In the domestic philosophical and cultural tradition, in all known typologies, Russia is usually considered separately. At the same time, they proceed from the recognition of its exclusivity, the impossibility of reducing it to either the Western or the Eastern type, and from here they draw a conclusion about its special path of development and special mission in the history and culture of mankind. Mostly Russian philosophers wrote about this, starting with the Slavophiles. The topic of the “Russian idea” was very important for and. The result of these reflections on the fate of Russia was summed up in philosophical and historical concepts of Eurasianism.
Prerequisites for the formation of Russian national character
Typically, Eurasians proceed from Russia’s middle position between Europe and Asia, which they consider to be the reason for the combination of features of Eastern and Western civilizations in Russian culture. A similar idea was once expressed by V.O. Klyuchevsky. In the “Course of Russian History” he argued that the character of the Russian people was shaped by the location of Rus' on the border of forest and steppe - elements that are opposite in all respects. This dichotomy between the forest and the steppe was overcome by the Russian people’s love for the river, which was both a nurse, a road, and a teacher of a sense of order and public spirit among the people. The spirit of entrepreneurship and the habit of joint action were fostered on the river, scattered parts of the population came closer together, and people learned to feel part of society.
The opposite effect was exerted by the endless Russian plain, characterized by emptiness and monotony. The man on the plain was overcome by a feeling of imperturbable peace, loneliness and sad contemplation. According to many researchers, this is precisely the reason for such properties of Russian spirituality as spiritual gentleness and modesty, semantic uncertainty and timidity, imperturbable calm and painful despondency, lack of clear thought and a predisposition to spiritual sleep, asceticism of desert living and pointlessness of creativity.
The economic and everyday life of Russian people became an indirect reflection of the Russian landscape. Klyuchevsky also noted that Russian peasant settlements, with their primitiveness and lack of the simplest amenities of life, give the impression of temporary, random sites of nomads. This is due both to the long period of nomadic life in ancient times and to the numerous fires that destroyed Russian villages and cities. The result was the rootlessness of the Russian person, manifested in indifference to home improvement and everyday amenities. It also led to a careless and careless attitude towards nature and its riches.
Developing Klyuchevsky's ideas, Berdyaev wrote that the landscape of the Russian soul corresponds to the landscape of the Russian land. Therefore, despite all the complexities of the relationship between Russian people and Russian nature, its cult was so important that it found a very unique reflection in the ethnonym (self-name) of the Russian ethnos. Representatives of various countries and peoples are called by nouns in Russian - Frenchman, German, Georgian, Mongolian, etc., and only Russians call themselves by adjectives. This can be interpreted as the embodiment of one’s belonging to something higher and more valuable than people (people). This is the highest for a Russian person - Rus', the Russian land, and every person is a part of this whole. Rus' (land) is primary, people are secondary.
Of great importance for the formation Russian mentality and culture played in its eastern (Byzantine) version. The result of the baptism of Rus' was not only its entry into the then civilized world, the growth of international authority, the strengthening of diplomatic, trade, political and cultural ties with other Christian countries, not only the creation artistic culture Kievan Rus. From this moment on, the geopolitical position of Russia between the West and the East, its enemies and allies, and its orientation to the East were determined, and therefore the further expansion of the Russian state took place in an eastern direction.
However, this choice also had a downside: the adoption of Byzantine Christianity contributed to the alienation of Russia from Western Europe. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 cemented in the Russian consciousness the idea of its specialness, the idea of the Russian people as God-bearers, the only bearer of the true Orthodox faith, which predetermined historical path Russia. This is largely due to the ideal of Orthodoxy, which combines unity and freedom, embodied in the conciliar unity of people. Moreover, each person is an individual, but not self-sufficient, but manifested only in a conciliar unity, the interests of which are higher than the interests of the individual.
This combination of opposites gave rise to instability and could explode into conflict at any moment. In particular, the basis of all Russian culture lies a number of insoluble contradictions: collectivity and authoritarianism, universal consent and despotic arbitrariness, self-government of peasant communities and strict centralization of power associated with the Asian mode of production.
The inconsistency of Russian culture was also generated by something specific to Russia. mobilization type of development, when material and human resources are used through their over-concentration and over-tension, in conditions of a shortage of necessary resources (financial, intellectual, time, foreign policy, etc.), often with the immaturity of internal development factors. As a result, the idea of priority of political factors of development over all other and a contradiction arose between the tasks of the state and the capabilities of the population according to their decision, when the security and development of the state was ensured by any means, at the expense of the interests and goals of individual people through non-economic, forceful coercion, as a result of which the state became authoritarian, even totalitarian, the repressive apparatus was disproportionately strengthened as an instrument of coercion and violence. This largely explains the Russian people’s dislike for and at the same time awareness of the need to protect him and, accordingly, the endless patience of the people and their almost resigned submission to power.
Another consequence of the mobilization type of development in Russia was the primacy of the social, communal principle, which is expressed in the tradition of subordinating personal interest to the tasks of society. Slavery was dictated not by the whim of the rulers, but by a new national task - the creation of an empire on a meager economic basis.
All these features formed such features of Russian culture, as the absence of a solid core, led to its ambiguity, binary, duality, constant desire to combine incongruous things - European and Asian, pagan and Christian, nomadic and sedentary, freedom and despotism. Therefore, the main form of the dynamics of Russian culture has become inversion - a change like a pendulum swing - from one pole of cultural meaning to another.
Due to the constant desire to keep up with their neighbors, to jump above their heads, old and new elements coexisted in Russian culture all the time, the future came when there were no conditions for it yet, and the past was in no hurry to leave, clinging to traditions and customs. At the same time, something new often appeared as a result of a leap, an explosion. This feature of historical development explains the catastrophic type of development of Russia, which consists in the constant violent destruction of the old in order to make way for the new, and then find out that this new is not at all as good as it seemed.
