K.P. Pobedonostsev

Pobedonostsev died. And with him died an entire state, social, even literary system; a remarkable, perhaps the most remarkable, face of Russian history of the 19th century has died; went to his grave, “passing away quietly after a long illness,” as it is written in his obituaries, a whole historical style of a completed and long era. The man of style barely survived the stylish era. He died at a time when it was all broken into pieces, and a stormy stream, bubbling and indignant, carried it away piece by piece and threw it out like the chips of a broken ship, like the brick of a destroyed building. In an ideological sense, in the sense of “faith, hope and love,” few people were punished as severely as Pobedonostsev. For few had the opportunity to see to what extent nothing, absolutely nothing, of what they “believed” and what they “loved” during their long lives, what they created and strengthened, survived - everything perished, and, moreover, irrevocably. “My affairs died before me.” How unhappy I am!.. “My affairs died before me.” How can I live?!.. This has been incessantly knocking on his head for the last two years. Everyone knew the name Pobedonostsev, all of Russia. All of Russia knew this strong, established, “decided” man who knew no amendments, deviations, deviations, compromises, or deals. Everyone knew his “belief system.” Thus, over a long period of time, during the last three reigns, no other “ideological” figure, or “officially” ideological one, was so clearly visible, so prominently illuminated. He looked like a large portrait in a frame, placed in the assembly hall of a gymnasium among noisy, playful, naughty students. How healthy, young, perky, rude and innocent they are! There is noise and noise all around. But everyone is looking around. on the frame with the portrait: the dry and old “uncle” from the frame is about to raise a heavy, fleshy finger and threaten everyone. The playfulness of others turned into insolence. In place of the booming childish laughter, a bilious grin appeared. Irritation, bile, and despair were born. The “portrait” stood still and dry. But, as he restrained everyone and threatened everyone, then, after enough time, what was no longer making noise around him was a young green din, but red laughter, shameless movements, squeals and whistles. – What should we do with this “portrait”? - Should I take him to the most indecent place? - Turn it upside down? This revolution was roaring around the “retired” Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod, Secretary of State and member of the State Council K.P. Pobedonostseva. The “portrait” was taken out. He was still alive and had already been “carried out.” Bitter minutes, two endless years. I have always been struck by the deep dissimilarity that comes from meeting K.P. in person. Pobedonostsev, with the impression of a “well-known portrait” that he gave to the whole of Russia, and, obviously, also not without reason. For Russia, these have always been a “threat” and an “obstacle.” “Don’t,” “stop,” “make it difficult”—this was his entire “system,” which, however, lasted a quarter of a century; and no matter how short these aphorisms are, applied without variation to thousands of large and small affairs of the state, education, and church, they actually formed a whole “style.” Shchedrin’s famous “drag and don’t let go,” with which the great satirist hit our bureaucracy, hit it as something ignorant, illiterate, cruel and dark, no other bureaucrat and no department had ever dealt with like this, “like a uniform tailored to measure,” like K.P. Pobedonostsev and his “spiritual department”... Here, indeed, everything was “dragged” and “not allowed to go”... The most complex institutions and distant, so to speak, insinuating measures were taken to ensure that not only during one’s lifetime and on one’s own behalf they would be “dragged and not allowed in,” but that even after that the future generation would be, so to speak, shackled by these measures and, having received certain institutions as an inheritance, would also involuntarily be forced to “drag” and “not let go.” These were his parochial schools. Such were his secular missionaries. With the help of the former, he intended to sweep out the “free spirit” from the public schools, introduced into them by zemstvos and zemstvo teachers. Instead of a general education and indefinitely educational school, he gave the people a confessional school, i.e. confessional, as if called only to answer: “I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Creator... and the life of the next century. Amen". He placed this school with the “amen” under the supervision and at the disposal of the clergy, in that subtle psychological calculation that the personal egoism of each priest-teacher-boss and the united egoism of the entire class of authorities and teachers would push him to harsh, merciless, inexorable implementation of his “amen” and the displacement of every spirit that interferes with him, that is not agreed with him. – I will plant a seed from which, due to the harshness, rudeness, darkness, cunning and strange persistence of our clergy, such protection will grow for “I believe, Lord, and I confess”, about which the despicable waves of various teachers’ seminaries and teacher’s institutes, these zemstvos, etc. will break like splashes. temporary slush. A “bilious smile” was squeezed out on the lips of the people’s teachers, “from now on placed in a subordinate and responsible position before their comrade teacher of the law.” The bilious smile played for years. There was a hidden, hissing struggle in every village, in almost every village, between the teacher and the teacher, who were always near the children, and between the law teacher who “visited” the school, who had “no time” to teach and only just had time to “look in, check and report”... This struggle, after sufficient time had passed, was expressed in the “All-Russian Teachers' Union” and in the famous resolutions of teachers' congresses... It was expressed also the fact that the peasant children, trained by an oppressed and supervised teacher, grew up and, coming to parliament, sat on its left benches, sat in a row. The guys, who had been playing innocently until then, “put upside down” the menacing portrait... But even among the priests, many are careless, sluggish, lazy, some with a “smell”... The seminary, given to the monks, and a well-chosen course of sciences in it provide the “Pharisee leaven” in the class; but it is necessary for this “leaven” to ferment and raise the dough in every place of the vast fatherland. K.P. Pobedonostsev laid the foundation for a staff of secular “missionaries,” these special lovers of churchliness, not in its thesis, not in the positive expression of Orthodoxy, but in its polemics, disputes and refutation of “other-minded people.” Peaceful and dormant Orthodoxy, through these missionaries scattered throughout all dioceses, was transferred to a defensive and offensive position, generally militant. Speaking in zoological terms, in a herbivorous and dairy creature, Pobedonostsev began to grow teeth and thicken the blood... This “to let in the blood” and “to let in the tooth” was one of the many features of the Catholic character that appeared in the new Orthodoxy - appearing independently and internally, without imitation or borrowing. Here we include the nervous-pathetic church painting of Vasnetsov and Nesterov. There is no doubt that the establishment of secular missionaries, who were introduced as “experts” to the court in the proceedings of church-religious cases, who turned into witnesses, indicators, judicial investigators and prosecutors on behalf of the church and with the authority of the church, marked the beginning of the Inquisition. And in the few years of its existence, this “spiritual mission” inside Russia filled the prisons with “heretics” or “heretic-like” sufferers, and not a single village with “stubborn” Old Believers, with suspected Khlysty or shamans, with Stundists or allegedly Stundists “who are going to read the Gospel at private meetings” escaped their eyes, just as no high-society ones escaped religious and mystical movements in St. Petersburg, nor popular religious movements in the Caucasus, Don and Volyn... The missionary’s eye spied everywhere, accused and denounced, and the threads of all this, through the famous V.M. Skvortsov, “official of special assignments under the chief prosecutor of St. Synod" and the editor of the semi-private, semi-official "Missionary Review", were gathered into the strong, fleshy fingers of K.P. Pobedonostseva. Not figuratively, but literally, or, better, both figuratively and literally, V.M. Skvortsov was a “truly Russian man”, with a short catechism in his head, where generals in the stars mixed with holy “saints” in golden crowns on their heads and everything formed such a “worshipped” crowd and a pile of “saints”, dignitaries, relics, salaries, the kingdom of heaven, government apartments, grace, healing holy water, compulsory subscription to a magazine, the French language and fashionable ties, which, probably, had never been seen in the West, but which quite accurately reproduced or resurrected Byzantium of the 7th - 9th centuries... Here they prayed, “curried themselves,” grabbed by the throat and robbed them, and in conclusion they again “prayed” or, better yet, prayed all the time “for the glory of St. Rus' and the Life-Giving Trinity." V.M. Skvortsov was a “simple man”, where all this coexisted without any contradiction and with complete sincerity and ardor of each individual element. But how could all this be combined in the single soul of K.P. himself? Pobedonostsev, who was neither a naive nor a narrow-minded person, is very difficult to understand. Through missionaries who were in living and personal contacts with V.M. Skvortsov, and he himself was in constant contact with K.P. Pobedonostsev, this latter took into personal observation the entire vast clergy class of Russia, putting pressure on it at every point where it was necessary... The clergy class was never as crushed and oppressed as under him: awarded with salaries, pensions - this is on the one hand, but also “pulled up by service” - this is on the other. And again this “bilious smile” squeezed out on the lips of the “ungrateful class”, and the “leftist elections” from the clergy to the Duma... Everyone, in agreement, took the “portrait” to the most indecent place that could be found... Such things as secular missionary work and parochial schools were so prominent and significant. They spoke to all of Russia, and they spoke in a certain way. There was no doubt: with Pobedonostsev, with his name, was connected a mass of something dark, gloomy, cruel, which was approaching Russia and stubbornly did not want to leave, which defended itself and its position. Based on this basic and general impression from his deeds, in Russia there was an idea of ​​Pobedonostsev’s face as something fundamentally dry... Dry and callous, motionless and strict, inexorable and “pious,” a little “hypocrite,” even very “hypocrite.” – He prays to God and does bad things. It stood above him like a black plaque with a brief inscription for decades... And he did not remove this “plate”, did nothing to remove it or replace it... For me, and to this day, it is a mystery where the truth was in Pobedonostsev: whether in his person or in his deeds. In the way “Konstantin Petrovich enters”, you see him, you undoubtedly see him, natural, you hear his voice, his intonations, so undeniable, cannot be faked - or “in the papers signed by Pobedonostsev” and which are given to officials of all sorts of names “for execution” or “for information and management”... In the end, I think that the truth lies in the papers, all of one direction, directions for so many years And the personal impression... it must be crossed out, like a vision, like a “good dream” in bad weather, when it’s raining, slushy and nasty outside... Into the room where there were 3-4 modest faces - between them some famous (I was told) organizer of church music and choirs, another exemplary teacher of an exemplary rural school, the forester Kravchinsky, tormented by doubts, brother of Kravchinsky-Stepnyak, the author of Underground Russia and the killer of the gendarme general Mezentsev, the famous emigrant, another gentleman entered... When I asked who it was, they whispered to me: “Don’t you recognize it: this is Konstantin Petrovich.” I began to peer with the greatest interest. The tall, very tall figure ended with a small head of a woman, beautifully built, almost without hair on the chin and lips... This absence of hair in the expected places, according to zoology “secondary (accompanying) signs of male sex, male strength and male maturity,” was a striking feature of the new person who entered the room. I have been observing for a long time, and this can be verified by historical portraits, that people of special importance or exceptional talents never have a “common physiognomy”, a “universal human” face, “that’s like everyone else”, that in the face of such people there is always a deviation from the norm - alas! – mostly in the direction of the ugly... While still a high school student, loving philosophy, I collected portraits and photographs of famous philosophers. These were also “unforgivable monsters”, which to show immediately and live in a room would mean to frighten or disperse the audience. Suffice it to say that Socrates, the famous freak of antiquity, was also one of the most beautiful. But what it was like, for example, Locke’s face or Descartes’s big-lipped face with a monstrous mouth is even unpleasant to remember. As you know, Suvorov was so ugly that he did not enter rooms where he expected to see a mirror. Of course, there are exceptions to this (Pascal’s face), but they are rare exceptions... However, I immediately liked the face of the new person who came in, just like a woman’s, feminine face, without a beard or mustache (some kind of nonsense instead), not shaved, not grown, of a gentle outline, with white or very pale skin... It was an elderly, slightly old woman, i.e. an old female bust, with a dry, flat chest, without “breasts”, set on a tall and strong male body, a little lean, flat when viewed from the side, and wide when viewed from the face... Some kind of big legs and big hands. It was as if the arms, legs and head were entering the room, and the rest of the body next to them was only “by the way.” A man of thought, movement and capture - how can you not think about it? I liked him, even though he had “no breasts.” But I am a man. One can imagine the degree of organic, dark, irresistible disgust and repulsion that he undoubtedly inspired by his very approach, by his very presence in the room, to everything that had a female instinct, a female gaze, a female taste and gravity. For Pobedonostsev, Suvorov’s frightened “don’t go near the mirror” varied into a frightened, weary, ominous “don’t come near a woman.” – Lasciate ogni speranza voi, ch'entrate, “abandon all hope, you who enter here”... For female readers, my words will be clear, and for readers I will notice how unbearable for us men are women with a “soldier’s profile”, women with masculine faces, with a rough voice and peasant movements... For us, the charm of the other sex is expressed in the additional contrast with us, in everything that is the opposite of us: in tenderness, grace, pliability, pliability, in a deep, gentle voice and elusive, soft movements. This is what we call “femininity,” demanding it in everything, from soul and singing to gait and handicrafts. Obviously, this is also in the expectations of women: they demand masculinity from the other sex, this outline of a “hero”, from gait and command to feats and beard... There was none of this in Pobedonostsev; the beard didn’t even grow; there is something terrible and insidious in this line of expectations and demands... Meanwhile, God and his parents made him... a boy, a baby, a youth, a young man, a man, an old man. From whom everyone left, could not help but leave, as if from a youth... I'm talking about colored smart blouses. And no one approached him as a young man... I'm talking about noisy trains. And he was also organically not needed as a man, as an elderly man, as an old man... He was invariably pleasant, useful, and needed only by people of his own gender and his own costume. But this terrible loneliness, as soon as he entered the other half of the human race, probably not without reason called “beautiful,” this “desertness around,” as soon as he entered the garden of flowers, aromas and bliss, should have left such impressions on his soul from an early age, the strength and severity of which we cannot