National Russia: our tasks 5906817220, 9785906817228

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Ivan Ilyin National Russia: our tasks

Preface The great Russian thinker, philosopher, publicist and public figure Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin was born in 1883 in Moscow into a noble family, many generations of whose ancestors were raised on the ideals of Orthodoxy, Patriotism, service to God, the Tsar and the Fatherland. After graduating from Moscow University, Ilyin devoted himself to philosophy, which for him was not academic doctrinaire, but a powerful weapon of the Russian strong-willed idea, a means of mobilizing national life. Along this path, he inevitably came into conflict with the Jewish Bolshevik regime, who expelled him from Russia, forcing him to live in a foreign land in Germany and Switzerland. Ilyin initially gained fame as a researcher of Hegel's philosophy. Subsequently, he develops his own teaching, in which he continues the traditions of Russian spiritual philosophy. Analyzing modern society and man, Ilyin believes that their main vice is “split”, in the opposition of mind to heart, reason to feeling. The basis of the disdain with which modern humanity treats the “heart” is, according to Ilyin, the idea of a person as a thing among things and a body among bodies, as a result of which the creative act is interpreted “materially, quantitatively, formally and technically.” It is this attitude, Ilyin believes, that makes it easier for a person to achieve success in almost all of his life’s fields, promoting a career, making profits, and having a pleasant pastime. However, “thinking without a heart,” even the most intelligent and resourceful, is ultimately relativistic, machine-like and cynical; “heartless will,” no matter how stubborn and persistent it may be in life, turns out to be essentially animal greed and evil will; “Imagination divorced from the heart,” no matter how picturesque and dazzling it may seem, remains ultimately an irresponsible game and vulgar coquetry. “A person who is mentally split and incomplete is an unhappy person. If he perceives the truth, then he cannot decide whether it is the truth or not, because he is not capable of total evidence... he loses faith that total evidence can be given to a person at all. He does not want to recognize it in others either and greets it with irony and mockery.” Ilyin sees the way to overcome fragmentation in restoring the rights of experience as intuition, as heartfelt contemplation. Reason must learn to “look and see,” in order to become reason, a person must come to a reasonable and bright faith of “sufficient reason.” Ilyin connects hopes for the future with “heartfelt contemplation”, “conscientious will” and “believing thought” - for solving problems that are insoluble both for “heartless freedom” and for “anti-heart totalitarianism”. Ilyin’s work “On Resistance to Evil by Force” received wide resonance, in which Ilyin reasonably criticized L. N. Tolstoy’s teaching on non-resistance. Considering physical coercion or warning as an evil that does not become good because it is used for good purposes, Ilyin believes that in the absence of other means, a person not only has the right, but may also have the obligation to use force to resist evil. “Violence,” according to Ilyin, is justified in calling only arbitrary, reckless coercion, emanating from evil will or directed towards evil.

Faithful to the “great monarchical traditions and historical shrines” of Russia, Ilyin was a consistent supporter of the monarchical principle all his life. We must, he wrote in a draft letter to the Italian king, affirm the “great historical role” of the monarchical idea, “its sacred, vital and creative significance.” They must “create and put forward an apology for the monarchical principle, “its religious depth, its moral advantages, its artistic beauty and its state patriotic strength.” Polemicizing with his liberal opponents, Ilyin wrote: “The monarch does not at all oppose the people, but lives in the heart and will of each of his subjects; the monarchy does not at all go against the fair equality of people; The monarchy does not at all neglect earthly benefits... etc.” Being a supporter of the strong monarchical principle in the state, Ilyin was an opponent of puppet monarchies like the English one, seeing in them a tool

