Another socio-literary movement of the mid-60s, which removed the extremes of Westerners and Slavophiles, was the so-called “soilism”. Its spiritual leader was F. M. Dostoevsky, who published two magazines during these years - “Time” (1861-1863) and “Epoch” (1864-1865). Dostoevsky's associates in these magazines were literary critics Apollo Aleksandrovich Grigoriev and Nikolai Nikolaevich Strakhov.
Pochvenniki to some extent inherited the view of Russian national character, expressed by Belinsky in 1846. Belinsky wrote: “Russia has nothing to compare with the old states of Europe, whose history was diametrically opposed to ours and has long since given flower and fruit... It is known that the French, English, and Germans are so national, each in their own way, that they are unable to understand each other , while a Russian has equal access to both the sociality of a Frenchman and Practical activities the Englishman, and the vague philosophy of the German."
Soil scientists spoke about “all-humanity” as characteristic feature Russian national consciousness, which was most deeply inherited in our literature by A. S. Pushkin. “This thought was expressed by Pushkin not only as an indication, teaching or theory, not as a dream or prophecy, but fulfilled in reality, contained eternally in brilliant creatures him and proven by him,” wrote Dostoevsky. “He is a man ancient world, he is a German, he is an Englishman, deeply aware of his genius, the melancholy of his aspirations (“A Feast in the Time of Plague”), he is also a poet of the East. He told and declared to all these peoples that the Russian genius knows them, understood them, came into contact with them like a native, that he can reincarnate in them in its entirety, that only one Only the Russian spirit has been given universality, given the purpose in the future to comprehend and unite all the diversity of nationalities and remove all their contradictions."
Like the Slavophiles, the pochvenniki believed that “Russian society must unite with the people’s soil and absorb the people’s element.” But, unlike the Slavophiles, (*10) they did not deny positive role reforms of Peter I and the “Europeanized” Russian intelligentsia, called upon to bring education and culture to the people, but only on the basis of folk moral ideals. A. S. Pushkin was precisely such a Russian European in the eyes of the soil people.
According to A. Grigoriev, Pushkin is “the first and full representative” of “our social and moral sympathies.” “In Pushkin, for a long time, if not forever, our entire spiritual process, our “volume and measure,” was completed, outlined in a broad outline: all subsequent development of Russian literature is a deepening and artistic understanding of those elements that were reflected in Pushkin. The most organic expression of Pushkin's principles in modern literature was A. N. Ostrovsky. "Ostrovsky's new word is the oldest word - nationality." "Ostrovsky is as little an accuser as he is a little idealizer. Let him be what he is - great national poet, the first and only exponent national essence in its diverse manifestations..."
N. N. Strakhov was the only deep interpreter of L. N. Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” in the history of Russian criticism of the second half of the 19th century. It is no coincidence that he called his work “a critical poem in four songs.” Leo Tolstoy himself, who considered Strakhov his friend, said: “One of the blessings for which I am grateful to fate is that there is N.N. Strakhov.”
Yu.V. Lebedev
On the originality of Russian literary criticism.
“As long as our poetry is alive and well, until then there is no reason to doubt the deep health of the Russian people,” wrote critic N. N. Strakhov, and his like-minded person Apollo Grigoriev considered Russian literature “the only focus of all our highest interests.” V. G. Belinsky bequeathed to his friends to place in his coffin an issue of the magazine "Domestic Notes", and the classic of Russian satire M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin in farewell letter to his son he said: “Love above all native literature and prefer the title of writer to any other."
According to N.G. Chernyshevsky, our literature was elevated to the dignity of a national cause that united the most viable forces of Russian society. In the minds of the 19th century reader, literature was not only “fine literature”, but also the basis of the spiritual existence of the nation. The Russian writer treated his work in a special way: for him it was not a profession, but a ministry. Chernyshevsky called literature a “textbook of life,” and Leo Tolstoy was subsequently surprised that these words did not belong to him, but to his ideological opponent.
Artistic development of life in Russian classical literature never turned into strictly aesthetic activity, it always pursued a living spiritual and practical goal. “The word was perceived not as an empty sound, but as a deed - almost as “religiously” as the ancient Karelian singer Veinemeinen, who “made a boat with singing.” Gogol also harbored this belief in the miraculous power of the word, dreaming of creating such a book that itself, by the power of the only and indisputably true thoughts expressed in it, should transform Russia,” notes modern literary critic G. D. Gachev.
Belief in the effective, world-transforming power of the artistic word also determined the features of Russian literary criticism. From literary problems it always rose to social problems that were directly related to the fate of the country, the people, the nation. The Russian critic did not limit himself to discussions about artistic form, about the skill of a writer. Analyzing literary work, he addressed the questions that life posed to the writer and reader. The focus of criticism on a wide range of readers made it very popular: the authority of the critic in Russia was great and his articles were perceived as original works that enjoyed success on a par with literature.
Russian criticism of the second half of the 19th century developed more dramatically. The social life of the country at this time became unusually complicated, many political trends arose that argued with each other. The picture turned out to be colorful and multi-layered literary process. Therefore, criticism has become more diverse compared to the era of the 30s and 40s, when all the diversity critical assessments was covered by the authoritative word of Belinsky. Like Pushkin in literature, Belinsky was a kind of universalist in criticism: he combined sociological, aesthetic, and stylistic approaches in evaluating works, covering the literary movement as a whole with a single gaze.
In the second half of the 19th century, Belinsky’s critical universalism turned out to be unique. Critical thought specialized in certain areas and schools. Even Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, the most versatile critics with a broad social outlook, could no longer claim not only to embrace the literary movement in its entirety, but also to provide a holistic interpretation separate work. Sociological approaches predominated in their work. Literary development in general, and the place of an individual work in it was now revealed by the entire set of critical movements and schools. Apollo Grigoriev, for example, arguing with Dobrolyubov’s assessments of A. N. Ostrovsky, noticed facets in the playwright’s work that eluded Dobrolyubov. A critical understanding of the works of Turgenev or Leo Tolstoy cannot be reduced to the assessments of Dobrolyubov or Chernyshevsky. N. N. Strakhov’s works on “Fathers and Sons” and “War and Peace” significantly deepen and clarify them. The depth of understanding of I. A. Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov” is not exhausted by Dobrolyubov’s classic article “What is Oblomovism?”: A. V. Druzhinin introduces significant clarifications into the understanding of Oblomov’s character.
The main stages of the social struggle of the 60s.
The diversity of literary criticism in the second half of the 19th century was associated with growing social struggle. Since 1855 in public life are identified, and by 1859 two historical forces- revolutionary democracy and liberalism. The voice of the "peasant democrats", gaining strength on the pages of Nekrasov's magazine Sovremennik, begins to determine public opinion in the country.
The social movement of the 60s went through three stages in its development: from 1855 to 1858; from 1859 to 1861; from 1862 to 1869. At the first stage there is a demarcation of social forces, at the second there is an intense struggle between them, and at the third there is a sharp decline in the movement, ending with the onset of government reaction.
Liberal-Western Party. Russian liberals of the 60s advocated the art of “reforms without revolutions” and pinned their hopes on social changes “from above.” But in their circles, disagreements arise between Westerners and Slavophiles about the paths of the emerging reforms. Westerners start counting down historical development from the reforms of Peter I, whom Belinsky called “the father of the new Russia.” They are skeptical about pre-Petrine history. But, denying Russia the right to “pre-Petrine” historical legend, Westerners deduce from this fact a paradoxical idea about our great advantage: a Russian person, free from the burden of historical traditions, may turn out to be “more progressive” than any European due to his “innovativeness.” The land, which does not conceal any of its own seeds, can be plowed boldly and deeply, and in case of failures, in the words of the Slavophile A.S. Khomyakov, “you can calm your conscience with the thought that no matter what you do, you will not make it worse than before.” “Why is it worse?” Westerners objected. “A young nation can easily borrow the latest and most advanced in science and practice Western Europe and, having transplanted it onto Russian soil, make a dizzying leap forward.”
Mikhail Nikiforovich Katkov, on the pages of the liberal magazine “Russian Messenger”, founded by him in 1856 in Moscow, promotes the English ways of social and economic reforms: the liberation of peasants with land when it is purchased by the government, the provision of local and state government rights to the nobility following the example of the English lords.
Liberal Slavophile Party. The Slavophiles also denied the “unaccountable worship of past forms (*6) of our antiquity.” But they considered borrowing possible only if they were grafted onto the original historical root. If Westerners argued that the difference between the enlightenment of Europe and Russia existed only in degree, and not in character, then the Slavophiles believed that Russia, already in the first centuries of its history, with the adoption of Christianity, was educated no less than the West, but “the spirit and fundamental principles "Russian education differed significantly from Western European education.
Ivan Vasilyevich Kireevsky in his article “On the Nature of the Enlightenment of Europe and its Relation to the Education of Russia” highlighted three significant features of these differences: 1) Russia and the West have learned different types ancient culture, 2) Orthodoxy had pronounced distinctive features that distinguished it from Catholicism, 3) they were different historical conditions, in which Western European and Russian statehood took shape.
Western Europe inherited ancient Roman education, which differed from ancient Greek formal rationality, admiration for the letter of legal law and disdain for the traditions of “common law,” which was based not on external legal decrees, but on traditions and habits.
Roman culture left its mark on Western European Christianity. The West sought to subordinate faith to the logical arguments of reason. The predominance of rational principles in Christianity led the Catholic Church first to the Reformation, and then to the complete triumph of self-deified reason. This liberation of reason from faith was completed in German classical philosophy and led to the creation of atheistic teachings.
Finally, the statehood of Western Europe arose as a result of the conquest of the indigenous inhabitants of the former Roman Empire by German tribes. Started with violence European states should have developed periodically revolutionary upheavals.
