Crown of thorns (in memory of F. M. Dostoevsky)

Read at an evening in memory of F. M. Dostoevsky in Kyiv on February 25, 1906, and was published in No. 1 of the magazine “Freedom and Culture.” About Dostoevsky cf. also our following essays: “Ivan Karamazov as a philosophical type” (in the collection “From Marxism to Idealism”, 1903), “Vasnetsov, Dostoevsky, Soloviev and Tolstoy. Parallels" (in the collection "Literary Affairs"), "After a quarter of a century" (Introductory essay about F. M. Dostoevsky for the 6th edition of his works). Dostoevsky ended his immortal speech about Pushkin with the following words: “If Pushkin had lived longer, there would have been, perhaps, fewer misunderstandings and disputes between us than we see now. But God judged differently. Pushkin died in the full development of his powers and undoubtedly took some great secret with him to the grave. And now we are solving this mystery without him.” These profound words apply to F. M. Dostoevsky himself. In a certain sense, every person is an unsolved mystery, although they usually pass by without noticing. This is especially clear regarding those people who revealed their souls, but the more they revealed it, the more enigmatic and mysterious it remained, and they went to the grave unsolved. The last word, the secret of living individuality, its spiritual essence turned out to be unspoken, the creative plan that called this living soul into existence remained unrevealed, and one can only guess and argue about what really was the most important, genuine, essential in a person. And to the highest degree, all this has to be said about the individuality of such power, wealth, and complexity as F. M. Dostoevsky was. Is there in all Russian and, perhaps, even world literature greater complexity, a more bizarre fracturedness of the soul than Dostoevsky, and that is why his individuality is stamped with the stamp of a particularly deep secret? It is this mystery that we now have to unravel. Where is Dostoevsky’s soul, where did its true, primordial element manifest itself, not what he himself thought and wrote about himself, but what he really was? In general, it is possible to answer such a question only subjectively: this means talking about what our own inner eye sees in him, why we need and value Dostoevsky, what we believe in Dostoevsky (for in the end, here, as elsewhere, the most basic and central question is resolved only by an act of faith, inner clairvoyance, intuitive feeling). To answer the question of what the secret of personality is means to spiritually know it, and this knowledge is such an intimate internal act that is based only on spiritual fusion, on the intimate touch of souls, on direct perception rather than on the reflective activity of the mind. In relation to Dostoevsky, in the knowledge of him from the side of Russian society and Russian criticism, there is a twofold trend. One part - I will not exaggerate if I say that the majority belongs to this category 1 - treats Dostoevsky with gross indifference, essentially not noticing him, or getting rid of him with cheap methods of simply denouncing Dostoevsky’s political errors. The whole problem of Dostoevsky, if there is one, is exhausted for them by the fact that Dostoevsky thought incorrectly about autocracy and other political issues, and was, in a progressive sense, politically unreliable. Labeling a reaction and filing it away is so simple, so indulgent to established habits and mental laziness, that it is not surprising if such exercises still continue. Dostoevsky was little understood by the critics of his time (with very few exceptions), and even the insightful Mikhailovsky treated him superficially and journalistically, seeing in him only “cruel talent.” In modern times, such spiritual indifference to Dostoevsky and evaluating him only from a political angle seems to have come to an end. A more serious study of Dostoevsky begins. A quarter of a century after his death, Dostoevsky is finally noticed and is beginning to be understood. Dostoevsky may not be noticed at all, and there is nothing to help against this spiritual blindness, but the one who once noticed him can no longer tear himself away from the “cruel talent”; for that Dostoevsky becomes a companion for life, a torment, a mystery, a consolation. There can be no middle ground here. Once you notice Dostoevsky, you can no longer tear yourself away from him. But this does not mean that it can be perceived easily and simply, that it is clear and thereby calms contradictions. No, Dostoevsky's problem is really difficult, complex and painful. For in the soul of this man there was a great, continuous struggle, and from the crater of this bubbling volcano erupted fire, molten metal, and lava mixed with hot mud. It is impossible to hide that in Dostoevsky there really is something unenlightened and unpacified, and there is also something that needs to be abandoned - and this was done, for example, by his closest like-minded person, V.S. Solovyov. In this living conglomerate, which represents the soul of Dostoevsky, the purest gold was welded with ash and slag, their final separation did not occur, and the broken life took to the grave the secret of resolution, synthesis, reconciliation and the final separation of good and evil. And everyone also interprets this apparent inconsistency in their own way, for some some pages from Dostoevsky lie on top, for others - others, some see only an accidental painful growth in what they have to refuse in Dostoevsky, on the contrary, others