Sin against the Church

Duma on the Russian intelligentsia “The sun sets, filling the birch trunks and golden foliage with purple. The ringing of bells hums over Moscow and slowly spreads out in the air: they are ringing for the all-night vigil. Arkhangelsk. Moscow called. How much I love her, brothers! Onuphry. On what occasion is the peal ringing? Arkhangelsk. Tomorrow is Sunday. To the all-night vigil. Bear. Shut up, shut up! Listen! (Make a deep melodious sound with his chest in tune with the singing bells.) Guuuuu, guuuuu... Glukhovtsev (jumps up). No, I can't! This is such beauty that you can go crazy. Olya, Olga Nikolaevna, let's go to the cliff. Vote. Both us and us. Leave your beer, Onufriy Nikolaevich! (Everyone pours out onto the edge of the cliff. Bear with a glass of beer, Onufry holds a bottle and from time to time drinks straight from the bottle. They listen.) Onuphry. Evening bells, evening bells, how many thoughts he (drinks) brings to mind.” This small scene from Leonid Andreev’s drama “Days of Our Lives” makes me think “a lot.” The ancient capital of the Orthodox Russian kingdom calls with a thousand voices to the churches for prayer, and a group of young people, students, among whom is a former seminarian, Popovich Arkhangelsky, listens to this “calling bell” from the cliff of the Sparrow Hills. True, people admire the ringing, but they admire the ringing as a uniquely aesthetic phenomenon. The ringing is just a random interesting setting for a country picnic, the same as music in a restaurant, and to the ringing of church bells, students drink beer, some from a glass, and some straight from a bottle. Could the spiritual duality of the Russian land be described even more clearly? When some, having heard the good news, reverently cross themselves and go to the all-night vigil, others drink beer on the Sparrow Hills to the sound of bells! Our Russia can say about itself in the words of Faust: Ah, two souls live in my chest. One still wants to separate from the other! Times of great national upheaval, such as those we are experiencing now, should not pass without a trace for the people's self-awareness, for the healing of people's ailments. Nowadays it is impossible not to reflect on the fate of our native land, not to suffer from its ailments, not to think about healing these ailments. The painful duality of the Russian soul is obvious to every thinking observer of life. When did this disease begin, how did it develop, what is its essence, how to get rid of it? – anyone who wants to serve their native land cannot help but try to answer all these questions. When the suffering and sick asked Christ for healing, He spoke to them about the forgiveness of sins. Illness from sin. If the Russian land is sick, then why is it especially sinful? The question of the essence of the Russian disease turns into the question of the main Russian sin. Even in the middle of the last century, Slavophiles dealt with similar issues, the most ardent of whom, Konstantin Aksakov, by the way, argued this way in his article “The Public and the People” 1: “There was a time when we didn’t have an audience... Is this possible? - they will tell me. It is very possible and absolutely true: we did not have an audience, but we had people. This was even before the construction of St. Petersburg. The public is a purely Western phenomenon and was introduced here along with various innovations. It was formed very simply: part of the people abandoned Russian life, language and clothing and formed the public, which surfaced above the surface. It is it, the public, that constitutes our constant connection with the West; writes out all sorts of outfits from there, both material and spiritual, bows before him as a teacher, borrows his thoughts and feelings, paying for this at a huge price: time, connection with the people and with the very truth of thought. The public appears before the people as if it were its privileged expression; in fact, the public is a distortion of the idea of ​​the people. The difference between the public and the people is obvious. The public imitates and has no independence: everything that it accepts that is alien, it accepts outwardly, each time becoming a stranger itself. The people do not imitate and are completely independent; and if he accepts something that is alien, he will make it his own, internalize it. The public turns what is theirs into someone else’s. The people turn what is alien into their own. Often, when the public goes to a ball, people go to the all-night vigil; when the audience dances, the people pray. The center of the public in Moscow is the Kuznetsky Bridge. The center of the people is the Kremlin. The public writes thoughts and feelings, mazurkas and polkas from across the sea, the people draw life from their native source. The public speaks French, the people speak Russian. The public wears German dress, the people wear Russian dress. The public has Parisian fashions, the people have their own Russian customs. The public eats the lean, the people eat the lean. The public is asleep, the people have long been up and working. The audience works (mostly with their feet on the parquet); people are sleeping or already getting up to work again. The public despises the people, the people forgive the public. The public is only one hundred and fifty years old, but you can’t count the people’s years. The public is transient; the people are eternal. And in the public there is gold and dirt, and in the people there is gold and dirt; but among the public there is dirt in gold, among the people there is gold in dirt. The public has society (monde, balls, etc.); the people have peace (gathering). The public and the people have epithets: our public is the most respectable, and the people are Orthodox. “Public, go! People, go back! – this is how one visitor exclaimed meaningfully.” At one time, Aksakov’s article with these arguments was