In Russia, many things turned out differently. She received a cultural inoculation not of formally rational Roman education, but of a more harmonious and integral Greek education. The fathers of the Eastern Church never fell into abstract rationality and cared primarily about the “correctness of the internal state of the thinking spirit.” What was in the foreground for them was not intelligence, not rationality, but the highest unity of the believing spirit.
Slavophiles considered Russian statehood to be unique. Since there were no two warring tribes in Russia - the conquerors and the conquered, public relations it was based not only on legislative and legal acts that constrained people’s life, indifferent to the internal content human connections. Our laws were more internal than external character. “The sanctity of tradition” was preferred to the legal formula, morality to external benefit.
The Church has never tried to usurp secular power and replace the state with itself, as happened more than once in papal Rome. The basis of the original Russian organization was the communal structure, the grain of which was the peasant world: small rural communities merged into broader regional associations, from which the consent of the entire Russian land, headed by the Grand Duke, arose.
Peter's reform, which subordinated the church to the state, abruptly broke the natural course of Russian history.
In the Europeanization of Russia, the Slavophiles saw a threat to the very essence of Russian national existence. Therefore, they had a negative attitude towards Peter’s reforms and government bureaucracy, and were active opponents of serfdom. They stood up for freedom of speech, for the resolution of state issues at the Zemsky Sobor, consisting of representatives of all classes of Russian society. They objected to the introduction of forms of bourgeois parliamentary democracy in Russia, considering it necessary to preserve the autocracy, reformed in the spirit of the ideals of Russian “conciliarity.” The autocracy must take the path of voluntary cooperation with the “land”, and in its decisions rely on popular opinion, periodically convening the Zemsky Sobor. The sovereign is called upon to listen to the point of view of all classes, but to make the final decision alone, in accordance with the Christian spirit of goodness and truth. Not democracy with its voting and mechanical victory of the majority over the minority, but consent, leading to unanimous, “conciliar” submission to the sovereign will, which should be free from class limitations and serve the highest Christian values.
The literary-critical program of the Slavophiles was organically connected with their social views. This program was proclaimed by the “Russian Conversation” they published in Moscow: “The highest subject and task folk word consists not in saying what is bad about a certain people, what they are sick with and what they do not have, but in the poetic recreation of what is best given to them for their historical destiny.”
Slavophiles did not accept social-analytical principles in Russian prose and poetry; refined psychologism was alien to them, in which they saw the disease of the modern personality, “Europeanized,” cut off from the people’s soil, from the traditions of national culture. It is precisely this painful manner of “showing off unnecessary details” that K. S. Aksakov finds in early works L. N. Tolstoy with his “dialectics of the soul”, in the stories of I. S. Turgenev about the “superfluous man”.
Literary-critical activity of Westerners.
Unlike the Slavophiles, who advocate for the social content of art in the spirit of their “Russian views,” Western liberals represented by P. V. Annenkov and A. V. Druzhinin defend traditions " pure art", addressed to "eternal" questions, shunned by the topic of the day and faithful to the "absolute laws of artistry."
Alexander Vasilyevich Druzhinin in the article “Criticism of the Gogol period of Russian literature and our relationship to it” formulated two theoretical ideas about art: he called one “didactic” and the other “artistic”. Didactic poets "want to directly influence modern life, modern morals and modern man. They want to sing, teaching, and often achieve their goal, but their song, while gaining in an instructive sense, cannot but lose much in relation to eternal art."
Genuine art has nothing to do with teaching. “Firmly believing that the interests of the moment are fleeting, that humanity, constantly changing, does not change only in the ideas of eternal beauty, goodness and truth,” the poet-artist “sees his eternal anchor in selfless service to these ideas... He depicts people as He sees them, without ordering them to correct themselves, he does not give lessons to society, or if he gives them, he gives them unconsciously. He lives in the midst of his sublime world and descends to earth, as the Olympians once descended upon it, firmly remembering what he has. your home on high Olympus."
The indisputable advantage of liberal-Western criticism was close attention to the specifics of literature, to the difference between its artistic language and the language of science, journalism, and criticism. Also characteristic is an interest in the enduring and eternal in the works of classical Russian literature, in what determines their unfading (*9) life in time. But at the same time, attempts to distract the writer from the “everyday unrest” of our time, to muffle the author’s subjectivity, and distrust of works with a pronounced social orientation testified to liberal moderation and limitations public views these critics.
Social program and literary-critical activity of the Pochvenniks.
Another socio-literary movement of the mid-60s, which removed the extremes of Westerners and Slavophiles, was the so-called “soilism”. Its spiritual leader was F. M. Dostoevsky, who published two magazines during these years - “Time” (1861-1863) and “Epoch” (1864-1865). Dostoevsky's associates in these magazines were literary critics Apollo Aleksandrovich Grigoriev and Nikolai Nikolaevich Strakhov.
The Pochvenniki to some extent inherited the view of the Russian national character expressed by Belinsky in 1846. Belinsky wrote: “Russia has nothing to compare with the old states of Europe, whose history went diametrically opposite to ours and has long since given flower and fruit... It is known that the French, English, and Germans are so national, each in their own way, that they are not able to understand each other , while the sociality of a Frenchman, the practical activity of an Englishman, and the vague philosophy of a German are equally accessible to a Russian.”
The Pochvenniks spoke of “all-humanity” as a characteristic feature of the Russian national consciousness, which was most deeply inherited in our literature by A. S. Pushkin. “This thought was expressed by Pushkin not only as an indication, teaching or theory, not as a dream or prophecy, but fulfilled in reality, contained forever in his brilliant creations and proven by him,” wrote Dostoevsky. “He is a man of ancient times.” world, he is a German, he is an Englishman, deeply aware of his genius, the melancholy of his aspiration ("A Feast in the Time of Plague"), he and the poet of the East He said and declared to all these peoples that the Russian genius knows them, understood them, touched them. with them as a native, that he can be reincarnated in them in its entirety, that only the Russian spirit has been given universality, given the purpose in the future to comprehend and unite all the diversity of nationalities and remove all their contradictions."
Like the Slavophiles, the pochvenniki believed that “Russian society must unite with the people’s soil and absorb the people’s element.” But, unlike the Slavophiles, (*10) they did not deny the positive role of the reforms of Peter I and the “Europeanized” Russian intelligentsia, called upon to bring enlightenment and culture to the people, but only on the basis of popular moral ideals. A. S. Pushkin was precisely such a Russian European in the eyes of the soil people.
According to A. Grigoriev, Pushkin is “the first and full representative” of “our social and moral sympathies.” “In Pushkin, for a long time, if not forever, our entire spiritual process, our “volume and measure,” was completed, outlined in a broad outline: all subsequent development of Russian literature is a deepening and artistic understanding of those elements that were reflected in Pushkin. The most organic expression of Pushkin's principles in modern literature was A. N. Ostrovsky. "Ostrovsky's new word is the oldest word - nationality." “Ostrovsky is as little an accuser as he is a little idealizer. Let us leave him to be what he is - a great folk poet, the first and only exponent of the people’s essence in its diverse manifestations...”
N. N. Strakhov was the only deep interpreter of L. N. Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” in the history of Russian criticism of the second half of the 19th century. It is no coincidence that he called his work “a critical poem in four songs.” Leo Tolstoy himself, who considered Strakhov his friend, said: “One of the blessings for which I am grateful to fate is that there is N.N. Strakhov.”
Literary-critical activity of revolutionary democrats
The social, social-critical pathos of the articles of the late Belinsky with his socialist beliefs was picked up and developed in the sixties by the revolutionary democratic critics Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky and Nikolai Aleksandrovich Dobrolyubov.
By 1859, when the government program and views of the liberal parties became clearer, when it became obvious that reform “from above” in any of its variants would be half-hearted, the democratic revolutionaries moved from a shaky alliance with liberalism to a severance of relations and an uncompromising fight against it. The literary-critical activity of N. A. Dobrolyubov falls on this second stage of the social movement of the 60s. He devotes a special satirical section of the Sovremennik magazine called “Whistle” to denouncing liberals. Here Dobrolyubov acts not only as a critic, but also as a satirical poet.
Criticism of liberalism then alerted A. I. Herzen, (*11) who, being in exile, unlike Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, continued to hope for reforms “from above” and overestimated the radicalism of liberals until 1863.
However, Herzen's warnings did not stop the revolutionary democrats of Sovremennik. Beginning in 1859, they began to pursue the idea of a peasant revolution in their articles. They considered the peasant community to be the core of the future socialist world order. Unlike the Slavophiles, Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov believed that communal ownership of land rested not on Christian, but on the revolutionary-liberation, socialist instincts of the Russian peasant.
Dobrolyubov became the founder of the original critical method. He saw that the majority of Russian writers do not share the revolutionary-democratic way of thinking and do not pronounce judgment on life from such radical positions. Dobrolyubov saw the task of his criticism as completing in his own way the work begun by the writer and formulating this verdict, based on real events and artistic images works. Dobrolyubov called his method of understanding the writer’s work “real criticism.”
Real criticism “examines whether such a person is possible and real; having found that it is true to reality, it moves on to its own considerations about the reasons that gave rise to it, etc. If these reasons are indicated in the work of the author being analyzed, criticism uses them and thanks the author; if not, does not pester him with a knife to his throat - how, they say, did he dare to draw such a face without explaining the reasons for its existence? In this case, the critic takes the initiative into his own hands: he explains the reasons that gave rise to this or that phenomenon from a revolutionary-democratic position and then pronounces a verdict on it.
Dobrolyubov positively evaluates, for example, Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov,” although the author “does not and, apparently, does not want to give any conclusions.” It is enough that he “presents you with a living image and vouches only for its resemblance to reality.” For Dobrolyubov, such authorial objectivity is quite acceptable and even desirable, since he takes upon himself the explanation and the verdict.
Real criticism often led Dobrolyubov to a peculiar reinterpretation of the writer’s artistic images in a revolutionary-democratic manner. It turned out that the analysis of the work, which developed into comprehension acute problems modernity, led Dobrolyubov to such radical conclusions that the author himself had never expected. On this basis, as we will see later, Turgenev’s decisive break with the Sovremennik magazine occurred when Dobrolyubov’s article about the novel “On the Eve” was published in it.
In Dobrolyubov’s articles, a young, strong nature comes to life talented critic, who sincerely believes in the people, in whom he sees the embodiment of all his highest moral ideals, with whom he connects the only hope for the revival of society. “His passion is deep and persistent, and obstacles do not frighten him when they need to be overcome to achieve something passionately desired and deeply conceived,” writes Dobrolyubov about the Russian peasant in the article “Traits for Characterizing the Russian Common People.” All the critic’s activities were aimed at the struggle for the creation of a “party of the people in literature.” He devoted four years of tireless work to this struggle, writing nine volumes of essays in such a short time. Dobrolyubov literally burned himself out in his selfless journal work, which undermined his health. He died at the age of 25 on November 17, 1861. Nekrasov said soulfully about the premature death of his young friend:
But your hour struck too early
And the prophetic pen fell from his hands.
What a lamp of reason has gone out!
What heart has stopped beating!
The decline of the social movement of the 60s. Disputes between Sovremennik and Russian Word.
At the end of the 60s, dramatic changes took place in Russian social life and critical thought. The manifesto of February 19, 1861 on the liberation of the peasants not only did not soften, but further aggravated the contradictions. In response to the rise of the revolutionary democratic movement, the government launched an open attack on progressive thought: Chernyshevsky and D.I. Pisarev were arrested, and the publication of the Sovremennik magazine was suspended for eight months.
The situation is aggravated by a split within the revolutionary democratic movement, the main reason for which was disagreement in the assessment of the revolutionary socialist capabilities of the peasantry. Activists of the "Russian Word" Dmitry Ivanovich Pisarev and Varfolomey Aleksandrovich Zaitsev sharply criticized Sovremennik for (*13) its alleged idealization of the peasantry, for an exaggerated idea of the revolutionary instincts of the Russian peasant.
Unlike Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky, Pisarev argued that the Russian peasant is not ready for a conscious struggle for freedom, that for the most part he is dark and downtrodden. Pisarev considered the revolutionary force of modern times to be the “mental proletariat,” the common revolutionaries who bring natural science knowledge to the people. This knowledge not only destroys the foundations official ideology(Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality), but also open the people’s eyes to the natural needs of human nature, which are based on the instinct of “social solidarity”. Therefore, enlightening the people with natural sciences can lead society to socialism not only by a revolutionary (“mechanical”), but also by an evolutionary (“chemical”) path.
In order for this “chemical” transition to take place faster and more efficiently, Pisarev proposed that Russian democracy be guided by the “principle of economy of force.” The “mental proletariat” must concentrate all its energy on destroying the spiritual foundations of the existing society through the propaganda of natural sciences among the people. In the name of so-understood “spiritual liberation,” Pisarev, like Turgenev’s hero Yevgeny Bazarov, proposed abandoning art. He really believed that “a decent chemist is twenty times more useful than any poet,” and recognized art only to the extent that it participates in the propaganda of natural science and destroys the foundations of the existing system.
In the article “Bazarov” he glorified the triumphant nihilist, and in the article “Motives of Russian Drama” he “crushed” the heroine of A. N. Ostrovsky’s drama “The Thunderstorm”, erected on a pedestal by Dobrolyubov. Destroying the idols of the “old” society, Pisarev published the infamous anti-Pushkin articles and the work “Destruction of Aesthetics.” The fundamental differences that emerged during the polemics between Sovremennik and Russian Word weakened the revolutionary camp and were a symptom of the decline of the social movement.
The social upsurge of the 70s.
By the beginning of the 70s, the first signs of a new social upsurge associated with the activities of the revolutionary populists were visible in Russia. The second generation of revolutionary democrats, who made a heroic attempt to rouse the peasants to (*14) revolution by “going to the people,” had their own ideologists who, in new historical conditions, developed the ideas of Herzen, Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov. “Faith in a special way of life, in the communal system of Russian life; hence faith in the possibility of a peasant socialist revolution - this is what animated them, raised tens and hundreds of people to heroic struggle against the government,” V. I. Lenin wrote about the populists of the seventies . This faith, to one degree or another, permeated all the works of the leaders and mentors of the new movement - P. L. Lavrov, N. K. Mikhailovsky, M. A. Bakunin, P. N. Tkachev.
The mass “going to the people” ended in 1874 with the arrest of several thousand people and the subsequent trials of 193 and 50. In 1879, at a congress in Voronezh, the populist organization "Land and Freedom" split: "politicians" who shared Tkachev's ideas organized their own party "People's Will", proclaiming the main goal of the movement to be a political revolution and terrorist forms of struggle against the government. In the summer of 1880, Narodnaya Volya organized an explosion in the Winter Palace, and Alexander II miraculously escaped death. This event causes shock and confusion in the government: it decides to make concessions by appointing the liberal Loris-Melikov as plenipotentiary ruler and appealing to the liberal public of the country for support. In response, the sovereign receives notes from Russian liberals, which propose to immediately convene an independent assembly of representatives of zemstvos to participate in governing the country “with the aim of developing guarantees and individual rights, freedom of thought and speech.” It seemed that Russia was on the verge of accepting parliamentary form board. But on March 1, 1881, an irreparable mistake was made. After multiple assassination attempts, the Narodnaya Volya killed Alexander II, and after this a government reaction began in the country.
Conservative ideology of the 80s.
These years in the history of the Russian public are characterized by the flourishing of conservative ideology. It was defended, in particular, by Konstantin Nikolaevich Leontiev in the books “East, Russia and the Slavs” and “Our “New Christians” F. M. Dostoevsky and Count Leo Tolstoy.” Leontiev believes that the culture of each civilization goes through three stages of development: 1) primary simplicity, 2) blossoming complexity, 3) secondary mixed simplification. Leontyev considers the main sign of decline and entry into the third stage to be the spread of liberal and socialist ideas with their cult (*15) of equality and general prosperity. Leontyev contrasted liberalism and socialism with “Byzantism” - strong monarchical power and strict ecclesiasticalism.
Leontyev strongly criticized the religious and ethical views of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. He argued that both writers were influenced by the ideas of socialism, that they turned Christianity into a spiritual phenomenon, derived from earthly human feelings of brotherhood and love. Genuine Christianity, according to Leontyev, is mystical, tragic and terrible for a person, for it stands on the other side of earthly life and evaluates it as a life full of suffering and torment.
Leontyev is a consistent and principled opponent of the very idea of progress, which, according to his teaching, brings one or another people closer to mixed simplification and death. To stop, delay progress and freeze Russia - this idea of Leontyev suited the conservative policy of Alexander III.
Russian liberal populism of the 80-90s.
In the era of the 80s, revolutionary populism was experiencing a deep crisis. The revolutionary idea is being replaced by the “theory of small affairs,” which in the 90s will take shape in the program of “state socialism.” The government's transition to the side of peasant interests can peacefully lead the people to socialism. Peasant community and artel, handicrafts with the patronage of zemstvos, active cultural assistance from the intelligentsia and the government can withstand the onslaught of capitalism. At the dawn of the 20th century, the “theory of small affairs” quite successfully developed into a powerful cooperative movement.
Religious and philosophical thought of the 80-90s. The time of deep disappointment in political and revolutionary forms of struggle against social evil made Tolstoy’s preaching of moral self-improvement extremely relevant. It was during this period that the religious and ethical program for the renewal of life in the work of the great writer finally took shape and Tolstoyism became one of the popular social movements.
In the 80-90s, the teachings of the religious thinker Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov began to gain fame. At the heart of his “Philosophy of the Common Cause” is the idea, grandiose in its audacity, of the great calling of man to completely master the secrets of life, defeat death and achieve god-like power and control over the blind forces of nature. Mankind, according to Fedorov, through its own (*16) efforts can transform the entire bodily composition of a person, making him immortal, resurrect all the dead and at the same time achieve control of “solar and other stellar systems.” “Born from the tiny earth, the viewer of immeasurable space, the viewer of the worlds of this space must become their inhabitant and ruler.”
In the 80s, along with the democratic ideology of the “common cause”, along with V. S. Solovyov’s “Readings on God-Humanity” and “The Justification of Good,” the first sprouts of the philosophy and aesthetics of the future Russian decadence appeared. N.M. Minsky’s book “In the Light of Conscience” is published, in which the author preaches extreme individualism. The influence of Nietzschean ideas is increasing, Max Stirner is being pulled out of oblivion and becoming almost an idol with his book “The One and His Property,” in which outright egoism was proclaimed the alpha and omega of modernity...
Questions and assignments: What explains the diversity of trends in Russian criticism of the second half of the 19th century? What are the features of Russian criticism and how are they related to the specifics of our literature? What did Westerners and Slavophiles see as the weaknesses and advantages of Russian historical development? What, in your opinion, are the strengths and weak sides public programs of Westerners and Slavophiles? How does the program of the Pochvenniks differ from the Westernizing and Slavophile ones? How did the soil scientists determine the significance of Pushkin in the history of new Russian literature? Describe the principles " real criticism"Dobrolyubova. What is the uniqueness of the social and literary-critical views of D.I. Pisarev? Give a description of the social and intellectual movement in Russia in the 80s - 90s
Artist. Such complete coincidence with its time in its “adequate implementation” is evidence of the scale and strength of Repin’s talent (see: Sarabyanov D.V. Repin and Russian painting of the second half of the 19th century // From the history of Russian art of the second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries. Collection of articles of the Research Institute, Moscow, 1978, pp. 10–16). Within the walls of the Academy, from the moment of its foundation, the historical genre was the most important, under which...
