century.

But in Pelevin's book, in parallel with the crisis of billionaires, the crisis of an ordinary person from the people in modern civilization, Tanya, is unfolding. And she, unlike the oligarchs, finds a way out. She agrees that it is necessary to change the foundation itself, the entire Civilization.

The essence of the changes is the rejection of the domination of men (patriarchy) and a return to what humanity has lived for tens of thousands of years - to the civilization of matriarchy.

Unfortunately, Pelevin, outlining the convincing advantages of matriarchy over patriarchy (for example, the elimination of the need for women to "get" a man and follow the "fashion" for this), bypasses the main problem of matriarchy, and all models of utopian socialism, all "balanced" societies. If an idyll is achieved, then why develop? Crises, the most terrible, but related to development, in a just society will be replaced by a crisis of suspension, a crisis of stagnation. Development crises are replaced by a halt crisis.

And yet, Fedor, one of the three heroes of Pelevin's book, is more inclined towards what the Man from the People, Tanya, came to.

In this readiness to abandon all modern civilization, the great sparks of the global Russian experiment of 1917 were preserved. Characteristically, both Tanya and Boris, according to Pelevin, are Russians. In this readiness to go, in the words of Mayakovsky, "until the days of the last bottom", in the readiness to look for a New Civilization, in the readiness to "give the helm" of human development to women, is one of the merits of Pelevin's analysis.

Looking for a way out

The undoubted merit of Pelevin is that he is an optimist. He believes that there is a way out of this situation.

First, you need to stop digging into yourself. Stop looking for a way out only for yourself and personally for yourself. Fedor abandons his "self-immersions" and goes to his Tanyusha. This seemingly purely personal step means a lot. It means the end of throwing in your "I" and the transition to actions in the sphere of "we". Tanya is already the end of "I", this is already "we". Tanya is the people.

Secondly. Pelevin believes, like Fedor, that in the people one should look not for what he has in the past, but for something new, to which the best people from the people are moving. It is in the new Tanya that there is only a prospect for Fedor. This will save Fedor, and the best part of the business, and the best part of the intelligentsia.

And what has Tanya now become and, again, in general, the best part of the people?

The answer to this question is the third conclusion of Pelevin's book. He believes that the people are approaching a global, super-radical conclusion.

It is necessary to change not some parts of the modern structure of civilization, but this civilization itself. And Pelevin finds an exceptionally capacious formulation of the way out: we must return to the era of matriarchy.

Marx and Engels wrote that the rejection of the civilization of property would be something super grandiose. They have a formula for the transition of Mankind from its Prehistory to History.

Many scientists, writers, science fiction writers have written about various features of the New Civilization in the last century. Suffice it to recall the works of Bestuzhev-Lada. On the developments of the Club of Rome. About how Ivan Efremov and the Strugatsky brothers saw the future.

I wrote about it too. My recently published book Reflections on the Future brings together my writings from the past two decades. Here are some of their titles: "The Great Alternative of the 21st Century", "On the Civilization of the 21st Century", "On the Way to the Future", "The Problem of the Russian Elite".

About thirty-five years ago, extensive material for the analysis of state-bureaucratic socialism was accumulated both in scientific and journalistic literature. But it was Alexander Beck's work of fiction The New Appointment that allowed me to review it, and the term "administrative command system" almost immediately became accepted. And now, Victor Pelevin's term "matriarchy" can become the start of an overdue detailed discussion about the New Civilization.

Victor Pelevin considers the key to the transformation of women into the leading force of society. I would agree with this if matriarchy included efforts to develop science and technology. The problem of concentrating scientific and technological progress on the general task of humanity on Earth - the task of preserving in the Universe a spark of that Mind that will appear on our Earth in the endless worlds of dead matter.

The transition to such a New Civilization will solve the whole knot of the problems of modern mankind: the preservation of the environment; bridge the gap between the "golden billion" of the planet and its vast majority; eliminating inequalities in developed countries; the "stupefaction" of the youth; growth in the proportion of "gray-haired"; "dispossession" of financial capital and its expulsion from the layer of "leaders" of civilization; the need for a Civilization in which the main decisions are made not by representatives of the "majority" elected for five years, but by the best people of the intellectual elite of mankind.

Today, for the best minds, it is becoming more and more obvious that even the full implementation of the idea of “living well” will make only primitive, limited people happy - plankton: entertainment plankton, office plankton, sports plankton, “near-creative” plankton, “near-scientific” plankton, factory plankton and farms.

Victor Pelevin's trip to Fuji was useful and fruitful. He came to the correct, in my opinion, conclusion that it is necessary to change the very foundation of modern civilization. A global revision of all its postulates is needed. Refusal to focus on one's "I", from the consumer society.

Pelevin correctly believes that only the synthesis of the popular, collective ideology of Tanya and the highest forms of Fedor's individualism promises prospects. Only the unification of the best that the socialist, collectivist ideology and the anarchist, existential ideologies of individualism gave, promises the formation of a platform that will help humanity “swim”, like Homer’s Odyssey, between Scylla and Charybdis of the 21st century. In the "foggy distance" loomed the prospect of a civilization that would combine both the New Collectivism and the New Individualism. New Organization and New Free Personality.

N. P. Ogarev. What do the people need? ("The Bell", July 1, 1861)

Very simply, the people need land and freedom.

The people cannot live without land, and without land it is impossible to leave them, because it is their own, blood. The land does not belong to anyone else, but to the people. Who occupied the land that is called Russia? who cultivated it, who for centuries won it back and defended it against all enemies? The people, no other than the people. How many people died in the wars, you can’t count that! In the last fifty years alone, far more than a million peasants have died,

just to defend the people's land. Napoleon came in 1812, he was expelled, but not for nothing: more than eight hundred thousand of his people were put to death. Now the Anglo-French were coming to the Crimea; and here more than fifty thousand people were killed or died of wounds. And besides these two big wars, how many people were killed in other small wars in the same fifty years? What is all this for? The kings themselves told the people: “in order to defend your land". Do not defend the people of the Russian land, there would be no Russian kingdom, there would be no tsars and landlords.

And it always has been. As soon as some enemy comes to us, they shout to the people: give us soldiers, give us money, arm yourself, defend your native land! The people defended. And now both the tsar and the landowners seem to have forgotten that the people shed sweat and blood for a thousand years in order to work out and defend their land, and they say to the people: “buy, they say, more of this land, for money.” No! This is iscaria. If you trade land, then trade it with the one who got it. And if the tsars and landowners do not want to own the land at the same time, inseparably with the people, then let them buy the land, and not the people, for the land is not theirs, but the people’s, and it came to the people not from the tsars and landowners, but from the grandfathers who settled it at a time when there was still no mention of landlords and tsars.

People from time immemorial In fact owned the land In fact poured for the earth sweat and blood, and command on paper with ink unsubscribed this land to the landowners and to the royal treasury. Together with the land, the people themselves were taken into captivity and they wanted to assure that this is the law, this is the divine truth. However, no one was convinced. The people were flogged with whips, shot with bullets, exiled to penal servitude, so that the people would obey the decreed law. The people were silent, but they did not believe. And out of a wrong deed, a right deed did not come out. Oppression only ruined the people and the state.

We have now seen for ourselves that it is still impossible to live. We thought about fixing the issue. For four years they wrote and rewrote their papers. Finally, they decided the matter and declared freedom to the people. Generals and officials were sent everywhere to read the manifesto and serve prayers in churches. Pray, they say, to God for the king, but for the will, but for your future happiness.

The people believed, rejoiced and began to pray.

However, how did the generals and officials conceive to interpret the people Regulations, it turns out that the will is given only in words, and not in deeds. That in the new provisions - the former mandative laws, only on a different paper, in other words, rewritten. And serve the landowner as before, and if you want to get your own hut and land, redeem them with your own money. Invented a transitional state. Either for two years, or for six, or for nine years, a new serfdom was determined for the people, where the landlord will flog through the authorities, where the authorities will do the court, where everything is mixed up so that if in these royal positions there was some preferential grain for the people, then it cannot be used. And the state peasants were still left with their bitter fate, and the same officials were left to own the land and the people, but if you want to be free, then redeem your land. The people listen to what the generals and officials are telling them about the will, and they cannot understand what kind of will it is without land under the rods of the landlords and bureaucrats. The people do not want to believe that they have been so dishonestly deceived. It can’t be, he says, that the tsar, with his word, caresses us with freedom for four years, and now, in fact, he would give us the same corvee and dues, the same rods and beatings.

It’s good that those who didn’t believe, kept silent: and those who didn’t believe, but began to grieve according to an unfulfilled will, they came to reason with whips, bayonets and bullets. And innocent blood poured across Rus'. Instead of prayers for the tsar, the groans of the martyrs were heard, falling under whips and bullets and exhausted under the glands along the Siberian road.

So, again, with whips and hard labor they want to make the people believe that the new order law is divine truth.

Moreover, the tsar and nobles sneer, they say that in two years there will be freedom. Whence same she will will something? They will cut the land, but for the cut-down they will make you pay exorbitant prices, but they will give the people under the authority of officials, so that in addition to these triple money they squeeze out another three times by robbery; and almost someone will not let himself be robbed, so again whip and hard labor. They will not do anything like in two years, but they will never do anything for the people, because their advantage is the slavery of the people, and not freedom ...

What do the people need?

Land, freedom, education.

In order for people to actually receive them, it is necessary:

1) To announce that all peasants are free with the land they now own. Those who do not have land, for example, the yards and some factory workers, should be given plots of state lands, that is, people's, that have not yet been occupied by anyone. Which of the landlord peasants does not have enough land, so cut the land from the landowners or give land for settlement. So that not a single peasant is left without a sufficient amount of land. The peasants shall own the land jointly, i.e., by the communities. And when in a community too many people are born, so that it becomes crowded, give that community for the peasants how much land is needed for a settlement from empty convenient lands. In a thousand years, the Russian people settled and conquered so many lands that it would be enough for them for many centuries. Know be fruitful, but there can be no refusal in the land.

2) As all the people will own the common people's land, so, therefore, all the people will pay for the use of this land and taxes for the general people's needs, into the general state (people's) treasury. For this purpose, the peasants liberated with land shall be subject to the same tax as the state peasants are now paying, but no more. Give tribute to the peasants together, for mutual guarantee; so that the peasants of each community are responsible for each other.

3) Although the landlords have owned the land wrongfully for three hundred years, however, the people do not want to offend them. Let the Treasury give them annually, in allowance or remuneration, as much as they need, at least about sixty million a year ( If we take 60 million as interest on capital, at 6 per hundred, then a thousand million will come out of capital. If 60 million are counted annually from the number of taxes in favor of the landowners, so that the sixth percent goes to the payment of capital, then in 37 years the entire thousand million will be paid and with interest of 5 per hundred, and, consequently, the landowner is rewarded in the best possible way, with extravagantly. Instead of capital, the landlords are now to be given tickets, on which it is written how much anyone should receive in a thirty-seven-year period; Now they can sell these tickets to whoever wants and have money for new equipment and hiring workers, then the interest on tickets, as now from a pawnshop, will be received from the treasury, who bought them, who owns them. And this is all the same to the people, as long as taxes are not increased; and after 37 years there will be nothing to count from the taxes for paying the ticket. there, everything will be paid; it will be necessary to file or lower, or. to use for the common people a useful thing), from the general state taxes. If only the people were left with all the land that they now plow for themselves, on which they live, on which they feed and heat themselves, on which they feed and water their cattle, but if only taxes would not be raised in any case, otherwise the people would have to count the remuneration to the landlords I agree from the submissions. And how much; which of the money counted for this from the taxes falls, the landowners themselves among themselves in the provinces can agree ... According to the latest revision, only 11,024,108 souls are considered landowner peasants. If they are taxed with the same tax as the state peasants, i.e., seven rubles per soul a year, then, counting out of these seven rubles about 1 rub. 60 kop. silver, which the landowning peasants now pay to the treasury (per head and various duties), then there will remain about 5 rubles from each soul. 40 kop. ser., and from all the landlord peasants in Russia - about sixty million rubles in silver. This means that there is something to help and reward the landowners; more than this they are ashamed to wish, and should not be given.

4) If, with such a tax, up to the full 60 millions that go to the landowners, which is not enough, then all the same, no extra taxes need to be demanded to cover the shortfall. And you should reduce the cost of the army. The Russian people live in peace with all their neighbors and want to live in peace with them; it became, he did not need a huge army, with which only the tsar amuses himself, but shoots at the peasants. Therefore, the army should be reduced by half. Now one hundred and twenty millions are being spent on the army and the navy, and all to no avail. They collect a lot of money from the people for the army, but little comes to the soldier. Of the one hundred and twenty millions, forty millions go to the military officials alone (to the military administration), who, moreover, themselves notably plunder the treasury. How to reduce the army by half, and in particular to reduce the military officials, so the soldiers will be better off, and the surplus from the expenses for the army will remain large, forty million silver. With such a surplus, no matter how great the remuneration to the landowners, there will be something to pay. Taxes will not increase, but they will be distributed more reasonably. The same money that the people are now paying for an extra army, so that the tsar shoots at the people with that army, will go not to death, but to the life of the people, so that the people can calmly go free with their land.

5) And the tsarist government's own expenses must be reduced. Instead of building stables and kennels for the tsar, it is better to build good roads, as well as handicraft, agricultural and all kinds of schools and institutions suitable for the people. Moreover, it goes without saying that the tsar and the tsar's family have nothing to do in vain to appropriate for themselves the appanage and factory peasants and the income from them; the peasantry must be one and pay the same tax; and from the tax they will count how much the king can put in for the administration.

6) Rid the people of officials. For this it is necessary that the peasants, both in the communes and in the volosts, should govern themselves, by their elected representatives. Rural and volost foremen would be determined by their choice and dismissed by their own court. They would sue each other by their own arbitration court or in peace. The rural and volost police would be supervised by their own elected people. And so that in all this, as well as in who is engaged in what kind of work or trade and fishing, from now on not a single landowner or official would interfere, if only the peasants would pay their tax on time. And for this, as said, mutual responsibility is responsible. For the sake of ease of mutual responsibility, the peasants of each community will make a pool among themselves, that is, they will constitute worldly capital. If trouble happens to anyone, the world will lend him out of this capital and will not let him perish; late or someone with a tribute - the world will bring a tax for him on time; give him time to recover. Whether it was necessary for the whole community to build a mill or a store, or to buy a car, social capital will help them to manage the common good. Social capital will also help the rural economy, and it will save it from officials, since if taxes are paid properly, not a single official can oppress anyone. This is where it is important that everyone stand for one. If you hurt one, they will hurt everyone. It goes without saying that it is not necessary for an official to touch this capital with his finger; but those to whom the world entrusts it, they will give an account of it to the world.

7) And so that the people, having received land and freedom, would preserve them for eternity; so that the tsar would not arbitrarily impose heavy taxes and duties on the people, would not keep extra troops and extra officials who would crush the people with the people's money; in order for the tsar not to be able to squander the people's money for feasts, but to spend it conscientiously on the people's needs and education, it is necessary that taxes and duties be determined and distributed among themselves by the people themselves through their elected ones. In each volost, the elected representatives of the villages will decide between themselves how much money should be collected from their people for the general needs of the volost, and they will choose among themselves a trusted person who will be sent to the county, so that, together with the elected representatives of other volosts, both landowners and city dwellers, decide What taxes and duties are needed, according to the county, These elected people at the county meeting will select trusted people from among themselves and send them to the provincial city in order to decide what duties to the people to accept in the province. Finally, elected representatives from the provinces will gather in the capital to the tsar and decide what duties and taxes should be served by the people for the needs of the state, that is, common to the entire Russian people.

People trusted by the people will not let the people be offended, they will not allow them to take extra money from the people; and without extra money, there will be nothing to support both extra troops and extra officials. The people, therefore, will live happily, without oppression.

Trusted people will decide how much taxes to pay to the people and how to pay them so that no one is offended. As soon as the elected representatives gather and collide, it will already be possible for them to decide that the tribute is paid not from the soul, but from the land. Which community has more land, and the land is better, that, therefore, will have to pay taxes more, and whoever has poorer land, they will pay less. Here the landowners will pay from their land. This means that things will be fairer and more favorable for the people. The trustees will decide how to fairly serve the recruiting service; how to fairly serve the road, lodging and underwater duties; they will value them with money and spread them harmlessly throughout the people. They will count every penny of the people, on what kind of business she should go; how much money for the government, how much for the army, how much for courts, how much for public schools, how much for roads. And what they decide, it will only be. As the year goes by, give an account to the people in every penny - where it was spent.

Then the people will really prosper. This is what the people need, without which they cannot live...

Ogarev. N. P. Fav. socio-political and philosophical works.-M., 1952.-T. 1.-S. 527-536.

Very simply, the people need land and freedom.
The people cannot live without land, and without land it is impossible to leave them, because it is their own, blood. The land belongs to no one else but to the people. Who occupied the land that is called Russia? who cultivated it, who for centuries won it back and defended it against all enemies? The people, no other than the people. How many people died in the wars, you can’t count that! In the last fifty years alone, far more than a million peasants have died just to defend the people's land. Napoleon came in 1812, he was expelled, but not for nothing: too eight hundred thousand of his people were put to death. Now the Anglo-French were coming to the Crimea; and here too fifty thousand people were killed or died of wounds. And besides these two big wars, how many people were killed in other small wars in the same fifty years? What is all this for? The kings themselves told the people: "in order to defend their land." Do not defend the people of the Russian land, there would be no Russian kingdom, there would be no tsars and landlords.
And it always has been. As soon as some enemy comes to us, they shout to the people: give us a soldier, give us money, arm yourself, defend your native land! The people defended. And now both the tsar and the landowners seem to have forgotten that the people shed sweat and blood for a thousand years in order to work out and defend their land, and they say to the people: “buy, they say, more of this land, for money.” No! this is iscaria. If you trade land, then trade it with the one who got it. And if the tsars and landlords do not want to own the land together, inseparably with the people, then let them buy the land, and not the people, for the land is not theirs, but the people’s, and it came to the people not from the tsars and landowners, but from the grandfathers who settled it at a time when there was still no mention of landlords and tsars.
The people, from time immemorial, actually owned the land, in fact shed sweat and blood for the land, and the clerks wrote this land on paper with ink to the landowners and to the royal treasury. Together with the land, the people themselves were taken into captivity and they wanted to assure that this is the law, this is the divine truth. However, no one was convinced. The people were flogged with whips, shot with bullets, exiled to penal servitude, so that the people would obey the decreed law. The people were silent, but still did not believe. And out of a wrong deed, a right deed did not come out. Oppression only ruined the people and the state.
We have now seen for ourselves that it is still impossible to live. We thought about fixing the issue. For four years they wrote and rewrote their papers. Finally, they decided the matter and declared freedom to the people. Generals and officials were sent everywhere to read the manifesto and serve prayers in churches. Pray, they say, to God for the king, but for the will, but for your future happiness.
The people believed, rejoiced and began to pray.
However, as the generals and officials conceived to interpret the Regulations to the people, it turns out that the will was given only in words, and not in deeds. That in the new provisions - the former mandative laws are only on a different paper, in other words, rewritten. And serve the landowner's corvée and dues as before, if you want to get your own hut and land, redeem them with your own money. Invented a transitional state. Either for two years, or for six, or for nine years, a new serfdom was determined for the people, where the landlord will flog through the authorities, where the authorities will do the court, where everything is mixed up so that if in these royal positions there was some preferential grain for the people, then it cannot be used. And the state peasants were still left with their bitter fate, and the same officials were left to own the land and the people, but if you want to be free, then redeem your land. The people listen to what the generals and officials are telling them about the will, and cannot understand what kind of will it is without land under the rods of the landlords and bureaucrats. The people do not want to believe that they have been so dishonestly deceived. It can’t be, he says, that the tsar, with his word, caressed us with freedom for four years, and now, in fact, he would give us the same corvee and dues, the same rods and beatings.
It’s good that those who didn’t believe, kept silent: and those who didn’t believe, but began to grieve according to an unfulfilled will, they came to reason with whips, bayonets and bullets. And innocent blood poured across Rus'.
Instead of praying for the tsar, the groans of the martyrs were heard, falling under whips and bullets and exhausted under glands along the Siberian road.
So, again, with whips and hard labor they want to make the people believe that the new order law is divine truth.
Moreover, the king and nobles sneer, they say that in two years there will be freedom. Whence same she will will something? They will cut the land, but they will make them pay exorbitant prices for the cut, and they will give the people under the rule of officials, so that in addition to these triple money they squeeze out another three times by robbery; and almost someone will not let himself be robbed, so again whip and hard labor. They will do nothing not like in two years, but they will never do anything for the people, because their benefit is the slavery of the people, and not freedom.<...>
Land from the people unsubscribed for themselves. Everything that the people work out - give to the court, and to the treasury, and to the nobles; and you yourself always sit in a rotten shirt and holey bast shoes.
Freedom has been taken away. Don't you dare take a step without official permission, without a passport or ticket, and pay for everything.
The people were not taught anything. The money that is collected for public education is wasted on the royal stables and kennels, on officials and an unnecessary army that would shoot at the people.
They themselves understand that it is impossible to be like this, that with such iscariotism you will destroy the people, and destroy the kingdom, and leave yourself with nothing to do with it. They themselves confess to the people that they must be allowed to recover, but when it comes down to it, they cannot overcome their greed. It is a pity for the king of his countless palaces with thousands of lackeys and araps, it is a pity for the queen of her brocades and diamonds. They have not yet managed to love the people more than their hunting dogs, than gold dishes, than feasts and fun. So they cannot dismiss and appease their nobles and officials, who help them collect millions of rubles from the people, and they pull the same amount for themselves. They cannot overcome their greed, so they are double-minded. And the tsar writes such manifestos that the people cannot understand. In words, he seems to be kind and speaks with the people according to his conscience; but as words have to be executed in practice, he keeps with the nobles all the same greed. In words, from the royal kindness to the people, joy and fun, but in reality, all the former grief and tears. In words, the Tsar will give the people, but in reality, for the same will, the tsarist generals flog the people and exile them to Siberia, and shoot them.
No! to double-heartedly with the people and to deceive them is dishonorable and criminal. Trading in land and the will of the people is not the same as Judas trading in Christ? No, the cause of the people must be decided without bargaining, in conscience and truth. The decision should be simple, frank, understandable to everyone; so that the words of the decision, once uttered, neither the tsar, nor the landowners and officials could reinterpret. So that for the sake of stupid, stupid, treacherous words, innocent blood is not shed.

N.P. OGAREV

Chernyshevsky was sentenced to seven years of hard labor and an eternal settlement. May this immeasurable villainy be cursed on the government, on society, on the vile, bribe journalism that incited this persecution, fanned it out of personalities. She taught the government to kill prisoners of war in Poland, and in Russia to approve the maxims of the wild ignoramuses of the Senate and the gray-haired villains of the State Council ... And here miserable people, people-grass, people-slugs say that this gang of robbers and scoundrels should not be scolded, who governs us!

"Invalid" 128 recently asked where new Russia, for which Garibaldi drank. It can be seen that she is not all “beyond the Dnieper”, when the victim falls after the victim ... How can one reconcile wild executions, wild punishments of the government and confidence in the serene peace of his hacks? Or what does the editor of Invalid think about a government that, without any danger, without any reason, shoots young officers, sends Mikhailov, Obruchev, Martyanov, Krasovsky, Trouvelier, 129 twenty others, and finally Chernyshevsky, into hard labor.

And this reign we welcomed ten years ago!

P.S. These lines were written when we read the following in a letter from an eyewitness to the execution: “Chernyshevsky has changed a lot, his pale face is swollen and bears traces of scorbut. They put him on his knees, broke his sword and put him up for a quarter of an hour at the pillory. Some girl threw a wreath into Chernyshevsky's carriage - she was arrested. The famous writer P. Yakushkin shouted "goodbye!" and was arrested. Exiling Mikhailov and Obruchev, they made an exhibition at 4 o'clock in the morning, now - in broad daylight! .. "

Congratulations to all the various Katkovs - they triumphed over this enemy! Well, is it easy for them?

Chernyshevsky was put up by you for a quarter of an hour * 18 - and you, and Russia, will remain tied to him for how many years?

Damn you, damn it - and, if possible, revenge!

Herzen A.I. Sobr. op. At 30 t.

M, 1959. T.18.S.221-222.

to the begining

N.P. Ogarev

(1813-1877)

What do the people need?130

Very simply, the people need land and freedom.

The people cannot live without land, and without land it is impossible to leave them, because it is their own, blood. The earth belongs to no one else like a people. Who occupied the land that is called Russia? who cultivated it, who for centuries won it back and defended it against all enemies? The people, no other than the people. How many people died in the wars, you can’t count that! In the last fifty years alone, far more than a million peasants have died just to defend the people's land. Napoleon came in 1812, he was kicked out, but not for nothing: too eight hundred thousand of his people were put to death. Now the Anglo-French were coming to the Crimea; and here too fifty thousand people were killed or died of wounds. And besides these two big wars, how many people were killed in other small wars in the same fifty years? What is all this for? The kings themselves told the people: “in order to defend your land." Do not defend the people of the Russian land, there would be no Russian kingdom, there would be no tsars and landlords.

And it always has been. As soon as some enemy comes to us, they shout to the people: give us soldiers, give us money, arm yourself, defend your native land! The people defended. And now both the tsar and the landowners seem to have forgotten that the people shed sweat and blood for a thousand years in order to work out and defend their land, and they say to the people: “buy, they say, more of this land, for money.” No! this is iscaria. If you trade land, then trade it with the one who got it. And if the tsars and landowners do not want to own the land together, inseparably with the people, then let them They they buy land, not the people, for the land is not theirs, but the people's, and it came to the people not from tsars and landowners, but from grandfathers who settled it at a time when there was still no mention of landowners and tsars.

People, from time immemorial, In fact owned the land In fact poured for the earth sweat and blood and orders on paper with ink unsubscribed this land to the landowners and to the royal treasury. Together with the land, the people themselves were taken into captivity and they wanted to assure that this is the law, this is the divine truth. However, no one was convinced. The people were flogged with whips, shot with bullets, exiled to penal servitude, so that the people would obey the decreed law. The people were silent, but they did not believe. And out of a wrong deed, a right deed did not come out. Oppression only ruined the people and the state.

The people believed, rejoiced and began to pray.

However, how did the generals and officials conceive to interpret the people Regulations 131 , it turns out that the will is given only in words, and not in deeds. That in the new provisions - the former mandative laws are only on a different paper, in other words, rewritten. And serve the landowner as before, and if you want to get your own hut and land, redeem them with your own money. Invented a transitional state. Either for two years, or for six, or for nine years, a new serfdom was determined for the people, where the landlord will flog through the authorities, where the authorities will do the court, where everything is mixed up so that if in these royal positions there was some preferential grain for the people, then it cannot be used. And the state peasants were still left with their bitter fate, and the same officials were left to own the land and the people, but if you want to be free, redeem your land. The people listen to what the generals and officials are telling them about the will, and they cannot understand what kind of will it is without land under the rods of the landlords and bureaucrats. The people do not want to believe that they have been so dishonestly deceived. It can’t be, he says, that the tsar, with his word, caressed us with freedom for four years, and now, in fact, he would give us the same corvee and dues, the same rods and beatings.

Instead of praying for the tsar, the groans of the martyrs were heard, falling under whips and bullets and exhausted under glands along the Siberian road.

So, again, with whips and hard labor they want to make the people believe that the new order law is divine truth.

Moreover, the tsar and nobles sneer, they say that in two years there will be freedom. Whence same she will will something? They will cut the land, but for the cut-down they will make you pay exorbitant prices, but they will give the people under the authority of officials, so that in addition to these triple money they squeeze out another three times by robbery; and almost someone will not let himself be robbed, so again whip and hard labor. Nothing they are not what in two years, - but never they won’t do it for the people, because their benefit is the slavery of the people, and not freedom<...>

Land from the people unsubscribed for themselves. Everything that the people work out - give to the court, and to the treasury, and to the nobles; but he himself always sit in a rotten shirt, and in holey bast shoes.

Freedom has been taken away. Don't you dare take a step without official permission, without a passport or ticket, and pay for everything.

The people were not taught anything. The money that is collected for public education is wasted on the royal stables and kennels, on officials and an unnecessary army that would shoot at the people.

They themselves understand that it is impossible to be like this, that with such iscariotism you will destroy the people, and destroy the kingdom, and leave yourself with nothing to do with it. They themselves confess to the people that they must be allowed to recover, but when it comes down to it, they cannot overcome their greed. It is a pity for the king of his countless palaces with thousands of lackeys and araps, it is a pity for the queen of her brocades and diamonds. They have not yet managed to love the people more than their hunting dogs, than gold dishes, than feasts and fun. So they cannot dismiss and appease their nobles and officials, who help them collect millions of rubles from the people, and they pull the same amount for themselves. They cannot overcome their greed, so they are double-minded. And the tsar writes such manifestos that the people cannot understand. In words, he seems to be kind and speaks with the people according to his conscience; but as the words in fact have to be executed, he keeps with the nobles all the same greed. In words, from the royal kindness to the people, joy and fun, but in reality, all the former grief and tears. In words, the Tsar will give the people, but in reality, for the same will, the tsarist generals flog the people and exile them to Siberia, and shoot them.

No! to be double-minded with the people and to deceive them is dishonorable and criminal. Trading in land and the will of the people is not the same as Judas trading in Christ? No, the cause of the people must be decided without bargaining, in conscience and truth. The decision should be simple, frank, understandable to everyone; so that the words of the decision, once uttered, neither the tsar, nor the landowners and officials could reinterpret. So that for the sake of stupid, stupid, treacherous words, innocent blood is not shed.

What do the people need?

Land, freedom, education.

In order for the people to actually receive them, it is necessary:

1) To announce that all peasants are free with the land they now own. Those who do not have land, for example, the yards and some factory workers, will be given plots from state lands, that is, people's, that have not yet been occupied by anyone. Which of the landlord peasants does not have enough land, so cut the land from the landowners or give land for settlement. So that not a single peasant is left without a sufficient amount of land. The peasants shall own the land jointly, i.e. communities. And when in a community too many people are born, so that it becomes crowded, give that community for the peasants how much land is needed for a settlement from empty convenient lands. In a thousand years, the Russian people have settled and conquered so many lands that it will be enough for them for many centuries. Know be fruitful, but there can be no refusal in the land.

3) Although the landowners have owned the land wrongly for three hundred years, the people, however, do not want to offend them. Let the Treasury give them every year, as allowance or remuneration, as much as they need, at least about sixty million a year, out of the general state taxes. If only the people were left with all the land that they now plow for themselves, on which they live, on which they feed and heat themselves, on which they feed and water their cattle, but if only taxes would not be raised in any case, otherwise the people would have to count the remuneration to the landowners I agree from the submissions. And how much of the money counted for this from the taxes falls, the landowners themselves can agree among themselves in the provinces. The people don't care, as long as they don't raise taxes. According to the latest revision, there are only 11,024,108 souls of landlord peasants. If they are taxed with the same tax as the state peasants, i.e., seven rubles per soul a year, then, counting out of these seven rubles about 1 rub. 50 kop. silver, which the landowning peasants now pay to the treasury (per head and various duties), then there will remain about 5 rubles from each soul. 40 kop. ser., and from all the landlord peasants in Russia - about sixty million rubles in silver. This means that there is something to help and reward the landowners; more than this they are ashamed to wish, and should not be given.

4) If, with such a tax, up to the full 60 millions going to the landlords, which is not enough, then no extra taxes need to be demanded to cover the shortage. And you should reduce the cost of the army. The Russian people live in peace with all their neighbors and want to live in peace with them; therefore, he does not need a huge army, with which only the tsar amuses himself and shoots at the peasants. Therefore, the army should be reduced by half. Now 120 million are spent on the army and the fleet, but all to no avail. They collect a lot of money from the people for the army, but little comes to the soldier. Of the one hundred and twenty millions, forty millions go to the military officials alone (to the military administration), who, moreover, themselves notably plunder the treasury. How to reduce the army by half, and in particular to reduce the military officials, so the soldiers will be better off, and there will be a large surplus from the expenses for the army - forty millions of silver. With such a surplus, no matter how great the remuneration to the landowners, there will be something to pay. Taxes will not increase, but they will be distributed more reasonably. The same money that the people are now paying for an extra army, so that the tsar shoots at the people with that army, will go not to death, but to the life of the people, so that the people can calmly go free with their land.

5) And the tsarist government's own expenses must be reduced. Instead of building stables and kennels for the tsar, it is better to build good roads, as well as handicraft, agricultural and all kinds of schools and institutions suitable for the people. Moreover, it goes without saying that the tsar and the tsar's family have nothing to do in vain to appropriate for themselves the appanage and factory peasants and the income from them; it is necessary that the peasantry be one and pay the same tax, and from the tax they will count how much the tsar can pay for the administration.

6) Rid the people of officials. For this it is necessary that the peasants, both in the communes and in the volosts, should govern themselves, by their elected representatives. Rural and volost foremen would be determined by their choice and dismissed by their own court. They would sue each other by their own arbitration court or in peace. The rural and volost police would be supervised by their own elected people. And so that in all this, as well as in who is engaged in what kind of work or trade and fishing, from now on not a single landowner or official would interfere, if only the peasants would pay their tax on time. And for this, as said, mutual responsibility is responsible. For the sake of ease of mutual responsibility, the peasants of each community will make a pool among themselves, that is, they will constitute worldly capital. If trouble happens to anyone, the world will lend him out of this capital and will not let him perish; if someone is late with a tax, the world will bring a tax for him on time, give him time to recover. Whether it was necessary for the whole community to build a mill or a store, or to buy a car, social capital will help them to manage the common good. Social capital will also help the rural economy, and it will save it from officials, since if taxes are paid properly, not a single official can oppress anyone. Here it is important that all stand for one. If you hurt one, they will hurt everyone. It goes without saying that it is not necessary for an official to touch this capital with his finger; but those to whom the world entrusts it, they will give an account of it to the world.

7) And so that the people, having received land and freedom, would preserve them for eternity; so that the tsar would not arbitrarily impose heavy taxes and duties on the people, would not keep extra troops and extra officials who would crush the people with the people's money; in order for the tsar not to be able to squander the people's money for feasts, but to spend it conscientiously on the people's needs and education, it is necessary that taxes and duties be determined and distributed among themselves by the people themselves through their elected ones. In each volost, the elected representatives from the villages will decide between themselves how much money should be collected from their people for the general needs of the volost and will choose among themselves a trusted person who will be sent to the county, so that, together with the elected representatives from other volosts, both landowners and city dwellers, decide what taxes and duties are needed in the county. These elected officials at the county meeting will select trusted people from among themselves and send them to the provincial town to decide what duties the people should accept in the province. Finally, the elected representatives from the provinces will gather in the capital to the tsar and decide what duties and taxes should be served by the people for the needs of the state, i.e. common to the Russian people.

Trusted people will decide how much taxes to pay to the people and how to pay them so that no one is offended. As soon as the elected representatives gather and collide, it will be possible for them to decide that the tribute is paid not from the soul, but from the land. Which community has more land and better land, that means that taxes will have to be paid more; and those who are poorer in land will pay less. Here the landowners will pay from their land. This means that things will be fairer and more favorable for the people. The trustees will decide how to fairly serve the recruiting service; how to fairly serve the road, lodging and underwater duties; they will value them with money and spread them harmlessly throughout the people. They will take into account every penny of the people, for what particular business she should go: how much money for the government, how much for the army, how much for courts, how much for public schools, how much for roads. And what they decide, it will only be. As the year goes by, give an account to the people in every penny - where it was spent. This is what the people need, without which they cannot live.

But who will be such a friend to him that he will deliver all this to him?

Until now, the people believed that the current king would be such a friend to him. Unlike the previous tsars, who signed off the land from the people and gave it into captivity to the nobles, landowners and officials, the new tsar will make the people happy. As soon as the generals came with soldiers to shoot the people for their will and flog with gauntlets, they had to say the same about the new king that the prophet Samuel said to the people of Israel when he advised them to do without the king: “And (the king) will appoint you hundreds and thousands; and he will take your daughters as world cooks and cooks; and your villages and your vineyards and your oilseeds he will take and give to his servants; and your seeds and your vines shall be ten; and your good flock will take and put ten for his works; and your pasture will be ten, and you will be his servants” * 19 . In other words: do not expect any good from the king, but only one evil, since, due to their greed, kings and the will and prosperity of the people are inevitably robbed. And our tsar, who orders to shoot at the people, turns out to be the tsar of Samuil. Togo and see that he is not a friend, but the first enemy of the people. They say that he is kind: but what could he do worse than now, if he were evil? Let the people wait to pray for him, and with their intuition and common sense look for more reliable friends, real friends, devoted people.

Most of all, the people need to draw closer to the army. And whether the father, whether the mother, equips the son as a recruit - do not forget the people's will, take an oath from the son that he will not shoot at the people, he will not be the killer of fathers, mothers and blood sisters, no matter who gives the order to shoot, even the tsar himself, because such an order, even though it be royal, is still a cursed order. For that, look for friends and higher.

When an officer is found who will teach the soldiers that it is a mortal sin to shoot at the people - know, people, that this is his friend, who stands for the land of the world and for the will of the people.

Is there a landowner who will immediately set the peasants free with all their land, in the most favorable way and will not offend in anything, but will help in everything; whether there is a merchant who will not spare his rubles for liberation; is there such a person who has neither peasants nor rubles, but who all his life and thought, and studied, and wrote, and published only in order to better arrange the land of the world and the will of the people - know the people: these are all his friends .

There is no point in making noise to no avail and crawling under the bullet at random; but we must silently gather our strength, look for people who are devoted, who would help with advice, and leadership, and in word, and deed, and treasury, and life, so that it would be possible to cleverly, firmly, calmly, amicably and strongly defend the land against the king and nobles worldly, the will of the people, but the truth of man.

Ogarev N. P. Fav. socio-political and philosophical works

M., 1952. T. 1. S. 527-536.

CHAPTERI.

Domestic philosophers of the 40s - 60s of the nineteenth century

and problems of the Russian agricultural worldview

Chapter 1. Socio-political and philosophical views of N.P. Ogareva, A.I. Herzen and M.N. Bakunin (early period of creativity).

The theoretical and ideological positions defended by the authors of works of art in an explicit or implicit form sometimes require and sometimes anticipate their meaningful clarification or more precise formulation in terms of philosophical knowledge. And since these theoretical and ideological positions, before taking on artistic forms, are often present in theoretical form in the texts of professional social thinkers, this naturally implies the need for their special analysis.

At the same time, since this kind of work fits within the framework of the activities of professional historians of Russian philosophy, it creates the need for us to designate our own specific range of interests in this area. Such, in our opinion, should be the consideration of those issues and problems that, in an explicit or hidden form, firstly, became the subject of analysis by writers in connection with the study of the Russian worldview in general and the worldview of the Russian farmer, in particular. And, secondly, those that did not become the subject of special artistic consideration for writers, nevertheless, were significant or had an impact on the essence of the topics under consideration.

In this regard, our interest is primarily attracted by the figures of the followers of the Western tradition in Russian philosophy, who, earlier than others in the history of Russian philosophical thought, made an attempt to develop the ideology of the so-called peasant communal socialism.

The first in a series of these thinkers should be named the name Nikolai Platonovich Ogarev (1813 - 1877), who, together with his friend A.I. Herzen devoted his life without a trace to the search for a reasonable and least painful way for the peasantry to reform Russian agrarian production and the organization of public life in general. Moreover, he did it so consistently that, perhaps, one of the entire long list of Russian theoreticians-transformers, both revolutionary and reformist, including the great literary mourner about the peasant fate of Count L. Tolstoy, began with a personal act. After the death of his father, Ogarev, having received a huge inheritance, set free 1820 serfs (with their families - about 4000 people). At the same time, in a number of estates, the entire landowner's land, rich water meadows and forests were transferred to the peasants. At the same time, in other places, he founded alcohol, paper and sugar factories and organized agricultural farms on the principles of free wage labor. Along the way, Ogarev renounced all the rights and privileges that were due to him as a member of the nobility.

All this was done in 1846 - 15 years before the official abolition of serfdom. In a letter to A.I. Regarding the decision, Ogarev wrote to Herzen: “Friend! Have you ever felt the weight of your inheritance? Have you ever had a bitter piece that you put in your mouth? Have you been humiliated before yourself, helping the poor - with other people's money? How deeply do you feel that only personal labor gives you the right to enjoyment? Friend! Let's go to the proletariat. Otherwise, you will suffocate."

Researchers of the life and work of N.P. Ogareva note, in principle, rarely found in people of a theoretical mindset, the ability to combine their own words and deeds. As we see, this can be attributed to Ogarev. In addition, being a consistent and convinced supporter of the continuation in Russia of the main cause of the Decembrists - the restriction of the monarchy, already at the university he attempted to create a secret society of followers of the participants in the December uprising, for which, in particular, he was arrested and imprisoned, and later was placed under supervision police and exiled. The incessant police persecution, as well as the general increase in the reaction, prompted Ogarev in 1856 to leave Russia altogether and join Herzen, choosing for himself the fate of a political emigrant.

One of the first socio-philosophical journalistic works of N.P. Ogareva - written in March 1847 for Sovremennik, the ironic "Letter from the Province", signed with the pseudonym "Anton Postegaikin". In it, in a colloquial, on the verge of arrogant, form, realistic pictures of peasant life are revealed, presented so sharply and truthfully that they do not allow doubts about the true likes and dislikes of the author depicting them. The main semantic moments around which the story unfolds are the following three stories. The first one is dedicated to the problem of folk "darkness" and its church enlightenment, which is eternal for Russian literature. So, the narrator reports that the Russian peasant almost does not eat meat: it is expensive, and a sin. In fact, Wednesday and Friday are fast days, and you can’t eat meat during the great and other fasts. And the Russian peasant, according to Ogarev, is devout. Here a peasant comes to the narrator and almost falls at his feet: help, the son is dying because he does not eat anything. In the conversation, it turns out that the son is three years old, and he “does not eat” because he asks for milk, which is a sin to drink in fasting. And when, at the insistence of the narrator, the child was given milk, he immediately recovers on the second day.

The second story tells about the “misconduct” of the landowner, who, in order to get the peasants to work diligently, forbade the women with infants or small children to be distracted by them during field work. As a result, “a little misfortune happened. Baba came to the field and, of course, put the cradle with the child on the ground, while she herself works. And the filthy boy was fiddling, fiddling in the cradle, stuck out his hand, and began to play with the earth; and here instead of a simple earth, an ant heap happened. The ants crawled over the boy, climbed into his ears, and into his eyes, and into his nose, and into his mouth, they bite; the child is screaming. Baba, of course, does not dare to leave work and go to the cradle. The child screamed, shouted yes to God, and gave his soul. It's bad business, but it's nobody's fault. If there hadn't been a bunch of ants here, nothing would have happened. But you can’t give women a prank; perhaps, and all the time they will be messing around with the guys, and they will miss the lordly work. It’s a well-known fact that since a woman fed a child in the morning, he won’t ask for food until dinner, unless the mother will spoil, but there’s no need to spoil at all.

In the third story, with undisguised irony, the author tells how a good man named Suvorov lived in one county, “but suddenly he for no reason at all it seemed that we have no justice. (Highlighted by us. - S.N., V.F.). He went to the robbers, lived, I don’t know where and how, only brought awe to the whole side, although - as I already said - he never touched a peasant on a high road with his little finger. And whether it was a police officer or an assessor without a gun or a flail, it happened and would not leave. Yes, and weapons did not help! Suvorov was a smart guy. The driver was afraid of him; envious - throw the reins and run into the bushes. And Suvorov will come; to hell with a gun and a flail, and then at first he will rob the unfortunate official, and then with a rod or stick he gets through, gets through, and says: next time you want to offend the people, remember, such and such, Suvorov. Our whole county, they say, came to despair from this malicious robber.

There are other stories of the same kind in the "letter". However, we singled out these three first of all because, in our opinion, they provide the most prominent idea of the most important for Ogarev, from the point of view of the concept of peasant communal socialism, topics. These are the themes of “tradition” (the first story), “common practice”, in the sense of the current state of affairs (the second story), and “innovation” - as one of the recipes for what is proposed for the future Russian device by an autocratic state, but making attempts to Europeanize, state ( story three). It must be said that for all its seeming "sketchiness" in depicting real Russian problems, Ogarev's work is not without accuracy and elegance, including when viewed from the standpoint of a modern rather sophisticated reader. However, the main theoretical texts containing the essence of the problems of peasant communal socialism are concentrated in other works of N.P. Ogaryov. These are, first of all, his famous four articles with the general title "Russian Questions".

Analyzing the views of Ogarev and later Herzen from today's standpoint, one involuntarily asks the question: what is the reason that they, European-educated and liberal-minded thinkers, placed such high hopes on what seems to be an obviously ineffective instrument of social organization - the communal organization of peasants. And here are the answers that come to mind in this regard.

The first is related to the fact that, unlike a number of pure water “servants of the idea”, who were enough at that time, and, moreover, in later Russia, Ogarev and Herzen were not only “ideologically oriented thinkers”, but also pragmatists. . They understood that capitalism in Russia was just beginning to develop. And if in industry by the middle of the 19th century the first several thousand enterprises with hired workers and the first railways appeared - the prototype of the future infrastructure that would be integral in its production and the country's market, then in agriculture things were done in the same way as three hundred years ago.

We have already analyzed and intend to continue doing this in the future, this problem on the example of literary creativity. The writers testified with their work that “new” people are just being born in the country and are quite rare. Farms of the "new type" so far exist only in projects and in the first timid individual experiments. Everywhere the peasant community dominates, in some places only to a small extent "ennobled" by some European innovations. The communal way of life dominates everywhere and the germs of a new, more perfect way of life are not yet foreseen. Thus, the first response about hopes for the peasant community was associated with an adequate assessment of the existing economic, political and social reality. That is, if we talk about the possibility of actions that are revolutionary in their consequences, in modern Russia they can only take place in connection with the peasant community.

The second answer is again dictated by the realism of the positions of Ogarev and Herzen: their knowledge of the formation of capitalism in Western agriculture prompted them to more negative than positive assessments of it (this formation). To avoid the misfortunes and disasters of the first stages of capitalist development, to prevent the formation in Russia of a new, perhaps no less than autocracy, as they believed, bourgeois evil, was their patriotic goal.

And, finally, the last answer about hopes for the social potential of the community is connected with the eternal, repeatedly repeated by domestic thinkers and politicians-practitioners, the Russian mistake-illusion, according to which the West ahead of Russia in its forward movement makes and discovers mistakes that Russia following it has a chance and can see and avoid in time. And, besides, Ogarev and Herzen, it seems to us, could also be possessed by a purely Russian illusion that we, without allowing some stage, some form of progressive development observed in the West, will still be able to get ( it is not known how) all the “pluses” arising from this form, and all the “minuses” (again, it is not known how) to avoid. This also requires the West to lead the way, and we would see and react in time to the “positive” and “negative” it reveals. In general, there were enough arguments for the development of "peasant communal socialism" in Russia. How did he present himself?

The articles “Russian Questions” written in 1956-1858 were originally conceived as an attempt to involve a thinking, liberal-minded person in resolving long-standing Russian problems. And participation, which is important to note for Ogarev's position, in productive interaction with the authorities. Ogarev writes: “... My sincere goal was to raise all the burning Russian questions: let the young government and the newly reviving Russia decide them.”

Of course, the most important among all issues was the question of the abolition of serfdom. And so Ogarev's first article begins with the words: "We are confident that Emperor Alexander will free the serfs in Russia." And then the main author's idea follows in expanded form: “We do not want the question of the liberation of the peasants to include a distortion of all the concepts of the Russian people about property. The Russian people cannot separate themselves from the land, the land from the community. The community is convinced that a certain amount of land belongs to it. ... This inseparability of man and land, community and soil is a fact. Whether it is the result of deep antiquity, whether it was formed during the Petrine period - all the same; the fact is that in the concept of the Russian people a different arrangement is impossible.

The liberation of serfs without land is contrary to the spirit of the Russian people, and in addition they can easily be liberated with land. The introduction into Russia of the proletariat, which is still unknown to us, is not necessary.

Reading these lines, it is impossible not to note the historical insight of Ogarev. He clearly understands the danger of both maintaining the situation in the form in which it is, and the abolition of serfdom in a radical way - the liberation of the peasants without land. What would happen in this case? In his opinion, Russia would take the worst path - the path of Western development, which is characterized by the horrors of "fruitless bloodshed, fragmentation of property, begging, the proletariat, formally legal and humanly unjust trials, oppression, shameful petty-bourgeois tyranny, hypocrisy" . In this case, further, the "bourgeois landowner" will set the price for renting the land, and the peasants will not have any freedom of choice. Slavery will arise, almost worse than the present. “But it is possible,” he is sure, “to pass from slavery to real freedom. Give the peasants the land they now de facto enjoy. Remuneration of landlords through banking or other operations can be invented ... " .

In his letters - a kind of "conversations" with the authorities, Ogarev, which is important to note, does not choose a critical and confrontational manner of discussing the problem, and even more so does not take the position of extreme revolutionaryism, which in the late 50s already made itself felt. His manner is rather recommendatory and advisory, which, however, does not reduce its substantive exactingness. So, in the question of finding a worthy interlocutor-debater for the government as a subject of action, Ogarev is inexorably selective, specific and strict. In his opinion, it is pointless for the government to “turn for advice” to the estates of Russian society in the matter of liberating serfs. Thus, the "big bars" are brought up in a transcendental sphere, they never come into contact with the people and, moreover, are corrupted to the extreme. The petty nobility is devoid of education and is perfectly capable of one thing - to squeeze the last juice out of the peasant. The merchant class is a caste that considers itself to be spiders and everyone else to be flies. Officials are members of one organization of widespread robbery. The people do not have rational concepts and are guided by intuition and instincts. With whom can you have a dialogue?

There remains one class - "nobles of the middle hand", who, on the one hand, are educated and accustomed to thinking, and on the other, live next to the people, know them and did not sell their conscience for jobs. “... The young Russian government should turn to educated Russian people not by the longevity of their service, but by the extent of their independence from service; not according to their importance, but according to their insignificance. These people remained original and independent, therefore, conscientious. These people in the present epoch express the highest development of Russian thought; they can be advisers and helpers. And the main understanding that they, along with the peasants, have is an understanding of what the Russian community is.

In disputes about the community, according to Ogarev, Slavophiles and Westernizers are equally wrong. The former believe that the community is an exclusively Slavic structure of society, from which we, the descendants, should not “evade” by accepting various “non-Russian” innovations. And the more strictly we will follow this “oldest order of things”, the better. The second, the Westernizers, usually reply to this that, firstly, the community is not an exclusively Russian invention, but a necessary, barbaric stage in the development of society that has existed among many peoples. That in Russia, secondly, it was planted by the government with the aim of attaching a nomadic people to the land.

According to Ogarev, both groups are mistaken, although in different ways. And if the Slavophiles try to “look ahead with the back of their heads,” then the Westerners delve into history, and do not give an answer to the question of further development. But all this is academic debate, and society, nevertheless, requires the solution of real problems and a clear answer to the question - should the community in Russia be destroyed or does it have a future.

According to Ogarev, the peasant community in Russia is held together by the force of custom, which is so great that it is impossible to destroy it, and it is not worth trying. The community, which follows from his ideas, optimally maintains a balance between survival and efficiency. In fact, the community alone owns the arable land and gives plots of land to its members for use with redistribution once every three years, depending on the three-field crop rotation. Vegetable gardens and threshing floor are homesteads. Meadows and pastures are common. The hut, cattle, field tools each have their own. The land is divided according to taxes, and the fewer taxes, the more plots. Communal property is exclusively landed and non-hereditary, while all other peasant property is hereditary and private.

At the same time, the peasant is poor and uneducated, and this is a fact. But is this a consequence of the communal arrangement, or the effect of other causes, or is it the effect of the communal arrangement of life and other causes together? In Europe, Ogarev notes, the rejection of the communal structure did not occur voluntarily. The community was supplanted by external factors. The modern, post-communal position of the European peoples that came to replace it - private ownership of land - is far from perfect. It is painful: property develops in parallel with poverty. Moreover, the concentration of property in the hands of a few, on the one hand, and fractional landownership due to inheritance (when land was divided by inheritance among all heirs), on the other, became a real disaster. In France, for example, "bloody revolutions are repeated convulsively and fruitlessly, bringing shameful despotism instead of civil freedom." So, as a result of the revolution of 1789, the peasant became the owner, and land ownership became fractional. But at the same time, eight million new landless peasants arose and the revolutionary threat again became real.

From the standpoint of this method of solving the land issue, the Russian peasant prospers: firstly, he cannot split up his plot, and, secondly, he will never become a “homeless person”. “He is never a proletarian,” sums up Ogarev. Under communal land tenure, no one “is denied a plot of land; There is no non-owner, and all plots are equal. ... Changes in the method of land ownership cannot be demanded, because the plots are distributed fairly; there is no reason for revolutionary bloodshed; people are left with two natural ways out - settlement and the strengthening of the artel industry. Settlement with a communal structure has a natural desire for communal colonization on new soil.

At the same time, Ogarev continues his analysis, the overcoming of feudalism in Europe brought many benefits to its inhabitants. Respect for the inviolability of the person, property, tenant developed, concepts of honor arose, the transparency of the court and opinion strengthened, law prevailed, science progressed, including agriculture and industry, as well as education in general.

“Meanwhile, in Russia, the impudence of the treatment of any more or less higher with the lower and the serfdom prove a complete disrespect for the person. Not a single person placed above you will be ashamed to insult and impudently cross the threshold of your house, especially if this house is a hut. The concept of honor froze before this impudence. Personality has not developed to independence ... Any defense of one's right and truth is considered a rebellion, and meanness, if not valor, then at least a matter of the natural order of things. Serfdom and bureaucracy erased the inviolability of property. They judge and condemn people on the sly, based on bribery, hypocrisy, and oppression. Opinions cannot be expressed aloud, and the seal of silence lies on the lips of a Russian. ... Our science has lagged behind, our industry and especially agriculture are in perfect infancy.

But does this mean that it is the peoples of the West who have found the right path, and Russia is only stubborn, not wanting to recognize it as the right one? Ogarev's answer is negative. First, in the West, all the previously described positive phenomena are valid only in relation to a very narrow, as he believes, circle of owners. Respect for a person, as well as respect for his freedom, exist only for the owner. "... Respect for the person and property of the lords is real, and respect for the person of the tenant of the land is imaginary." The have-nots - the vast majority - are deprived of all this. For them, capitalism (although Ogarev does not have this term. - S.N., V.F.) created a new kind of slavery, even more terrible than feudal slavery.

And now Ogarev is approaching his main question, which we will also think about: is it not easier “to develop the ideal of community (that is, prosperity for everyone. - S.N., V.F.) from the form of communal land tenure than from forms of ownership completely opposite. On the basis of the opposite forms of landownership, the striving for communality can proceed only through violent crises, because it is necessary to break the existing one, while with communal landownership it is only necessary to leave this beginning to develop freely, unhindered and naturally without any social upheavals. ... It is very fortunate that in Russia it is impossible to erase the form of communal land ownership. The people will not yield to any force; no matter how unconscious the custom, but it has taken root, and very happily if it coincides with rationality. And if until now Russia has not benefited from communalism, it is only because the landowner and the official “put a limit on the development of the communal principle. Only the administration has evolved. The bad state of agriculture and industry stems not from communal principles, but from landlord law and administrative violence. If, however, somewhere in Russia a peasant community is accidentally preserved, freed from the interference of the landowner and official, then it exists according to its custom and prospers. So, she self-governs, electing and removing the headman; divides the land according to taxes; does not interfere with a person's private life; in disputes, the word of the elders is decisive; the headman collects dues and duties and keeps an account for them before the world. And this is only the "infantile" state of the peasant community. “Let it develop and you will see a genuine peasant communal beginning,” exclaims Ogarev. “It is better to arrange so that there is not a single person in Russia who does not have his own land in the community, than to look for other forms of land ownership for Russia, in the eyes of our condemned by historical and economic experience.