considered harmful, and the newspaper in which it was published was closed. Of course, there is something specifically Slavophile in Aksakov’s reasoning, but it correctly notes a historical fact: the split in the Russian people, the falling away of the public from the people, occurred under the influence of the West and occurred when Russia was subjugated to this influence by Peter. The illness of the Russian soul, therefore, is already two centuries old. Two hundred years ago, the seeds of division were sown into the Russian soul, and for two hundred years almost no one treated this disease; it only became more complicated and developed. Heartbroken over the fate of their homeland, the Slavophiles looked for the source of its misfortunes in the West. At the same time, the Slavophiles contrasted Russia with the West in many respects. And undoubtedly, the Slavophiles were right in many ways. But if you look at everything primarily from the church point of view, then many issues that were very hotly discussed by the Slavophiles somehow lose their urgency, and church interest comes first. When I ask myself the question about the essence of the painful schism among the Russian people, I am inclined to see this essence in the sphere of the church and religion. The Russian disease is based on a sin against the Church. The attitude towards the Church is the touchstone for a Russian person. He who is faithful to the Church is faithful to Russia, he is truly Russian. Whoever renounced the Church renounced Russia, broke away from Russian soil, and became a groundless cosmopolitan. This always happens in the life of exclusively religious peoples. For example, among the Jews, only those who are faithful to the Law of Moses can be called true Jews. A Jew, who has renounced the Law of Moses, is certainly a complete nihilist, harmful both to his own people and to any other in which he lives. In parallel to this, it was the Russian intelligentsia that supplied the most radical deniers, nihilists and anarchists into European life. Tolstoy and Bakunin are ours. Russian revolutionaries are also persecuted in Western Europe. No person, perhaps, has looked into the abyss of denial like the Russian man. The Russian national character has been nurtured over the course of entire centuries under the leadership of the Church, and therefore a falling away from the Church for a Russian person is almost certainly a falling away from Russia. Russia can be imagined without parliament, without universities, but Russia cannot be imagined without the Church. The essence of the Russian people's disease can be seen in the fact that part of the Russian people seriously sinned against the Church, moved away from the Church, left its leadership, and lost touch with the life of the Church. The history of the Russian ideological schism can confirm this general position many times over. But who tempted the Russian people to sin and how did the falling away from the Church occur in Russia? This falling away from the Church occurred under the influence of the West, which had long ago fallen away from the Church. It was the West that seduced the Russian people to treat the Orthodox Church arrogantly, even to despise it - and in this one can see the most harmful and destructive influence of the West on Russian life. It is true and, perhaps, undeniable that, from the outside, Russian life has received a lot from the West, but it is also undeniable that the Russian soul received from the West a severe and painful wound, which burns and haunts the Russian people to this day. Before Peter, the Russian people from top to bottom were equally Orthodox and ecclesiastical. It was one church society, a church body. The Church was for him the supreme authority and the highest value. The “Consecrated Council” of the highest hierarchs was the closest adviser to the Moscow kings, even in state affairs. All of Peter’s transformative activities were aimed at humiliating the Church and undermining its strength and authority. Previously, in the Moscow Kremlin, the metropolitan or patriarch was a “father and pilgrim”, sometimes a “family friend” and always almost an adviser to princes and kings. The first Russian emperor destroyed the patriarchate itself, replacing it with an unprecedented synodal form of church government. No matter how much is written in the Regulations about the advantages of the collegial form of government over the individual form of government, it is not only felt between the lines, but also positively expresses the main goal of the church reform being undertaken. This goal is so that for the people no one stands next to the king, so that the state side of life comes first, and the Church steps aside, loses its independence and submits to the state, so that the monarch becomes the final judge of the spiritual board. It has long been recognized that the views of the Regulations on the relationship of the Church to the state and the entire proposed reform of church governance were borrowed from the West and inspired by the spirit of German Protestantism. The ideas of the Regulations soon passed into state life and immediately humiliated the position of the Church in Russia. Peter and his “associate” Feofan Prokopovich, of course, did not meet with sympathy in the Russian church hierarchy, and Peter soon completely turned his back on the Great Russian hierarchs. The Russian saints were, as it were, replaced for Peter by various foreigners, mostly Germans. And what kind of Germans are they? Artificial, rude and ignorant. The influence of the Church was replaced by German dominance over Russian state life. The 18th century began, this darkest and most unfortunate century in Russian history. Above the surface of Russian people's life, the upper layers of government surfaced, alien to the Russian land by blood, language, and faith. Foreigners, even not noble ones, gave their tone to all the upper circles of Russian society. The 18th century was a time of suffering for the entire Russian land from foreigners alien to it, who, however, were appointed to govern and lead it. It is clear that the position of the Church was especially difficult during this century. When someone’s love for the Church dries up, zeal for the work and service of the Church weakens, then it is useful to study Russian church history for the 18th century. The disasters and persecutions experienced by the Church in Russia during this century can touch even a heart indifferent to the glory of the Church! The first half of the 18th century was filled with positive persecution of the Church, and the second half with arrogant contempt for the Church. Since the time of Peter, the entire highest hierarchy of the Church has been placed under suspicion. Peter suspected her - and, of course, not without reason! - in complete lack of sympathy for his church and state reforms. The German government that emerged after Peter felt unsteady, fearful and suspicious on Russian soil. The palace and fortress then often changed occupants. The investigation was most unrestrained, torture and execution fell on the heads of the Russian people, and perhaps first of all on the heads of church leaders. Persecution and oppression of the Church were still new, the hierarchy was not yet accustomed to it, and it is clear that it often did not have enough patience and sighs of murmur escaped. In addition, under the new government, the hierarchy could not fulfill some of its archpastoral duties without arousing the discontent of the government. Together with the Germans, German false teachings began to penetrate into Russia. It was the duty of the hierarchy to refute and expose these false teachings, mainly Protestant ones. But the government looked at the refutation of Protestantism as a conspiracy against itself, as political unreliability. In the thirties, two synodal members, Archimandrites Euthymius and Plato, were disgraced for translating and distributing a book against Protestantism. What turned out to be criminal in the book was that it allegedly “smeared all Protestants with untruth and infidelity, many of whom are honorable persons at court, both in the military and in the civil ranks, and serve with high ranks, which caused no little grief to the most respectable persons.” Among the Germans who persecute the Church, along with Biron, Osterman and Minikh, one should also name Feofan Prokopovich, this protege and “associate” of Petrov. This educated and talented hierarch sacrificed the interests of the Church to his pride and ambition. Many disasters befell both the entire Russian Church and individual hierarchs due to Theophan’s slander. Theophan slyly accused the hierarchs he disliked of having rebellious plans against the German government, and thereby hardened that government against the Church. Monasticism was subjected to especially severe persecution in the new Russian state, which Protestants, of course, could not understand in any way. Alien to the ancient Russian Orthodox worldview, the government looked at monasticism only from a limited and narrow point of view - the state. For the government, the monks were only parasites who “flee from taxes and laziness so that they can eat bread for free.” And now the German government is rudely intruding into the internal life of the Church. Taking monastic vows is completely prohibited. A decree on this was issued one by Peter, on January 28, 1723 2 , and another in 1734 on June 10 by the government of Anna Ioannovna 3 . As many as hundreds of monks were condemned at the same time to be defrocked, although they often already had holy orders. Their only serious guilt was that they were tonsured without permission, for example, from the cabinet of ministers, where the main person was the German Osterman. Emptying the monasteries to the point that sometimes there was no one to serve the liturgy in them, the government, starting with Peter, sent there for maintenance, in exchange for monks, retired military men, even non-Orthodox ones, reasoning like this: “they will receive food by decree, but this has nothing to do with their faith.” It is clear what happened in monasteries from such inhabitants! Not only that. The government began to look at the monasteries as prisons for political criminals, and there were many of them then, given the government’s morbid suspicion. Supervision over the prisoners and responsibility for their integrity lay with the monks. Finally, the government sometimes hid its victims in monasteries: amid torture in the dungeons of the secret chancellery, many went crazy, and these crazy people were also sent to monasteries. This is how the Church lived in Russia under Peter and his immediate successors. With the accession of Elizabeth, a bright ray of hope for the best flashed. And this is how church preachers in the church pulpit recalled the recent past. On the day of the Annunciation in 1742, Dimitri Sechenov said: “It was an unfavorable time. Our opponents have found a good way, kind to oppressing us, showing themselves that they are servants loyal to the state, that they are guardians of the health of their sovereigns, that they are all working for the benefit and correction of Russia; and when they took our entire fatherland into their hands, they vomited a great poison of anger at the faithful children of Russia; a great persecution was brought against the Church of Christ and the pious faith; their time was long and the region was dark: they did what they wanted... Christian dogmas became fables and amounted to nothing; the holy saints of God were not revered; they did not bow to icons of saints; the fathers rejected the traditions of the apostles and saints... And most of all, the great persecution of the very Holy Mysteries of the ministers, the spiritual rank: bishops, priests, monks were tortured, executed, cut off; incessant mail, both by water and by land - where? For what? - monks, priests, pious people are taken to distant Siberian cities - to Okhotsk, Kamchatka, Orenburg; and thus they frightened them so much that even the very shepherds, the very preachers of the word of God, were silent and did not dare to open their lips about piety.” Even a little earlier (November 18, 1741), Kirill Florinsky said in a sermon: “Hitherto we were dormant, but now we have seen that Osterman and Minich with their host entered Russia, like emissaries of the devil, and to them, having allowed God, the wealth, glory and honor that they desired happened; This is what Satan promised them, and under the guise of ministry and faithful service to the Russian state, the first and dearest thing in Russia - orthodoxy and piety will not only be transformed, but they will also be eradicated.” You don’t have to be a person who especially loves the Church and cares about her to recognize the first half of the 18th century in our history as a dark and gloomy time. Our historians have a tendency to extol the genius of Peter and cruelly criticize his successors, but in relations to the Church it was Peter who set the main tone for the entire 18th century: after all, he had Protestant friends, the Great Russian hierarchs were disgusted with him, he was the protodeacon of the most drunken and most humorous council, he gave complete predominance to the state principle over the church principle, he destroyed the patriarchate so that it would not interfere with him, he even rode the wheel one bishop. This is how the first break occurred among Russian society. It grew out of sin against the Church. It was created by the humiliation of the Church before the state, the weakening of church power by the destruction of the patriarchate, the emergence as rulers of people alien to the people's faith and the people's Church, the emergence of Protestant Germans in power. It became possible to live on Russian soil without knowing or understanding the Orthodox Church, despising it, persecuting and humiliating its highest servants. The dominant position of the Church in Russia since the time of Peter can only be spoken of with great reservations. What domination, if all the time from Peter the main vital nerve of the Church - its conciliarity - was paralyzed! This was the beginning of our society and our intelligentsia, who broke away from the Church and the people. Their ancestors were the Birons, Ostermans and the like. Of course, our contemporaries will resolutely disown such ancestors. However, it is not difficult to notice many similarities in the worldview of the Birons and Ostermans, on the one hand, and our modern intellectuals, on the other. You only need to take the attitude of both of them towards the Orthodox Church, listen to the opinions of both, for example, about monasticism. It is, of course, true that the German tyrants of the first half of the 18th century marked only the beginning of the now obvious ideological division of Russian society. The worldview and, in particular, the attitude towards the Church of the Russian elite had its own deplorable history and gradually became more complicated. The second half of the 18th century differs very significantly from the first. The age of Catherine is the age of admiration for French philosophy. Catherine herself admired Voltaire, Diderot and d'Alembert; She carries on friendly correspondence with them, has endless conversations with Diderot, admitting that she would not get tired of talking with him all her life, buys his library from him, leaves it at his disposal for life, and for the management of his own library assigns him a salary, paying it fifty years in advance. Montesquieu's "Spirit of Laws", according to Catherine, should be the prayer book of all monarchs with common sense. Russian nobles seem to argue with the empress in respect for the new French idols. Ancient Russian people dreamed of pious journeys to the sacred East to the Holy Sepulcher and to Saint Athos; Now the Russian people have found a new shrine in the West - Ferney Castle, where the godless Voltaire lived. Being in Europe and not seeing Voltaire became a shame for the Russian people, and the Empress usually scolded her favorites if they, while in Europe, for some reason did not visit Voltaire. Under the dominance of the humane ideas of the West, it is clear that there could be no direct persecution of the Church; rack and dungeon even for sacred persons - this has receded into the realm of terrible legend. But, of course, admiration for Voltaire and other French philosophers could not return the top of Russian society to the Church. For these materialist philosophers, any faith, especially the Orthodox one, was an area of ​​superstition and ignorance, of which an enlightened person should be ashamed. This faith can only be practiced by a simple person who has not tasted the fruits of high enlightenment and therefore deserves only pity and ridicule. The clergy, in charge of matters of faith, for that very reason stands below noble society, perhaps on a par with artisans. Meanwhile, Peter’s view of the Church as a value not independent, but subordinate to the state, this view was fully shared by Catherine. She considered herself the head of the Church; bishops were state officials for her. Generous with land gifts to her many favorites, Catherine took away lands from churches and monasteries. And Catherine, without embarrassment, appointed not only persons inclined towards Protestantism, like Melissino, but also obvious atheists, like Chebyshev, to the chief prosecutors of the Synod. With such an attitude towards the Church, the upper echelons of Russian society, who had become detached from it, learned to look at it as a bastion of superstition and ignorance, and learned to despise the Church and everyone who is faithful to the Church. Voltaire, of course, could not teach anyone