judge. “An exceptional personality and exceptional impressions”... And all of a black, bitter meaning... I convey my thoughts as they poured into my head in a crowd when I was looking at the famous statesman around 1895... We were all younger than him, but this old man seemed younger than all of us, at least livelier, more animated, in movement, speech, light graceful playfulness, the undeniable intelligence that shone in his eyes... What was also pleasant was his faith in his intelligence and dignity: he was deeply calm, deeply did not seek anything from anyone; He didn’t need anyone for himself (for him), and this made him even more free, easier and more voluntarily to give affection to others. It was not contained in words, was not expressed - it flowed vaguely from him, as an extremely happy, calm and benevolent person. “What a wonderful person!” – I thought. This first time, when I saw Pobedonostsev, I also saw “the moon, forever accompanying its sun,” - Vl. K. Sabler. He soon entered the same room. A brave, elderly man, with a graying head, broad, large, almost cheerful, in any case, very cheerful, a man without despondency, sadness and melancholy. “Everything is fine,” said his face and figure. He was all deeply ordinary, just as Pobedonostsev was deeply extraordinary. When he walked or moved, he definitely pushed everyone away, even if he didn't. Such manners. He sat down and began to tell how he had been told on the phone about some large unexpected donation from some spiritual person or involved in the spiritual world; then he talked about some meeting at which the members “opened their fountains” (eloquence). “Your fountain is no worse than others. Why don’t you shut him up?” – I thought. Pobedonostsev, who also loves to talk, smiled sympathetically at this denial on the part of his “comrade” in the position of “fountains of eloquence.” – It’s good when we talk... But when others talk, it’s very boring. And... it's not necessary. Here was that sweet, happy, graceful egoism that is developed in any nobility, whether it be an economic, titled, class or service, bureaucratic nobility. Doesn't matter. The essence of nobility is independence and strength. In power over others. And it is invariably reflected in feeling, in mysticism, in nature: “how good it is when I bloom, and how boring it is when others bloom; and... it’s not necessary.” Eternal history, one in Artaxerxes, Famusov and Pobedonostsev-Sabler. The point is not in the person, but in the position. A person sits in his place, but it is even more accurate that he sits under his place, i.e. completely surrounded, suppressed and shaped by the conditions of the place, armchair, chair, stool or matting on which he sits. I will say briefly that, just as Pobedonostsev was a strong statesman, Sabler was just as strong an official. Both seemed to be born just for this. One was born for “considerations”, for a “plan”, the other - for the hustle and bustle of business, hassle, running around, trifles. But for this very reason they complemented each other to the highest degree, were well “harmonized”; and, as I had to see later, V.K. Sabler did not leave Pobedonostsev even on the rarest occasions when he attended the opera (at the conservatory). He literally surrounded him with himself: it was almost impossible to get a word from Pobedonostsev other than through Sabler; It was almost impossible to convey your words to Pobedonostsev other than through Sabler. Is it really something very unnecessary and in every sense uninteresting... - Oh, my friend, service?! Experience!! Service genius!!! This was clearly engraved on Sabler’s happy, strong, ordinary face. If only Russia were as happy as Sabler!.. But even the spiritual department itself, apart from these tiny pensions and tiny salaries, was stripped, cold, hungry, oppressed, irritated. It was uncomfortable everywhere. But this office was cozy. I remember Vlad’s characteristic long laugh. Solovyov, with whom he conveyed to me: – Ivan Davydovich (Delyanov) says: “From all sides I hear complaints that our church is dead. No, why not: how busy Vladimir Karlovich is” (Sabler). Delyanov, the then Minister of Education, an old Armenian, was “Nicholas’s bone.” Having begun his service under Emperor Nicholas I, he was timid, modest, lazy, uneducated and terribly smart with a practical, worldly form of mind. Until the end of his life, he read nothing except S.-Peterb.Zeitung, and did not know Russian literature at all, neither current nor past, nor magazine, nor classical. This, however, did not mean that he did not know who Pushkin was. But people, extremely well-read and educated not only in Russian, but also in Western literature, told me: “This is the opposite of Pobedonostsev: as much as Pobedonostsev is smart in the theoretical form of his mind, Delyanov is just as smart in the practical form of his mind.” I heard from other people, professors: “It’s not because Delyanov is old that he doesn’t do anything for gymnasiums and universities. This clever guy could make an abyss of balanced, kind, intelligent. But he is a cynic: being smart himself and without education, he deeply despises the essence of education, and he absolutely does not care what is and what is not, what is taught and what is not taught in gymnasiums. He would only like for unrest and outrages to not occur, not on their own, but because it is an official nuisance, and a nuisance in his department.” The door of his apartment on Nevsky was always open “for those invited and uninvited.” He was completely accessible even to gymnasium teachers. And he will remember and fulfill every request. His personal kindness and willingness to do everything for his neighbor, to do both according to the law and beyond the law, was limitless. When a student came to him with a complaint or for help, and, of course, with that famous “student spirit,” he, taking him by the button, led him through the rooms to his office. Here, approaching some table, he took the portrait frame and turned it in front of the student. He saw with amazement the well-known portrait of Emperor Nicholas I. To the perplexed look of the student, the minister said: “You young people are now afraid of nothing and respect no one.” Very bad, sir. I started the service in front of him (pointing to the portrait) and I’m still afraid of him!! Nowadays, oh-ho-ho!!! I will fulfill your request, but everyone is obliged to respect the authority of their elders. After his death, it was reported in St. Petersburg that when his spiritual will was opened, it turned out that only a small share of his enormous fortune (which he inherited upon marriage) was assigned to his relatives; everything else went as a gift and pension to countless watchmen - I can’t say whether it was his home, his personal servants or the servants “min. adv. enlightenment” – to some of his “godsons” and “goddaughters”, born to the daughters and spouses of these watchmen. The trait of kindness and simplicity is also touching. I saw him once in my life, at the funeral service of Academician Karl Grot. Wearing some kind of black saddle-stitched coat, he impressed with his modesty and especially liveliness. The figure and face were miserable and funny. But it was clear that, although funny himself, he internally laughed a little at everyone else. – Old Nikolaev fox: with one “St.-Petersb. Zeit." with his heart set on becoming the Minister of Public Education in Russia and “serving” his service as successfully and successfully as, perhaps, no one before him could: showered with honors and favors, no troubles and does nothing. He was already a “count” and had the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called, that is, “in service,” in the sense of distinctions, orders and “favors,” he overtook Pobedonostsev, and, it seems, all his peers. He was always insulted by Pobedonostsev, oppressed in the State Council, in the Committee of Ministers: Delyanov would present some project, of course, “for the benefit of the eye,” and Pobedonostsev, with all the force of a critical genius and a guardian of the fate of the fatherland, would fall upon him. The bear climbed, with a roar, with a crowbar, onto a house of cards, onto a sparrow’s nest, to the place “where the hen pecked at the grain”; and it’s not that important that “the project was falling down”, the project - God be with him, you can fix it and present it with something else, but “trouble” came out, the members of the State Council shook their heads or smiled, and so on, and so on, and so on. The noise is empty. The old “Nikolaev” fox smiled with Armenian laughter already at the address of “Konstantin Petrovich’s department”: “They say the church is dead.” I can’t find it: how Vladimir Karlovich runs alone. Delyanov, being interested in the grandchildren of his watchmen, of course, was not in the slightest interested in either the Russian, or the Armenian, or any other church. But he strained his mind. Indeed, in one phrase of his brilliantly practical mind, he illuminated and rejected and ridiculed everything that K.P., “wrinkling his brow,” puffed, tried and could not do anything about. Pobedonostsev. – The Church does not live at all... The Church has rotted and collapsed. This is Vladimir Karlovich Sabler running around in a hurry, earning himself the Alexander Nevsky ribbon. And the smug, clever Pobedonostsev, who always offends me and despises me as an ignoramus, takes the troubles of his Vladimir Karlovich for the actions of the grace of the Lord and looks for the Holy Spirit in the plume of his senatorial hat. Sabler, among other things, was also a “senator”. The next time I saw Pobedonostsev was in a small company of retired or semi-retired government officials. There was one ex-minister with a shaved, ugly and stupid face; a fellow minister, with a very beautiful, but too ordinary face; the wife of the ex-minister, a sweet and “purely Russian woman”, from a famous noble Russian family, who babbled terribly hastily about charity and about gr. L.N. Tolstoy, inserting French fragments of phrases whenever she absolutely could not convey them in Russian. For the first time I heard this secular talk, magnificent examples of which were given by gr. L. Tolstoy in “Resurrection” and in “War and Peace”. Since the society was Russian, and in my person also democratic, she, obviously a kind and friendly, completely simple woman, felt uncomfortable speaking not in Russian. But this was terribly difficult for her. She spoke terribly slowly, obviously mentally translating from French into Russian: but in some places she fell into despair, and then the French words that she had been holding back fell out, and again she began to put together Russian sentences with effort, like a child. Meanwhile, she was a purebred Russian, and her surname appears in Gogol’s biography among his closest friends. Pobedonostsev entered, shining with intelligence and calmness: that intelligence and calmness that I have always loved in him, like everything pleasant and beautiful. It seems to me that “his own thought,” his half-thought-out thought and unfinished reflection were always in him, inherent in him both day and night. And because of this presence of thought in his face, now thought, it was spiritually more beautiful than other faces, wherever he entered, wherever he appeared. Everyone else is thinking about “now,” and this thought about “now” is short, small. Pobedonostsev, entering the “now” situation, carried on himself the remnants and traces of long thoughts, naturally more important and more beautiful than ordinary ones. No matter how little respect I have for his activities, in my view of which I completely agree with the definition of I.D. Delyanov, nevertheless, Pobedonostsev’s personality was and will remain invariably attractive to me. He had another valuable trait - deep naturalness. His every movement, every word was natural, “just as he wanted.” Nothing artificial, made, deliberate. Not even the remotest hint of cunning or the possibility of cunning. How different in this respect he was from the “high-ranking careerists” of St. Petersburg... At a large round table they looked at a series of drawings (about a hundred) made in gouache (a special type of dry paint). The drawings illustrated the apocryphal Gospel of James, which has some non-canonical, but very poetic shades of the text. They were made by one deeply educated person, whom I later knew closely, and were drawn slowly, over the course of about 15 years, drawn with inspiration and beauty. Never have I seen so much taste, intelligence, choice and noble play of imagination on the noblest subjects as in this work of a St. Petersburg old-timer, official and lawyer (by education and position). I looked at them many times afterwards. And to explain the whole series, I’ll give at least one example. Based on the words of the evangelist about the genealogy and birth of Jesus Christ, a drawing is given approximately three inches in height and 2 1/2 in width. It is divided diagonally by the arc of a compass into two parts approximately equal in size: these are two pictures, as if two historical visions, two plots of the history of literature, legends, reality and religion. In the right and lower half, i.e. under the dividing line, somewhere in the gardens of Augustus, Virgilia reads to his royal friend and patron those famous stanzas, where he amazingly coincided with the very event that actually happened in Bethlehem in August. These stanzas are still a mystery to historians and archaeologists, something incomprehensible, but the gullible Middle Ages for these stanzas placed Virgil among the Old Testament prophets who predicted the coming of the Savior. Only Virgil says this more definitely and clearly than all the prophets: “In your days, Augustus, a Divine Child will be born, who will mark the beginning of a new order of things on earth: from Him will come a new law, and he will bring peace to people.”... I don’t remember it by heart now, but the specificity of the prediction is amazing. So, Augustus and the poet (with a wreath on his head) are sitting in white canvas togas, and, reading from the scroll, Virgilius inspiredly raised his finger upward. A wonderful scene of the home life of the Caesars, when they had not yet ceased to be citizens. Virgilia doesn’t see anything, doesn’t know; he is a poeta et vates, a rhymer and prophet... But whether his fortune-telling is true or not, he himself does not know. I want to sing about a “new golden age,” and he sings. But we “want”, and in our desires, perhaps, God speaks? Where do dreams come from? But God, as in Samuel’s dream, speaks in them. So this time, in amazing, truly amazing stanzas from a pagan Roman, a simultaneously occurring event in Israeli history was described: while, of course, Virgilia did not know the very names of “Nazareth”, “Bethlehem”, “Jesus”, “Mariam”! Above the arched line, as if in continuation and fulfillment of the inspired word and gesture of the Roman poet, the southern sky was seen, dark with stars, and in it the Mother of God and the Child, in the icon-like composition to which we are accustomed. How graceful it was, how elegantly executed it was. The drawing occupied the upper half of a piece of cardboard, on the lower half of which four or five lines of Virgil’s Latin verses related to this were written in ink in large “chronicle” letters. Everyone admired it, sorting out the picture sheets from hand to hand. - What is this? What is this? - Pobedonostsev exclaimed. In his hands was the first title page. In the Byzantine style, with this rich ornamentation of all sorts of curls and straps, the “Heavenly Glory” was drawn: the Throne of the Lord, and the Holy Trinity sitting on it. Here is God the Father - the Elder, at His right hand - the Son; on the Father’s toes is the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove; It seems that on the other side is the Mother of God. I don’t remember the details, but I remember that it was the Throne of God that was depicted as a symbol of an integral church, an integral Christianity. And again, as in the previous picture, a line was drawn, but horizontally; that was the heavenly half of Christianity, and here is the earthly half. On the right side, in a checkered plaid, an Englishman walks busily with suitcases; all around is an African landscape (a miniature of a giraffe, an elephant): all around, naked savages look at the checkered gentleman in surprise and piously... - This is an Englishman!.. Obviously. English mission in wild countries. Under his arm he carries the Gospel (a book, perhaps, with the symbol of a cross), and, most importantly, suitcases, trade (a little laughter, more like a smile). Good, good: they bring Christianity and culture; there is a lot of selfishness, but