Three speeches in memory of Dostoevsky

Contents Preface First speech Second speech Third speech Note in defense of Dostoevsky Brochure Vl. Solovyov’s “Three Speeches in Memory of Dostoevsky” (1881 – 1883) contains the first speech published for the first time in this edition, never read anywhere, the second speech, previously published in the newspaper “New Time” (1882. No. 2133) and delivered on February 1, 1882, and the third, first published in the magazine “Rus” (1883. No. 6) under the title “On the true matter (In memory of Dostoevsky),” said on February 19, 1883. In a separate publication, an article was attached: “A note in defense of Dostoevsky from the accusation of “new” Christianity (Against K. Leontyev),” previously published in the magazine “Rus” (1883. No. 9) with the subtitle “A few words about Mr. Leontyev’s brochure “Our New Christians”." The philosopher perceived the death of Dostoevsky as a huge spiritual loss. According to eyewitnesses, his speech at Dostoevsky’s funeral was one of the most significant. “The impression remained from the apostolic figure of V.S. Solovyov, from his curls falling on his forehead. He spoke with great pathos and expression” (F. M. Dostoevsky in the memoirs of his contemporaries. M., 1964. T. 2. P. 430). The text is printed according to the 1884 edition. In three speeches about Dostoevsky, I do not deal with either his personal life or literary criticism of his works. I have in mind only one question: what did Dostoevsky serve, what idea inspired all his activities? It is all the more natural to dwell on this question since neither the details of his private life, nor the artistic merits or demerits of his works explain in themselves the special influence that he had in the last years of his life, and the extraordinary impression that his death made. On the other hand, those fierce attacks to which Dostoevsky’s memory is still subjected are not directed in any way at the aesthetic side of his works, for everyone equally recognizes in him a primary artistic talent, sometimes rising to genius, although not free from major shortcomings. But the idea that this talent served is true and beneficial for some, while for others it seems false and harmful. The final assessment of Dostoevsky’s entire activity 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." It seems to me that Dostoevsky cannot be looked at as an ordinary novelist, as a talented and intelligent writer. There was something more about him, and this more is what distinguishes him and explains his effect on others. A lot of evidence could be cited to support this. I will limit myself to one thing worthy of special attention. That's what gr. says. L. N. Tolstoy in a letter to I. N. Strakhov: “How I wish I could say everything that I feel about Dostoevsky. By describing your feeling, you expressed part of mine. I have never seen this man and never had direct relations with him; and suddenly, when he died, I realized that he was the closest, dearest person I needed. And it never occurred to me to measure myself against him, never. Everything he did (the good, real thing he did) was such that the more he did, the better I would be. Art makes me envious, the mind too, but the work of the heart is only joy. I considered him my friend and didn’t think anything other than that we would see each other and that now it just wasn’t necessary, but that it was mine. And suddenly I read - he died. Some support bounced off me. I was confused, and then it became clear how dear he was to me, and I cried and am crying now. The other day, before his death, I read “The Humiliated and Insulted” and was touched” 2 . And in another, earlier letter: “The other day I was reading “The House of the Dead.” I forgot a lot, re-read and don’t know better books from all the new literature, including Pushkin. Not the tone, but the point of view is amazing: sincere, natural and Christian. A good, edifying book. I enjoyed the whole day yesterday, like I haven’t enjoyed for a long time. If you see Dostoevsky, tell him that I love him." 3 Those heartfelt qualities and that point of view that gr. Tolstoy, are closely connected with the dominant idea that Dostoevsky carried within himself throughout his life, although only towards the end he began to fully master it. Three of my speeches are devoted to clarifying this idea. In the primitive times of mankind, poets were prophets and priests, the religious idea ruled poetry, and art served the gods. Then, with the complexity of life, when a civilization based on the division of labor appeared, art, like other human endeavors, became isolated and separated from religion. If before artists were servants of the gods, now art itself has become a deity and an idol. Priests of pure art appeared, for whom the perfection of artistic form became the main thing, in addition to any religious content. The twofold spring of this free art (in the classical world and in new Europe) was luxurious, but not eternal. Before our eyes, the flowering of modern European art ended. The flowers are falling, but the fruits are just beginning to set. It would be unfair to demand from the ovary the qualities of a ripe fruit: one can only predict these future qualities. This is exactly how we should approach the current state of art and literature. Today's artists cannot and do not want to serve pure beauty, to produce perfect forms; they are looking for content. But, alien to the former, religious content of art, they turn entirely to current reality and place themselves in a doubly slavish attitude towards it: firstly, they try to slavishly copy off the phenomena of this reality, and secondly, they strive just as slavishly to serve the topic of the day, to satisfy the public mood of the moment, to preach current morality, thinking through this to make art useful. Of course, neither one nor the other of these goals is achieved. In the unsuccessful pursuit of supposedly real 4 details, the real reality of the whole is only lost, and the desire to combine external instructiveness and usefulness with art to the detriment of its internal beauty turns art into the most useless and unnecessary thing in the world, for it is clear that a bad work of art, with the best tendency, can teach nothing and cannot bring any benefit. It is very easy to pronounce an unconditional condemnation of the modern state of art and its dominant trend. The general decline of creativity and private attacks on the idea of ​​beauty are too striking - and, however, unconditional condemnation of all this would be unfair. In this crude and base modern art, under this double image of a slave, lie hidden the guarantees of divine greatness. The demands of modern reality and the direct benefit of art, 5 meaningless in their present crude and dark application, hint, however, at such a sublime and deeply true idea of ​​art, which neither representatives nor interpreters of pure art have yet reached. Not content with the beauty of form, modern artists want, more or less consciously, for art to be a real force that enlightens and regenerates the entire human world. Former art distracted man from the darkness and malice that dominate the world, it took him to its serene heights and entertained him with its bright images; modern art, on the contrary, attracts a person to the darkness and malice of everyday life with a sometimes unclear desire to enlighten this darkness, to pacify this malice. But where will art get this enlightening and regenerating power? If art should not be limited to distracting a person from an evil life, but should improve this evil life itself, then this great goal cannot be achieved by simply reproducing reality. To portray does not yet mean to transform, and reproof is not yet correction. Pure art raised man above the earth, took him to Olympic heights; new art returns to the earth with love and compassion, but not in order to plunge into the darkness and malice of earthly life, for this does not require any art, but in order to heal and renew this life. To do this, you need to be involved and close to the earth, you need love and compassion for it, but you also need something more. For a powerful action on the earth, in order to turn and recreate it, it is necessary to attract and apply unearthly forces to the earth. Art, having become isolated and separated from religion, must enter into a new free connection with it. Artists and poets must again become priests and prophets, but in a different, even more important and sublime sense: not only will the religious idea own them, but they themselves will own it and consciously control its earthly incarnations. The art of the future, which itself, after long trials, will return to religion, will be completely different from the primitive art that has not yet emerged from religion. Despite the anti-religious (apparently) nature of modern art, a discerning eye will be able to distinguish in it the unclear features of future religious art, namely in the double desire - for the complete embodiment of the idea in the smallest material details to the point of almost perfect merging with current reality and at the same time in the desire to influence real life, correcting and improving it, according to known ideal requirements. True, these demands themselves are still quite unsuccessful. Unaware of the religious nature of its task, realistic art abandons the only solid support and powerful lever for its moral action in the world. But all this crude realism of modern art is only that hard shell in which the winged poetry of the future is hidden for the time being. This is not just a personal aspiration - positive facts suggest this. There are already artists who, starting from the prevailing realism and still remaining largely on its base soil, at the same time reach religious truth, connect the tasks of their works with it, draw their social ideal from it, and sanctify their public service with it. If in modern realistic art we see a kind of prediction of a new religious art, then this prediction is already beginning to come true. There are no representatives of this new religious art yet, but there are already its forerunners. Dostoevsky was such a forerunner. By the nature of his activity he belongs to the artist-novelists and is inferior to some of them in one respect or another, Dostoevsky has over all of them the main advantage that he sees not only around him, but also far ahead of himself... Apart from Dostoevsky, all our best novelists take the life around them as they found it, as it took shape and expressed itself - in its ready-made, solid and clear forms. These are especially