anything else. During the century of Catherine, the disease of the duality of Russian society made great strides in its development. A new education and upbringing appeared, completely independent of the Church, completely free from its influence, often hostile to the Church and certainly unknown to ancient Rus'. This is how Catherine herself raised her grandson, the future Emperor Alexander. His upbringing was based on the philosophical ideas of the encyclopedists, and religious education, that is, acquaintance with the soul of the Russian people, was relegated to the background. Of all the Russian clergy, Alexander found only Archpriest Samborsky as a teacher of the law, who lived for twenty years in London, married to an Englishwoman and known more as a gardener than as a theologian (he, for example, planned a garden in Tsarskoe Selo). That is why, despite all the good qualities of his mind and heart, Alexander was alien to the people's faith and did not know his people. As if in order to sober up Russian society from its slavish infatuation with the West and its reckless disregard for the Church, God’s Providence sent the great disaster of the Patriotic War. The enlightened French came to Moscow, robbed and desecrated people's shrines, thereby showing the underside of their European soul. Alas! This hard lesson did not benefit Russian society. During the Patriotic War, only a few Russian people raised their voices of protest against French education and for a return to the former, original Russian Orthodox life. “We admired and pressed the snake to our chest,” wrote Shishkov, “which, tormenting its own womb, shed its poison on us, and finally, for our affection and love for it, it hurts us with its all-vicious sting. Let us not be ashamed to admit our weakness. It is more commendable and salutary to fall and rise than to see your mistake and lie under its harmful yoke. The friendship and temptations of a depraved people are more dangerous for us than their enmity and weapons... An obvious example, filled with abominations, illuminated by the fires of Moscow, imprinted with our blood and wounds, should finally open our eyes and assure us that we must certainly choose one of two: either, continuing to nourish our inclination towards the evil people, to be their evil slaves, or to break off all moral ties with them, return to the purity and integrity of our morals and be brave in name and soul and Orthodox Russians. We must decide once to build a wall between evil and good so that evil does not touch us: then, having been tempted by blood and our troubles, we will rise, buy true glory for ourselves, bring peace to our descendants, and the grace of God will be with us.”4 This is how Shishkov preached before Emperor Alexander himself! But others at the same time watched as the lesson of the war passed without benefit for Russia. “One thing scares me,” wrote M.A. Volkova 5, “is that misfortunes do not serve as a lesson for us; despite everything the Lord does to turn us to himself, we resist and remain bitter.” And how could it be otherwise? After all, it was officially stated that we were waging a war with Napoleon, and not with the French. The Russians entered Paris victoriously and there they surrendered to the French. In Russia, the passion for French did not become any weaker after the war; it may even have intensified. A Frenchman from Bordeaux, and after the invasion of Moscow by the twelve, he was only preparing for the journey to Russia, to the barbarians, with fear and tears. And as soon as he arrived, he immediately found that there was no end to the caresses. Not a Russian sound, not a Russian face Not to be met: as if in the fatherland, with friends, - Ah, the Russian princesses kept repeating everything as before A lesson that was taught to them from childhood; "Oh! France! There is no better region in the world!” And Chatsky exclaimed bitterly: Oh, if we were born to adopt everything, At least we could borrow some from the Chinese Their ignorance of foreigners is wise! 6 The Russian government mood immediately after the war is clearly depicted by Leskov in “The Tale of the Tula Lefty Lefty” 7. “When Emperor Alexander Pavlovich graduated from the Vienna Council, he wanted to travel around Europe and see wonders in different states. He traveled to all countries and everywhere, through his affectionateness, he always had the most internecine conversations with all sorts of people, and everyone surprised him with something and wanted to bend him to their side, but with him was the Don Cossack Platov, who did not like this inclination and, missing his household, kept beckoning the Tsar home. And if Platov notices that the Tsar is very interested in something foreign, then all those accompanying him are silent, and Platov will now say: so and so, and we have our own at home, no worse, - and will take him away with something.” In one place they showed the Emperor and Platov Mortimer’s gun. “The Emperor looked at the pistol and couldn’t see enough 8 . He got terribly excited. - Ah, ah, ah! - he says, - how is this possible... how can this even be done so subtly! “And he turns to Platov in Russian and says: “If I only had one such master in Russia, I would be very happy and proud of it, and I would immediately make that master noble.” And Platov, at these words, at that very moment lowered his right hand into his large trousers and pulled out a gun screwdriver from there. The English say: it won’t open, but he, not paying attention, just picks the lock. I turned it once, turned it twice - the lock and got out. Platov shows the Tsar the dog, and there, on the very bend, there is a Russian inscription: “Ivan Moskvin in the city of Tula.” The British are surprised and nudge each other: And the Emperor sadly says to Platov: “Why did you make them so embarrassed, I feel very sorry for them now.” Let's go. They got back into the carriage and drove