also a genuine desire to enlighten the savages with the light of the Gospel, for which there is genuine enthusiasm. Maybe not the best earthly deed, but a good earthly deed. Yes, for a Protestant, Christianity is culture, identified with culture. So what: culture grows richer from Christianity, and Christianity grows richer from culture. A good field for gospel grain, although perhaps not far from the road, where many birds fly and peck out a lot of grain. Labor and vanity, the egoism of civilization: and the gospel grain fell into it, half trampled, half muffled. What is this? Ba-ba-ba! On the left side of the picture was a fat Catholic priest, tied with a rope, with a bull's neck and a shaved face; raising both hands as if in defense of himself, he turned away from the spectacle, which was clearly disgusting to him. And no wonder: the “spectacle” was represented by a young woman, with a child in her arms, pleadingly speaking to the priest about something. - Te-te-te! Gotcha, darling. The young woman thrusts at him the child he gave birth to, and he raises his hands in grief, answering: “We don’t know.” Fraudsters. Liars and libertines. And this... He looked at the middle of the drawing. – I don’t understand what this is. The monk is sleeping. Seems. Maybe a bishop - lush clothes. Sign of the cross and kukol. Yes, this is our monk, an Eastern one. How comfortable it was to lie down. And a pillow. Is he sleeping? No, he seems to be dozing: his eyes are not completely closed. The face is dull, sleepy and smug. Yes, this is our Orthodox Church. It seems that I slightly incorrectly or, more precisely, did not fully describe the upper part of the drawing: the “Throne of God” was only above this “Orthodox” monk, not extending to the left and right, to the Englishman and the priest: both of them (miniatures) seemed to go away “from Christ”, one, abandoning himself to the concerns of culture, and the other, plunging into debauchery. - Wonderful! – Pobedonostsev continued, clearly delighted. “One gave himself up to trade, the other to debauchery.” Everything was given to our fools, but our fools fell asleep over everything. Well, you won’t wake them up! Where. Well-fed and dreaming golden dreams. This is our entire East, lazy, soulless, which imagines that if the “truth” has fallen into their hands, then what can they do, the “truth” will stand up for itself, and they can sweetly doze off on sweet pies. I don’t remember the details: but I accurately convey the meaning and all the shades of meaning of Pobedonostsev’s speeches. Not that he spoke with bile, but with that long-established conviction, which, perhaps, had once bubbled up, rushed into action, into anger, but has long been covered with a bark of indifferent contempt and the complete conviction that time is stronger than man, and the nation, in its vices and weaknesses, is much stronger than any efforts over it by an individual. It seems to me that in one respect he was a man of the old, even outdated and somehow stupid school. He figured out what to “do,” which meant doing it himself. Well, the guarantee of “virtue” of all our service people, starting with Peter. All the “arcs were bent”... Meanwhile, the truth is to let others do. There is a whole gulf between these two programs. “The doing itself lies in some kind of disgusting conviction that all people are dead, except for “me,” let’s say Speransky, Arakcheev, D.A. Tolstoy, Pobedonostsev. I will work on these dead people, sweat, break and break them until I put everything “in proper form.” But the “proper appearance” usually doesn’t come out... And the person dies, sometimes terribly smart, completely disappointed. Another program is extremely smart historically and at the same time convenient, because it does not require any special individual qualities to perform it. It lies in the view that everything should “be done”, “take place by itself” and that almost all individual efforts, say, of a “high-ranking person”, a minister, etc. should consist in removing obstacles from the road, in removing fetters from a person and people. I said that this program does not require special intelligence. But it presupposes in a person some higher gift than intelligence; a kind soul, a modest recognition of one’s own mental and moral level that is not higher than that of other people, the so-called “crowd”, and, as the fruit of all this, faith in people and circumstances. Although, apparently, Pobedonostsev attached higher importance to the “blind elements of history” than to the individual mind (see his “Moscow Collection”), in fact he was an individualist and looked at the blind elements of history as robbery, almost robbery in his department. He did not trust the people, the country, or his generation. All these were “robbers” who robbed his suitcase with smoothly copied papers on which was signed: “K. Pobedonostsev." It was all a narrow-minded system. Although terribly smart individually, he was not smart educationally, i.e. He received his first taste of education and youth in a crudely naive, positively short-sighted era. I studied in those days when Delyanov also studied: but only he read everything “S.