We must be aware that all parties, absolutely everyone - from the monarchists to the Bolsheviks - were the product and implementation of Western Modernity, because the very idea underlying their existence is the idea of ​​political "freedom", the competition of elites, and ultimately - individualism, the idea of ​​atomization as the ultimate ideal of freedom.

For the Russian consciousness, always aimed at seeking justice and, moreover, hierarchical, not perceiving people outside of their general connection and need for each other, the idea of ​​politics as a confrontation of competing private interests is deeply alien.

The October Manifesto of 1905 thus marked the political victory of the bearers of the Western liberal consciousness.

And no matter how monarchists, populists and conservatives the representatives of individual parties proclaim themselves, the very fact that they successfully acted in the field of party politics and oriented themselves in it, the very fact of successful party building indicates that this consciousness was fully assimilated by them and perceived as your own.

I remember that at the institute I tormented my teacher with the question: why, why did Guchkov, Milyukov and other monarchists support the constitutional reform? After all, it was their support that turned out to be decisive, did they really not understand that they were acting against their own convictions - they were destroying the Autocracy?

So, they didn't understand. Just like any Western person, a Modern person does not understand that the Autocracy and the constitution are incompatible.

In order to understand this, you need to be a man of Tradition and see in the Autocracy something other than just a monarchy, which pan-European modernity prescribes to be constitutional.
I repeat: all political parties, regardless of their orientation, by their very existence opposed Russian traditional culture.
And among them, the Marxist one was the most radical, but was no exception.

Marxism is the last political doctrine of the New Age, the final chord of the Modern.

Rationalism, cult of reason, social engineering, one-dimensionality of progress, maximally expressed in the doctrine of the change of socio-economic formations, liberal understanding of freedom.

Marxism denied the reality of its time, but it denied it precisely on the basis of those meanings that formed this reality and were shaped by it.

In the 19th century, the ideals of the New Age were embodied in liberalism - and the teachings of Marx-Engels were the most liberal of all contemporary liberal teachings. If you carefully read the founders, you can see that communism seemed to them the realm of individualism, the ultimate atomization, where all dependence of man on man was removed,- in other words, the realm of freedom precisely and only in its liberal sense.

Here, for example, is the future of the family - and along with traditional morality:

"With the transfer of the means of production to public ownership, the individual family will cease to be the economic unit of society. The private household will turn into a public sector of labor. The care and upbringing of children will become a public affair; society will equally care for all children, whether they are married or illegitimate. This will eliminate the concern about the "consequences" which at present constitutes the most essential social moment - moral and economic - that prevents a girl from giving herself to the man she loves without hesitation. at the same time, a more condescending approach of public opinion towards maiden honor and female modesty?
(Engels F. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. - Marx K., Engels F. Soch., vol. 21, pp. 78-79.)
Foresight project "Childhood-2030", for an hour, not written off from here?

The Russian Marxists of the first echelon, including the Bolsheviks, who had been brought up in a liberal environment and who never left Geneva, Lausanne and London, were Marxists in the full sense of the word. And all the signs of the 20s - the "glass of water" theory, the destruction of churches, constructivism in architecture, unlimited freedom of speech and assembly (by the way!) - are natural signs of a liberal modernization project unfolding in Russia.

However, this project was not destined to take place, and I see two main reasons for this.

The first one lies in the fact that the war, revolutionary unrest and subsequent modernization stirred up huge masses of people who, by the very situation, were confronted with the question of how to live on. These questioning masses received in response a modernization impulse, powerful and, by historical standards, instantaneous. They had to assimilate and assimilated a set of completely new concepts in the shortest possible time.
But, as you know, quickly learned is poorly learned.
There was nothing like that gradual, diffuse penetration, thanks to which the milieu of Russian liberals was formed. There was an active agitation, people listened to it - and perceived it as best they could. In accordance with its own, not modernized, Russian traditional understanding of things.

AND They said: "Communism is the happy future of peoples!" - and they imagined not a collection of free individuals, not even burdened with a family, but a huge friendly family, where everyone is soldered, takes care of each other and is united in work and rest. They were told: "Freedom!" - and they saw in reality the fabulous peasant ideal, the happy country of the Berendeys, where between the king and the plowman there is neither a gentleman nor a boss. .. They were told: “There is no God!” They scratched their heads in puzzlement (“How is it not? ! Be pure, righteous, serve people disinterestedly - He will hear you even without prayers.

To show how deeply this interpretation of Marxism has penetrated, how natural and indispensable it has become for the Soviet builders of communism, let me give an example from a completely different era.

Here is the article "Communism" from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. It was written by professional Marxists, who in fact ate the dog, studied everything according to documents and primary sources, and, naturally, sought to follow the ideas of the founders as accurately as possible (verbatim!)

Reading:
The development of individuality under K. is really free in the affirmation of harmonious relations between the individual and society, here the free development of each is a condition for the free development of all.
And now let's compare it with how it is written in the "Manifesto":
In place of the old bourgeois society with its classes and class antagonisms comes an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

Almost verbatim, yes. But do you notice? Instead of Marx's "association", a kind of ideal gas, a collection of unrelated particles, where the "free development of all" is simply the sum of the free development of individual individuals - "harmonious relations" (that is, firstly, there are relations, there are connections, and in - second - these connections are "harmonious", suggesting harmony - inseparability, merging, complementarity). And in addition - "individuals" with "society". That is, it goes without saying that there is a society, understood as a whole, having its own properties, not reducible to the sum of the properties of individual individuals.

And these are Marxists, members of a professional corporation in which they spanked painfully for gag.

So, they didn't notice. The entire Soviet scientific-communist community did not notice how organic the substitution was for Soviet psychology.

The second important reason The failure of the liberal project was a change in the qualitative composition of the Bolshevik elite itself. From the second half of the 1920s, the old "Leninist guard" began to lose ground. The political ambitions of the second echelon took shape, in which there were several groups that fiercely fought among themselves. Gradually, the most active began to take over - and the most, we note, close to the people. Headed by a graduate of an Orthodox seminary, it consisted of the ideological common people who had joined the Bolsheviks at one time - "noble robbers" who once committed "exes" in the spirit of Dubrovsky for the happiness of the people, field commanders of the civil war of peasant and Cossack origin, provincial engineers, literate workers .. Needless to say, these people, who had never been in exile and did not participate in the pre-revolutionary discussions of a narrow Marxist milieu, themselves fully shared the popular idea of ​​communism.

Russian Marxism

Initially, Marxism on Russian soil was an extreme form of Russian Westernism. Russian Marxism was waiting for liberation from the industrial development of Russia. Capitalist industry must lead to the formation and development of the working class, which is the liberating class.

The Marxists thought that they had finally found a real social basis for the revolutionary liberation struggle. The only real social force that can be relied upon is the emerging proletariat. It is necessary to develop the class revolutionary consciousness of this proletariat. We must go not to the peasantry, which rejected the revolutionary intelligentsia, but to the workers, to the factory. The Marxists recognized themselves as realists, because the development of capitalism at that time was really taking place in Russia.

The first Marxists wanted to rely not so much on the revolutionary intelligentsia, on the role of the individual in history, but on the objective socio-economic process. They fought against utopianism, against daydreaming, and were proud that they had finally found the truth of scientific socialism, which promises them a sure victory by virtue of a natural, objective social process. Socialism will be the result of economic necessity, necessary development.

The first Russian Marxists were very fond of talking about the development of material productive forces as their main hope and support. At the same time, they were interested not so much in the economic development of Russia itself, as a positive goal and good, but in the formation of an instrument of revolutionary struggle. Such was revolutionary psychology.

The aims of the Russian revolutionary intelligentsia seem to have remained the same, but they have acquired a new weapon of struggle, they have felt firmer ground under their feet. Marxism was a more complex mental theory than the theories on which the revolutionary intelligentsia had hitherto relied, and required great effort of thought. But it was regarded as a revolutionary weapon, and above all as an instrument of struggle against the old trends that had shown their impotence.

In the beginning, the Marxists even gave the impression of being less extreme and ferocious revolutionaries than the old socialist populists or socialist revolutionaries, as they began to be called, they were against terror. But this was a deceptive appearance, misleading even the gendarmes. The emergence of Russian Marxism was a serious crisis for the Russian intelligentsia, a shock to the foundations of their world outlook. Various new currents emerged from Marxism. And one must understand the essence of Marxism and its duality in order to orient oneself in further Russian currents.

Marxism is a more complex phenomenon than is commonly thought. It must not be forgotten that Marx emerged from the depths of German idealism at the beginning of the 19th century; he was imbued with the ideas of Fichte and Hegel. Feuerbach, the main representative of left Hegelianism, was exactly the same, and even then, when he called himself a materialist, he was completely imbued with idealistic philosophy and even remained a kind of theologian. Especially in the young Marx one can feel his origin from idealism, which left a seal on the whole concept of materialism.

Marxism, of course, gives very good grounds for interpreting Marxist doctrine as a consistent system of sociological determinism. The economy determines all human life; not only the whole structure of society depends on it, but also the whole ideology, the whole spiritual culture, religion, philosophy, morality, art. The economy is the basis, the ideology is the superstructure. There is an inevitable objective socio-economic process by which everything is determined. The form of production and exchange is, as it were, the original life, and everything else depends on it. It is not he himself who thinks and creates in man, but the social class to which he belongs, he thinks and creates like a nobleman, big bourgeois, petty bourgeois or proletarian. A person cannot free himself from the economy that defines him, he only reflects it.

This is one side of Marxism. The power of the economy in human life was not invented by Marx, and he is not the culprit that the economy influences ideology in such a way. Marx saw this in the capitalist society of Europe that surrounded him. But he generalized it and gave it a universal character. What he discovered in the capitalist society of his time, he recognized as the basis of any society. He discovered a lot in capitalist society and said a lot of true things about it, but his mistake was to universalize the particular.

Marx's economic determinism is of a very special character. This is the exposure of the illusions of consciousness. This was already done by Feuerbach for religious consciousness. Marx's method of exposing the illusions of consciousness is very similar to what Freud does. Ideology, which is only a superstructure, religious beliefs, philosophical theories, moral assessments, creativity in art - illusoryly reflect in consciousness reality, which is primarily economic reality, that is, the collective struggle of man with nature to maintain life, just as in Freud is primarily sexual reality. Being determines consciousness, but being is primarily material, economic being. Spirit is an epiphenomenon of this economic existence.

Marxism does not directly derive every ideology and every spiritual culture from economics, but through the medium of class psychology, i.e., there is a psychological link in the sociological determinism of Marxism. Although the existence of class psychology and class distortion of all ideas and beliefs is an undoubted truth, psychology itself is the weakest side of Marxism, this psychology was rationalistic and completely outdated.

In order to understand the meaning of the sociological determinism of Marxism and its exposure of the illusions of consciousness, it is necessary to pay attention to the existence of a completely different side in Marxism, apparently contradicting economic materialism. Marxism is not only the doctrine of historical or economic materialism about the complete dependence of man on the economy, Marxism is also the doctrine of deliverance, of the messianic calling of the proletariat, of the coming perfect society in which man will no longer depend on the economy, of the power and victory of man over irrational forces of nature and society. The soul of Marxism is here, and not in economic determinism.

Man is entirely determined by the economy in a capitalist society, this refers to the past. The determinability of man by economics can be interpreted as a sin of the past. But in the future it may be different, a person can be freed from slavery. And the proletariat is the active subject that will free man from slavery and create a better life. Messianic properties are attributed to him, the properties of the chosen people of God are transferred to him, he is the new Israel. This is the secularization of the Hebrew messianic consciousness.

The lever with which it will be possible to turn the world upside down has been found. And here the materialism of Marx turns into extreme idealism. Marx discovers in capitalism the process of dehumanization, the "reification" of man. Marx's brilliant doctrine of the fetishism of commodities is connected with this. Everything in history, in social life, is a product of human activity, human labor, human struggle. But man falls victim to an illusory, deceptive consciousness, by virtue of which the results of his own activity and labor appear to him as an external objective world on which he depends. There is no material, objective, economic reality, this is an illusion, there is only the activity of man and the active relationship of man to man. Capital is not an objective material reality that is outside of man, capital is only the social relations of people in production. Behind the economic reality are always hidden living people and social groupings of people. And man, by his activity, can melt this ghostly world of the capitalist economy. This is what the proletariat is called upon to fall victim to this illusion, the fetishization and reification of the products of human labor. The proletariat must fight against the reification of man, against the dehumanization of the economy, must show the omnipotence of human activity.

This is a completely different side of Marxism, and it was strong in the early Marx. Faith in the activity of man, the subject, he received from German idealism. This is faith in the spirit and it is not compatible with materialism. In Marxism there are elements of a true existential philosophy that reveals the illusion and deceit of objectivation, overcoming the world of objectified things by human activity. Only this side of Marxism could inspire enthusiasm and arouse revolutionary energy. Economic determinism belittles a person, only faith in human activity, which can accomplish a miraculous rebirth of society, elevates him.

Connected with this is the revolutionary, dynamic understanding of dialectics. It must be said that dialectical materialism is an absurd phrase. There can be no dialectics of matter, dialectics presupposes logos, meaning, only dialectics of thought and spirit is possible. But Marx transferred the properties of thought and spirit to the depths of matter. The material process is characterized by thought, reason, freedom, creative activity, and therefore the material process can lead to the triumph of meaning, to the mastery of the social mind of all life. Dialectics turns into an exaltation of human will, human activity. Everything is no longer determined by the objective development of the material productive forces, not by the economy, but by the revolutionary class struggle, that is, by the activity of man. Man can conquer the power of the economy over his life. What is ahead, according to Marx and Engels, is a leap from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom. History will be sharply divided into two parts, into the past, determined by the economy, when man was a slave, and into the future, which will begin with the victory of the proletariat and will be entirely determined by the activity of man, social man, when there will be a kingdom of freedom. The transition from necessity to freedom is understood in the spirit of Hegel. But the revolutionary dialectic of Marxism is not the logical necessity of the self-disclosure and self-development of an idea, but the activity of a revolutionary man, for whom the past is not obligatory.

Freedom is a conscious necessity, but this consciousness of necessity can work miracles, completely regenerate life and create something new, something that has never been. The transition to the realm of freedom is a victory over original sin, which Marx saw in the exploitation of man by man. The entire moral pathos of Marx is connected with this disclosure of exploitation as the basis of human society, the exploitation of labor. Marx clearly confused economic and ethical categories. The doctrine of surplus value, which reveals the exploitation of workers by capitalists, Marx considered a scientific economic doctrine. But in reality it is above all an ethical teaching. Exploitation is not an economic phenomenon, but above all a phenomenon of a moral order, a morally bad attitude of man to man. There is a striking contradiction between the scientific immorality of Marx, who could not stand the ethical justification of socialism, and the extreme moralism of the Marxists in assessing social life. The entire doctrine of the class struggle has an axiological character. The difference between "bourgeois" and "proletarian" is the difference between evil and good, injustice and justice, between the deserving of reproach and approval. In the system of Marxism there is a logically contradictory combination of materialistic, scientific-deterministic, immoral elements with idealistic, moralistic, religious-myth-creating elements. Marx created a real myth about the proletariat. The mission of the proletariat is an object of faith. Marxism is not only science and politics, it is also faith, religion. And that's where his strength is based.

The Russians at first perceived Marxism primarily from the side of objective science. What struck me most was Marx's teaching that socialism would be the necessary result of objective economic development, that it was determined by the very development of the material productive forces. This was taken as hope. The Russian socialists have ceased to feel themselves groundless, hanging over the abyss. They felt themselves to be "scientific", not utopian, not dreamy socialists. "Scientific socialism" has become an object of faith. But the firm hope that scientific socialism gives for the realization of the longed-for goal is connected with industrial development, with the formation of a class of factory workers. A country that will remain exclusively agricultural and peasant does not give such hopes. Therefore, the first Russian Marxists had first of all to overthrow the Narodnik world outlook, to prove that capitalism was developing and should develop in Russia. The struggle for the thesis that capitalist industry is developing in Russia and consequently the number of workers is increasing, seemed like a revolutionary struggle.

But Marxism was perceived differently. For some, the development of capitalist industry in Russia meant hope for the triumph of socialism. The working class is emerging. One must devote all one's strength to the development of the consciousness of this class. It was Plekhanov who said: "The whole dynamic of our social life is for capitalism." In saying this, he was thinking not of industry itself, but of the workers.

For others, mainly for legal Marxists, the development of capitalist industry acquired a self-contained significance, and the revolutionary class side of Marxism receded into the background. Such was above all P. Struve, the representative of bourgeois Marxism.

Those Russian Social Democrats, Marxists, who later received the name "Mensheviks", greatly valued the thesis that a socialist revolution is possible only in a country with a developed capitalist industry. Therefore, a socialist revolution will be possible in Russia when it ceases to be predominantly a peasant and agricultural country. This type of Marxist has always cherished the objective-scientific, deterministic side of Marxism, but has also preserved the subjective, revolutionary-class side of Marxism.

The constant talk of the first Marxists about the need to develop capitalism in Russia and their readiness to welcome this development led the old Narodnaya Volya L. Tikhomirov, who later went over to the reactionary camp, to accuse the Marxists of turning into knights of primitive accumulation. Indeed, Russian Marxism, which arose in a country not yet industrialized, without a developed proletariat, must have been torn apart by a moral contradiction that weighed heavily on the conscience of many Russian socialists. How can one wish for the development of capitalism, welcome this development, and at the same time consider capitalism an evil and injustice against which every socialist is called upon to fight? This complex dialectical question creates a moral conflict. The development of capitalist industry in Russia presupposed the proletarianization of the peasantry, depriving them of the instruments of production, i.e., plunging a considerable part of the people into misery. Capitalism meant the exploitation of the workers and, therefore, the emergence of these forms of exploitation had to be welcomed. In classical Marxism itself there was a duality in the evaluation of capitalism and the bourgeoisie. Marx, since he stood on the evolutionary point of view and recognized the existence of different stages in history, in relation to which the assessment changes, highly appreciated the mission of the bourgeoisie in the past and the role of capitalism in the development of the material power of mankind.

The whole concept of Marxism depends very much on the development of capitalism and associates with capitalist industry the messianic idea of ​​the proletariat, which has nothing in common with science. Marxism believes that the factory, and only the factory, will create the new man. The same question is put before Marxism in a different form: is the Marxist ideology the same reflection of economic reality as all other ideologies, or does it lay claim to the discovery of absolute truth, independent of the historical forms of the economy and economic interests? For the philosophy of Marxism, the question is very important: is this philosophy pragmatism or absolute realism? This question will also be debated in Soviet philosophy.

So, the first Russian Marxists were confronted with a moral and a cognitive question and created a moral and logical conflict. We will see that this moral conflict will be resolved only by Lenin and the Bolsheviks. It is the Marxist Lenin who will assert that socialism can be realized in Russia apart from the development of capitalism and before the formation of a large working class.

Plekhanov, on the other hand, spoke out against the combination of a revolution that would overthrow the autocratic monarchy and a social revolution; he was against the revolutionary-socialist seizure of power, i.e., in advance against the communist revolution in the form in which it had taken place. With the social revolution you have to wait. The emancipation of the workers must be the work of the workers themselves, and not of the revolutionary circle. This requires an increase in the number of workers, the development of their consciousness, and presupposes a more developed industry.

Plekhanov was initially an enemy of Bakuninism, in which he saw a mixture of Fourier and Stenka Razin. He is against rebellion and conspiracy, against Jacobinism and belief in committees. The dictatorship can do nothing if the working class is not prepared for the revolution. The reactionary nature of the peasant community, which hinders economic development, is emphasized. We need to rely on an objective social process.

Plekhanov did not accept the Bolshevik revolution, because he was always against the seizure of power, for which neither strength nor consciousness was yet prepared. First of all, it is necessary to revolutionize the consciousness, and not a spontaneous movement, and revolutionize the consciousness of the working class itself, and not the minority organized by the Party.

But if the principles of Marxism were applied to Russia in this way, it would take too long to live before the social revolution. The possibility of direct socialist activity in Russia was called into question. The revolutionary will could be finally crushed by intellectual theory. And the most revolutionary-minded Russian Marxists had to interpret Marxism differently and construct other theories of the Russian revolution, develop different tactics. In this wing of Russian Marxism, the revolutionary will prevailed over intellectual theories, over bookish interpretations of Marxism. There was an imperceptible combination of the traditions of revolutionary Marxism with the traditions of the old Russian revolutionism, which did not want to allow the capitalist stage in the development of Russia, with Chernyshevsky, Bakunin, Nechaev, Tkachev. This time, not Fourier, but Marx was connected with Stenka Razin. The Marxist-Bolsheviks turned out to be much more in the Russian tradition than the Marxist-Mensheviks. On the basis of an evolutionary, deterministic interpretation of Marxism, it was impossible to justify a proletarian, socialist revolution in an industrially backward, peasant country with an underdeveloped working class. With such an understanding of Marxism, one had to rely first on the bourgeois revolution, on the development of capitalism, and only then to carry out the socialist revolution. This was not very favorable for the exaltation of the revolutionary will.

On the basis of the transfer of Marxist ideas to Russia among the Russian Social Democrats, among other things, a trend of “economism” arose, which placed the political revolution on the liberal and radical bourgeoisie, and considered it necessary to organize a purely economic, professional movement among the workers. It was the right wing of the Social Democracy that provoked a reaction from its more revolutionary wing. There was more and more division within Russian Marxism into an orthodox, more revolutionary wing and a critical, more reformist wing.

The distinction between "orthodox" and "critical" Marxism was very relative, because "critical" Marxism was in some respects more faithful to the scientific, deterministic side of Marxism than "orthodox" Marxism, which drew completely original conclusions from Marxism in relation to Russia. , which could hardly be accepted by Marx and Engels.

Lukacs, a Hungarian who writes in German, the most intelligent of the communist writers, who has shown great subtlety of thought, makes a peculiar and, in my opinion, correct definition of revolutionary. Revolutionism is not at all determined by the radicalism of the aims, or even by the nature of the means employed in the struggle. Revolutionism is totality, integrity in relation to every act of life. A revolutionary is one who, in every act he performs, relates him to the whole, to the whole of society, subordinates him to a central and integral idea. For a revolutionary there are no separate spheres, he does not allow fragmentation, he does not allow the autonomy of thought in relation to action and the autonomy of action in relation to thought. The revolutionary has an integral world outlook, in which theory and practice are organically merged. Totalitarianism in everything is the main sign of a revolutionary attitude to life.

I. Repin "Refusal of confession before execution"

Critical Marxism could have the same ultimate ideals as revolutionary Marxism, which considers itself orthodox, but it recognized separate, autonomous spheres, it did not assert totality. One could, for example, be a Marxist in the social sphere and not be a materialist, even be an idealist. It was possible to criticize certain aspects of the Marxist worldview.