At the same time, the dichotomy and binary nature of Russian culture has become the reason for its exceptional flexibility and ability to adapt to extremely difficult conditions of survival during periods of national catastrophes and socio-historical upheavals, comparable in scale to natural disasters and geological disasters.
Main features of the Russian national character
All these moments formed a specific Russian national character, which cannot be assessed unambiguously.
Among positive qualities usually called kindness and its manifestation in relation to people - goodwill, cordiality, sincerity, responsiveness, cordiality, mercy, generosity, compassion and empathy. They also note simplicity, openness, honesty, and tolerance. But this list does not include pride and self-confidence - qualities that reflect a person’s attitude towards himself, which indicates the characteristic attitude of Russians towards “others”, their collectivism.
Russian attitude to work very peculiar. Russian people are hardworking, efficient and resilient, but much more often they are lazy, careless, careless and irresponsible, they are characterized by disregard and sloppiness. The hard work of Russians is manifested in the honest and responsible performance of their work duties, but does not imply initiative, independence, or the desire to stand out from the team. Sloppiness and carelessness are associated with the vast expanses of the Russian land, the inexhaustibility of its riches, which will be enough not only for us, but also for our descendants. And since we have a lot of everything, we don’t feel sorry for anything.
"Faith in a good king" - a mental feature of Russians, reflecting the long-standing attitude of the Russian person who did not want to deal with officials or landowners, but preferred to write petitions to the tsar (general secretary, president), sincerely believing that evil officials are deceiving the good tsar, but as soon as you tell him the truth, how the weight will immediately become good. The excitement around the presidential elections over the past 20 years proves that the belief is still alive that if you choose a good president, Russia will immediately become a prosperous state.
Passion for political myths - another characteristic feature of the Russian person, inextricably linked with the Russian idea, the idea of the special mission of Russia and the Russian people in history. The belief that the Russian people are destined to show the whole world the right path (regardless of what this path should be - true Orthodoxy, the communist or Eurasian idea) was combined with the desire to make any sacrifices (including their own death) in the name of achieving set goal. In search of an idea, people easily rushed to extremes: they went to the people, made a world revolution, built communism, socialism “with a human face,” and restored previously destroyed churches. Myths may change, but the morbid fascination with them remains. Therefore, among the typical national qualities is gullibility.
Calculation on the chance - a very Russian trait. It permeates the national character, the life of the Russian person, and manifests itself in politics and economics. “Maybe” is expressed in the fact that inaction, passivity and lack of will (also named among the characteristics of the Russian character) are replaced by reckless behavior. Moreover, it will come to this at the very last moment: “Until the thunder strikes, the man will not cross himself.”
The flip side of the Russian “maybe” is the breadth of the Russian soul. As noted by F.M. Dostoevsky, “the Russian soul is bruised by the vastness,” but behind its breadth, generated by the vast spaces of our country, hide both prowess, youth, merchant scope, and the absence of a deep rational miscalculation of the everyday or political situation.
Values of Russian culture
The Russian peasant community played the most important role in the history of our country and in the formation of Russian culture, and the values of Russian culture in to a large extent are the values of the Russian community.
Herself community, "world" as the basis and prerequisite for the existence of any individual, it is the most ancient and most important value. For the sake of “peace” he must sacrifice everything, including his life. This is explained by the fact that Russia lived a significant part of its history in conditions of a besieged military camp, when only the subordination of the interests of the individual to the interests of the community allowed the Russian people to survive as an independent ethnic group.
Interests of the team In Russian culture, the interests of the individual are always higher, which is why personal plans, goals and interests are so easily suppressed. But in return, the Russian person counts on the support of the “world” when he has to face everyday adversity (a kind of mutual responsibility). As a result, the Russian person puts aside his personal affairs without displeasure for the sake of some common cause from which he will not benefit, and this is where his attractiveness lies. The Russian person is firmly convinced that he must first arrange the affairs of the social whole, more important than his own, and then this whole will begin to act in his favor at its own discretion. The Russian people are collectivists who can only exist together with society. He suits him, worries about him, for which he, in turn, surrounds him with warmth, attention and support. To become, a Russian person must become a conciliar personality.
Justice- another value of Russian culture, important for life in a team. It was originally understood as the social equality of people and was based on economic equality (of men) in relation to the land. This value is instrumental, but in the Russian community it has become a target value. Members of the community had the right to their own, equal to everyone else, share of the land and all its wealth that the “world” owned. Such justice was the Truth for which the Russian people lived and strived. In the famous dispute between truth-truth and truth-justice, it was justice that prevailed. For a Russian person, it is not so important how it actually was or is; much more important is what should be. The nominal positions of eternal truths (for Russia these truths were truth and justice) were assessed by the thoughts and actions of people. Only they are important, otherwise no result, no benefit can justify them. If nothing comes of what was planned, don’t worry, because the goal was good.
Lack of individual freedom was determined by the fact that in the Russian community, with its equal allotments, periodically carried out redistribution of land, striping, it was simply impossible for individualism to manifest itself. Man was not the owner of the land, did not have the right to sell it, and was not even free in the timing of sowing, harvesting, or in choosing what could be cultivated on the land. In such a situation, it was impossible to demonstrate individual skill. which in Rus' was not valued at all. It is no coincidence that they were ready to accept Lefty in England, but he died in complete poverty in Russia.
The habit of emergency mass activity(suffering) was brought up by the same lack of individual freedom. Here, hard work and a festive mood were combined in a strange way. Perhaps the festive atmosphere was a kind of compensatory means that made it easier to carry a heavy load and give up excellent freedom in economic activity.
