Progress and war

Living through the difficult days of a terrible war asks every thoughtful person a whole series of questions. What is this happening before our eyes? Europe, civilized, cultural Europe, the 20th century, a wide stream of enlightenment, science, art, high ideas, humanity, freedom, equality, even brotherhood - and suddenly war, murder, cruelty, inhumanity, blood, atrocity. How can these two series of phenomena be reconciled? It is now useful to read “The Diary of a Writer,” which our great Dostoevsky kept during the days of the Turkish War in 1877. By the way, Dostoevsky wrote in his diary: “Among these Slavic children brought to Moscow... there is one child, a girl of eight or nine years old, who often faints and who is especially looked after. She faints from the memory: she herself, with her own eyes, saw this summer how the Circassians tore off her father’s skin and tore it all off. This memory is persistent with her and, most likely, will remain forever, perhaps over the years in a softened form, although, however, I don’t know whether there could be a softened form. O civilization! O Europe, which would suffer so much in its interests if it seriously forbade the Turks to flay their fathers in the eyes of their children! These are the highest interests of European civilization, of course - trade, navigation, markets, factories - what could be higher in the eyes of Europe? These are interests that one cannot even touch, not only with a finger, but even with a thought, but - but “damn these interests of European civilization!” ...I consider it an honor to join in this exclamation: yes! May these interests of civilization be damned, and even civilization itself, if in order to preserve it it is necessary to skin people. But, nevertheless, it is a fact: in order to preserve it, it is necessary to skin people!” 1. According to Dostoevsky, therefore, progress and civilization are necessarily associated with war and cruelty. And indeed, if you take a thoughtful look at progress, you involuntarily discover an inextricable connection between progress and war with its cruelties. What is progress? The very theory of progress is only the application of the general doctrine of evolution to human life, but evolution legitimizes the struggle for existence. The German, they say, invented the monkey. But it was only through a long struggle that the animal world finally gave birth to the monkey. The weakest species disappeared in a merciless struggle for existence. Only the strongest and those best adapted to the struggle survived in this struggle. If you transfer the struggle for existence into international relations, you get war. War is a struggle for existence, waged between entire peoples, entire nations. In this struggle, the one who wins survives; therefore, adaptation to struggle is necessary; hence the continuous armament of modern nations. The theory of progress sees the meaning of German militarism, the German iron fist. Progress requires war, and war brings with it cruelty. There have been dynastic wars and knightly wars in history. Now wars are predominantly and almost exclusively economic. Now, indeed, there is no higher motive for war than markets, trade, factories. Progress requires the accumulation of enormous wealth for its implementation. The Lord blessed man to eat his bread by the sweat of his brow and pointed to agriculture as a source of food. On the path of progress, humanity wants to bypass this Divine commandment, because agriculture does not provide wealth sufficient for brilliant cultural success. More wealth comes from factory and trade. The factory requires trade, export, because it produces more goods than are required in the factory area itself. It’s not enough to sell to a European. He forces you to buy from him. Hence European policy is colonial. What is the point of this policy? Why should black or red people be subordinated to pale-faced people? This is what progress requires, this is what European civilization demands. Provide material for our factories and please buy from us, otherwise we will not be rich enough for cultural success - this is what the Europeans, in essence, say to the inhabitants of their colonies and add: and if you don’t buy, we will force you by force of arms. So the savages already understood this side of the European. From the Europeans, they say, first comes the missionary, after the missionary comes the merchant, and after the merchant comes the soldier. Thus, colonial policy is, in essence, a disguised robbery, where he is the robber - that impeccable gentleman in an elegant tailcoat and a shiny top hat, who is usually called a cultured man. Sometimes robbery takes a different form. A cultured man attacks his neighbor, if he is weaker, and begins to beat him until he asks for mercy. Oh, of course, he will spare, he will not kill to death; he will only demand a ransom and write a trade agreement beneficial to himself at the end of the war. There is no benefit to killing your neighbor; It's better to make him pay money. Look at the pursuit of new markets lately, and how more and more difficult it has become to delimit the sphere of influence. Just as robbers often threaten each other with a knife when dividing up their loot, so do civilized states when they rattle their swords for economic reasons. I remember how closely the Germans followed the last Balkan war. It looks like the seller is afraid that the buyer will leave him, or someone else will lure him away. But when did they swing the sword especially hard in Vienna? Then, when the Serbs approached the Adriatic Sea. What is the reason here? And in the fact that the small neighboring people received the opportunity for a free economic life, a way out of economic bondage was opened for them. Isn't this terrible? Cultural progress suffers. So get away from the sea! We will trade there, and you must buy from us. You work, and we will get rich. We need this for our cultural success on the path of progress. And what an amazing friendship the Germans have with the Turks! Where is she from? Is it really sincere? If it’s not sincere, it’s beneficial to the Germans. The Turks no longer protest against the robbery of the Germans. If there lives a decrepit old man who can be robbed, then how can one not wish the old man to live longer. Otherwise, heirs will appear with whom it will be more difficult to get along than with a decrepit old man who has lost his mind. These are the driving springs that we see in the modern life of cultural humanity! Humanity has followed the path of progress and inevitably had to engage in robbery, and rare robbery occurs without bloodshed. So it turns out that progress itself is essentially closely and inextricably linked with war and cruelty. There is nothing to be surprised here when in the field of European thought the blessing of cruelty and mercilessness has already been pronounced, and precisely in the field of evolutionary thought. After all, the last word of evolutionary theory was said by Nietzsche. Nietzsche continued the evolution. Man evolved from the monkey through evolution. But why should the evolutionary process stop with humans? He does not stop, but creates a superman out of man. The superman, as Nietzsche portrays him, is cruel and merciless. He walks over the corpses of the weak to the heights. Hence Nietzsche's enmity against Christianity. The Christian virtues of humility, patience, and compassion are disastrous for the Nietzschean superman, and therefore the superman must treat all Christian virtues with contempt. German practice is already putting into practice the philosophical theory of the mad thinker. If humanity has bowed so low and reverently before the idol of progress that it is forbidden to touch it not only with a finger, but even with a thought, then it remains to come to terms with the horrors of war. What goes around comes around. Sow the wind and reap the storm. If you follow the path of progress, you will fight and lose pity. Progress, on the contrary, is not at all connected with spiritual improvement; often even resists him. Progress requires that all a person's energy be devoted to him alone and nothing else. But Christianity requires from a person inner feat, even to the point of bloodshed, and directs energy inward. That is why we so often look at faith as an obstacle to progress. This is so in fact, because the Christian ascetic no longer has so much energy left to be a figure of progress, and his interests, his ideals are not ahead, but above, in Heaven, in the highest Jerusalem. The worker of progress, of necessity, runs wild spiritually and carries the beast within himself. If you take a closer look at a modern cultural person, then, perhaps, you will have to repeat the words of Dostoevsky, written in the same diary: “You know, gentlemen... if they don’t flay the skin of fathers here on Nevsky in the eyes of their children, then it is only by accident, so to speak, “due to circumstances beyond the control of the public,” and, of course, because the policemen are standing... and that it’s up to us, maybe the matter wouldn’t have happened, despite all our civilization.” Sad realization! This awareness, I think, alone can deprive a person of peace and joy. These blessings of peace and joy are promised to the Christian, but the path to these blessings is not the path of progress, not the path of cultural success, because the skinning necessary for progress deprives the one who is skinned of peace and joy, and does not give peace and joy to the one who is engaged in this skinning. But we can also apply the Latin saying to civilized humanity: Per quae qui peccat, per eadem torquetur 2. Humanity sins by admiring progress - it is this same progress that punishes it first of all. The progress made in recent decades has been astounding. But what progresses the fastest? It seems that it would not be untrue to say that the fastest growing technology is the instruments of war, instruments of extermination, instruments of death, cruelty and torture. In fact, the armadillo ages faster than a human. At thirty, a man is still in the bloom of hope and strength, but a battleship or a cruiser is already a worthless old man who can barely drag himself along with a stick, while young people run around him in a rush. How long ago have we heard the word “airplane”? Has any of us received any improvement in life from airplanes, except for the spectacle of “dead loops”, a spectacle that sometimes makes us recall Andreev’s fantasy “Love for one’s neighbor”? And the war can no longer do without airplanes on its terrible bloody battlefields. Isn’t it remarkable that aviation immediately entered into friendship with the military department? How much benefit has liquid oxygen, for example, brought us? And it is very useful for blowing up zeppelins. You will remember the wars of bygone days and sometimes you will smile. After all, on our 20th-century scale, this is child’s play. Achilles runs after Hector, the treacherous Danaans hide armed warriors in a horse statue - and this is enough for the fall of Troy. You look now at the walls of the Trinity Lavra and think: just three hundred years ago these walls were an impregnable fortress that Sapega and Lisovsky could not take for sixteen months. What kind of “approachable intrigues” there were then - chopped shields, turuses on wheels and all sorts of wall-breaking tricks! How the attacks were reflected back then! They poured boiling water over the enemies, threw burning sulfur and resin at them, and poured lime into their eyes. After all, all this is an idyll compared to our wars. Huge guns and terrible shells, bombs and shrapnel, mines and land mines, wolf pits and wire fences, and even with high voltage electric current, machine guns and armored cars. After all, it’s all scary to even imagine! With such improvements, war becomes some kind of hell and madness. This is where the grandiose successes of progress are - in the field of destruction and death. Human enmity, anger and cruelty, with the help of technological improvements, have penetrated everywhere. War and mutual destruction are everywhere: on and under water, on earth and in the clouds. The quiet, serene blue sky to which people prayed and worshiped, the “heaven” that “tells the psalmist the glory of God” (Ps. 18:2), this wondrous infinity of world spaces, contemplating which a person becomes solemn because he is in contact with eternity—the sky, and it has become a deadly battlefield. As soon as a man rose to the clouds, it turned out that he was in full power of the “prince of the power of the air” (Eph. 2:2), the spirit of “wickedness in high places” (Eph. 6:12). Thus, war forces us to think through the theory of progress to the end. A significant connection between progress and war is revealed, and war appears to be a self-exposure of progress and even its self-curse. F. Dostoevsky. Diary of a writer for 1877. Complete works. 4th ed. St. Petersburg, 1891. T.11. pp.45–46. Whoever sins in any way suffers through it (lat.). - "Editor's note". You might be interested in: