Прогресс и преображение

In the introductory lecture “Progress and Transformation,” read on September 3, 1914 in the academic audience, Archimandrite Hilarion attempts to analyze the deep, ontological reasons for this war, its unclear, but for many, main spiritual meaning. This war, according to the lecturer, is not some kind of annoying absurdity, an accident that could not have happened. It is not even just a war of states, nations for some political, economic, geographical and similar advantages. This is a war of two ideologies, two worldviews, worldviews, and more precisely, two ways of existence, the antinomy and counter-directionality of which makes the war between them a natural consequence of a conflict that cannot be resolved by any peaceful means. The name of one of these modes of existence is progress, the other is transformation. The most prominent representatives: the first - Germany, the second - Russia. Progress is only “the adaptation to human life of the general principle of evolution, and evolutionary theory is the legitimation of the struggle for existence” 212. The most consistent exponent of the theory of evolution and progress is Nietzsche. The goal of human development is the superman. “The superman must break forever with Christian virtues; for him they are vice and death.” The main virtue is strength. Using others who are weaker, even at the cost of their death, to achieve one’s “higher” goals is the main law and the main virtue of progress. “Transfer these words into politics, and you will get the policy of Germany... Even large nations, even the Russian people, the Germans are ready to look at as manure to fertilize the soil on which German cultural progress should grow and flourish” 213. Hence “war is the best indicator of the inner essence of cultural progress,” and “it is the self-curse of progress.” Therefore, the German nation, which considers itself Christian, but has long fallen away from the Church of Christ, is much closer to the Mohammedan Turks than to the Orthodox Russians. Closer because it’s more profitable. Profit is the idol of cultural progress, which “for its prosperity certainly requires complete slavery to it on the part of human society” 214. For the Slavic Orthodox world, and in particular for Russia, there are no idols, but there is an ideal. This is the “religious ideal of Orthodoxy,” which “is not progress, but transformation” 215. The Russian character, formed under the influence of the Church, could never seriously think about earthly achievements, which are implied by the word progress, as unconditional values. “All cultural and political activity seems to a Russian to be just a division, to which it is a sin to give one’s entire soul” 216. The Orthodox soul does not strive for well-fed complacency, but for salvation through the transformation of human nature, through deification, which is possible only in the Church. Unity with God, which requires a refusal to worship the idol of progress, is the ideal of the Russian people. “As we enter the second century of our dear and dear academy,” the academy inspector concluded his lecture, “we will each have our Russian ideal of transformation as a guiding light, so that when the time comes to work in the people’s field, we will not serve hard European stone to those who ask for real Russian bread” 217 . “The concept of Archimandrite Hilarion was positively received among the God-seeking intelligentsia” 218. However, despite such an ardent patriotic mood, Archimandrite Hilarion does not lose his ability to reason. He imagines academic service itself as participation in hostilities on the ideological front and perceives the transition from this front to the active army, although not as desertion, but at least as an unjustified lowering of the level of struggle against a common enemy. Hilarion, (Troitsky), sschmch. Progress and transformation // Same. Without the Church there is no salvation. P. 266. Krasnov-Levitin A., Shavrov V. Essays on the history of Russian church unrest. – M.: Krutitsky Patriarchal Compound, Kusnacht (Schweiz): Institut Glaube in der 2. Welt, 1996. P. 313.