Wealth could not become a value in a situation of dominance of the idea of equality and justice. It is no coincidence that the proverb is so well known in Russia: “You cannot build stone chambers with righteous labor.” The desire to increase wealth was considered a sin. Thus, in the Russian northern village, traders who artificially slowed down trade turnover were respected.
Labor itself was also not a value in Rus' (unlike, for example, in Protestant countries). Of course, work is not rejected, its usefulness is recognized everywhere, but it is not considered a means that automatically ensures the fulfillment of a person’s earthly calling and the correct structure of his soul. Therefore, in the system of Russian values, labor occupies a subordinate place: “Work is not a wolf, it will not run away into the forest.”
Life, not oriented towards work, gave the Russian person freedom of spirit (partly illusory). It always stimulated creativity in man. It could not be expressed in constant, painstaking work aimed at accumulating wealth, but was easily transformed into eccentricity or work that surprised others (the invention of wings, a wooden bicycle, a perpetual motion machine, etc.), i.e. actions were taken that had no meaning for the economy. On the contrary, the economy often turned out to be subordinate to this idea.
Community respect could not be earned simply by becoming rich. But only a feat, a sacrifice in the name of “peace” could bring glory.
Patience and suffering in the name of “peace”(but not personal heroism) is another value of Russian culture, in other words, the goal of the feat being performed could not be personal, it must always be outside the person. The Russian proverb is widely known: “God endured, and He commanded us too.” It is no coincidence that the first canonized Russian saints were princes Boris and Gleb; They accepted martyrdom, but did not resist their brother, Prince Svyatopolk, who wanted to kill them. Death for the Motherland, death “for one’s friends” brought immortal glory to the hero. It is no coincidence that in Tsarist Russia the words were minted on awards (medals): “Not for us, not for us, but for Your name.”
Patience and suffering- the most important fundamental values for a Russian person, along with consistent abstinence, self-restraint, and constant sacrifice of oneself for the benefit of another. Without this, there is no personality, no status, no respect from others. From here comes the eternal desire for Russian people to suffer - this is the desire for self-actualization, the conquest of inner freedom necessary to do good in the world, to conquer freedom of spirit. In general, the world exists and moves only through sacrifice, patience, and self-restraint. This is the reason for the long-suffering characteristic of Russian people. He can endure a lot (especially material difficulties) if he knows why it is necessary.
The values of Russian culture constantly point to its aspiration towards some higher, transcendental meaning. For a Russian person there is nothing more exciting than the search for this meaning. For this, you can leave home, family, become a hermit or holy fool (both of them were highly revered in Rus').
On the day of Russian culture as a whole, this meaning becomes the Russian idea, to the implementation of which the Russian person subordinates his entire way of life. Therefore, researchers talk about the inherent features of religious fundamentalism in the consciousness of Russian people. The idea could change (Moscow is the third Rome, the imperial idea, communist, Eurasian, etc.), but its place in the structure of values remained unchanged. The crisis that Russia is experiencing today is largely due to the fact that the idea that united the Russian people has disappeared; it has become unclear in the name of what we should suffer and humiliate ourselves. The key to Russia's exit from the crisis is the acquisition of a new fundamental idea.
The listed values are contradictory. Therefore, a Russian could simultaneously be a brave man on the battlefield and a coward in civil life, could be personally devoted to the sovereign and at the same time plunder the royal treasury (like Prince Menshikov in the era of Peter the Great), leave his home and go to war to free the Balkan Slavs. High patriotism and mercy were manifested as sacrifice or beneficence (but it could well become a “disservice”). Obviously, this allowed all researchers to talk about the “mysterious Russian soul”, the breadth of Russian character, that “ You can't understand Russia with your mind».
Philosophical and historical research always has a certain practical orientation. By comprehending the past, we strive to understand the present and determine the trends in the development of modern society. In this sense, the solution to the question of the relationship between Western and Eastern cultures and civilizations, as well as Russia’s place in the dialogue of these cultures, is of particular importance and relevance for us. This problem has been raised quite often before in the works of philosophers and sociologists. Now it has begun to be discussed not only in the specialized press - monographs, articles, but also in weekly and daily magazine and newspaper materials, in political discussions, etc. In 1992 magazine "Questions of Philosophy" held a round table on the topic "Russia and the West: interaction of cultures", at which leading Russian scientists presented their positions: philosophers, historians, philologists, regionalists, etc. Using the materials of this discussion, as well as the significant material of domestic and world thought that preceded it, we will try to answer the questions posed.
West and East in this context are considered not as geographical, but as geosopiocultural concepts. One of the round table participants, V.S. Stepin, noted that by the term “West” he understood a special type of civilizational and cultural development that took shape in Europe around the 15th - 17th centuries. A civilization of this type could be called technogenic. Her character traits- this is a rapid change in technology and technology, thanks to systematic application in production scientific knowledge. The consequence of this application is scientific, and then scientific and technological revolutions, changing man’s relationship with nature and his place in the production system. With the development of technogenic civilization, there is an accelerating renewal of the artificially created by man objective environment in which his life activity directly takes place. In turn, this is accompanied by the increasing dynamics of social connections and their relatively rapid transformation. Sometimes, over the course of one or two generations, a change in lifestyle occurs and a new type of personality is formed.
The prerequisites for Western culture were laid in antiquity and the Middle Ages. The main milestones of its prehistory were the following: the experience of democracy of the ancient polis, the formation within its culture of various philosophical systems and the first examples of theoretical science, and then - formed in the era of the European Middle Ages Christian tradition with its ideas about human individuality, the concept of morality and the understanding of the human mind as created, “in the image and likeness of God,” and therefore capable of rational comprehension of the meaning of existence. The synthesis of these two traditions during the Renaissance was one of the origins of the values of technogenic civilization. The Age of Enlightenment saw the completion of the formation of worldviews that determined the subsequent development of technogenic civilization. The system of these attitudes formed the special value of the progress of science and technology, as well as the belief in the fundamental possibility of rational organization social relations. Socially, Western civilization is identified with the era of the formation and development of capitalist production and economic relations and bourgeois-democratic forms of government, the formation of civil society and legal domination. In technological terms - with industrial and post-industrial society.