People fighting the elements, sea battles; A.O. Orlovsky. The theoretical foundations of Romanticism were formed by F. and A. Schlegel and F. Schelling. Painting from the era of the Wanderers. The influence of the social environment on the work and creative trends of Russian artists in the second half of the 19th century. The conscious turn of new Russian painting towards democratic realism, nationality, and modernity was outlined in...
Another socio-literary movement of the mid-60s, which removed the extremes of Westerners and Slavophiles, was the so-called “soilism”. Its spiritual leader was F. M. Dostoevsky, who published two magazines during these years - “Time” (1861-1863) and “Epoch” (1864-1865). Dostoevsky's associates in these magazines were literary critics Apollo Aleksandrovich Grigoriev and Nikolai Nikolaevich Strakhov. The Pochvenniki to some extent inherited the view of the Russian national character expressed by Belinsky in 1846. Belinsky wrote: “Russia has nothing to compare with the old states of Europe, whose history went diametrically opposite to ours and has long since given flower and fruit... It is known that the French, English, and Germans are so national, each in their own way, that they are not able to understand each other , while the sociality of a Frenchman, the practical activity of an Englishman, and the vague philosophy of a German are equally accessible to a Russian.”
The Pochvenniks spoke of “all-humanity” as a characteristic feature of the Russian national consciousness, which was most deeply inherited in our literature by A. S. Pushkin. “This thought was expressed by Pushkin not only as an indication, teaching or theory, not as a dream or prophecy, but fulfilled in reality, contained forever in his brilliant creations and proven by him,” wrote Dostoevsky. “He is a man of ancient times.” world, he is a German, he is an Englishman, deeply aware of his genius, the melancholy of his aspiration ("A Feast in the Time of Plague"), he and the poet of the East He said and declared to all these peoples that the Russian genius knows them, understood them, touched them. with them as a native, that he can be reincarnated in them in its entirety, that only the Russian spirit has been given universality, given the purpose in the future to comprehend and unite all the diversity of nationalities and remove all their contradictions."
Like the Slavophiles, the pochvenniki believed that “Russian society must unite with the people’s soil and absorb the people’s element.” But, unlike the Slavophiles, (*10) they did not deny the positive role of the reforms of Peter I and the “Europeanized” Russian intelligentsia, called upon to bring enlightenment and culture to the people, but only on the basis of popular moral ideals. A. S. Pushkin was precisely such a Russian European in the eyes of the soil people.
According to A. Grigoriev, Pushkin is “the first and full representative” of “our social and moral sympathies.” “In Pushkin, for a long time, if not forever, our entire spiritual process, our “volume and measure,” was completed, outlined in a broad outline: all subsequent development of Russian literature is a deepening and artistic understanding of those elements that were reflected in Pushkin. The most organic expression of Pushkin's principles in modern literature was A. N. Ostrovsky. "Ostrovsky's new word is the oldest word - nationality." “Ostrovsky is as little an accuser as he is a little idealizer. Let us leave him to be what he is - a great folk poet, the first and only exponent of the people’s essence in its diverse manifestations...”
N. N. Strakhov was the only deep interpreter of L. N. Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” in the history of Russian criticism of the second half of the 19th century. It is no coincidence that he called his work “a critical poem in four songs.” Leo Tolstoy himself, who considered Strakhov his friend, said: “One of the blessings for which I am grateful to fate is that there is N.N. Strakhov.”
Soil science- a current of Russian social thought, akin to Slavophilism, opposite to Westernism. Originated in the 1860s. Adherents are called pochvenniks.
The Pochvenniki recognized the salvation of all humanity as the special mission of the Russian people, and preached the idea of bringing the “educated society” closer to the people (“national soil”) on a religious and ethical basis.
The term “Soilism” arose on the basis of the journalism of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky with its characteristic calls to return to “one’s own soil”, to popular, national principles. Genetically, Pochvennichestvo goes back to the direction of the “young editorial staff” of the magazine “Moskvityanin”, which existed in 1850-1856, and was ideologically related to the Slavophiles (including their moral orientation towards Russian peasantry); At the same time, representatives of this trend recognized the positive principles in Westernism. Pochvennichestvo opposed the feudal nobility and bureaucracy, called for “the merging of education and its representatives with the people” and saw this as the key to progress in Russia. The soil workers spoke out for the development of industry, trade, and freedom of the individual and press. Taking " European culture“, they simultaneously denounced the “rotten West” - its bourgeoisness and lack of spirituality, rejected revolutionary, socialist ideas and materialism, contrasting them with Christian ideals; polemicized with the Sovremennik magazine.
In the 1870s, the features of pochvennichestvo appeared in the philosophical works of Nikolai Yakovlevich Danilevsky and the “Diary of a Writer” by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
In the second half of the twentieth century, it was revived in “village prose” and publications on historical and patriotic topics. An article by Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev, then head of the department, was directed against them in 1972. The ideological department of the CPSU Central Committee, with crushing criticism from the standpoint of orthodox Marxism-Leninism.
F. Dostoevsky “A series of articles on Russian literature”
N. Strakhov “A few belated words”
20. Neo-Slavophile criticism of K. Leontiev.
One of the first Russian critics for whom religious issues turned out to be the main criterion in assessing literary phenomena was Konstantin Nikolaevich Leontyev. The writer, who in articles of the early 1860s almost single-handedly defended the priority of “pure” aesthetics, in the 1870s-1880s devoted himself almost entirely to philosophical and religious journalism, defending an extremely conservative, “protective” point of view not only on social conflicts, but also on Orthodox Christianity.
In two works included in the brochure “Our New Christians,” Leontyev questioned the socio-religious validity of the teachings of Dostoevsky and L. Tolstoy: in his opinion, Dostoevsky’s Pushkin speech and L. Tolstoy’s story “How People Live” demonstrate the imperfection of religious thinking and superficial acquaintance with the teachings of the church fathers of two famous Russian writers, despite the preaching religious pathos of their speeches. Unlike most “neo-Slavophiles,” Leontyev did not accept Tolstoy’s “religion of love,” which, in his opinion, distorts the essence of true Christianity.
However, the critic declared Tolstoy’s works of art, his novels “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina,” to be the greatest creations of world literature “over the last 40-50 years.” In the article “Two Counts: Alexey Vronsky and Leo Tolstoy,” which was included in the “Notes of a Hermit” series, Leontyev called “Gogolism” the main prophet of Russian literature - i.e. "humiliation" in artistic creativity Russian reality. For Leontyev, such an attitude towards Russian life is all the more blasphemous because in the matter of educating “Russian youths” “literature is much stronger than both school and family.” And only Tolstoy, in his main works, was able to break the Gogol tradition, depicting “high Russian society finally in a human way, that is, impartially, and in places with obvious love.” This was confirmed for Leontyev by the image of Vronsky, whom the critic perceives from a patriotic perspective, comprehending the “military heroes” of Russian literature.
Leontiev proposed a deeper and more detailed coverage of L. Tolstoy’s work in his voluminous work “Analysis, Style and Trend. About the novels of gr. L.N. Tolstoy,” which combined two, almost opposite, tendencies in the literary-critical activity of a religious thinker: a distinct political bias and the desire for a purely “philological,” formal, subtly analytical study of literary texts. It should be noted the methodological innovation of Leontyev, who tried to find a multi-valued refraction and artistic embodiment of the ideological concept in the writer’s style.
K. Leontiev “Our new Christians”
21. Literary-critical topics of journalism of writers of the 1870-90s.
Famous Russian writers of the 2nd half of the 19th century themselves often became subjects of the literary critical process, publicly expressing their opinions about the principles of artistic creativity and about many specific literary phenomena. And the fact that Turgenev, Ostrovsky, Goncharov, L. Tolstoy were only occasionally noted in the press with articles on literature did not prevent increased attention to their works from the public, who were attracted by the importance and breadth of the issues being addressed, as well as the authority of the writers' names themselves. Even in appeals to the past of Russian and world literature, in theoretical and aesthetic reflections, famous artists of words sought to demonstrate an unexpected and insightful vision of deep literary and social processes modernity.
I. Turgenev “Hamlet and Don Quixote”: The article, only at first glance, may seem like a detached historical and literary study - in fact, this “external” property of the article turns out to be a kind of genre “trap”, which with even greater acuteness directs readers to the perception of current social problems. Obvious allusions and associations connect the two fundamentally dissimilar human types discovered by the writer, Hamlet and Don Quixote, with famous names of public and literary figures of the 1860s and, more importantly, with the widespread mentality of the era. The pathos of Turgenev’s public speech was the affirmation of the equivalence of the socio-psychological type of the intelligent and subtle reflective skeptic Hamlet, who, resisting the lies surrounding him, is unable to believe in the possibility of modern truth, and the type of the funny in his naivety “enthusiast, servant of the idea” Don Quixote, who, on the contrary, for the sake of a ghostly, illusory ideal, he is ready for the most uncompromising actions. From the point of view of Turgenev, who masterfully “allows” the internal logic of the text to “reveal itself” to the reader, the position of the intelligent egoist Hamlet is much less in demand by modern times than the unbridled altruism of Don Quixote. The key in characterizing the characters becomes for the writer their impact on others: if Hamlet unwittingly sows lies, deceit and death around himself, then Don Quixote infects with his positive enthusiasm such sincere and strong personalities as Sancho Panza, who with crazy ideas can bring a lot of kindness and benefits. Turgenev's article, in which generalized reasoning was combined with specific historical issues, anticipated Merezhkovsky's future historical and cultural oppositions.
A. Goncharov “A Million Torments”: Chatsky becomes an eternal socio-psychological type, especially characteristic of Russian society, in this “critical study.” Agreeing with his predecessors that the immortal significance of Griboyedov’s comedy is given by the brilliant depiction of the mores of Moscow society, and the creation of bright, historically and psychologically reliable types, and apt aphoristic language, Goncharov still considers the image of Chatsky to be Griboyedov’s main achievement. According to Goncharov, the main character of “Woe from Wit,” unlike Onegin and Pechorin, overcomes the historical isolation of his time and becomes a hero new era, therefore, his image is saturated with numerous potential meanings that are revealed upon later reading. And it is no coincidence that the writer’s thoughts about the “positive”, i.e. Chatsky’s effective mind, his sincere passion, the desire of Griboyedov’s hero to disrupt the indifferent inertia and reassuring hypocrisy of the surrounding society are full of obvious and hidden associations connecting Chatsky with the personality of Herzen, with the activities of the leaders of social thought of the 1870s.
