At the elections (from the diary)

I take up my pen to talk about the elections about what the soul is full of and what makes it hurt. Least of all do I mean purely political issues. I would like to express out loud the general life impressions that I received here. With them, like black poison, the soul is poisoned, from them it again hurts with its old, never quenched pain, yearns with its inconsolable, never subsiding melancholy, is worried by its always-present, never-ending anxiety - about Russia. These elections bring about acute bouts of spiritual nostalgia. Russia! homeland! those who loved you, lived by you, believed in you, did they know anything from you except torment? Through torment they loved, through torment they believed, but even when faith wavered, when they threw the bitterness of crying and bile in your face, they knew that for them there was no life outside of you, no homeland, no promised land, except you, Russia, no tabernacle of the covenant, except your heart, holy Rus'! And despairing of you, they despaired of themselves, pronouncing judgment on you, they judged themselves. For me, these elections were such days of sorrow and torment, close to despair. I blindly, stupidly believe (do they really believe otherwise?) in the irrevocability of the calling and election of Russia and live by this faith, but I also see how reality laughs at this faith, how different “Russia” is from “Holy Rus'”, how an ugly monster, a mixture of savagery, rudeness and laziness, obscures the “holy remnant” 1 in which the prophets of Israel never tired of believing, and even after the fall of both kingdoms... They believed and were justified by their faith. This is the third time I have attended elections 2 and I have material for comparison. There were many things that happened in these elections that happened in previous ones, which the eye has already managed to take a closer look at. As before, all peasants without exception, attracted mainly by “diets” 3 (who will blame them for this?). As before, some electors had absolutely fantastic hopes for a deputy seat, counting on crazy luck, thanks to which electoral combinations sometimes bring completely random people to the Tauride Palace, and what one succeeded begins to loom for another. A trait of low political culture - these aspirants do not at all question whether they are fit for anything in the legislative chamber - like children, they are only interested in getting elected, naively and simply. There is a relatively small group of politicians who know what they want and consciously wage political struggle. All this was the same as before. The peculiarity of the current elections is their organization, and of a new type, not from the right and not from the left, but from above; The bureaucracy, having taken a closer look at the new weapon, learned to use it and adapted it to its needs. This organization was prepared from two sides, from representatives of the secular government - the governors, and the spiritual - the diocesan bishops, guided by instructions from the election bureau at St. synod. I half did not believe the newspaper reports about this organization of elections until I saw with my own eyes how unceremoniously and with what disrespect for the law and the very idea of ​​elections this campaign was conducted in our province: all means were used - intimidation from the authorities, exclusion from the elections at the last moment, government emissaries, government candidates. As a result, the meaning of the entire election campaign came down to the fact that on the part of the administration, the candidates designated by the government, headed by the well-known governor of one of the northern provinces, who had previously been promoted to electors by the same means, were elected, and on the part of everyone else, to overthrow this bloc (which, in the end, still failed). There were no political parties here in the usual sense of the word, because these official candidates and their voters have as little right to call themselves “right” as a soldier or official executing the orders of his authority, who remains alien to any political coloring. Here there was simply a group of “Pompadours” 4 with “adjacent” and a group of independent people fighting against it, in which Octobrists, “progressives”, Cadets, even Social Democrats united in a bizarre way. All independent voters were thereby united and thrown “to the left”: unfortunately, it is too difficult to kick back from leftism in this sense in Russian life, and there is no more difficult task than, with intelligence and conscience, to be politically right, having even the most right-wing ideology (a classic example is our Slavophiles!). For in the official right-wing camp there is a demand not for independent and free convictions, but for obedient servility, not for principles, but for lack of principles, even right-wing principles with the exactingness inherent in every principled conviction (like our Slavophiles) also turn out to be inconvenient here. The greatest misfortune of Russian political life is that it does not and cannot form a genuine (“English”) conservatism: this could become a real, not rubber, but ideological Octobrism, and the obvious failure of Octobrism, which many are now rejoicing at, is a clear symptom of the fact that our political culture is still immature for Octobrism, which demands only either servility or the “leftism” of an irresponsible opposition, or blind revolutionism. The political atmosphere of the voting hall turned out to be completely poisoned, and the meaning of the elections was completely distorted: in the foreground were not political parties, but the main candidate of the administration - the “governor”, who had gone too far in his province and needs a deputy seat to improve his shaky career, and the main organizer of elections in the province, a type of clerk (his own candidacy for a reward for all his really considerable work was withdrawn at the last moment by his own clients), who has vigilant supervision over electors - peasants and priests, and representatives of the “prime class”. Ah, this class! In those days it was the center of Russian culture; not to understand this significance of the nobility would mean committing an act of historical ingratitude, but now it is a political corpse, poisoning the atmosphere with its decay, and meanwhile it is being intensively galvanized, and this class finds itself at the very source of power and influence. And when you see with your own eyes this degeneration, combined with arrogance, pretensions and, at the same time, cynicism, which does not disdain dubious services, you become afraid for the power that stubbornly wants to be based on this element, which inclines attention to its parquet whispers *. Absolutely new in these elections was the forced participation of the clergy in them, and they were previously tied by the authorities to the “right” bloc and were all the time under the supervision and influence of the bishop, carried out both directly and through the “prikazny”. You need to know how great and irresponsible the power of the bishop over the clergy is in order to understand what kind of fist was raised over the heads of the clergy and in what painful position they were placed. In order to show disobedience - namely, to put the ball at the discretion of the “secret” vote, which, in fact, was obvious, because it was monitored both at the ballot box itself, and on the basis of the vote count, one had to consciously risk the loss of a seat, transfer to the worst, if not its final deprivation, that is, complete ruin (and this is the same in all stages of the elections). You need to know both the large family nature of our clergy and their age-old downtroddenness, to put it mildly, “apoliticality,” in order to understand that for them to perform this elementary act of exercising political rights meant going to martyrdom. Let the one who goes for it himself demand martyrdom from others!.. And let the responsibility for the sin that was committed at the ballot box by the hand of the clergy fall on the instigators of this base plan, this blatant violence. There were more than twenty priests in our elections. One or two of them were official, episcopal candidates for the State Duma; they, childishly or like peasants, gave themselves up to the sweet hope of “diets,” honor, and new prospects. Not all of the others were aware of the ambiguity of their position and the nature of the political campaign in which they found themselves. Summoned from distant district corners, some, perhaps for the first time in their lives, finding themselves in the brilliant hall of the Assembly of the Nobility, they were blinded by the imaginary role that was assigned to them, and out of habit, without reasoning, they did the will of the one who sent them. Only a very few did it not out of fear, but out of conscience and were captured by “right-wing” politicking, although they were the most dangerous for their brothers. But there were also those who acted under the influence of fear and against conscience and were aware of this, were ashamed and tormented - of course, for them these days were a bitter lesson in political education. And I don’t know whether its inventors will be able to repeat this experiment again. It was only here that one of my interlocutors recognized both his own role and the company he had joined. Another, out of a long-acquired habit of disguising himself, complacently assures that almost all priests are “progressives” at heart and are only intimidated. The third has a family of seven, but is tormented and ashamed of his situation. The fourth, being especially suspicious and expansive, is repeatedly subjected to direct threats and influences from the bishop, who directly forbade him to stand as a candidate (which he did not intend to), and directly ordered him to vote for the “governor” (moreover, the “lord” directly said that he was ordered to appoint the governor and that these elections were a burden to him). It was painful to see the noble head of this priest crowned with gray hair when he, excitedly, talked about his adventures - he took a lot of pain and torment from these elections. But this is only the “beginning of illnesses” 5. The consequences of this satanic plan - to make the clergy an instrument for electing government candidates - will be innumerable, for the clergy will still have to account to their flock for the fact that on their backs the “governor” and other proteges of the peculiar rightists entered the State Duma. I will not soon forget the acute feeling of pain for the humiliation of the church that I experienced at that moment when the election of a “governor” was announced, apparently decided by the votes of the clergy. “Shepherds of the living God!” – I heard the voice of a smart “progressive” (from the seminarians) behind me! And all these elections were a complete disgrace in the face of almost a hundred electors, more than a dozen of whom were peasants. By this I do not at all want to express a desire for the clergy to be right or left in their political convictions, and when assessing the merits of their representatives, I least of all take into account the political direction. I won’t say that I liked the “left” priests as a spiritual type. But here they were brought here not to express their personal, right or left, convictions, but to fulfill the will of their superiors - this is political absurdity and arrogant cynicism, which even the enemies of the church will not invent on purpose. In how many souls the picture of the current elections will break the weak shoots of faith, extinguish the barely smoldering fire, seduce, confuse. Until now I have had to attack intellectual nihilism a lot, but I must admit that in this case it is far from administrative nihilism!.. We got into a conversation with one of the intelligent and “conscientious” priests from the black earth district, and he painted me a sad, depressing picture of the spiritual state of the village, somewhat reminiscent of the image in Rodionov’s book “Our Crime” 6 (which, by the way, would deserve a more thoughtful attitude than mere party condemnation). The most significant fact of the life of a modern village, according to his story, is the decomposition of the old foundations - religion, family, morality, everyday life; what is especially striking is the growth of atheism among village youth, covering entire villages. Here the direct influence of intellectual nihilism is revealed: books and brochures with propaganda content are circulated in the village, our illiterate village recognizes the names of Nietzsche and Marx, Renan and Feuerbach... The conductors of higher education are miners, and they flock to the mines (of southern Russia) to earn money (which is then spent on village dandy) from the age of fifteen. Before going down into the mine, the priest vividly told me, he takes off his shirt and throws himself on the ground and the cross, and without the cross the youth returns to their homeland. He talked about hooligan antics in the church, about evil blasphemy, about many disturbing and sad things. In Russia there was and is no culture outside of religion, and with its destruction barbarism remains. I listened and thought how the present village, which reads newspapers, will greet its shepherds after the elections, what is happening now in the souls of those present at these elections... And a black wave of despair and horror for Russia rose in my soul, and at that moment there was no strength to fight this despair. Russia is rotting alive - that’s what ached in my soul with a funeral motive. She is deeply poisoned by a deadly poison, and this poison is nihilism, dual in origin and character - intellectual and bureaucratic nihilism. The intelligentsia, following their teachers, believes in the “spirit of destruction as a creative spirit”; out of the revolution, they created a religion for themselves, and we have already seen this religion in action... I am not one of the people who quickly forget the lessons of the past, and I have no doubt at all that the new triumph of intellectual nihilism can only mean the further collapse of our statehood and culture. However, the intelligentsia believes in its religion, and subjectively it is justified by this faith. But this administrative nihilism, which does not stop at cynicism and makes a program of public administration out of nihilism and political cheating, inevitably leads to its own self-abolition and the triumph of the “spirit of destruction” with its righteous and unrighteous anger. Russia seems to be heading towards abyss and collapse. Every day those lessons of political wisdom that were learned from the history of recent years are forgotten. Hopes for organic development are becoming weaker. Let our finances be in excellent condition, and the budget has exceeded three billion, even though order in the country is still maintained, but the social atmosphere is still, no, more than before, poisoned by nihilism, for which nothing is sacred, and this poison will reveal its effect at the first opportunity. We begin to live again without a future, according to the old principle: après nous le déluge! ** Yes, “Holy Rus'” is the mystical reality of Russia, it was seen and touched by its prophets. But this Russian rudeness, in which we are suffocating, is also the mystical reality of Russia. And how is one connected to the other, how is one separated from the other? “I don’t see anything: I see some pig snouts instead of faces, but nothing else”... 7 Isn’t this what Gogol cried about with his laughter? But didn’t he write about the majestic stride of Russia? What a painful, nightmarish mystery! They brought newspapers. In them we read that the Bulgarians won a decisive victory over the Turks, and the valiant Orthodox army of the Slavs was pushing back the Turkish hordes and knocking them out of their last fortifications. The momentous hour of history has struck. The time has come for which old Rus' was waiting with its dream of a “third Rome,” the capital of the Orthodox kingdom; the time is approaching for the fulfillment of Dostoevsky’s political testament that sooner or later “Constantinople must be ours” 8; The moment is approaching when Russia will have to say a firm word and finally decide the fate of the Slavic states it has called into political existence. World-historical events are ripe, in which Russia is called upon to play a leading role. And at such a moment in history, we “make” elections and hold elections to the State Duma with the selected votes of the governor and other government candidates, we are engaged in political buffoonery, filter out every progressive who passes into the Duma, and in international politics we play a pathetic role in tow from Austria, with which we must fight. This is how Russia, in the hour of history’s Last Judgment, responds to its age-old historical calling... Disappear into space, disappear Triumphant rudeness is incompatible with world-historical tasks, the atmosphere of servility does not produce citizens, but only slaves or revolutionary bandits, and nihilism with a nationalistic sauce will not give birth to true love for one’s homeland and one’s people. It is not courageous to give in to despair and cowardice for a long time; everyone must do their job in their turn. But we must understand the difficulty of the situation and the seriousness of the internal illness that Russia suffers from and which threatens not only the vitality and health, but also the very existence of our statehood. Of course, faith in the Russian idea is separable from Russian statehood, just as faith in the church is not connected with the status quo of a given local organization, but we have a responsibility before our ancestors and descendants to preserve the precious heritage entrusted to us - our homeland, Russia! “What else should we hit you with, if you continue your stubbornness? My whole head is full of ulcers and my whole heart is withered away. From the sole of his foot to the crown of his head there is no healthy place: ulcers, spots, festering wounds, uncleaned and untied and not softened with oil... If the Lord of hosts had not left us a small remnant, then we would have been the same as Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah. Hear the word of the Lord, princes of Sodom; Hearken unto the law of our God, O people of Gomorrah!” (Isaiah 1, 5–6, 9–10). As an elector from the Oryol province, Bulgakov participated in two-stage elections to the IV State Duma (1912–1916). The essay attracted Lenin’s attention with a picture of the decomposition of village morals (about the lost response to it, see: Lenin V.I. Complete Works, vol. 48, pp. 164, 165; see also the mention in the article “What is happening in populism and what is happening in the village?” - ibid., vol. 22, p. 366). Compare: Epistle to the Romans. 11, 5. Having been a deputy of the Second State Duma, Bulgakov, despite disappointment, took part in the preparation of elections in the Third. “After the dissolution of the 2nd State. Duma and the new electoral law, the Stolypin government demonstrated a well-known electoral technique, which, however, was combined, alas, with straightforward cynicism and shamelessness. And Russian life has not yet been accustomed to this, as it is already accustomed to now (as in the whole world, where elections are made).” (From the autobiographical essay “Agony,” written in Constantinople in 1923. - S.N. Bulgakov, “Autobiographical Notes,” p. 83). Diet is a salary received by parliamentarians. Pompadours are high-ranking officials (the satirical image of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin from his book “Pompadours and Pompadours” was used). Matthew. 24, 8; Mark. 13, 8 (“For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there will be earthquakes in places, and there will be famines and turmoil. This is the beginning of diseases” - from the Gospel eschatological prophecies). Rodionov I.A. – zemstvo chief in the Novgorod province, right-wing monarchist, fighter against the influence of Rasputin at court. His book “Our Crime. Not nonsense, but reality. From modern folk life" (1909) went through several reprints and was condemned by the left-wing press as slander against the Russian people. The words of the Governor in the finale of The Inspector General. F. M. Dostoevsky. The writer’s diary for March 1877 (chapter one, I: “Once again about the fact that Constantinople, sooner or later, must be ours”). From Andrei Bely’s poem “Despair” (1908). Of course, I’m talking about the political significance of the class, but not about individuals, whom I have deep respect for. After us, even a flood (French) (Editor's note)