Philosophers and sociologists consider the ideological, social and technological aspects of culture as a single whole, showing their inextricable unity and interaction. Thus, the German sociologist and philosopher M. Weber in his famous work "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" convincingly showed the role of the Protestant Reformation and the religious teachings of Calvinism in the formation of the rationalistic spirit of capitalism and other basic value systems of a given society. The result of this synthesis, according to Weber, was the following basic values of Western culture: 1) dynamism, orientation towards novelty; 2) affirmation of dignity and respect for human personality; 3) individualism, orientation towards personal autonomy; 4) rationality; 5) ideals of freedom, equality, tolerance; 6) respect for private property.
The Western type of culture in philosophy and sociology is contrasted with the Eastern type, which has received the synthetic name of “traditional society.” Geopolitically, the East is associated with the cultures of Ancient India and China, Babylon, Ancient Egypt, and the national-state formations of the Muslim world. These cultures were original and, at the same time, characterized by some general features: they were focused, first of all, on the reproduction of established social structures, the stabilization of an established way of life, which often prevailed for many centuries. Traditional patterns of behavior, accumulating the experience of ancestors, were considered as the highest value. Types of activities, their means and goals changed very slowly and were reproduced for centuries as stable stereotypes. In the spiritual sphere, religious and mythological ideas and canonized styles of thinking dominated; scientific rationality was opposed to a moral and volitional attitude toward contemplation, serenity, and intuitive-mystical fusion with existence.
In the ideological aspect, in Eastern cultures there is no division of the world into the world of nature and society, natural and supernatural. Therefore, the eastern perception of the world is not characterized by the division of the world into “one and the other”; it is more characterized by a syncretic approach “one in the other” or “all in all”. Hence the denial of the individualistic principle and the orientation towards collectivism. Autonomy, freedom and dignity of the human person are alien to the spirit of Eastern culture. In Eastern worldview systems, a person is absolutely unfree, he is predetermined either by cosmic law or by God.
This is where the political and economic models of the life of the “Eastern man” come from. To Eastern people the spirit of democracy and civil society is alien. It has historically been dominated by despots. The desire to instill the norms of Western democracy on Eastern soil produces very unique hybrids, and the implementation of these aspirations is associated with profound social cataclysms.
Of course, all of these, in a certain sense, are speculative models; reality has never produced such pure “ideal types.” Moreover, in the modern world, when there is such close interaction between all spheres public life in different countries and continents, which leaves a huge imprint on the interaction and transformation of cultures.
Now that we have given the most general characteristics Western and Eastern types of culture, it is necessary to figure out which culture Russia gravitates towards most?
Philosophers and sociologists have long been faced with the question:
How do Western and Eastern cultural heritage compare in Russian culture? Is an original path of development for Russia possible and necessary? The answers to these questions were often contradictory. On this basis, there was an ideological dispute between various philosophical and ideological trends, the concentrated theoretical formulation of which took place in mid-19th V. in the form of the ideology of Westernism and Slavophilism. Westerners, as mentioned above, did not seek to emphasize the peculiarities of Russian cultural experience and believed that Russia should adopt all the best achievements of Western culture and way of life. Slavophiles defended the idea of the originality of the Russian path of development, linking this originality with the commitment of the Russian people to Orthodoxy. In their opinion, Orthodoxy was the source of a number of the most important features of the “Russian soul”, Russian culture, the most important of which are deep religiosity, increased emotionality and associated collectivist values, the priority of the collective over the individual, commitment to autocracy, etc. (For more details, see the topic “Russian religious philosophy of the mid-19th - 20th centuries.”).
The question of the path of development of Russia, the uniqueness of Russian culture is still higher value acquired for Russian philosophers who found themselves in exile after the October Revolution. During this period, several major works by leading Russian thinkers were published on this topic in various foreign publications: Berdyaev N.A., Vysheslavtsev B.P., Zenkovsky V.V., Fedotov G.P., Florovsky G.V., Sorokin P. A. This topic was analyzed most fully, with solid philosophical and historical-factological justification, in the work of Ya. A. Berdyaev “Russian idea. The main problems of Russian thoughts XIX and the beginning of the 20th century."
N.A. Berdyaev believes that to determine the national type, national individuality, it is impossible to give a strictly scientific definition. The secret of any individuality is recognized only by love, and there is always something incomprehensible to the end, to the last depth. And the main question, according to Berdyaev, is not what the Creator intended for Russia, but what is the intelligible image of the Russian people, its idea. The famous Russian poet F.I. Tyutchev said: “Russia cannot be understood with the mind, nor can it be measured with a common yardstick. She has become something special; you can only believe in Russia.” Therefore, Berdyaev believes, in order to comprehend Russia it is necessary to apply the theological virtues of faith, hope and love.
One of the most important characteristics of Russian folk individuality, according to Berdyaev, is its deep polarization and inconsistency. “The inconsistency and complexity of the Russian soul,” he notes, “may be due to the fact that in Russia two streams of world history collide and come into interaction - East and West. The Russian people are not a purely European and not a purely Asian people. Russia is a whole part of the world, a huge East-West, it connects two worlds. And two principles have always struggled in the Russian soul, eastern and western” (N. A. Berdyaev. Russian idea. The main problems of Russian thought of the 19th and early 20th centuries / About Russia and Russian philosophical culture: Philosophers of Russian post-October foreign countries. - M., 1990. - P. 44).
