CHAPTER VI
RUSSIAN COMMUNISM AND REVOLUTION
The Russian revolution is universalistic in its principles, like any great revolution, it was carried out under the symbols of the international, but it is also deeply national and is becoming more and more nationalized in its results. The difficulty of making judgments about communism is determined precisely by its dual character, Russian and international. Only in Russia could a communist revolution occur. Russian communism should appear to Westerners as Asian communism. And this kind of communist revolution is unlikely to be possible in Western European countries; there, of course, everything will be different. The very internationalism of the Russian communist revolution is purely Russian, national. I am inclined to think that even the active participation of Jews in Russian communism is very characteristic of Russia and the Russian people. Russian messianism is related to Jewish messianism. Lenin was a typically Russian person. There was something Russian-Mongolian in his characteristic, expressive face. Lenin’s character contained typically Russian traits, not specifically of the intelligentsia, but of the Russian people: simplicity, integrity, rudeness, dislike of embellishment and rhetoric, practicality of thought, a tendency toward nihilistic cynicism on a moral basis. In some of his features, he resembles the same Russian type who found brilliant expression in L. Tolstoy, although he did not possess the complexity of Tolstoy’s inner life. Lenin is made from one piece, he is monolithic. The role of Lenin is a wonderful demonstration of the role of the individual in historical events. Lenin could become the leader of the revolution and implement his long-developed plan because he was not a typical Russian intellectual. In him, the features of a Russian sectarian intellectual were combined with the features of Russian people who assembled and built the Russian state. He combined the features of Chernyshevsky, Nechaev, Tkachev, Zhelyabov with the features of the Grand Dukes of Moscow, Peter the Great and Russian statesmen of the despotic type. This is the originality of his physiognomy. Lenin was a revolutionary maximalist and statesman. He combined the utmost maximalism of the revolutionary idea, the totalitarian revolutionary worldview with flexibility and opportunism in the means of struggle, in practical politics. Only such people succeed and win. He combined simplicity, directness and nihilistic asceticism with cunning, almost deceit. In Lenin there was nothing of the revolutionary bohemia, which he could not tolerate. In this he is the opposite of people like Trotsky or Martov, the leader of the left wing of the Mensheviks.
In his personal life, Lenin loved order and discipline, was a good family man, loved to sit at home and work, and did not like endless arguments in cafes, to which the Russian radical intelligentsia was so inclined. There was nothing anarchic in him and he hated anarchism, the reactionary nature of which he always exposed. He hated revolutionary romance and revolutionary phrase-mongering. As chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, the leader of Soviet Russia, he constantly exposed these traits in the communist environment. He attacked communist arrogance and communist lies. He rebelled against the "infantile disease of leftism" in the Communist Party. In 1918, when Russia was threatened with chaos and anarchy, in his speeches Lenin made superhuman efforts to discipline the Russian people and the communists themselves. He calls for elementary things, for work, for discipline, for responsibility, for knowledge and teaching, for positive construction, and not just destruction, he smashes revolutionary phrase-mongering, denounces anarchic inclinations, he casts real spells over the abyss. And he stopped the chaotic collapse of Russia, stopped it in a despotic, tyrannical way. This is similar to Peter.
Lenin preached cruel policies, but personally he was not a cruel person. He didn’t like it when people complained to him about the Cheka’s cruelties; he said that it was none of his business, that it was inevitable in the revolution. But he probably couldn't control Cheka himself. In his personal life he had a lot of complacency. He loved animals, loved to joke and laugh, and took touching care of his wife's mother, to whom he often gave gifts. This trait gave rise to Malaparte<<28>> characterize him as a petty bourgeois, which is not entirely true. In his youth, Lenin worshiped Plekhanov, treated him almost with reverence and looked forward to his first meeting with Plekhanov with passionate excitement.<<29>> The disappointment in Plekhanov, in whom he saw small traits of pride, ambition, a proud and contemptuous attitude towards his comrades, was for Lenin a disappointment in people in general. But the first impetus that determined Lenin’s revolutionary attitude to the world and life was the execution of his brother, who was involved in a terrorist case. Lenin's father was a provincial official who rose to the rank of general and nobility. When his brother was executed for a political cause, the surrounding society turned away from Lenin’s family. This was also a disappointment in people for young Lenin. He developed a cynical and indifferent attitude towards people. He did not believe in man, but he wanted to organize life in such a way that it would be easier for people to live, so that there would be no oppression of man by man. In philosophy, in art, in spiritual culture, Lenin was a very backward and elementary person; he had the tastes and sympathies of people of the 60s and 70s of the last century. He combined social revolutionism with spiritual reactionism.
Lenin insisted on the original, nationally unique character of the Russian revolution. He always said that the Russian revolution would not be what the doctrinaires of Marxism imagined it to be. In this way he always made adjustments to Marxism. And he built the theory and tactics of the Russian revolution and implemented it. He accused the Mensheviks of pedantically following Marxism and abstractly transferring its principles to Russian soil. Lenin is not a theorist of Marxism, like Plekhanov, but a theorist of revolution. Everything he wrote was just a development of the theory and practice of the revolution. He never developed a program, he was interested only in one topic, which was least of all interesting to Russian revolutionaries, the topic of seizing power, of acquiring the strength for this. That's why he won. Lenin's entire worldview was adapted to the technique of revolutionary struggle. He alone, in advance, long before the revolution, thought about what would happen when power was won, how to organize power. Lenin is an imperialist, not an anarchist. His whole thinking was imperialist, dsspotic. Associated with this is the straightforwardness, narrowness of his worldview, concentration on one thing, poverty and asceticism of thought, and the elementary nature of his slogans addressed to the earth. Lenin's type of culture was not high; much was inaccessible and unknown to him. Any refinement of thought and spiritual life repulsed him. He read a lot, studied a lot, but he did not have extensive knowledge, did not have much mental culture. He acquired knowledge for a specific purpose, for struggle and action. He had no capacity for contemplation. He knew Marxism well and had some economic knowledge. He read philosophy exclusively to combat, to settle accounts with heresies and deviations in Marxism. To expose Mach and Avenarius, whom the Marxist-Bolsheviks Bogdanov and Lunacharsky were passionate about, Lenin read an entire philosophical literature. But he didn't have philosophical culture, less than Plekhanov. All his life he fought for a holistic, totalitarian worldview, which was necessary for the struggle, which should concentrate revolutionary energy. He did not allow a single brick to be taken out of this totalitarian system; he demanded that everything be accepted as a whole. And from his point of view, he was right. He was right that passion for Avenarius and Mach or Nietzsche violates the integrity of the Bolshevik worldview and weakens it in the struggle. He fought for integrity and consistency in the struggle; it is impossible without an integral, dogmatic confession, without orthodoxy. He demanded consciousness and organization in the fight against any spontaneity. This is his main motive. And he allowed all means to fight, to achieve the goals of the revolution. For him, good was everything that served the revolution, evil was everything that hindered it. Lenin's revolutionary spirit had a moral source; he could not tolerate injustice, oppression, or exploitation. But having become obsessed with a maximalist revolutionary idea, he eventually lost the direct distinction between good and evil, lost his direct relationship with living people, allowing deception, lies, violence, and cruelty. Lenin was not a bad person; there was also a lot of good in him. He was a selfless man, absolutely devoted to the idea, he was not even a particularly ambitious and power-hungry person, he thought little of himself. But exclusive obsession with one idea led to a terrible narrowing of consciousness and to moral degeneration, to the admission of completely immoral means in the struggle. Lenin was a man of destiny, a fatal man, this is his strength.
Lenin was a revolutionary to the core precisely because all his life he professed and defended an integral, totalitarian worldview and did not allow any violations of this integrity. Hence the incomprehensible at first glance passion and fury with which he fights against the slightest deviations from what he saw as Marxist orthodoxy. He demands orthodox worldviews that agree with totalitarianism, i.e., revolutionary views on knowledge, on matter, on dialectics, etc., from anyone who considers himself a Marxist, who wants to serve the cause of the social revolution. If you are not a dialectical materialist, if in purely philosophical, epistemological questions you prefer Mach’s views, then you are betraying totalitarian, integral revolutionism and should be expelled. When Lunacharsky tried to talk about God-seeking and God-building, although it was completely atheistic in nature, Lenin furiously attacked Lunacharsky, who belonged to the Bolshevik faction. Lunacharsky introduced complications into the holistic Marxist worldview; he was not a dialectical materialist, this was enough for his excommunication. Even though the Mensheviks had the same ultimate ideal as Lenin, even though they were also devoted to the working class, they lack integrity, they are not totalitarian in their attitude towards the revolution. They complicated matters by talking about how a bourgeois revolution is first needed in Russia, that socialism is feasible only after a period of capitalist development, that we must wait for the development of the consciousness of the working class, that the peasantry is a reactionary class, etc. The Mensheviks also did not attach much importance to a holistic worldview, compulsory confession dialectical materialism, some of them were ordinary positivists and even, what is absolutely terrible, neo-Kantians, that is, they clung to “bourgeois” philosophy. All this weakened the revolutionary will. For Lenin, Marxism is, first of all, the doctrine of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Mensheviks considered the dictatorship of the proletariat in an agricultural, peasant country impossible. The Mensheviks wanted to be democrats, they wanted to rely on the majority. Lenin is not a democrat; he does not affirm the principle of the majority, but the principle of a selected minority. Therefore, he was often reproached with Blanquism. He built a plan for revolution and a revolutionary seizure of power, not at all relying on the development of consciousness of the huge masses of workers and on the objective economic process. Dictatorship flowed from Lenin’s entire worldview; he even built his worldview in application to dictatorship. He asserted dictatorship even in philosophy, demanding the dictatorship of dialectical materialism over thought.
Lenin's goal, which he pursued with extraordinary consistency, was to create a strong party representing a well-organized and iron-disciplined minority, based on an integral revolutionary Marxist worldview. The party must have a doctrine in which nothing can be changed, and it must prepare a dictatorship over the entirety of life. The party organization itself, extremely centralized, was already a dictatorship on a small scale. Every member of the party was subject to this dictatorship of the center. The Bolshevik Party, which Lenin created over many years, was supposed to provide a model for the future organization of all of Russia. And Russia was indeed organized along the lines of the organization of the Bolshevik Party. All of Russia, the entire Russian people found themselves subordinate not only to the dictatorship of the Communist Party, its central body, but also to the doctrine of the communist dictator in their thoughts and their conscience. Lenin denied freedom within the party and this denial of freedom was transferred to all of Russia. This is the dictatorship of the worldview that Lenin was preparing. Lenin could do this only because he combined in himself two traditions - the tradition of the Russian revolutionary intelligentsia in its most maximalist trends and the tradition of Russian historical power in its most despotic manifestations. Social Democrats, Mensheviks, and Socialist Revolutionaries remained only in the first tradition, and even then a softened one. But by combining two traditions that were in mortal hostility and struggle in the 19th century, Lenin could draw up a plan for organizing a communist state and implement it. As paradoxical as it may sound, Bolshevism is the third phenomenon of Russian great power, Russian imperialism - the first phenomenon was the Muscovite kingdom, the second phenomenon was the Petrine Empire. Bolshevism is for a strong, centralized state. The will to social truth was combined with the will to state power, and the second will turned out to be stronger. Bolshevism entered Russian life as a highly militarized force. But the old Russian state was always militarized. The problem of power was the main one for Lenin and everyone who followed them. This distinguished the Bolsheviks from all other revolutionaries. And they created a police state, very similar in management methods to the old Russian state. But organizing power and subjugating the worker-peasant masses cannot be done by force of arms alone, by pure violence. We need a holistic doctrine, a holistic worldview, we need binding symbols. In the Moscow kingdom and in the empire, the people were held together by the unity of religious beliefs. A new, united faith for the masses must be expressed in elementary symbols. Transformed Marxism in Russian turned out to be quite suitable for this. To understand the preparation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is the dictatorship of the Communist Party, Lenin’s book “What is to be done?”, written back in 1902, when there was no split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, and which represents a brilliant example of revolutionary polemics, is of extreme interest. In it, Lenin fought mainly against so-called “economism” and spontaneity in understanding the preparation of the revolution. Economism was the denial of a holistic revolutionary worldview and revolutionary action. Lenin opposed spontaneity to the consciousness of the revolutionary minority, which is called upon to dominate social process. It requires organization from above, not from below, that is, an organization not of a democratic, but of a dictatorial type. Lenin mocked those Marxists who expect everything from spontaneous social development. He did not assert the dictatorship of the empirical proletariat, which was very weak in Russia, but the dictatorship of the idea of the proletariat, which could be permeated by a small minority. Lenin was always an anti-evolutionist and, in essence, an anti-democrat, which affected the young communist philosophy. Being a materialist, Lenin was not at all a relativist and hated relativism and skepticism as a product of the bourgeois spirit. Lenin is an absolutist, he believes in absolute truth. It is very difficult for materialism to construct a theory of knowledge that allows for absolute truth, but Lenin is not worried about this. His incredible naivety in philosophy is determined by his holistic revolutionary will. Absolute truth is affirmed not by knowledge, not by thinking, but by intense revolutionary will. And he wants to select people of this intense revolutionary will. Totalitarian Marxism, dialectical Marxism is absolute truth. This absolute truth is an instrument of revolution and the organization of dictatorship. But the teaching that substantiates the totalitarian doctrine, which embraces the entirety of life - not only politics and economics, but also thought, consciousness, and all the creativity of culture - can only be an object of faith.
The entire history of the Russian intelligentsia prepared for communism. Communism included familiar features: a thirst for social justice and equality, recognition of the working classes as the highest human type, aversion to capitalism and the bourgeoisie, the desire for a holistic worldview and a holistic attitude towards life, sectarian intolerance, suspicious and hostile attitude towards the cultural elite, exclusive this-worldliness, denial spirit and spiritual values, giving materialism an almost theological character. All these features have always been characteristic of the Russian revolutionary and even simply radical intelligentsia. If the remnants of the old intelligentsia, who did not join Bolshevism, did not recognize their own traits in those against whom they rebelled, then this is a historical aberration, a loss of memory from an emotional reaction. The old revolutionary intelligentsia simply did not think about what it would be like when it gained power; it was accustomed to perceiving itself as powerless and oppressed, and power and oppression seemed to them to be the product of a completely different type, alien to it, while it was also their product. This is the paradox of the exodus of the Russian intelligentsia, its transformation after the victorious revolution. Part of her turned into communists and adapted her psyche to new conditions, while the other part of her did not accept the socialist revolution, forgetting her past. Already the war has developed a new mental type, a type inclined to transfer military methods to the organization of life, ready to practice methodical violence, power-hungry and worshiping force. This is a worldwide phenomenon, found equally in communism and fascism. A new anthropological type has appeared in Russia, a new facial expression. People of this type have a different gait, different gestures than the type of old intellectuals. Just as in the 60s, with the emergence of nihilists, the softer type of idealists of the 40s was replaced by a harder type, in the element of a victorious revolution that emerged from the elements of war, the same process occurred on a more grandiose scale. At the same time, the old intelligentsia, genetically connected with the “thinking realists” of the nihilistic era, plays the same role that the idealists of the 40s played in the 60s, and represents a softer type. Due to weakening memory, under the influence of passion, she forgets that she descended from Chernyshevsky, who despised Herzen as a gentle idealist of the 40s by origin. The communists contemptuously called the old revolutionary and radical intelligentsia bourgeois, just as the nihilists and socialists of the 60s called the intelligentsia of the 40s noble and lordly. In the new communist type, the motives of strength and power replaced the old motives of truthfulness and compassion. This type has developed rigidity, turning into cruelty. This new mental type turned out to be very favorable to Lenin’s plan, he became the material for organizing the Communist Party, he began to rule over a huge country. The new spiritual type, called to dominate the revolution, comes from the worker-peasant environment; it has passed through military and party discipline. The new people who came from below were alien to the traditions of Russian culture; their fathers and grandfathers were illiterate, devoid of any culture and lived exclusively by faith. These people were characterized by ressentiment towards the people of the old culture, which at the moment of triumph turned into a feeling of revenge. This explains a lot psychologically. People in the past felt untruth social order, based on the oppression and exploitation of the working people, but he meekly and humbly bore his suffering share. But the hour came when he did not want to endure it any longer, and the entire structure of the people’s soul was turned upside down. This is a typical process. Meekness and humility can turn into ferocity and fury. Lenin could not have carried out his plan for revolution and seizure of power without a revolution in the soul of the people. This revolution was so great that the people, who lived by irrational beliefs and were submissive to an irrational fate, suddenly became almost obsessed with the rationalization of all life, believed in the possibility of rationalization without any irrational residue, believed in a machine instead of God. The Russian people moved from the tellurgical period, when they lived under the mystical power of the earth, into the technical period, when they believed in the omnipotence of the machine and, according to the old instinct, began to treat the machine as a totem. Such switchings are possible in the soul of the people.
Lenin was a Marxist and believed in the exclusive mission of the proletariat. He believed that the world had entered an era of proletarian revolutions. But he was Russian and made a revolution in Russia, a very special country. He had exceptional sensitivity to the historical situation. He felt that his time had come, thanks to the war, which turned into the disintegration of the old system. It was necessary to make the world's first proletarian revolution in a peasant country. And he felt free from all Marxist doctrinaireism with which the Marxist-Mensheviks bored him. He proclaimed a workers' and peasants' revolution and a workers' and peasants' republic. He decided to use the peasantry for the proletarian revolution and he succeeded in this matter, which so embarrassed the doctrinaire Marxists. Lenin carried out, first of all, an agrarian revolution, taking advantage of much that the populist socialists had previously asserted. Leninism included elements of revolutionary populism and rebellion in a transformed form. Socialist revolutionaries, representatives old tradition, turned out to be unnecessary and crowded out. Lenin did everything better, faster and more radically, he gave more. This was accompanied by the proclamation of a new revolutionary morality, corresponding to the new mental type and new conditions. It turned out to be different from that of the old revolutionary intelligentsia, less humane, not embarrassed by any cruelty. Lenin is an anti-humanist, as well as an anti-democrat. In this he is a man of a new era, an era of not only communist, but also fascist revolutions. Leninism is leaderism of a new type; it puts forward a leader of the masses, endowed with dictatorial power. Mussolini and Hitler will imitate this. Stalin will be a complete type of leader-dictator. Leninism is not, of course, fascism, but Stalinism is already very similar to fascism.
In 1917, that is, fifteen years after the book “What is to be done?”, Lenin wrote the book “State and Revolution”, perhaps the most interesting of all that he wrote. In this book, Lenin outlined a plan for organizing the revolution and organizing revolutionary power, a plan designed for a long time. The remarkable thing is not that he drew up this plan, the remarkable thing is that he carried it out, he clearly foresaw which way everything would go. In this book, Lenin builds a theory of the role of the state in the transition period from capitalism to communism, which can be more or less long. This was not the case with Marx himself, who did not specifically foresee how communism would be implemented, what forms the dictatorship of the proletariat would take. We have seen that for Lenin, Marxism is, first of all, the theory and practice of the dictatorship of the proletariat. From Marx it was possible to draw anarchist conclusions that rejected the state completely. Lenin resolutely rebels against these anarchist conclusions, which are clearly unfavorable for the organization of revolutionary power, for the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the future, the state should indeed die out as unnecessary, but in the transition period the role of the state should increase even more. The dictatorship of the proletariat, that is, the dictatorship of the communist party, means state power stronger and more despotic than in bourgeois states. According to Marxist theory, the state has always been an organization of class domination, a dictatorship, of ruling classes over the oppressed and exploited classes. The state will wither away and be finally replaced by organized society after the disappearance of classes. The state exists as long as classes exist. But the complete disappearance of classes does not occur immediately after the victory of the revolutionary proletariat. Lenin did not at all think that after the October Revolution a communist society would finally be realized in Russia. There is still a preparatory process and a fierce struggle ahead. During this preparatory period, when society has not yet become completely classless, a state with strong centralized power is needed for the dictatorship of the proletariat over the bourgeois classes, for their suppression. Lenin says that the “bourgeois” state must be destroyed through revolutionary violence, and the newly formed “proletarian” state will gradually wither away as a classless communist society is realized. In the past there was a suppression of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie; in the transitional period of a proletarian state ruled by a dictatorship, there must be a suppression of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat. During this period, officials will carry out orders from workers. Lenin relies mainly on Engels in his book and constantly quotes him. “As long as the proletariat still needs the state, it needs it not in the interests of freedom, but in the interests of suppressing its opponents,” Engels wrote to Bebel in 1875. Here Engels is a clear predecessor of Lenin. According to Lenin, democracy is not at all necessary for the proletariat and for the implementation of communism. It is not the path to the proletarian revolution. Bourgeois democracy cannot evolve towards communism, the bourgeois democratic state must be destroyed to realize communism. And democracy is unnecessary and harmful after the victory of the proletarian revolution, because it is the opposite of dictatorship. Democratic freedoms only hinder the implementation of the reign of communism. And Lenin did not believe in the real existence of democratic freedoms; they only cover up the interests of the bourgeoisie and its dominance. In bourgeois democracies there are also dictatorships, the dictatorship of capital and money. And there is undoubtedly some truth in this. Under socialism, all democracy will die out. The first phases in the implementation of communism cannot be freedom and equality. Lenin said this directly. The dictatorship of the proletariat will be brutally violent and unequal. Contrary to the doctrinaire understanding of Marxism, Lenin asserted the clear primacy of politics over economics. The problem of strong power is the main one for him. Contrary to the doctrinaire Marxism of the Mensheviks, Lenin saw Russia's political and economic backwardness as an advantage for the implementation of social revolution. In a country with an autocratic monarchy, not accustomed to the rights and freedoms of the citizen, it is easier to implement the dictatorship of the proletariat than in Western democracies. This is undoubtedly true. The age-old instincts of obedience must be used for the proletarian state. This was foreseen by K. Leontyev. In an industrially backward country, with underdeveloped capitalism, it will be easier to organize economic life according to the communist plan. Here Lenin is in the tradition of Russian populist socialism; he claims that the revolution will take place in Russia in an original way, not according to the Western one, that is, essentially not according to Marx, not according to the doctrinaire understanding of Marx. But everything must happen in the name of Marx.
How and why will the violence and coercion, the lack of any freedom that characterize the period of transition to communism, the period of proletarian dictatorship, cease? Lenin's answer is very simple, too simple. First you need to go through drilling, through coercion, through an iron dictatorship from above. There will be coercion not only in relation to the remnants of the old bourgeoisie, but also in relation to the worker-peasant masses, to the proletariat itself, which is declared a dictator. Then, Lenin says, people will get used to observing the elementary conditions of society, adapt to new conditions, then violence against people will be eliminated, the state will wither away, the dictatorship will end. Here we encounter a very interesting phenomenon. Lenin did not believe in man, did not recognize any inner principle in him, did not believe in the spirit and freedom of the spirit. But he endlessly believed in the public drilling of man, he believed that forced public organization can create any new person, a perfect social person who no longer needs violence. Likewise, Marx believed that the new man is manufactured in factories. This was the utopianism of Lenin, but a realizable and realized utopianism. There was one thing he didn't foresee. He did not foresee that class oppression could take completely new forms, not similar to capitalist ones. The dictatorship of the proletariat, having strengthened state power, develops a colossal bureaucracy, covering, like a web, the entire country and subordinating everything to itself. This new Soviet bureaucracy, stronger than the Tsarist bureaucracy, is a new privileged class that can brutally exploit the masses. This is what happens. A simple worker often receives 75 rubles a month, while a Soviet official or specialist receives 1,500 rubles a month. And this monstrous inequality exists in a communist state. Soviet Russia is a country of state capitalism, which can exploit no less than private capitalism. The transition period may drag on indefinitely. Those who rule in it will get a taste for ruling and will not want the changes that are inevitable for the final implementation of communism. The will to power will become self-sufficient and will be fought for as an end, and not as a means. All this was beyond Lenin's horizons. Here he is especially utopian, very naive. The Soviet state has become the same as any despotic state, it acts by the same means, lies and violence. This is first and foremost a military-police state. His international policy closely resembles the diplomacy of bourgeois states. The communist revolution was originally Russian, but the miracle of the birth of a new life did not happen; the old Adam remained and continues to act, only transforming himself. The Russian revolution took place under the symbols of Marxism-Leninism, and not of populist socialism, which had old traditions behind it. But by the time of the revolution, populist socialism had lost its integrity and revolutionary energy in Russia, it was exhausted, it was half-hearted, it could have played a role in the February, intelligentsia, still bourgeois revolution, it valued more the principles of democracy than the principles of socialism, and can no longer play a role in the October revolution, i.e. completely mature, popular, socialist. Marxism-Leninism absorbed all the necessary elements of populist socialism, but rejected its great humanity, its moral scrupulousness, as an obstacle to the conquest of power. He found himself closer to the morality of the old despotic government.
Berdyaev. Origins and meaning of Russian communism.
The abstract was completed by: student of group E-91 Budchenko E. A.
Sib GUTI, Department national history
Novosibirsk, 2001.
Introduction. Russian religious idea and the Russian state.
In the introduction to his work “The Origins and Meaning of Russian Communism,” Berdyaev says that Russian communism is difficult to understand because of its dual nature. On the one hand, it is a global and international phenomenon, on the other hand, it is a Russian and national phenomenon. And then he explains the reasons and prerequisites for this duality.
Berdyaev writes that the historical fate of the Russian people was “unhappy and suffering.” Why? The reason is the catastrophic pace of development, through discontinuity and change in the type of civilization. It is impossible to find organic unity in Russian history. Berdyaev writes about five different Russias in history: Kiev Russia; Russia of the Tatar period; Moscow Russia; Peter's, imperial Russia; and the new Soviet Russia.
The Russian people had to conquer and develop too large spaces. We can say that the Russian people became a victim of the immensity of their land, their natural spontaneity. Russian historians explain the despotic character of the Russian state by this need to develop the huge, vast Russian plain. In a sense, this is also true for the Soviet communist state, where the interests of the people were sacrificed to the power and organization of the Soviet state.
The Russian people in their spiritual structure are an Eastern people, and Russia is a Christian East. At the same time, Russia was heavily influenced by the West for two centuries and absorbed all Western ideas in the cultural sphere. The contradictory nature of the Russian soul was determined by the struggle between Eastern and Western. The soul of the Russian people was formed by the Orthodox Church and received a religious form. And this religious form survived until the Russian nihilists and communists. But in the soul of the Russian people there remained a strong natural element associated with the immensity of the Russian land. Russians have “nature,” elemental force, stronger than Westerners. That is, what we get again is a clash of two elements - primitive, natural paganism, the spontaneity of the endless Russian land and the Orthodox, derived from Byzantium, aspiration to to the other world.
The religious energy of the Russian soul in those days had the ability to switch to goals that are not religious, for example, to social goals. Berdyaev believes that due to the religious, dogmatic make-up of their souls, Russians are always “orthodox or heretics, apocalyptic or nihilistic”¨. At one time, the Russian people awakened to the consciousness that the Muscovite kingdom was the only Orthodox kingdom in the world, and Moscow was the Third Rome. Belonging to the Russian kingdom was determined by the confession of the true, Orthodox faith. In exactly the same way, belonging to Soviet Russia, to the Russian communist “kingdom” was determined by the confession of the communist faith.
In his work, Berdyaev often relies on historical data and deduces from historical events the reasons for the emergence of communism in our country. Here he writes the following. Under Ivan the Terrible, the universal consciousness was so weakened in the Russian church that the Greek church, from which the Russian people received Orthodoxy, was no longer looked at as a truly Orthodox church; they began to see it as a departure from the true faith. The Orthodox faith is the Russian faith, and the non-Russian faith is not the Orthodox faith. As a result of all this, one of the most important events in Russian history took place in the 17th century - the religious split of the Old Believers. The question was whether the Russian kingdom was a truly Orthodox kingdom, that is, whether the Russian people were fulfilling their messianic calling. The people suspected that there had been a betrayal of the true faith; the Antichrist had taken possession of state power and the highest church hierarchy. The split became a characteristic phenomenon of Russian life. So the Russian revolutionary intelligentsia of the 19th century became schismatic and thought that an evil force was in power. Both in the Russian people and in the Russian intelligentsia there will be a search for a kingdom based on truth.
Berdyaev writes that “the second blow was dealt by the reform of Peter the Great”¨. Peter's reform was completely inevitable: Russia could no longer exist as a closed kingdom, with military, naval, economic backwardness, in the absence of education and the technology of civilization. Russia had to overcome its isolation and join the cycle of world life. Peter's reform was inevitable, but he accomplished it through terrible violence against the people's soul and people's beliefs. He wanted to destroy old Moscow Russia, uproot the feelings that underlay its life. One could make a comparison between Peter and Lenin, between Peter’s revolution and the Bolshevik revolution. The same rudeness, violence, the imposition of well-known principles on the people from above.
Western enlightenment of the 18th century in the upper strata of Russian society was alien to the Russian people. Nowhere was there such a gap between the upper and lower strata as in Peter’s, imperial Russia, and no country simultaneously lived in such different centuries, from the 14th to the 19th centuries.
The main clash was between the idea of an empire, a powerful state, and the religious-messianic idea of a kingdom, which went into the popular layer, and then, in a transformed form, into the intelligentsia layer. Most of the Russian people - the peasantry - lived in serfdom. According to their concepts of property, Russian peasants always considered it untrue that nobles owned vast lands. God's land and all the people who work the land can use it. For the cultural classes, for the intelligentsia, the people remained as if a mystery that needed to be solved. The intelligentsia believed that in the silent, still wordless people the great truth about life was hidden and the day would come when the people would have their say.
K XIX century Russia has taken shape into a huge, vast peasant kingdom, enslaved, illiterate, but with its own folk culture based on faith. With the ruling noble class, lazy and uncultured, often having lost their religious faith and national image. With the king at the top, in relation to whom religious faith was preserved. With a strong bureaucracy and a very thin and fragile cultural layer.
By the 19th century the empire was very unhealthy both spiritually and socially. As mentioned above, Russians are characterized by the combination and combination of polar opposite principles. Russia and the Russian people can only be characterized by contradictions. The Russian people can equally be characterized “as a state-despotic and anarchist-freedom-loving people, as a people prone to nationalism and national conceit, and as a people of a universal spirit, more than anyone else capable of pan-humanity, cruel and extraordinarily humane, inclined to cause suffering and painfully compassionate.” ¨. In the 19th century, the conflict took on new forms - Rus', seeking social truth, the kingdom of truth, collided with an empire seeking power.
Education of the Russian intelligentsia and its character. Slavophilism and Westernism
Here Berdyaev gives an explanation of the Russian intelligentsia. To understand the sources of Russian communism and to understand the character of the Russian revolution, it is necessary to know what constitutes that peculiar phenomenon that in Russia was designated by the word “intelligentsia”. Berdyaev writes that the Russian intelligentsia is not the same as the Western one, that is, people of intellectual labor and creativity, primarily scientists, writers, artists, professors, teachers. A completely different formation is represented by the Russian intelligentsia, to which people who are not engaged in intellectual work and who are not particularly intellectual in general could belong. The intelligentsia in Russia is more like a monastic order or a religious sect with its own special morality, very intolerant. The intelligentsia was an ideological rather than a professional and economic group. It was formed from different social classes, first from the more cultured part of the nobility, later from the sons of priests and deacons, from minor officials, from the bourgeoisie and, after liberation, from the peasants - this is the various intelligentsia.
The Russian intelligentsia was dominated by social motives and revolutionary sentiments. It gave birth to a type of man whose only specialty was revolution. It was characterized by extreme dogmatism, to which Russians have always been prone. What in the West was a scientific theory subject to criticism, a hypothesis or relative truth, among the Russian intellectuals turned into dogma. The Russian radical intelligentsia developed an idolatrous attitude towards science. According to Berdyaev, Russians poorly understand the meaning of relative, gradual historical process, diversity of different spheres of culture. Russian maximalism is connected with this. The Russian soul strives for integrity; it does not put up with dividing everything into categories. She strives for the absolute and wants to subordinate everything to the absolute, and this religious trait in the Russian soul explains a lot.
“The first steps of the Russian intelligentsia on the paths of enlightenment, and not revolution, in the 18th century were accompanied by sacrifices and suffering, prison and hard labor.”¨ The loneliness of Russian cultured and freedom-loving people of the first half of the 19th century was extraordinary. There were cultured people, but there were none cultural environment. At the beginning of the 19th century, during the era of Alexander I, Russia experienced a cultural renaissance, but the renaissance of that era took place in a very small and thin layer of the nobility. Cultural and truth seekers people had to live in small groups and communities. The beginning of the 19th century was an era of “loosening” of the Russian soul; it became receptive to all kinds of ideas, to spiritual and social movements. But everything happened in such a small and socially secluded layer that it could not significantly change Russian life
After the accession of Nicholas I, everything went the way of growing schism and revolution. The Russian intelligentsia has finally developed into a schismatic type; it began to speak about itself as “we”, and about the state as “they”. The Russian cultural layer found itself above the abyss, crushed by two main forces - the autocratic monarchy above and the dark mass of the peasantry below.
All Russian thought of the 19th century, occupied general questions worldview, was Westernizing or Slavophile, i.e. it solved the problem of whether Russia should be the West or the East, whether it was necessary to follow the path of Peter or return to pre-Petrine, Moscow Rus'. A Russian young man from the generation of idealists of the 30s and 40s of the 19th century, professed totalitarian Schellianism or totalitarian Hegelianism in relation to all life, not only the life of thought and social life, but also personal life, in relation to love or feelings of nature.
The Slavophiles were greatly influenced by Schelling; they created an original Orthodox theology, which included revised motifs of German idealism. The originality of the Slavophiles was due to the fact that they tried to comprehend the originality of the Eastern, Orthodox type of Christianity, which formed the basis of Russian history. They denied imperial, Peter's Russia, they did not feel at home in the reality of Nicholas I, and the authorities treated them with suspicion and hostility, despite their Orthodoxy and monarchism. The Slavophiles considered the Russian people to be non-state. The Russian people have a religious, spiritual calling and want to be free from the state in order to fulfill this calling. This theory contradicts, of course, the fact that the Russian people created the greatest state in the world.
Russian Westernizers, to whom the religious type of Slavophiles was alien, became carried away by Hegelianism, which for them was a totalitarian system of thought and life, embracing absolutely everything. In the camp of radical Westerners, the influence of French socialism and French literature was strong.
Slavophiles and Westerners were enemies and friends. For some, Russia was, first of all, a mother, for others, a child.
At the end of the 40s, a circle gathered with the Russian landowner Petrashevsky, which discussed social issues, a plan for a new and better structure for mankind. Most of the circle were Fourierists or Saint-Simonists. The utopian socialism of the circle members was idyllic. They established three stages of development of socialist ideas in Russia: utopian socialism, populist socialism and scientific or Marxist socialism. “They expressed a mood very characteristic of the Russian revolutionary intelligentsia - love for the “distant”, and not love for the “neighbor””¨. The peaceful meetings of the Petrashevites circle ended sadly. All members of the circle were arrested and 21 people were sentenced to death penalty with hard labor instead. The Petrashevites’ cause could not help but strengthen the revolutionary sentiments of the Russian intelligentsia, but Russian socialism will no longer be so idyllic.
Here Berdyaev reveals to us the traits that are so characteristic of Russian people in general and Russian revolutionaries in particular: totalitarianism and dogmatism in all adherences, in all views. For a Russian revolutionary, only complete, unquestioning adherence to theory. A step to the side is already a betrayal.
Russian socialism and nihilism
In this chapter, Berdyaev talks about Belinsky and, it seems to me, shows by his example the process of formation of socialist ideas, thoughts, and sentiments among a Russian person of that time.
Belinsky was a man of exceptional talent and exceptional receptivity to ideas, but his level of education was not high, he knew almost no foreign languages and became acquainted with the ideas that he was passionate about second-hand. “He was, in turn, a Fichtean, a Schellingian, a Hegelian, then he switched to Feuerbachianism and denied the influence of French literature and French socialist thought”¨ .
Russian Hegelians of the 40s at first understood Hegel conservatively and interpreted the idea of the “reasonableness of reality” in the sense that one must come to terms with the surrounding reality, the reality of the Nicholas era and see reason in it. Belinsky also experienced such a moment of conservative Hegelianism. Russian romantic idealists of the 40s fled from social reality into the world of thought, fantasy, literature, into the reflected world of ideas. They suffered from the ugliness and untruth of reality, but were powerless to change it. They could not accept reality, not to reconcile with it, not to fight it. For Belinsky, this takes the form of a crisis of Hegelianism, which all left-wing, revolutionary Russian thought breaks with until the emergence of Russian Marxism, which again turned to Hegel, but understood his dialectics in a revolutionary way.
In the last period, Belinsky came to revolutionary socialism and militant atheism. The source of this atheism was compassion for people, the impossibility of reconciling with the idea of God in view of immeasurable evil and the sufferings of life. Many Russian intellectuals at all times came from sincere faith to militant atheism because of the vices and injustices of the world around them. Out of compassion for man, out of rebellion against the general (idea, reason, spirit, God) that oppressed a living person, Belinsky becomes a socialist. It is evidence of the moral, psychological origins of Russian socialism. His rebellion against the common in the name of the individual turns into a struggle for a new common, for humanity, for its social organization.
“Out of compassion for people, Belinsky preached tyranny and cruelty. Blood is necessary. In order to make the majority of humanity happy, you can blow off the heads of at least hundreds of thousands.”¨ Belinsky is the predecessor of Bolshevik morality. He says that people are so stupid that they need to be led to happiness by force. Belinsky is a central figure in the history of Russian thought and self-awareness of the 19th century. And he, more than others, should be placed in the ideological genealogy of Russian communism, as one of its predecessors. Russians, out of pity, compassion, and the inability to endure suffering, became atheists. They became atheists because they could not accept the Creator who created an evil, imperfect world full of suffering. They themselves wanted to create a better world, in which there would be no such injustices and suffering.
Belinsky, first of all, paid attention to live human personality, in response to the suffering she was experiencing, first of all, he wanted to affirm her dignity and right to the fullness of life. But the direction of his attention changes very quickly and the personality is absorbed by the social whole, society. The problem of society finally replaces the problem of man. The revolution overthrows the “common,” which oppressed the human personality, but it suppresses it with a new “common,” a society that demands the complete subordination of man.
Further in this chapter, Berdyaev explains to us what nihilism is, as a purely Russian phenomenon. In the mental sphere one must ascetically be content with the natural sciences, which destroy old beliefs, overthrow prejudices, and political economy, which teaches the organization of a more just social order. Nihilism is a rebellion against the untruth of history, against the lies of civilization, a demand that history end and a completely new, ahistorical or supra-historical life begin. Nihilism is the demand for throwing off all cultural veils, turning all historical traditions into nothing, the emancipation of a person on whom no shackles will be imposed. The Russian nihilists of the 60s were Russian enlighteners, they declared a struggle against all historical traditions, they opposed “reason,” the existence of which as materialists they could not admit, to all the beliefs and prejudices of the past.
The attitude of Russian nihilists towards science was idolatrous. Science, which meant the natural sciences, became an object of faith, it was turned into an idol. But the nihilistic enlighteners were not people of science. These were religious people and dogmatic believers. Russian nihilism was a departure from the world that lies in evil, a break with the family and with any established way of life. The state, law, and traditional morality were considered sinful, since they justified the enslavement of people and people. The Russian people, who received a nihilistic formation, easily made sacrifices, went to hard labor and to the gallows. “They were directed towards the future, but for themselves personally they had no hopes, neither in this earthly life, nor in the eternal life, which they denied.”¨ .
To understand the formation of Russian nihilism in in a broad sense words and Russian revolutionism of the 60s, Berdyaev describes Dobrolyubov. Dobrolyubov received a purely Orthodox religious education. In childhood and early youth he was very religious. And this pious, ascetic to the point of severe serious soul loses faith. He loses faith, overwhelmed by evil, injustice, and the suffering of life. He could not come to terms with the fact that such an evil world, full of injustice and suffering, has an all-powerful Creator. Dobrolyubov feels surrounded by a dark “kingdom”. Dobrolyubov wants earthly happiness for a person, and after the loss of faith he does not know any other goal.
One of the nihilists, Picapev, committed a real pogrom of aesthetics, completely denied Pushkin and suggested that Russian novelists write popular treatises on natural science. In this regard, the cultural program of the communists was more moderate. She suggested studying Pushkin and attached importance to art. For communists, technology plays the same role that natural science, mainly biological sciences, played in the 60s. If the program of Russian nihilism were fully implemented in Russian communism, then the results for culture would be more destructive than we see in Soviet culture. In nihilism there was an elementary and real emancipation. Nihilism had a huge positive significance for the emancipation of women. A similar process was repeated in the transition from the type of people who created the cultural renaissance of the early 20th century to the type of Russian communist.
The ideologists of communism did not notice the radical contradiction that lay at the basis of all their aspirations. They wanted the liberation of the individual, they declared a revolt against all beliefs, all norms, all abstract ideas in the name of this emancipation. In the name of liberation of the individual, they overthrew religion, philosophy, art, morality, and denied the spirit and spiritual life. But by doing this they suppressed the personality, deprived it of quality content, devastated its inner life, and denied the individual’s right to creativity and spiritual enrichment. Nihilism manifested a violent, externally imposed asceticism in thinking and creativity. Materialism was such an imposed asceticism, poverty in thinking. The principle of personality could in no way be substantiated and strengthened on the basis of materialism. The empirical personality was deprived of the right to the creative fullness of life.
Russian populism and anarchism.
Populism is as characteristically a Russian phenomenon as nihilism and anarchism. Populism, first of all, is faith in the Russian people. The feeling of guilt before the people played a huge role in the psychology of populism. The intelligentsia is always in debt to the people and it must pay its debt. The entire culture received by the intelligentsia was created at the expense of the people, at the expense of the people's labor, and this imposed a heavy responsibility on those introduced to this culture. “Russian populism is a product of the schism of the Petrine era. It is a product of consciousness in intelligent layers of the unjustification of one’s life, the absurdity of one’s life.”
The populists-nobles were guided by motives of conscience, the populists-commoners - by motives of honor. Russian populism has always been characterized by aversion to bourgeoisism and fear of the development of capitalism in Russia. The populists believed in special paths of development for Russia, in the possibility of bypassing Western capitalism, in the destiny of the Russian people to resolve the social issue better and faster than in the West. The concept of property has always been alien to the Russian people. For Russian consciousness, what is important is not the attitude towards the principle of property, but the attitude towards a living person. Russian communism has a doctrine opposite to populism, but it includes strong elements of religious populism.
And again an excursion into history. The early 60s were an era liberal reforms, liberation of peasants, judicial reform, establishment of zemstvo. There were several years of greater harmony, relative reconciliation of the left intelligentsia with the authorities and a desire to participate in the implementation of reforms coming from above. “But these spring moods did not last long.”¨ The reactionary mood from above and the revolutionary mood from below grew, and the atmosphere became increasingly unhealthy. A revolutionary movement began, which was expressed in terrorist attacks against Alexander II. Revolutionary acts could not change the system, since a huge mass of the people still believed in the sacredness of the autocratic monarchy. After the liberation of the peasants, revolutionary populism and agrarian socialism received new motives. The development of capitalist industry began in Russia.
For the extreme, maximalist revolutionary movements of the late 60s, Nechaev, who compiled the “Catechism of a Revolutionary,” a one-of-a-kind document, is of greatest interest. This document says: the revolutionary broke with civil order and the civilized world, with the morality of this world; he lives in this world to destroy it; he should not love the sciences of this world; he knows only one science - destruction; the revolutionary destroys everyone who prevents him from achieving his goal; He is not a revolutionary who still values anything in this world; it is necessary to increase suffering and violence in order to cause an uprising of the masses; it is necessary to concentrate this world into one force that destroys everything and is invincible. Like many revolutionaries, Nechaev redirected his religious energy in another direction. The communists, of course, softened Nechaev’s catechism, but much of this catechism was incorporated into Russian communism, especially in the initial period.
Anarchism is as characteristic as nihilism, as well as populism. If the Russians were characterized by the idea of the sacred anointing of power, then they were also characterized by the idea that any power is evil and sin. “The most striking thing is that the ideology of anarchism is primarily the creation of the upper layer of the Russian nobility, and this Russian anarchism has acquired pan-European significance”¨ . The anarchists wanted to stir up a world rebellion, ignite a world fire, they wanted to destroy the old world, they believed that a new world would arise on its own from the ruins of the old world. They believed in the truth and power of unorganized spontaneity. A prominent representative of such anarchism was Bakunin. In militant atheism, Bakunin is the forerunner of communism. Communism took advantage of Bakunin's anarchism and rebellion for the cause of destruction. But in creation, in construction, in organization, communists are radically different from Bakunin, who could never organize power and did not want to.
Compared to the extremism of Nechaev and Bakunin, other currents of Russian revolutionary socialist, populist thought were softened and moderate. Crude utilitarianism in morality is being overcome, as well as the extremes of nihilism in general.
The theorist of the revolution in the 70s was P. N. Tkachev. He, more than anyone else, is Lenin's predecessor. Tkachev was the first to talk about Marx in the 70s. Tkachev considered the absence of a developed bourgeoisie to be Russia's greatest advantage, facilitating the possibility of social revolution. He asserted the power of the minority over the majority. Tkachev, like Lenin, was a theorist of revolution. His main idea is the seizure of power, the seizure of power by a revolutionary minority. To do this, it is necessary to disorganize the existing government through terror. According to Tkachev, the people are always ready for revolution, because they are only material used by the revolutionary minority. He speaks of replacing conservative institutions with revolutionary ones in much the same way as Lenin would later speak.
“Classical Marxism and Russian Marxism.”
The first generations of Russian Marxists, first of all, fought against the old trends of the revolutionary intelligentsia, against populism, and dealt irreparable blows to it. Russian Marxism was waiting for liberation from the industrial development of Russia, which populism precisely wanted to avoid. The Marxists stood for the proletarianization of the peasantry, which the populists also opposed. Marxists thought that they had found a real social basis for revolutionary liberation struggle- the emerging proletariat. “The first Marxists wanted to rely not so much on the revolutionary intelligentsia, on the role of the individual in history, but on the objective socio-economic process.”¨ The first Russian Marxists were very fond of talking about the development of material productive forces, as their main hope and support. At the same time, they were interested not so much in the economic development of Russia itself, as a positive goal and good, but in the formation of an instrument of revolutionary struggle. The economy determines the entire human life; not only the entire structure of society, but also the entire ideology, the entire spiritual culture, religion, philosophy, morality, and art depend on it. Economics is the basis, ideology is the superstructure. There is an inevitable objective socio-economic process that determines everything. In a person, it is not he himself who thinks and creates, but the social class to which he belongs. A person cannot free himself from the economy that defines him; he only reflects it. This is one side of Marxism.
Marxism is not only the teaching of historical or economic materialism about the complete dependence of man on the economy, Marxism is also the teaching about deliverance, about the messianic calling of the proletariat, about the coming perfect society in which man will no longer depend on the economy, about the power and victory of man over the irrational forces of nature and society. The determination of a person by economics can be interpreted as a sin of the past. But in the future it may be different, a person may be freed from slavery. There is a leap ahead from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom. History will be sharply divided into two parts, into the past, determined by the economy, when man was a slave, and into the future, which will begin with the victory of the proletariat and will be entirely determined by the activity of man, social man, when there will be a reign of freedom. The active subject that will free man from slavery and create a better life is the proletariat. Living people are always hidden behind economic reality and social groups of people. A person with his activity can melt this ghostly world of the capitalist economy. The proletariat must fight against the reification of man, against the dehumanization of the economy, and must reveal the omnipotence of human activity. Faith in human activity is faith in the spirit and it is not compatible with materialism. Only this side of Marxism could inspire enthusiasm and generate revolutionary energy. This is the second side of Marxism.
Exploitation is not an economic phenomenon, but, first of all, a phenomenon of moral order, a morally bad attitude of man to man. “The difference between the “bourgeois” and the “proletarian” is the difference between evil and good, injustice and justice.”¨ Marx created a real myth about the proletariat. The mission of the proletariat is an object of faith. Marxism is not only science and politics, it is a religion. This is what his strength is based on.
Russians perceived Marxism first from the objective-scientific side. Russian socialists no longer feel groundless, hanging over an abyss. They felt themselves to be “scientific”, not utopian, not dreamy socialists. “Scientific socialism” became an article of faith.
Marxism has been perceived in different ways. For some, the development of capitalist industry in Russia meant hope for the triumph of socialism. A working class is emerging => we must devote all our efforts to developing the consciousness of this class. For others, the development of capitalist industry acquired primary importance, and the revolutionary class side of Marxism faded into the background. Russian Marxism, which arose in a non-industrial country, without a developed proletariat, was tormented by a moral contradiction that weighed on the conscience of many Russian socialists. How can one wish for the development of capitalism, welcome this development, and at the same time consider capitalism an evil and injustice, against which every socialist is called upon to fight?
The traditions of revolutionary Marxism were imperceptibly united with the traditions of the old Russian revolutionism, which did not want to allow a capitalist stage in the development of Russia. From the point of view of the evolutionary interpretation of Marxism, it was impossible to justify a proletarian, socialist revolution in an industrially backward, peasant country with a poorly developed working class. With this understanding of Marxism, one had to count first on the bourgeois revolution, on the development of capitalism, and then carry out the socialist revolution. There was a division within Russian Marxism into an orthodox, more revolutionary wing and a critical, more reformist wing. The distinction between “orthodox” and “critical” Marxism was relative, because “critical” Marxism was in some respects more faithful to the scientific, deterministic side of Marxism than “orthodox” Marxism, which drew conclusions from Marxism that were original in relation to Russia.
Totalitarianism in everything is the main sign of a revolutionary attitude to life. Critical Marxism might have the same ultimate ideals as revolutionary Marxism, which considers itself orthodox, but it recognized separate, autonomous spheres, it did not affirm totality. Russian revolutionaries have always been total in the past. The revolution was for them a religion and philosophy, and not just a struggle related to the social and political side of life. A Russian Marxism had to be developed that would correspond to this revolutionary type and this revolutionary totalitarian instinct. This is Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Bolshevism defined itself as the only totalitarian, integral Marxism, which does not allow the fragmentation of the Marxist worldview and the acceptance of only its individual parts.
Under Bolshevism, the proletariat ceased to be a reality, since as a reality the proletariat was insignificant. It was first and foremost the idea of the proletariat, and the bearer of this idea was a small minority. The communist revolution in Russia was carried out in the name of totalitarian Marxism, Marxism as the religion of the proletariat. Totalitarian Marxism managed to carry out a revolution in which Russia skipped the stage of capitalist development.
The peasantry was declared a revolutionary class, although the Soviet government had to constantly fight against it, sometimes very cruelly. Lenin proclaimed that the industrial backwardness of Russia and the rudimentary nature of capitalism were the great advantages of the social revolution. You won't have to deal with a strong, organized bourgeoisie.
“Marxism was the downfall of the Russian intelligentsia, it was the consciousness of its weakness”¨ . But with all the spiritual changes in the intelligentsia, the basic ground remained the same - the search for the kingdom of social truth and justice, an ascetic attitude towards culture, a holistic, totalitarian attitude towards life, determined by the main goal - the implementation of socialism.
At the beginning of the 20th century in Russia there was a real cultural renaissance, religious, philosophical, artistic. And here there was a return to the traditions of great Russian literature and Russian religious and philosophical thought. But these cultural idealistic currents began to lose touch with the social revolutionary movement. A cultural elite was formed that had no influence on wide circles Russian people and society. This was a new split, with which the history of the Russian intelligentsia is so rich. It was a time of symbolism, metaphysics, mysticism. People of the Russian cultural layer stood tall European culture. Interest was lost in enlightenment, nihilism, and populism. At this time the first revolution of 1905 was raging. There was almost nothing in common between the upper and lower levels of Russian culture; there was a complete split. Interest in social issues weakened and figures of spiritual culture had no influence on the ongoing social revolutionary ferment; they lived in social isolation and constituted a closed elite.
The elementaryity and crudeness of the ideas of the 1905 revolution, in which the legacy of Russian nihilism was felt, repelled the figures of the cultural renaissance and caused a spiritual reaction. According to the old tradition of the Russian intelligentsia, the struggle for the spirit was perceived as a reaction, almost as a betrayal of liberation aspirations. Such was the pre-revolutionary cultural atmosphere. Inside revolutionary movement The weakness and unpreparedness of the Social-Democratic Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries, who continued the Narodnik traditions, were revealed. Bolshevism became the most consistent with the entire situation of 1917, and the most faithful to some of the original Russian traditions, and the Russian quest for universal social truth. This was determined by the entire course of Russian history, but also by the weakness of our creative spiritual forces. Communism turned out to be the inevitable fate of Russia, an internal moment in the fate of the Russian people.
"Russian communism and revolution".
The Russian Revolution is universal in its principles; it was carried out under the symbols of the international, but it is also deeply national. Only in Russia could a communist revolution occur. Russian communism is Asian communism. The very internationality of the Russian communist revolution is purely Russian, national. Lenin's role is a demonstration of the role of the individual in historical events. According to Berdyaev, Lenin was “a revolutionary maximalist and a statesman.”¨ He combined the utmost maximalism of a revolutionary idea, a totalitarian revolutionary worldview with flexibility and opportunism in the means of struggle, in practical politics.
The first impetus that determined Lenin's revolutionary attitude to the world and life was the execution of his brother, who was involved in a terrorist case. Lenin's father was a provincial official who rose to the rank of general and nobility. When his brother was executed for a political cause, the surrounding society turned away from Lenin's family. This was also a disappointment in people for Lenin. He developed a cynical and indifferent attitude towards people. He did not believe in man, but he wanted to organize life in such a way that it would be easier for people to live, so that there would be no oppression of man by man. In philosophy, in art, in spiritual culture, Lenin was a very backward and elementary person.
Lenin built the theory and tactics of the Russian revolution and implemented it. Lenin is not a theorist of Marxism, but a theorist of revolution. Everything he wrote was just a development of the theory and practice of the revolution. He did not develop a program, he was interested in one topic that was least of all interested in Russian revolutionaries, the topic of seizing power. Lenin's entire worldview was adapted to the technique of revolutionary struggle. His whole thinking was imperialistic, despotic. This is associated with poverty and asceticism of thought, the elementary nature of slogans. He read a lot, studied a lot, but he did not have extensive knowledge, did not have much mental culture. He acquired knowledge for a specific purpose, for struggle and action.
He did not allow a single brick to be taken out of his totalitarian system; he demanded that the whole thing be accepted. He demanded consciousness and organization in the fight against any spontaneity. He allowed all means to fight, to achieve the goals of the revolution. Having become obsessed with a revolutionary idea, he lost the direct difference between good and evil, lost his direct relationship with living people, allowing deception, lies, violence, and cruelty.
For Lenin, Marxism is the doctrine of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Lenin is not a democrat; he did not assert the principle of the majority, but the principle of a selected minority. He built a plan for revolution and a revolutionary seizure of power, not at all relying on the development of consciousness of the huge masses of workers and on the objective economic process. Dictatorship flowed from Lenin’s entire worldview; he even built his worldview in application to dictatorship.
Lenin's goal was to create a strong party. The party must have a doctrine in which nothing can be changed. Each party member was subject to the dictatorship of the center. The Bolshevik Party was supposed to provide a model for the organization of all of Russia. And Russia was indeed organized according to this model. All of Russia, the entire Russian people found themselves subordinate not only to the dictatorship of the Communist Party, its central body, but also to the doctrine of the communist dictator in their thoughts and their conscience. Lenin denied freedom within the party and this denial of freedom was transferred to all of Russia.
The problem of power was the main one for Lenin and everyone who followed them. This distinguished the Bolsheviks from all other revolutionaries. And they created a police state. But it is impossible to organize power and subjugate the workers and peasants by force of arms alone. The new faith for the masses must be expressed in elementary symbols. Marxism, transformed for Russian conditions, turned out to be quite suitable for this.
Communism included familiar features: a thirst for social justice and equality, recognition of the working classes as the highest human type, aversion to capitalism and the bourgeoisie, attitude to life, sectarian intolerance, suspicious and hostile attitude towards the cultural elite, denial of the spirit. All these features have always been characteristic of the Russian revolutionary and even simply radical intelligentsia. Part of the intelligentsia turned into communists and adapted their psyche to new conditions, while the other part did not accept the socialist revolution, forgetting their past.
A new anthropological type has appeared in Russia, a new expression on faces. In the new communist type, the motives of strength and power supplanted the old motives of truthfulness and compassion. This type has developed rigidity, turning into cruelty. This new spiritual type became the material for the organization of the Communist Party. The new people who came from below were alien to the traditions of Russian culture; their fathers and grandfathers were illiterate, devoid of any culture and lived exclusively by faith. In the past, the people felt the injustice of the social system, but they meekly and humbly bore their share. The hour came when he did not want to endure it any longer. Meekness and humility turned into ferocity and fury. Lenin could not have carried out his plan for revolution and seizure of power without a revolution in the soul of the people. The Russian people entered a technical period; they believed in the omnipotence of the machine and, out of old instinct, began to treat the machine as a totem.
Lenin felt that his time had come. It was necessary to make the world's first proletarian revolution in a peasant country. Leninism included elements of revolutionary populism and rebellion in a transformed form. Lenin is an anti-humanist, as well as an anti-democrat. In this he was a man of his era, the era of not only communist, but also fascist revolutions. Leninism puts forward a leader endowed with dictatorial power. Mussolini and Hitler imitated this. Stalin is a complete type of leader - dictator.
For Lenin, Marxism is the theory and practice of the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the future, the state should die out, but in the transition period the role of the state should increase even more. The state will wither away and be finally replaced by organized society only after the disappearance of classes. Lenin did not think that after the October Revolution a communist society would finally be realized in Russia. There is still a preparatory process and a fierce struggle ahead. In the past there was a suppression of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie; in the transitional period of a proletarian state ruled by a dictatorship, there must be a suppression of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat. The dictatorship of the proletariat will be brutally violent and unequal.
“How and why will violence and coercion, the absence of any freedom that characterize the period of transition to communism, cease?”¨ asks Berdyaev. Lenin's answer is very simple, too simple. First you need to go through coercion, through an iron dictatorship from above. Then people will get used to observing the basic conditions of society, adapt to new conditions, then violence against people will be eliminated, the state will wither away, the dictatorship will end. There was one thing he didn't foresee. He did not foresee that class oppression could take completely new forms, not similar to capitalist ones. The dictatorship of the proletariat, having strengthened state power, develops a colossal bureaucracy covering the entire country. This new Soviet bureaucracy, stronger than the Tsarist bureaucracy, is a new privileged class that can brutally exploit the people. This is what happened. And all this was beyond Lenin’s horizons. Here he turned out to be a utopian. The Soviet state became the same as any despotic state. The communist revolution was originally Russian, but the miracle of the birth of a new life did not happen.
And here I absolutely agree with Berdyaev - the revolution is irrational, it testifies to the dominance of irrational forces in history. This means that the old regime has become completely irrational and is no longer justified by any meaning, and that the revolution itself is carried out through the dispersion of the irrational popular element. Lenin was an extreme rationalist; he believed in the possibility of the final rationalization of social life. But he was also a man of fate, fate, that is, the irrational in history.
Acceptance of history means acceptance of revolution, acceptance of its meaning as a catastrophic discontinuity in the destinies of a sinful world. The rejection of any meaning of revolution must inevitably lead to the rejection of history. But revolution is terrible and terrible, it is ugly and violent. Undoubtedly, the Russian revolution is a feature of every revolution. But there is also a single, once accomplished, original revolution; it is generated by the uniqueness of the Russian historical process and the uniqueness of the Russian intelligentsia.
Bolshevism took advantage of everything for its triumph. He took advantage of the impotence of the liberal democratic government. He took advantage of the unsettled discontent of the peasants. He took advantage of the Russian traditions of despotic rule from above and, instead of unusual democracy, proclaimed a dictatorship more similar to the old tsarism. He took advantage of Russian messianism, which always remains, at least in an unconscious form, Russian faith in the special ways of Russia. He took advantage of the historical split between the people and the cultural stratum, and popular distrust of the intelligentsia. He took advantage of the collapse of patriarchal life among the people and the decay of old religious beliefs.
The Russian people did not realize their messianic idea of Moscow as the third Rome. The religious schism of the 17th century revealed that the kingdom of Moscow was not the third Rome. The messianic idea of the Russian people took either an apocalyptic form or a revolutionary form. An amazing event occurred in the fate of the Russian people. Instead of the Third Rome, the Third International was implemented in Russia and many features of the Third Rome were transferred to the Third International. The Third International is also a sacred kingdom and it is also based on orthodox faith. The Third International is not an International, but a Russian national idea. This is a transformation of Russian messianism. Something happened that Marx and Western Marxists could not foresee; there was, as it were, an identification of two messianisms, the messianism of the Russian people and the messianism of the proletariat.
Ideologically, Berdyaev had a negative attitude towards Soviet power. This power, stained with cruelty and inhumanity, covered in blood, kept the people in a terrible grip. But at the moment, Berdyaev seemed to be the only power that was carrying out at least some kind of defense of Russia from the dangers that threatened it.
Conclusion.
Having written this work, I understood a lot about the Russian revolution. I always wanted to know whether it was possible to go through this stage, whether it was possible to avoid the revolution and the associated violence and despotic power. Such a resolution of the situation that developed at that time was natural, and most importantly, the revolution was inevitable. Such is the fate of the Russian people. Spontaneity, revolution, not evolution, totalitarianism in everything, in life, in thoughts, in goals. The collapse of all traditions, the entire way of life, power. Despotism of power is a very characteristic phenomenon for Russia, which arose in connection with the need to develop vast expanses. This is how it was under Peter the Great, this is how it happened under communism. All revolutionary sentiments did not arise suddenly. Discontent accumulated gradually over two centuries among the intelligentsia. Perhaps its goals were noble initially, but over time, leader Lenin became fixated on overthrowing the government by any means, on establishing a communist and fair society by any means. In Russia there are always only extremes everywhere, there is a split everywhere, either it will be in my opinion, or it will not be at all. Religious blind faith over the course of many centuries turned into the same, the only possible faith in the goodness of communism in the twentieth century. Therefore, the revolution became a characteristic traditional Russian phenomenon, impossible in the West. Such was the fate of the Russian people - to show the whole world what Soviet power was, in order to warn against such power. The revolutionaries believed that Russia could avoid the Western path of development, avoid capitalism, that is, the exploitation of people. The trouble with Russia is that it is a relatively young civilization and sees all the shortcomings of the system it is moving towards using the example of the West. It has always lagged behind Western development, always going one step lower. And the revolution threw the country back, as it were, preserved it in the state in which it was before 17. And now we are forced to catch up with Western countries with giant strides, and there is nothing good about this either.
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Structure and content of the book. The book was conceived by Berdyaev in 1933 and was caused by the appearance in the Western press - mainly in America and England - of articles and books by foreign authors who distorted the history of the ideological and religious struggle in Russia during the revolutionary era and even tried to defend the materialist ideology of communism from a Christian point of view . This explains the fact that this book, addressed to the Western reader, was published in foreign languages, first in English, in 1937, then in German, French, Italian and Dutch. The Russian reader had the opportunity to become acquainted with it only in 1989, when it was first published in Russia.
The book “The Origins and Meaning of Russian Communism” is, to a certain extent, a final work. It summarized the socio-philosophical searches of the author, his reflections on the paths of Russian and world history of the twentieth century and was prepared by his entire previous evolution
Education of the Russian intelligentsia and its character. Slavophilism and Westernism. In this chapter, the author explores the unique specificity of the Russian intelligentsia, how social phenomenon, shows its ideological origins, its uniqueness and incomparability with the Western intelligentsia. The main difference between the Russian intelligentsia is that it is not a professional association of people engaged in intellectual work, but an ideological social education aimed not so much at understanding the world as at transforming it. “Russians tend to perceive everything in a totalitarian way; the skeptical criticism of Western people is alien to them. This is a drawback, but it is also a virtue and indicates the religious integrity of the Russian soul. The Russian radical intelligentsia developed an idolatrous attitude towards science itself. When a Russian intellectual became a Darwinist, then Darwinism was for him not a biological theory subject to dispute, but a dogma... San-Simonism, Fourierism, Hegelianism, materialism, Marxism, and Marxism in particular were experienced by the Russian intelligentsia in a totalitarian and dogmatic way.”
Russian socialism and nihilism. In this chapter, N. Berdyaev explores the ideological and moral origins of Russian nihilism and finds them in the intelligentsia's dissatisfaction with the official doctrine of Orthodoxy - the dominant religion in Russia, the spiritual foundation of society. “Nihilism is a characteristically Russian phenomenon, unknown in this form to Western Europe... It arose on the spiritual soil of Orthodoxy, it could only arise in a soul that had received an Orthodox formation. This is Orthodox asceticism turned inside out.” This becomes obvious if we remember the image of Bazarov from Turgenev’s “Fathers and Sons”, familiar to us from school, which is largely copied from real historical characters - Belinsky, Pisarev, whose life and work N.A. Berdyaev explores in his book.
Russian populism and anarchism. In this chapter, N. Berdyaev explores the nature of Russian populism, also linking it with the original Christian worldview that distinguishes Russians. A populist is a “repentant nobleman” who has realized the unjustification of his existence. Berdyaev also finds the origins of anarchism in the peculiarities of Russian national character. “Russian populism is a product of the split of the Petrine era. It is a product of the consciousness of the intelligent layers of the unjustification of their life, the absurdity of their life, a product of the inorganic nature of the entire structure of Russian life.” In his assessment of anarchism, Berdyaev also proceeds from the characteristics of the fair-haired national character, his unbridled desire for freedom, as exemplified by such historical figures as Stenka Razin and Emelyan Pugachev. Anarchism, as an ideological movement, is a “lordly” phenomenon associated with the names of Prince Kropotkin, Count Tolstoy and, of course, master Bakunin. “Anarchism is as characteristic a product of the Russian spirit as nihilism, as well as populism... The entire Russian intelligentsia did not like the state... If the Russians were characterized by the idea of the sacred anointing of power, then they were also characterized by the idea that all power is evil and sin."
Russian literature of the 19th century and its prophecies. In this chapter, the author shows the deep difference between Russian literature and Western literature, finding it in “religious social agitation,” a premonition of disaster, and disbelief in the strength of civilization. He analyzes the works of Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Tolstoy, proving that only in Russia could such literature be born that is akin to social philosophy. The second point is that only in Russia could literature have such a political and spiritual influence and turn into the ideological basis of social action. “Russian literature was born not from a joyful creative excess, but from the torment and suffering fate of man and people, from the search for universal salvation. But this means that the main motives of Russian literature were religious.” And at the same time, it was “a premonition of the coming revolution, and sometimes even called for it.”
Classical Marxism and Russian Marxism. In this chapter, N.A. Berdyaev shows the ideological transformation that Marxism, a purely Western phenomenon, has undergone in Russia. Bolshevism, as an ideology, turned out to be most consistent with the religious spirit of the Russian people, and as a political force, less utopian than its liberal opponents, more consistent with “Russian methods of governing and ruling by violence.” Proving the religious nature of Marxism, Berdyaev writes: “Marx created a real myth about the proletariat. The mission of the proletariat is an object of faith. Marxism is not only science and politics, it is also faith, religion. And its strength is based on this.”
Russian communism and revolution. In this chapter, N.A. Berdyaev shows the uniquely Russian character of the 1917 revolution in Russia, despite the fact that it was carried out under the slogans of internationalist ideas. Analyzes in detail the personality of V.I. Lenin, his political path; gives a negative assessment of the historical significance of the Russian revolution. The author analyzes the similarities and differences between totalitarian regimes - in the Russian Empire and communist Russia, showing the inhumane nature of both the first and, especially, the latter. “The old Russian monarchy rested on the orthodox worldview and demanded agreement with it. The new Russian communist state also rests on the orthodox worldview and demands even more coercive agreement with it. The Holy Kingdom is always a dictatorship of the worldview, always demands orthodoxy, always casts out heretics. Totalitarianism ", the demand for the integrity of faith as the basis of the kingdom corresponds to the deep religious instincts of the people. The Soviet communist state has great similarities in its spiritual structure with the Moscow Orthodox kingdom. It has the same suffocation."
Communism and Christianity. In this chapter N.A. Berdyaev analyzes the ideological similarities between communism and Christianity, thereby explaining the ideological rootedness of communist ideas in Russian religious consciousness. Being religious in nature, communist ideology fought against religion, instilling in its followers a fanatical attitude and faith in the proclaimed ideals, a faith that did not tolerate “competition” from other faiths. In other words, the struggle of the communists with the church was in many ways akin to the religious wars of Muslims or crusaders. “The hatred of the Russian communists for Christianity contains a contradiction that those whose consciousness is clouded by the communist doctrine are not able to notice. The best type of communist, that is, a person completely captured in the service of an idea, capable of enormous sacrifices and selfless enthusiasm, is possible only as a result of Christian education human souls, as a result of the processing of natural man by the Christian spirit. The results of this Christian influence on human souls, often invisible and above-ground, when in their consciousness people abandoned Christianity and even became its enemies, if we assume that anti-religious propaganda will finally destroy the traces of Christianity in the souls of Russians. people, if it destroys every religious feeling, then the implementation of communism will become impossible, because no one will want to make sacrifices, no one will understand life as serving a super-personal goal..."
The result of N.A. Berdyaev’s reflections on the fate of Russia was the conclusion that the Russian revolution was not accidental and that its ideas and social practice were rooted in the Russian national consciousness and traditional system Russian State Administration; its preparedness by the entire previous history of the development of statehood and ideology.
“The origins and meaning of Russian communism” is a unique philosophy of Russian history, considering a certain political phenomenon - the Russian revolution - and striving to understand its meaning through the specifics of Russian ideological, religious, political, cultural traditions and the “Russian soul” in general (this concept is from Berdyaev essentially identical to the concept of the Russian religious type).
This book uses a number of provisions put forward and developed in earlier works by N. Berdyaev. This is the interpretation of history as a process unfolding primarily in the sphere of the spirit, the interpretation of Marxism as a quasi-religious teaching, the opposition of revolution and culture. In "Origins..." these provisions are largely rethought in the light of the new historical experience- the experience of the era of the victorious revolution, which he himself once sincerely called for.
To comprehend the internal pattern of Russian history according to Berdyaev means to understand the “Russian idea.” And this last one is a transcendental, supra-empirical category. “The Russian idea,” as Vl. Soloviev believed, is not what any of the people thinks about it, but what God himself thinks about it, it is here”... the true Russian idea, attested by the religious character of the people , transformed and indicated by the most important events and greatest personalities of our history." The human mind is not able to directly grasp the content of this idea; it is forced to make its way to it through a series of successive philosophical reconstructions. Objectively, such reconstructions, Berdyaev believes, were Slavophilism, populism, the views of Socialist Revolutionary theorists and the concepts of Russian Marxism. The truth was not fully represented from any point of view, and history, already seemingly placed within doctrinal frameworks, each time made turns that took it away from the networks woven by the human mind.
According to the logic of providentialism (divine provision), each such turn anew clarifies the “plan” that it follows, and therefore significantly transforms the entire semantic context of the story, me it, and just like an extra word added to a phrase can sometimes change its entire meaning. In accordance with this, Berdyaev interprets the entire historical path of Russia from the point of view of the preconditions of Bolshevism in Russian history and the role that it played in its destinies. Russian communism, from the point of view of N. Berdyaev, is both a global and a purely national phenomenon. As a national phenomenon, it is determined by the entire course of Russian history. How does N. Berdyaev understand this determinism? “Russian communism,” he believes, was brought to life not so much by any specific social factors, how much is conditioned, even predetermined metaphysically: it is a natural product of the “mental structure” of the Russian people.
The starting point of all Berdyaev’s reasoning is the specific duality of the “Russian soul,” which contradictorily combines Eastern and Western elements, as well as Orthodox asceticism with a spontaneous natural beginning. From this basic contradiction, he deduces the essential conflicts of Russian history, which seem to him to be characteristic of its throwing between extremes. The Russian people, Berdyaev repeats more than once in his books, can only be characterized in polar opposites: they are with the same basis can be considered both state-despotic and anarchically freedom-loving, prone to national conceit and most capable of all humanity, cruel and at the same time capable of compassion reaching the point of painfulness. The antinomy of the Russian soul is aggravated by the fact that in its aspirations it knows no limitations. In this respect, the “landscape of the soul” of a Russian person resembles the landscape of the land on which it was formed: the same immensity, the absence of any limits, aspiration into the infinite. This natural pagan element became distinctive feature, a feature of the Russian person, who is Orthodox at his core, includes such features as adherence to a certain idea, readiness to bear suffering and sacrifice in its name, intense maximalism, attraction to eternity, another world. These spiritual qualities, losing their direct connection with their religious source and acquiring a different content, began to be embodied in various social theories and movements, including Russian communism."
Characterizing the spiritual makeup of the Russian people, Berdyaev refutes the legends common in the West about their barbarism and inertia. It also reminds the Western reader of the culture of Kievan Rus, which stood above its contemporary culture Western Europe, and about the wonderful Russian architecture, and about the greatness of classical Russian literature, and about the originality of Russian religious and philosophical thought, and about the collective genius of the enslaved, illiterate peasant masses who created a unique folk culture based on Orthodoxy.
At the same time, Russian spirituality, in his opinion, is alien to Western enlightenment. Western and eastern elements in Russian culture exist, as it were, separately and oppose each other. Western enlightenment, transferred to Russian soil by Peter's reform, was concentrated in a narrow layer of the nobility and intelligentsia. Having assimilated Western knowledge, this layer broke away from the people, who continued to live by their traditions, and became for them an “alien race.” But the “educated society” itself perceived foreign influences superficially. They could not completely overcome the Russian people, but only gave rise to intense conflicts in his consciousness and deeds: the empire created by Peter grew, became the most extensive state in the world, but its unity was not of a spiritual nature. On the contrary, it generated and reproduced a fragmented spirituality. Therefore, Berdyaev argues, for all its external greatness, the Russian state of the 19th century was contradictory and unhealthy. At its core was the conflict between the original Russian idea of a harmoniously organized Orthodox state (“Holy Rus'”) and the idea of empire borrowed from the Germans, the most striking embodiment of which was the “Prussian officer” on the throne - Nicholas I. The bearer of the opposing principles of the empire was, first of all, , the intelligentsia, who found themselves in chronic opposition to the authorities. The resolution of this conflict - a painful resolution, but in its own way logical - was, according to Berdyaev, the Russian Revolution.
N. Berdyaev’s discussions about the “Russian soul” showed observation and understanding of the national character. The old disputes between Slavophiles and Westerners found their continuation in them. In these disputes, he took a rather original position. In contrast to the one-sided Westernizing point of view, which considered all elements of Russian life that are not similar to “Europe” as a sign of its backwardness, the philosopher affirms the spiritual and historical originality of Russia. The Russian people are not catching up with the West, but are going their own way. At the same time, Berdyaev does not accept traditional Slavophilism, and unlike him, he believes that it is impossible to find a harmonious internal unity in Russian history. He also does not agree with the Slavophil thesis about the “non-state” essence of the Russian people. In accordance with his concept of the contradictory nature of the “Russian soul,” Berdyaev develops a different thesis: in the Russian consciousness both commitment to state power and the ideal of freedom coexist. The clash of the instinct of statehood with the instinct of love of freedom and love of truth was historically expressed in the constant alternation of destructive riots of the freemen with periods of strengthening of power, which restrained this freemen with an iron hand.
Berdyaev's plan, obviously, was to remove the extremes of Westernism and Slavophilism in a new theoretical synthesis. In “Results...” one can trace some “orientalization” in the assessment of Russian folk life. In particular, “Russian communism” is considered as Eastern communism. At the same time, Russian history is considered in the context of European history, an integrity unfolded over time, formed by the joint participation in it of all peoples inhabiting the continent. However, Russia has a special role in the pan-European historical process. Following V. Solovyov, Berdyaev propagates the messianic meaning of Russian history and the divine destiny of the Russian people.
The secret of the attractiveness of the “Bolshevik myth” for the masses, in his opinion, is that it combined traditional Russian messianism with the new social messianism of Marxist teaching. There was, as it were, an identification of faith in the special destiny of the Russian people with the idea of the special historical mission of the proletariat. At the same time, the state created by the communists, which from the very beginning found itself in a hostile environment, merged in the popular consciousness with the image of the “kingdom of truth,” the only custodian of the “true faith.”
This Berdyaev concept has gained extremely wide popularity in the West; N. Berdyaev points out the connection between “Russian communism” and the doctrine of Moscow as the Third Rome (“two Romes have fallen, a third stands, but there will never be a fourth”). Russia failed to become the Third Rome, but it created the Third International.
In his analysis of the ideology of “Russian communism,” Berdyaev pays primary attention to V.I. Lenin. In the creator and leader of Bolshevism, he sees a vivid expression of the type of maximalist revolutionary with which the history of the Russian liberation movement was so rich. At the same time, N. Berdyaev noted, there was nothing from revolutionary bohemia, from transcendental romanticism. His revolutionary maximalism was in organic combination with pragmatic flexibility in politics; The features of an intellectual - a schismatic and a sectarian paradoxically coexisted in him with the features of a prince and kings who collected and built Russian state. Thus, Lenin seemed to combine two political tendencies that were in an irreconcilable struggle in the 19th century. And paradoxically, only thanks to this, Berdyaev claims, he was able to become not only the leader of the revolution, but also the creator of the new Soviet state. While being critical of Lenin, calling him a man of a “low cultural type,” Berdyaev, at the same time, notes his personal unselfishness, devotion to his convictions, his enormous merits in saving Russia from chaos and anarchy, which threatened it with complete collapse, and repeatedly compares him with Peter Great. “Lenin was a revolutionary to the core precisely because all his life he professed and defended an integral, totalitarian worldview, without allowing any violations of this integrity. , a holistic worldview, we need binding symbols... A new faith for the masses must be expressed in elementary symbols, transformed Marxism turned out to be quite suitable for this."
The political system that existed in Russia in the 30s caused Berdyaev indignation and indignation. She has compromised herself with an extreme degree of inhumanity, she is covered in blood and holds the people in a tight grip. However, expressing this to the philosopher seems insufficient, and he strives to understand how and why it could have developed? Answering this question, he comes to the conclusion that it could arise only because it expressed, albeit in an extremely distorted form, some objective needs of society.
First of all, this is the need to “gather a state” that is under threat of collapse. For all his negative attitude towards the regressive regime of Soviet power, Berdyaev recognizes it as the only real force ensuring the protection of Russia from the external dangers that threaten it. Therefore, the sudden fall of this power would, from his point of view, be no less a tragedy than its existence, which we witnessed in the late 80s. The collapse of a powerful totalitarian regime entailed an economic and political crisis in the Soviet Union, led to its collapse, social destabilization, which led to many bloody conflicts within the state; for example, Chechnya alone is enough.
Another important task solved by the Stalinist regime is the accelerated industrialization necessary for the further development of Russia. In the West, industrialization took place on the basis of a private capitalist form of economic management. In Russia, it occurs under the communist regime, and the basis for it is not private initiative, but, on the one hand, the enthusiasm of the masses, brought to life by the transformation of this, in general, prosaic matter into poetry, myth, and on the other hand - merciless coercion comparable to slavery.
Thus, Berdyaev’s Stalinism appears not as the creation of “evil spirits” of history that suddenly intervened in its course, but as a complex and contradictory phenomenon that must be explained on the basis of historical necessity.
Berdyaev sees the main weakness of communism in the fact that it is not able to defeat hatred, but, on the contrary, cultivates it through the constant stimulation of public indignation towards “enemies of the people.” Creating an image of an enemy is one of the most harmful features of communist ideology; it pushes a person back. A person overwhelmed by hatred cannot be focused on the future. In his opinion, the saving idea for Russia still remains Christianity, cleared of the dogmatism of the official Orthodox Church. The idea of socialism itself is very close to Berdyaev; in his opinion, apart from the repressive practice of political socialism carried out in Russia, it does not at all contradict the preaching of love, freedom and justice in the true teaching of Christ.
Thus, the true path of Russia is the path of Christian achievement, asceticism, and the creation of a new great morality. He sincerely believed that sooner or later Russia would take this path.
Berdyaev. Origins and meaning of Russian communism.
The abstract was completed by: student of group E-91 Budchenko E. A.
Sib GUTI, Department of Russian History
Novosibirsk, 2001.
Introduction. Russian religious idea and the Russian state.
In the introduction to his work “The Origins and Meaning of Russian Communism,” Berdyaev says that Russian communism is difficult to understand because of its dual nature. On the one hand, it is a global and international phenomenon, on the other hand, it is a Russian and national phenomenon. And then he explains the reasons and prerequisites for this duality.
Berdyaev writes that the historical fate of the Russian people was “unhappy and suffering.” Why? The reason is the catastrophic pace of development, through discontinuity and change in the type of civilization. It is impossible to find organic unity in Russian history. Berdyaev writes about five different Russias in history: Kiev Russia; Russia of the Tatar period; Moscow Russia; Peter's, imperial Russia; and the new Soviet Russia.
The Russian people had to conquer and develop too large spaces. We can say that the Russian people became a victim of the immensity of their land, their natural spontaneity. Russian historians explain the despotic character of the Russian state by this need to develop the huge, vast Russian plain. In a sense, this is also true for the Soviet communist state, where the interests of the people were sacrificed to the power and organization of the Soviet state.
The Russian people in their spiritual structure are an Eastern people, and Russia is a Christian East. At the same time, Russia was heavily influenced by the West for two centuries and absorbed all Western ideas in the cultural sphere. The contradictory nature of the Russian soul was determined by the struggle between Eastern and Western. The soul of the Russian people was formed by the Orthodox Church and received a religious form. And this religious form survived until the Russian nihilists and communists. But in the soul of the Russian people there remained a strong natural element associated with the immensity of the Russian land. Russians have “nature,” elemental force, stronger than Westerners. That is, what we get again is a clash of two elements: primitive, natural paganism, the spontaneity of the endless Russian land and the Orthodox, derived from Byzantium, aspiration to the other world.
The religious energy of the Russian soul in those days had the ability to switch to goals that are not religious, for example, to social goals. Berdyaev believes that due to the religious, dogmatic make-up of their souls, Russians are always “orthodox or heretics, apocalyptic or nihilistic.” At one time, the Russian people awakened to the consciousness that the Muscovite kingdom was the only Orthodox kingdom in the world, and Moscow was the Third Rome. Belonging to the Russian kingdom was determined by the confession of the true, Orthodox faith. In exactly the same way, belonging to Soviet Russia, to the Russian communist “kingdom” was determined by the confession of the communist faith.
In his work, Berdyaev often relies on historical data and deduces from historical events the reasons for the emergence of communism in our country. Here he writes the following. Under Ivan the Terrible, the universal consciousness was so weakened in the Russian church that the Greek church, from which the Russian people received Orthodoxy, was no longer looked at as a truly Orthodox church; they began to see it as a departure from the true faith. The Orthodox faith is the Russian faith, not the Russian faith, not the Orthodox faith. As a result of all this, in the 17th century, one of the most important events in Russian history took place - the religious split of the Old Believers. The question was whether the Russian kingdom was a truly Orthodox kingdom, that is, whether the Russian people were fulfilling their messianic calling. The people suspected that there had been a betrayal of the true faith; the Antichrist had taken possession of state power and the highest church hierarchy. The split became a characteristic phenomenon of Russian life. So the Russian revolutionary intelligentsia of the 19th century became schismatic and thought that an evil force was in power. Both in the Russian people and in the Russian intelligentsia there will be a search for a kingdom based on truth.
Berdyaev writes that “the second blow was dealt by the reform of Peter the Great.” Peter's reform was completely inevitable: Russia could no longer exist as a closed kingdom, with military, naval, economic backwardness, in the absence of education and the technology of civilization. Russia had to overcome its isolation and join the cycle of world life. Peter's reform was inevitable, but he accomplished it through terrible violence against the people's soul and people's beliefs. He wanted to destroy old Moscow Russia, uproot the feelings that underlay its life. One could make a comparison between Peter and Lenin, between Peter’s revolution and the Bolshevik revolution. The same rudeness, violence, the imposition of well-known principles on the people from above.
Western enlightenment of the 18th century in the upper strata of Russian society was alien to the Russian people. Nowhere was there such a gap between the upper and lower layers as in Peter’s, imperial Russia, and no country lived simultaneously in such different centuries, from the 14th to the 19th centuries.
The main clash was between the idea of an empire, a powerful state, and the religious-messianic idea of a kingdom, which went into the popular layer, and then, in a transformed form, into the intelligentsia layer. Most of the Russian people, the peasantry, lived in serfdom. According to their concepts of property, Russian peasants always considered it untrue that nobles owned vast lands. God's land and all the people who work the land can use it. For the cultural classes, for the intelligentsia, the people remained as if a mystery that needed to be solved. The intelligentsia believed that in the silent, still wordless people the great truth about life was hidden and the day would come when the people would have their say.
By the 19th century, Russia had become a huge, vast peasant kingdom, enslaved, illiterate, but with its own folk culture based on faith. With the ruling noble class, lazy and uncultured, often having lost their religious faith and national image. With the king at the top, in relation to whom religious faith was preserved. With a strong bureaucracy and a very thin and fragile cultural layer.
By the 19th century the empire was very unhealthy both spiritually and socially. As mentioned above, Russians are characterized by the combination and combination of polar opposite principles. Russia and the Russian people can only be characterized by contradictions. The Russian people can equally be characterized “as a state-despotic and anarchist-freedom-loving people, as a people prone to nationalism and national conceit, and as a people of a universal spirit, more than anyone else capable of pan-humanity, cruel and extraordinarily humane, inclined to cause suffering and painfully compassionate.” . In the 19th century, the conflict took on new forms; Rus', seeking social truth, the kingdom of truth, collided with an empire seeking power.
Education of the Russian intelligentsia and its character. Slavophilism and Westernism
Here Berdyaev gives an explanation of the Russian intelligentsia. To understand the sources of Russian communism and to understand the character of the Russian revolution, it is necessary to know what constitutes that peculiar phenomenon that in Russia was designated by the word “intelligentsia”. Berdyaev writes that the Russian intelligentsia is not the same as the Western one, that is, people of intellectual labor and creativity, primarily scientists, writers, artists, professors, teachers. A completely different formation is represented by the Russian intelligentsia, to which people who are not engaged in intellectual work and who are not particularly intellectual in general could belong. The intelligentsia in Russia is more like a monastic order or a religious sect with its own special morality, very intolerant. The intelligentsia was an ideological rather than a professional and economic group. It was formed from different social classes, first from the more cultured part of the nobility, later from the sons of priests and deacons, from minor officials, from the bourgeoisie and, after liberation, from the peasants - this is the various intelligentsia.
Social motives and revolutionary sentiments prevailed among the Russian intelligentsia. It gave birth to a type of man whose only specialty was revolution. It was characterized by extreme dogmatism, to which Russians have always been prone. What in the West was a scientific theory subject to criticism, a hypothesis or relative truth, among the Russian intellectuals turned into dogma. The Russian radical intelligentsia developed an idolatrous attitude towards science. According to Berdyaev, Russians poorly understand the meaning of the relative, the gradualness of the historical process, and the diversity of different spheres of culture. Russian maximalism is connected with this. The Russian soul strives for integrity; it does not put up with dividing everything into categories. She strives for the absolute and wants to subordinate everything to the absolute, and this religious trait in the Russian soul explains a lot.
“The first steps of the Russian intelligentsia on the paths of enlightenment, and not revolution, in the 18th century, were accompanied by sacrifices and suffering, prison and hard labor.” The loneliness of Russian cultured and freedom-loving people of the first half of the 19th century was extraordinary. There were cultured people, but there was no cultural environment. At the beginning of the 19th century, during the era of Alexander I, Russia experienced a cultural renaissance, but the renaissance of that era took place in a very small and thin layer of the nobility. Cultured and truth-seeking people had to live in small groups and communities. The beginning of the 19th century was an era of “loosening” of the Russian soul; it became receptive to all kinds of ideas, to spiritual and social movements. But everything happened in a taco
A conversation about the character of the Russian people and its connection with the communist idea. Today we present to your attention a brief summary of the classic work of one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, Nikolai Berdyaev “ Origins and meaning of Russian communism" In terms of the depth of the analysis presented, without a doubt, this is one of the most outstanding works in Russian historiosophical “journalism.” It is worth noting - as a special advantage - the lively, accessible, “convincing” language of presentation. However, Nikolai Ivanovich was always famous for this, even to excess (whoever read him a lot could not help but pay attention to how he savors the expressive possibilities of the Russian literary language, presenting the same ideas in different words, proving the same theses different ways- for greater persuasiveness).
The main ideas of the work discussed are as follows.
- Russian historical communism is flesh and blood of the archetypes of Russian national consciousness, Russian history, the messianic idea in Russian self-consciousness. In this context, of particular interest is Berdyaev’s interpretation of the Third International as a transformed form of the “Third Rome” (which explains a lot of facts from Soviet history, including the history of “excesses”).
- Russian historical communism is an inadequate form of embodiment of the indisputable social ideals of Christianity. Its inadequacy lies in the deep internal contradiction between the essentially correct socio-economic policy (+ the correct course towards “raising a new man”, ideas of social service and the creation of new worlds, etc.) and “false anthropology”, which resulted in totalitarian statism, incompatible with the true personal freedom of the “new man”.
- Russian historical communism is a unique religion (in Fromm’s sense, let’s say now), which replaced “Christianity that had deviated from social service” and with its ultra-atheistic pathos only confirmed the immanent religiosity of the Russian consciousness (dialectics!).
- The messianistic significance of Russian historical communism lies in the fact that Russia - albeit in a transformed form - even in Soviet times was an “outpost of defense” of humanity from the dominance of the essentially inhumane bourgeois consciousness. And, having overcome the “false anthropology”, it may well offer humanity a new, progressive form of social organization - a Christian (in the broad sense of the word) society of social service, which will be made up of “new”, personally free people. Let me remind you that N.I. himself According to his philosophical beliefs, Berdyaev is a personalist.
Now a selection of fundamental theses from this work (emphasis mine throughout).
- Russians are characterized by the combination and combination of antinomic, polar opposite principles. Russia and the Russian people can only be characterized by contradictions. This inconsistency was created by the entire Russian history and the eternal conflict of the instinct of state power with the instinct of love of freedom and love of truth of the people. Main the aspiration of Russian nature is towards infinity and limitlessness.
- For the Russian intelligentsia, in which social motives and revolutionary sentiments prevailed... it was characteristic extreme dogmatism, to which Russians have always been inclined. Russians tend to perceive everything totalitarian, the skeptical criticism of Western people is alien to them. This is a disadvantage that leads to confusion and substitution, but it is also a virtue indicating religious integrity of the Russian soul. Russians generally have a poor understanding of the meaning of the relative, the stages of the historical process, and the differentiation of different spheres of culture. Related to this Russian maximalism. The Russian soul strives for integrity, it does not put up with dividing everything into categories, it strives for the Absolute and wants to subordinate everything to the Absolute, and this is a religious feature in her. But she easily makes confusion, takes the relative for the absolute, the particular for the universal, and then she falls into idolatry.
- The motives that gave rise to the worldview of the Russian revolutionary intelligentsia must be seen primarily in passionate, indignant protest against the evil, misfortunes and suffering of life, in compassion for the unfortunate, the disadvantaged, the oppressed. But the Russians, out of pity, compassion, and the inability to endure suffering, became atheists. They become atheists because they cannot accept the Creator, who created an evil, imperfect world full of suffering. They themselves want to create a better world, in which there will be no such injustices and suffering.
- It is very important to note that liberal ideas have always been weak in Russia, and we have never had liberal ideologies that receive moral authority and inspire. Roman concepts of property have always been alien to the Russian people. The absolute nature of private property has always been denied. For Russian consciousness, what is important is not the attitude towards the principle of property, but the attitude towards a living person.
- Russian literature is the most prophetic (that is, full of foresight of desirable and undesirable scenarios for future development - approx. Z.G.) in the world, it is full of premonitions and predictions, it is characterized by anxiety about impending disaster. Starting with Gogol, Russian literature becomes teaching, it seeks truth and teaches the implementation of truth. Russian literature was born not from a joyful creative excess, but from the torment and suffering fate of man and people, from the quest universal salvation. But this means that the main motives of Russian literature were religious. It was Russian writers who raised the problem of justifying human creativity and culture with particular urgency and questioned the justification of culture. Western people almost never doubt the justification of civilization; this is a purely Russian doubt and it arose... among those Russians who were often at the heights of culture. Russian writers, the most significant ones, did not believe in the strength of civilization, in the strength of those foundations on which the world, the so-called bourgeois world of their time, rests. Russians were more characterized by integrity and totalitarianism, both in thought and in creativity and life. Russian thinkers, Russian creators, when they had spiritual significance, always sought not so much a perfect culture, perfect products creativity, how much perfect life, the absolute truth of life. Related to this is the realism of Russian literature of the 19th century, which is often misunderstood. This is realism in the sense of revealing the truth and depth of life. Russian writers of the 19th and 20th centuries felt above the abyss; they did not live in a stable society, in a strong, established civilization. A catastrophic attitude has become characteristic of the most remarkable and creative Russian people. In Russia, an eschatological spiritual structure has been developed...developed special mystical sensitivity. The Russian people, according to Dostoevsky, are God-bearing people precisely because they the bearer of the all-human idea, the idea of all-human brotherhood. Russian writers, the most interesting and sensitive ones, did not want to come to terms with the fact that Russia would follow the banal Western path, bourgeois, rationalistic, liberal. And Vl. Solovyov...and Leontyev, apocalyptic moods, a feeling of the approach of the end does not mean the onset of the end of the world, but the end of a historical era, a premonition of historical catastrophes. This is an apocalypse within history. Everyone feels that Russia is facing an abyss.
- Russian literature and Russian thought indicate that in imperial Russia there was no single, integral culture, that there was a gap between the cultural stratum and the people, that the old regime had no moral support. There were no cultural conservative ideas and forces in Russia. Everyone dreamed of overcoming the split and gap in one form or another of collectivism. Everything was heading towards revolution. (history repeats itself, doesn’t it? - approx. Z.G.). Bolshevism turned out to be the least utopian and the most realistic, most appropriate to the whole situation as it developed in Russia in 1917, and most faithful to some of the original Russian traditions, and Russian quest for universal social truth, understood maximalistically, and Russian methods of control and domination by violence. This was determined by the entire course of Russian history, but also by the weakness of our creative spiritual forces. Communism turned out to be the inevitable fate of Russia, an internal moment in the fate of the Russian people. Bolshevism is for a strong, centralized state. The will to social truth was combined with the will to state power, and the second will turned out to be stronger. The entire history of the Russian intelligentsia prepared for communism. Communism included familiar features: a thirst for social justice and equality, recognition of the working classes as the highest human type, aversion to capitalism and the bourgeoisie, the desire for a holistic worldview and a holistic attitude towards life, sectarian intolerance, a suspicious and hostile attitude towards the cultural elite, exclusive this-worldliness.
- The revolution freed previously shackled worker-peasant forces for the historical cause. And this determines the exceptional actualism and dynamism of communism. An enormous vital force was revealed in the Russian people, which had not previously been given the opportunity to reveal itself. Bolshevism took advantage of the properties of the Russian soul (in every way opposite to the secularized bourgeois society) with its religiosity, its dogmatism and maximalism, its search for social truth and the kingdom of God on earth, its capacity for sacrifice and patient suffering, but also for manifestations of rudeness and cruelty, took advantage of Russian messianism, which always remains, at least in an unconscious form, Russian faith in the special ways of Russia. It corresponded to the absence in the Russian people of Roman concepts of property and bourgeois virtues, corresponded Russian collectivism who had religious roots. He proclaimed the obligatory nature of a holistic, totalitarian worldview, the dominant creed, which corresponded to the skills and needs of the Russian people in faith and symbols that govern life. The Russian soul is not inclined to skepticism and skeptical liberalism least of all corresponds to it. The people's soul could most easily move from an integral faith to another integral faith, to another orthodoxy, embracing the whole of life. [In Soviet Russia] something happened that Marx and Western Marxists could not have foreseen, it seemed to happen identification of two messianisms, the messianism of the Russian people and the messianism of the proletariat. The patriotism of a great people must be faith in the great and global mission of this people, otherwise it will be provincial nationalism, closed and devoid of global perspectives. The mission of the Russian people is recognized as the implementation of social truth in human society, not only in Russia, but throughout the world. And this is in accordance with Russian traditions.
- To create...new mental structure and the new man, Russian communism made a tremendous effort. He made more gains psychologically than economically. A new generation of youth has emerged who are capable of enthusiastically committing themselves to the implementation of the Five-Year Plan, who understand the task of economic development not as a personal interest, but as a social service. The Russian people have never been bourgeois, they did not have bourgeois prejudices and did not worship bourgeois virtues and norms. The enthusiasm of communist youth for socialist construction was fueled by the religious energy of the Russian people. If this religious energy dries up, then enthusiasm will dry up and selfishness will appear, which is quite possible under communism. They tell the following story. One Soviet young man came to France for several months and then returned back to Soviet Russia. Towards the end of his stay he was asked what his impression of France was. He replied: “There is no freedom in this country.” His interlocutor objects to him with surprise: “What are you saying, France is a country of freedom, everyone is free to think what they want and do what they want, you don’t have any freedom.” Then the young man outlined his understanding of freedom: there is no freedom in France, and the Soviet young man was suffocating in it because it is impossible to change life in it, to build a new life; the so-called freedom in it is such that everything remains unchanged, every day is similar to the previous one, ministries can be overthrown every week, but nothing changes from this. Therefore, a person who comes from Russia finds it boring in France. In Soviet, communist Russia there is real freedom, because every day you can change the life of Russia and even the whole world, you can rebuild everything, one day is not like the next. Every young person feels like a builder of a new world. Here Liberty is understood not as freedom of choice, not as freedom to turn right or left, but as active life change, as an act performed not by an individual, but by a social person, after a choice has been made. Freedom of choice bifurcates and weakens energy. True creative freedom comes after a choice is made and a person moves in a certain direction. French freedom is conservative, it interferes with the social reconstruction of society, it has boiled down to the fact that everyone wants to be left alone. Freedom must, of course, be understood as creative energy, as an act that changes the world. But if we understand freedom exclusively in this way and do not see what internally precedes such an act, such a realization of creative energy, then the denial of freedom of conscience, freedom of thought is inevitable. And we see that in the Russian communist kingdom freedom of conscience and thought is completely denied. The concept of freedom refers exclusively to collective, not personal consciousness. The individual has no freedom in relation to the social collective; he has no personal conscience and personal consciousness. For the individual, freedom lies in his exclusive adaptability to the collective. But an individual who has adapted and merged with the collective receives enormous freedom in relation to the rest of the world. Russian communism, if you look at it more deeply, in the light of Russian historical fate, is a deformation of the Russian idea, Russian messianism and universalism, the Russian search for the kingdom of truth, the Russian idea, which took on ugly forms in the atmosphere of war and decay. But Russian communism is more connected with Russian traditions than is usually thought of, traditions not only good, but also very bad. Russian communism more traditional than is usually thought, and is transformation and deformation of the old Russian messianic idea.
- One can think of communism, in economic life, combined with humanity and freedom. This presupposes a different spirit and a different ideology (than the Soviet version - approx. Z.G.). The communist economy itself can be neutral. It is communist religion, not economics, that is hostile to Christianity, spirit, and freedom. Truth and lies are so mixed up in communism precisely because communism is not only a social phenomenon, but also a spiritual phenomenon. The idea of a classless, labor society, in which everyone works for others and for everyone, for a super-personal goal, does not contain a denial of God, spirit, freedom, and even on the contrary, this idea is more consistent with Christianity than the idea on which bourgeois capitalist society is based. The whole world is moving towards the liquidation of old capitalist societies, towards overcoming the spirit that inspired them. The movement towards socialism - towards socialism understood in a broad, non-doctrinaire sense - is a worldwide phenomenon. In relation to economic life, two opposing principles can be established. One principle says: in economic life, pursue your personal interest, and this will contribute to the economic development of the whole, it will be beneficial for society, the nation, the state. This is the bourgeois ideology of economics. Another principle says: in economic life, serve others, society, the whole, and then you will receive everything you need for life. The second principle affirms communism and in this it is right. And a new motivation for work, more consistent with human dignity, is quite possible. This problem cannot only be a problem of a new organization of society; it is inevitably a problem of a new mental structure of man, a problem of a new man. This understanding of economic life as social service.
- The best type of communist, i.e. a person completely captivated by the service of an idea, capable of enormous sacrifices and selfless enthusiasm, is possible only as a result of the Christian education of human souls, due to the processing of the natural man by the Christian spirit. The results of this Christian influence on human souls, purely invisible and supermundane, remain even when in their consciousness people abandoned Christianity and even became its enemies. How much have Christians done to implement Christian truth in social life? Have they tried to realize the brotherhood of people without the hatred and violence of which they accuse communists? Communism must be understood as a challenge to the Christian world; it reveals a higher judgment and an understanding of an unfulfilled duty. Every person introduced to the philosophy of communism (Soviet - Z.G.'s note) loses the ability to distinguish between the individual. All the limitations and untruths of communist philosophy are associated with a misunderstanding of the problem of personality. Class inequalities must be overcome in human society, but personal inequalities will only become more pronounced from this. The mental type of a communist is determined primarily by the fact that for him the world is sharply divided into two opposing camps - Ormuzd and Ahriman, the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness without any shades. The communist is in negative dependence on the kingdom of Satan, on evil, on capitalism and the bourgeoisie. He cannot live without an enemy, without negative feelings towards this enemy, he loses pathos when there is no enemy. Communists cannot overcome hatred and this is their main weakness. Hatred is always directed towards the past and always depends on the past. A person overwhelmed by the affect of hatred cannot be turned to the future, to a new life. But in the socio-economic system of communism there is a large share of truth, which can well be reconciled with Christianity, in any case more than the capitalist system, which is the most anti-Christian. And it is not for the defenders of capitalism to expose the lies of communism; they only make the truth of communism more prominent. It is unacceptable to base the struggle for spiritual interests and spiritual revival on the fact that bread will not be provided for a significant part of humanity. Communism is a great teaching for Christians, often reminding them of Christ and the Gospel, of the prophetic element in Christianity.
- The problematics of communism contribute to the awakening of Christian conscience and should lead to the disclosure of creative social Christianity, not in the sense of understanding Christianity as a social religion, but in the sense of the disclosure of Christian truth in relation to social life.
God, how relevant! These are the books that must be included in educational programs in history, literature, psychology...
Next time we will continue the discussion. We'll probably talk about either Ilyin or Berdyaev. The topic of the “Russian idea” is now more in demand by society than ever before.
Sincerely,
Dragon