the novels of Goncharov and gr. Leo Tolstoy. Both of them reproduce Russian society, developed over centuries (landowners, officials, sometimes peasants), in its everyday, long-existing, and partly obsolete or obsolete forms. The novels of these two writers are decidedly homogeneous in their artistic subject matter, despite the peculiarities of their talents. A distinctive feature of Goncharov is the power of artistic generalization, thanks to which he could create such an all-Russian tin. like Oblomov, whose breadth we do not find equal in any of the Russian writers 6 . - As for L. Tolstoy, then all his works are distinguished not so much by the breadth of types (none of his heroes became a household name), but by his skill in detailed painting, a vivid depiction of all sorts of details in the life of man and nature, but his main strength is in the subtlest reproduction of the mechanism of mental phenomena. But both this painting of external details and this psychological analysis appear against the constant background of a ready-made, established life, namely the life of a Russian noble family, shaded by even more motionless images from the common people. The soldier Karataev is too humble to overshadow his masters, and even the world-historical figure of Napoleon cannot expand this narrow horizon: the ruler of Europe is shown only to the extent that he comes into contact with the life of the Russian master; and this contact can be limited to very few things, for example, the famous washing, in which Count Tolstoy’s Napoleon worthily competes with Gogol’s general Betrishchev 7 . – In this motionless world everything is clear and definite, everything is established; if there is a desire for something else, a desire to get out of these frameworks, then this desire is turned not forward, but back, to an even simpler and unchangeable life - to the life of nature (“Cossacks”, “Three Deaths”). The artistic world of Dostoevsky represents a completely opposite character. Here everything is in ferment, nothing has been established, everything is still just becoming. The subject of the novel here is not the life of society, but a social movement. Of all our wonderful novelists, Dostoevsky alone took the social movement as the main subject of his work. Turgenev is usually compared with him in this regard, but without sufficient reason. To characterize the overall significance of a writer, one must take his best, not his worst, works. Turgenev’s best works, especially “Notes of a Hunter” and “The Noble Nest,” present wonderful pictures not of a social movement, but only of a social state - the same old noble world that we find in Goncharov and L. Tolstoy. Although Turgenev then constantly followed our social movement and was partly subject to its influence, he did not guess the meaning of this movement, and the novel specifically devoted to this subject (“Nov”) turned out to be completely unsuccessful 8 . Dostoevsky did not submit to the influence of the aspirations that dominated around him, did not meekly follow the phases of the social movement - he foresaw the turns of this movement and judged them in advance. And he could judge by right, for he had a standard of judgment in his faith, which placed him above the prevailing trends, allowed him to see much further than these trends and not get carried away by them. By virtue of his faith, Dostoevsky correctly foresaw the highest, distant goal of the entire movement, clearly saw its deviations from this goal, rightly judged and rightly condemned them. This fair condemnation applied only to the wrong paths and bad methods of the social movement, and not to the movement itself, which was necessary and desirable; this condemnation related to a base understanding of social truth, to a false social ideal, and not to the search for social truth, not to the desire to realize a social ideal. This latter was ahead for Dostoevsky too: he believed not only in the past, but also in the coming Kingdom of God and understood the need for work and feat for its implementation. He who knows the true goal of the movement can and should judge deviations from it. And Dostoevsky had all the more the right to do this because he himself initially experienced those deviations, he himself stood on that wrong road. The positive religious ideal, which raised Dostoevsky so high above the dominant currents of social thought, this positive ideal was not given to him right away, but was gained through hard and long struggle. He judged what he knew, and his judgment was righteous. And the clearer the highest truth became for him, the more decisively he had to condemn the false paths of social action. The general meaning of all of Dostoevsky’s activities, or the significance of Dostoevsky as a public figure, lies in the resolution of this double question: about the highest ideal of society and about the real path to achieving it. The legitimate reason for a social movement lies in the contradiction between the moral demands of the individual and the existing structure of society. This is where Dostoevsky began as a describer, interpreter and at the same time an active participant in the new social movement. A deep sense of social untruth, albeit in the most harmless form, was expressed in his first story, “Poor People.” The social meaning of this story (to which the later novel “Humiliated and Insulted” is adjacent) boils down to that old and ever-new truth that in the existing order of things, the best (morally) people are at the same time the worst for society, that they are destined to be poor people, humiliated and insulted 9 . If social untruth had remained for Dostoevsky only the theme of a story or novel, then he himself would have remained only a writer and would not have achieved his special significance in the life of Russian society. But for Dostoevsky, the content of his story was at the same time a vital task. He immediately raised the question on moral and practical grounds. Having seen and condemned what was being done in the world, he asked: what should be done? First of all, a simple and clear solution presented itself: the best people, who see social injustice in others and feel it in themselves, must unite, rebel against it and recreate society in their own way. When the first naive attempt 10 to carry out this decision led Dostoevsky to the scaffold and to hard labor, he, like his comrades, at first could see in such an outcome of his plans only his own failure and someone else’s violence. The sentence that befell him was severe. But the feeling of resentment did not prevent Dostoevsky from realizing that he was wrong with his plan for a social revolution, which only he and his comrades needed 11. Among the horrors of the dead house, Dostoevsky for the first time consciously encountered the truth of popular feeling and in its light he clearly saw the wrongness of his revolutionary aspirations. The vast majority of Dostoevsky's comrades in prison were from the common people, and, with a few striking exceptions, they were all the worst people of the people. But even the worst people of the common people usually retain what the best people of the intelligentsia lose: faith in God and the consciousness of their sinfulness. Simple criminals, standing out from the masses of the people by their bad deeds, are not at all separated from them in their feelings and views, in their religious worldview. In the dead house, Dostoevsky found real “poor (or, in popular expression, unhappy) people” 12. Those former ones whom he left behind still had refuge from public resentment in a sense of their own dignity, in their personal superiority. The convicts did not have this, but there was something more. The worst people of the dead house returned to Dostoevsky what the best people of the intelligentsia had taken from him. If there, among the representatives of the enlightenment, the remnant of religious feeling made him turn pale from the blasphemies of the leading writer, then here, in the dead house, this feeling had to be resurrected and renewed under the impression of the humble and pious faith of the convicts. As if forgotten by the Church, oppressed by the state, these people believed in the Church and did not reject the state. And in the most difficult moment, behind the riotous and ferocious crowd of convicts, the stately and meek image of the serf Marey, lovingly encouraging the frightened little bark, arose in Dostoevsky’s memory. And he felt and understood that before this supreme truth of God, any self-made truth is a lie, and an attempt to impose this lie on others is a crime. Instead of the anger of an unsuccessful revolutionary, Dostoevsky brought out from hard labor the bright look of a morally reborn man. “More faith, more unity, and if love is there, then everything is done,” he wrote. This moral strength, renewed by contact with the people, gave Dostoevsky the right to a high place at the forefront of our social movement, not as a servant of the topic of the day, but as a true mover of social thought. The positive social ideal was not yet completely clear to Dostoevsky’s mind upon his return from Siberia. But three truths in this matter were completely clear to him: he understood, first of all, that individuals, even the best people, do not have the right to rape society in the name of their personal superiority; he also understood that social truth is not invented by individual minds, but is rooted in popular feeling, and, finally, he understood that this truth has a religious meaning and is necessarily connected with the faith of Christ, with the ideal of Christ. In the awareness of these truths, Dostoevsky was far ahead of the then dominant direction of social thought and thanks to this he could predict and indicate where this direction would lead. It is known that the novel “Crime and Punishment” was written just before the crime of Danilov 14 and Karakozov, and the novel “Demons” - before the trial of the Nechaevites. The meaning of the first of these novels, with all the depth of detail, is very simple and clear, although it was not understood by many. The main character is a representative of the view according to which every strong man is his own master and everything is allowed to him. In the name of his personal superiority, in the name of the fact that he is strong, he considers himself entitled to commit murder and actually commits it. But suddenly that thing, which he considered only a violation of an external meaningless law and a bold challenge to social prejudice, suddenly it turns out to be something much more for his own conscience, it turns out