It is characteristic that Turgenev, and Goncharov, and Herzen, and Dostoevsky energetically resisted the perception of their speeches at literary themes in line with traditional literary critical creativity, willingly demonstrating their genre and content specificity.
22. "Other criticism" in criticism of the 1890-1910s. On the themes and problems of the literary process.
To one degree or another, the heralds of the “new criticism” were writers who fundamentally did not fit into a certain literary movement or direction. Their activities were openly independent. Even when drawn into aesthetic disputes with their contemporaries, they remained “lone” critics. Each of them had a special opinion on every important, aesthetic and ethical issue.
The literary and critical performances of Annensky, Aikhenvald, and Rozanov did not depend on established views, but at the same time they were the focus of close attention of everyone who was related to the artistic culture of the Silver Age. “Independents” could proclaim their own research methodology, they built the foundation of new philosophical teachings, saw in their own way the paths of literary development in Russia.
A “mansion” figure in the history of Russian criticism at the turn of the century – Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky, who occupies a special place in Russian literature of this period as a poet, translator, playwright and teacher. He published reviews of works on Russian, Slavic and classical philology in the Journal of the Ministry of Public Education.
In the development of Annensky's critical prose, two stages can be clearly distinguished.
The first is associated with critical and pedagogical articles published in the late 1880s-1890s in the magazines “Education and Training” and “Russian School”, dedicated to the works of A. Tolstoy, Gogol, Lermontov, Goncharov, Ap. Maykova. In these works, a system of views was gradually built and formed, which led in the early 1900s to the creation of a special new method of literary critical analysis. Annensky often used the ideas of discursive criticism (i.e., rational criticism, justified by previous judgments). In addition, the pedagogical task forced the critic to bring thoughts to the logical limit, while avoiding associative and metaphorical images that could complicate reader perception.
The second stage of Annensky’s literary-critical creativity is associated with the beginning of the 20th century. In 1906, a collection of literary critical articles, “Books of Reflections,” was published, not appreciated by contemporaries, but marking a completely new and original page in the history of Russian literary critical life. Turning in his critical studies to the works of Gogol, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Pisemsky, L. Tolstoy, M. Gorky, Chekhov, Balmont, Annensky spoke about the inexhaustible ambiguity of works of art, about their eternal renewal and evolution in time, in accordance with this - about their interpretation, about reading as a creative process.
His critical articles are delicately executed, subtly associative and dynamic philological observations, permeated with the author's lyricism, benevolent intonation, and semantic versatility.
“Impressionistic” or “immanent” criticism played a significant role in the formation of the principles of “new criticism” Yulia Isaevich Aikhenvald. The methodological foundations of Aikhenwald’s literary critical activity were significantly influenced by the idealistic philosophy of Schopenhauer. The tasks of impressionistic criticism were to convey the impression made by the author on the insightful reader. Aikhenwald proceeded from the fact that art is something absolutely self-sufficient and therefore consciously refused to study the writer in connection with the specific conditions of place and time, and did not perceive impressionism as “aestheticism.” Recognizing the educational significance of art, he rejected the “ulitarian” requirements for it, considering them alien to the irrational nature of poetry. Aikhenwald denied the very possibility of constructing the history of literature on any single methodological basis. Speaking about the right of a critic to subjectively interpret a work, he assigned him the role of a kind of priest, an intermediary between the artist and the reader, the first and best of the readers. Aikhenvald’s views on art were especially clearly manifested in the revaluation of Belinsky’s creative heritage and criticism of the 60s, which he reproached for excessive journalisticism, insufficient artistic taste and inconsistency of literary assessments.
Y. Aikhenvald “Silhouettes of Russian Writers”
In the history of Russian culture of the late 19th - early 20th centuries Vasily Vasilievich Rozanov– a most controversial personality and at the same time undeniably talented, original and lively-minded. Like no other prominent writer of the turn of the century, he was openly rejected by his contemporaries. Russian journalism attacked him with particular zeal both on the left and on the right, rewarding him with many negative characteristics, among which were the following: “dirty man”, “rubbish”, “naked Rozanov”, “rotten soul”, “Great Vashlyak of Russian Literature” . He preferred truth to any ideological “trends.” Filled with counterfeelings, Rozanov’s manner of thinking and writing is paradoxical and dialogical, alone with one’s own conscience and the conscience of a wise, sighted reader, open to honest dialogue, capable of hearing, but not obeying, maintaining one’s own dignity and independence of concepts about life. With his entire system of judgment, Rozanov deliberately provoked internal irritated disagreement with himself. Hence the external fragmentation, mosaic, kaleidoscopicity and apparent disorder of his thoughts and style. Rozanov wrote a huge number of articles, essays, anniversary words, reviews and notes about Pushkin, Dostoevsky, L. Tolstoy, Turgenev, Strakhov, Leontiev, Merezhkovsky. He repeatedly turned to the analysis of the works of Gogol, Nekrasov, Goncharov, Chekhov, M. Gorky, Vl. Solovyova, Berdyaeva.
In the works of criticism on literature and philosophy, the fruitful concept of a value-based approach to the verbal, artistic and ethical-aesthetic heritage of Russian culture was clearly expressed.
The original “music” of Rozanov’s word was clearly stated in his early book by the “deepest analyst of the soul” Dostoevsky, “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor F. M. Dostoevsky”: it touches on many side, parallel and very important topics dear to him.
A special place in Rozanov’s creative heritage is occupied by original, genre-unusual memoir-necrological works (“In Memory of Vl. Solovyov”, “In Memory of I. I. Kablits”).
V. Rozanov “Three moments in the development of Russian criticism”
23.Modernist criticism (symbolism and acmeism). Stylistic, genre features, polemical and self-characterizing orientation.
In the 1890s, with the establishment of symbolism as a fundamentally new poetic direction, the formation of modernist tendencies in literary criticism began. The emergence of each new literary movement - be it symbolism, acmeism, futurism, imagism in various and whimsical combinations and modifications - brought to life not only theoretical treatises proclaiming and explaining the essence of creative quests inherent in one or another aesthetic platform, but also a rapid flow of literary -critical publications. A new artistic expression, new poetic rhythms, new poetic ideas required urgent assessments, controversial revelations, and polemical statements.
A feature of the literary era was the participation in critical debates of almost all writers without exception. It is difficult to name the name of at least one prose writer or poet who would not write a critical article, review, or preface to a new book. In an era that will be called the Silver Age, many literary critics turn out to be outstanding poets, and poets turn out to be talented critics. V. Solovyov and Merezhkovsky, Annensky and Rozanov, Blok and A. Bely, Akhmatova and Mandelstam turned out to be exceptionally talented both in writing and in critical analysis.
At the beginning of the century, new organizational forms appeared for the expression of literary assessments: these were poetry clubs and literary cafes, which contributed to the birth of free critical thought. Controversy has taken over all literature. Literary criticism of modernist movements was formed and developed in parallel with socially oriented democratic, mass criticism. Both populist criticism, feuilleton newspaper and magazine speeches, and Marxist literary journalism were aimed at the vast masses of readers. The literary-critical studies of the modernists appeared with the expectation of a small circle of “insider” people, initiates, involved in a certain literary movement. The modernists created art for a sophisticated audience, for a sophisticated reader capable of perceiving and appreciating not the “ideological essence” of a work, but its poetic poignancy and filigree of form. That is why, with the widest genre-thematic range and stylistic richness, the critical prose of the modernists was focused on the phenomenon of artistic integrity.
Probably, otherwise poetic highways would have developed Silver Age, if not for the work of V.S. Solovyov, who determined both the fate of symbolism and the role of literary criticism during the period of active emergence of new artistic concepts.
Into the history of Russian culture Vladimir Sergeevich Solovyov entered as a great idealist philosopher. However, he did not study “pure” philosophy for quite a long time. His rich literary heritage widely includes poetry, literary criticism, and journalism. In literary criticism, Soloviev primarily appears as a discerning “judge,” unusually sensitive to both the artist’s place in the world of ideas and his individual pathos. Philosophical and critical articles devoted to Russian poetry had a unique introduction. They were 2 fundamental works on aesthetics for Solovyov - “Beauty in Nature” and “The General Meaning of Art”. In the first article, beauty was revealed as “the transformation of the mother through the embodiment in her of another, supermaterial principle” and was considered as an expression of ideal content, as the embodiment of an idea. The second article characterized the goals and objectives of art, and a work of art was defined as “a tangible image of any object or phenomenon from the point of view of its final state or in the light of the future world.” The artist, according to Solovyov, is a prophet. What becomes significant in Solovyov’s views on art is that truth and goodness must be embodied in beauty. According to Solovyov, beauty cuts off light from darkness, “only it illuminates and tames the evil darkness of this world.”
It was Solovyov who discovered Fet’s legacy for such poets as Blok and A. Bely, and oriented the young poetic generation towards the principles that Fet professed. It was Fet’s poetry that was the subject of Solovyov’s first literary-critical article, “On Lyric Poetry.” The article also embodied some of the favorite themes of Solovyov’s philosophical and aesthetic works: about the subject of lyrical poetry, about the role objective reality in poetry, about the meaning of beauty in the world and its embodiment in lyrics, about “the true background of all lyrics,” about love and its embodiment in lyrics, about the lyrics of nature. Here the idea was put forward that Fet’s poetry is the most noticeable phenomenon in the general stream of “ulitarian” Russian literature.