Marxism ceased to be an integral, totalitarian doctrine; it turned into a method in social cognition and social struggle. This is contrary to the revolutionary type of totalitarianism. Russian revolutionaries have always been total in the past. The revolution was for them a religion and philosophy, and not just a struggle related to the social and political side of life. And a Russian Marxism, corresponding to this revolutionary type and this revolutionary totalitarian instinct, had to be worked out. This is Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Bolshevism defined itself as the only orthodox, i.e., totalitarian, integral Marxism, which does not allow the Marxist worldview to be split up and accept only its separate parts.

This "orthodox" Marxism, which in reality was a Russian-style transformed Marxism, took first of all not the deterministic, evolutionary, scientific side of Marxism, but its messianic, myth-creating religious side, allowing for the exaltation of the revolutionary will, bringing to the fore the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, led by an organized minority inspired by the conscious proletarian idea.

This orthodox, totalitarian Marxism has always demanded a materialistic faith, but it also had strong idealistic elements. He showed how great is the power of an idea over human life if it is total and corresponds to the instincts of the masses. In Marxism-Bolshevism, the proletariat ceased to be an empirical reality, because as an empirical reality the proletariat was insignificant, it was first of all the idea of ​​the proletariat, and the bearer of this idea could be an insignificant minority. If this insignificant minority is completely possessed by the titanic idea of ​​the proletariat, if its revolutionary will is exalted, if it is well organized and disciplined, then it can perform miracles, can overcome the determinism of social regularity.

Lenin proved in practice that this is possible. He made a revolution in the name of Marx, but not according to Marx. The communist revolution in Russia was carried out in the name of totalitarian Marxism, Marxism as the religion of the proletariat, but in opposition to everything that Marx said about the development of human societies. It was orthodox, totalitarian Marxism that succeeded in bringing about the revolution in which Russia skipped the stage of capitalist development that seemed so inevitable to the first Russian Marxists.

This proved to be in keeping with Russian traditions and the instincts of the people. At this time, the illusions of revolutionary populism were outlived, the myth of the people-peasantry fell. The people did not accept the revolutionary intelligentsia. A new revolutionary myth was needed. And the myth of the people was replaced by the myth of the proletariat. Marxism decomposed the concept of the people as an integral organism, decomposed into classes with opposing interests. But in the myth of the proletariat, the myth of the Russian people was restored in a new way. There has been, as it were, an identification of the Russian people with the proletariat, of Russian messianism with proletarian messianism. A worker-peasant, Soviet Russia rose. In it, the people-peasantry united with the people-proletariat, contrary to everything that Marx said, who considered the peasantry to be a petty-bourgeois, reactionary class. Orthodox, totalitarian Marxism forbade talking about the opposition of the interests of the proletariat and the peasantry. This broke Trotsky, who wanted to be faithful to classical Marxism. The peasantry was declared a revolutionary class, although the Soviet government had to constantly fight it, sometimes very cruelly.

Lenin returned in a new way to the old tradition of Russian revolutionary thought. He proclaimed that the industrial backwardness of Russia, the rudimentary character of capitalism, is the great advantage of the social revolution. You don't have to deal with a strong, organized bourgeoisie.

Bolshevism is much more traditional than is generally thought, it agrees with the originality of the Russian historical process. Russification and orientalization of Marxism took place...

The biggest paradox in the fate of Russia and the Russian revolution is that liberal ideas, the ideas of law, as well as the ideas of social reformism, turned out to be utopian in Russia. Bolshevism, on the other hand, turned out to be the least utopian and the most realistic, the most appropriate for the whole situation as it developed in Russia in 1917, and the most faithful to some of the original Russian traditions, and the Russian search for a universal social truth, understood maximalistically, and Russian methods of governing and ruling by force. This was determined by the entire course of Russian history, but also by the weakness of our creative spiritual forces.

Communism turned out to be the inevitable fate of Russia, an internal moment in the fate of the Russian people.