-Pet. Zeitung,” and this one read everything, and constantly read philosophers, poets, legislators, historians. His love for reading was tireless, and the number of books he read, and read with loving inspiration, was amazing. Already a 70-year-old man, he made notes in a notebook about the books he was reading and wrote out wonderful passages from them. But all this decorated his mind, without helping the statesman. As a statesman, he received a crooked temper, if I may put it this way, back in those 30s and 40s of the 19th century, when in the Russian state system there was no other view, no other system, like this virtuous and narrow system of “self-division”... “I could do everything myself”, “dead men all around: I am the only one alive”... The last two years of his life could have convinced him of the complete falsity of such a theory. Vlad. Karlovich Sabler is not so smart as to become wiser from anything: but Pobedonostsev could have seen how much everything was revived by the same revival that he dreamed and languished about: and he sincerely languished, in his beloved area of ​​the church, as soon as he himself moved away from it, and with him went away those countless locks, latches and barriers with which he had blocked and forced it all. “Theological Bulletin” in Moscow (in Trinity-Sergiev Posad), “Tserkovny Vestnik”, “Vek”, “Ringer” in St. Petersburg, “Church Newspaper” in Kharkov, “Church and Social Life” in Kazan - how it all spoke, in what language, with what tension, with what clarity and on what topics!!! But these people who write and publish there, they were the same people yesterday and yesterday: only they were not allowed to speak yesterday and yesterday,” but today circumstances were such that “there was no time for them,” and they themselves began to speak amidst the noise and noise. They started talking, and the picture immediately became better. What Pobedonostsev considered hopeless appeared - the awakening of the people of the church. Well, why did everyone have to run errands for Pobedonostsev - no one wanted that. And everything was done sluggishly or half-done in “his department,” which the church became under him. But he departed - if not yet into eternity, then into retirement: and everyone rushed to do it, for God, for Christ, for the church. The very position of Chief Prosecutor of the Synod is so negative in itself that the lesser the person in this position, the better: Pobedonostsev’s successors (there were already two of them) were so small that no one paid attention to them; and therefore the opportunity opened up to serve not them, but the truth, religious and church truth. So far this has been expressed negatively, in the fight against religious and church untruth, the existence of which was recognized even by Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow: but first they clear the field, and then they sow in it. I will also convey a personal impression from Pobedonostsev: about five of us were guests of Metropolitan Anthony; fortunately, Skvortsov, Pobedonostsev’s trusted man, was also there. We sat over tea and the conversation flowed freely. Suddenly, a servant who came in whispered something to the Metropolitan, and, smiling, he told us: “Konstantin Petrovich.” Immediately the door opened and Pobedonostsev entered. He was as lively and mentally handsome as ever. Skvortsov’s presence was a blessing because, obviously, the Metropolitan was terribly constrained by Pobedonostsev and his “high rank” and feared the possibility of any suspicion on his part regarding the “purity of his intentions.” A face-to-face conversation between the Metropolitan and 4-5 writers might have seemed to the Chief Prosecutor of the Synod not a very pious deed, but, most importantly, a form of religious-state “unreliability”... I remember that he later expressed himself in the sense that “thank God that Skvortsov was there too.” Pobedonostsev was now served a glass of tea, and he chatted cheerfully with all of us, of course, about those pre-troubled days that were then flowing (the time of Plehve). Among his other speeches was the one that “it is impossible to live and work in Russia without knowing it, but to know Russia... how many of us know it? Russia is an endless world of diversity, a homeless and patient world, completely dark: and in this darkness wolves wander.” He expressed the last thought well, with feeling. It seems that it literally sounded like this: “a wild dark field and a dashing man walks among it”... He said the last word with hostility, fear and contempt. His hands lay on the table: “And when that’s the case,” he finished, “then nothing is needed in Russia more than power; power against this dashing man who can cause trouble in our darkness and desert desolation. And his fingers clenched enormously, as if grabbing something. I looked: what a disgrace! Despite the gauntness of his entire figure, “all Pobedonostsev,” his fingers were thick, fleshy, and bloodshot. They were so disproportionately large, as if five children’s red hands stood out from the hand, from the palm. Characteristic. Maybe because he constantly wrote a lot for 50 years. I think this feature was noticed by the brilliant I.E. Repin. In the painting “The State Council” he depicted Pobedonostsev sitting completely in the background. His figure is dim and not striking. As you know, the belly of Ignatiev, the Kyiv Governor-General, reigns over the entire State Council (in the picture), so classic, like a wheel. But here’s what’s characteristic: Pobedonostsev put his elbows on the table and put the fingers of one hand into the fingers of the other. In the dim distant image one can only see the wrinkled, angry, ominous face of the “Secretary of State and Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod” and these terrible two hands of his, like his second face, as characteristic as his feminine, white, intelligent face! - Grab it! Grab everything! Otherwise, everyone will scatter and, having scattered, they will kill themselves and break!..