Solovyov’s undoubted creative achievement was the philosophical essay “The Poetry of F. I. Tyutchev.” It was a landmark in the understanding and interpretation of Tyutchev’s poetry and had a great influence on the early symbolists, who counted the great lyricist among their predecessors. Solovyov tried to reveal to the reader the countless treasures of philosophical lyrics, to look into the secrets of his artistic poetic world.
Soloviev is not only a luminary of Russian philosophical criticism the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, but also its true founder. Soloviev argued that philosophical analysis does not subordinate a work of art to a scheme within which it is doomed to serve as an illustration of a thesis, but goes back to its objective semantic basis.
Since 1895, Soloviev has been writing encyclopedic articles for the Brockhaus and Efron dictionary, in which the spirit of his “philosophical criticism” is fully preserved. This is not only the article “Beauty”, but also works dedicated to Maikov, Polonsky, A. M. Zhemchuzhnikov, Kozma Prutkov and K. Leontyev.
In research works, Solovyov’s literary-critical activity is most often considered as a harbinger of Russian symbolism. Solovyov’s influence on the “younger” symbolists (Blok, A. Bely, S. Solovyov), on their creation of the historical and literary concept of the poet-prophet, is undeniable.
Solovyov’s ideas about the integrity of the writer’s creative path, about the “holiness” of artistic activity, about the highest responsibility of the artist to humanity, about the great and inescapable duty of genius had a huge influence on the ethics and aesthetics of the 20th century, on Russian culture as a whole.
24.Literary-critical aspect of the work of religious thinkers of the early 20th century.
The literary life of the early 20th century cannot be fully perceived if we do not take into account the creative participation of Russian religious philosophers in it. The works of N. A. Berdyaev, S. N. Bulgakov, S. L. Frank, filled with allusions and reminiscences from Russian classical and modern literature, devoted to the problems of creative self-awareness, the role of the intelligentsia in critical eras, one way or another found themselves in the midst of literary criticism discussions. It often happened that philosophers and critics came to the same painful points of Russian reality, relying on the Russian intelligentsia, capable of an educational mission, and Russian literature as higher form manifestations of national consciousness.
In the famous collection “Vekhi” (1909), philosophers, publicists and critics began an alarming, prophetic conversation about the upcoming tragic events in Russia. An acute premonition of impending disaster permeates N.A.’s articles. Berdyaev “Philosophical truth and intellectual truth”, S. N. Bulgakov “Heroism and asceticism”, M. O. Gershenzon “Creative self-consciousness”, P. B. Struve “Intelligentsia and revolution”, S. L. Frank “Ethics of nihilism” .
After 60 s extra years another Russian thinker, A.I. Solzhenitsyn, will write that the ideas set out in “Vekhi” were “indignantly rejected by the entire intelligentsia, all party directions from the Cadets to the Bolsheviks. The prophetic depth of “Vekhi” did not find the sympathy of reading Russia and did not influence the development of the Russian situation.” The timeless, universal - that which now constitutes a veritable treasury of literary assessments, opinions, and fulfilled forecasts - receives recognition from readers only after many decades.
Russian philosophers warned Russia against the invasion of lack of culture and called for religious humanism. And in this respect, they turned out to be methodologically consonant with the various movements of the so-called “new criticism”.
N. Berdyaev “The Crisis of Art”
V. Rozanov “The Legend of Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor”
S. Bulgakov
Russian literary-critical and philosophical thought of the second half of the 19th century
Yu.V. Lebedev
On the originality of Russian literary criticism.
“As long as our poetry is alive and well, until then there is no reason to doubt the deep health of the Russian people,” wrote critic N. N. Strakhov, and his like-minded person Apollo Grigoriev considered Russian literature “the only focus of all our highest interests.” V. G. Belinsky bequeathed to his friends to put in his coffin an issue of the magazine “Domestic Notes”, and the classic of Russian satire M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin in his farewell letter to his son said: “Above all, love your native literature and prefer the title of writer to any other.” .
According to N.G. Chernyshevsky, our literature was elevated to the dignity of a national cause that united the most viable forces of Russian society. In the minds of the 19th century reader, literature was not only “fine literature”, but also the basis of the spiritual existence of the nation. The Russian writer treated his work in a special way: for him it was not a profession, but a ministry. Chernyshevsky called literature a “textbook of life,” and Leo Tolstoy was subsequently surprised that these words did not belong to him, but to his ideological opponent.
The artistic exploration of life in Russian classical literature never turned into a purely aesthetic pursuit; it always pursued a living spiritual and practical goal. “The word was perceived not as an empty sound, but as a deed - almost as “religiously” as the ancient Karelian singer Veinemeinen, who “made a boat with singing.” Gogol also harbored this belief in the miraculous power of the word, dreaming of creating such a book that itself, by the power of the only and indisputably true thoughts expressed in it, should transform Russia,” notes modern literary critic G. D. Gachev.
Belief in the effective, world-transforming power of the artistic word also determined the features of Russian literary criticism. From literary problems it always rose to social problems that were directly related to the fate of the country, the people, the nation. The Russian critic did not limit himself to discussions about artistic form and the skill of the writer. Analyzing a literary work, he came up with questions that life posed to the writer and reader. The focus of criticism on a wide range of readers made it very popular: the authority of the critic in Russia was great and his articles were perceived as original works that enjoyed success on a par with literature.
Russian criticism of the second half of the 19th century developed more dramatically. The social life of the country at this time became unusually complicated, many political trends arose that argued with each other. The picture of the literary process also turned out to be motley and multi-layered. Therefore, criticism has become more diverse compared to the era of the 30s and 40s, when all the diversity of critical assessments was covered by the authoritative word of Belinsky. Like Pushkin in literature, Belinsky was a kind of universalist in criticism: he combined sociological, aesthetic, and stylistic approaches in evaluating works, covering the literary movement as a whole with a single gaze.
In the second half of the 19th century, Belinsky’s critical universalism turned out to be unique. Critical thought specialized in certain areas and schools. Even Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, the most versatile critics with a broad social outlook, could no longer claim not only to embrace the literary movement in its entirety, but also to provide a holistic interpretation of an individual work. Sociological approaches predominated in their work. Literary development as a whole and the place of an individual work in it was now revealed by the entire set of critical movements and schools. Apollo Grigoriev, for example, arguing with Dobrolyubov’s assessments of A. N. Ostrovsky, noticed facets in the playwright’s work that eluded Dobrolyubov. A critical understanding of the works of Turgenev or Leo Tolstoy cannot be reduced to the assessments of Dobrolyubov or Chernyshevsky. N. N. Strakhov’s works on “Fathers and Sons” and “War and Peace” significantly deepen and clarify them. The depth of understanding of I. A. Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov” is not exhausted by Dobrolyubov’s classic article “What is Oblomovism?”: A. V. Druzhinin introduces significant clarifications into the understanding of Oblomov’s character.
The main stages of the social struggle of the 60s.
The diversity of literary criticism in the second half of the 19th century was associated with growing social struggle. Since 1855, two historical forces emerged in public life, and by 1859, entered into an uncompromising struggle - revolutionary democracy and liberalism. The voice of the "peasant democrats", gaining strength on the pages of Nekrasov's magazine Sovremennik, begins to determine public opinion in the country.
The social movement of the 60s went through three stages in its development: from 1855 to 1858; from 1859 to 1861; from 1862 to 1869. At the first stage there is a demarcation of social forces, at the second there is an intense struggle between them, and at the third there is a sharp decline in the movement, ending with the onset of government reaction.
Liberal-Western Party. Russian liberals of the 60s advocated the art of “reforms without revolutions” and pinned their hopes on social changes “from above.” But in their circles, disagreements arise between Westerners and Slavophiles about the paths of the emerging reforms. Westerners begin the countdown of historical development with the transformations of Peter I, whom Belinsky called “the father of the new Russia.” They are skeptical about pre-Petrine history. But, denying Russia the right to the “pre-Petrine” historical tradition, Westerners derive from this fact a paradoxical idea about our great advantage: a Russian person, free from the burden of historical traditions, may turn out to be “more progressive” than any European due to his “re-innovativeness.” The land, which does not conceal any of its own seeds, can be plowed boldly and deeply, and in case of failures, in the words of the Slavophile A.S. Khomyakov, “you can calm your conscience with the thought that no matter what you do, you will not make it worse than before.” “Why is it worse?” Westerners objected. “A young nation can easily borrow the latest and most advanced in the science and practice of Western Europe and, transplanting it onto Russian soil, make a dizzying leap forward.”
Mikhail Nikiforovich Katkov, on the pages of the liberal magazine “Russian Messenger”, founded by him in 1856 in Moscow, promotes the English ways of social and economic reforms: the liberation of peasants with land when it is purchased by the government, the provision of local and state government rights to the nobility following the example of the English lords.
Liberal Slavophile Party. The Slavophiles also denied the “unaccountable worship of past forms (*6) of our antiquity.” But they considered borrowing possible only if they were grafted onto an original historical root. If Westerners argued that the difference between the enlightenment of Europe and Russia existed only in degree, and not in character, then the Slavophiles believed that Russia, already in the first centuries of its history, with the adoption of Christianity, was educated no less than the West, but “the spirit and fundamental principles "Russian education differed significantly from Western European education.
Ivan Vasilyevich Kireevsky in his article “On the Nature of the Enlightenment of Europe and its Relation to the Enlightenment of Russia” identified three significant features of these differences: 1) Russia and the West adopted different types of ancient culture, 2) Orthodoxy had pronounced original features that distinguished it from Catholicism, 3) the historical conditions in which Western European and Russian statehood took shape were different.
Western Europe inherited ancient Roman education, which differed from ancient Greek formal rationality, admiration for the letter of legal law and disdain for the traditions of “common law,” which was based not on external legal decrees, but on traditions and habits.
Roman culture left its mark on Western European Christianity. The West sought to subordinate faith to the logical arguments of reason. The predominance of rational principles in Christianity led the Catholic Church first to the Reformation, and then to the complete triumph of self-deified reason. This liberation of reason from faith was completed in German classical philosophy and led to the creation of atheistic teachings.