to be a sin, a violation of internal, moral truth. Violation of the external law receives legal retribution from the outside in exile and hard labor, but the internal sin of pride, which separated a strong man from humanity and led him to murder, this internal sin of self-deification can only be redeemed by the internal, moral feat of self-denial 15. Boundless self-confidence must disappear before the faith in that which is greater than oneself, and self-made justification must humble itself before the highest truth of God, living in those very simple and weak people whom the strong man looked upon as insignificant insects. In “Demons” the same theme is, if not deepened, then significantly expanded and complicated. An entire society of people, obsessed with the dream of a violent revolution in order to remake the world in their own way, commit brutal crimes and die in a shameful manner, and Russia, healed by faith, bows before its Savior. The social significance of these novels is great; they predicted important social phenomena that were not slow to emerge; at the same time, these phenomena are condemned in the name of the highest religious truth, and the best outcome for the social movement is indicated in the acceptance of this very truth. Condemning the search for arbitrary abstract truth, which only gives rise to crimes, Dostoevsky contrasts them with the people's religious ideal, based on the faith of Christ. A return to this faith is the common outcome for both Raskolnikov and the entire demon-possessed society. The faith of Christ alone, living among the people, contains within itself that positive social ideal in which the individual is in solidarity with everyone. From an individual who has lost this solidarity, it is first of all required that she renounce her proud solitude, so that through a moral act of self-sacrifice she will be spiritually reunited with the whole people. But in the name of what? Is it just because he is a people, that sixty million are more than one or a thousand? There are probably people who understand it this way. But such an overly simple understanding was completely alien to Dostoevsky. Demanding that a solitary individual return to the people, he first of all meant a return to that true faith that is still preserved among the people. In the social ideal of brotherhood or universal solidarity that Dostoevsky believed in, the main thing was its religious and moral, and not national, significance. Already in “Demons” there is a sharp mockery of those people who worship the people only because they are the people, and value Orthodoxy as an attribute of the Russian nationality 16. If we want to denote in one word the social ideal to which Dostoevsky came, then this word will not be the people, but the Church. We believe in the Church as the mystical body of Christ; we also know the Church as a collection of believers of one or another confession. But what is the Church as a social ideal? Dostoevsky did not have any theological claims, and therefore we do not have the right to seek from him any logical definitions of the Church in essence. But, preaching the Church as a social ideal, he expressed a completely clear and definite demand, just as clear and definite (although directly opposite) as the demand that is stated by European socialism. (That’s why in his last diary Dostoevsky called the people’s faith in the Church our Russian socialism 17.) European socialists demand the forcible reduction of everyone to one purely material level of well-fed and self-satisfied workers, they demand the reduction of the state and society to the level of simple economic association. “Russian socialism”, which Dostoevsky spoke about, on the contrary, elevates everyone to the moral level of the Church as a spiritual brotherhood. although with the preservation of external inequality of social positions, it requires the spiritualization of the entire state and social system through the embodiment in it of the truth of the life of Christ. The church as a positive social ideal was supposed to be the central idea of ​​a new novel or a new series of novels, of which only the first was written - “The Brothers Karamazov” 18. If this social ideal of Dostoevsky is directly opposite to the ideal of those modern figures who are depicted in “Demons,” then the paths of achievement for them are just as opposite. There the path is violence and murder, here the path is a moral feat, and, moreover, a double feat, a double act of moral self-denial. First of all, it is required of the individual that she renounce her arbitrary opinion, her self-made truth in the name of the common, popular faith and truth. A person must bow to the people's faith, but not because it is popular, but because it is true. And if so, then it means that the people, in the name of this truth in which they believe, must renounce and renounce everything in themselves that does not agree with religious truth. Possession of the truth cannot be the privilege of a people, just as it cannot be the privilege of an individual. Truth can only be universal, and the people are required to perform the feat of serving this universal truth, at least, and even without fail, with the sacrifice of their national egoism. And the people must justify themselves before the universal truth, and the people must lay down their soul if they want to save it. Universal truth is embodied in the Church. The final ideal and goal is not in the nation, which in itself is only a service force, but in the Church, which is the highest object of service, requiring moral achievement not only from the individual, but also from the whole people. So, the Church as a positive social ideal, as the basis and goal of all our thoughts and deeds, and the national feat as a direct path for the implementation of this ideal - this is the last word that Dostoevsky reached and which illuminated all his activities with prophetic light. (Said February 1, 1882) I will talk only about the most important and significant things in Dostoevsky’s activity. With such a rich and complex nature as Dostoevsky had, with his extraordinary impressionability and responsiveness to all the phenomena of life, his spiritual world represented too great a variety of feelings, thoughts and impulses to be able to recreate it in a short speech. But responding to everything with such spiritual fervor, he always recognized only one thing as the main and unconditionally necessary thing, to which everything else must be added. This central idea, which Dostoevsky served in all his activities, was the Christian idea of ​​free universal unity, universal brotherhood in the name of Christ. Dostoevsky preached this idea when he spoke about the true Church, about universal Orthodoxy, in which he saw the spiritual, not yet manifested essence of the Russian people, the world-historical task of Russia, the new word that Russia must say to the world. Although 18 centuries have passed since this word was first proclaimed by Christ, in our days it is truly a completely new word, and such a preacher of the Christian idea as Dostoevsky can rightly be called a “clairvoyant premonition” of true Christianity. Christ was not for him only a fact of the past, a distant and incomprehensible miracle. If you look at Christ this way, then you can easily make of Him a dead image, which is worshiped in churches on holidays, but which has no place in life. Then all Christianity is confined within the walls of the church and turns into ritual and prayer, and active life remains entirely non-Christian. And such an external Church contains true faith, but this faith here is so weak that it lasts only for festive moments. This is church Christianity. And it must exist first of all, for on earth the external comes before the internal, but it is not enough. There is another type or degree of Christianity, where it is no longer content with worship, but wants to lead the active life of a person; it leaves the church and settles in human dwellings. His destiny is inner individual life. Here Christ appears as the highest moral ideal, religion is concentrated in personal morality, and its work is based on the salvation of the individual human soul. There is true faith in such Christianity, but even here it is still weak: it only suffices for a person’s personal life and private affairs. This is Christianity at home. It should be there, but it is not enough. For it abandons the entire universal human world, all affairs, social, civil and international - it abandons all this and transfers it to the power of evil anti-Christian principles. But if Christianity is the highest, unconditional truth, then this should not be so. True Christianity cannot be only domestic, nor can it only be church-based; it must be universal, 19 it must extend to all humanity and all human affairs. And if Christ is truly the embodiment of truth, then He should not remain only a church image or only a personal ideal: we must recognize Him as a world-historical principle, as a living foundation and cornerstone of the pan-human Church. All human affairs and relationships must ultimately be governed by the same moral principle that we worship in churches and which we recognize in our home life, i.e. the beginning of love, free consent and fraternal unity. This kind of universal Christianity was professed and proclaimed by Dostoevsky. Church and home Christianity exists in reality - it is a fact. Universal Christianity does not yet exist in reality, it is only a task, and what a huge task, apparently exceeding human strength. In fact, all universal human affairs - politics, science, art, social economy, being outside the Christian principle, instead of uniting people, scatter and divide them, for all these affairs are governed by selfishness and private gain, competition and struggle and give rise to oppression and violence. This is reality, this is a fact. But 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 being tempted by the visible domination of evil and not renouncing invisible good for its sake is a feat of faith. In him lies all the strength of man. Whoever is not capable of this feat will not do anything 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. Not embarrassed by the anti-Christian character of our entire life and activity, not embarrassed by the lifelessness and inaction of our Christianity, Dostoevsky believed and preached Christianity, living and active, the universal Church, the universal Orthodox cause. He spoke not only about what is, but about what should be. He spoke of the universal Orthodox Church not only as a divine