New! Alexander Shmeman "Fundamentals of Russian culture." Schmemann - the foundations of Russian culture

31.03.2019

On December 11, 2017, in the Cathedral Chamber of the Main Building of the Orthodox St. Tikhon's Humanitarian University, a presentation of the book “Fundamentals of Russian Culture” by the famous preacher and theologian Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann took place.

The event was attended by the rector of PSTGU Archpriest Vladimir Vorobyov, the editor-compiler of the book Elena Dorman, the senior editor of the PSTGU publishing house Egor Agafonov and the son of the author of the book, journalist, Pulitzer Prize winner Sergei Shmeman.

Opening the presentation, the rector of PSTGU, Archpriest Vladimir Vorobyov, welcomed all those present. “Today’s event is very significant for us because the name of Father Alexander Schmemann is increasingly attracting the attention and love of people. We constantly quote Father Alexander at various university courses and rely on his authority,” said the rector of PSTGU. “In particular, I teach the course “Introduction to Liturgical Tradition” and constantly remember how in my youth I waited with excitement for the next chapter on liturgy to appear in the “Bulletin of the Russian Christian Movement.” Then these chapters, one might say, were a revelation for us,” emphasized Father Vladimir.

In a book published by PSTGU publishing house, for the first time almost in in full(without the unfound first one) a series of conversations was published that Archpriest Alexander Schmeman conducted on Radio Liberty in 1970-1971. These texts are insightful analyzes of the fundamental characteristic features and trends of Russian culture, thoughtful reflection on its past and future. “Russian culture is an amazing symphony in which melodies filled with sadness are ultimately transformed into praise of goodness, truth and beauty,” stated Father Alexander.

According to the publisher of the book, senior editor of the PSTGU publishing house Egor Agafonov, the basis of the publication was a series of conversations that did not reach us in the audio version. “They survived only in typewritten form, but since Father Alexander spoke a lot in his Sunday radio conversations on Radio Liberty on the topic of culture, we made a small appendix in the book from these previously published conversations,” he said. Egor Agafonov invited everyone who came to the presentation to listen to one short, but very bright and expressive conversation by Father Alexander Schmemann about the work of Pushkin. The senior editor of the PSTGU publishing house also recalled that next year will mark the 35th anniversary of the death of Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann, but nevertheless his. new, previously unpublished books continue to be published. One of the most significant posthumous publications was this series of conversations about Russian culture.

The book “Fundamentals of Russian Culture” was collected and prepared for publication by translator and editor Elena Dorman. She lived in New York for more than 20 years and knew Father Alexander personally.

The editor-compiler of the book, the main publisher of other books and articles by Father Alexander, Elena Dorman, said that these conversations were accidentally found in the archive of Tatyana Varshavskaya, transferred to the House of Russian Abroad named after Alexander Solzhenitsyn. “There were nine conversations, and they didn’t amount to a book. “I tried to find others,” Elena Dorman clarified. – Then, quite by accident, all 30 conversations - typewritten scripts from Father Alexander - were found in the basement of one dead woman, who once worked in radio in Munich. This discovery made it possible to make a book.”

The son of the book’s author, journalist Sergei Shmeman, said that as soon as he started reading, he learned a lot of new things. “It’s been 34 years since my father passed away. During this time I have accumulated a feeling for him large number questions. I keep wanting to ask him about what he thinks about Russia, about the Church, about the situation in the world. To my joy, this book contained many answers to questions about literature and poetry, the importance of culture in Russian consciousness and the Orthodox faith. For me, this book is a kind of guide to Russian culture,” Sergei Shmeman shared his impressions.

According to him, Father Alexander always considered connections with Russia an important part of his life. “Although there were people who said that he went to the American Church and left the Russian people, this was absolutely not the case. Contact with Russia was maintained not only through Radio Liberty, where my father conducted conversations for three decades, but also through meetings that began when hundreds of Soviet emigrants began to leave the Union. This contact with Russia was a big part of his life,” says Sergei Shmeman.