see this as an expression of the hidden essence, as if a sentence on Dostoevsky’s entire individuality. And everyone, I repeat, intimately perceiving Dostoevsky, expresses in essence what he believes and what he does not believe in him, revealing at the same time what he himself has in his inner experience. And in this sense, the attitude towards Dostoevsky, more than much else, characterizes a person’s own individuality, determines, so to speak, his caliber. When Dostoevsky was buried, a large crowd escorted the funeral chariot to the cemetery and, according to contemporaries’ descriptions, it was of a very diverse composition: young students, students and female students of various specialties, officers and ladies, young men and old men - the same diverse crowd as the one that enthusiastically applauded Pushkin’s speech six months before, when the general tension of delight was discharged by the fainting of an unknown young man near the pulpit at the feet of Dostoevsky. What united this crowd and gave birth to this painfully painful enthusiasm of love and gratitude for a speech that in many ways went against all current opinions and prejudices, which called the arrogant and self-righteous to repentance (humble yourself, proud man! Humble yourself, idle man! - this is how Dostoevsky exclaimed in it to the Russian intelligentsia)? Of course, both in the funeral procession and at the Pushkin festival there were fewer of Dostoevsky’s political like-minded people, and in general there were probably representatives of different political opinions. They were broken, which means that the political barriers that usually separate people, the general enthusiasm incinerated their apparent fortress! There were few, one must think, who suspected the full actual extent of Dostoevsky’s literary and philosophical genius. Of course, without exaggeration, he should be ranked among the greatest writers and thinkers of all times. After all, before the legend of the Grand Inquisitor and in general the philosophical chapters of The Brothers Karamazov (and many pages from his other works) - I say this with complete conviction - the mysteries of Byron, and perhaps even Faust, and in Dostoevsky’s novels, it must be said frankly, there is more genuine philosophy contained in it than in many volumes of its school representatives. Dostoevsky also predicted such unique and symptomatic phenomena of European consciousness as Nietzsche (remember the gallery of Nietzschean types: Raskolnikov, Kirillov, Stavrogin and Ivan Karamazov). Understanding the general significance of Dostoevsky in this sense still remains the lot of a few and, in addition, I am also deeply convinced of this, will only be fully revealed in future times. We have already seen how Dostoevsky grew for us after the revolution, regarding which he showed such amazing insight. What, then, was Dostoevsky dear to this motley crowd, what intimate connection made him related to those who, not sharing his faith and his opinions at all, cannot penetrate into all the complexity of his spiritual life? Obviously, this attachment relates more to a person than to a writer and artist; obviously, it is based on a deeper foundation than literary sympathies or political opinions. This invisible connection goes from heart to heart and from conscience to conscience; it passes in those depths where the connection between mother and child, brother and sister, and closest friends is hidden. And, it seems to me, it is in this captivating charm that one must look for the solution to the secrets of Dostoevsky’s soul, not in writing, but in what stands behind him and is sometimes even obscured and disguised by him - in his heart. A sick, loving and suffering heart is the shrine before which all kneel, and this is what draws one to Dostoevsky through all disagreements with him, misunderstandings and prejudices. Dostoevsky was given a terrible, truly human and only human gift - the gift of suffering in the name of love for people, the gift of suffering and the cross of suffering. If we weren’t such egoists, if we weren’t constantly busy with our petty personal affairs, then peace and happiness would become forever impossible for us. One has only to open our eyes and ears, listen to the voices of this world, we will hear from all times and peoples, from the past and present, unbearable groans, curses, complaints, crying of children, we will feel that the earth beneath us is soaked in blood and this whole world and all history is one painful tragedy. We cannot bear and contain this consciousness, we love ourselves and our peace too much, and only because of this we live in relative balance. Moreover, only to the extent of our own development are we able to understand not only physical, but also spiritual suffering, which we may not have suspected before: to an undeveloped person, the torment of Faust, Raskolnikov or Ivan Karamazov will seem like a whim. Hearing and understanding, and therefore sharing and bearing all the sorrows and sins of the whole world is the work of God, and here we are approaching the terrible secret of the Gethsemane night, bloody struggle and sweat. But everyone approaches the sacred fence of the Garden of Gethsemane, from which there is only one way - to Golgotha, to the extent of their suffering for others, selfless, selfless grief and pain for a person. And Dostoevsky came close, closer than many others, to her, and this is what the youth felt in him with their not yet petrified hearts. Dostoevsky, who took into his soul the torment of Raskolnikov, and the suffering of Sonya, and the shame of Marmeladov, and the grief of Ekaterina Ivanovna, and the tears of tortured children, and the melancholy of Karamazov, and the “poor people”, and the “humiliated and insulted”, and convicts, and aristocrats, Dostoevsky, whose “cruel talent” is tormented by this torment of his, wrings out tears, burns with his fire, a person is not able to sincerely reject this Dostoevsky, he can shield himself from him, not allow him to reach his consciousness, but he cannot consciously reject the shrine of this human suffering and love for man, just as he cannot consciously reject the One who suffered for people and prayed in the darkness of the Garden of Gethsemane. And Golgotha, which was in Dostoevsky’s heart, the cross that was erected in it, this is what imperiously bows us before Dostoevsky. By the way of the cross, through the suffering of hard labor, through the dirt and blackness of life, through the abysses of the human heart that opened up for him, Dostoevsky came to the One who is all Love, and, once seeing and understanding the mystery of the feat of the crucified God, all His uniqueness and holiness, he established himself on Him as the basis for faith in people, and in God, and in the salvation of mankind. Christ occupied his entire soul, but it cannot be otherwise: He can be rejected, but if he is accepted, then only with his whole soul. Dostoevsky's posthumous notes include, among other things, a plan to “write a book about Jesus Christ.” We do not know whether he would have written such a book, but in a certain sense, all his books, especially in recent years, are written about Christ, in all of them He is the true, albeit invisible, center, sometimes appearing openly. The greatest triumph of Dostoevsky’s genius lies precisely in the fact that, having removed the church gilding and Byzantine tradition, in a new way, in his own way, he managed to make one feel the living Christ in his works; he places Him, as it were, among us and, bringing Him closer, teaches us to love Him. Therefore, Dostoevsky achieves irresistible power and pathos precisely in those places in his works where Christ appears in him - visibly or invisibly. Remember the stunning scene of reading the gospel story about the resurrection of Lazarus in Crime and Punishment, where “the murderer and the harlot met to read the eternal book” and where the depths of the sinful and sorrowful human soul suddenly open up to the deepest bottom, remember the chapter about Cana of Galilee in The Brothers Karamazov, which also describes the moment of such spiritual uplift when a person is determined for life. It is also amazing what the militant atheist Kirillov speaks in his own unique language before committing suicide, undertaken in order to “declare self-will” in Nietzschean style. “Listen to the big idea: there was one day on earth, and in the middle of the earth there were three crosses. One on the cross believed so much that he said to the other: “Today you will be with me in paradise.” The day ended, both died, went and found neither heaven nor resurrection. What was said did not come true. Listen: this man was the highest in the whole earth, he was what she lived for. The whole planet, with everyone on it, without this person is just madness. There was nothing like this before or after Him, never even before a miracle. The miracle is that there has never been and will never be the same. And if so, if the laws of nature did not spare Him, they did not even spare His miracle, but forced Him to live among lies and die for lies, then, therefore, the whole planet is a lie and stands on lies and stupid ridicule. Therefore, the very laws of the planet are lies and devils’ vaudeville. Why live, answer me, if you are a man?” What a seemingly strange and wild idea it is to make one feel Christ in the heartfelt, dying delirium of an unbeliever before committing suicide, and yet the stunning truth of this image speaks for itself. Remember, finally, how the appearance of Christ is described in “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor” - it is as if you were present at this appearance. And this fiery love for Christ essentially determined Dostoevsky’s so-called worldview, his faith. Let us best characterize it with the words of V.S. Solovyov, spoken over the grave of Dostoevsky. “The final assessment of Dostoevsky’s entire activity,” said Solovyov, “depends on how we look at the idea that animated him, at what he believed in and what he loved. And he loved, first of all, the living human soul in everything and everywhere, and he believed that we are all the race of God, he believed in the infinite power of the human soul, triumphing over all external violence and over all internal fall. Having accepted into his soul all the malice of life, all the hardship and darkness of life and overcoming all this with the infinite power of love, Dostoevsky proclaimed this victory in all his creations. Having experienced the divine power in the soul, breaking through all human weakness, Dostoevsky came to the knowledge of God and the God-man. The reality of God and Christ was revealed to him in the inner power of love and forgiveness, and he preached this same all-forgiving power of grace as the basis for the external realization on earth of that kingdom of truth, which he longed for and to which he strove all his life.”2 One should not think that this faith was easy and painless for Dostoevsky. On the contrary, at the cost of the most severe struggle, desperate doubts, the torments of God-forsakenness (“My God, you have forsaken me forever”), it was given to him, and part of it—of course, only part, because the most important thing cannot be told here,” he says in his novels. In the human soul such depths of Sodomite sin were revealed to him, from which his head was spinning, but he also comprehended the heights of holiness with the whitening snows of eternity; He knew the underground, the brothel, the prison, and the monastery. All this passed, of course, through his own all-encompassing soul, from where he painfully extracted these terrible images. Perhaps it would have been a thousand times easier for him not to know about a person what he knew, and not to understand what he understood, but he needed to know and understand this, this was part of the weight of his cross. And so, in a bizarre and fantastic combination, these types alternate: Sonya and Svidrigailov, old man Karamazov and old man Zosima, Grushenka and the holy fool (from “Demons”), Alyosha and Ivan Karamazov, the Grand Inquisitor and the devil in Ivan Fedorovich’s nightmare, and all this bubbled and fought within him in a painful struggle. Also, in his philosophical reflections, such abysses of doubts opened up before Dostoevsky that the walking, carefree and superficial denial does not even dream of, so that on this basis others consider Dostoevsky an atheist, although he passionately longed for faith, but did not find it. Dostoevsky was not a systematic philosopher; he did not oppose arguments to arguments, beating one with the other and then coming to one final conclusion or another. He put on the same canvas an artistic depiction of feelings and moods, sometimes mutually exclusive. To say whether he himself has risen above this struggle, whether he is a winner or a loser, means also making an attempt to reveal his unsolved secret, perhaps his most fatal and terrible secret. Before the end of his life, Dostoevsky gave the last, most cruel and decisive battle to the opposing principles that fought in his novel “The Brothers Karamazov”, where “rebellion” and “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor” alternate with the teachings of Elder Zosima and “The Canoe of Galilee”, where all issues are exacerbated to a terrifying degree. This novel remained unfinished, its final denouement and the last word, the author was taken to the grave, and death put its usual ellipsis. Be that as it may, it is impossible to answer the question of what prevailed in Dostoevsky’s soul, what he himself was, Ivan or Alyosha, with an indisputability that eliminates all objections, and this is the originality, but also the torment of Dostoevsky’s work. I personally did not doubt and do not doubt that positive principles still triumphed in Dostoevsky’s soul and faith conquered doubts in him, although it did not always destroy their severity. I see the main and significant argument in favor of this opinion in the fact that otherwise Dostoevsky would not have been given an image of such power of positive religious experiences, the face of Christ that is present in them now would not have appeared in his writings, otherwise, perhaps, they simply would not have been written, and the whole tone, plan, and audacity of the sermon would have been different. All bloodied, Dostoevsky nevertheless remained a winner. This is how I feel about Dostoevsky, and it would not have even occurred to me to particularly insist on this if the opposite opinion had not been so persistently repeated by some modern skeptics (such as Shestov). I now turn to that category of Dostoevsky’s views that are commonly called social worldview. It is obvious that Dostoevsky, due to the complexity of his general worldview, was more complex than most of his – and our – contemporaries, who are usually content with a simplified mechanical and materialistic worldview, in the complete absence of philosophical and religious depth, and even with the denial of it. Where all questions end for him, for Dostoevsky, in essence, they are just beginning. Conventional theories of progress do not feel the world tragedy or, rather, feel it only for the present moment, are relatively cold towards it in the past and do not give it any place in the future, for which the prospect of an earthly paradise is drawn for future generations. Obviously, there is no doubt here that this is already a sufficient resolution of the world tragedy, with which the happy man-gods of the future will complacently reconcile. However, it is fair to doubt whether truly human progress can be seen in this type of development. Through the mouth of Ivan Karamazov, Dostoevsky expressed this doubt about the price of progress and the acquisition of anyone’s happiness even with a child’s tear. You remember that Ivan rebels against God and His world and denies the possibility of harmony and forgiveness even in the next century. One of two things: either each human personality, as Dostoevsky believed, is the highest value that cannot be considered as a means, and in this case, this whole theory, based on the historical “respect” of the soil with the corpses of some for the future happiness of others, if the latter do not vomit from such happiness, does not provide any way out of the world tragedy, or people are really not equal in their human dignity, and future giants or man-gods represent the true value and goal of history, and we relate to them in much the same way as monkeys or even more distant zoological species are to people. But, obviously, such a view takes away the ground in general from any ideals, at least of a democratic and socialist nature. Therefore, if we only recognize in each person a personality, the image of God, then we have to accept that either there is no solution to the world tragedy at all and the theory of progress is falsehood and self-deception, or this resolution is possible only where Dostoevsky saw it, that is, in the Christian faith in the restoration of all values, all individuals, in the doctrine of the future century, in short, of the general resurrection. With this view, the historical process with its relative and conditional progress receives its significance and meaning as a necessary link in the general theanthropic process. But, leaving aside these final and global questions, even within the framework of relative, historical progress, Dostoevsky could not help but have, of course, serious points of disagreement with the prevailing positivism. It would be shameful and unnecessary to assure that the author of “The Humiliated and Insulted” was not alien to social issues, issues of wealth and poverty, what in a broad sense can be called the problem of socialism. There can also be no doubt that for him it was resolved only in one sense, in which only it can be resolved in general; the ideal for him was the elimination of social untruth and the establishment of universal solidarity. But he found and, remaining true to his entire worldview, of course, could not help but find that in the materialist theories of socialism the question is posed too simply and not deeply enough, and that to achieve universal solidarity, one mechanical connection of people is not enough. He did not deny the truth of socialism (as it may seem to some readers in view of his usual attacks on socialism, in which he means only a certain version of it, namely the materialist one as the most widespread), but he wants to connect this relative truth and subordinate it to the highest religious truth, to warm and revive the cold and dead walls with religious fire. It is in this sense that one should understand his words, written in the last issue of the “Diary of a Writer”: “The socialism of the Russian people lies not in communism, not in mechanical forms: they believe that they will be saved only in the end by an all-light union in the name of Christ. This is our Russian socialism.” Of course, this requirement to consider social truth only in the light of religious truth does not in itself prevent us from recognizing the great significance of external reforms, so to speak, of external socialism, which is also the fulfillment of internal truth, and due to the fact that it is not yet everything, its significance as a historically given means should not be denied or belittled. In the aggravation of the polemic, Dostoevsky did not respect this scale and bent the stick in the direction opposite to that in which it was bent by his opponents, and sometimes approached Tolstoy’s individualism, which was generally so alien to him. We do not want to turn a blind eye to this sociological aberration in Dostoevsky; we will only point out in his defense that he was neither a real sociologist, nor a politician, nor an economist; he always posed questions in their fundamental breadth, but, at the same time, from a bird’s eye view, in some abstraction from the immediate practice of life. Interesting and deep is his criticism of the socio-mechanical resolution of social issues, as it is depicted in the heads of those who consider man to be entirely a product or reflex of economic and other reasons, an empty place intended to be a warehouse for all sorts of influences. In one of his earliest works, written before his exile (back in 1846), in “Notes from the Underground,” he points out the overlooked irrational and even blind self-will of human nature, which can break any “expedient” and “profitable” structure. “Then,” we read here, “new economic relations will arise, completely ready-made and also calculated with mathematical precision, so that in an instant all kinds of questions will disappear, precisely because all kinds of answers will be obtained to them. Then a crystal palace will be built. Then... Of course, there is no way to guarantee that then it won’t be, for example, terribly boring (because what can you do when everything is calculated according to the table), but everything will be extremely reasonable. Of course, you can’t come up with anything out of boredom!.. After all, I, for example, wouldn’t be at all surprised if suddenly, for no reason, for no reason, among the general future prudence, some gentleman with an ignoble, or, better to say, retrograde and mocking physiognomy, appears, puts his hands on his hips and says to us all: what, gentlemen, shouldn’t we push all this prudence down at once, with a foot, dust, The sole purpose is for all these logarithms to go to hell and for us to live according to our own stupid will! This would be nothing, but the insulting thing is that he will certainly find followers everywhere: this is how man is made. And all this for the most trivial reason, which, it seems, is not worth mentioning: precisely because man always and everywhere, no matter who he was, loved to act as he wanted, and not at all as reason and benefit commanded him; You can want against your own benefit, and sometimes you should positively. One’s own, free and free will, one’s own, even the wildest whim, one’s own fantasy, sometimes irritated even to the point of madness - this is all that overlooked, most profitable system, which does not fit into any classification and from which all systems and theories are constantly scattered to hell. And where did all the sages get the idea that a person needs some kind of normal, some kind of virtuous desire? Why did they necessarily imagine that a person necessarily needs a prudently beneficial desire? A person needs only one independent desire, no matter what this independence costs and no matter what it leads to.” But even darker and more tragic tones are heard in Dostoevsky when he talks about the moral devastation associated with the loss of faith and the highest meaning of life, which humanity will inevitably feel along with social successes in the “state of the future”, having settled down without God. The problem of atheism, present and future, constantly worried Dostoevsky. Remember this stunning passage from the conversation between “The Teenager” and Versilov and the latter’s words, which sink deeply into your soul. “I imagine, my dear,” he began with a thoughtful smile, “that the battle is already over and the struggle has subsided. After the curses, clods of mud and whistles, there was a lull, and the people were left alone, as they wished; the great old idea has left them; the great source of strength, which until now had nourished and warmed them, was receding, like that majestic calling sun in the painting by Claude Lorrain, but this would have been, as it were, the last day of humanity. II people suddenly realized that they were left alone, and at once they felt their great orphanhood. My dear boy, I could never imagine people being ungrateful and stupid. Orphaned people would immediately begin to cling to each other closer and more lovingly; they would grab hands, realizing that now they alone are everything for each other. The great idea of ​​immortality would disappear and would have to be replaced; and all the great excess of former love for the One who was and Immortality would have turned in everyone to nature, to the world, to people, to every blade of grass. They would love the earth and life uncontrollably and to the extent that they would gradually become aware of their transience and finitude, and with a special, no longer the same love. They would begin to notice and discover such phenomena and secrets in nature that they had never imagined before, for they would look at nature with new eyes, the gaze of a lover at his beloved. They would wake up and rush to kiss each other, rushing to love, realizing that the days are short, that this is all they have left. They would work for each other, and each would give everyone his entire fortune and thereby be happy. Every child would know and feel that everyone on earth is like a father and mother to him. “Even if tomorrow is my last day,” everyone would think, looking at the setting sun, “but I will still die, but all of them will remain, and after them their children,” and this thought that they will remain, still loving and trembling for each other, would replace the thought of an afterlife meeting. Oh, they would hasten to love in order to extinguish the great sadness in their hearts. They would be proud and bold for themselves, but they would become timid for each other; everyone would tremble for life and for everyone’s happiness. They would become tender to each other and would not be ashamed as they are now, and would caress each other like children. When they met, they would look at each other with a deep and meaningful look, and in their glances there would be love and sadness." Dostoevsky himself cannot stand the immeasurable, tragic and hopeless sadness of the picture; it still ends with the appearance of Christ: “I could not do without Him,” says Versilov, “I could not help but imagine Him, finally, among the orphaned people. He came to them, stretched out His hands to them and said: “How could you forget Him?” Here, as if a veil would fall from all eyes, and a great and enthusiastic hymn of a new and final resurrection would be heard..." These are the thoughts that worried Dostoevsky regarding the "state of the future"... We must now say a few words about Dostoevsky's political opinions 3 . It is known that he was a political Slavophile and rejected constitutionalism in the name of ideal autocracy. Based on this general principle, in the role of a political publicist, which, out of a strange passion, he willingly assumed, he developed ideas of foreign and domestic policy approaching what can be called nationalist imperialism. Each basic error has its own logic and, carried to the end in its most distant conclusions, leads to obvious absurdity. Such absurdities, along with the deepest insights, are also found in Dostoevsky’s journalism, and they provide grateful material for hostile and superficial criticism, which uses them to, through political exposure, discredit the worldview that is hated not only in these external manifestations, but even more so in its internal foundations. In Dostoevsky’s attitude to the internal issues of Russian life, like all Slavophilism, from which he is no different here, a factual historical error, an exaggeration of actual abilities, and an idealization of autocracy are manifested. This is a mistake, so impossible for us, in the atmosphere of the 60s, after the peasant reform, the inadequacy of which was not immediately clear, after the liberal reforms that replaced the gloomy regime of the previous reign, it was much more acceptable and understandable, and many then surrendered to this mood 4, the ideals of a democratic, freedom-loving autocracy then did not sound as obvious and cutting absurdity as in the newest era of bureaucratic autocracy under pretext of autocracy. Of course, if Dostoevsky, I.S. Aksakov and other Slavophiles had lived to this day in internal and external Tsushima, they would have joined - I am completely convinced of this - to the general anti-bureaucratic movement, although, of course, having their own special voice, they would not have gotten lost in this discordant chorus. But such an explanation, of course, is not enough. Dostoevsky’s negative mood towards the liberation movement of the 60s and 70s also reflects a kind of mental dislocation, a certain aberration, blindness. What is its source? I see it - and not only for Dostoevsky, but for all Slavophilism - in that religious and philosophical opposition that existed for various historical reasons, which is not the place to talk about here, between Slavophilism and Westernism. The liberation movement marched under the banner of philosophical nihilism and materialism, which became, as it were, its religion. And pushing away with his entire inner being from this nihilism, Dostoevsky pushed away from himself everything that seemed inextricably linked with it, including constitutionalism. Dostoevsky was unable to separate his relative political truth from the philosophical lies of his opponents and connect it with his religious truth. It seemed to both sides that only by denying religion could bureaucratic autocracy be denied; the hypnosis of historical fact obscured the truth that such autocracy could and should be denied in the name of religious truth, and that it was the religious criticism of absolutism, which instinctively grasps the authority of religion, that could be most deadly for it. Dostoevsky with his worldview in the spiritual atmosphere of Bazarov's nihilism remained in terrible, ascetic loneliness, and the burden of historical loneliness, even placed on mighty shoulders, cannot be borne without any harm to oneself, without paying for it with one or another spiritual deformity. And if Dostoevsky defended himself in what was most important for him, namely in the religious-philosophical field, then the political side of his soul was distorted and partly disfigured, so to speak. Here one must see traces not of personal decay, but of a historical split in Russian society, truly, saeculi vitia, non hominis. Some inconsistencies and particular inconsistencies in Dostoevsky’s worldview were pointed out by V.S. Solovyov, spiritually so close to Dostoevsky. And on us, on those who consider themselves the spiritual heirs of both Dostoevsky and Solovyov and the continuers of their historical work, now lies the task of straightening this dislocation, introducing the relative truth of the liberation political and social movement into religious consciousness, and introducing the latter into this movement, reconciling this spiritual split, filling up the abyss that appeared, it seems, since Peter’s reform and especially deepened in the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th. Returning to the political worldview of Dostoevsky and other political Slavophiles, it should be pointed out that their commitment to autocracy has nothing in common with the desires of the current guardians and reactionaries. Dostoevsky defended autocracy in the name of people’s freedom—that’s a fact. Being familiar from direct experience with the negative sides of Western parliamentarism, he did not believe in its fruitfulness in Russia, opposing this, of course, not ideal, but still historically the best political regime, with an ideal, new reality, non-existent autocracy and, like all Slavophiles, a bad, but still living draft horse, preferring a blooded, but only drawn Arabian horse. He constructed the tsar’s relationship with the people as a father and children, assigning a place in this construction to deliberative popular representation: he called on the people to “put trust” in the last “Diary of a Writer,” almost on the eve of March 1st. “With us, civil freedom,” he wrote here, “can be established in the most complete way, more completely than anywhere in the world, in Europe or even in North America... It will not be established by writing, but will be built only on children’s love for the Tsar as for a father, for children can be allowed a lot of things that are unthinkable among others, among treaty peoples; children can be entrusted with so much and so much can be allowed as has never been seen anywhere else.” This is the kind of autocracy Dostoevsky dreamed of, starting from Western constitutionalism. Here one can see an optical illusion, a historical illusion, but not an error of moral judgment. As is known, Dostoevsky believed in the exclusive mission of the Russian people, the God-bearing people, as he called them; in his Pushkin speech he attributed to him the traits of an all-man, the search for all-human truth, all-human reconciliation. Faith in the people, this almost religious faith of Dostoevsky, which was in connection with his eschatological ideas, is generally a highly important factor in his preaching. Sometimes she led him into the temptation of nationalism, which Vl had never led him into before. Solovyov, who shared it completely, but generally warmed him spiritually and was completely inseparable from his whole being. In these painful days of the moral decline of the Russian people, in this atmosphere of general brutality and savagery, I have often thought about Dostoevsky in recent years. What would he feel and say if he were alive now? Would his faith have withstood these painful trials? In the end, I answered this question in the affirmative. Who can say what torment it would have cost him - the wrinkles would have cut even deeper and his lips would have been even more distorted by concentrated suffering, but he would have managed to cope with himself, for he did not deny the bestial image, stinking sin, helplessness against temptations, even masterly cruelty in his people. In the same last “Diary of a Writer” he wrote among other things (and this is repeated in different places): “Even though there is atrocity and sin in our people, this is what is undeniable about them: this is precisely the fact that in their entirety, at least (and not only in the ideal, but in the most real reality), they never accept, will not accept and will not want to accept their sin as truth! He will sin, but he will always say, sooner or later: I did wrong. If the sinner does not speak, then someone else will speak for him, and righteousness will be completed. Sin is a stench, and the stench will pass when the sun fully shines. Sin is a transitory thing, but Christ is eternal. The people sin and commit dirty tricks every day, but in their best moments, in Christ’s moments, they will never be mistaken in the truth. That is precisely what is important is what the people believe in as their truth, what they believe it to be, how they imagine it, what they make it their best desire, what they love, what they ask from God, what they cry for in prayer. And the ideal of the people is Christ. And with Christ, of course, enlightenment, and in their highest, fatal moments, our people decide and have always decided every common matter in a Christian way.” This is how Dostoevsky answered similar questions in his time and what he would answer now. After the grief and shame of recent years, has our spiritual connection, our inner solidarity with the people weakened, have we become more alien to them, do we love and believe less in this people, dark, corrupted, so easily becoming an instrument of dark forces? No, but more painful. There is a blood attachment in which the torment inflicted only binds you more firmly, only conquers you more completely, teaches you to love and forgive, to love not for anything, but as if - although this is in fact untrue - in spite of everything. Dostoevsky loved the Russian people with such love, and he would not have betrayed it to the end. But how we would need him now, in those days when even Tolstoy’s mighty pen grew numb, how with all the truth and fiery anger of prophetic denunciation he would strike the hearts with his word, how he would strike the enemies of the truth, the enemies of the Russian people; but we have to go through the fateful hour of our history without Dostoevsky, and what he had already experienced was enough for him... Let me conclude this characterization with the heartfelt words of V. S. Solovyov, indicating the most precious feature of Dostoevsky’s spiritual individuality: “This is the merit, this is the whole significance of people like Dostoevsky, that they do not bow to the power of fact and do not serve it. Against this brute force of what exists, they have the spiritual strength of faith in truth and goodness - in what should be. Not to be tempted by the visible domination of evil and not to renounce invisible good for its sake is a feat of faith. In him lies all the strength of man. He who is incapable of this feat will do nothing and will not say anything to humanity. People of fact live someone else's life, but they do not create life. People of faith create life. These are those who are called dreamers, utopians, holy fools - they are also prophets, truly the best people and leaders of humanity. We commemorate such a person today” 5 . To this characteristic I will add just one more feature. Modern humanity, which cherishes golden dreams of peace and happiness of future generations and makes so many sacrifices for the sake of these dreams, yet in the depths of its soul, in its most intimate impulses, honors only suffering, voluntary, sacrificial, and even involuntary. Why are the liberated Shlisselburgers and other martyrs of the liberation movement so dear to us, so commandingly bowing their respectful heads? Dostoevsky, like no one else, felt and expressed this fundamental universal human trait. Remember Raskolnikov's painful scene with Sonya, when he suddenly kneels and kisses her foot. “What are you, what are you? In front of me! - she muttered, turning pale, and her heart suddenly sank painfully. He immediately stood up. “I didn’t bow to you, I bowed to all human suffering,” he said somehow wildly and walked away to the window.” You also remember how the holy elder bowed at the feet of Dmitry Karamazov, foreseeing the suffering he was doomed to. You can explain this in different ways, but these feelings, these experiences contain some kind of deep and significant truth. Let us also bow to the shrine of human suffering in the person of our writer, whose brow, together with the ray of immortality, is crowned with the highest crown that a person can be awarded, the crown of thorns!.. At least this was the case 10 years ago. Collected works of Vl. Solovyova. Vol. III, 169–170. The question of Dostoevsky’s political worldview in connection with his religious one requires careful and unbiased research and still remains difficult and poorly explained. Let us remember Herzen: “You have won, Galilean.” Collection op. V. Solovyov, vol. III, 185.