institution, immutably abiding, but also as a task of all-human and all-world unification in the name of Christ and in the spirit of Christ - in the spirit of love and mercy, heroism and self-sacrifice. The true Church, which Dostoevsky preached, is all-human, primarily in the sense that in it the division of humanity into competing and hostile tribes and peoples should completely disappear. All of them, without losing their national character, but only freeing themselves from their national egoism, can and must unite in one common cause of world revival. Therefore, Dostoevsky, speaking about Russia, could not have in mind national isolation 20. On the contrary, he believed the entire significance of the Russian people to be in the service of true Christianity, but there is neither a Greek nor a Jew in it. True, he considered Russia the chosen people of God, but chosen not for competition with other peoples and not for domination and primacy over them, but for free service to all peoples and for the realization, in fraternal union with them, of true pan-humanity, or the universal Church. Dostoevsky never idealized the people and did not worship them as an idol. He believed in Russia and predicted a great future for it, but the main inclination of this future in his eyes was precisely the weakness of national egoism and exclusivity in the Russian people. Two traits in him were especially dear to Dostoevsky. Firstly, the extraordinary ability to assimilate the spirit and ideas of foreign peoples, to transform into the spiritual essence of all nations - a trait that was especially expressed in Pushkin’s poetry. The second, even more important feature that Dostoevsky pointed out in the Russian people is the consciousness of their sinfulness, the inability to elevate their imperfection into law and right and rest on it, hence the demand for a better life, the thirst for purification and achievement. Without this, there is no true activity either for an individual or for an entire people. No matter how deep the fall of a person or a people, no matter how bad his life is filled, he can come out of it and rise if he wants, i.e. if he recognizes his bad reality only as bad, only as a fact that should not exist, and does not make an unchangeable law and principle out of this bad fact, does not elevate his sin to truth. But if a person or a people does not put up with his bad reality and condemns it as a sin, this means that he has some idea, or idea, or at least just a premonition of another, better life, of what should be. That is why Dostoevsky argued that the Russian people, despite their visible bestial image, in the depths of their souls bear another image - the image of Christ - and, when the time comes, they will show Him to all peoples, and attract them to Him, and together with them will fulfill the pan-human task. And this task, that is, true Christianity, is pan-human not only in the sense that it must unite all peoples with one faith, but, most importantly, in the fact that it must unite and reconcile all human affairs into one universal common cause, without it the common universal faith would only be an abstract formula and a dead dogma. And Dostoevsky not only preached this reunification of universal human affairs, at least the highest of them, in one Christian idea, but to a certain extent demonstrated it himself in his own activities. Being a religious man, he was at the same time a completely free thinker and a powerful artist. These three sides, these three highest matters were not differentiated from each other and did not exclude each other, but were inseparably included in all his activities. In his beliefs, he never separated truth from goodness and beauty; in his artistic creativity, he never placed beauty separately from goodness and truth. And he was right, because these three live only by their union. Goodness, separated from truth and beauty, is only an indefinite feeling, a powerless impulse, abstract truth is an empty word, and beauty without goodness and truth is an idol. For Dostoevsky, these were only three inseparable types of one unconditional idea. The infinity of the human soul revealed in Christ, capable of containing the entire infinity of divinity - this idea is at once the greatest good, the highest truth, and the most perfect beauty. Truth is good, conceivable by the human mind; beauty is the same good and the same truth, bodily embodied in a living concrete form. And its complete embodiment in everything is already the end, and the goal, and perfection, and that is why Dostoevsky said that beauty will save the world. The world should not be saved by force. The task is not simply to unite all parts of humanity and all human affairs into one common cause. One can imagine that people work together on some great task and reduce and subordinate all their private activities to it, but if this task is imposed on them, if for them it is something fatal and unrelenting, if they are united by blind instinct or external compulsion, then, even if such unity extends to all of humanity, it will not be true pan-humanity, but only a huge “anthill”. Examples of such anthills were, we know, in eastern despotisms - in China, in Egypt, and on a small scale they were already carried out in modern times by communists in North America 21 . Dostoevsky rebelled against such an anthill with all his might, seeing in it the direct opposite of his social ideal. His ideal requires not only the unity of all people and all human affairs, but most importantly, their humane unity. The point is not unity, but free consent to unity. Case. not in the greatness and importance of the common task, but in its voluntary recognition. The final condition of true pan-humanity is freedom. But where is the guarantee that people will freely come to unity, and not disperse in all directions, fighting and destroying each other, as we see? There is only one guarantee: the infinity of the human soul, which does not allow a person to forever stop and rest on something partial, small and incomplete, but forces him to strive and seek a complete human life, a universal and universal cause. Faith in this infinity of the human soul is given by Christianity. Of all religions, Christianity alone places next to the perfect God a perfect man, in whom the fullness of divinity dwells bodily. And if the full reality of the infinite human soul was realized in Christ, then the possibility, the spark of this infinity and completeness exists in every human soul, even at the lowest degree of decline, and Dostoevsky showed us this in his favorite types. The fullness of Christianity is pan-humanity, and Dostoevsky’s whole life was an ardent impulse towards pan-humanity. I don’t want to believe that this life was in vain. I would like to believe that it was not for nothing that our society mourned the death of Dostoevsky so unanimously. He left no theory, no system, no plan or project. But the guiding principle and goal, the highest social task and idea were set by him to unprecedented heights. Russian society will be ashamed if it brings its social idea down from this height and replaces the great common cause with its petty professional and class interests under various big names. Of course, everyone who recognizes the great universal cause has his own private affairs and occupations, his own profession and specialty. And there is no need to abandon them at all, unless there is nothing contrary to the moral law in them. A pan-human cause is a pan-human cause because it can combine everything and excludes nothing except malice and sin. All that is required of us is that we do not put our small part in the place of the great whole, that we do not isolate ourselves in our private affairs, but try to connect it with the universal cause, so that we never lose sight of this great cause, that we place it above and first of all, and everything else comes later. It is not in our power to decide when and how the great work of all-human unity will be accomplished. But to set it for ourselves as the highest task and to serve it in all our affairs is in our power. We have the power to say: this is what we want, this is our highest goal and our banner - and we will not agree to anything else. (Said February 19, 1883) During the reign of Alexander II, the external, natural education of Russia, the formation of its body, ended, and the process of its spiritual birth began in pain and illness. Every new birth, every creative process that introduces existing elements into new forms and combinations, is inevitably preceded by the fermentation of these elements. When the body of Russia took shape and the Russian state was born, Russian people - from princes with their squads to the last farmer - roamed throughout the country. All Rus' wandered apart. Such external fermentation caused external state consolidation in order to fold Russia into one great body. Begun by the princes in Moscow and completed by the emperors in St. Petersburg, this process of external consolidation, by virtue of which the former wandering squads turned into the landed nobility, the former free guests became bourgeois, and the freely moving peasants were made serfs - this organization of Russia, fixed by the state, introduced the life and activity of the people and society into a firm, defined framework. These frameworks remained intact even when, after Peter’s reform and especially from the reign of Alexander I, various ideas and mental trends in Western Europe began to take hold of the educated stratum of Russian society. Neither the mystical beliefs of Russian Freemasons, nor the humanitarian ideas of the leaders of the forties, despite the moral and practical direction that they often took among us, had a significant influence on the strength of everyday foundations and did not prevent educated people, reasoning in a new way, from living in the old way, in the forms bequeathed by tradition. Until the liberation act of the last reign, the life and activity of Russian people did not depend significantly on their thoughts and beliefs, but were determined in advance by the ready-made framework within which birth placed each person and each group of people. A special question about the tasks of life, about why to live and what to do, could not arise in the society of that time, because its life and activities were determined not by the question of what, but by the basis of why. The landowner lived and acted in a certain way not for anything, but primarily because he was a landowner, and in the same way the peasant was obliged to live one way and not another, because he was a peasant, and between these extreme forms, all other social groups, in the ready-made conditions of state life, found a sufficient basis that determined the circle of their life, leaving no room for the question: what to do? If Russia were only a people's state body, like, for example, China, then it could be satisfied with such external firmness and certainty of life, it could remain in its fixed organization. But Russia, baptized into the Christian faith in its very infancy, received from here the guarantee of a higher spiritual life and had to, having reached adulthood, developed and determined physically, seek a free moral definition for itself. And for this, first of all, the forces of Russian society had to receive freedom, the opportunity and the incentive to emerge from the external immobility that was determined by the serfdom. This (liberation, not reformist) matter is the whole meaning of the past reign. The great feat of this reign is the only liberation of Russian society from the previous mandatory framework for the future creation of new spiritual forms, and not the very creation of these latter, which has not yet begun. Before these forms can be formed, a liberated society must go through an internal spiritual ferment. Just as before the formation of the state body there was a period when everyone wandered, so it should be before the spiritual birth of Russia. At this time of internal fermentation, the question arises with irresistible force: why live and what to do? This question appears at first in a false sense. There is something false in the very posing of such a question on the part of people who have just been cut off from the known external foundations of life and have not yet replaced them with any higher ones, who have not yet mastered themselves. Ask directly: what to do? - means to assume that there is some kind of ready-made work that you just need to put your hands to, which means skipping another question: are the doers themselves ready? Meanwhile, in every human undertaking, large and small, physical and spiritual, both questions are equally important: what to do and who is doing it? A bad or unprepared worker can only ruin the best business. The subject of the matter and the qualities of the doer are inextricably linked with each other in any real matter, and where these two sides are separated, there is no real business. Then, first of all, the sought-after matter bifurcates. On the one hand, an image of an ideal system of life appears, and a certain “social ideal” is established. But this ideal is accepted regardless of any internal work of the person himself - it consists only of a certain, predetermined and externally forced economic and social system of life; therefore, everything that a person can do to achieve this external ideal comes down to eliminating external obstacles to it. Thus, the ideal itself appears exclusively only in the future, and in the present a person deals only with what contradicts this ideal, and all his activity from a non-existent ideal turns entirely to the destruction of the existing one, and since this latter is held by people and society, then this whole matter turns into violence against people and the whole society. Imperceptibly, the social ideal is replaced by antisocial activities. To the question: what to do? - a clear and definite answer is obtained: kill all opponents of the future ideal system, i.e. all defenders of the present. With this solution to the matter, the question is: are the workers ready? – is really redundant. For such service to the social ideal, human nature in its present state and from its worst sides is completely ready and suitable. In achieving a social ideal through destruction, all bad passions, all the evil and insane elements of humanity will find a place and purpose: such a social ideal stands entirely on the basis of the evil that prevails in the world. He does not impose any moral conditions on his servants, he does not need spiritual strength, but physical violence, he demands from humanity not an internal conversion, but an external revolution. Before the advent of Christianity, the Jewish people were waiting for the coming of the kingdom of God, and the majority understood by this kingdom an external violent revolution that was supposed to give dominance to the chosen people and destroy their enemies. The people who expected such a kingdom, at least the most determined and zealous of them, had a clear and definite answer to the question of what to do 22: rebel against Rome and beat the Roman soldiers. And they did this, began to beat the Romans and were themselves killed. And their cause perished, and the Romans destroyed Jerusalem. Only a few in Israel understood by the coming kingdom something deeper and more radical, they knew another enemy, a more terrible and more mysterious enemy than the Romans, and they were looking for another, even more difficult, but also more fruitful victory. For these people the question is: what to do? - there was only one mysterious and vague answer, which the teachers of Israel could not accommodate: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” 23 . The few people who were not embarrassed by this strange and dark answer, who accepted the new birth and believed in the spiritual kingdom of God - these people defeated the Romans and conquered the world. And now in our country, in an era of spiritual ferment - while adherents of a “social ideal”, as external and superficial as the “kingdom” of Jewish materialists, rebel and kill, destroy others and themselves perish fruitlessly and ingloriously 24, and others either get lost in mental chaos or wallow in indifferent self-interest - there are only a few people who, not being satisfied with any external goals and ideals, feel and proclaim the need for a deep moral revolution and indicate the conditions for a new spiritual birth of Russia and humanity. Of these few harbingers of the Russian and universal future, undoubtedly, Dostoevsky was the first, for he foresaw the essence of the coming kingdom more deeply than others, and foreshadowed it more powerfully and animatedly. The main advantage of Dostoevsky's views is precisely that for which he is sometimes reproached - the absence or, better to say, the conscious rejection of any external social ideal, that is, one that is not associated with the internal conversion of a person or his birth from above. Such a birth is not necessary for the so-called social ideal. He is content with human nature as it is - this is a crude and superficial ideal, and we know that attempts to realize it only confirm and multiply the evil and madness already dominating the world. Dostoevsky did not have such a crude and superficial, godless and inhuman ideal, and this is his first merit. He knew too well all the depths of human degradation; he knew that malice and madness form the basis of our perverted nature and that if we accept this perversion as the norm, then we cannot come to anything other than violence and chaos. Until the dark foundation of our nature, evil in its exclusive egoism and insane in its desire to realize this egoism, to take everything to ourselves and determine everything by ourselves - until this dark foundation is present in us - is not addressed - and this original sin is not crushed, until then no real work is possible for us and the question of what to do has no reasonable meaning. Imagine a crowd of people, blind, deaf, crippled, possessed, and suddenly from this crowd the question arises: what to do? The only reasonable answer here is: seek healing; until you are healed, there is no matter for you, and as long as you pretend to be healthy, there is no healing for you. A person who, on his moral illness, on his malice and madness, bases his right to act and remake the world in his own way, such a person, whatever his external fate and deeds, is by his very essence a murderer; he will inevitably rape and destroy others, and he himself will inevitably die from violence. – He considers himself strong, but he is at the mercy of alien forces; he is proud of his freedom, but he is a slave to appearances and chance. Such a person will not be healed until he takes the first step towards salvation. The first step to salvation for us is to feel our powerlessness and our bondage; whoever fully feels this will no longer be a murderer; but if he dwells on this feeling of his powerlessness and bondage, then he will come to suicide. Suicide - violence against oneself - is already something higher and freer than violence against others. Realizing his insolvency, a person thereby becomes above this incompetence, and, pronouncing a death sentence on himself, he not only suffers like a defendant, but also acts imperiously, like a supreme judge. But even here his judgment is unjust. There is an internal contradiction in the decision to commit suicide. This decision comes from the consciousness of one’s powerlessness and bondage; Meanwhile, suicide itself is already a certain act of strength and freedom - why not use this strength and freedom for life? But the fact is that a suicide not only recognizes human inconsistency within himself, but also elevates it into a universal law, which is already madness. He not only feels evil, but also believes in evil. Aware of his illness, he does not believe in healing and therefore the strength and freedom acquired by that consciousness can only be used for self-destruction. Anyone who is aware of all-human evil, but does not believe in superhuman Good, comes to suicide. Only by this faith is a person of thought and conscience saved from suicide. He should not stop at the first step - the consciousness of his evil, but must take the second step - to recognize the existing Good above him. And it takes a little common sense to, feeling all the evil in a person, conclude to the Good, independent of man, and a little effort of good will is needed to turn to this Good and give it a place in oneself. For this existing Good itself is already looking for us and turning us to itself, and we can only yield to Him, just not oppose Him. With faith in the superhuman Good, that is, in God, faith in man also returns, who no longer appears in his loneliness, weakness and captivity, but as a free participant in the deity and bearer of the power of God. But, having truly believed in the superhuman Good, we can no longer allow its appearance and action to be associated exclusively with our subjective state, so that the Divine in its manifestation depends only on the personal action of a person - we certainly, in addition to our personal religious attitude, must recognize the positive revelation of the Divine in the external world, we must recognize objective religion. To limit the action of God to the moral consciousness of man alone means to deny His completeness and infinity, and means not to believe in God. Really believing in God as Good, which knows no boundaries, it is necessary to recognize the objective embodiment of the Divine, i.e. His union with the very essence of our nature, not only in spirit, but also in the flesh, and through it with the elements of the external world - and this means recognizing nature as capable of such an incarnation of the Divine into it, which means believing in the redemption, sanctification and deification of matter. With real and complete faith in the Divine, not only faith in man returns to us, but also faith in nature. We know nature and matter, separated from God and perverted in itself, but we believe in its redemption and its union with the deity, its transformation into the Mother of God, and we recognize the true, perfect man, that is, the God-man in His free will and action, as the mediator of this redemption and restoration. A true, born-again person, through the moral feat of self-denial, conducts the living power of God into the dead body of nature and forms the whole world into the universal kingdom of God. To believe in the kingdom of God means to combine faith in man and faith in nature with faith in God. All delusions of the mind, all false theories and all practical one-sidedness and abuses have arisen and arise from the separation of these three faiths. All truth and all good come out of their inner union. On the one hand, man and nature make sense only in their connection with the Divine - for man, left to himself and established on his godless basis, exposes his inner untruth and comes, as we know, to murder and suicide, and nature, separated from the Spirit of God, is a dead and meaningless mechanism without reason and purpose - and on the other hand, God, separated from man and nature, outside of his positive revelation, is for us either an empty distraction, or all-consuming indifference. Through such a disastrous division of three principles and three faiths, the entire free enlightenment of Europe passed. Mystics (quietists and pietists) spoke here, striving to drown in the contemplation of the Divine, despising human freedom and turning away from material nature. Further, humanists (rationalists and idealists) spoke here, worshiping the human principle, declaring the unconditional self-legitimacy and supremacy of human reason and the idea conceivable by it, seeing in God only the embryo of man, and in nature only his shadow. But this shadow made its reality felt too strongly, and now, finally, after the collapse of idealism, naturalists (realists and materialists) come to the forefront of modern enlightenment, who, expelling from their worldview all traces of the spirit and Divinity, bow before the dead mechanism of nature. All these one-sided directions exposed each other in lies and sufficiently exposed their inconsistency. And our embryonic enlightenment passed through these three abstract directions. But the spiritual future of Russia and humanity does not lie in them. False and fruitless in their discord, they find both truth and fruitful power in their inner unity - in the fullness of the Christian idea. This idea affirms the embodiment of the divine principle in natural life through the free exploit of man, adding to faith in God faith in the God-Man and in the Mother of God (Theotokos) 25. Assimilated instinctively and semi-consciously by the Russian people from the time of their baptism, this triune Christian idea should become the basis for the conscious spiritual development of Russia in connection with the destinies of all humanity. Dostoevsky understood this and proclaimed this. More than any of his contemporaries, he perceived the Christian idea harmoniously in its threefold completeness: he was a mystic, a humanist, and a naturalist all together. Possessing a living sense of inner connection with the superhuman and being in this sense a mystic, in this same feeling he found the freedom and strength of man; Knowing all human evil, he believed in all human good and was, by all accounts, a true humanist. But his faith in man was free from any one-sided idealism or spiritualism: he took man in all his fullness and reality; such a person is closely connected with material nature - and Dostoevsky turned to nature with deep love and tenderness, understood and loved the earth and everything earthly, believed in the purity, holiness and beauty of matter. There is nothing false or sinful in such materialism. Just as true humanism is not worship of human evil just because it is human, so true naturalism is not slavery to perverted nature just because it is natural. Humanism is faith in man, but there is nothing to believe in human evil and weaknesses - they are obvious, obvious; and there is also nothing to believe in perverted nature - it is a visible and tactile fact. To believe in a person means to recognize in him something more than what is present, it means to recognize in him that power and that freedom that connects him with the Divine; and to believe in nature means to recognize in it the hidden lightness and beauty that make it the body of God. True humanism is faith in the God-Man, and true naturalism is faith in the Mother of God. The justification of this faith, the positive revelation of these principles, the reality of the God-Man and the Mother of God are given to us in Christ and the Church, which is the living body of the God-Man. Here, in Orthodox Christianity, in the universal Church, we find a solid foundation and an essential beginning for a new spiritual life, for the harmonious formation of true humanity and true nature. Here, then, is the condition of the present case. True work is possible only if there are positive and free forces of light and good in both man and nature; but without God, neither man nor nature has such powers. Separation from the Divine, that is, from the fullness of Good, is evil and, acting on the basis of this evil, we can only do a bad thing. The last act of a godless person is murder or suicide. Man introduces evil into nature and takes death from it. Only by renouncing your false position, from your insane concentration in yourself, from your evil loneliness, only by connecting yourself with God in. In Christ and in peace in the Church, we can do God’s real work - what Dostoevsky called the Orthodox work. If Christianity is a religion of salvation; if the Christian idea consists of healing, the internal unification of those principles, the discord of which is destruction, then the essence of the true Christian work will be what in logical language is called synthesis, and in moral language - reconciliation. Dostoevsky outlined the calling of Russia with this general feature in his Pushkin speech 26 . This was his last word and testament. And here there was something much more than a simple call to peaceful feelings in the name of the breadth of the Russian spirit - there was also an indication of the positive historical tasks or, better, responsibilities of Russia. It was not for nothing that it was felt and reflected that the dispute between Slavophilism and Westernism had been abolished - and the abolition of this dispute means the abolition in the idea of ​​the very centuries-old historical discord between East and West, it means finding a new moral position for Russia, freeing it from the need to continue the anti-Christian struggle between East and West and placing on it the great duty of morally serving both East and West, reconciling both within itself. And this duty and this purpose were not invented for Russia, but were given to it by the Christian faith and history. The division between East and West in the sense of discord and antagonism, mutual enmity and hatred - such a division should not exist in Christianity, and if it appeared, then it is a great sin and a great disaster. But it was precisely while this great sin was being committed in Byzantium that Russia was born to atone for it. Having accepted Orthodox Christianity from Byzantium, should Russia, along with God’s shrine, forever assimilate the historical sins of the Byzantine kingdom, which prepared its own destruction? If, contrary to the fullness of the Christian idea, Byzantium again aroused a great world dispute and took one side in it - the side of the East, then its fate is not a model for us, but a reproach. From the beginning, Providence placed Russia between the non-Christian East and the Western form of Christianity - between infidelism and Latinism; and while Byzantium, in a one-sided enmity with the West, more and more imbued with exclusively Eastern principles and turning into an Asian kingdom, turns out to be equally powerless against both the Latin crusaders and the Muslim barbarians and is finally conquered by the latter, Russia with decisive success defends itself from both the East and the West, victoriously repelling infidelism and Latinism. This external struggle with both opponents was necessary for the external formation and strengthening of Russia, for the formation of its state body. But now this external task is completed, the body of Russia has formed and grown, alien forces cannot absorb it - and the old antagonism loses its meaning. Russia has sufficiently shown both the East and the West its physical strength in the fight against them; now it has to show them its spiritual strength in reconciliation. I am not talking about external rapprochement and mechanical transference of alien forms to us, such as the reform of Peter the Great, which was necessary only as a preparation. The real task is not to adopt, but to understand other people’s forms, to recognize and assimilate the positive essence of someone else’s spirit and to morally unite with it in the name of the highest universal truth. Essential reconciliation is necessary; The essence of reconciliation is God, and true reconciliation lies in treating the enemy not in a human way, but in a “Godly way.” This is all the more urgent for us because now both of our main opponents are no longer outside us, but in our midst. Latinism, represented by the Poles, and infidelism, i.e., the non-Christian East, represented by the Jews, became part of Russia, and if they are our enemies, then they are already internal enemies, and if there has to be a war with them, then it will already be an internecine war. Here, not only Christian conscience, but also human wisdom speaks of reconciliation. And