At the end of the meeting, several sections of the documentary film “Apostle of Joy” about the life of Father Alexander were shown. Work on the film lasted three and a half years and was completed recently.

As the director of the film Andrei Zheleznyakov explained, the film “Apostle of Joy” is a documentary film with a large number of previously unavailable newsreels, interviews with the students and family of Father Alexander. The film shows him as a man full of energy and giving light to those around him. Entirely documentary can be seen at PSTGU on December 22, 2017.

After showing a fragment of the film, the editors, compilers and publishers of the book answered questions from the guests gathered in the hall.

In the archive of the publicist Vladimir Varshavsky, donated by his widow to the Alexander Solzhenitsyn House of Russian Abroad in Moscow, the texts of radio conversations of Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann were discovered, which were not included in the two-volume set published by the PSTGU publishing house. This series of conversations common name"Fundamentals of Russian Culture", unfortunately, is not complete: the first two conversations are missing and it is not possible to find them. The cycle was prepared for publication by the scientific secretary of the DRZ M.A. Vasilyeva and head. Department of Museum and Archival Storage of the DRZ E.Yu. Dorman and published in the “Yearbook of the House of Russian Abroad named after Alexander Solzhenitsyn” for 2012. The text of the conversations was provided by Elena Dorman. The 12th conversation is the last of the surviving conversations of the cycle “Fundamentals of Russian Culture”.

Conversation 12. Denial of culture in the name of social utopia

"Sociality, sociality or death!" - Belinsky’s enthusiastic exclamation when he had just converted to the socialist faith was often quoted. And it really could be put as an epigraph to the history of Russian consciousness, Russian thought, Russian dream, starting from the 40s of the 19th century.

Since then, the social question, or, more precisely, the social utopia, has become some kind of all-encompassing, all-consuming passion for a large part of the Russian intelligentsia. To simplify, we can say this: if in the 18th century they built culture, then in the 19th century interest in culture turned out to be almost entirely subordinated to social interest. And this, of course, deeply affected the fate of Russian culture.

However, not only Russian: it should be noted that the obsession with “sociality” in the 19th century was common to all of Europe, and Russia was no exception. The 19th century in Europe was the century of Proudhon, Marx, Engels, Bakunin, the century of revolutions, the Paris Commune, the beginning of the labor movement and the development of sociology and economics as scientific disciplines.

But unlike Russia, this social passion in the West did not become an all-consuming passion, and it did not stop or suppress the continuation cultural tradition and construction. For example, the history of French or English literature The 19th century can be studied completely separately from the social and revolutionary movement, which developed during those turbulent decades. We can talk about life or literary drama Flaubert, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, without reducing it to social issues. And this is because the cultural tradition in Western Europe was too strong and durable to be eroded and absorbed by a new social passion.

As for Russia, we must admit that our passion for “sociality” has led to a decrease in the cultural level and has become a source of deep and significant “disruptions” in Russian cultural consciousness.

The reduction of everything to “sociality,” the unconditional subordination of culture to it, has become the banner and, so to speak, nutrient medium new phenomenon of Russian life, namely famous, long-suffering, wonderful, but also in many ways for past Russia dangerous intelligentsia that appeared precisely in the 19th century.

If we take Pushkin again as our starting point and yardstick, then we must say that he never had a single distinctive feature"intellectual", there was, first of all, no internal subordination of culture to the social question. This does not mean at all that Pushkin was alien to social interests, did not experience a tragic absence political freedom, enslavement of serfs, social inequality and so on.

In his "Monument" he could honestly say about himself that in his " cruel age he glorified freedom and called for mercy for the fallen." His interest in the Pugachev rebellion and the depth of it historical analysis speak of their undoubted understanding social problem Russia in in a broad sense this word. Let's just say: no less than future Russian intellectuals, Pushkin was for freedom, justice, human dignity, and basic equality.

But Pushkin is alien to the main feature of the intelligentsia - utopianism. Therefore, on December 14, 1825, Senate Square in St. Petersburg, when the historical birth of the intelligentsia’s consciousness and life attitude took place, Pushkin was absent not only physically, but also, so to speak, spiritually.

The Decembrist uprising was the entry of utopia onto the historical stage of Russia. Pushkin could sympathize with the personal feat and heroism of the Decembrists, but he could not share their utopian passion. He could not, first of all, because in his hierarchy of values culture was in first, not second place, and improvement depended on it, on its creation and rooting in Russia social status, and not vice versa. It was this hierarchy of values that turned out to be inverted in the intelligentsia’s consciousness: social issue, and culture is subordinate to it.

The Russian intelligentsia, not as a special stratum of the population, but as a type, was created in Russian society as a result of a double process: the relatively rapid spread of enlightenment beyond the upper noble class and at the same time the almost tragic impossibility of creatively and constructively applying this enlightenment in practice, in life.

The birth of the intelligentsia as a mass phenomenon in our country coincided with the years of reaction after the Decembrist uprising, with the gradual transformation of the empire under Nicholas I into a bureaucratic-military state, into a colossal, clumsy bureaucracy. Then, for the first time, a relatively educated Russian man was faced with a choice: either he would turn into the likeness of that Chekhovian official who, in his old age, suddenly discovered that in the millions of government papers he had written, he had never had to put a single exclamation point, expressing, as he had just learned, delight, anger, a generally strong feeling, or he will have to go into the ghostly world of dreams about something unrealizable, that is, go into utopia. And so utopia became a kind of second nature for this educated man; the heat of his soul, all his imagination, all his energy went into it.

Utopia came in a ready-made form - from Western sources, from hastily prepared and simplified global and comprehensive schemes of Hegel and his followers, from textbooks of physics and chemistry, from the West seething with all kinds of ideas.

The delight experienced by young Herzen and Ogarev on Vorobyovy Gory was not an isolated phenomenon, but almost a collective one. In circles, in salons, and then in safe houses, that endless, enthusiastic and sublime conversation gradually arose and grew, consisting almost entirely of exclamation marks, which then lasted for this part of the intelligentsia almost until the very end of the Russian Empire.

And here’s what’s important to note: the further time went, the more obviously the decline cultural level talking and shouting. If in the Moscow salons of the forties - at Khomyakov and Chaadaev, at the Elagins and Granovsky - this conversation was still saturated with genuine, deep and subtle culture, which still had the reflection of Pushkin, then in the 60s - in the generation of Pisarev and Dobrolyubov - this the culture no longer existed, it had eroded, disappeared somewhere, replaced by some kind of gray semi-culture, which can be studied from the famous “thick magazines” of the second half of the 19th century century.

It was as if some strange law was at work here: the broader, the more, so to speak, “worldwide” the utopia was, the narrower and drier its cultural coefficient became. I really should have forgotten" The captain's daughter" and "Hero of Our Time", these heights of the Russian language, to get carried away by Chernyshevsky's novel "What is to be done" and cry over Nadson's poems.

Culture at this time in intellectual circles began to be understood exclusively pragmatically: as a minimum of necessary, necessarily practical, necessarily “useful” information for the “people”, education was reduced only to general “literacy”, without any concern for national culture. An intellectual reigned over Russian culture, “idealistic and groundless,” as Fedotov put it, an ascetic who despised not only the material blessings of life, but also any, in his opinion, unnecessary “elegance,” fanatically obsessed with one, only one dream, in which, however, , there was virtually no place for culture.

The tragic paradox of Russian culture was that, starting from a certain time, it found itself in its own homeland as if it were a “foreigner.” She ceased to be needed by the bureaucratic-military apparatus of the empire; moreover, by this apparatus she was placed under suspicion. But she ceased to be needed and worshiped by the revolution-worshipping intelligentsia, which also placed her under suspicion. The imperial utopia and the revolutionary utopia seemed to have entered into an unspoken alliance with each other - against the highest “realism” of Pushkin, against the truth about Russia that he felt and to which he called for Russian culture.

And one can only be surprised that, despite this double oppression - from the empire, which was moving further and further away from the culture, and from the intelligentsia, which was negatively disposed towards it, Russian culture still continued to exist, fed by the invisible sources of Russian creativity. Moreover, one can even say that this two-sided pressure gave it new depth, a new creative dimension, since this culture, willy-nilly, was forced to respond to the double negation directed against it, to overcome it from within.

Without exaggerating, we can say that Dostoevsky and Tolstoy began the liberation of Russian culture from its internal, psychological enslavement to the military-bureaucratic and revolutionary intelligentsia parts of Russia, into which it broke up after the death of Pushkin.

Pragmatic denial of culture, religious denial, and finally, socio-utopian denial of culture - these are the three dimensions, the purgatory that Russian culture had to go through after its dazzling embodiment in Pushkin. She went through this purgatory.

Did this mean a return to Pushkin, to the program he outlined, and how did this passage affect the very fabric of Russian cultural consciousness? What height, what depth did it reach? [What new tragedies did she have to encounter?] These are further questions, the answer to which must be sought first of all from two giants, at the two world peaks of Russian culture - Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.

Protopr. Alexander Shmeman. Fundamentals of Russian culture. Conversations on Radio Liberty. 1970-1971. / Orthodox St. Tikhon's Humanitarian University, 2017. - 416 p.
Hardcover. Offset printing. Offset paper.

For the first time, a completely published series of radio conversations by the famous theologian and preacher Fr. Alexander Shmeman is devoted to understanding the main categories of Russian culture. Pronounced in 1970-1971. and caused by reflections on the new emerging polarization of Russian culture, these conversations show us an example of a solid, deeply thought-out, verified Christian view of the essence and content of Russian culture.

Olga Sedakova. Seventies. Searching for a Lost Soul
Elena Dorman. From the compiler
Spiritual destinies of Russia
FUNDAMENTALS OF RUSSIAN CULTURE

Conversation 2. Dispute about culture in the Soviet Union
Conversation 3. “Culture” in Russian identity
Conversation 4. Paradoxes of the Russian cultural development: maximalism
Conversation 5. Paradoxes of Russian cultural development: minimalism
Conversation 6. Paradoxes of Russian cultural development: utopianism
Conversation 7. “Explosion” of Russian cultural identity in the 19th century (1)
Conversation 8. “Explosion” of Russian cultural identity in the 19th century (2)
Conversation 9. “Explosion” of Russian cultural identity in the 19th century (3)
Conversation 10. Denial of culture in the name of pragmatism
Conversation 11. Denial of culture in the name of religion
Conversation 12. Denial of culture in the name of social utopia
Conversation 13. Tolstoy and culture
Conversation 14. Dostoevsky and Russian culture
Conversation 15. Cultural identity of the “beginning of the century” (1)
Conversation 16. Cultural identity of the “beginning of the century” (2)
Conversation 17. Avoiding moral principles culture
Conversation 18. First reaction to the revolution
Conversation 19. Enslavement of culture
Conversation 20. Creative resistance (g)
Conversation 21. Creative resistance (2)
Conversation 22. Creative resistance (h)
Conversation 23. Past and traditions
Conversation 24. West
Conversation 25. Technology and science
Conversation 26. Social topics
Conversation 27. Religious topics
Conversation 28. At a crossroads
Conversation 29. On the way to synthesis (1)
Conversation 30. On the way to synthesis (2)
Conversation 31. Conclusion

Applications
Religious inspiration of Russian literature

Unified intuition
Dawn of Russian poetry
The Mystery of Pushkin
Tyutchev: love conquering the abyss
Strange thirst

Great Christian writer (A. Solzhenitsyn)

Image of eternity
Relevance to the main thing
Prayer is the experience of victory
Christian tragedy

Russian clergy in Chekhov

New! Alexander Shmeman “Fundamentals of Russian culture.”

The book of the famous theologian and preacher Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann “Fundamentals of Russian Culture” for the first time fully publishes a cycle of his radio conversations on Radio Liberty, dedicated to understanding the main categories of Russian culture. Spoken in 1970–1971 and caused by reflections on the new emerging polarization of culture in our country, these conversations show us an example of a solid, deeply thought-out, verified Christian view of the essence and content of Russian culture.

In addition to the presented cycle of conversations, the book includes several more radio conversations of Father Alexander from other cycles and a lecture on Chekhov, which he often read in different audiences. The collection opens with the report “The Spiritual Destinies of Russia,” read at a Russian symposium at the Church of Our Lady of Kazan in Sea Cliff, New York, in April 1977. He perfectly represents Father Alexander’s intuitions about Russian culture, which unfold in detail in the conversations themselves

Olga Sedakova. Seventies. In Search of the Lost Soul – 5
Elena Dorman. From the compiler – 14
_______
Spiritual destinies of Russia – 19
_______
FUNDAMENTALS OF RUSSIAN CULTURE
Conversation 2. Dispute about culture in the Soviet Union - 53
Conversation 3. “Culture” in Russian identity – 62
Conversation 4. Paradoxes of Russian cultural development: maximalism – 72
Conversation 5. Paradoxes of Russian cultural development: minimalism – 81
Conversation 6. Paradoxes of Russian cultural development: utopianism – 91
Conversation 7. “Explosion” of Russian cultural identity in the 19th century (1) – 100
Conversation 8. “Explosion” of Russian cultural identity in the 19th century (2) – 108
Conversation 9. “Explosion” of Russian cultural identity in the 19th century (3) – 117
Conversation 10. Denial of culture in the name of pragmatism – 126
Conversation 11. Denial of culture in the name of religion – 134
Conversation 12. Denial of culture in the name of social utopia – 143
Conversation 13. Tolstoy and culture – 152
Conversation 14. Dostoevsky and Russian culture – 160
Conversation 15. Cultural identity of the “beginning of the century” (1) – 169
Conversation 16. Cultural identity of the “beginning of the century” (2) – 178
Conversation 17. Moving away from the moral foundations of culture – 187
Conversation 18. First reaction to the revolution - 196
Conversation 19. Enslavement of culture – 205
Conversation 20. Creative resistance (1) – 214
Conversation 21. Creative resistance (2) – 223
Conversation 22. Creative resistance (3) – 232
Conversation 23. Past and traditions – 241
Conversation 24. West – 250
Conversation 25. Technology and science – 259
Conversation 26. Social topics – 268
Conversation 27. Religious topics – 276
Conversation 28. At a crossroads – 285
Conversation 29. On the way to synthesis (1) – 293
Conversation 30. On the way to synthesis (2) – 301
Conversation 31. Conclusion – 309
_______
APPLICATIONS
Religious inspiration of Russian literature
▪ Unified intuition – 320
▪ Dawn of Russian poetry – 325
▪ The Mystery of Pushkin – 331
▪ Tyutchev: love conquering the abyss – 336
▪ Strange thirst – 342
Great Christian writer (A. Solzhenitsyn)
▪ Image of eternity – 353
▪ Attribution to the main thing – 359
▪ Prayer - experience of victory – 364
▪ Christian tragedy – 370
Russian clergy in Chekhov – 375

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Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann begins a series of conversations about Russian culture in 1970, at the beginning of the “dead times,” which he calls post-Stalin and post-Khrushchev. This era cannot be called more precisely. The last fifteen years of official Soviet history there wasn't. They were “after” something, and the relationship with this something remained unclear (no discussions were expected either about Stalinism or the “Thaw”). The entire era is frozen in its “after”, instilling in people the confidence that this “after” is forever. “A bright future” remained a ritual phrase of officialdom, but no one thought about any other future than the continuation of the same “after.” An amazing experience of post-historical time.

In hindsight these years will be called “stagnation”. Schmemann speaks of them as a time of disbelief: a general disbelief in the “red idea,” in that “revolutionary faith” that ruled the country for decades and was cut down by Khrushchev’s revelations. Attempts to “renew” her in the sixties, to return her “youth” and “Leninist” romance did not go far and were in turn cancelled. In place of the “struggle for a bright future” that united the country (“ new type historical community of people”, in the official language), a semantic void opened up. The ideological mill was spinning as before, but it was no longer grinding anything. It produced not messages, but noise that drowned out any possibility of thought. The ritual repetition of the same “inhuman and wooden” phrases continued. But there was nowhere to hide from them. The coercion and omnipresence of a dead ideology constituted its meaning.

Protopresbyter Alexander Schmeman - Fundamentals of Russian culture: Conversations on Radio Liberty. 1970-1971

[comp. E.Y. Dorman; preface O.A. Sedakova; prepared text and comments M.A. Vasilyeva, E.Yu. Dorman, Yu.S. Terentyev]

M.: Publishing house of the Orthodox St. Tikhon's Humanitarian University, 2017. 416 p.

ISBN 978-5-7429-0497-7

Protopresbyter Alexander Schmeman - Fundamentals of Russian culture: Conversations on Radio Liberty. 1970-1971 - Contents

Olga Sedakova / The Seventies. Searching for a Lost Soul

Elena Dorman / From the compiler

Spiritual destinies of Russia

FUNDAMENTALS OF RUSSIAN CULTURE

Conversation 2 / Dispute about culture in the Soviet Union
Conversation 3 / “Culture” in Russian identity
Conversation 4 / Paradoxes of Russian cultural development: maximalism
Conversation 5 / Paradoxes of Russian cultural development: minimalism
Conversation 6 / Paradoxes of Russian cultural development: utopianism
Conversation 7 / The “explosion” of Russian cultural identity in the 19th century (1)
Conversation 8 / “Explosion” of Russian cultural identity in the 19th century (2)
Conversation 9 / “Explosion” of Russian cultural identity in the 19th century (3)
Conversation 10 / Denial of culture in the name of pragmatism
Conversation 11 / Denial of culture in the name of religion
Conversation 12 / Denial of culture in the name of social utopia
Conversation 13 / Tolstoy and culture
Conversation 14 / Dostoevsky and Russian culture
Conversation 15 / Cultural identity of the “Beginning of the Century” (1)
Conversation 16 / Cultural identity of the “Beginning of the Century” (2)
Conversation 17 / Moving away from the moral foundations of culture
Conversation 18 / First reaction to the revolution
Conversation 19 / Enslavement of Culture
Conversation 20 / Creative Resistance (1)
Conversation 21 / Creative Resistance (2)
Conversation 22 / Creative Resistance (3)
Conversation 23 / Past and traditions
Conversation 24 / West
Conversation 25 / Technology and Science
Conversation 26 / Social topics
Conversation 27 / Religious topics
Conversation 28 / At a crossroads
Conversation 29 / On the way to synthesis (1)
Conversation zo / On the way to synthesis (2)
Conversation 31 / Conclusion

APPLICATIONS

Religious inspiration of Russian literature

Unified intuition
Dawn of Russian poetry
The Mystery of Pushkin
Tyutchev: love conquering the abyss
Strange thirst

Great Christian writer (A. Solzhenitsyn)

Image of eternity
Relevance to the main thing
Prayer is an experience of victory
Christian tragedy

Russian clergy in Chekhov

Protopresbyter Alexander Schmeman - Fundamentals of Russian culture: Conversations on Radio Liberty. 1970-1971 - From the compiler

Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann is widely known as a theologian, liturgist, church leader, long-time rector of St. Vladimir's Seminary in New York State, author of books and articles on theology, as well as “Diaries” published after his death. It was “The Diaries” that made it possible to see Father Alexander as he was in life - smart, witty, doubtful and confident, deep, incredibly well-read, adoring literature and knowing it very well (especially Russian and French). Father Alexander did not isolate himself within the framework of religion (a word and concept he disliked); he saw and encountered God in all creation and, first of all, in culture. In his “Diaries” he wrote: “I feel more and more that theology without culture is virtually impossible and even with formal correctness it sounds different, not as it should be...”

Culture for him was primarily expressed in literature. Literature was, in the words of the critic Elena Nevzglyadova, “the precious concern of his mind and soul.” In Russian literature, Father Alexander searched and found an image of Russian culture in general; it reflected the self-awareness of the Russian people at different stages of its existence and development. A special kind Father Alexander's pastoral and preaching ministry included his conversations on Radio Liberty, which he conducted for almost thirty years - from 1953 until his death at the end of 1983. To this sometimes exhausting work - a new conversation every week for all thirty years! - Father Alexander treated him reverently and responsibly. Often it was in these “scripts,” as he called these texts, that he groped and confirmed the main intuitions of his future lectures and books.

In 1970-1971, Father Alexander Shmeman read on the radio a series of conversations “Fundamentals of Russian Culture.” Schmemann decided to talk about the foundations of Russian culture for a reason. He noticed that serious debates had begun in the USSR about Russian culture, its origins, past and present. After the cultural catastrophe that the revolution and the years of Soviet power led to, the search began for a single worldview, a single cultural space, common cultural values, attempts to restore cultural ties with the country’s past and, therefore, hope for the future of Russian culture. In this atmosphere, the question of the meaning and content of culture, of its mission in human society, again arose with particular urgency. At the same time, it was then that Soviet culture The eternal dispute between “Westerners” and “Slavophiles” became actualized for Russian thought; it was by the early 1970s that a polarization of views began to emerge, dividing cultural figures no longer on the basis of ideology, but on the basis of an understanding of the identity of the Russian cultural tradition. Father Alexander felt these tectonic shifts and responded vividly to them - with his wonderful, deeply thought-out and well-calibrated series of conversations.

However, the texts of these broadcasts were not preserved in the archives of either the author or Radio Liberty and, as a result, were not included in any collection of Father Alexander’s radio conversations, even in a solid two-volume set published in 2009 by the PSTGU publishing house. In 2011, Tatyana Georgievna Varshavskaya, the widow of the remarkable emigrant writer Vladimir Varshavsky, a friend of Alexander Shmeman’s father, transferred to archival storage House of Russian Abroad named after Alexander Solzhenitsyn family archive. Among the papers received, the scientific secretary of the DRZ, Maria Anatolyevna Vasilyeva, found the texts of nine conversations (from 3 to 12) from the series “Fundamentals of Russian Culture.” Maria Anatolyevna Vasilyeva and I, being an employee of the DRZ, prepared them for printing and published them in the DRZ Yearbook for 2012. There was little hope that the remaining conversations would be found. We have tried more than once to find their traces in both Europe and the USA, but to no avail.

But miracles happen. In 2016 in Munich, Andrei Andreevich Nikitin-Perensky, creator electronic library lmwerden.de and the archive of Russian emigrant literature “Second Literature”, I discovered, while sorting through the library of the poetess Nina Bodrova, who had died a year earlier, a folder with texts from the entire cycle “Fundamentals of Russian Culture” (unfortunately, except for the very first conversation). It turned out that the cycle consists of thirty-one conversations. I decided not to wait for another miracle to happen and the first conversation to be found, and to prepare the series for publication. The main work on preparing for the publication of conversations 3-12 was done by the scientific secretary of the House of Russian Abroad Maria Anatolyevna Vasilyeva, in particular Maria Anatolyevna provided the text with links. The rest of the conversations were edited and prepared by me. All footnotes in the text belong to the editors. Fragments crossed out by the author in the typescript are restored in square brackets.

In addition to the cycle of conversations “Fundamentals of Russian Culture,” the book includes several more radio conversations by Father Alexander from other cycles and a lecture on Chekhov, which Father Alexander often read in different audiences. The collection opens with the report “Spiritual Destinies of Russia”, read at the Russian symposium in the Kazan Church Mother of God in Sea Cliff, New York in April 1977. We felt that he best represents Father Alexander’s intuitions about Russian culture, which unfold in detail in the conversations themselves.

Many thanks to Maria Anatolyevna Vasilyeva and Andrei Andreevich Nikitin Perensky, thanks to whom we were able to read these conversations and introduce them to a wide readership.