…Let us not persecute the communal principle, but accept it as a fact and give it all the ways to a kind of harmonious development.

First of all, let's remove the obstacles to this development, i.e. landlord law and bureaucracy, then let us worry about the spread of education not on the basis of violence.

... The destruction of the landlord's right began thanks to the noble aspirations of Alexander II. These positive processes that have already really begun, Ogarev believes, should be supported.

Along with the problems of the development of the community, and perhaps the greatest Russian evil, bureaucracy continues to be. This layer of Russian administrators absorbed "all the filth of Tatarism" and "all the filth of German bureaucracy", which led to the fact that the country was entangled in a tightly woven network of general bureaucratic robbery. Salvation from this misfortune again suggests the experience of the life of the Russian peasant community. After all, the community is self-governing, and the government elected by it is accountable to the peasant world. The regulators of her power are the control of the world and the personal sense of conscience of her leaders. Shame on the world is the heaviest punishment. At the same time, the elected headman or foreman is at the same time the rural police. Make this device all-Russian, and the peasants will live in peace, and there will be no arrears and delays in state taxes, Ogarev advises the government.

In the county, as well as in higher territorial administrative units, there should be an elected administration and a court, whose activities should be carefully regulated by legislation. Of course, the creation of criminal courts is a somewhat more difficult task, but this task can be solved in principle. Maintenance of schools, hospitals, charities, etc. must cease to be a government matter and must become a public matter. As for the abolished army of bureaucracy, there is no need to worry about its future. As with the coachmen after the construction of the railway from Moscow to St. Petersburg, nothing terrible will happen to them: no one will starve to death and everyone will find work.

Concluding the articles “Russian Questions”, N.P. Ogarev notes: “we did not intend to write the charter of the new device ... We only wanted to indicate, starting from custom, the path to the device, the most popular based on elective administration”, on the principles underlying the functioning of the Russian peasant community.

Alexander Ivanovich Herzen (1812-1870), since childhood, a friend of Ogarev, in the history of Russian social thought, deservedly bears the name of the founder of the theory of "Russian socialism" and populism, which he, in the full sense of the word, suffered through his whole fate. Already two years after graduating from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University, for participating in a circle and preaching thoughts “not characteristic of the spirit of the government,” he was exiled, spent more than five years in exile, and in 1847 went abroad forever. Observing the bourgeois revolutions in Europe in 1848-1849 and their subsequent collapse, Herzen became disillusioned with the possibility of the practical realization of socialist utopias, as well as with the ability of science to correctly foresee the direction of historical movement. He also ceases to believe in the prospects for a social upheaval in the West and focuses his hopes entirely on Russia. In the Russian rural community, the thinker saw the germ of a socialist future. At the same time, he believed that "the man of the future in Russia is a peasant, just like a worker in France."

Already the first impressions of acquaintance with the West poured out in Herzen in impartial judgments about the new social class - the bourgeoisie. In his opinion, “the bourgeoisie has no great past and no future. It was momentarily good as a negation, as a transition, as an opposite, as a self-assertion. Her forces became to fight and to win; but she could not cope with the victory ... ”, - he states in Letters from France and Italy, written in 1847 - 1851. And here is the conclusion-insight, which will be substantiated in the future: the new revolutionary class is the peasantry. “A heavy storm is gathering in the peasant's chest. He does not know anything about the text of the constitution, or about the division of powers, but he looks gloomily at the rich owner, at the notary, at the usurer; but he sees that no matter how hard he works, the profit goes into other hands, and he listens to the worker. When he listens to the end and understands him well, with his stubborn firmness as a farmer, with his solid strength in every business, then he will count his strength - and then he will sweep the old social order from the face of the earth. And it will be a real revolution of the masses.

It is most likely that the actual struggle between the rich minority and the poor majority will have a sharply communist character. However, it was still a long way from the concrete implementation of such extreme conclusions in the late 40s and early 50s, and while Herzen, in his famous work On the Development of Revolutionary Ideas in Russia (1851), pays much attention to the analysis and interpretation of the historical the way of the country, as well as samples of the national self-consciousness emerging in it, reflected, among other things, in literary texts. It is this analysis, from the point of view of the meaningful interpretations and assessments found in it, that is of primary interest to us.

In society, Herzen notes, there are two processes going towards each other. On the one hand, the people, more and more clearly awakening: “The Russian people are breathing harder than before, looking sadder; the injustice of serfdom and the robbery of officials are becoming more and more unbearable for him. ... The number of cases against arsonists increased significantly, the murders of landowners and peasant riots became more frequent. The huge schismatic population grumbles; exploited and oppressed by the clergy and the police, it is very far from being united, but sometimes in these dead, inaccessible seas, a vague rumble is heard, foreshadowing terrible storms. On the other hand, first of all, the influence of literature, which “does not change its vocation and maintains a liberal and educational character as far as it succeeds with censorship” (Emphasis added by us. - S.N., V.F.).

Of course, the events of December 14, 1825 clarified a lot, as well as destroyed many illusions. And the most difficult discovery, as Herzen emphasizes, and which his revolutionary-minded followers repeatedly noted later, is the gulf that has been revealed between the people and its advanced part. “... The people remained an indifferent spectator on December 14th. Every conscious person has seen the terrible consequences of a complete rupture between national Russia and Europeanized Russia. Every living link between the two camps was cut off, it had to be restored, but how? That was the big question. Some believed that nothing could be achieved by leaving Russia in tow of Europe; they pinned their hopes not on the future, but on a return to the past. Others saw only misfortune and ruin in the future; they cursed the bastard civilization and the indifferent people. Deep sadness has seized the soul of all thinking people.

Only the sonorous and wide song of Pushkin was heard in the valleys of slavery and torment; this song continued the past era, filled the present with its courageous sounds and sent its voice into the distant future. Pushkin's poetry was a pledge and consolation.

Herzen's subsequent reflections on the literary work of Polevoy, Senkovsky and Belinsky show that it was the word and its work with the social consciousness of those strata that listened to the word that was the content of the work that prepared the advanced layers to eliminate the "gap", but the turn of the elimination itself has not yet approached.

However, for an unbiased observer it may seem strange that the large role that Herzen assigns to Russian literature. The future revolutionary sees the explanation for this phenomenon in a fact that is obvious to him: “In Russia, all those who read hate the authorities; all those who love it do not read at all, or only read French trifles. Pushkin, the greatest glory of Russia, was at one time turned away for his greeting to Nicholas after the cessation of cholera, and for two political poems. Gogol, the idol of Russian readers, instantly aroused the deepest contempt for himself with his servile pamphlet. Polevoy's star faded the day he made an alliance with the government. In Russia, a renegade is not forgiven.

So, as Herzen notes, in Russia there is no doubt a special role of literature among the thinking part of society that wants change. How to explain this special phenomenon? In our opinion, one of the explanations lies in the special geography in which the Russian people live. Geography is great, even immense, and, undoubtedly, it has played and continues to play a special role that divides and divides people. After all, with Russian geography, it is difficult, if not impossible, not just to come to an agreement and start joint actions, but to see each other in order to talk and agree, to decide on an agreed upon one. Of course, in the absence of broad connections, stable contacts and acquaintances, only literature could naturally take on such a role. It was through it that people seemed to agree among themselves about the content, meanings and goals of their actions, life priorities, about what is important and secondary for essential being. At the same time, the writers were not just translators (this role was successfully performed by "secular", salon, fashionable literature), but the creators and demiurges of the emerging consciousness, the true "rulers of thoughts" of the reading public. The revolutionary poems of the members of the "Northern" and "Southern" Decembrist societies told their representatives no less (if not more) than the programs drawn up in the societies.

In fact, such an understanding of the mission of Russian literature is, in our opinion, quite readable in Herzen's texts. Here is how he continues his story in The Development of Revolutionary Ideas, speaking of Chaadaev’s first letter: “... He wants to know what we buy at such a price (at the price of a “bestial state” - S.N., V.F.) than we deserved their position; he analyzes it with an inexorable insight that leads to despair, and, having finished vivisection, turns away in horror, cursing his country in its past, in its present and in its future. Yes, this gloomy voice sounded only to tell Russia that she had never lived like a human being, that she was "only a gap in human consciousness, only an instructive example for Europe." He told Russia that her past was useless, her present was futile, and she had no future.

This is confirmed by the fate of the geniuses of Russian literature. So, Gogol, according to Herzen, who in his early work conveyed his own joyful feeling of folk life, after moving to central Russia, forgets the ingenuous and graceful images created earlier. He takes on the image of the most important enemies of the people - the landowners and officials, while penetrating into the innermost corners of their impure, malicious souls. "Dead Souls" - "a case history written by the master's hand. Gogol's poetry is a cry of horror and shame, which is emitted by a man who has fallen under the influence of a vulgar life, when he suddenly sees his bestial face in the mirror. “Finally, what kind of monster is this called Russia, which needs so many victims and which gives its children only a sad choice to perish morally in an environment hostile to everything human, or to die at the dawn of their lives?”

And if Russian poetry, prose, art and history showed the formation and development of a suffocating environment, customs and power, then no one showed a way out. Nevertheless, disputes about a new life were going on: in particular, the debate between Europeanism and Pan-Slavism was gaining momentum in the country. Behind the first direction were people whose ideas were inseparable from the ideas of development and freedom of each person, his transformation into a person, sovereign not only in relation to the community or class, but to the state and church. The second, on the contrary, was formed by those who were accustomed, hiding behind the words about “humility” as the highest form of Christian virtue, to entrust personal freedom and responsibility to the state-autocratic and church principles, which naturally led to political and spiritual slavery.

Being a "Europeanist", Herzen analyzes in detail the ideological and theoretical views of the Slavophiles and does so clearly and harshly. Here are some of the examples of conclusions of this kind: "... renouncing their own mind and their own knowledge, they rushed under the shadow of the cross of the Greek church"; in Russia, the Eastern Church “blessed and approved all the measures taken against the freedom of the people. She trained the kings in Byzantine despotism, she prescribed blind obedience to the people, even when they were attached to the ground and bent under the yoke of slavery”; “one more century of such despotism as now, and all the good qualities of the Russian people will disappear.” And in conclusion, as a warning or even a sentence to a person caught in a double net of state and church: “Long slavery is not an accidental fact, it, of course, corresponds to some peculiarity of the national character. This feature can be absorbed, defeated by others, but it can also win. If Russia is able to come to terms with the existing order of things, then it does not have the future ahead of us, in which we place our hopes. If she continues to follow the course of St. Petersburg or returns to the Moscow tradition, then she will have no other way but to rush into Europe, like a horde, half barbarian, half depraved, devastate civilized countries and perish in the midst of general destruction.

Russia, for its own good, and for the preservation of Europe, should, in modern terms, be civilized, cultivated. But how to do it, for Herzen of that period of his spiritual development was a question not fully resolved. And the answer he gives at the end of his work “On the Development of Revolutionary Ideas…” about socialism as a “bridge” that will connect the cultured people of Russia, whether they are Westerners or Slavophiles, does not sound concrete, but rather like a sign or symbol of faith. It will acquire content later, and then, that is, at that period, we will turn to it.

Thus, completing a brief appeal to the views of the young Ogarev and Herzen, we can conclude the following. Their views, democratic in essence, in the early period of creativity were clothed in the form of Western liberalism. As for the line represented by Bakunin's revolutionary democratism, it consistently developed into anarchism and outright revolutionaryism.

Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (1814-1876)- known during his lifetime due to his revolutionary activity, and in the twentieth century - thanks to his involvement in the revolutionary (not only Bolshevik, but also world, including Maoist) tradition, he was not only (and not so much) a theorist, but a revolutionary - a practitioner who spent most of his life abroad, in the midst of Western European revolutionary events. Suffice it to say that he was a participant in revolutionary actions in 1848 in Germany and Austria, in 1870 in French Lyon, and then, in 1871, in Paris, in the ranks of the Communards. For participation in the revolution of 1848 - 1849, he was twice sentenced to death by European courts, and in the end, in 1851, the Austrian government was extradited to Russia, tried and exiled to Siberia, from which he fled only in 1861. In a letter written in 1860, shortly before the escape, to A.I. Herzen Bakunin confirms the immutability of his life and theoretical and political views: “You buried me, but I was resurrected, thank God, alive, and not dead, filled with the same passionate love for freedom, for logic, for justice, which was and still is the whole the meaning of my life."

Bakunin carried out a concentrated presentation of his views on philosophical, socio-political and revolutionary practical issues in full in the essay “Federalism, Socialism and Antitheologism”, written in 1867. Such a multifaceted study was necessary in connection with the League of Peace and Freedom, which was established at that time in Geneva at the First World Congress, set itself the goal of transforming all states on the principles of democracy and freedom. In this regard, the formation of the United States of Europe was considered the first task.

Of course, in their present form, the European states could not be consolidated into a single whole, not only because of the huge difference in the strength of each of them, but also because of their monarchical nature, as well as their inherent centralization, existing state bureaucracy and military. The constitutions of some of them testify to the constant disguised call for external or internal aggression. That is, the adherents of the League being created had to make efforts to replace their old organization, based on violence and authoritarianism, with a new one, “having no other basis than the interests, needs and natural inclinations of the population, no other principle than the free federation of individuals into communes, communes in a province, provinces in a nation, finally, these last ones in the United States, first of Europe, and then of the whole world.

The real situation of the peoples of European countries, Bakunin notes, is such that the division into "political" and "working" classes is clearly visible everywhere. The former have ownership of land and capital, while the latter are deprived of these riches. Labor should be "given" what rightfully belongs to it. And this can be done only on the basis of a change in the situation in the sphere of property and capital.

True, the revolutionary makes a reservation, these cardinal measures will lead to different results in relation to urban and rural workers. In comparison with the city dweller, “the farmer is much more prosperous: his nature, not spoiled by the stuffy and often poisoned atmosphere of factories and factories, not disfigured by the abnormal development of one of some abilities to the detriment of others, remains stronger, more whole, but his mind - almost always more backward, clumsy and much less developed than the mind of factory and city workers.

However, if we compare the "potential" of the privileged class and the class of the disadvantaged, then the latter have a number of qualities that cannot be found in the owners. This is "freshness of mind and heart"; a more correct "sense of justice" than "the justice of legal advisers and codes"; sympathy for other unfortunates; “common sense, not corrupted by the sophisms of doctrinaire science and the deceptions of politics,” etc. The people, Bakunin believes, have already understood that the first condition for its “humanization” is a radical reform of economic conditions, carried out by “radical transformation of the modern structure of society,” and from this the necessity of revolution and socialism follows logically.

However, socialism does not automatically follow from the revolution. History shows that socialist ideas first arise in the theoretical sphere, and republicanism follows from revolutionary practice. The socialism that arose in theory existed in two forms: in the form of doctrinaire and revolutionary socialism. An example of doctrinaire socialism is the teachings of Saint-Simon and Fourier, and revolutionary socialism is the concept of Kaabe and Louis Blanc. The merit of these two socialist systems lies in the fact that, firstly, they severely criticized the modern structure of society and, secondly, they attacked Christianity so fiercely that they shook its dogmas and restored the rights of man with his inherent passions.

At the same time, their mistake was the belief that a change in the state of affairs could be achieved by “power of persuasion” directed against the rich, and that the socialist order would arise not as a result of the activity of the masses, but as the affirmation of a theoretical doctrine on earth. Both systems "had a common passion for regulation", "were obsessed with a passion to teach and arrange the future" and therefore both were authoritarian.

Republicanism, unlike socialism, naturally followed from revolutionary practice, primarily from the practice of the Great French Revolution. At the same time, a political republican had to put and put the interests of his fatherland above not only himself, but also international justice, and therefore sooner or later turned out to be a conqueror. For a Republican, freedom is an empty phrase. It is only a free choice to be a voluntary slave of the state, and therefore it inevitably leads to despotism.

The socialist, on the other hand, puts justice (equality) above all else, through which he serves the whole society, and not just the state. Therefore, he is "moderately patriotic, but always humane."

And, finally, the final, third part of the work "Federalism, socialism and anti-theologism" is devoted to the manifestation of its author's views on the religious issue. Faith for M.A. Bakunin is synonymous with enslavement. “... Anyone who wants to worship God must give up the freedom and dignity of man.

God exists, so man is a slave.

Religion, according to Bakunin, demoralizes the people. In his list of evils arising from religion is the "murder" of reason, labor energy, productive power, a sense of justice, humanity itself. Religion is based on blood and lives on blood.

In a certain sense, the logical continuation of the book "Federalism, socialism and anti-theologism" was the work "Science and the people" published in Geneva in 1868. This work is interesting, among other things, because it contains an address to A.I. Goncharov to the problem of the heart and mind. So, Bakunin has an interpretation of the mind as such. Here she is. Ascertaining the “bifurcation” of reality into the “physical” and “spiritual” worlds inherited by contemporary thinkers from the past, Bakunin declares that this has been overcome. The basis for this, according to his vision, was the knowledge of the "physiological origin of all our mental activity." In this regard, from now on, the world should be understood only as a single one, and science should be interpreted as the only means of its knowledge. Metaphysics and abstract mental constructions should be discarded, including the concept of God, as well as everything connected with him. He writes: “... In order to finally free a person, it is necessary to put an end to his internal bifurcation - it is necessary to expel God not only from science, but also from life itself; not only the positive knowledge and rational thought of man, but also his imagination and feeling must be delivered from the ghosts of heaven. Whoever believes in God is ... doomed to inevitable and hopeless slavery.

In the history of philosophy, according to Bakunin, the decisive blow to the erroneous views of I. Kant, who recognized the effectiveness of metaphysics, was dealt by L. Feuerbach. It was he, and after him the founders of the "new school" - Buechner, Focht, Moleschott, who became all over the world, including Russia, "the apostles of revolutionary science", which destroyed all the barriers of religion and metaphysics and opened the way for people to freedom. Humanity's past recognition of God, the immortality of the soul, and, following this, a God-appointed state and kings with their despotism and police power, was discarded. Thus, "destroying among the people faith in the heavenly world, they are preparing the freedom of the earthly.

But who will be the subject of knowledge and public education? Since the time of Catherine II, the idea of creating public schools has been circulating in Russia. Even some nobles supported her. But is such an action on the part of the government possible and permissible? “Catherine II, without a doubt, the smartest of the descendants of Peter, wrote to one of her governors, who, believing her usual phrases about the need for public education, presented her with a project to establish schools for the people: “Fool! All these phrases are suitable for fooling Western talkers; you should know that as soon as our people become literate, neither you nor I will remain in our places» .

Since this position of the government has been preserved to this day, Bakunin sums up, “the way of liberating the people through science is also blocked for us; we are therefore left with only one path, the path of revolution. Let our people be freed first, and when they are free, they themselves will be willing and able to learn everything. Our business is to prepare a nationwide uprising by means of propaganda.”

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