Finally, the statehood of Western Europe arose as a result of the conquest of the indigenous inhabitants of the former Roman Empire by German tribes. Beginning with violence, European states were to develop through periodic revolutionary upheavals.
In Russia, many things turned out differently. She received a cultural inoculation not of formally rational Roman education, but of a more harmonious and integral Greek education. The fathers of the Eastern Church never fell into abstract rationality and cared primarily about the “correctness of the internal state of the thinking spirit.” What was in the foreground for them was not intelligence, not rationality, but the highest unity of the believing spirit.
Slavophiles considered Russian statehood to be unique. Since in Russia there were no two warring tribes - the conquerors and the conquered, social relations in it were based not only on legislative and legal acts that constrained people's life, indifferent to the internal content of human connections. Our laws were more internal than external. “The sanctity of tradition” was preferred to the legal formula, morality to external benefit.
The Church has never tried to usurp secular power and replace the state with itself, as happened more than once in papal Rome. The basis of the original Russian organization was the communal structure, the grain of which was the peasant world: small rural communities merged into broader regional associations, from which the consent of the entire Russian land, headed by the Grand Duke, arose.
Peter's reform, which subordinated the church to the state, abruptly broke the natural course of Russian history.
In the Europeanization of Russia, the Slavophiles saw a threat to the very essence of Russian national existence. Therefore, they had a negative attitude towards Peter’s reforms and government bureaucracy, and were active opponents of serfdom. They stood up for freedom of speech, for the resolution of state issues at the Zemsky Sobor, consisting of representatives of all classes of Russian society. They objected to the introduction of forms of bourgeois parliamentary democracy in Russia, considering it necessary to preserve the autocracy, reformed in the spirit of the ideals of Russian “conciliarity.” The autocracy must take the path of voluntary cooperation with the “land”, and in its decisions rely on popular opinion, periodically convening the Zemsky Sobor. The sovereign is called upon to listen to the point of view of all classes, but to make the final decision alone, in accordance with the Christian spirit of goodness and truth. Not democracy with its voting and mechanical victory of the majority over the minority, but consent, leading to unanimous, “conciliar” submission to the sovereign will, which should be free from class limitations and serve the highest Christian values.
The literary-critical program of the Slavophiles was organically connected with their social views. This program was proclaimed by the “Russian Conversation” they published in Moscow: “The highest subject and task of the people’s word is not to say what is bad about a certain people, what they are sick with and what they do not have, but to poetically (*8 )tical reconstruction of what was given to him best for his historical purpose."
Slavophiles did not accept social-analytical principles in Russian prose and poetry; refined psychologism was alien to them, in which they saw the disease of the modern personality, “Europeanized,” cut off from the people’s soil, from the traditions of national culture. It is precisely this painful manner of “flaunting unnecessary details” that K. S. Aksakov finds in the early works of L. N. Tolstoy with his “dialectics of the soul”, in the stories of I. S. Turgenev about the “superfluous man.”
Literary-critical activity of Westerners.
In contrast to the Slavophiles, who advocate for the social content of art in the spirit of their “Russian views,” Western liberals represented by P. V. Annenkov and A. V. Druzhinin defend the traditions of “pure art,” addressed to “eternal” issues, shunned by malice of the day and faithful to the “absolute laws of artistry.”
Alexander Vasilyevich Druzhinin in the article “Criticism of the Gogol period of Russian literature and our relationship to it” formulated two theoretical ideas about art: he called one “didactic” and the other “artistic”. Didactic poets “want to directly influence modern life, modern morals and modern man. They want to sing, teaching, and often achieve their goal, but their song, while gaining in an instructive sense, cannot but lose a lot in relation to eternal art.”
True art has nothing to do with teaching. “Firmly believing that the interests of the moment are fleeting, that humanity, constantly changing, does not change only in the ideas of eternal beauty, goodness and truth,” the poet-artist “sees his eternal anchor in selfless service to these ideas... He depicts people as He sees them, without ordering them to correct themselves, he does not give lessons to society, or if he gives them, he gives them unconsciously. He lives in the midst of his sublime world and descends to earth, as the Olympians once descended upon it, firmly remembering what he has. your home on high Olympus."
The indisputable advantage of liberal-Western criticism was close attention to the specifics of literature, to the difference between its artistic language and the language of science, journalism, and criticism. Also characteristic is an interest in the enduring and eternal in the works of classical Russian literature, in what determines their unfading (*9) life in time. But at the same time, attempts to distract the writer from the “everyday unrest” of our time, to muffle the author’s subjectivity, and distrust of works with a pronounced social orientation testified to the liberal moderation and limited social views of these critics.
Social program and literary-critical activity of the Pochvenniks.
Another socio-literary movement of the mid-60s, which removed the extremes of Westerners and Slavophiles, was the so-called “soilism”. Its spiritual leader was F. M. Dostoevsky, who published two magazines during these years - “Time” (1861-1863) and “Epoch” (1864-1865). Dostoevsky's associates in these magazines were literary critics Apollo Aleksandrovich Grigoriev and Nikolai Nikolaevich Strakhov.
The Pochvenniki to some extent inherited the view of the Russian national character expressed by Belinsky in 1846. Belinsky wrote: “Russia has nothing to compare with the old states of Europe, whose history went diametrically opposite to ours and has long since given flower and fruit... It is known that the French, English, and Germans are so national, each in their own way, that they are not able to understand each other , while the sociality of a Frenchman, the practical activity of an Englishman, and the vague philosophy of a German are equally accessible to a Russian.”
The Pochvenniks spoke of “all-humanity” as a characteristic feature of the Russian national consciousness, which was most deeply inherited in our literature by A. S. Pushkin. “This thought was expressed by Pushkin not only as an indication, teaching or theory, not as a dream or prophecy, but fulfilled in reality, contained forever in his brilliant creations and proven by him,” wrote Dostoevsky. “He is a man of ancient times.” world, he is a German, he is an Englishman, deeply aware of his genius, the melancholy of his aspiration ("A Feast in the Time of Plague"), he and the poet of the East He said and declared to all these peoples that the Russian genius knows them, understood them, touched them. with them as a native, that he can be reincarnated in them in its entirety, that only the Russian spirit has been given universality, given the purpose in the future to comprehend and unite all the diversity of nationalities and remove all their contradictions."
Like the Slavophiles, the pochvenniki believed that “Russian society must unite with the people’s soil and absorb the people’s element.” But, unlike the Slavophiles, (*10) they did not deny the positive role of the reforms of Peter I and the “Europeanized” Russian intelligentsia, called upon to bring enlightenment and culture to the people, but only on the basis of popular moral ideals. A. S. Pushkin was precisely such a Russian European in the eyes of the soil people.
According to A. Grigoriev, Pushkin is “the first and full representative” of “our social and moral sympathies.” “In Pushkin, for a long time, if not forever, our entire spiritual process, our “volume and measure,” was completed, outlined in a broad outline: all subsequent development of Russian literature is a deepening and artistic understanding of those elements that were reflected in Pushkin. The most organic expression of Pushkin's principles in modern literature was A. N. Ostrovsky. "Ostrovsky's new word is the oldest word - nationality." “Ostrovsky is as little an accuser as he is a little idealizer. Let us leave him to be what he is - a great folk poet, the first and only exponent of the people’s essence in its diverse manifestations...”
N. N. Strakhov was the only deep interpreter of L. N. Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” in the history of Russian criticism of the second half of the 19th century. It is no coincidence that he called his work “a critical poem in four songs.” Leo Tolstoy himself, who considered Strakhov his friend, said: “One of the blessings for which I am grateful to fate is that there is N.N. Strakhov.”
Literary-critical activity of revolutionary democrats
The social, social-critical pathos of the articles of the late Belinsky with his socialist beliefs was picked up and developed in the sixties by the revolutionary democratic critics Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky and Nikolai Aleksandrovich Dobrolyubov.
By 1859, when the government program and views of the liberal parties became clearer, when it became obvious that reform “from above” in any of its variants would be half-hearted, the democratic revolutionaries moved from a shaky alliance with liberalism to a severance of relations and an uncompromising fight against it. The literary-critical activity of N. A. Dobrolyubov falls on this second stage of the social movement of the 60s. He devotes a special satirical section of the Sovremennik magazine called “Whistle” to denouncing liberals. Here Dobrolyubov acts not only as a critic, but also as a satirical poet.
Criticism of liberalism then alerted A. I. Herzen, (*11) who, being in exile, unlike Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, continued to hope for reforms “from above” and overestimated the radicalism of liberals until 1863.
However, Herzen's warnings did not stop the revolutionary democrats of Sovremennik. Beginning in 1859, they began to pursue the idea of a peasant revolution in their articles. They considered the peasant community to be the core of the future socialist world order. Unlike the Slavophiles, Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov believed that communal ownership of land rested not on Christian, but on the revolutionary-liberation, socialist instincts of the Russian peasant.
Dobrolyubov became the founder of the original critical method. He saw that the majority of Russian writers do not share the revolutionary-democratic way of thinking and do not pronounce judgment on life from such radical positions. Dobrolyubov saw the task of his criticism as completing in his own way the work begun by the writer and formulating this verdict, relying on real events and artistic images of the work. Dobrolyubov called his method of understanding the writer’s work “real criticism.”
Real criticism “examines whether such a person is possible and real; having found that it is true to reality, it moves on to its own considerations about the reasons that gave rise to it, etc. If these reasons are indicated in the work of the author being analyzed, criticism uses them and thanks the author; if not, does not pester him with a knife to his throat - how, they say, did he dare to draw such a face without explaining the reasons for its existence? In this case, the critic takes the initiative into his own hands: he explains the reasons that gave rise to this or that phenomenon from a revolutionary-democratic position and then pronounces a verdict on it.