off, and the Tsar was at the ball that day, and Platov choked down an even larger glass of sour wine and slept in a sound Cossack sleep. He was happy that he had embarrassed the British and put the Tula master on the spot, but he was also annoyed: why did the Tsar feel sorry for the British under such an occasion!” And in another case, the Emperor said to the English masters: “You are the first masters in the whole world, and my people cannot do anything against you.” And when did such a humiliation of everything Russian before foreign European things happen? Immediately after the “Vienna Council”, immediately after Russian valor saved all of Europe from Napoleon. But let the Russian people in Western Europe admire only guns and pistols. They had hobbies there that were incomparably more harmful to Russian life, especially to the Church. French materialism has compromised itself in the eyes of European society. As a reaction against materialism in Europe, mysticism, often morbid, came into great fashion. The Tsar himself in Europe met with the head of the mystics, Jung-Stilling, was fond of the Herrnhuters, and talked with Baroness Kridener or, as some called her, “Baronche Kridener.” This pan-European adventurer, after many sins, “ascended above the limits of her mind,” took up mysticism and began to prophesy. At the end of the war, a widespread disease of mysticism emerged in high Russian society. Quakers and various preachers came to St. Petersburg in large numbers, and their own whips and eunuchs appeared. Kondraty Selivanov skated like cheese in butter in St. Petersburg. For the Khlysty, the northern capital at this time became “the city of Zion, the green Garden of Eden.” All mystics and sectarians were welcomed with open arms then. Other prophets were paid a state salary, the celebrations of Tatarinova’s “spiritual union” took place in the Mikhailovsky Castle, in a government apartment, the prophet of this “union,” the musician of the cadet corps Nikita Fedorov, or Nikitushka, was even awarded a rank, albeit of the 14th class. Even the church, in gratitude to God for getting rid of the French, they decided to build according to the design of the mystic Vitberg, made in a vaguely mystical style. The church has already been founded. Fortunately, the Sparrow Hills opposed this mystical undertaking, refusing to support the huge mystical building, and the construction of the church did not go beyond the foundation. At the same time, control of the Church and public education was entrusted to the unbelieving Prince Golitsyn, and the Holy Synod simply turned to the “Synodical Department.” The Orthodox Church then received from its prodigal sons a new derogatory name - “external”, “external”. The denunciation of mysticism and the defense of the Church was officially called “the defense of the outer Church against the inner”, “the extermination of the spirit of the internal Christian teaching”; this was a matter “completely contrary to the principles guiding our Christian government in the civil and spiritual aspects.” For allowing a book directed against mysticism to be published, the learned censor, Archimandrite Innocent, was sent from St. Petersburg to Penza, where he soon died. But the mystical books of Jung-Stilling, Mrs. Gion, Boehm, Eckartshausen, Swedenborg and others grew on Russian soil like mushrooms after rain. The Bible Society distributed mystical books to educational institutions, parish and monastery libraries, everywhere raising doubts about the truth and the necessity of the “external Church.” This is how the Russian people did not understand the lessons of the Patriotic War a hundred years ago. Society did not turn to the Church and therefore remained as before alien to both Russia and the Russian people. The “public” met and united with the people only in Khlyst ships and at sectarian zeal. Mystical sectarianism is what the Russian people received from their masters at the beginning of the 19th century. The upper class had already completely isolated itself from the mass of the Russian people at this time, and this split had a primarily religious basis; it was based on a sin against the Church, the falling away of the upper class from the ancient Russian Orthodox Church worldview and the change from church-Christian life to Western European life. In the 19th century, the ideological split of the Russian people only intensified. High society, having tasted the fruits of European enlightenment, sometimes made attempts to “instill European enlightenment in the wild and uneducated Russian people,” “to transform them in religious, moral, social and artistic terms.” These attempts have been sufficiently ridiculed in our literature. When those educated in Paris came to the village for educational purposes, it turned out that they were completely alien to the people and spoke to each other in incomprehensible languages, especially when it came to faith and Christian life. This is how, for example, Konstantin Aksakov describes the conversation between Prince Lupovitsky and the village elder Anton: – I want your understanding... how to say... intellectual education, well... your moral, ethical dignity to rise (Anton is silent). I speak unclearly, perhaps; but better to get to the point. Tell me, are you religious? A? That is, do you go to church? - Let's go, Your Excellency. “And wonderful, my friends, wonderful.” Oh, be religious, believers. I belong to those people who respect faith and even consider it the main thing. I advise you to be religious; do what your religion or faith tells you to do. – We perform according to our strength. - However, Anton, I was in church today; Of course, I didn’t come at the beginning, but they were still serving, and I saw that there weren’t many people. - Yes, father, you came after mass, and it was prayer services; So those who served remained, while others dispersed. - Yes, exactly, yes, prayer services. Let me, however, let me: there the priest gave the cross to kiss. “Why, father, this happens at every prayer service.” – It happens, yes, it happens, for sure. Would you like to have breakfast? I'll tell you to serve it there. - No, father, I won’t. - We are fasting, father; this is modest. - Petrovka! I admit, I didn’t know. – Your business is the master’s, father 9. And on other issues the prince spoke with the headman, and invariably he had to suffer defeat, until he admitted that he misunderstood many things, that he did not know or understand the Russian people and their Church at all. In the same style there is an evil and witty story by Prince V. Meshchersky “The Lord Apostle in the Great St. Petersburg Light,” published in 1876. The St. Petersburg fans of the Lord Apostle are excellently described here, their sentimental tenderness and copious tears from the Lord’s empty and vague sectarian sermons in English. The great St. Petersburg society began to move, and then decided to take the Lord Apostle to the village to educate the peasants. We arrived in the village. First, they ask the village priest to serve mass. It turned out that summer mass in the village ends before the gentlemen have time to get up. The priest refuses to serve mass after ten o'clock, saying that by this time the peasants will have dispersed to the villages. Then the gentlemen offer him to serve two masses: one early for the peasants, the other later for the gentlemen. When asked to serve two masses on one day, the priest, of course, only opens his eyes wide in surprise, and the gentlemen will not understand why the priest does not agree to serve two masses, and explain this with priestly laziness and greed. Finally, after a sumptuous breakfast, the lord delivered a sermon on spending Sunday through an interpreter from the master's terrace. The helpful police officer, through the sots, drove the listeners to the manor's house. Alas! The whole thing ended with the men, who did not understand anything from the sermon, asking the master to roll out two buckets of vodka for them for their troubles. Then the police officer made a speech that was more understandable to the people: “Oh, you devils! They teach you how to read the Holy Scriptures on Sunday, but you ask for vodka! Get out!” This is how the lord’s plans to educate the people ended pitifully! But there were village educators of a different kind. There was later a type of “repentant nobles” who decided to break with their former life and “go among the people.” Many people came, but nothing came of it. Connections with the former lordly world turned out to be unbroken, and the “repentant nobleman”, at best, turned into a “good gentleman”, deceived in every possible way by the peasants, and at worst, into an “eccentric gentleman”, at whom even the peasants nodded their heads mockingly. There was something that prevented the merging of the master and the peasant. Gleb Uspensky, who wrote about “unbroken ties,” among other things, said that “26 volumes of Solovyov’s history of Russia” prevented merging with the people. This story allegedly did not allow the people to understand the repentant gentlemen. “How much has grown on him, and around him, and under his feet, and above, and below - in a word, both in him and outside of him - all kinds of game, cobwebs! How much rottenness is lying along the path of its development, centuries-old rotten, moss-covered, which confuses and confuses the paths! 10. Only one thing and the most important thing has been lost sight of: as many as fourteen volumes of the history of Russia (before Peter) are filled with the history of the church people’s life, from which the gentlemen broke away, and outside this church life they themselves, since the time of Peter, were overgrown with Western European rot and all sorts of game and cobwebs, which is why they were alien to the people. Finally, in the 19th century, an intelligent class emerged between the people and high society. In their denial of the Church and their admiration for the West, this class has perhaps gone further than anyone else. Belinsky taught Russian intellectuals atheistic socialism. The Russian intelligentsia has become both non-religious and non-national. Westernism and religious denial entered into close friendship with each other in the worldview and beliefs of the Russian intellectual. Theological schools also sinned by introducing nihilists, “raznochintsy” like Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky into Russian literature and the Russian public. These renegades of the clergy became for a time leaders and leaders of the intelligentsia, and it is known that a renegade is especially hostile to what he has renounced. The intelligentsia was brought up in hostility to the Church. She did not know the church; replaced religion for herself with “anthropology”; Therefore, she grew up a stranger to both the people and the people's life. Meanwhile, the intelligentsia also wanted to teach the people. This intellectual science immediately turned into social and revolutionary propaganda, propaganda that corrupted and turned away from the Church. The intelligentsia changed their idols every decade and each time, having not yet really learned anything themselves, they wanted to reeducate the people, rebaptize them into their godless faith. But the change of idols was always accompanied by struggle and division within the intelligentsia itself. “Sixties”, “Seventies”, “Eighties”, “Nineties” - all these are different types, each worshiping their own gods. When a sixties person lived through the sixties or a seventies person lived into the eighties, they were alien to the younger generation, and this generation seemed to them a traitor to the recent “great testaments.” Shelgunov and Mikhailovsky had to denounce their own younger contemporaries. Leskov in “Nowhere” or Chirikov in “Youth” well described how in constant useless disputes, in mutual division and enmity, the intelligentsia involuntarily spent their spiritual strength, being, however, blindly confident that they were doing a “great thing” and selflessly serving the people. V.V. Rozanov is very close to the truth when he says (“Fallen Leaves,” box two) that all intellectual literature, including the “Complete Works of the Sixties,” is essentially “The Story of How Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich quarreled.” So we came again to the scene on Sparrow Hills, where modern intellectuals listen to the ringing of Moscow bells. The history of the last two centuries, as it were, forcibly led to such a division of Russian society, when the authority of the Orthodox Church was humiliated and Russian people began to be forced to learn from Western heretics and think, and feel, and even believe. Now we are again experiencing a difficult Patriotic War and again seeing with our own eyes the unsightly underside of European culture. Is it possible that this war will also be fruitless for Russian society, just as the Patriotic War was experienced without benefit a hundred years ago? But even now we hear voices saying that we are not at war with Western European culture, but only with Prussian militarism 11 . And this war, it seemed, could teach the Russian people a lot - first of all, that in order to heal the wounds corroding the Russian soul, it is necessary to repent of the two-century sin against the Church, return everyone to the faith of the fathers and give the Orthodox Church its former place in state and social life. Before the start of the war, the Church in Russia was humiliated to the extreme. Previously, according to the Rules, the Church was subordinate to the Sovereign; it could be justified. But the Russian monarch called for constitutional legislative institutions to come to life. In the new legislation, church life is not at all separated from the terms of reference of representative institutions. And now both Friedman and Chkheidze have the right to legally discuss and resolve many issues of even internal church life. The enslavement of the Church to the state has reached its final development. And this is at the very time when both schismatics and sectarians, often harmful to Russia, who grew from German seed, received complete freedom. You open the newspaper and see how easy it is for schismatics to gather for a council. You remember how Fetler, now exiled from Russia, organized conferences of Baptists in ancient Orthodox Moscow. And only the Orthodox Church cannot form a council and set itself a legitimate head on it, according to the 34th Apostolic Canon! It is sometimes difficult to visit the Moscow Assumption Cathedral. This is when you see people there not praying, but “sightseeing.” These people walk around the cathedral as if it were a museum. Even the shrines of the Moscow saints do not tell them anything, and they not only do not bow before them, they do not even cross themselves. But this year I had to serve an early mass in the Assumption Cathedral. As soon as I reached the altar, the cathedral was so filled with ordinary people. Endless lines of pilgrims walked and reverently kissed the relics of the great saints in all four corners of the cathedral. I realized that the Russian soul was still alive and that the ancient sacred cathedral had not yet turned for it into an insensitive archaeological museum, as it is revered by intellectuals alien to church life! But it was even more painful than always to see the empty patriarchal place! I wanted to exclaim: how long, Lord! When will the supreme shepherd of the Russian people ascend to this place, take the flute and club into his holy hands and gather all the Russian people into a single flock of Christ, including those pea-predatory sheep that have now scattered across the Sparrow Hills and are grazing in strange and harmful pastures? Introductory reading at the Moscow Theological Academy on August 26, 1916. First published in the magazine "Christian's Rest", 1916, No. 10. Signed “Professor Archimandrite Hilarion.” Complete collection of laws of the Russian Empire, since 1649. T. 7. [SPb.], 1830, No. 4151. Ibid., vol. 9, [SPb.], 1830, No. 6585. Brief notes of Admiral A. Shishkov, kept by him during his stay under Emperor Alexander the First of blessed memory during the war with the French in 1812 and subsequent years. St. Petersburg, 1831, p. 53–54. Private letters of 1812. Letter from M.A. Volkova to V.I. Lanskaya dated September 17. -Russian archive. 1872, issue. 12, count. 2399. Griboyedov has a different arrangement of lines. – Note. ed. The exact title of the story: “Lefty. (The Tale of the Tula Left-Hander and the Steel Flea).” – Note. ed. The following quote is not about Mortimer's gun, but about another "pistol". Note ed. Works by K. S. Aksakov. T. 1. Pg., 1915, p. 529–531. (Quote without remarks by the playwright from the comedy “Prince Lupovitsky, or Arrival in the Village.” - Ed. Note) G.I. Uspensky. Unbroken connections. – Collected works. T. 4. M., 1956, p. 288. – Note. ed. “It is not with the Germany of Albrecht Durer, Holbein and the artists who created the immortal paintings and sculptures of its ancient cathedrals, not with the Germany of Lessing, Herder, Schiller, Goethe and Novalis, not with the Germany of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer, these teachers of both Russian Slavophiles and Russian Westerners, not with all this great culture of the recent past that we are fighting... But we are fighting and will fight to the end with that bestial face that unexpectedly and menacingly looked at us when Germany threw off the mask of cultural idealism, behind which for fifty years insolent militarism and vulgar bourgeois egoism and vandalism were hiding” (G. Rachinsky. Brotherhood and Freedom. - Russian Thought. 1914, December, p. 85). Deputies of the State Duma. – Note. ed. You might be interested in: