Where did the historical turning point that marked the collapse of the Russian Empire begin? What driving forces led the country to the revolutions of 1917, what ideology did the revolutionaries adhere to, what was their support in society? The current point of view about the Bolsheviks, who undermined the stone of state power, decomposed the army and came to power as a result of an armed coup in October 1917, looks extremely simplified. After all, earlier, without any participation of the Bolsheviks, the monarchy was overthrown in February, and 12 years before that, the revolution of 1905 broke out, in which the influence of the Bolsheviks was minimal.

The prerequisites for a revolutionary explosion have their roots in the 19th century. Domestic historiography speaks of two revolutionary situations that developed in the Russian Empire in 1859-1861 and 1879-1882. V.I. Lenin directly stated that 1861 gave birth to 1905 (and 1905, according to numerous researchers, gave birth to 1917). You can treat the personality of Vladimir Ilyich as you like, but it is impossible to deny that he was the greatest theoretician (and practitioner) of the revolution in the 20th century.

V.I.Lenin dated the first revolutionary situation to 1859-1861. Bare facts: the Crimean War, catastrophic for the empire, exposed mass unrest among the peasants. The cup of patience overflowed, the "lower classes" could no longer put up with serfdom. An additional factor was the increased exploitation of the peasants caused by the war. Finally, the famine caused by crop failures in 1854-1855 and 1859 struck 30 provinces of Russia.

Not yet formed into a united force, not revolutionary in essence, but driven to despair, the peasantry abandoned their work en masse. Having learned about the “Decree on the Formation of the Naval Militia” (1854) and the “Manifesto on the Convocation of the State Militia” (1855), thousands of people left the estates and headed for the cities. Ukraine was seized by a mass movement - "Kyiv Cossacks", the peasants in the villages demanded to enlist them in the army. Passing off wishful thinking, they interpreted the royal decrees as a promise to grant freedom in exchange for military service. After the end of the war, in 1856, the roads of Ukraine were filled with carts: a rumor spread that the tsar was distributing land in the Crimea. Hundreds and thousands of people made their way to the cherished freedom. They were caught, returned to the landowners, but the flow did not dry up.

It became clear that the authorities were losing control over the peasant milieu. "Top" could not keep the situation. If in two years, from 1856 to 1857, more than 270 peasant uprisings took place in the country, then in 1858 - already 528, in 1859 - 938. The intensity of passions in the most massive class of Russia grew like an avalanche.

Under these conditions, Alexander II had no other choice but to carry out reforms. “It is better to abolish serfdom from above than to wait for the time when it, of itself, will begin to be abolished from below,” he said, receiving representatives of the nobility of the Moscow province on March 30, 1856.

It should be noted that Alexander the Liberator was almost late with the reform. The idea of ​​abolishing serfdom has stirred Russia since the time of Catherine II. Feudal relations objectively hampered the development of the state, and Russia's lagging behind the European powers was increasingly felt. The following example is indicative: In 1800, Russia produced 10.3 million poods of pig iron, England - 12 million, and in the early 50s Russia - from 13 to 16 million, England - 140.1 million poods.

In 1839, the head of the III department of the imperial office, the chief of gendarmes A.Kh. Benkendorf reported to the sovereign about the mood among the peasantry:

“... at every important event at the court or in the affairs of the state, from ancient times and usually the news of the upcoming change runs through the people ... the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe freedom of the peasants is excited; As a result of this, disturbances, murmurings, and displeasures occur in different places during the past year, which threaten with a distant, but terrible danger. The rumors are always the same: the tsar wants it, but the boyars resist. It is a dangerous business, and it would be a crime to conceal this danger. The common people are not the same as they were 25 years before. The clerks, thousands of petty officials, merchants and curry cantonists, who have the same interest in common with the people, instilled in them many new ideas and fanned a spark in their hearts that might one day flare up.

The people are constantly interpreting that all foreign-speaking people in Russia, Chukhny, Mordovians, Chuvashs, Samoyeds, Tatars, etc. are free, and only Russians, Orthodox, are slaves, contrary to Holy Scripture. That all evil is caused by the Lord, that is, the nobles! All the trouble is dumped on them! That the gentlemen are deceiving the tsar and slandering the Orthodox people before him, etc. Here they even sum up texts from the Holy Scriptures and predictions according to the interpretation of the Bible and foreshadow the liberation of the peasants, the revenge of the boyars, who are compared with Haman and the pharaoh. In general, the whole spirit of the people is directed towards one goal - liberation. In general, serfdom is a powder magazine under the state, and it is all the more dangerous because the army is made up of peasants, and that now there is a huge mass of worthless noblemen from officials who, being inflamed with ambition and having nothing to lose , glad to any disorder. In this regard, the soldiers who were dismissed on indefinite leave draw attention to themselves. Of these, the good ones remain in the capitals and cities, and people mostly lazy or of bad behavior disperse to the villages. Having lost the habit of peasant labor, having no property, alien in their homeland, they incite hatred against the landowners with their stories about Poland, the Ostsee provinces, and in general can have a harmful effect on the mind of the people.

The opinion of sane people is this: without declaring freedom to the peasants, which could cause unrest from suddenness, one could begin to act in this spirit. Now serfs are not honored even by members of the state and do not even swear allegiance to the sovereign. They are outside the law, because the landowner can exile them to Siberia without trial. One could start by establishing by law everything that already exists in practice (de facto) in well-established estates. It wouldn't be news. For example, it would be possible to establish volost administrations, surrender to recruits by lot or by a general court of volost elders, and not at the whim of the landowner. It would be possible to determine the measure of punishment for guilt and subject serfs to the protection of general laws

It is necessary to start sometime and with something, and it is better to start gradually, carefully, rather than wait until it starts from below, from the people. Then only a saving measure will be taken when it is taken by the government itself, quietly, without noise, without loud words, and prudent gradualness will be observed. But that this is necessary and that the peasant class is a powder mine, everyone agrees on this ... ".

There were enough sound voices calling for a change in the situation with serfdom. But a characteristic feature of the Russian ruling dynasty was to postpone the solution of pressing problems for the future - for one reason or another, under one pretext or another. Having embarked on the path of reforms, they preferred not to cut in haste. As a result, well-conceived progressive undertakings were everywhere limited to half-measures, or leveled by subsequent decisions.

The abolition of serfdom in 1861 was no exception. As noted above, the long-awaited freedom was granted to peasants without land ownership, the allotments available for cultivation were reduced, the rural population was subject to redemption payments, corvee was preserved. This was not the reform that the peasantry dreamed of.

"Regulations of February 19, 1861 on peasants who emerged from serfdom" caused a new explosion of discontent. In 1861, the number of peasant uprisings rose to 1,176. In 337 cases, troops had to be used against the peasants. The people were agitated by the rumor that the "Regulations" were false, that the real royal decree was concealed by the bar. The most indicative is the Kandeevsky performance of 1861, which covered many villages of the Penza and neighboring Tambov provinces. The uprising was led by the peasant Leonty Yegortsev, who claimed that he had seen a "real" letter with the complete liberation of the peasants. She, according to the leader of the rebellion, was kidnapped by the landowners, and then the tsar conveyed his will through Yegortsev: “All peasants must be forced out of the landlords by force, and if anyone does not fight off before Holy Easter, he will be, anathema, cursed.”

Thousands of peasants with a red banner rode carts through the villages, proclaiming: “The land is all ours! We don’t want to rent, we won’t work for the landowner!

The situation was stabilized only by the use of force. The Kandeev uprising, like hundreds of others, was crushed by the troops. However, as we know, this did not resolve any contradictions. Until the next revolutionary situation arose - 1879-1882 - a tense silence reigned in the Russian Empire, threatening a new explosion at any moment.

Lenin V.I. Complete Works Volume 20

"PEASANT REFORM" AND THE PROLETARIAN-PEASANT REVOLUTION

The anniversary, which the monarchy of the Romanovs feared so much and about which the Russian liberals so beautifully touched, has been celebrated. The tsarist government celebrated it by strenuously selling the Black Hundred anniversary pamphlets of the National Club "to the people", strenuously arresting all "suspicious ones", forbidding meetings in which one could expect speeches at least somewhat similar to democratic ones, fined and strangled newspapers, pursued "seditious" cinemas.

The liberals celebrated the anniversary by shedding more and more tears about the need for a “second February 19th” (Vestnik Evropy 80), expressing their loyal feelings (the royal portrait comes first in Rech), talking about their civic despondency, about the fragility of the national “constitution”, about the “disastrous destruction” of the “original land principles” by the Stolypin agrarian policy, etc., etc.

Nicholas II, in a rescript to Stolypin, declared that just the end of the “great reform” on February 19, 1861, was the Stolypin agrarian policy, i.e., the return of peasant land to the flow and plunder to a handful of world-eaters, kulaks, wealthy peasants and the return of the village under the control of feudal landowners .

And it must be admitted that Nicholas the Bloody, the first landowner of Russia, is closer to historical truth than

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our beautiful liberals. The first landowner and chief feudal lord understood—or rather, learned from the teachings of the Council of the United Nobility—the truth of the class struggle that the “reforms” carried out by the feudal lords cannot but be serf-owning in all their appearance, cannot but be accompanied by a regime of all sorts of violence. Our Cadets, and our liberals in general, are afraid of the revolutionary movement of the masses, which alone is capable of wiping out the feudal landowners and their omnipotence in the Russian state; and this fear prevents them from understanding the truth that as long as the serf-owners are not overthrown, no reforms - and especially agrarian reforms - are impossible except in the form of a feudal lord, of a feudal nature and method of implementation. To be afraid of revolution, to dream of reform, and to whimper that the "reforms" are actually carried out by the feudal lords in a serf-like manner, is the height of baseness and stupidity. Much more rights and much better teaches the Russian people to the mind of Nicholas II, who clearly "gives" a choice: feudal "reforms" or a people's revolution that overthrows the feudal lords.

February 19, 1861, was a feudal reform, which our liberals can paint over and portray as a "peaceful" reform only because the revolutionary movement in Russia it was then weak to the point of insignificance, and the revolutionary class among the oppressed masses did not yet exist at all. The decree of November 9, 1906, and the law of June 14, 1910, are feudal reforms of the same bourgeois content as the reform of 1961, but the liberals can not present it as a “peaceful” reform, they cannot so easily begin to embellish it (although they are already beginning to do so, for example, in Russkaya Mysl), for one can forget the lone revolutionaries of 1861, but one cannot forget the revolution of 1905. In 1905 was born in Rus' a revolutionary Class- the proletariat, which managed to raise the peasant masses to the revolutionary movement. And when a revolutionary class is born in any country, it cannot be suppressed by any persecution,

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he can die only with the death of the whole country, he can die only having won.

Let us recall the main features of the peasant reform of 1961. The notorious "liberation" was the most shameless robbery of the peasants, it was a series of violence and sheer abuse of them. On the occasion of the "liberation" from peasant land, they were cut off in the black earth provinces over 1/5 part. In some provinces they cut off, took away from the peasants up to 1/3 and even up to 2/5 of the peasant land. On the occasion of the “liberation”, the peasant lands were separated from the landlords so that the peasants moved to the “sand”, and the landlords’ lands were driven into the peasants’ lands with a blade, so that it would be easier for the noble nobles to enslave the peasants and rent them land for usurious prices. On the occasion of the “liberation”, the peasants were forced to “buy out” their own lands, and double and triple higher than the actual price of land. The entire “epoch of reforms” of the 1960s left the peasant impoverished, downtrodden, ignorant, subordinate to the feudal landowners both in court, and in administration, and in school, and in the Zemstvo.

The "Great Reform" was a feudal reform and could not have been otherwise, for it was carried out by the feudal lords. What force compelled them to undertake the reform? The force of economic development that drew Russia onto the path of capitalism. The feudal landlords could not prevent the growth of Russia's commodity exchange with Europe, they could not keep the old, crumbling forms of economy. The Crimean War showed the rottenness and impotence of serf Russia. Peasant "revolts", growing with each decade before the liberation, forced the first landowner, Alexander II, to admit that it was better to free above than wait until overthrown from below.

The "peasant reform" was a bourgeois reform carried out by the feudal lords. This was a step towards the transformation of Russia into a bourgeois monarchy. The content of the peasant reform was bourgeois, and this

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content came out the more less cut down peasant lands than fuller they separated themselves from the landowners than below was the amount of tribute to the feudal lords (i.e., "ransom") than freer from the influence and pressure of the feudal lords, the peasants of one locality or another settled down. Because the the peasant escaped from the power of the serf-owner, insofar as he became under the power of money, fell into the conditions of commodity production, and became dependent on the emerging capital. And after 1961, the development of capitalism in Russia proceeded with such rapidity that in a few decades transformations took place that took whole centuries in some of the old European countries.

The notorious struggle between the serf-owners and the liberals, so exaggerated and embellished by our liberal and liberal populist historians, was a struggle inside ruling classes, mostly inside the landowners struggle exclusively due to measure and form concessions. The liberals, just like the feudal lords, stood on the basis of recognizing the property and power of the landowners, condemning with indignation all revolutionary thoughts about destruction this property, oh complete overthrow this power.

These revolutionary thoughts could not help wandering in the heads of the serfs. And if the centuries of slavery had so beaten down and dulled the peasant masses that during the reform they were incapable of anything other than fragmented, isolated uprisings, or rather even “revolts” not illuminated by any political consciousness, then even then there were revolutionaries in Russia who stood on the side of the peasantry and who understood all the narrowness, all the squalor of the notorious "peasant reform", all its feudal character. At the head of these revolutionaries, extremely few in number at that time, was N. G. Chernyshevsky.

February 19, 1861 marks the beginning of a new, bourgeois Russia, which grew out of the serf era. The liberals of the 1860s and Chernyshevsky are the representatives of two historical tendencies, two historical forces, which from then until

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of our time determine the outcome of the struggle for a new Russia. That is why, on the fiftieth anniversary of February 19, the class-conscious proletariat must realize as clearly as possible what the essence of both tendencies was and what their relationship is.

The liberals wanted to "liberate" Russia "from above" without destroying either the tsar's monarchy or the landownership and power of the landowners, inducing them only to "concessions" to the spirit of the times. The liberals were and remain the ideologists of the bourgeoisie, which cannot put up with serfdom, but which is afraid of the revolution, afraid of the movement of the masses, capable of overthrowing the monarchy and destroying the power of the landowners. The liberals therefore confine themselves to the "struggle for reforms", the "struggle for rights", ie, the division of power between the feudal lords and the bourgeoisie. No other "reforms" except those carried out by the feudal lords, no other "rights" except those limited by the arbitrariness of the feudal lords, can be obtained with such a correlation of forces.

Chernyshevsky was a utopian socialist who dreamed of a transition to socialism through the old, semi-feudal, peasant community, who did not see and could not see in the 60s of the last century that only the development of capitalism and the proletariat was capable of creating the material conditions and social strength for the realization socialism. But Chernyshevsky was not only a utopian socialist. He was also a revolutionary democrat, he knew how to influence all the political events of his era in a revolutionary spirit, passing through the obstacles and slingshots of censorship the idea of ​​a peasant revolution, the idea of ​​the struggle of the masses to overthrow all the old authorities. "Peasant reform" of 61, which the liberals first tinted, and then even glorified, he called abomination, for he clearly saw its feudal character, clearly saw that the peasants were being ripped off by Messrs. liberal liberators like sticky. Chernyshevsky called the liberals of the 60s "talkers, bouncers and fools" 81, for he clearly saw their fear of the revolution, their spinelessness and servility before those in power.

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These two historical tendencies have developed in the course of the half century since February 19th, and have diverged more and more clearly, more definitely and more decisively. The forces of the liberal-monarchist bourgeoisie grew, preaching satisfaction with "cultural" work and shunning the revolutionary underground. The forces of democracy and socialism grew - first mixed together in a utopian ideology and in the intellectual struggle of Narodnaya Volya and revolutionary Narodniks, and from the 90s of the last century they began to diverge as they moved from the revolutionary struggle of terrorists and lone propagandists to the struggle of the revolutionary classes themselves.

The decade before the revolution, from 1895 to 1904, shows us already open actions and the steady growth of the proletarian masses, the growth of the strike struggle, the growth of Social-Democratic labor agitation, organization, and party. Behind the socialist vanguard of the proletariat, especially since 1902, the revolutionary-democratic peasantry began to take part in the mass struggle.

In the revolution of 1905, those two tendencies which in 1961 had only just begun to emerge in life were only just outlined in literature, developed, grew, found expression in the movement masses, in the fight parties in the most diverse fields, in the press, at rallies, in unions, in strikes, in an uprising, in State Dumas.

The liberal-monarchist bourgeoisie created the parties of the Cadets and the Octobrists, which at first coexisted in one Zemstvo-liberal movement (until the summer of 1905), then defined themselves as separate parties that strongly competed (and compete) with each other, pushing forward one predominantly liberal, the other predominantly monarchical "face", but who always agreed on the most essential, in censuring the revolutionaries, in desecrating the December uprising, in worshiping the "constitutional" fig-leaf of absolutism as if it were a banner. Both parties stood and

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stand on "strictly constitutional" grounds, i.e., they limit themselves to those frameworks of activity that the black hundred of the tsar and the serf-owners could create, without giving up their power, without letting go of their autocracy, without sacrificing a penny from their "hallowed for centuries" slave-owning incomes , not the slightest privilege of their "acquired" rights.

The democratic and socialist tendencies separated from the liberal and separated from each other. The proletariat organized itself and acted separately from the peasantry, rallying around its workers' Social-Democrats. parties. The peasantry was organized incomparably weaker during the revolution, its actions were many, many times more fragmented, weaker, its consciousness stood at a much lower level, and monarchical (as well as constitutional) illusions that are inextricably linked with them often paralyzed its energy, made it dependent from liberals, and sometimes from the Black Hundreds, gave rise to empty dreaming about "God's land" instead of an onslaught on the landowning nobility with the aim of completely destroying this class. But still, on the whole, the peasantry, as a mass, fought precisely against the landowners, acted revolutionary, and in all Dumas - even in the third, with its representation mutilated in favor of the feudal lords - it created labor groups that, despite their frequent hesitation, true democracy. The Cadets and Trudoviks of 1905-1907 expressed in a mass movement and politically shaped the position and tendencies of the bourgeoisie, on the one hand, liberal-monarchist, and on the other hand, revolutionary-democratic.

The year 1861 gave birth to 1905. The feudal nature of the first "great" bourgeois reform hindered development, doomed the peasants to thousands of worst and worst torments, but did not change the direction of development, did not prevent the bourgeois revolution of 1905. The reform of 1961 delayed the denouement by opening a certain valve, giving some boost to capitalism, but it did not eliminate the inevitable denouement, which by 1905

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played out in an incomparably broader field, in the onslaught of the masses on the autocracy of the tsar and the feudal landowners. The reform carried out by the serf-owners in an era of complete underdevelopment of the oppressed masses gave rise to a revolution by the time the revolutionary elements in these masses had matured.

The Third Duma and Stolypin's agrarian policy are the second bourgeois reform carried out by the feudal lords. If February 19, 1961 was the first step along the way transformation of a purely feudal autocracy into a bourgeois monarchy, the epoch of 1908-1910 shows us a second and more serious step along the same path. Almost 4 1/2 years have passed since the issuance of the decree on November 9, 1906, more than 3 1/2 years have passed since June 3, 1907, and now not only the Cadet, but to a large extent the Octobrist bourgeoisie is convinced of " failure" of the June 3rd "constitution" and the June 3rd agrarian policy. “The most right of the Cadets,” as the semi-Octobrist Mr. Maklakov was rightly called recently, had every right to say in the State Duma on February 25, on behalf of both the Cadets and the Octobrists, that “those central elements of the country are dissatisfied at the present time, who most of all want a lasting peace, who are afraid of a new outbreak of a revolutionary wave. There is only one general slogan: "everyone says," continued Mr. Maklakov, "that if we go further along the path along which we are being led, we will be led to a second revolution."

The general slogan of the Kadet-Octobrist bourgeoisie in the spring of 1911 confirms the correctness of the assessment of the state of affairs which our Party gave in the resolution of the December 1908 conference. “The main factors of economic and political life,” this resolution reads, “that caused the revolution of 1905, continue to operate, and a new revolutionary crisis is inevitably brewing in such an economic and political situation.”

Menshikov, a hired hack of the Black-Hundred tsarist government, recently announced in Novoye Vremya,

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that the reform of February 19 "failed miserably" because "the year 1961 failed to forestall the nine hundred and fifth." Now hired lawyers and parliamentarians of the liberal bourgeoisie announce the failure of the "reforms" 9.XI. 1906 and 3. VI. 1907, for these "reforms" lead to the second revolution.

Both statements, like the entire history of the liberal and revolutionary movement in 1861-1905, provide the most interesting material for clarifying the most important question of the relation of reform to revolution, of the role of reformists and revolutionaries in the social struggle.

The opponents of the revolution, some with hatred and gnashing of teeth, some with sorrow and despondency, recognize the "reforms" of 61 and 1907-1910 as unsuccessful, because they do not prevent revolution. Social Democracy, the representative of the only revolutionary class of our day to the end, responds to this recognition: the revolutionaries have played the greatest historical role in the social struggle and in all social crises. even then, when these crises led directly to only half-hearted reforms. Revolutionaries are the leaders of those social forces which bring about all transformations; reforms are a by-product of the revolutionary struggle.

The revolutionaries of 1961 remained alone and apparently suffered a complete defeat. In fact, it was they who were the great figures of that era, and the farther we move away from it, the clearer their greatness becomes to us, the more obvious is the meagerness and wretchedness of the then liberal reformists.

The revolutionary class of 1905-1907, the socialist proletariat, apparently suffered a complete defeat. Both the liberal monarchists and the liquidators from among the Marxists, too, shouted with all their ears about how he supposedly went “too far”, went to “excesses”, how he succumbed to the passion of the “spontaneous class struggle”, how he allowed himself to be seduced by a destructive idea "hegemony of the proletariat", etc., etc. In fact, the "guilt" of the proletariat was only that it did not go far enough, but this "guilt" is justified

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by the state of his strength at that time, and is redeemed by tireless revolutionary Social-Democratic work at the time and by the most vicious reaction, by an inexorable struggle against all manifestations of reformism and opportunism. In fact, everything that has been won back from the enemies, everything that is firmly established in conquests, has been won back and is maintained only to the extent that the revolutionary struggle is strong and alive in all fields of proletarian work. In fact, only the proletariat upheld consistent democracy to the end, exposing all the precariousness of liberalism, wresting the peasantry from under its influence, rising with heroic courage in an armed uprising.

No one is able to predict to what extent the truly democratic transformations of Russia will be carried out in the era of her bourgeois revolutions, but there is not a shadow of a doubt that only the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat will determine the extent and success of the transformation. Between feudal "reforms" in the bourgeois spirit and a democratic revolution led by the proletariat, there can only be powerless, spineless, unprincipled waverings of liberalism and opportunist reformism.

Casting a general glance at the history of the last half-century in Russia, at 1861 and 1905, we can only repeat with even greater conviction the words of our Party resolution: “The goal of our struggle is, as before, the overthrow of tsarism, the conquest of political power by the proletariat, relying on the revolutionary sections of the peasantry. and carrying out a bourgeois-democratic revolution by convening an all-people's constituent assembly and creating a democratic republic" 82 .

Published according to the text of the newspaper "Social-Democrat"

The year 1861 gave birth to 1905... The reform carried out by the feudal lords in an era of complete underdevelopment of the oppressed masses gave rise to a revolution by the time the revolutionary elements in these masses had matured.
V. I. Lenin. "Peasant Reform" and the proletarian-peasant revolution (1911).