Dobrolyubov positively evaluates, for example, Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov,” although the author “does not and, apparently, does not want to give any conclusions.” It is enough that he “presents you with a living image and vouches only for its resemblance to reality.” For Dobrolyubov, such authorial objectivity is quite acceptable and even desirable, since he takes upon himself the explanation and the verdict.
Real criticism often led Dobrolyubov to a peculiar reinterpretation of the writer’s artistic images in a revolutionary-democratic manner. It turned out that the analysis of the work, which developed into an understanding of the pressing problems of our time, led Dobrolyubov to such radical conclusions that the author himself had never expected. On this basis, as we will see later, Turgenev’s decisive break with the Sovremennik magazine occurred when Dobrolyubov’s article about the novel “On the Eve” was published in it.
In Dobrolyubov’s articles, the young, strong nature of a talented critic comes to life, sincerely believing in the people, in whom he sees the embodiment of all his highest moral ideals, with whom he associates the only hope for the revival of society. “His passion is deep and persistent, and obstacles do not frighten him when they need to be overcome to achieve something passionately desired and deeply conceived,” writes Dobrolyubov about the Russian peasant in the article “Traits for Characterizing the Russian Common People.” All the critic’s activities were aimed at the struggle for the creation of a “party of the people in literature.” He devoted four years of tireless work to this struggle, writing nine volumes of essays in such a short time. Dobrolyubov literally burned himself out in his selfless journal work, which undermined his health. He died at the age of 25 on November 17, 1861. Nekrasov said soulfully about the premature death of his young friend:
But your hour struck too early
And the prophetic pen fell from his hands.
What a lamp of reason has gone out!
What heart has stopped beating!
The decline of the social movement of the 60s. Disputes between Sovremennik and Russian Word.
At the end of the 60s, dramatic changes took place in Russian social life and critical thought. The manifesto of February 19, 1861 on the liberation of the peasants not only did not soften, but further aggravated the contradictions. In response to the rise of the revolutionary democratic movement, the government launched an open attack on progressive thought: Chernyshevsky and D.I. Pisarev were arrested, and the publication of the Sovremennik magazine was suspended for eight months.
The situation is aggravated by a split within the revolutionary democratic movement, the main reason for which was disagreement in the assessment of the revolutionary socialist capabilities of the peasantry. Activists of the "Russian Word" Dmitry Ivanovich Pisarev and Varfolomey Aleksandrovich Zaitsev sharply criticized Sovremennik for (*13) its alleged idealization of the peasantry, for an exaggerated idea of the revolutionary instincts of the Russian peasant.
Unlike Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky, Pisarev argued that the Russian peasant is not ready for a conscious struggle for freedom, that for the most part he is dark and downtrodden. Pisarev considered the revolutionary force of modern times to be the “mental proletariat,” the common revolutionaries who bring natural science knowledge to the people. This knowledge not only destroys the foundations of the official ideology (Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality), but also opens the people’s eyes to the natural needs of human nature, which are based on the instinct of “social solidarity.” Therefore, enlightening the people with natural sciences can lead society to socialism not only by a revolutionary (“mechanical”), but also by an evolutionary (“chemical”) path.
In order for this “chemical” transition to take place faster and more efficiently, Pisarev proposed that Russian democracy be guided by the “principle of economy of force.” The “mental proletariat” must concentrate all its energy on destroying the spiritual foundations of the existing society through the propaganda of natural sciences among the people. In the name of so-understood “spiritual liberation,” Pisarev, like Turgenev’s hero Yevgeny Bazarov, proposed abandoning art. He really believed that “a decent chemist is twenty times more useful than any poet,” and recognized art only to the extent that it participates in the propaganda of natural science and destroys the foundations of the existing system.
In the article “Bazarov” he glorified the triumphant nihilist, and in the article “Motives of Russian Drama” he “crushed” the heroine of A. N. Ostrovsky’s drama “The Thunderstorm”, erected on a pedestal by Dobrolyubov. Destroying the idols of the “old” society, Pisarev published the infamous anti-Pushkin articles and the work “Destruction of Aesthetics.” The fundamental differences that emerged during the polemics between Sovremennik and Russian Word weakened the revolutionary camp and were a symptom of the decline of the social movement.
The social upsurge of the 70s.
By the beginning of the 70s, the first signs of a new social upsurge associated with the activities of the revolutionary populists were visible in Russia. The second generation of revolutionary democrats, who made a heroic attempt to rouse the peasants to (*14) revolution by “going to the people,” had their own ideologists who, in new historical conditions, developed the ideas of Herzen, Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov. “Faith in a special way of life, in the communal system of Russian life; hence faith in the possibility of a peasant socialist revolution - this is what animated them, raised tens and hundreds of people to heroic struggle against the government,” V. I. Lenin wrote about the populists of the seventies . This faith, to one degree or another, permeated all the works of the leaders and mentors of the new movement - P. L. Lavrov, N. K. Mikhailovsky, M. A. Bakunin, P. N. Tkachev.
The mass “going to the people” ended in 1874 with the arrest of several thousand people and the subsequent trials of 193 and 50. In 1879, at a congress in Voronezh, the populist organization "Land and Freedom" split: "politicians" who shared Tkachev's ideas organized their own party "People's Will", proclaiming the main goal of the movement to be a political revolution and terrorist forms of struggle against the government. In the summer of 1880, Narodnaya Volya organized an explosion in the Winter Palace, and Alexander II miraculously escaped death. This event causes shock and confusion in the government: it decides to make concessions by appointing the liberal Loris-Melikov as plenipotentiary ruler and appealing to the liberal public of the country for support. In response, the sovereign receives notes from Russian liberals, which propose to immediately convene an independent assembly of representatives of zemstvos to participate in governing the country “with the aim of developing guarantees and individual rights, freedom of thought and speech.” It seemed that Russia was on the verge of adopting a parliamentary form of government. But on March 1, 1881, an irreparable mistake was made. After multiple assassination attempts, the Narodnaya Volya killed Alexander II, and after this a government reaction began in the country.
Conservative ideology of the 80s.
These years in the history of the Russian public are characterized by the flourishing of conservative ideology. It was defended, in particular, by Konstantin Nikolaevich Leontiev in the books “East, Russia and the Slavs” and “Our “New Christians” F. M. Dostoevsky and Count Leo Tolstoy.” Leontiev believes that the culture of each civilization goes through three stages of development: 1) primary simplicity, 2) blossoming complexity, 3) secondary mixed simplification. Leontyev considers the main sign of decline and entry into the third stage to be the spread of liberal and socialist ideas with their cult (*15) of equality and general prosperity. Leontyev contrasted liberalism and socialism with “Byzantism” - strong monarchical power and strict ecclesiasticalism.
Leontyev strongly criticized the religious and ethical views of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. He argued that both writers were influenced by the ideas of socialism, that they turned Christianity into a spiritual phenomenon, derived from earthly human feelings of brotherhood and love. Genuine Christianity, according to Leontyev, is mystical, tragic and terrible for a person, for it stands on the other side of earthly life and evaluates it as a life full of suffering and torment.
Leontyev is a consistent and principled opponent of the very idea of progress, which, according to his teaching, brings one or another people closer to mixed simplification and death. To stop, delay progress and freeze Russia - this idea of Leontyev suited the conservative policy of Alexander III.
Russian liberal populism of the 80-90s.
In the era of the 80s, revolutionary populism was experiencing a deep crisis. The revolutionary idea is being replaced by the “theory of small affairs,” which in the 90s will take shape in the program of “state socialism.” The government's transition to the side of peasant interests can peacefully lead the people to socialism. The peasant community and artel, handicrafts with the patronage of zemstvos, active cultural assistance from the intelligentsia and the government can withstand the onslaught of capitalism. At the dawn of the 20th century, the “theory of small affairs” quite successfully developed into a powerful cooperative movement.
Religious and philosophical thought of the 80-90s. The time of deep disappointment in political and revolutionary forms of struggle against social evil made Tolstoy’s preaching of moral self-improvement extremely relevant. It was during this period that the religious and ethical program for the renewal of life in the work of the great writer finally took shape and Tolstoyism became one of the popular social movements.
In the 80-90s, the teachings of the religious thinker Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov began to gain fame. At the heart of his “Philosophy of the Common Cause” is the idea, grandiose in its audacity, of the great calling of man to completely master the secrets of life, defeat death and achieve god-like power and control over the blind forces of nature. Mankind, according to Fedorov, through its own (*16) efforts can transform the entire bodily composition of a person, making him immortal, resurrect all the dead and at the same time achieve control of “solar and other stellar systems.” “Born from the tiny earth, the viewer of immeasurable space, the viewer of the worlds of this space must become their inhabitant and ruler.”
In the 80s, along with the democratic ideology of the “common cause”, along with V. S. Solovyov’s “Readings on God-Humanity” and “The Justification of Good,” the first sprouts of the philosophy and aesthetics of the future Russian decadence appeared. N.M. Minsky’s book “In the Light of Conscience” is published, in which the author preaches extreme individualism. The influence of Nietzschean ideas is increasing, Max Stirner is being pulled out of oblivion and becoming almost an idol with his book “The One and His Property,” in which outright egoism was proclaimed the alpha and omega of modernity...
Questions and assignments: What explains the diversity of trends in Russian criticism of the second half of the 19th century? What are the features of Russian criticism and how are they related to the specifics of our literature? What did Westerners and Slavophiles see as the weaknesses and advantages of Russian historical development? What, in your opinion, are the strengths and weaknesses of the social programs of Westerners and Slavophiles? How does the program of the Pochvenniks differ from the Westernizing and Slavophile ones? How did the soil scientists determine the significance of Pushkin in the history of new Russian literature? Describe the principles of “real criticism” of Dobrolyubov. What is unique about the social and literary-critical views of D. I. Pisarev? Give a description of the social and intellectual movement in Russia in the 80s - 90s.
Bibliography