peaceful feelings towards opponents as people in general are not enough here, because these opponents are not people in general, but very special people, with their own specific character, and for real reconciliation you need a deep understanding of precisely this special character of theirs - you need to turn to their very spiritual being and treat it in God's way 27. The spiritual origin of the Poles is Catholicism, the spiritual origin of the Jews is the Jewish religion. To truly be reconciled with Catholicism and Judaism means, first of all, to separate in them what is from God and what is from men. If within us there is a living interest in the work of God on earth, if His holiness is dearer to us than all human relationships, if we do not put the abiding power of God on the same scale with the transitory affairs of people, then through the hard crust of sins and errors we will discern the seal of Divine election, firstly, on Catholicism, and then on Judaism. Seeing that the Roman Church, even in ancient times, alone stood as a solid rock, against which all the dark waves of the anti-Christian movement (heresies and Islam) were broken: seeing that in our times, Rome alone remains untouched and unshakable among the stream of anti-Christian civilization and from it alone the imperious, albeit cruel word of condemnation of the godless world is heard, we will not attribute this to some incomprehensible human stubbornness, but recognize here also the secret power of God; and if Rome, unshakable in its shrine, at the same time, striving to bring everything human to this shrine, moved and changed, walked forward, stumbled, fell deeply and rose again, then it is not for us to judge it for these stumblings and falls, because we did not support it and did not raise it, but complacently looked at the difficult and slippery PATH of our Western brother, ourselves sitting in place, and sitting on place, didn't fall. If everything that is humanly bad, everything small and dirty is so striking to us, if we see all this dust of the earth so clearly and distinctly, and everything divine and holy for us, on the contrary, is imperceptible, dark and incredible, then this only means that there is little God in ourselves. Let's give Him more space in ourselves and see Him more clearly in others. Then we will see His power not only in the Catholic Church, but also in the Jewish synagogue. Then we will understand and accept the words of the Apostle about the Israelites: “They have sonship, and glory, and covenants, and laws, and ministry, and promises; theirs are their fathers, and from them is Christ according to the flesh, who is God above all... Or has God cast away his people? It won't happen! God did not cast away his people whom he knew before... But lest you should be proud, I do not want you, brethren, to be ignorant of the mystery that Israel was blinded in part until the fullness of the nations came. And then all Israel will be saved... For God has brought all into rebellion, that He might have mercy on all.”28 Truly, if for us the word of God is truer than all human considerations and the cause of the kingdom of God is dearer than all earthly interests, then the path of reconciliation with our historical enemies is open to us. And let’s not say: will our opponents themselves agree to peace, how will they react to this and what will they answer us? Someone else's conscience is unknown to us, and other people's affairs are not in our power. It is not in our power for others to treat us well, but in our power to be worthy of such treatment. And we should think not about what others will tell us, but about what we will tell the world. In one conversation, Dostoevsky applied to Russia the vision of John the Theologian about a wife clothed in the sun and in torment wanting to give birth to a man’s son 29: the wife is Russia, and what she gives birth to is the new Word that Russia must tell the world. Whether this interpretation of the “great sign” is correct or not, Dostoevsky guessed the new Word of Russia correctly. This is a word of reconciliation for East and West in the union of the eternal truth of God and human freedom. This is the highest task and responsibility of Russia, and this is the “social ideal” of Dostoevsky. Its basis is the moral revival and spiritual feat of no longer an individual, lonely person, but of an entire society and people. As of old, such an ideal is unclear to the teachers of Israel, but there is truth in it, and it will conquer the world. A note in defense of Dostoevsky from the accusation of “new” Christianity (“Our new Christians”, etc. K. Leontiev, Moscow. 1882) 30 "Every man is a lie." – “Behold, you seek to kill Me, the man who told you the truth.” “Do you think that I came to bring peace to earth? No, but division." "And there will be one flock and one shepherd." “The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.” “God is love. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear." 31 Is it possible to reduce the entire essence of Christianity to one humanity? Is the goal of Christianity universal harmony and prosperity on earth, achieved by the natural progress of mankind? Finally, is the basis of Christian life and activity in love alone? When these questions are directly posed, the answer to them cannot be doubtful. If the whole truth lies in humanity alone, then what does the Christian religion have to do with it? Why then talk about it instead of directly preaching simple humanity? If the goal of life is achieved by natural progress and consists in earthly prosperity, then why connect this with such a religion, which is all kept in secret, miracle and feat? Finally, if the whole point of religion is one human feeling of love, then this means that religion has no business at all and there is no need for it itself. For human love, with all its psychological complexity, in the moral sense is only a simple accidental fact and cannot in any way constitute the main content of a religious sermon. The Apostle of Love himself bases his sermon not on the morality of love, but on the mystical truth of the incarnation of the Divine Logos: “what was in the beginning, what we heard, what we saw with our eyes, what we examined and what our hands touched, about the meaning of life (for life has appeared, and we have seen and testify, and we proclaim to you this eternal life, which was with the Father and appeared to us), about what we have seen and heard, We proclaim to you that you also may have fellowship with us: and our fellowship is with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ” (1st John I. 1 - 3). And love is spoken about only later, for love can be fruitful only on the basis of a believing and regenerated soul. But on a purely human basis, it remains only a personal disposition, for one can neither transfer love (as a simple feeling) to others, nor demand it from others - one can only state its presence or absence in a given case. Consequently, in itself, as a subjective state, love cannot be the subject of religious duty or the task of religious action. The direct posing of these three questions and the decisive answer to them in a negative sense constitutes the main interest and merit of the brochure “Our New Christians.” What the author attacks is the desire to replace the living fullness of Christianity with commonplaces of abstract morality, covered with a Christian name without a Christian essence - this desire is very widespread in our days, and it should have been noted. Unfortunately, while denouncing the errors of pseudo-Christianity, the author of the brochure associated them with the names of two Russian writers, at least one of whom is decisively free from these errors. The author of the brochure rightly highly appreciates the significance and merits of Dostoevsky. But the Christian idea that this remarkable man served was distorted in his mind, according to Mr. Leontyev, by an admixture of sentimentality and abstract humanism 32 . There may have been a touch of sentimentality in the style of the author of “Poor People,” but in any case, Dostoevsky’s humanism was not the abstract morality that Mr. Leontyev denounces, for Dostoevsky based his best hopes for man on real faith in Christ and the Church, and not on faith in abstract reason or in that godless and demon-possessed humanity, which is clearer in the novels of Dostoevsky himself than anywhere else. reflected in all its abomination. Dostoevsky's humanism was affirmed on the mystical, superhuman basis of true Christianity, and when assessing a figure from a Christian point of view, the most important thing is what he stands on and what he builds on. “Is it possible,” asks Mr. Leontyev, “to build a new national culture on one good feeling for people, without specially defined, at the same time, material and mystical objects of faith that stand above this humanity - that’s the question?” 33 Dostoevsky would answer this question in the same negative way as the author of the pamphlet. Dostoevsky’s ideal of true culture—national and universal—was based not on good feelings for people alone, but primarily on the mystical objects of faith that stand above this humanity—namely, Christ and the Church, and the very creation of true culture was presented to Dostoevsky primarily as a religious “Orthodox cause”; and “faith in the divinity of the Carpenter of Nazareth crucified under Pontius Pilate” 34 was the animating beginning of everything that Dostoevsky said and wrote. “Christianity does not believe either in the best autonomous morality of the individual, or in the reason of collective humanity, which must sooner or later create paradise on earth” 35. Dostoevsky did not believe in anything like that. If he was a moralist, as Mr. Leontyev calls him, then his morality was not autonomous (self-legal), but Christian, based on religious conversion and the rebirth of man. And the collective mind of humanity, with its attempts at a new Babylonian pandemonium, was not only rejected by Dostoevsky, but also served as the subject of witty ridicule for him, and not only in the last period of his life, but also earlier. Let Mr. Leontyev at least re-read Notes from Underground. Dostoevsky believed in man and in humanity only because he believed in the God-man and in God-manhood - in Christ and in the Church. “Christ is known only through the Church. Love the Church first of all. Only through the Church can you come into contact with the people - simply and freely and enter into their trust. We must learn from the people to humble themselves mentally, to understand that there is more truth in their