N.A. Berdyaev believes that there is a correspondence between the immensity, the boundlessness of the Russian land and the Russian soul. In the soul of the Russian people there is the same immensity, boundlessness, aspiration to infinity, as in the Russian plain. The Russian people, Berdyaev argues, were not a people of culture based on ordered rational principles. He was a people of revelations and inspirations. Two opposing principles formed the basis of the Russian soul: the pagan Dionistic element and ascetic-monastic Orthodoxy. This duality permeates all the main characteristics of the Russian people: despotism, hypertrophy of the state and anarchism, freedom, cruelty, a tendency to violence and kindness, humanity, gentleness, ritualism and the search for truth, individualism, a heightened consciousness of personality and impersonality, collectivism, nationalism, self-praise and universalism , pan-humanity, eschatological-missionary religiosity and external piety, the search for God and militant atheism, humility and arrogance, slavery and rebellion. These contradictory features of the Russian national character predetermined, according to Berdyaev, the complexity and cataclysms of Russian history.
The solution to the topic of the original foundations of Russian history and culture in the works of representatives of the so-called Eurasian movement (P. A. Karsavin, N. S. Trubetskoy, G. V. Norovsky, P. P. Stuchinsky, etc.) is of a somewhat different nature. . Eurasianism existed as a socio-political and ideological movement of the Russian emigrant intelligentsia from the early 20s to the end of the 30s of the XX century. Eurasianism, as a historical and cultural concept, it considers Russia as Eurasia - a special ethnographic world occupying the middle space of Asia and Europe, approximately outlined by three plains - East European, West Siberian and Turkestan. This world also has its own unique culture, “equally different from European and Asian.” At the same time, Eurasians emphasized the Asian focus of Russian culture, including the Turanian peoples in this culture, linking Russia with the empire of Genghis Khan by continuity and declaring that “the Russian revolution opened a window to Asia.” The views of Eurasians on Russia's prospects in the development of world civilization are of particular interest. Eurasians believed that after the October Revolution, old Russia with all its statehood and way of life crashed and sank into eternity. World War and the Russian Revolution usher in a new era. And this era is characterized not only by the disappearance past Russia, but also by the decomposition of Europe, the comprehensive crisis of the West. And the West, according to Eurasians, has completely exhausted its spiritual and historical potential and must resign to a secondary and peripheral role in world history. The future is in this new era belongs to the renewed Russia, and with it to the entire Orthodox world. Here, as we see, the Eurasians largely follow the Slavophiles.
The topics raised in discussions between Westerners and Slavophiles by N. A. Berdyaev and Eurasianists continue to be discussed in modern Russian philosophy. For many modern Russian philosophers, it is clear that the development of Western technogenic culture and civilization has led humanity to global problems and crises. In this regard, they pose the question: can we perceive the samples of Western experience as some kind of ideal, or should these samples themselves be subject to criticism? Perhaps humanity, in order to survive, must stand on new way civilized development. And this may mean that the deep crisis that has arisen in Russia in all spheres of public life is a necessary moment that can serve as an impetus for the creation of this new type of civilized development. In Russian culture, in national Russian tradition There are serious reasons for developing such a development path, the main values of which would be an orientation not towards ever-increasing material production and consumerism, but towards ascetic moderation based on the priority of spiritual values. Cold calculation, calculation, and rationalism must be opposed by the warmth of human relationships and Christian self-sacrifice, and individualism must be opposed by fraternal mutual assistance and collectivism. Along with these deep “metaphysical” questions, there are also more specific ones related to the social specifics of today’s situation in former USSR. What are the paths, what are the fates of that integrity, that community that was previously called Russia; will it come together again or is the process of its disintegration irreversible? This and other issues will have to be resolved both theoretically and practically not only by us, but also by future generations of the peoples of the once great Russian Empire.
- Civilization (from the Latin civilis - “civil”) - the level of social development, material and spiritual culture. Sometimes this word is used to describe the image of social structure, culture and religion characteristic of a certain country, region, or people.
- Sociology (Latin societas - “society” and Greek “logos” - “word”) studies the patterns of development of society, the relationship between the individual and society.
- The Latin alphabet, or Latin alphabet, developed in the IV-III centuries. before i. e. in Ancient Rome. On its basis, the writing systems of many languages of the world were created.
- Ya Cyrillic is a Slavic alphabet created on the basis of Greek writing at the end of the 9th - beginning of the 10th century. Formed the basis of the Russian alphabet.
- The largest Russian ethnographer of the second half of the 20th century. Sergei Aleksandrovich Tokarev to the question: “Who do you consider yourself to be - a European or a Eurasian?” - exclaimed: “Of course, a European!”
Russia is a country of two parts of the world: it occupies the east of Europe and the north of Asia. 78% of its population lives in the European part, and 22% in the Asian part, with 25% of the territory in Europe and 75% in Asia. Culturally, Russia is a unique state. More than 85% of the Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, etc.) are close in culture to the Christian European world, and about 10% of the population (approximately 15 million people - Tatars, Bashkirs, Buryats, Kalmyks, etc.) are associated with Islamic and Buddhist civilization of the East. Therefore, Russia can be called equally a European and an Asian country.
Russian coat of arms - double headed eagle, which looks in both directions. Where will the two-headed bird direct its flight? Will Russia cooperate with the countries of the East, without breaking with Europe, but also without making itself overly dependent on it? Or will it strive to join the community of European countries, while maintaining special relations with its eastern and southern neighbors? Or maybe our country will choose a special path - neither Western nor Eastern? To answer these questions, you must first understand what the West and the East are and “how much” of both there are in Russia.
WEST AND EAST
Most often, the West is understood as the economically developed states of Western Europe and North America (USA and Canada). Sometimes they include Japan, which culturally belongs more to the East, and economically and technologically it is closer to the West. There is no doubt that Catholic Ireland and Italy, Orthodox Greece and Protestant Scandinavia are very different; but there is also no doubt that they belong to the same type of development (both economic and cultural). Their unity is sealed by major political and military alliances: NATO, the EEC, the G7, etc. (see the article “Russia and International Organizations”).
Unlike the West, there is no single East. A simple geographical division (East is Asia, and West is Europe) does not give anything. The Muslim East (Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, etc.), India, China, the Buddhist countries of Southeast Asia (Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, etc.), the Catholic Philippines differ from each other no less, and sometimes even more, than from European countries. The East is a bizarre mixture of different economic systems, religions and cultures. A special place is occupied by Buddhist Japan, which, based on the type of economic and technological development, is classified as a Western country.
So how does the West differ from the East? Firstly, the West has a higher level of economic and technological development. Secondly, the culture of the West is based mainly on Christian values (although this does not mean that all Westerners profess Christianity), and the culture of the East was formed on the basis of Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc. In addition, according to sociologists, In the West, the character of people is dominated by such traits as individualism, personal responsibility and initiative, while in the East - communalism, and therefore collective responsibility. Thus, “West” and “East are not so much geographical as economic and, first of all, cultural concepts.
How do East and West relate in Russia itself? There are two points of view. According to one, the East is a non-Slavic, predominantly non-Christian population of both the European (Tatars, Kalmyks, Bashkirs) and Asian parts of the country (Buryats, etc.). In this sense Slavic peoples, wherever they live, they appear to be part of the West, that is, European Christian civilization. Supporters of this point of view believe that East and West have united in Russia, and since more than 85% of its inhabitants can be attributed to the West, the country’s development should follow the Western path. Another point of view denies the existence of a pan-European civilization. According to this theory, there are two Christian civilizations: one is actually Western, Western European (it is also called Atlantic, Romano-Germanic, Catholic Protestant), and the other, opposing it, is Eastern Christian (mostly Orthodox and mainly Slavic). According to adherents of this view, in our country the East coexists with a special, Slavic world, therefore Russia is destined for its own path of development, unlike any other. In the 19th century The defenders of these theories were called Westerners and Slavophiles, respectively. The word "Slavophiles" can be translated as "lovers of the Slavs", since the Greek verb "philo" means "to love." So which of the two points of view is correct? There is no answer to this question yet, and disputes between Westerners and Slavophiles still do not cease.
WESTERNS AND SLAVOPHILES - AN UNFINISHED DISPUTE
The beginning of the dispute can be dated back to the 17th century. Why not earlier? Apparently, because before the Mongol-Tatar invasion this question did not arise at all. Ancient Rus' was included in the system of European political and economic relations. The princes either fought with the nomads or entered into close alliances, but in general relations with them were stable. Later, during the era of the Golden Horde yoke, everything changed. We had to equally defend ourselves from the danger that came from the eastern borders, and from attacks by the Germans, Swedes, Poles, and Danes. And only after the Time of Troubles (beginning of the 17th century) the question arose with all its urgency: with whom should Russia be? With Europe, and should we consider Asian Russia only as a source of resources? Or with Asia, bringing the “light of Orthodoxy” to it and fencing off from the “heretical and pernicious” influence of the West?
Peter I was a pronounced “Westernizer.” All his activities were aimed at introducing Russia to European values and took place in a fierce struggle with the old aristocracy, who did not want to part with their usual way of life. All subsequent Russian monarchs can also be called “Westerners”: none of them tried to restore the pre-Petrine order, and by blood, culture, and upbringing they were much more Western European than Russian.
However, can the Russian tsars, and above all Peter I, be called genuine Westerners, without quotation marks? They willingly adopted the external features of Western civilization (costumes, wigs, etiquette, military regulations), but the socio-political principles (personal freedom of citizens, free labor, independent judiciary, etc.) most often remained alien to them. The development of the country was based on the forced labor of serfs and serf workers, on a rigid bureaucratic administrative apparatus. Genuine Westerners at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries. there were only writers and public figures N. I. Novikov, A N. Radishchev, M. M. Speransky and some others. Their fate most often became disgrace or exile.
However, it is hardly lawful to clearly divide historical characters on Westerners and Slavophiles. Broad-minded individuals, such as A. S. Pushkin and A. S. Griboyedov, could easily combine respect for the achievements of Europe with love for the best features of the Russian cultural heritage.
The very concepts of “Westerner” and “Slavophile” appeared quite late, in the middle of the 19th century. The Slavophiles of that time (A. S. Khomyakov, I. S. Aksakov and K. S. Aksakov, I. V. Kireevsky, Yu. F. Samarin) advocated a special path of development for Russia, fundamentally different from the Western one. They believed that it was necessary to develop their own - Russian or "common Slavic" - culture, to a certain extent fencing off from the West. Other, non-European peoples of the country, according to the Slavophiles, need to be introduced to Slavic, and in religious terms - to Orthodox values.
Westerners (P.V. Annenkov, V.P. Botkin, T.N. Granovsky, K. D. Kavelin, V.G. Belinsky, I.S. Turgenev) saw the path of development of Russia completely different. In their opinion, the Slavic peoples of Russia should embrace Western culture and political ideals, and then spread these ideals among other peoples of the country.
Both Westerners and Slavophiles alike, without special sympathy belonged to Islam, and Buddhist and Hindu values either did not interest them at all, or were of purely educational interest. Only a few Slavophile thinkers, for example the writer and artist Nicholas Roerich, saw the possibility of moral improvement of humanity precisely in the combination of Christian and Hindu-Buddhist spirituality.
It would seem that, October Revolution 1917 resolved the age-old dispute - Russia chose the path of development based on communist ideas that came from Europe. However, even under Soviet rule, Westernist and Slavophile points of view on the development of the country continued to compete.
The pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary activities of the Bolshevik Party and its leader V.I. Lenin were mainly Westernizing. Marxism itself, the ideological basis of the policy of the USSR, was entirely a product of Western political economic thought. However, as was the case in the era of Peter I, while accepting some ideas, the Bolsheviks did not try to transfer the main achievements of the West to Russian soil - freedom and personal independence of citizens, etc. On the contrary, lawlessness and terror reigned in the country, and the whole world was separated from Russia "Iron Curtain". It is natural that in the late 40s. Stalin started public company the fight against “kowtowing to the West.” Such a position can be considered an external manifestation of Slavophilism.
EURASIANITY - THE THIRD WAY?
After the revolution in Western Europe There were hundreds of thousands of emigrants from Russia. The years spent abroad were difficult for many. The West was not very hospitable to the newcomers, and it was not easy to integrate into its life. In the new environment, many emigrants became especially acutely aware of their “Russian peculiarity”, their difference from Europeans.
This is probably partly why an ideological, political and philosophical movement arose among the Russian emigration, called “Eurasianism.” Its most prominent ideologists were the outstanding linguist N. S. Trubetskoy, geographer and economist P. N. Savitsky.
Eurasians sharply criticized Western European civilization and its values. They considered the fact that Russia adopted them for a long time to be a sin, and the communist revolution as retribution for it. Like the Slavophiles, the Eurasians saw the future of the country in the revival of “Russian originality,” but they understood it in their own way. The uniqueness of Russia, in their opinion, lies in the unity of all the peoples inhabiting it, in the mixing of their blood, in the synthesis (from the Greek “synthesis” - “union”) of Slavic, Finno-Ugric and Turkic-Mongolian cultures. These processes took place over centuries. Eurasians, unlike the Slavophiles, viewed the East as one of the most important factors in the formation of Russian identity; they considered Russia an Orthodox-Muslim-Buddhist country.
Here is what Nikolai Sergeevich Trubetskoy wrote about this: “It is essential for Eurasianism that it loves the narrow-eyed, eyebrowless and high-cheekbone face of real Russia - Eurasia, and not that fantastic Slavic beauty in a pearl kokoshnik, which the Slavophile Russians created in their imagination patriots of the pre-revolutionary period."
Being staunch anti-communists, the Eurasians were nevertheless sympathetic to the USSR. They believed that over time the Russian people would free themselves from the obsession of Soviet ideology and, using the sovereign power of the state, would fulfill their historical mission: to unite and ensure the development of all - both Slavic and non-Slavic - peoples of Eurasia. Therefore, Eurasians welcomed, in particular, the creation of a new written language for the peoples Soviet Union based on the Russian alphabet. Such writing, they believed, would more closely connect these peoples with Russian culture and at the same time tear them away from the West with its Latin alphabet, and from the writing of Muslim peoples, developed before the revolution on an Arabic basis. Such expectations were, however, not fully realized. The Cyrillic alphabet turned out to be much less convenient for the languages of the peoples of the North and the Caucasus than the alphabets created on a Latin basis in the 20s. and canceled in 1938
Many leaders non-Slavic peoples Russia was and still is very wary of Eurasianism, fearing that under the guise of equality of peoples, Eurasians are seeking to recreate a state with Russians in the role of the dominant majority.
AT THE CROSSROADS AGAIN
In the 20th century, and especially after the collapse of the USSR, the relationship between West and East in Russia changed, although not very much. Countries of a purely Western type, once part of the Russian Empire and the USSR, have today completely separated - politically, economically, culturally. After October 1917, these were Poland and Finland, and then, in 1991, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia. These countries have become an organic part of Europe. Other republics located in the west of the Soviet Union - Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova - also gained independence. They cannot be unambiguously called “Western”, but none is completely “Eastern”. The typically eastern republics of Central Asia also separated from Russia. And yet, at the end of the 20th century. Russia remains a Western-Eastern power.
At the turn of the millennium, the question of which path to choose again became one of the main ones in the public life of the country. Is it possible to copy the Western type of state and economy, or will these innovations not take root and Russia must look for its own unique path? The centuries-old dispute between Westerners and Slavophiles, which began several centuries ago, is still not over.
In 1991, supporters of market reforms and the development of democracy took the helm of the Russian economy. Most of them believed that the country should develop along the Western path, without forgetting, of course, its own characteristics. They argued that the laws of economics and sociology, like the laws of physics and chemistry, know no boundaries; and only by adopting the rules by which the prosperous West lives can the revival of Russia be achieved. However, the reforms they carried out were accompanied by a series of failures and crises, and therefore many residents of the country cooled down to the idea of arranging society according to the Western model.
At the same time, both Slavophile and Eurasian ideas are popular in Russia. However, the all-Russian centuries-old dispute about the choice between the West and the East by the end of the 20th century, apparently, is gradually being resolved in favor of the West. Russia will probably become more and more European country, while maintaining a unique multinational identity.
Reflecting on the question of Russia's place in history and in modern world, various philosophers have viewed Russia in one way or another within the framework of the East-West scheme. At the same time, Russia is attributed either to the East or the West, or is recognized as a special country, neither Western nor Eastern.
In the history of Russian thought for last case Several independent concepts of the East-West problem are known:
- G. Plekhanov believed that Russia was, as it were, between East and West, leaning first to one side, then to the other.
- N. Berdyaev declared it East-West or West-East.
- The young man predicted to her great destiny: Russia must unite East and West on the basis of true Christianity.
- According to Eurasians, Russia forms a special world, a “third force”, quite similar to both the West and the East, but not dependent on either of them.
Therefore, in order to navigate all these diverse points of view and understand the true position of Russia in the world, it is necessary to unambiguously establish the meaning of the original concepts and terms, to draw the boundaries of the concepts “West”, “East” and their correlation with each other.
In the minds of Europeans, the East has always been in a certain opposition to the West. The mysterious and unfamiliar East was woven from contradictions - they spoke, on the one hand, about its constancy and high spirituality and, on the other, about stagnation and slavery. Against the background of the “East,” the uniqueness of the West was more clearly visible; in fact, in the process of comprehending the East, a Western European understanding also took shape.
The East-West paradigm helped Europeans form European identity itself. Therefore, the concepts of “East” and “West” influence our worldview - voluntarily or involuntarily, regardless of our critical or dogmatic attitude towards them.
For the first time, the theoretical concepts of “East” and “West” were used in his works by the philosopher G. Hegel. Under the name “East” it unites three cultural and historical formations:
Chinese, which includes China,
Indian, which includes India,
and the Middle East, which includes the ancient civilizations of Asia, North Africa: Persia, including the people of Zarathustra, Assyria, Media, Iran, Babylon, Syria, Phenicia, Judea, Egypt, as well as the Islamic world.
For Hegel, the “West” consisted of two civilizations that formed in the north of the Mediterranean - Roman and Greek. It is worth noting that there was no place for Russia in Hegel’s system.
Thus, “West” in Hegel’s philosophy had two meanings:
- broad, including ancient times and Christian culture of European peoples;
- narrow, including only the Christian world.
These interpretations have their supporters and opponents.
“Localists” (N.Ya. Danilevsky, O. Spengler, A. Toynbee), rejecting the “West – East” paradigm, considered only the Western European world as “West”. E. Husserl called Ancient Greece"spiritual homeland" of the West.
K. Jaspers proposed a compromise point of view. He considers Western civilization one of many local ones, but notes it special role in world history, especially in the modern era, and indicates that Western culture is the spiritual heir of the Greek, Jewish and Roman cultures.
Jaspers introduces the concept of “axial time,” universal for all humanity, criticizing Hegel’s “universal axis” associated exclusively with Christianity. But since Christianity itself was the basis only for Western civilization, it is incorrect to choose it as the boundary of this “axial time” for the whole world. The sought-after universality, and with it the fullness of being, existed before, for example, in eastern cultures. Jaspers calls the “amazing era” the time between the 8th and 2nd centuries BC, when different parts of the world had their own prophets: in China - Confucius and Lao Tzu, in Persia and Iraq - Zarathustra, in India - Buddha, in Palestine The Old Testament is being created, philosophy is actively developing in Greece. At this time, a person overcomes his local thinking and becomes aware of himself. But people did not unite into a single formation; however, several centers of world religions and political paradigms were formed.
It is worth noting that Jaspers practically does not use the concept “East”. He views China and India as independent cultural worlds along with the West. In the broad concept of “West” he includes not only Western culture of the 2nd millennium, but also the culture begun by the Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Cretan-Mycenaean civilizations, continued in antiquity by the Greeks, Romans, Persians, Jews, completed in the Christian era by Byzantium, Russia, Europe, America and Islamic civilizations. In addition, the West in Jaspers’ concept is considered as the cradle of ideas about freedom, democracy, philosophy, and science.
The problem East - West - Russia in the history of philosophical thought
The question of Russia’s place in the “East – West – Russia” paradigm was first raised in Philosophical Letters.
- Westerners argued that Russia is part European culture, i.e. West. Slavophiles believed that Russia is a “original spiritual formation.”
- There was a third point of view - the concept of K. Leontyev.
The “pochvennik” gave great support to the ideas of the Slavophiles. Without recognizing the “East-West” paradigm, he developed the idea of the existence of independent cultural and historical types. Russian culture, according to Danilevsky, represented just such a special type of culture.
Almost the entire 19th century in Russian philosophical thought was dominated by the idea of the “specialness” of Russia among other civilizations, which influenced the formation of the national Russian civilizational and historical self-awareness.
This process is embodied in the famous formulas:
« The history of Russia requires a different thought, a different formula” (A. Pushkin),
“You can’t understand Russia with your mind” (F. Tyutchev)
“Rus', where are you going, give me the answer?” (N. Gogol),
“Why can’t we accommodate last word Him [Christ]? (F. Dostoevsky).
Based on the fact that Russian culture is Christian, Westerners placed the Slavic peoples along with the Germanic ones on the third world-historical level. The Slavophiles, pointing to cultures, contrasted Russia with Western Europe.
Chaadaev believed that Russian culture can combine both reason and imagination, so Russia can become a kind of bridge between the West and the East. He calls Russia the “third force” in history.
The introduction of Russia into the Hegelian triad of “China, India, Middle East” allows for two theoretical possibilities:
1) maintaining the triad with Russia placed “inside” one of the elements;
2) reducing the elements to two and introducing Russia into the triad instead of one of them.
The second possibility clearly has theoretical priority. However, the philosophy of the 19th century was dominated by the idea of Russian identity, so in that era Russian thinkers used the first one.
Vl used the second opportunity in his research. Soloviev, proposing the formula “East-West-Russia” in “Philosophical principles of integral knowledge”.
Vl. Soloviev proposed the idea of a tripartite division of history. He identified three stages of world-historical development. Two, according to the philosopher, we have already passed. At the first stage, the “face” of humanity was the East. This was followed by the Christian milestone and the second stage, where the West played a dominant role in history. In this scheme, neither antiquity, nor Byzantium, nor Ancient Rus' Vl. Soloviev does not consider cultural and political formations as significant.
According to Solovyov:
- The East symbolizes the “inhuman God”,
- The West is a “godless man.”
The confrontation between the West and the East ends at the third stage, characterized by the establishment of true Christianity. Only young people who are not connected with either the West or the East, for example, Russia, can become the bearer of a new mentality.
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