Representatives of modern bourgeois reactionary ideology, the ideological squires of anti-communism, argue that the Russian national life of the 19th century, the literature of old Russia seems to have nothing in common with the revolution and communism, they are in blatant contrast with what happened in the October days of 1917.
Bolshevism and the Soviet literature following it, from the point of view of Western propaganda, seem to break the connection with the traditions of Russian social thought and literature. Another group of foreign reactionary propagandists, in order to prove the same gap in continuity between Soviet Russia and the spiritual culture of past Russia, makes a different move.
They are trying to prove that Chernyshevsky or Saltykov, like other Russian progressive figures, in their searches did not go to Marxism, but from Marxism, they took shape under the influence of Western bourgeois-liberal philosophy, sociology and aesthetics.
Finally, and this is most common, representatives of bourgeois reactionary Russian studies are trying to distort Lenin's conception of the history of the revolutionary liberation movement in Russia in the 19th century, which was genuinely scientific and tested by the experience of ideological searches and revolutionary struggle.
Desiring to limit the significance of Leninism to national Russian borders, they are strenuously looking for the genealogy of Bolshevism precisely in the history of Russian social thought and discover it now in Slavophilism or, on the contrary, in Westernism of the 40s, now in nihilism, etc.
R. Hare, for example, considers the struggle between Westerners and Slavophiles (and, in other terminology, between adherents of Catholicism and Orthodoxy) in his book Portraits of Russian Figures Between Reform and Revolution (1959) as the essence of the history of Russian society, social thought and literature of Russia XIX century
From this point of view, they try to evaluate the heritage of one or another figure in literature and philosophy, establishing in their ideas and artistic images the presence of a struggle between the West and the East between the ideas of European cosmopolitans and Russian nationalists.
V. I. Lenin at one time pointed out the complete failure of the approach to the history of Russian social thought as a whole from the point of view of expressing in it two principles - Western and Slavophile. The bourgeois "experts of the East" do not take this into account.
The meaning, the target of their falsifications are very clear. On the one hand, they are trying to distort the ideological and spiritual image of the Soviet communist, presenting him as a person cut off from the national soil, carrying only denial and destruction.
On the other hand, the named falsification is intended to confirm the existence of the abyss separating the East and the West...
Facts from the life of Russian society, the history of the revolution and literature of the second half of the 19th century. clearly show the absurdity of such lightweight propaganda statements, designed to convince ignorant readers of the groundlessness and accident of the revolution, socialism and socialist literature in Russia.
Russia's past convincingly proves the legitimacy of its movement towards socialist revolution and socialism.
Let us turn to a more specific consideration of one of the main issues. On the basis of what facts, by virtue of what features of Russian literature, does Soviet science assert that the outstanding realists of the second half of the 19th century. reflected, objectively, of course, Russia's movement towards revolution and socialism, served this movement with their ideas and artistic means, contributed precisely to such an understanding of Russian reality?
Of course, in this case, we are talking primarily about the era of preparation for the first Russian revolution (1861-1904).
It is known that this revolution was bourgeois in its tasks and content. But it is deeply mistaken to consider Russian literature and social thought of the post-reform era only from the point of view of how they served the needs of Russia precisely in bourgeois-democratic development, in the destruction of feudal survivals, in clearing the ground for the bourgeois-democratic order.
The figures of literature and social thought were far from being limited to the sphere of these needs, reproducing the era of the preparation of the first Russian revolution. They, basing themselves on the material of Russian life in the second half of the 19th century, raised such fundamental questions, the solution of which is possible only by proletarian democracy, by scientific socialism.
Why was this possible? Undoubtedly, the powerful cognitive power of advanced realistic art, its ability to run ahead, its ability to foresee, to guess what is really possible and necessary, was at work here.
But for the manifestation of this force of realism, not only subjective, but also objective prerequisites are needed. The latter are contained in the originality of the development of post-reform Russia, the socio-economic relations that have developed in it, which determined the special character and prospects of the Russian revolution of 1905. In its content, it was bourgeois, but it was not the bourgeoisie that made it politically cowardly, counter-revolutionary, but the masses - the proletariat and the peasantry.
V. I. Lenin in his article “On the Assessment of the Russian Revolution” emphasized: “The victory of the bourgeois revolution in our country is impossible, like the victory of the bourgeoisie. It seems paradoxical, but it is a fact."
The bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1905 was headed not by the bourgeois parties, but by the proletarian revolutionary-Marxist party of the Bolsheviks. This revolution was carried out in such an epoch of the socio-economic development of Russia, with such forces and such methods that spoke of the fact that in world history the time has come when the victorious bourgeois revolution, carried through to the end, to the establishment of the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, has opportunity to develop into a socialist revolution.
In a certain sense, the revolution of 1905 should be called a proletarian revolution. V. I. Lenin spoke about this in his report on the revolution: “The Russian revolution was at the same time proletarian, not only in the sense that the proletariat was the leading force, the vanguard of the movement, but also in the sense that the specifically proletarian means of struggle, It was the strike that represented the main means of swaying the masses and the most characteristic phenomenon in the undulating growth of decisive events.
The world significance of the first Russian revolution is determined by the totality of all these circumstances. In post-reform Russia, preparations were underway for just such a bourgeois revolution, which became the dress rehearsal, the prologue of the socialist revolution.
Literature and social thought in Russia, remaining on the basis of Russian life, reflecting its movement towards the bourgeois-democratic revolution and contributing to this movement, raised the fundamental questions of democracy and socialism, merged into one. This can be easily seen by paying attention to the most characteristic feature of the literary heritage of the second half of the 19th century.
Its outstanding creators in most cases represented the post-reform peasantry, semi-proletarian masses, urban democracy, were their voice, expressed their protest, stood up for the complete elimination of the remnants of feudalism.
In this sense, they objectively served the democratic tasks of the country's development along the path of peasant, farmer capitalism. But the anti-serf orientation of their work merged with powerful criticism of Russian, as well as Western European and American capitalism.
And this was dictated by life itself. The peasant masses, petty-bourgeois democrats, semi-proletarians and proletarians, on behalf of whom many artists of the word and thinkers spoke, suffered not only from the survivals of serfdom, but also from capitalist predatory exploitation.
The working masses of Russia were forced by the objective course of socio-economic life to fight against serfdom and against the bourgeoisie. True, on this exceptionally difficult path of searching for ways to get rid of feudal and free-hired slavery, the masses of the people and peasants (as well as their ideologists) fell into grave, but also quite understandable errors.
It seemed to them that if they achieved the satisfaction of their demands: land, the right to vote, independence from the landowner, freedom from guardianship and regulation of the administration, the elimination of class restrictions, etc., then they would thereby gain heaven on earth, get rid of social injustice, from all exploiters.
“The mass of peasants,” wrote V.I. Lenin in the article “Socialism and the Peasantry,” does not and cannot realize that the most complete “freedom” and the most “fair” distribution, even if only all the land, will not only not destroy capitalism, but, on the contrary, will create the conditions for its especially wide and powerful development.
It was on this basis that the confusion of the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution and the socialist revolution arose, the fusion of democracy with socialism, which is so characteristic of Russian literature, social thought, and the ideological legacy of the revolutionaries of the pre-proletarian period.
While noting the indicated delusion of the general democratic movement of the pre-proletarian period, it should, however, be borne in mind that the illusory anti-capitalist sentiments of the naive peasant democracy, dreaming of achieving general prosperity “in one fell swoop”, forced the best minds of Russia to seek such ideals that meant a break with the norms of any exploiting society.
Within the Russian borders, capitalism has not yet fully revealed all its insurmountable contradictions. But the capitalist practice of other nations provided rich material for reflection on the essence and prospects for the development of the bourgeois way of life.
Industrial capitalism in Russia came into force when the predatory, exploitative and reactionary essence of the bourgeoisie was fully revealed by the examples of its management, predatory wars and reprisals against the working class in the countries of Western Europe, whose life was very well known to Russian writers.
Foreign apologists and servants of capitalism also showed themselves superbly - deputies of parliaments, ministers and prime ministers of the republics, lawyers, economists and sociologists, generals and preachers. For Russian writers, especially for Tolstoy, Shchedrin and G. Uspensky, the analysis and exposure of the anti-people essence of bourgeois-serf relations in Russia merges with a critical analysis and condemnation of foreign bourgeois-democratic orders, as well as the theories of the ideologists of capitalism.
Of course, some writers and public figures of Russia sometimes drew wrong conclusions and fell into the illusions of Russian originality. Wishing to save their homeland from the horrors of capitalism, they tried to justify a special, different from Western European, non-capitalist path of development of Russia.
Some of them (especially Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, not counting the populists) talked about the special role of Russia and its people in the destinies of mankind. Many writers and thinkers leaned towards populism, partly towards Slavophilism, invented a religion of universal love, dreamed of equality socialism, looked back at the still motionless East at that time and placed their hopes on the Russian community and the communist instincts of the peasant, dreamed of life without a state and church, or vice versa , in autocracy and Orthodox Christianity they saw protection from capitalism, etc.
Hopes for the possibility of using one or another means to avoid Russia's entry into the capitalist path of development in the conditions of that time had no real basis. On the contrary, it was necessary for Russia to survive all the torments of the capitalist mode of production and, hardened in its crucible, to embark on the path of socialism.
Only in our epoch, when there is a mighty camp of socialist states, can those or other peoples who have not yet gone through the stage of capitalism directly choose the path of socialist construction, bypassing capitalism.
But there is no need in our days to judge the classics of literature and social thought particularly harshly for cherishing an unrealizable at that time, but very attractive, inspiring dream of a non-capitalist development of their homeland.
Capitalism, especially Russian capitalism, brought unheard-of disasters and suffering to the working people.
Naturally, those who represented the working people, lived in their interests, really wanted to protect, save them from the torments of free-hired slavery. But the real paths to this could not be known to the writers of the past.
This is first. And, secondly. In the literature and social thought of the second half of the 19th century, especially in its last two decades, another process began to take shape.
It consisted in overcoming the patriarchal-original ideology, moral-aesthetic and utopian-socialist criticism of capitalism, naive socialist and anarchist hopes, communal and Christian socialism.
A break with the abstract principles of morality, with the eternal truths of religion, with populism was outlined in Russian literature and social thought; voices were growing stronger in it in favor of recognizing the relative progressiveness of capitalism as a necessary step on the path of society's movement towards socialism, etc.
The classics of the post-reform era, studying and depicting the peculiarities of the people's life in Russia and foreign countries, the position and struggle of the working people, their aspirations and psychology, raised, as already mentioned, questions that the bourgeois revolution, even the most consistent, was powerless to solve, the solution of which turned out to be possible. only through the socialist revolution, the socialist reorganization of society.
The chief of these questions—the abolition of large-scale private property in land—was put forward with all the poignancy by the course of Russian life after 1861, and figures of the Russian revolution, literature, and social thought persistently raised it.
The bourgeois-democratic revolution, if it had ended in victory in 1905-1907, would have abolished landownership, but would have cleared the way for capitalist land ownership.
The liberation of the land from all private property, its transformation into a national property, which the outstanding figures of the past dreamed of, was carried out by the October Socialist Revolution.
Figures of Russian literature and socio-economic thought stood up for the destruction of private property in general, for real, and not paper, equality of all members of society.
Some of the writers and thinkers perfectly understood that private property enslaves its owner, makes him spiritually limited and distorts all relations of man to man.
Private property is the source of social injustice, the oppression of man by man, the growth of material poverty and the spiritual darkness of the majority of people who create with their own hands all the wealth of the earth - these thoughts were familiar to Tolstoy and Chernyshevsky, Uspensky and Chekhov.
The best writers of the country were outraged by all kinds of class and official privileges of some and restrictions on the rights of others. From the era of serfdom, there remained a disgusting habit of evaluating people depending on their belonging to one social class or another, on their official and financial position, on their ranks, connections, etc.
Even Herzen scoffed at such an approach to a man in a multi-class, motley, drawn into the most diverse uniforms of the Nikolaev empire.
Russian writers and thinkers spoke of the need for such a state policy that would solve economic issues in the interests of the overwhelming majority. Some of the writers saw "new foundations for life," as Shchedrin said, in socialism, the triumph of which, in their conviction, would replace capitalism.
Such a path was found by the people in October 1917. If L. N. Tolstoy saw the salvation of Russia in strengthening the old communal order and the peasant's management on his own land, then N. Shchedrin and G. Uspensky were critics of the state community, the fragmented and meager economy of the peasants.
The task of creating socialist agriculture on a scientific basis was solved only by the socialist revolution. V. I. Lenin discovered a path for the development of the peasantry, which corresponds to the characteristics of the peasantry, its production activities, and at the same time gradually leads the peasants to communism.
An important place in the classics' thoughts about life was occupied by the problem of the relationship between the city and the countryside. They drew attention to their antagonism, noticed the fear of the peasants who fell into the conditions of urban life, and the confusion of the city dweller who found himself in the countryside.
Writers spoke of the city and the countryside as two diametrically opposed ways of life and suffered deeply from the fact that the city enjoys all the benefits of civilization, while the countryside is deprived of them. They were looking for opportunities to bridge this unnatural gap. But this question can be solved only as a result of the scientific socialist transformation of society.
It is also known what destructive work was done by the artists and thinkers of the past, denouncing the evil and meanness of the Russian autocratic government and the anti-nationality, hypocrisy of a foreign democratic republic, in which democracy is reduced to the right of citizens to elect their deputies every few years.
And how could a bourgeois-democratic revolution satisfy the dreams of writers and revolutionaries about genuine people's power, about people's self-government, about the participation of the masses in the creation of their own forms of social and state life?
Of course, only a socialist revolution could do this. The Program of the CPSU states: “The apparatus of the socialist state serves the people and is accountable to the people...
The Party considers it necessary to further develop democratic principles in governance. In the course of the further development of socialist democracy, there will be a gradual transformation of organs of state power into organs of public self-government.
Finally, the outstanding figures of the spiritual culture of the past, rejecting the bourgeois-landowner system of life, raised the deepest questions of a social and ethical nature; dreaming of a society of social justice, of a life free from the exploitation and ignorance of the people, they worked out such a high ideal of the human personality and human relations, the practical implementation of which is possible only in the conditions of a socialist and communist society.
It is enough to recall the passionate desire of Tolstoy and Chekhov, Uspensky and Dostoevsky to find a way to the triumph of brotherly, trustingly frank relations between people.
But only the socialist revolution of the proletariat opens the real, scientific path to the realm of a highly organized, conscious community of working people.
Outstanding artists of the word were looking for such a "norm of life", which was supposed to liberate the personality, transform a person and his work, animate his being with creative inspiration, charm, human meaning.
The writers of the past were characterized by the desire to develop and establish "rules of life" curbing the egoism of people, affirming the "sanctity of life" not in the religious-ecclesiastical, priestly sense, but in a broad socio-ethical, human sense.
Writers and thinkers caught (with amazing insight Chekhov did) in the soul of their contemporaries the struggle of two at that time irreconcilably opposite, mutually exclusive aspirations - a person’s desire to live better and his desire to be better.
Chernyshevsky, using the example of the life of the "new people", convincingly showed under what conditions these two indestructible, legitimate tendencies in human existence can harmonize. But what is the specific path to this for all members of society - Chernyshevsky could not answer this question. The theory and practice of scientific socialism answers it.
The foregoing fully explains why Soviet researchers can assert with full justification that the classical heritage objectively reflects Russia's movement towards revolution, not only towards a bourgeois revolution, but also towards a socialist one. It actively contributed to Russia's choice of the communist path of development.
In the field of literary and philosophical aesthetics in the post-reform era, the process of preparing the ground for the future, socialist realism, was also going on. This process took place in many ways.
It also indicated the search for new ways of artistic depiction of a steep "pass" in the socio-economic development of Russia, in the thoughts and feelings of the masses, and the desire to realize the existence of an individual in connection with life, work, the ideals of the working people, and the craving of the realists of the past for a revolutionary, to the "new man", and the desire to understand, depict the history of the awakening of the public self-consciousness of the individual from the working people and the democratic intelligentsia.
Perhaps the most significant thing that characterizes the literature of the post-reform decades as a whole lies in the pathos of modernity, which inspired, almost without exception, great and small figures of Russian literature. This was the effect of the general law of art.
"A true artist," says Chernyshevsky, "always puts contemporary ideas at the foundation of his works." Modernity for the writers of the post-reform period was a fundamental socio-moral, philosophical and aesthetic position in creativity, in social activities and in personal life.
They were extremely sensitive to modernity and it organically flowed into their work, transforming art forms, ways of depiction, aesthetics, artistic thinking, genres.
Sometimes foreign bourgeois authors discover in the heritage of Russian classics a “contradiction” between the desire to create in accordance with civic duty to their era, people, homeland, on the one hand, and personal literary and aesthetic aspirations, tastes and interests, on the other.
Civic duty in the interpretation of bourgeois literary criticism becomes a kind of chains that constrain the literary vocation of the artist and, consequently, have a negative impact on the entire work of the writer.
In the fourth volume of the Harvard Works on Slavic Studies in 1957, R. Matlow's article “Turgenev's Roman. Civic responsibility and literary vocation. In it, the author speaks about the dualism of Turgenev's novels, which he sees in the fact that the ideological, social side of Turgenev's novels is not connected with their artistic side, does not form unity with it.
Such a gap, according to Matlow, was the result of a contradiction between Turgenev's desire to be guided in his work by civic duty and the literary vocation of the writer, his own literary aspirations, which did not want to obey his intentions.
The question posed, but incorrectly solved by Matlow, is a big and acute question that has repeatedly arisen in the history of classical Russian literature and socialist literature. What Matlow said about the past is also transferred by other bourgeois critics to Soviet writers, who, in their opinion, are also entangled in the chains of partisanship and public duty.
To them they sacrifice their talents and abilities, their own literary aspirations.
The West German critic G. Spreit talks about Sholokhov's dualism, about his bifurcation into a communist and an artist: the first pulls him towards socialism and Bolshevism, allegedly breaking with those great classical literary traditions, within which only genuine creativity is possible, the second towards these traditions, which puts him in opposition to the principles that govern the development of Soviet literature.
The statements of Matlow and Spreit testify to the inability to understand the “living soul” of classical and Soviet literature, to the ignorance of the historical conditions in which literary classics developed and which formed a special type of writer, as M. Gorky said, “a spokesman for the truth, an impartial judge of the vices of his people and a fighter for his interests.
Great writers of Russia of the XIX century. served the modernity not casually, not in the form of responses to the current moment and not contrary to their own literary aspirations and possibilities.
They served it with their restless art of great and deep socio-economic and philosophical-moral generalizations and foresights. There was no place for "stucco", an illustrative depiction of life and superficial topicality.
No, the issues of time and service to it were reflected not only in the content of the classical work. They constituted the pathos of creativity, determined the choice and development of new genres, image techniques, and style.
The need to serve civic duties, contemporary issues became for a great artist freedom, a source of inspiration, an "organizer" of his intellectual and moral world, the creative process, this necessity was reincarnated into poetics.
Writers of the past sensitively, deeply and organically captured the new needs of life. And realizing the need for their service to them, in the name of this they recreated, broke the poetics, traditional ideas about genres, about style.
Prose writers of the second half of the 19th century, developing the innovation of Gogol, the author of Dead Souls, boldly push the boundaries of the novel.
The increase in the scale of capturing reality, the expansion of the horizons of vision of the world are tangible even in the story of the post-reform era, by Leskov, and then by Garshin, Korolenko, especially Chekhov.
M. Gorky wrote: "... in every story of Leskov you feel that his main thought is not about the fate of the person, but about the fate of Russia."
Russian novelists dream of a broad and free form of the novel, which would make it possible, as Pisemsky said, "to capture a lot and reveal a lot."
In the living room of Lasunskaya (“Rudin” by Turgenev), the life of a serf village was not yet felt. Later, the framework of Turgenev's novel seems to expand, their plots reproduce broad pictures of folk and landowner life, social movement, ideological and political struggle.
Pisemsky's evolution from "Is she to blame?" is also indicative. to A Thousand Souls, and then to the Troubled Sea and the Philistines. Equally characteristic is Dostoevsky's transition from "Poor People" and "The Humiliated and Insulted" to "Notes from the Dead House", to "The Teenager" and "The Brothers Karamazov".
Tolstoy also moved from a novel of “family happiness” to a “conceptual novel” about a Russian landowner, about the historical fate of the Russian people, the noble intelligentsia, and all of Russia.
The same trend develops in Shchedrin's work. It suffices to compare The History of a City with Shchedrin's previous works to be convinced of this. Ouspensky also moves to genres, as if absorbing the life of the people of all Russia, creating cycles of travel letters in the last period of his activity.
Tolstoy's desire to "capture everything" and create a whole, complete world out of the infinite diversity of life is also characteristic of other prose writers.
Mamin-Sibiryak, for example, moves from a monographic novel (“Privalovsky millions”) to a novel about the people, about the whole region, about the flow of life in its socio-economic contradictions (“Mountain Nest”, “Bread”).
His Ural chronicle-novel "Three Ends" has similarities with Ertel's novel "Gardeninas ...".
In the latter, contemporaries saw the real strength of Ertel. It lies, in their opinion, not in the depiction of the psychological problems of the individual.
Ertel's sphere is a description of entire regions, a whole corner of Russia with a mass of figures. This ability of Ertel to think completely as a whole, to reproduce the vast world, is also confirmed by his novel "Change".
The most original master of Russian prose, Leskov, also spoke of the "artificial and unnatural form of the novel." His romantic chronicles are an attempt to somehow reform the novel, to make its form receptive and modern.
When creating the novel The Stirred Sea, Pisemsky, paraphrasing Gogol's well-known words about the Dead Souls he created, emphasized that he "captures almost all of our mother Rus'."
Pisemsky was aware of the contrast between his novels and Turgenev's novel, the basis of which is a "chosen", strictly defined section of life. Pisemsky himself strove to describe a "whole life".
And with Shchedrin, the main subject of the novel becomes the whole of Russian life. This is evidenced by the novel-review "Lords of Tashkent", and the historical novel-chronicle "The History of a City", and the actual socio-psychological novel "Lord Golovlevs".
There is a fairly widespread opinion abroad that the Russian novel ceased to be great as soon as it lost its autobiographical beginning and, in the post-reform era, turned exclusively to the process of life.
No, even in the new era it has become even greater, even more significant in the national life of the country, since it was a mirror of Russia's difficult but victorious path to revolution and socialism. And so it acquired a universal meaning.
Prose writers of the post-reform era solve general questions, they are drawn to the synthesis novel, to the problematic novel, to the novel of search, to restless heroes who, in their thinking, feelings and actions, go beyond the sphere of personal, family, social and group relations into the big world of life. the whole country, its people, its ideological quest.
These heroes are captivated by thoughts about others, they are inspired by the idea of ​​serving the people, the common good, the dream of saving the homeland and all of humanity. In an effort to artistic and philosophical generalization, some of the artists sometimes rise to the level of a symbol (“The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor” by Dostoevsky, “The Red Flower” by Garshin, “The History of a City” by Shchedrin, some legends by Korolenko, stories and plays by Chekhov).
An exceptional interest in the real, bubbling, bubbling drama of the folk life of that time, an understanding of its deep sources and the variety of forms of its expression - this is what, in the eyes of outstanding literary figures of the past, first of all constitutes the basis of any truly modern work of art of the word.
Such an understanding of the work led to a rethinking of its entire traditional structure, to a "violation" of the usual norms and laws of fiction. And Russian writers, sensitive to the calls of life, boldly went for it, literally making a revolution in the history of world prose, creating deeply original works that convey their entire ideological and artistic system - not only the subject of the image, themes and ideas, but also the forms of artistic thinking, and ways of depiction, and linguistic style, contemporary reality.
Writers turn to the development of the most acute and characteristic of the era of plots that incorporate the most significant problems and conflicts, conveying all the drama of the experienced "pass", the change of social eras and cultures.
Breaking the characters and destinies of people, the collapse of family foundations, the crisis of consciousness, leaving the native nest, the awakening of the provincial "bear corners", the rebellion of the individual against any constraints, the processes of the formation of new characters and new ideas, the search for "new truth", "new business" and "new love", anticipation of all this new, painful disappointments and death - all this gave life a deeply dramatic and tragic content and became the subject of prose of writers of various trends.
Pisemsky imagined Russia as "a turbulent sea", "a whirlpool", and the author of "Smoke" said that "the whole shaken life was shaking like a swamp bog." Goncharov wrote about fermentation, storms and fires in Russian life, and Dostoevsky about the chaos of decomposition and struggle in it.
Penetration into the sources and guessing the meaning of the drama of life, which is the basis of the work, made it necessary to focus not on an entertaining intrigue, external construction and all kinds of spectacular combinations of forces and personalities, and not even on the events that express the depicted drama, but on the deep currents of life, on the fact that really fueled the drama, on the contradictions of life.
This liberation of the novel from literary constructions likened it to life itself. Therefore, some foreign writers sometimes compared this or that Russian novel with a “piece of life” or spoke about the triumph in Russian realism of the aesthetics of the “ordinary life norm”.
First of all, this means that literature has become so merged with life, so completely understood it, that it has become a complete likeness of life itself, and artistic mastery, as it were, is no longer visible in it. The creators of Russian literature reject the method of an entertaining, arbitrary plot with all sorts of behind-the-scenes dramatic combinations and think primarily about the people depicted, about the vital significance of the types drawn.
Flaubert spoke of this unusual aesthetics of Russian prose in a letter to Louis Bouillet (1850) and wrote to Maupassant in an article on Turgenev (1883). Shchedrin and Tolstoy thought about the same new aesthetics.
The latter called the novel "the imprint of life." He said: “It seems to me that over time they will stop inventing works of art altogether. It would be shameful to write about some fictitious Ivan Ivanovich or Marya Petrovna. Writers, if they are, will not compose, but only tell the significant and interesting things that they happen to observe in life.
Such thoughts about the literature of life were dictated by reality itself, imperiously and directly entering art, and the position of the artist, who could not hide in the “imaginary world”, surrender to “literaryism”, be silent, observing and personally experiencing the sufferings of the people, screaming contradictions, all the tragic character of Russian reality.
But does this mean that he generally began to abandon artistic mastery and poetic fiction? Of course no!
For the implementation of the aesthetics of the "ordinary standard of living", which received such a fundamental importance in the post-reform conditions, it was necessary to have the most complete innovation in the methods and techniques of artistic reproduction of reality.
And the secret of this innovation, supposedly merging literature with life, but in reality elevating literature as an art to an unprecedented height, was owned by the outstanding masters of Russian artistic prose.
The aesthetics of the "usual standard of living" should not lead to lack of wings or ideas. An exhaustive knowledge of objective reality, at the request of this aesthetics, merges with progressive ideology, with romance.
Ideological content should not "clog" or replace the analysis of socio-economic and moral life. And the truthful pictures of this life, for their part, also cannot be deprived of the light radiated by ideas.
One without the other is impossible when it comes to real art. The classics created examples of the unity of both, and this experience is very important for the Soviet writer, it protects both from naturalism and from “Schillerism”.
Some Soviet word artists neglected a thorough study of life and had little knowledge of the economy, social and moral relations, those new forms of life that were created and affirmed by socialism. Such writers usually "travelled" on correct and topical ideas...
The aesthetics of the "ordinary life norm" requires imagination, skill, and passion. True pictures of life should awaken the reader - this requirement was formulated by many figures of Russian literature - Dobrolyubov, Karenin, Uspensky, Garshin, and then Gorky.
In the post-reform era, the process of creating restless art was going on. The writer, truthfully reproducing the life of the people, and the fighter, passionately intruding into life, merged in this art into one whole.
“It is necessary,” advises Ch. Uspensky to the young writer V. Timofeeva, - so that it - with a knife right in the heart. That's how to write."
This formula was repeated and developed in the 80-90s, it determined the creative principles of more than one Uspensky. In the essays Willy-nilly (1884), the latter proclaims: “I am tormented and tormented and I want to torment and torment the reader because this determination will give me in time the right to speak about the most urgent and greatest torments experienced by this very reader.”
For the author of The Red Flower, the everyday, everyday in the life of the people and the intelligentsia also becomes the source of his own torment: “Strike in the heart, deprive them of sleep, become a ghost before their eyes! Kill their peace as you killed mine! ("Artists").
And the founder of socialist realism in the program story "The Reader" (1898) speaks of art that would wake people up both as a ruthless scourge and as "a fiery caress of love, following the blow of a scourge."
The truth of life (even transmitted in the forms and techniques of a purely artistic depiction!), proclaimed by the aesthetics of the “ordinary life norm”, should wake people up and be a source of inspiring words that would uplift the soul, strengthen the faith of the fighters, would call for service, would teach contempt to the little things in life.
The Gorky reader expects from the writer "cheerful words that inspire the soul", "the excitation of a person corrupted by the abomination of life, fallen in spirit."
Such art was born in the era of the preparation of the revolution and flourished in the years before the storm.
Some leaders of the modern Soviet and foreign literary movement claim that the classics allegedly dealt with a slowly developing reality and did not face the ever-increasingly complex tasks of art, more and more new demands of life.
Therefore, they had the opportunity to think carefully, to nurture their ideas for many years, to create monumental works, distinguished by exacting finishes.
The conditions for creative work are quite different for Soviet writers. They faced a huge difficulty that the classics did not know. It consists, as G. Nikolaeva said, "in the unprecedented swiftness ... of the socialist movement forward."
The novel, argue supporters of this theory, requires ten years of work. But life does not wait! In its rapid development, it captures heroes and writers. Novelists want to keep up with life.
How to be? To work on a book for decades, as did Flaubert, Goncharov, Leo Tolstoy? But in this case, literature will be doomed to a constant lagging behind life.
The Soviet writer who is working on a modern topic faces another difficulty - he is dealing "with fundamentally new phenomena, born of socialism."
The artists of the past dealt with the habitual, centuries-long recurring relationships in society, the family, with firmly established moral norms, aesthetic ideas and forms of thinking. They worked on the basis of the centuries-old social and artistic experience of class society.
The Soviet writer, according to this theory, has no such experience behind him. The artist of a socialist society creates in conditions where social and artistic experience is in the process of rapid formation.
The point of view formulated by G. Nikolaeva is quite widespread in the circles of the Soviet and foreign literary community, although criticism has repeatedly pointed out its inconsistency.
Modern foreign opponents of the genre of the novel also refer to the fact that the novelists of the last century reproduced relatively stable social relations, and the writer of the 20th century. lives in an era of great break, rapid and stormy changes, he can no longer think about reality in the usual genre forms, so he refuses the traditional novel, which most fully corresponds to the 19th century.
Let us emphasize here those aspects of this strange but tenacious theory that have not been paid attention to. The processes of emergence and development of new socio-economic formations - capitalist and socialist - have similarities.
And one of them is the stormy and radical breaking of the old foundations of life and the human psyche, morality and the whole philosophy of life, the emergence of completely unfamiliar socio-economic relations, a new code of morality and mental order.
The collapse of the old and the novelty of the emerging capitalist formation (compared to the feudal formation) were also the subject of discussion among the classics, who raised the question of the possibilities of artistic development of the steep “pass” they were experiencing in the history of Russia.
Post-reform Russia made its way by leaps and bounds. V. I. Lenin spoke about this rapid pace, which was not known to any country in the world, on the basis of a thorough study of the Russian economy after 1861.
He wrote: "... after the 61st year, the development of capitalism in Russia proceeded with such speed that in a few decades transformations took place that took whole centuries in some old European countries."
Therefore, references to the “immobility” of Russia, the absence of processes of continuous and fundamental renewal in her life, etc., simply do not actually correspond to reality.
Second. Undoubtedly, the novelists of the past had behind them a huge and very instructive social and artistic experience of the centuries-old development of society and its art. But they lived not only by this experience, but also discovered new ways of mastering the reality of their time.
Writers and literary critics of the second half of the 19th century. splendidly felt and acutely realized the novelty of the whole way of life of their time. They saw it in extraordinary dynamism, in the growing power of a capricious historical flow that controls the destinies of people, and in the dominance of the chaos of decay and the formation of a new one.
In Essays on Russian Life, N. Shelgunov wrote that contemporary social relations did not give artists the opportunity to create “complete images and precise types”, that major writers like Saltykov and Uspensky clearly understood that “present-day life flows so vividly flow that prevents anything from crystallizing into a steady state.
Therefore, the subject of research may not be crystals that do not exist, but the general flow that prevents them from being formed.
Shchedrin and Uspensky wrote about the elusive living stream, in which nothing had yet acquired completeness and everything was still in the process of dying and the formation of a new one.
Dostoevsky expressed the same opinion in his note “From the Author” to “The Brothers Karamazov”: “It would be strange to demand clarity from people in a time like ours.”
His discussion with Goncharov about the features of contemporary reality and the possibilities of its artistic reproduction by means of the novel is also indicative.
Goncharov was just waiting for the calm of the stream and the formation of “crystals” in it, believing that true art can only depict life, settled in permanent, complete and clear forms.
Goncharov's talent turned out to be unyielding to the impressions aroused by contemporary reality. The overturned system of Russian life did not capture him in its whirlpool and did not cause in him that deepest spiritual breakdown that many of his contemporaries experienced.
But even this artist, the most conservative in poetics, in the way of thinking, unyielding to the spirit of the current time, was forced in “The Cliff” to significantly deviate from the poetics of the novel that had been established in him (on the basis of awareness and reproduction of pre-reform life) and to expand the scale of coverage of life, by means of plot and composition to convey the crisis of the old and the emergence of the new. With even greater rights, the "power of modernity" controlled other writers of the post-reform era.
Dostoevsky, arguing with the author of Oblomov, pointed out that the artist is called upon to deal not only with the stream of life that has entered its banks, crystallized into completed types and finished paintings, but also with life-chaos, in which the very process of crystallization is still taking place - decomposition and dying, falling away and evaporation of one and folding, formation of another.
The author of the novels "Teenager" and "Player" opposed himself to Goncharov, Turgenev and Tolstoy, considered himself a novelist who does not write in a historical way (that is, not about what has already taken root and has therefore become the past) and creates not " artistically finished” paintings, “beautiful types”, “pleasant and gratifying details”, but “obsessed with longing for the current”, deals with modernity, with “troubled times”, with people of a disorderly, unsettled life, with the kingdom of “chaos” and “ fermentation."
In a dispute with his contemporaries, Dostoevsky, of course, was not right in everything. None of them avoided and did not want to avoid meeting with modernity, none of them resisted the holy temptation of intrusion into the "current moment".
Even in a work that Dostoevsky referred to as a "historical genre" and saw in """" a reproduction not of a whirlwind of life, but an image of "beautiful types" of "pleasant and gratifying details" ("War and Peace"), even in it images arise "confusion of life" and "muddy reality".
And the heroes of this work - at least Pierre - are seized with confusion of spirit, dissatisfaction with themselves and others, a sense of the evil of life, a desire for good.
The plot of the novel "Anna Karenina" at first glance seems to be neutral in relation to the "topic of the day." Yes, and Tolstoy himself, as you know, was dismissive of those authors who were chasing newspaper topicality.
Such writers, perhaps, deserve such an attitude from the great artist, since in his view the service of modernity was by no means limited to responses to current events, the reproduction of various signs of the moment being experienced, the creation of an appropriate background for the work.
For Soviet writers, the experience of Tolstoy, as the author of Anna Karenina, is very instructive in terms of understanding how a true artist penetrates into the core of his era, which expresses his not external and hasty, but organic, suffered by mind and heart connection with modernity.
In the novel "Anna Karenina" signs of the times are literally scattered. This was convincingly shown by V. Kirpotin in the article "Topical in Anna Karenina".
Levin persistently reflects on how the new life will develop. And he manages like a landowner of the post-reform period. Levin is also a zemstvo activist. The novel deals with the plunder of the Bashkir lands, it also reproduces disputes about the direction of education in Russia, and the denouement of the novel is connected with the volunteer movement during the Serbo-Montenegro-Turkish war.
But all this chronicle of contemporary Russian life for the writer is not an end in itself for him. It serves as a support for him to create a deeply original ideological and artistic conception of human characters and the entire process of Russian social and moral life.
And in order to truly penetrate into the connections between Tolstoy's novel and its modernity, in order to understand Tolstoy's interpretation of this modernity, one must unravel the meaning of Levin's spiritual quest and Anna's tragic story.
It is clear that both must be connected with the “pass” that all of Russia was going through. Levin came to the need to seek support for his moral and physical life from the peasant.
Such a course of search carried him into the most important stream of Russian life in the 70s, when the “muzhik” became the alpha and omega of the moral philosophy and social practice of all the democratic forces of Russia ...
Anna Karenina’s “rebellion”, her “breaking out” of a deadly environment, her struggle for her happiness, for the fullness, scope and rights of living life, living feeling, her passionate desire to get rid of the oppression of someone else’s will and someone else’s thought, lifeless norms and traditions - all this dramatic story of a thinking, thoughtful, energetic and passionate woman of a tragic fate arose on the basis of the awakening of consciousness, the growth of a sense of human dignity and the awareness of a person of their rights.
And this, like the search for ways to the heart and mind of a peasant, was the quintessence of modernity, portrayed by Tolstoy.
So, the novel "Anna Karenina" is fully imbued with modernity, a sense of anxiety and confusion, a premonition of a catastrophe. It was from this novel that V. I. Lenin drew the words that characterize the essence of the “pass” experienced by Russia.
Like the author of The Teenager, Tolstoy was also captivated by modernity, the era of breaking and building, he perceived post-reform Russia with unusual sharpness. And under its influence, a fundamental change was made not only in the ideological position of the writer, but also in his entire artistic system, in the ways and means of depicting life, even in the structure of his artistic and journalistic language.
Tolstoy was carried away by the hero, who is in a continuously intense search for truth and justice, in a state of spiritual crisis and a turning point, a break with his environment, with the usual environment of life (“Resurrection”, “Living Corpse”, “Death of Ivan Ilyich”, “Kreutzer Sonata”, "Father Sergius").
There are, as it were, two "tiers" in Tolstoy's reproduction of modernity. One of them is quite noticeable, palpable, these are signs of the times. The other constitutes the soul of modernity, its social, moral and philosophical essence.
Tolstoy's creative experience is especially important for those who today speak of the impossibility of capturing and reproducing in large-scale artistic forms the rapidly developing socialist reality.
Thus, they reserve the right to wait for the formation of a solid "distance" that would distance them from the time they represent. Or they reserve the right to limit themselves in the reproduction of modernity only to its first, visible "tier".
But neither Tolstoy nor Dostoevsky have such "theories", there is no such "practice".
The “living stream of life” is not facts (they continuously accumulated them and knew them well!) and not ideas (and they are not so difficult to assimilate!), but precisely the living stream of national life, this flesh of the idea, the soul of facts.
To lag behind, to break away from this nourishing stream was, in the eyes of the writers of the past, death for the artist, his loss of the source of creativity.
Ouspensky is also looking for artistic forms that, in his opinion, could convey with all dramatic sharpness the feeling of the growing unsettling instability and painful inconsistency of Russian life in the transitional period, would allow him to respond in a living form to the "topic of the day" generated by this time, and together with thus they would give him freedom in expressing his own anxieties and pains for the position and fate of the working people, the raznochintsy intelligentsia.
The era of disturbing instability, full of dramas and tragedies in the fate of the people and the intelligentsia, "killed" in Uspensky the possibility of creating a novel, determined the excited, "personal" tone of his works, brought to life both his socio-political journalism, and the chronicle of people's suffering, and "hysterical lyrics".
The writer's perception of reality is exacerbated to the extreme, he, in the words of Shchedrin, rises "to that heartache that makes him identify with worldly need and bear the sins of this world."
With such a mental structure (and the key to it is the same post-reform reality that brings disaster to the people), it was impossible to remain on the positions of that “organic” thinking that is so inherent in Goncharov, and create within the strict framework of the usual genre forms, “chase” for artistry, to achieve harmony in their works.
It is very characteristic that in the 60s the artistic thinking of Gleb Uspensky was embodied mainly in the usual genre forms of a novel, short story or essay.
The Ruin trilogy was perceived by him in the process of its creation as a novel or as a story.
Starting from the 70s, the artist-researcher of the “sick conscience” of the Russian person realizes the impossibility of continuing work in his former manner.
He is convinced that in order to illuminate the social and moral issues of that time, it is necessary to create a work of a special type, in which the artist, in the words of Shchedrin, must become "in direct relation to the reader."
Ouspensky resolutely renounces traditional genres that are shy for him. In a letter to A. Kamensky from Paris on May 9, 1875, he thus defines his new manner, linking it with the tasks of the present:
“I decided to put everything that I thought and what I have in my head now into some order and print it as I think in the most diverse form, without resorting to the forms of a story, an essay that are extremely shy at the present time. There will be an essay, and a scene, and a reflection - given .. in some order, that is, arranged so that the reader knows why this essay follows this scene.
In the same letter, Ouspensky admits that he has “no time to mess around” with the novel (we are talking about the novel “The Daring Good Guy” he had conceived), that he decided to start a new kind of work.
Using other forms and means of poetics, relying on different life material and social experience, Dostoevsky's contemporaries - Tolstoy and Goncharov, Turgenev and Pisemsky, not to mention Shchedrin and Uspensky - were inspired by the desire to understand the meaning and forms of the experienced "pass" of Russian history and discover ways of his artistic representation, conveying the character, the very type of the born, in whose feverish trembling "the normal law and the guiding thread" were still almost not caught.
So, considering the novel “Gardenina ...”, A. I. Ertel emphasized in one of his letters to V. Lavrov that the idea of ​​​​this novel included the image of that “vague, complex and troublesome growth of neoplasms, the emergence of new thoughts, concepts and relationships which was taking place in the village at that time.
Ertel's correspondence contains numerous expressions in which he captures the fermentation of the spirit and contemporary social reality (“concepts are reborn”, “beliefs are modified”, “new forms of society powerfully promote the growth of a critical attitude towards reality”, etc.).
Each of the writers, therefore, perceived the life of his time as something unsettled, devoid of "crystals", "center" and "guiding threads". All this is quite understandable.
“The quick, hard, sharp breaking of all the old “foundations” of old Russia”, “the whirlpool of the increasingly complicated socio-political life” of an unfamiliar bourgeois Russia, in one way or another, captivated all the outstanding writers of post-reform Russia, imposed common features on their work, presented to their skill certain requirements.
Soviet artists of the word (if, of course, we recognize and not deny the importance of classical traditions) work, therefore, not "from scratch", they rely on the richest experience in the development of society and art.
In particular, the experience of the aesthetic assimilation by Russian classics of their rapidly developing modernity teaches the Soviet writer a great deal in the art of mastering such a reality, which is all in extreme tension, in motion, in contradictions, in the struggle of the new with the old, in the creation of unprecedented forms of life.
Finally, in the post-reform era, the greatest task arose to combine strictly realistic art with revolutionary and socialist ideology, with the heroic, with the romanticism of the revolutionary struggle.
In Chernyshevsky's novel What Is to Be Done? the innovative striving to give a realistic image of the people of the revolution and the socialist ideal was most clearly and deeply manifested.
Connection question in "What to do?" revolutionary-democratic ideology with realism is quite clear, widely covered in the scientific literature.
But there is still a denial of the positive value of utopian-socialist ideology in the realistic system of the novel What Is To Be Done?. The real mistake stems from an underestimation of utopian socialism in general, from a misunderstanding of the most important circumstance that “under the fantastic cover of these pictures of an ideal system (drawn by utopian socialists - N.P.) we still find the germs of brilliant ideas.”
This idea, voiced at the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, restores a truly Marxist, Leninist attitude towards utopian socialism.
Chernyshevsky was the first to make an attempt to transfer the socialist ideal from the sphere of utopian dreams to the soil of reality and to reproduce it in the forms of everyday private life of people and their social practice.
The solution of such a problem could not be carried out in full on the basis of utopian socialism.
Chernyshevsky was able to draw the socialist ideal by realistic means, to show what the future society would be, but, like all utopians, he did not know what would be the forces called upon to create a new world.
Therefore, the revolutionary democrats, even the greatest of them, did not have a complete picture of the birth of the future. The utopians, as it was said at the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, "were closer to the truth when they talked about what would not happen in such a society than when they outlined the paths for the implementation of socialism."
Further. Utopian socialism, including Chernyshevsky's socialism, is characterized by a tendency towards normativity, regulation, they were carried away by the desire to draw up a detailed schedule of life under socialism, to provide for all the little things in it, regardless of the fact that the life of their time did not provide sufficient material for this.
Chernyshevsky himself understood, as follows from his abstracts of Essays on Political Economy (According to Mill), that it was even theoretically impossible in his time to imagine socialist forms of life, that only in the future would reality provide material that would make it possible to concretely embody the socialist ideal.
Realizing this, the author of What Is to Be Done? nevertheless, he did not refuse (to the best of the opportunities provided by his time) from the embodiment of the socialist ideal in the pictures and images of life itself. N. Shchedrin in his review of the novel What Is to Be Done? reproached its author for not avoiding some arbitrary regulation of details in his work, "for the prediction and depiction of which reality does not yet provide sufficient data."
This remark by N. Shchedrin is very symptomatic, it expresses a departure from utopian socialism, dissatisfaction with the way its supporters imagined the picture of the life of a socialist society.
The utopian socialists loved to paint in every detail the future socialist society, they drew up a detailed program of the life of the people of this society.
K. Marx and F. Engels did not draw such pictures. In "What are 'friends of the people' and how do they fight against the Social Democrats?" V. I. Lenin, in his polemic with N. Mikhailovsky, emphasized precisely this feature of scientific socialism.
The latter "was limited," says V. I. Lenin, "to giving an analysis of the modern bourgeois regime, studying the development trends of the capitalist social organization - and nothing more."
And then V. I. Lenin quotes and comments on the words of Marx from a letter to A. Ruge: “We do not tell the world,” Marx wrote back in 1843, and he exactly fulfilled this program, “we do not say to the world:“ stop fighting; all your struggles are trifles,” we give him the true slogan of struggle. We only show the world what he is actually fighting for, and consciousness is such a thing that the world must acquire for itself, whether it likes it or not.”
And then V. I. Lenin continues: “Everyone knows that, for example, Capital - this is the main and basic work expounding scientific socialism - is limited to the most general hints about the future, tracing only those elements that are now already available, from which the future system grows.
This shows the well-known closeness of the points of view of N. G. Chernyshevsky (when in the notes to Mill he doubted the possibility of reproducing the forms of the future socialist life), M. E. Saltykov (in a review of the novel What Is to Be Done?), K. Marx ( in a letter to Ruge) and V. I. Lenin (in the work “What are the “friends of the people” and how do they fight against the social democrats?”) on the issue of a concrete image of the socialist ideal.
It is neither possible nor necessary to deal with the "prospects of the future"; this is not the main task of that generation of people who are anxious to give the world a real weapon of struggle for the transformation of society in the name of the socialist future.
It is significant that in Chernyshevsky's Prologue there are no pictures of this future, and the main attention is paid to the alignment of socio-political forces in the country, to an analysis of the specific situation that has developed in Russia, to how to prepare for future battles, what kind of people are needed for this. .
But does it follow from this that the depiction of the socialist future by utopian socialists and realists of the past had no positive significance in the history of the revolutionary liberation movement and the search for truth, in the promotion of the socialist ideal?
No! N. Shchedrin in his judgments about "What is to be done"? discovered in a certain sense an underestimation of the outstanding role of socialist fantasy, the socialist dream in the education of people, their mobilization and inspiration for the struggle for socialism.
Chernyshevsky perfectly understood the role of the socialist ideal expressed by means of realistic literature. This once again confirms that it is impossible to identify the socio-literary and philosophical-ethical positions of Chernyshevsky and Shchedrin.
Author of the novel What Is to Be Done? he sought to captivate the younger generation, to clearly show him what the socialist norms of community life are, what the socialist rules of social and family morality are, how the life and work of people in a socialist society are organized.
Herzen, pondering the tragic outcome of those portrayed by him in the novel "Who is to blame?" relations between people, all the time, as if asking himself: how will such conflicts, hopeless for that time, be resolved under socialist conditions, what new will socialism bring to the solution of those problems of family morality that worried its heroes?
Chernyshevsky with his novel What Is to Be Done? answered Herzen's questions. Shchedrin did not ignore the need to depict the ideal, but he questioned the artist's right to reproduce the details of the future (who knows if it will be so!), he preferred to engage in a critical, sternly merciless analysis of the foundations of contemporary life.
Other contemporaries of Chernyshevsky, as well as subsequent generations of fighters, reveled in these details, did not leave any of them without close attention, looked at these details from the point of view of "working out the future."
The problem of realistic reproduction of the socialist ideal and the people of the revolution is one of the fundamental problems of the art of the 19th-20th centuries, which is of exceptional importance for the formation of the system of socialist realism.
Naturally, Russian literature of the second half of the 19th century, which reflected Russia's movement towards revolution and socialism, posed this problem most profoundly.
And this was done first of all by Chernyshevsky in the novel What Is to Be Done? The utopian socialism of this novel, like Russian utopian socialism as a whole, should not be fundamentally opposed to Western European utopian socialism.
But the peasant utopian socialism in Russia in the second half of the 19th century is impossible. to limit only within the known Western European forms of utopian socialism.
In Chernyshevsky's novel there are also tendencies that testify to the overcoming of certain prejudices of the utopian socialists, the peculiarities of their thinking, their ideas about the means and forms of the transition of society to socialism.
That is why Marxists believe that Chernyshevsky came closer to scientific socialism than other utopian socialists. Utopian socialists not only fell into the sin of regulating the life of the future society (Chernyshevsky was not free from it either).
They are also characterized by the dogmatism of thinking, from which the dialectician Chernyshevsky was spared. Utopian socialists tended to decree socialism, naively believing that socialism could be prescribed, introduced by law into the life of society.
The great merit of Chernyshevsky, the author of the novel What Is to Be Done?, consisted in the fact that he concretely reproduced the picture of how socialist relations are created by people in the process of everyday life and struggle, how people educate themselves in the spirit of the socialist ideal, how they creatively seek and find new forms of production activity, etc.
The essence of socialism in the view of Chernyshevsky was not in a new combination of already existing elements of life, not in the redistribution of wealth and happiness in accordance with the ideas of justice, goodness and truth.
With the whole meaning of his novel, Chernyshevsky points out that the conditions for happiness must be created, that the determining factor in socialism is not the distribution of goods, but their production, that it is necessary to find new forms of this production.
Socialism is the living creativity of the masses themselves, ordinary working people, yesterday's slaves of capital, not only mutilated, but also hardened by it for the struggle - Chernyshevsky came closest to this idea of ​​Marxism-Leninism among the thinkers of the pre-Marx era, when he argued that the most ordinary working people , spiritually corrupted by the "corrupted order of things" ("Prologue"), can become "new people", creators of new relationships and new morality.
Socialist relations and socialist norms of morality are not invented, they are not composed in offices, they are not introduced from outside with the help of decrees and orders of a "genius" or some caste of selected reformers and philosophers, but are worked out by people in the course of their daily experience.
Such is the great thought of Chernyshevsky, the utopian socialist who managed to step over the brink of some of the delusions of utopian socialism.
Socialism is conceived by Chernyshevsky as the triumph of the happy life of people on earth. In "What to do?" he created a socialist concept of happiness, free from the philosophy of asceticism and suffering, humiliation and cruelty.
To this day, poets and theoreticians appear in the international communist movement who cannot imagine the building of socialism without mass deprivation and bloody sacrifices.
The idea that only great suffering can give rise to everything great and beautiful in human life is a very old, well-worn and very popular idea in certain historical epochs and among certain social classes... But here comes Chernyshevsky, the greatest representative of utopian socialism in Russia , and then - Gorky, the founder of socialist realism, and convincingly showed that the happiness of life on earth is possible without a redemptive sacrifice.
Rakhmetov proudly announces: "We demand for people the full enjoyment of life." The heroes of Chernyshevsky do not consider themselves victims or "dung" for the happiness of future generations.
A man who has pride and will cannot humiliate himself with a philosophy of suffering. However, the life of the “new people” depicted by Chernyshevsky is not at all a festive idyll. It has sharp contradictions and dramatic struggle.
The novelist sees the tragic in the fate of people, their life is not easy, he knows their suffering, doubts and sorrows, but he does not have a philosophy of suffering, that is, such a concept of life, which is based on the assertion that the happiness of man and mankind must be suffered.
A real revolutionary treats the slavish philosophy of suffering and asceticism with a feeling of disgust and indignation, he resolutely denies it, considers suffering, as Gorky said, "the shame of the world."
“In Russia,” Gorky wrote, “a country where the need for suffering is preached as a universal means of ‘saving the soul’, I have not met, I don’t know a person who, with such depth and force as Lenin, would feel hatred, disgust and contempt for misfortunes , I burn, the suffering of people ... For me, it is this feeling of irreconcilable, inextinguishable hostility to the misfortunes of people, his vivid belief that misfortune is not an irremovable basis of being, but an abomination that people must and can sweep aside away from myself. I would call this basic feature of his character the militant optimism of a materialist.
In these words of Gorky, relying on the authority of V. I. Lenin, an irresistible rebuke is given to all those who cannot get rid of the slavish philosophy of suffering, believing that the triumph of the socialist ideal must be bought at the cost of great torment and sacrifice.
Finally, the other side of the novel What Is to Be Done? is also of fundamental importance. Socialism in it is inseparable from the people's revolution, only it can open the way to socialism.
Therefore, the reproduction of the socialist ideal merges in the novel with the depiction of what materials of life and how a revolutionary is formed.
And in this area, Chernyshevsky, while remaining a utopian socialist, also found himself at the pinnacle of pre-Marxist science. The utopian socialists of the West were not supporters of revolutionary methods of transforming society, they placed their hopes on the strength of the moral factor, persuasion, arguments of reason, etc.
The Russian socialists, through the mouth of Herzen, proclaimed that "a socialist in our time cannot but be a revolutionary."
It should also be borne in mind that 1861 brought a radical break in the social consciousness of the intelligentsia, the working people of the city and countryside. In the post-reform conditions, a new attitude to life, to the structure of society, to the king, to God was taking shape.
Many contemporaries tell about these shifts in the spiritual world with great accuracy in their memoirs. In the pre-reform era, dogmatic and normative thinking dominated, illuminated by faith in God and in the king.
The spiritual foundations of people were not shaken by analysis, doubts. The human personality, its rights, interests, will were not considered.
The human person was nothing, everything was the idea of ​​autocracy and Orthodoxy. Generations of people were brought up in the spirit of complete self-denial, leading to the recognition of their insignificance before the tsar, the landowner, the authorities, God, etc.
The existing was accepted without explanation, analysis and comparison, everything was taken for granted, ideal and eternal, unshakable.
Such a worldview, says Korolenko in The History of My Contemporary, explained everything by the “will of God” and was the basis of absolutism. This idea is confirmed by Rosa Luxemburg in the article "The Soul of Russian Literature".
The year 1861 brought with it the beginning of the rapid destruction of the old way of thinking, and this led to the elimination of many, many illusions that prevailed in pre-reform conditions.
Rebellion against all forms of despotism - the despotism of parents and superiors, dilapidated traditions and orders, dominant ideas, moral norms and beliefs - is the most characteristic feature of the new generation of the 60s and 70s.
The struggle for the social and moral emancipation of the individual, for the development of his independence and dignity, the defense of his rights to a truly human life were the ideological and social banner of the era of "storm and onslaught". There was an idea that what existed for centuries can be shaken, changed, destroyed.
The idea that people are responsible for the existing social evil, that the fate of the fatherland, the position of the people depend on their will and actions, has become widespread. The intelligentsia was inspired by the disinterested, selfless service to the people.
Zlatovratsky's story "The Madman" vividly conveys the powerful attraction of young hearts to the people.
The movement to the people began to mature already in the mid-60s. And the participants invested in it not only a social, but also a deeply moral meaning, they considered it as a cleansing from the filth of the past, as a departure
From the jubilant, idly chatting,
Enveloping hands in blood ...
People appeared, as V. Bervi-Flerovsky tells in “Notes of a Revolutionary Dreamer”, who literally lived with the suffering of the people, left
...to the camp of the perishing
For the great cause of love...
where there is a struggle, where “rough hands work”.
The hearts of these people, according to Shchedrin, bled for the sake of the people. They dreamed of creating a new, rational religion - a religion of equality, they were enthusiasts and ascetics, revolutionary dreamers and revolutionary idealists, their actions and spiritual quests were often fanatic.
This was a special breed of people of duty, in whose characters steely restraint and severe ascetic rationalism were combined with the tenderness and gullibility of a child, with fiery faith in people, with cordiality, with admiration for the beautiful.
Only such people could become an inspiring example of heroic service to the people.
The "liberation" reform awakened the best aspirations and bright hopes throughout Russia - in the remote provinces and in the cities. General enthusiasm, faith in the future seized the young forces of the country, striving for its real renewal.
But no outlet was given to these fresh and talented forces; their anticipations were grossly deceived. The tsarist government, the tsar himself, turned out to be deceivers.
Thus was the beginning of that complete lack of respect for the foundations of the social system, for the official representatives of political power, which "systematically shocked" the youth and led them to struggle, was laid by the autocracy itself.
A slow but steady process of destruction of faith in the king began, which ended in 1905.
Fundamental changes took place after 1861 in the self-consciousness of the people, in their position and behavior. A new generation of peasants appeared to replace the downtrodden and chained to the village serf, who believed in the priests, was afraid of any bosses, and lost his sense of his own personality.
The reforms “disentangled” him to his own land and will, to his own self-government, to education, to publicity. All these inflamed appetites of the peasant were not satisfied, but once the thought aroused in him did not stop working.
In the post-reform era, walkers from the people appear in search of happiness and truth for the people, "real paper", life without bosses. A whole movement arose - unauthorized resettlement as one of the forms of mass struggle for new forms of life.
Men-philosophers, truth-seekers, preachers of life in free partnerships appear ...
“Voices from the people” begin to sound louder and louder - articles in newspapers and speeches in courts, letters-addresses to writers, masculine lyrics and masculine journalism ...
After 1861, the peasant masses came to the realization that they were not working cattle, but people who had the right to a happy human life.
The awakening of a sense of personality and self-esteem in the “horse” is the greatest historical process that ultimately shaped and organized the mighty forces of the people.
Post-reform conditions contributed to this awakening of a person in a “horse”. The new generation of peasants went through a hard, but at the same time fruitful for them school of seasonal crafts, urban life, free-lance labor.
This bitter experience of wandering life taught yesterday's serf a lot, awakened a personality in him, made him think hard about his position, analyze life, look for the very "root" of evil and ways to eradicate it ...
The "pass" of Russia from one socio-economic formation to another seized decisively all spheres of material and spiritual life, stirred up a remote province, awakened an ignorant and downtrodden people, gave rise to classes of bourgeois society and new relations among people, determined a turn in the revolutionary liberation movement of the intelligentsia, caused breaking habitual ideas, the whole inner world of a person.
Even Oblomov, the embodiment of the immobility of old Rus', foresaw the death of the patriarchal world and constantly repeated: "life touches."
And the observant, sensitive boy Kolya Ivolgin from Dostoevsky's novel "The Idiot" caught a profound change in people: "And you noticed, prince, in our age all adventurers! And it is here in Russia, in our dear fatherland. And how it all worked out - I do not understand. It seems that it stood firm, but what now?
The psyche, the nature of behavior, thinking, dreams and interests, conflicts and relationships - all this acquired new features, unprecedented, unthinkable in pre-reform conditions.
Movement from below and crisis from above, "new people" and old Russia, breaking obsolete forms, norms of life and thinking, "growth of a Russian person", the history of the formation of personality from the people, the awakening of the masses under the influence of new circumstances of their life, a break with their native environment, relations plebeians and nobility, the change and struggle of different generations and ways of life, the search for opportunities for rapprochement with the people by an advanced personality from raznochintsy and nobility, painful attempts to borrow "faith" from the peasant - these are the most characteristic elements of the overturning order of life.
There appeared a hero of passionate quest and a hero breaking out of his native nest, a Protestant hero from the people and a hero - the bearer of the utopian socialist ideal.
A new philosophy of life was also emerging. The main thing in it is a decisive break with the dogmas and traditions, orders and ideals of the past; a war against social and everyday despotism in the name of the complete emancipation of the individual from all bonds that hinder the manifestation of his human essences; condemnation of the noble-landlord and petty-bourgeois selfishness; the desire to join the life of the working people, the realization that it is higher in its moral content, cleaner than the life of the ruling class, etc.
Under the conditions of the “disintegration” of the habitual, time-honored order of life, when everyone felt that the former should “break and change”, and the new was perceived as something unknown, unsettled, and therefore terrible, bringing ruin and death, exceptionally complex problems arose before Russian literature. and responsible tasks.
It was necessary to deeply understand the ongoing revolution in the socio-economic, ideological and mental life of society, develop one or another point of view on the ongoing processes and give them an appropriate assessment, find new forms and new means for their artistic knowledge and reproduction.
Russian literature of the post-reform era coped brilliantly with these tasks. Thus, Russian reality after 1861, and literature, and public sentiments raised such questions, the solution of which in no way fit into the framework of the bourgeois-democratic revolution.
The ideological opponents of the socialist revolution in Russia do not wish to reckon with these facts. They graciously agreed in the past and now agree only to a bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia, arguing that the solution of the accumulated contradictions of Russian post-reform life was to be brought not by a socialist, but by a bourgeois revolution with its republic, parliaments, freedoms, etc.
The socialist revolution in Russia, in their opinion, had not yet matured at that time. It was a "historical injustice", it seemed that it happened contrary to objective historical reality and had nothing to do with the people, with Russian culture, but was planned and unleashed by the Bolsheviks led by Lenin, was the result of a conspiracy and a coup d'état that deviated Russia from the natural path of development which, as A. Stender-Petersen says in his two-volume History of Russian Literature (1957), destroyed the best traditions of Russian literature.
And then comes the Western bourgeois and émigré reaction. She begins to judge the Russian revolution, not only relying on the nihilists of Dostoevsky, but also using B. Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago.
Bourgeois propagandists, like the Russian Mensheviks in their time, did not understand that in the conditions of Russia the victorious bourgeois-democratic revolution cannot be separated from the socialist revolution, that only the socialist revolution of 1917 proved capable of solving the bourgeois-democratic tasks...
Modern reactionary publicists, blinded by the bourgeois way of life, take it upon themselves to assert that the bourgeois-democratic system of life created by capitalism is more perfect than the socialist system, and if it were established in Russia, it would provide its peoples with a higher standard of living and a faster pace of development. productive forces.
Bourgeois-democratic illusions still continue to retain their force of influence on the minds of modern capitalist countries; they have captured and poisoned the consciousness of a significant part of the intelligentsia and have penetrated the environment of the working people, hindering the growth of their revolutionary proletarian self-consciousness.
The influence of these illusions sometimes affects representatives of socialist society to some extent, and it is also found among the Soviet creative intelligentsia, some of whose representatives are sometimes inclined to flirt with the bourgeois-democratic point of view and soften its criticism.
Sometimes this is unreasonably justified by the need for fruitful business cooperation with figures of bourgeois culture and science.
Soviet literary classics, faithful to Leninism, have educated and continue to educate generations of Soviet people to sense and understand the unshakable boundary that separates proletarian democracy from various forms of petty-bourgeois and bourgeois democracy.
Here, too, Soviet literature develops classical traditions. The writers of the past, of course, could not oppose proletarian democracy to bourgeois democracy, but with their works they give a great deal to the modern Marxist in his struggle against the bourgeois-democratic illusions of the masses, against the philosophy of life of the ideologists of "Western democracy", against the opponents of Soviet democracy.
Russian leading figures in literature and social thought broke with bourgeois-democratic ideals and aspirations, they denounced the bourgeois-democratic order of capitalist society, which did not free the working people from slavery, not before the law, but before the necessity of things.
The crux of the matter, they taught, lies not in who is in governments, not in the forms of government, not in loud words about freedom, equality and fraternity, but in the real situation of the working people, in real socio-economic relations that are not regulated by governments. and not even by legislation, but by the objectively and daily acting inexorable force of things.
Even the most consistently democratic bourgeois republic is incapable of creating trouble-free material and legal guarantees that really ensure the implementation in practice of those slogans of freedom, equality and fraternity that were proclaimed by the bourgeoisie at the dawn of its history.
Writers and thinkers of Russia noticed one of the most characteristic contradictions in the life of the Western European peoples, who declared the equality and freedom of people, but never achieved their fraternal unity and social and moral solidarity, did not eliminate social injustice and lack of human rights, mutual enmity, the cruel struggle of classes, parties , groups, persons.
Outstanding figures of Russian literature and journalism of the second half of the 19th century. they teach to recognize the anti-popular essence of liberalism and republicanism in their most colorful and elegant clothes.
The fight against liberalism and reformism, against the bourgeois-democratic illusions of the Western European persuasion, the stake on the separation of the democrats, who express the aspirations of the broadest masses of working people, from the liberals, the merging of peasant revolutionary democracy and utopian socialism into one inseparable whole, and then the separation of proletarian democracy from the general democratic movement, the transition to scientific socialism and its connection with the struggle of the working class, the formation of social democracy - such is the most important feature of the ideological life of Russian society in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Contrary to the assertions of the Narodniks, in a few decades a great Russian proletariat took shape in Russia, which immediately revealed its "eagle wings" and determined the process of isolating a mighty proletarian-socialist current from the general democratic stream.
The fate of mankind, as they took shape at the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th centuries, set before the working class of Russia unusually responsible, difficult and universal tasks.
Already in 1902, in the work “What is to be done?” V. I. Lenin prophetically wrote that history has set before the Russian proletariat “the immediate task, which is the most revolutionary of all the immediate tasks of the proletariat of any country.
The accomplishment of this task, the destruction of the most powerful stronghold not only of European, but also ... of Asian reaction, would make the Russian proletariat the vanguard of the international revolutionary proletariat.
The prophecy of V. I. Lenin came true. The October Socialist Revolution changed the course of world history, freed the peoples of Europe, the East and Asia from the forces of the most frenzied reaction.
There is also no doubt that the fate of the modern Western "civilized world", the charms of which bourgeois ideologists so zealously sing about, would have turned out quite differently if the working people of Russia had not destroyed in 1917 the stronghold of international reaction.
And it is quite natural that the Soviet people are proud of their revolution, which blocked the way for the most reactionary feudal and fascist regimes and helped the peoples of the world to preserve their democratic gains.
The Soviet people are proud that Russia became the birthplace of Leninism, that it was the first to embark on the path of socialism and opened a new era in the history of all mankind, showed the peoples the path to communism.
But the squires of anti-communism, disregarding this international significance of October, still go on talking about the socialist revolution in Russia as only a specifically "Russian experiment" that has no appeal to the population of the Western countries.
They are still trying to pass off the Russian revolution as something provincial that had no impact on the fate of other peoples.
In some cases even Marxist historians make concessions to bourgeois ideology. Thus, Christopher Hill in Lenin and the Russian Revolution (1947) limits the impact of the "Soviet experience" only to the borders of backward, agrarian countries.
The course of modern human history refutes philistine views on the history of peoples. And then they sit on another favorite horse of anti-Soviet propaganda - the Soviet communists allegedly plant "red regimes" among other nations, "push" the peoples to revolution, cultivate the idea of ​​"Russian primacy" and Russian expansion, vigorously popularize the idea of ​​the messianic duties of socialist Russia and its culture in relation to other peoples.
Some foreign authors believe that the idea of ​​the exclusive calling of Russia to establish universal peace, unity and brotherhood of peoples on earth, to bring them salvation from the injustice of the exploitative system, is the dominant idea in Russian spiritual culture of the 19th-20th centuries.
It is allegedly inherent also in the proletariat, in its party (“proletarian messianism”).
The idea of ​​messianism is often interpreted by the ideological opponents of the USSR as the philosophy of "red imperialism"! And they are trying to find its roots in the mental warehouse of a Russian person, in the political ideas of Dostoevsky!
Marxist-Leninists have never been and are not guided by the idea that the Russian people is a chosen nation with a special predisposition to revolution and socialism, called upon to be the deliverer of mankind from social evil.
“The time of the chosen peoples,” says Engels in “Afterword to the article“ On Social Relations in Russia, ”“, has passed irrevocably.”
Yes, the world significance of the peoples of Russia in the past and present history of the struggle for revolution and socialism, for democracy and peace is exceptionally great.
Soviet Russia has become a huge force of attraction for other peoples, an example for them. But all this is not a mystical messianism, but a historical regularity.
But does this mean that the leading political and literary figures of the XIX century. Or did representatives of Soviet science and culture draw and continue to conclude from this circumstance that only the people of Russia have a calling to realize the communist ideal on earth, that they, so to speak, have been chosen by fate itself to play a leading and messianic role in relation to other peoples?
In the history of advanced Russian social thought and literature of the 19th century. Of course, there are cases when ideas were expressed about a special predisposition of the Russian people or Slavic peoples to socialism, when it was argued that only Russia was called upon to save socialism (from Western perversion) and “decrepit Europe”, to give other peoples an example of solving socio-economic issues and problems of the human spirit, etc.
Let us recall, for example, Herzen's pan-Slavism. But we know how the founders of scientific socialism reacted to such a philosophy, it is also known that its author did not remain unchanged in his convictions.
The Narodniks also fell into messianic illusions, believing, as Engels says in a letter to Plekhanov (1895), "in a spontaneously communist mission, allegedly distinguishing Russia, the true Holy Rus', from other infidel peoples."
The Narodniks considered the Russian people to be the chosen people of the social revolution... It also seemed to Dostoevsky that the Russian people had been chosen to give the world a saving synthesis of all those ideas which had been individually developed by the different peoples of Western Europe...
Tolstoy was also convinced that "the great historical vocation of the Russian people" is to resolve the land issue in the interests of the people by abolishing private ownership of land, bypassing the horrors of landlessness that the grain growers of the West experienced.
In this way, Russia will also show other peoples the path to a reasonable, free and happy life.
Of course, the above facts can give reason to believe that in the spiritual culture of Russia in the 19th century. the idea of ​​the chosenness of the Russian people dominated. Some Western authors come to such conclusions.
But they do not investigate, firstly, the sources that gave rise to these ideas. In one case, their ground was disappointment in the fate of Western Europe, in its socialist teachings and revolutionary struggle, which was the result of the defeat of the revolutions of the middle of the 19th century.
In other cases, the ideas under consideration arose on the basis of the socio-economic backwardness of Russia, giving rise to all sorts of illusory hopes for a peculiar path for its development, for its special mission in world history.
The horrors of more developed Western capitalism, and then of Russian capitalism, had an intimidating effect on some representatives of Russian literature, causing them to desire to bypass these horrors, to find some other way of development for all mankind.
Secondly, foreign authors do not take into account the fact that there was a tense debate with similar ideas in Russian literature, completed by the founders of scientific socialism, leaders of the Marxist party in Russia.
And, thirdly, researchers of the ideas of Russian messianism did not pay attention to the fact that these ideas were popular primarily in reactionary-monarchist, and partly in liberal circles.
The adherents of these ideas were the Slavophiles, the representatives of the “official nationality”, the pochvenniks, it was faithfully served by Katkov, Pobedonostsev and Meshchersky, the authors of anti-nihilistic novels. In the messianic ideas of the Russian reaction of the XIX century. there was a conscious, selfishly embittered and cowardly desire to delay the course of world progress.
Fear and despair in the face of the collapse of the old world were also expressed in them. They tried to save him with the help of Orthodoxy, the patriarchal-serf people, the autocratic system.
The stronghold of all this was the old pre-reform Russia. She was idealized and poeticized, opposed to the revolutionary and socialist West, believing that she should take on the great role of the deliverer of all mankind.
N. Danilevsky in the book "Russia and Europe, a look at the cultural and political relations of the Slavic world to the German-Roman world" argued that the Russian people and most other Slavic peoples are God's chosen peoples, they got the historical lot of the custodian of the living tradition of religious truth - Orthodoxy.
Did democratic literature, the revolutionary and progressive social thought of Russia in the 19th century, have anything in common with such ideas?
But it can be said that there was a reactionary messianism and that there was a progressive, revolutionary messianism. No, the idea of ​​messianism is reactionary in its very essence, it is one of the forms of manifestation of nationalism and leads to the exaltation of one people and humiliation, ignoring other peoples, to the cultivation of the idea of ​​chosen nations, leading peoples.
Proletarian internationalist revolutionaries have always rejected such nationalist theories with disgust.
The role of socialist Russia in the present destinies of mankind is exceptionally great and noble, which is one of the sources of the Soviet people's legitimate sense of national pride.
And under these conditions, one can slip into the "Soviet dictate", to the idea of ​​the messianic role of the Soviet people. And so it happened in the years of the personality cult, when the national characteristics of other peoples building socialism were hardly considered, when the Soviet experience, Stalin's instructions were mechanically transferred to the practice of other peoples, to the activities of fraternal parties.
In this case, the ideas of messianism and diktat served to exalt one person on a global scale and brought significant damage to the international communist movement, international cultural ties, and mutual understanding of peoples. Such a dangerous tendency, generated by the cult of personality, ran counter to Leninist norms and national traditions.
Figures of Russian culture and social thought did not allow the natural and legitimate feeling of national pride of the Russian people to result in the philosophy of messianism, in the preaching of nationalism, the dictatorship of one people over other peoples.
The Leninist revolutionaries oppose messianism and nationalism, which have now become the banner of the anti-communist forces, with proletarian internationalism, which today is winning the minds of the broadest masses of working people.
Outstanding minds of Russia in the 19th century. (including Herzen) highly valued the contribution of each people to the cause of progress, they recognized the right of this or that people to independently choose their own path of development, they always took into account the national identity of the historical life of this or that people and believed that different paths are possible and inevitable to socialism.
V. I. Lenin also emphasized that all nations will come to socialism, but each of them will come in its own way.
The ideologists of modern reaction, justifying and inflaming the enmity between the West and the East, argue that it comes from the Bolsheviks, from Lenin, from Soviet Russia, which, as a tradition, took over from Russian writers and thinkers of the 19th century. the idea of ​​an unconditional rejection of Western civilization, a sense of mistrust and hostility towards the Western world.
But such an interpretation of the philosophy of life of Russian writers and Soviet people is a gross distortion of the truth.
Exposing the Western European bourgeois-democratic order, the Russian classics, with a few exceptions, did not fall into the idealization of Russia, did not believe that "there" (in the countries of bourgeois democracy) everything is bad, but "here" (in Russia) everything is good, that the West " rots”, and Russia “blooms”.
Speaking in a loud voice the whole harsh truth about the deceitfulness of bourgeois democracy, about the dominance in the countries of Western Europe of formal freedom, only declared in bourgeois constitutions, but in reality not protected by guarantees, constantly trampled on by the exploiting classes and the republican government obedient to them, the writers and thinkers of Russia recognized and the positive role of Western European democratic forms in the history of the workers' struggle for their rights.
They sought to understand what each nation contributes to the treasury of world civilization, what is its role in world history.
And the most far-sighted, insightful figures of literature and social thought came to the conclusion that Russia must comprehensively, creatively take into account, weigh the world experience of history, go in its development (but at a faster pace and more fruitfully, without repeating the mistakes of other peoples) the same path, as well as the peoples who have already entered the bosom of capitalist civilization.
Does all this mean that in the Russian spiritual culture of the XIX-XX centuries. the idea of ​​the messianic function of the Russian people dominated?
Concrete historical thinking, excellent knowledge of Russian and foreign socio-economic and political reality, upholding the fundamental interests of the working people, the deepest respect for every people and intolerance towards nationalism - this is what saved the outstanding figures of Russian literature and social thought from messianic self-satisfied utopias and from the sweet petty-bourgeois idealization of bourgeois democracy, forced them to look for such an ideal social structure that should take into account national experience and the experience of world history and be in all respects superior to bourgeois-democratic society.
These searches objectively led Russian literature to socialism.

It shook the foundations of the autocratic system and created the prerequisites for the subsequent successful struggle for the overthrow of tsarism. According to the generally accepted point of view in the USSR, this was a new type of bourgeois-democratic revolution, the hegemon of which for the first time in history was the proletariat, led by the Marxist party.

Background of the revolution

agrarian question

The inevitability of the revolution was due to the entire course of the socio-economic and political development of post-reform Russia. “1861,” noted V.I. Lenin, “gave birth to 1905”. By the beginning of the 20th century, an acute conflict had matured between capitalist production relations, which dominated industry and were increasingly introduced into agriculture, and the numerous survivals of serfdom, the concentrated embodiment of which was landownership and tsarist autocracy. Imperialism sharply aggravated all the class and national contradictions in the country, intensified the striking discrepancy between "the most backward landownership", the "wild countryside" and the latest forms of industrial and financial economics. 10.5 million peasant households (about 50 million of the population of Russia) had almost as much land as 30,000 landlords, who widely used labor compensation and other semi-feudal, "Prussian-Junker" methods of exploiting the peasants. The peasantry of Russia still suffered much more from the underdevelopment of capitalism than from capitalism as such. The elimination of landownership, the transfer of the countryside to the most progressive and democratic under capitalism, the "American" path of development - these were the primary tasks facing the revolution of 1905-07 in the field of agrarian relations. The agrarian question, on the solution of which depended the fate of the peasantry, who constituted the majority of the population of the country, and the whole direction of the further development of Russia, was the most burning problem of the Russian bourgeois-democratic revolution, which therefore became, first of all, a peasant revolution.

Having sharpened and deepened the contradictions generated by the rule of the feudal lords, developing capitalism added new antagonisms to them, the main of which was the contradiction between labor and capital. The "labor question" moved to one of the first places in the life of the country. Russia's entry into the era of imperialism, with its inherent desire to extract maximum profit by intensifying the exploitation of the working people, has further intensified the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. At the same time, the high level of concentration of production and the socialization of labor in industry, as well as the class stratification of the peasantry, created certain prerequisites for the transition to a higher, socialist mode of production, for the development of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a proletarian one. Unlike the Western European bourgeois revolutions of the 17th-19th centuries, in the Revolution of 1905-07 the proletariat acted as an independent political force, formed not only into a "class in itself", but also into a "class for itself". By 1905, the number of industrial (including mining and railway workers) in the country reached 3 million people, and more than half of it was concentrated in large enterprises (from 500 workers and more). At the beginning of the 20th century, the worker became the central figure of the revolutionary movement in Russia.

Tasks of the revolution

The solution of the national task - the elimination of the remnants of serfdom - was possible only through the struggle against the tsarist autocracy. The lack of rights of the people and police arbitrariness, brutal coercion and despotism, butchery against the oppressed nations and great-power chauvinism - these are the most characteristic features of tsarism as "military-feudal imperialism", one of the main strongholds of world reaction. The further existence of the autocracy was incompatible with the needs of the country's development. A deep conflict was brewing between the noble-bureaucratic authorities and the revolutionary people.

The beginning of the revolution

The revolution began in St. Petersburg with the events of "Bloody Sunday" (January 9, 1905), when the tsarist troops shot at a peaceful demonstration of St. Petersburg workers who were going to the tsar to present a petition about the needs of the people.

Spring-Summer Rise of the Revolution

The spring-summer upsurge began with mass May Day strikes, in which 220,000 workers took part.

Highest Rise of the Revolution

The October All-Russian political strike of 1905 led to concessions from the tsarist government and the publication of the Manifesto on October 17, 1905. In December, a series of armed uprisings took place in Russia (the largest in Moscow) with the aim of seizing power.

Retreat of the revolution

The intensity of the revolution in 1906-1907 was lower. The end of the revolution is marked by the June 3 coup d'état of 1907, after which the period of Stolypin's reaction began.

The results and significance of the revolution

The revolution was defeated, but it shook the foundations of the tsarist autocracy and laid the foundation for the subsequent revolutionary uprising of 1917.

The years of the revolution of 1905-1907 became a time of important state events for Russia. reforms, although not recognized as great, but of a deep and difficult to reverse character Then, on the whole, the political, legal and socio-economic transformations begun in the 1860s were completed, which were supposed to ensure the survival and further development of the monarchical form of government.

In the course of these transformations, the scope of the rights of the monarch changed, representative bodies of the aldsti arose, and feudal law significantly developed on the way to its transformation into bourgeois law.

The prevailing trend in the development of the Russian state at the turn of the XlX-XX centuries was modernization, which refers to the processes of updating the economy, social and political system, legal institutions, etc.

The initial stage of modernization was the traditional agrarian society with its characteristic rigid class hierarchy, the absolutist form of rule and the privileged position of noble landowners. The final stage of this process is the industrial general defense, the most important features of which are a market economy, the institution of separation of powers. multi-party system, etc.

Russia later than other countries entered the path of modernization. Being a country with a backward economy and political system, it implemented the so-called "catch-up type" of modernization. He was characterized by the active intervention of the state in the economic and political life of the country, the imposition of capitalist relations and the transformation of the form of government "from above".

The fact that such an important historical event as the first Russian revolution took place in Russia in 1905-1907 had socio-economic and political preconditions.

Current economic prerequisites The modernization of the Russian economy had reached significant results by the beginning of the 20th century. The industrial revolution was rapidly taking place in the country, new equipment and technologies were introduced, and the development of private entrepreneurship was initiated.

A rapid industrial boom occurred in the 1890s, when S.Yu Witte was the Minister of Finance. in particular, enterprises of the A- group, active railway construction. The results of this stage of industrial modernization were an increase in the volume of industrial output by more than 2 times, an increase in labor productivity, and the technical re-equipment of enterprises

By the beginning of the 20th century Russian capitalism moved to a qualitatively new stage of development, called imperialism. There was a concentration of production and capital, the first monopoly associations of capitalists in industry arose. Covering almost all branches of heavy and some branches of light industry, they became the basis of the country's economic life. The process of merging industrial and banking capital began, which led to the emergence of finance capital and a financial oligarchy.

Russian capitalism was characterized by a high degree of concentration of capital, production and labor.

During the years of industrial growth, the growth rates of production in a number of leading industries were higher than in the highly developed countries of Europe and in the USA. The network of railways increased significantly, amounting to 64 thousand miles by 1913. However, the subject of export for Russia was not industrial goods, but agricultural goods, primarily textiles.

A feature of Russian capitalism was the preservation of significant vestiges of serfdom. There were disproportions in the development of industry and agriculture, an actively developing industry coexisted with backward agriculture, large-scale land acquisition by the nobility - with an underdeveloped peasant economy. Survivals of feudalism in agriculture hampered the process of the country's capitalization. Peasant land ownership increased, arrears in paying taxes and redemption payments from the peasants increased. Crop failures became more frequent, as well as the hunger strikes of peasants and epidemics that accompanied them. The landed nobility, which for the most part found themselves unable to adapt to the new economic conditions, was rapidly losing land, bombarding the monarch with petitions for help.

On the eve and during the years of the first Russian revolution, the agrarian crisis became an important component of the general political crisis that was brewing in the country. It was aggravated by the fact that Russia was a predominantly agrarian country "more than 75% of the country's population was engaged in agriculture, and the agrarian sector of the economy gave about half of the gross national product .

political background. Like socio-economic ones, they matured gradually. The beginning was laid by the reforms of the 1860s-l870s, which became an important stage in the modernization of the Russian state. The formula B P of Lenin is correct, that 1861 gave birth to 1905. The reforms gave a powerful impetus to the development of the country. They introduced some elements of bourgeois statehood into the political system of Russia "created elected representative institutions of local government (zemstvo and city self-government bodies), elected court bodies (world courts), established the foundations of bourgeois judicial system and legal proceedings, more flexible bourgeois forms state financial control and censorship, etc.

In the activities of the highest state bodies (the Committee of Ministers, the Council of Ministers, the State Council, the Senate), an increasing place began to be occupied by affairs related to bourgeois entrepreneurship and property bureaucracy has declined, amounting to the beginning of the XX century. a little over 50%. The so-called plutocracy appeared as part of the bureaucracy - representatives of the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie, as well as the "third element" - civilian personnel of self-government bodies (doctors, statisticians, agronomists, teachers, etc.) However, the positions of the Russian bourgeoisie in public administration were weak in unlike the countries of Western Europe, where the "third estate" was politically active, had a pronounced civic position, acted as a leader and a conductor of modernization. The weakness of the political influence of the bourgeoisie raised its discontent and was compensated by the omnipotence of the noble bureaucracy. the state, especially the forms of rule and the political system, was a taboo topic for a long time. In view of this, the technical revolution coexisted with absolutism and with the most basic forms of serfdom

By the beginning of the 20th century the main pre-reform higher, central and local institutions with a noble bureaucratic majority, as well as the foundations of pre-reform law, have been preserved. The State Council retained the importance of the supreme legislative body. The top bureaucracy more than once put forward projects to expand the composition of the State Council at the expense of elected members from Zemstvo assemblies and city dumas, the authors of which were M T Loris-Melikov, P A Valuev and others. However, they were not implemented Russia remained absolute a monarchy headed by an autocrat-emperor. The lack of reform of the political system gave rise to protest in society.

During the reign of Alexander Ul, the importance of the State Council falls somewhat due to the strengthening of the role of the Committee of Ministers. The emperor preferred to discuss bills in a narrower circle of senior officials. In contrast to the Committee of Ministers, which was in charge of the current administrative grandfather. The Council of Ministers considered and discussed events of national importance. The ruling Senate retained in post-reform Russia the importance of the supreme body of court and supervision. The functions and apparatus that existed before 1861 were retained by the Holy Synod.

The lack of continuity in the political course of the autocracy, which alternated reforms with counter-reforms, further intensified the crisis. During the reign of Alexander Ill, in a number of areas (local administration, court, education system), measures were taken that limited and distorted the reforms of the 1860-l870-x

An essential role in the maturation of the conditions for the revolution was played by the personality traits and style of government of the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II (1868-1918). he perceived the departure from them as a betrayal of the interests of Russia and an abuse of the sacred foundations bequeathed by his ancestors. The emperor considered autocracy as a family affair of the Romanovs, in which no one has the right to interfere. sheet of the First All-Imperial Population Census of 1897, where he wrote down clearly and daconically: “The owner of the Russian land.” In his first public speech in January 1895, the Nar said: “Let everyone know that, devoting all my strength to the good of the people, I will protect the beginnings of the autocracy as firmly and unswervingly as my unforgettable late parent guarded him.”

However, it was impossible to try to solve the large-scale problems facing Russia at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries with the “policy of the Middle Ages”, without shaking the age-old foundations of Russian statehood. The last Russian tsar faced a task, the solution of which was put into the background by all his predecessors. The country was called upon to overcome the backwardness of the social system, to liberalize the political regime. The answer to the inability of the autocracy to respond to the challenge of the times and to carry out reforms that weaken the intensity of confrontation in society was the nervous Russian revolution.

The political crisis in the country was exacerbated by the adventurous foreign policy of the tsarist government at the beginning of the 20th century. in the ruling spheres, the influence of a group of politicians headed by the Minister of the Interior B. K. Plehve prevailed, who introduced a way to resolve internal contradictions in the “small victorious war”. In the government, supporters of the so-called “big Asian program” assumed the exit and strengthening of Russia on the Pacific coast. Aggressive foreign policy and the struggle for the redivision of the world were characteristic features of the imperialist stage in the development of capitalism. The Nikolaev empire was drawn into a complex tangle of international contradictions, which led it to an inglorious war with Japan, and in the future to a world war. This war became the catalyst for a revolutionary explosion. As V. O. Klyuchevsky correctly pointed out, a monarchy that suffers a military defeat loses its legitimacy.

The Russo-Japanese war, which began on January 27, 1904, was doomed even before it began, as many politicians pointed out. There was a disdainful underestimation of the enemy, the vagueness of the purpose of entering the war, the lack of a strategic concept of military operations, the mediocrity of command, the poor preparedness of officers , backward weapons, significantly inferior to the Japanese In August 1905, the Treaty of Portsmouth was signed, which recorded a significant weakening of Russia's positions in the Far East, the loss of its spheres of aliya in China and Korea, on Sakhalin. Russia's failures in foreign policy have brought the country to the brink of revolution

Events of the Revolution of 1905-1907 The beginning of the first Russian revolution was laid by the events of January 9, 1905, which received the name "Bloody Sunday" Troops in St. Petersburg shot crowds of workers marching to the Winter Palace to file a petition. data, the number of victims was much higher - from 800 to l000 killed). "Bloody Sunday" undermined the people's faith in the king

The procession was organized by the priest G. Gapon, an agent of the St. Petersburg secret police and the founder of the St. Petersburg Society of Factory Workers, an organization that aimed to sway the workers to the side of the autocracy. The demonstrators demanded the introduction of elected popular representation and the provision of civil rights to the population. The petition also included slogans for improving the life of workers (establishing an eight-hour working day, increasing wages), convening a Constituent Assembly to hold democratic reforms, the responsibility of ministers to the people, etc. The petition collected 150,000 signatures

The execution of workers in St. Petersburg stirred up the general public. A wave of workers' strikes in protest against the mistreatment of the population swept across the country. In January 1905 alone, the number of strikers was 10 times higher than the average annual level of the previous decade. A symptom of the political activation of the workers was the creation of Soviets of authorized deputies, which initially served as centers of leadership * strikes, and then gradually transformed into alternative bodies of power. The first such Council arose in May 1905 during a strike of textile workers in Ivanovo-Voznesensk. On behalf of the workers, the Council elected by them negotiated with the owners of the factories and represented their interests before the city authorities, was engaged in the protection of social order (formed its own milipiya, banned the sale of strong liquor in the shops during the strike), distributed between the strikers the funds collected for them by the workers, organized a political demonstration under the slogan "Down with autocracy!". As the Ivanovo-Voznesensk strike showed, the workers did not limit themselves to criticizing the existing order and demanding political reforms, but developed their own alternative model of state administration and self-government.

The growth of the revolution was evidenced by the statistics of Kreegian protests - in January-February 1905, 126 cases of protest were registered, in March-April - 247, in May-June - already 791. Unrest in the village was accompanied by the seizure, looting and arson of noble estates. According to rough estimates by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in 1905-1907 more than 2 thousand small estates were destroyed and burned down, the peak of protests came in the autumn of 1905.

Revolutionary uprisings engulfed the army, which had previously been the unshakable support of the autocracy. In the summer and autumn of 1905, more than 40 performances by soldiers and sailors took place. In June 1905, the team of the squadron battleship of the Black Sea Fleet "Prince Potemkin Tauride" - one of the best ships of the fleet - rebelled. Unrest began on the national outskirts of the revolutionary movement swept Poland, Finland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, the Caucasus, and Central Asia.

In September-October 1905, Russia was engulfed in a general political strike, in which railroad workers, factories, and city institutions took part. The events began in Moscow with a strike of printers who put forward political demands. Soon representatives of other professions joined it, the demands began to be of an economic nature, the geography of speeches expanded: they covered 66 provinces of European Russia. The culmination of the revolution was an armed uprising in Moscow in December 1905 i.