worldview than in ours. Therefore, humility before the people for one who is clearly aware of his feelings is nothing other than humility before the Church” 36. Dostoevsky would, without a doubt, subscribe to these beautiful words. In the “Diary of a Writer,” Mr. Leontyev could find many passages expressing these very thoughts. It is enough to remember what was said there against our populists, who wanted to unite with the people and benefit them apart from the Church 37. Only by loving the Church and serving her can one truly serve one’s people and humanity. For you cannot serve two masters. Serving one's neighbor must coincide with serving God, and God cannot be served otherwise than by loving what He himself loved - the only object of God's love, His beloved and friend, that is, the Church. The Church is humanity deified through Christ, and with faith in the Church, to believe in humanity means only to believe in its ability to deify, to believe, in the words of St. Athanasius the Great, that in Christ God became man in order to make man god. And this faith is not heretical, but truly Christian, Orthodox, fatherly. And with this faith, a sermon or prophecy about universal reconciliation, world harmony, etc. directly refers only to the final triumph of the Church, when, according to the word of the Savior, there will be one flock and one shepherd, and according to the word of the Apostle, God will be all in all. Dostoevsky had to talk to people who had not read the Bible and had forgotten the catechism. Therefore, in order to be understood, he inevitably had to use expressions such as “universal harmony” 38 when he wanted to talk about the Church triumphant or glorified. And in vain Mr. Leontyev points out that the triumph and glorification of the Church should take place in the next world, while Dostoevsky believed in universal harmony here on earth. For there is no such unconditional boundary between “here” and “there” in the Church. And the earth itself, according to the Holy Scriptures and the teaching of the Church, is a changing term. One is the earth about which it is said at the beginning of the Book of Genesis, that it was invisible and unsettled and darkness was at the top of the abyss, and the other is the one about which it is said: “God appeared on the earth and lived with men,” and another will be that new earth, in which truth lives 39 . The fact is that the moral state of humanity and all spiritual beings in general does not depend at all on whether they live here on earth or not, but on the contrary, the very state of the earth and its relationship to the invisible world is determined by the moral state of spiritual beings. And the universal harmony that Dostoevsky prophesied does not mean the utilitarian well-being of people on the present earth, but precisely the beginning of that new earth in which truth lives. And the advent of this universal harmony or the triumphant Church will not occur through peaceful progress, but through the pains and illnesses of a new birth, as it is described in the Apocalypse, Dostoevsky’s favorite book in his last years. “And a great sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. And in the womb she cries out in supplication and suffering to give birth" 40 . And only then, behind these illnesses and torments, triumph, and glory, and joy. “And I heard the voice of many people, and like the voice of many waters, and like the voice of mighty thunder, saying: Hallelujah, for the Lord God Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give glory to Him, for the marriage of the lamb has come, and His wife has prepared food for herself. And it was given to her to be clothed in fine linen, clean and bright: for the fine linen is the justification of the saints" 41 . “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there was no sea. And I John saw the city of Jerusalem, taken down, coming down from God from heaven, prepared as a bride for her husband. And I heard a great voice from heaven saying: Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them: and His type of people will be, and God himself will be with them, their God. And God will take away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no death for anyone; there will be no crying, no crying, no sickness, like the first one who passed by.”42 This is the kind of world harmony and prosperity Dostoevsky meant, repeating only in his own words the prophecies of the New Testament revelation. From words. spoken at Dostoevsky’s grave on February 1, 1881 (Publishers’ note - Some researchers note the connection between Vl. Solovyov’s speech at the grave of F. M. Dostoevsky and the philosopher’s public speech on March 1, 1881 against the execution of Narodnaya Volya (see, for example: Mochulsky K. N. Vl. Solovyov. Life and teaching. Paris. B.G. S. 131 – 132). – 291.) From February 5 – 10, 1881 // L. N. Tolstoy on literature. M., 1955. S. 169.– 291. In volume I of Dostoevsky's Collected Works, appendices, pp. 69 and 67 (Publishers' note - In a letter to N.N. Strakhov dated September 26, 1880 // Ibid. P. 168. Vl. Solovyov quotes from the edition: Dostoevsky F. M. Collected works. St. Petersburg, 1882. T. 1.–291.) Every detail, taken separately, is not real in itself, because only everything together is real, besides, the realist artist still looks at reality from himself, understands it in his own way, and, therefore, this is no longer an objective reality. This refers to the direction in aesthetics and literary criticism of the 60s, which is primarily associated with the name of Dobrolyubov and was called “real criticism.” Dostoevsky passionately polemicized with this trend in the 60s // See: Dostoevsky F. M. Complete. collection cit.: In 30 vol. L „ 1978. T. 18. P. 41 – 104. – 293. In comparison with Oblomov, the Famusovs and the Molchalins, the Onegins and the Pechorins. The Manilovs and Sobakevichs, not to mention Ostrovsky's heroes, all have only a special meaning. The hero of the second volume of “Dead Souls” by N.V. Gogol. – 295. Although Turgenev owned the word “nihilism” in its commonly used meaning, he did not guess the practical meaning of the nihilistic movement, and its later manifestations, far removed from Bazarov’s conversations, were a grave surprise for the author of “Fathers and Sons.” This is the same adobe theme as in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables: the contrast between a person's inner, moral dignity and his social position. Dostoevsky valued this novel very highly and was himself subject to some, albeit rather superficial, influence of Victor Hugo (a penchant for antitheses). In addition to Pushkin and Gogol, Dickens and Georges Sand had a deeper influence on him (Publishers' notes - See, for example: Dostoevsky F. M. Pol. collected works. 1984. T. 26. P. 136 - 148; 1979. T. 19. P. 151-168; 1981. T. 23. P. 30–37.–297). Naive, in fact, on the part of Dostoevsky, to whom the paths of social revolution were presented in very vague terms. See: Dostoevsky F. M. Poly. collection op. 1980. T. 21. P. 8 – 13. – 297. Wed. right there. T. 21. P. 13 – 22.–298. See: Dostoevsky F. M. Poly. collection op. 1981. T. 22. pp. 46 – 52. – 298. Danilov is a student at Moscow University who killed and robbed a moneylender, having at the same time some special plans (Publishers’ note - January 12, 1866, i.e., during the printing of the first chapters of the novel “Crime and Punishment” in the “Russian Bulletin”, in Moscow, student A. M. Danilov killed and robbed the retired captain - money lender Popov and his maid M. Nordman (see: Dostoevsky F.M. Complete collection of works. 1973. T. 7. P. 349). – 299.). Vl. Soloviev gives his interpretation of the epilogue of “Crime and Punishment,” which has been the object of fierce controversy for more than a hundred years. See: Dostoevsky F. M. Poly. collection op. 1974. T. 10. P. 30 – 34, etc. See: Dostoevsky F. M. Poly. collection op. 1984. T. 27. P. 19. Dostoevsky conveyed the main idea, and partly the plan of his new work, to me in brief outlines in the summer of 1878. At the same time (and not in 1879, as stated in error in the memoirs of N. N. Strakhov) we went to Optina Pustyn (Publishers' note - To Optina Pustyn to Elder Ambrose Dostoevsky (together with Vl. Solovyov and according to him persuasion) went in the summer of 1878 after the death of his three-year-old son Alexei, the writer stayed there for two days and saw the elder three times - 301.). See: Dostoevsky F. M. Complete. collection op. T. 26. P. 136 – 148 See: Dostoevsky F. M. Complete. collection op. T. 27. pp. 5–25. Wed: Dostoevsky F. M. Complete. collection op. 1980. T. 20. P. 139. Persistent repetition of the question “what should I do?” emphasizes the connection between the criticized Vl. Solovyov's ideas with the views of N. G. Chernyshevsky In this case, the problematic of Vl. Solovyov is similar to the problems of the novel “Demons”. Wed. memories of Maria Timofeevna’s monastic life in “The Possessed” (Dostoevsky F.M. Pol. sobr. soch. 1974. T. 10. P. 116). See: Dostoevsky F. M. Fields. collection op. T. 26. From what has been said, it seems to me clear that the matter is not about concessions and compromises in the external struggle (church-political and national), but about eliminating the internal cause of this struggle through spiritual reconciliation on purely religious grounds. Until religious internal unity is restored, until then political and national struggle remains in its rights. Book by K. N. Leontyev “Our New Christians. F. M. Dostoevsky and c. Leo Tolstoy" (Moscow, 1882) consists of two articles: "Fear of God and love for humanity. Regarding the story of gr. L.N. Tolstoy: “How do people live?” (first published in the magazine “Citizen” (1882. No. 54 – 55)) and “About universal love. Speech by F. M. Dostoevsky at the Pushkin holiday" (first published in the "Warsaw Diary" (1880 No. 162:169:173)). Rome. 3:4; John 8:40; Matt. 10:34 ; John 10:16 ; Ps. 110:10 ; John 4:8 See, for example: Leontyev K. Collection. op. M., 1912. T. 8. P. 203–204 Words from the Orthodox Creed used by Leontyev. The quotation from Leontyev is presented in abbreviation. In this case, Vl. Soloviev admits that the quotation is inaccurate. The fact is that the first two phrases belong to Pobedonostsev and are given by Leontyev as quotes. The other two phrases have undergone a serious - semantic - reduction (cf.: Ibid. P. 206:207:210). Wed: Dostoevsky F. M. Diary of a writer for 1880 August. Chapter: Two halves (Poly. collected works. T. 26. P. 161 – 170). See: Dostoevsky F. M. Poly. collection op. 1976. T. 14. pp. 215–224 Life 1:2; Open 21:3:5:24–27; 22:1–5.