Masonic circles. A secret note from Ilyin to General P.N. has been preserved. Wrangel, in which he exposed the plans of Masonic circles to create a “monarchy” in Russia modeled on the English one and enthrone “Emperor Cyril I.” In 1929, he wrote: “The recognition of foreign Freemasonry now occupies a special place; Russian lodges are working against the Bolsheviks and against the dynasty. The main task: to eliminate the revolution and establish a dictatorship, creating for it its own, Masonic, entourage. They will also go against the monarchy, especially if the monarch is surrounded by them or himself becomes a member of their organization... their main task is still the conspiratorial organization of their elite, their secretly dominant Masonic “nobility”, which is not associated with either religion or political dogma, nor the political form of government (“everything is fine if it is led by our elite”). The Masons are ready to support Kirill Vladimirovich with money. “The manifested manifesto led. book Kirill,” continues I.A. Ilyin,” was not a complete surprise to me. Back in May, I learned that a group of people from French-Swiss Freemasonry, having established who they were leading. book Kirill lists a large timber latifundia in Poland, which has not yet been confiscated by the Poles, but is subject to confiscation in September 1924, and is working very energetically and hastily to acquire it from Vel. book (he didn’t know about her!).” About 150 million francs in gold should be deducted from this sale for the needs of the “Emperor”. The information was absolutely accurate... The Freemasons' calculations were twofold: either to damage Russian monarchism with the sure failure of a new initiative, or to damage Russian monarchism by enthroning a weak, stupid and, most importantly, person co-opted by the Freemasons and surrounded by them. I must say on my own that a less popular contender for the Throne in Russia could not have been invented... Unfortunately, there was no one around. The princes are people either who are under the actual influence of Freemasonry (I know the details from insufficiently conspiratorial Masons), or who reason like this: “The question of the throne is a question of bread and money.” Ilyin made an outstanding contribution to the development of Russian national ideology. In his report “The Creative Idea of Our Future,” made in Belgrade and Prague in 1934, he formulates the emerging problems of Russian national life. We must tell the rest of the world, he declared, that Russia is alive, that burying it is short-sighted and stupid; that we are not human dust and dirt, but living people with a Russian heart, with a Russian mind and Russian talent; that it is in vain to think that we have all “quarreled” with each other and are in irreconcilable differences of opinion; as if we are narrow-minded reactionaries who are only thinking of settling their personal scores with a commoner or a “foreigner.” A general national convulsion is coming in Russia, which, according to Ilyin, will be spontaneously vindictive and cruel. “The country will boil with a thirst for revenge, blood and a new redistribution of property, for truly not a single peasant in Russia has forgotten anything. Dozens of adventurers will stand in this opinion, three-quarters of whom will “work” for someone else’s foreign money, and not one of them will have a creative and substantive national idea.” To overcome this national cramp, Russian nationally minded people must be ready to generate this idea in relation to new conditions. It must be state-historical, statenational, state-patriotic. This idea must come from the very fabric of the Russian soul and Russian history, from their spiritual harmony. This idea should speak about the main thing in Russian destinies - both past and future, it should shine on entire generations of Russian people, comprehending their lives and infusing them with cheerfulness.

The main thing is the education of a national spiritual character in the Russian people. Due to his lack of intelligence and masses, Russia collapsed from the revolution. “Russia will rise to its full height and become stronger only through the education of such character among the people. This education can only be national self-education, which can be carried out by the Russian people themselves, that is, by their faithful and

strong national intelligentsia. This requires a selection of people, a spiritual, qualitative and strong-willed selection.” This process, according to Ilyin, has already begun “invisibly and formlessly” in Russia and more or less openly abroad: “the selection of unseduced souls who opposed the world turmoil and infection - the Motherland, honor and conscience; and unyielding will; the idea of spiritual character and sacrificial action." Starting from a minority led by a single leader, a national dictator, the Russian people in the next 50 years must overcome and overcome all obstacles with a collective, conciliar effort of spirit. Published in this volume of the “Russian Resistance” series, the book “National Russia. Our tasks" was conceived by Ilyin as a series of closed articles from 1948 to 1954. for members of the Russian All-Military Union (ROVS). They were sent out, multiplied on a hectograph with the stamp “Weekly leaflet only for like-minded people” and were considered a kind of ideological instructions for fighters for Great Russia, against all its haters. These articles were a powerful weapon in the struggle for Russia, and when disseminating the thoughts and ideas contained in them, it was necessary to observe secrecy, about which a special article was written. The first articles were very short and came out as letters, and among the “likeminded people” to whom they were sent, those who had a typewriter were selected. Later, the opportunity expanded and articles began to be published in the form of free newsletters. Only two years after the death of the author, all 215 articles were published in printing as a separate book. Published in 1956, the book became a program of action for Russian patriots, outlining the main tasks that the Russian people must complete in order to revive Great Russia. In this book by Ilyin, the idea of Russian spiritual patriotism, which “is love,” crystallizes. Patriotism, according to Ilyin, is the highest solidarity, unity in the spirit of love for the Motherland (spiritual reality), is a creative act of spiritual self-determination, faithful in the face of God and therefore gracious. Only with such an understanding can patriotism and nationalism be revealed in their sacred and indisputable meaning.

Patriotism lives only in that soul for which there is something sacred on earth, and above all the shrines of its people. It is the national spiritual life that is what and for the sake of which one can and should love one’s people, fight for them and die for them. It contains the essence of the Motherland, the essence that is worth loving more than yourself. The Motherland, Ilyin notes, is a Gift of the Holy Spirit. National spiritual culture is like a hymn, publicly sung to God in history, or a spiritual symphony, historically sounded to the Creator of all things. And for the sake of creating this spiritual music, peoples live from century to century, in work and suffering, in falls and rises. By denationalizing, a person loses access to the deepest wells of the spirit and to the sacred fires of life, for these wells and these fires are always national. According to Ilyin, nationalism is love for the historical and spiritual appearance of one’s people, faith in its God-gracious power, the will for its creative flourishing and contemplation of one’s people in the face of God. Finally, nationalism is a system of actions arising from this love, from this faith, from this will and from this contemplation. True nationalism is not a dark, anti-Christian passion, but a spiritual fire that elevates a person to sacrificial service, and a people to spiritual flourishing. Christian nationalism is a delight in contemplating one's people in God's plan, in the gifts of His Grace, in the ways of His Kingdom.

The correct paths leading to the national revival of Russia, according to Ilyin, are the following: faith in God; historical continuity; monarchical legal consciousness; spiritual nationalism; Russian statehood; private property; new control layer; new Russian spiritual character and spiritual culture. In the article “The Main Task of the Coming Russia,” Ilyin wrote that the main task of Russian national salvation and construction “will consist in highlighting the best people to the top - people devoted to Russia, nationally feeling, state-minded, strong-willed, ideologically creative, who will not take revenge on the people.” and not disintegration, but the spirit of liberation, justice, supra-class unity.” This new leading layer, the new Russian national intelligentsia, will first of all have to comprehend the “reason of history” inherent in the Russian historical past, which Ilyin defines as follows: – the leading stratum is neither a closed “caste” nor a hereditary or hereditary “class”. In its composition, it is something living, moving, always replenished with new, capable people and always ready to free itself from the incapable - the path to honesty, intelligence and talent! - Belonging to the leading stratum - from a minister to a justice of the peace, from a bishop to an officer, from a professor to a people's teacher - is not a privilege, but a difficult and responsible duty. Rank in life is necessary and inevitable. It is justified by quality and covered by work and responsibility. The rank must be matched by strictness towards oneself in the one who is higher, and unenviable respect in the one who is lower. Only with this true sense of rank will we recreate Russia. End of envy! Make way for quality and responsibility!

– The new Russian elite must “maintain and strengthen the authority of state power... The new Russian selection is designed to root the authority of the state on completely different, noble and legal grounds: on the basis of religious contemplation and respect for spiritual freedom; based on fraternal legal consciousness and patriotic feelings; based on the dignity of power, its strength and general trust in it.” – These requirements and conditions presuppose one more requirement: the new Russian selection must be animated by a creative national idea. The unprincipled intelligentsia “is not needed by the people and the state and cannot lead it.” But the previous ideas of the Russian intelligentsia were erroneous and burned in the fire of revolution and war. Neither the idea of “populism”, nor the idea of “democracy”, nor the idea “socialism”, neither the idea of “imperialism”, nor the idea of “totalitarianism” - none of

they will not inspire the new Russian intelligentsia and will not lead Russia to goodness. The necessary new idea is “religious in origin and national in spiritual meaning. Only such an idea can revive and recreate the future Russia.” Ilyin defines this idea as the idea of Russian Orthodox Christianity. Adopted by Russia a thousand years ago, it obliges the Russian people to realize their national earthly culture, imbued with the Christian spirit of love and contemplation, freedom of objectivity. The Russian people, Ilyin believed, need repentance and purification, and those who have already purified themselves “must help those who have not purified themselves to restore in themselves a living Christian conscience, faith in the power of good, a true sense of evil, a sense of honor and the ability to be faithful. Without this, Russia cannot be revived and its greatness cannot be recreated. Without this, the Russian state, after the inevitable fall of Bolshevism, will crumble into abyss and mud.” Ilyin, of course, is aware of how difficult this task is, the whole process of repentance and cleansing, but it is necessary to go through this process. All the difficulties of this penitential cleansing must be thought through and overcome: for religious people - in the order of the church (according to confessions), for non-religious people - in the order of secular literature, sufficiently sincere and deep, and then

as a personal conscientious act. Penitential cleansing is only the first stage on the path to solving a longer and more difficult task: raising a new Russian person. Russian people, Ilyin wrote, must renew their spirit, affirm their Russianness on new, national-historically ancient, but renewed foundations in content and creative charge. This means that Russian people must:

– learn to believe in a new way, to contemplate with the heart - whole, sincerely, creatively; – learn not to separate faith and knowledge, to bring faith not into the composition or method, but into the process of scientific research and strengthen our faith with the power of scientific knowledge;

– to learn a new morality, religiously strong, Christianly conscientious, not afraid of the mind and not ashamed of one’s imaginary “stupidity”, not seeking “glory”, but strong in true civic courage and strong-willed organization;

- to cultivate in oneself a new sense of justice - religiously and spiritually rooted, loyal, fair, fraternal, faithful to honor and the Motherland; – to cultivate in oneself a new sense of ownership – charged with the will to quality, ennobled by Christian feeling, meaningful by artistic instinct, social in spirit and patriotic in love; - to cultivate in oneself a new economic act - in which the will to work and abundance will be combined with kindness and generosity, in which envy will be transformed into competition, and personal enrichment will become a source of national wealth.

In preparing this volume, the first edition of the book “Professor I.A.” was used. Ilyin. “Our tasks. Articles 1948–1954". T.1– 2. Publication of the Russian General Military Union, Paris, 1956." When distributing articles, the subject index compiled by the author himself was used. The preparation of the book text for publication was carried out by the Institute of Russian Civilization.

O. Platonov

About the suffering and humiliation of the Russian people Every Russian who loves his people and is proud of his culture has probably asked himself more than once: “Why is Russia destined to such a terrible fate? Why exactly does the Russian people have to endure such torment and humiliation? Why did Russia have to become a gigantic torture chamber, a worldwide disgrace and a breeding ground for infection?!”… This question is spiritually natural and patriotically understandable; the bad Russian is the one to whom it never occurred to him. But usually it is formulated unclearly and confusingly, and this makes it extremely difficult to answer. There are at least four different questions hidden within it: 1. Why? 2. Who is to blame? 3. Why and 4. Why? "Why"? – there is a national-historical question; this is a question about the causes of the Russian revolution, that is, about the general and particular factors that led to this national tragedy. We are all obliged to constantly think about the resolution of this question, contemplating and researching, but not at all making it easier for ourselves to answer with a superficial, cheap and often slanderous reference to a “reactionary government”, a reference dictated not by historical understanding, but by political hatred. "Who is guilty?" - there is a philistine-political question, based on the naive and short-sighted idea that it’s all about individual people, their delusions, mistakes, stupidities and crimes; that these people need to be “found” and, according to the recipe of Shchedrin’s “Fools”, “thrown off the peal of the bell tower.” – This question is the most personally passionate and party-biased and therefore the most stupid and most dangerous; however, also the least fruitful. The third question is “why was this sent to us?” – there is a religious-philosophical question that should be considered only among people of a homogeneous worldview and the same religious faith; this is the most difficult question, for it encroaches on the understanding of the ways of Divine Providence; and therefore it is doomed to be resolved as if by a “mirror in fortunetelling”... And finally, the fourth question is “why?” – there is an almost volitional question; This is the most important and fruitful question in life, the resolution of which we should all tirelessly work spiritually and politically... One should not think that all these issues can be quickly and finally resolved. They will be theoretically explored and practically destroyed for generations to come. But something basic, necessary and useful for their resolution must be said immediately. 1. First of all, on the issue of the causes of the Russian revolutionary tragedy. It is complex and deep: everything that delayed the political and cultural development of Russia - climate, soil with its “permafrost”, open unprotected plain, abundance of spaces, continental slowness of life, isolation from the seas, abundance of small and alien tribes, peculiarity of language and way of life , the position of the country between East and West, the eternal pressure of contemptuously envious Europe and the invasion of predatory pogrom Asia, the endless Tatar yoke, endless defensive wars, all sorts of “theft”, “crookedness” and “untruth” of the Russian people of all classes themselves (about it for a long time Khomyakov already cried out, accusatory and repentantly!), all the government mistakes, omissions, all the political myopia of the former Russian government and much more... all this created a certain educational-political and economic-technical backwardness of Russia and the Russian people; all this has made it difficult for us in our national struggle against the external enemies of the twentieth century and against the Third International; all this should be subsequently revealed as part of the historical causes of the collapse of Imperial Russia.

But with all this, we must admit the following.

The disease now plaguing Russia, namely: militant atheism; anti-Christianity; materialism that denies conscience and honor; terrorist socialism; totalitarian communism; universal lust for power, allowing itself all means - this whole single and terrible illness is not of Russian, but of Western European origin. During the nineteenth century, the Russian intelligentsia was seduced by it as “the last word of advanced culture,” dreamily, sentimentally and weakly becoming infected with it. In the twentieth century, a multinational, international, half-Russian, half-intelligentsia, infected to the marrow of its bones, stupid, strong-willed and cruel, went on an assault at the terrible hour of the world war, seized power in Russia and turned our country into an experienced breeding ground for this spiritual plague. It was this plague that brought us all our national torment and humiliation, so that later (now!) it was also awarded to the neighboring peoples of the West and East, who considered themselves “unthreatened”...

But why didn’t we manage to defend ourselves against this dominance? – Because the Russian national intelligentsia did not understand its people, did not understand their monarchical sense of justice, did not know how to lead them correctly and turned away from their Sovereigns. And one more thing: due to ignorance, childish gullibility and property greed of the masses. And one more thing: due to the lack of a strong-willed element in Russian Orthodoxy of the last two centuries. And, most importantly, due to the immaturity of the Russian national character and Russian national legal consciousness. The West endured a destructive idea and program, but precisely because it itself could oppose it with a strong-willed, social and organized rebuff; and in the Russian folk body there were no necessary “antitoxins” for the “bacteria” introduced into it. The semi-intelligentsia of the East believed in the Western devil as in God, and enslaved the multi-tribal Russian masses - first by the temptation of unbridledness, and then by the fear of hunger, humiliation, torture and death...

2. To the question about “the guilty” there can be only one answer: everyone is guilty - in their own way and in their place. In their own way they are rulers, and in their own way they are subjects; seducers in their own way, and seduced in their own way; people are strong-willed in their own way, and weak-willed in their own way. However, those who are seduced and conquered, those who suffer and are humiliated, atone for their guilt through flour, are cleansed and transformed; and now the rulers, seducers and strong-willed tormentors are doing their devilish work to the end. Some people had wine in the past and now they would act differently; while others have wines - both in the past, and in the present, and for centuries. And one day the Russian people, having completed their way of the cross and their purification, at an auspicious hour in history will answer them according to their dignity and merit. 3. The third question - “why was this sent to us” - tries to anticipate its own answer, for it addresses not the God of love, mercy, and forgiveness, but the “god” of fierce anger, “talion” punishment (an eye for an eye) and unrelenting cruelty. However, such a “god” would have to measure out to each sinner a “coupon”, that is, as much punishment as sin, in a fair measure. We see many innocents in torment and death - street children, confessors, people of bright faith and bright impulse, selfless heroes; We also see average people in extreme torment that they do not deserve. And we see villains and seducers in animal prosperity and impunity. That is why people who insist on the question “why?” inevitably come to the most fantastic inventions: not long ago one of these “pathfinders” argued that in the Russian people of our days live “transmigrated souls” of an evil people and another sinful age, now undergoing their retribution in a new guise... Fantasy - truly unchristian!

Therefore, the third question must be changed radically, asking not “why was this sent to us?”, but “for what purpose, for what test, for what teaching and confirmation, hardening and transformation were these torments and humiliations sent to us?”, so that accept with the will and heart what is sent and embark on the pre-indicated path of renewal. One should not think that suffering is always sent to a person as punishment for his sins. God is not a God of vengeance and merciless retribution; He is the God of redemption, purification, spiritualization and transformation. And to a Christian

one must think not only about a well-deserved reward, but, first of all and most of all, about improvement through heartfelt contemplation. 4. And here is the third question leading us to the fourth: “WHY?” The suffering and humiliation of the Russian people must make them wiser and purify them, open them to new earthly horizons and new heavenly heights, awaken their heart and strengthen their will. Our entire mental structure must be renewed: in this tragedy, a new Russian national character must be established and strengthened, rooted in Christ, heartfelt and strong-willed, worthy and direct, without cunning and deceitful cunning and with a living sense of spiritual rank. The slave in the Russian soul must be overcome; a new civil-free legal consciousness must begin in it. Russian people must stop worshiping foreign idols and devils. He must “return to himself,” to the living and precious roots of his national culture. He must understand, accept and pronounce his Russian Idea, in order to then implement it in everything - in religion and science, in law and in state form, in art and in work, in court, in medicine and in education. The suffering and humiliation of the revolution were given to us so that we could see the abyss into which the pre-revolutionary seducers were dragging us, and so that we would delight in God; so that we can be cleansed, reborn and weave the fabric of a new Russia. And therefore it is absurd for us to be proud of the fact that we “haven’t reviewed anything” and “learned nothing”; and it is even more absurd for us to again “go begging under the windows” of Western culture, Western religiosity, philosophy and politics, and beg for ourselves “for poverty” the stale crusts of European rational inventions. Russia expects from us its vision, its faith, its thoughts and its new, its state form. And we must prepare for the day when the dominance of the devil in Russia will collapse.

The Russian Revolution as a catastrophe, crime and madness After everything that happened in Russia between 1917 and 1949, one would have to be completely blind or untruthful to deny the catastrophic nature of what was happening. The revolution is a catastrophe in the history of Russia, the greatest state-political and national-spiritual collapse, in comparison with which the Troubles pale and fades.

Troubles were fermentations; the people wandered and came to their senses. The revolution took advantage of the new unrest and fermentation and did not allow the people to come to their senses or restore their organic development. The Troubles were a chaotic riot and disorganized robbery. The revolution rode the rebellion and organized the general robbery by the state. No one planned the Troubles: it was an excess of despair, a nationwide fall from grace and social collapse. The revolution was prepared systematically, over decades; among certain sections of the intelligentsia it became a tradition passed on from generation to generation; from 1917, it began to be systematically carried out according to Shigalev’s behests and strengthened in a monstrous way: it broke the moral and state “backbone” of the Russian people and the people and deliberately mended the fractures in an incorrect and ugly way.

The Troubles lasted 9 years (1604 - the appearance of the Pretender, 1613 - the election of Mikhail Fedorovich to the kingdom). The revolution has been dragging on for 32 years and there is no end in sight. New generations are growing up living in Russia, but not knowing its history, its sacred traditions, or its international position. Troubles broke out in relatively primitive Russia, shaken and impoverished by the terror of Ivan the Terrible. The revolution was prepared and carried out in Russia, which was culturally blossoming, economically rich and progressively reformed. Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century had two dangers: war and revolution. The war was deliberately forced upon it by Germany to stop its growth; the revolution in it was deliberately fanned by revolutionary parties in order to seize power in it.

After the Time of Troubles, Russia was devastated (only one twenty-third of the former area was sown); but she retained her national character. The revolution ruins and destroys it systematically, and simulates its imaginary “richness”; she distorted her national face, abolished even her name and turned her into a world plague that threatens all nations.

Therefore, the Russian revolution is the greatest catastrophe - not only in the history of Russia, but also in the history of all humanity, which is now beginning to understand too late that Soviet communism is of European origin and that it is now breaking back - to its “homeland”. For it has been preparing in Europe for a hundred years as a social reaction to world capitalism; it was conceived by European socialists and atheists and carried out by an international community of people who consciously politicized crime and criminalized government. An immoral power-lover has descended into the world, who made science and statehood an instrument of general robbery and enslavement - a cruel and godless, the greatest liar and vulgarity of world history, who learned from the Europeans to swear by the name of the “proletariat” and justify the most vile means with his goals.

So the Russian revolution was prepared over decades (since the seventies) - by people of strong will, but meager political understanding and doctrinaire myopia. These people, according to Dostoevsky, did not understand anything about Russia, did not see its uniqueness and its national tasks. They decided to politically rape her according to the schemes of Western Europe, with “ideas” that they, like hungry children, gorged on and choked on. They didn't know their

fatherland; and this ignorance has become a disastrous tradition for Russian Westerners since the time of the main denigrator of Russia, the Catholic Chaadaev... Russian revolutionaries did not understand the greatest state difficulties created by Russian space, Russian climate and the insignificant density of the Russian population. They did not understand at all that the Russian people are the bearers of order, Christianity, culture and statehood among their multinational and multilingual fellow citizens. They did not want to take into account the severity of the Russian historical burden (three years of life - two years of defensive war!) and only wanted to use the fatigue, bitterness and protest that had accumulated among the people for their own purposes. They did not understand that statehood is built and maintained by a living national sense of justice, and that the Russian national sense of justice rests on two foundations - on Orthodoxy and on faith in the Tsar. As “enlightened” unbelievers, they did not see at all the precious originality of Russian Orthodoxy, did not understand its global meaning and its creative significance for the entire Russian culture. They did not see the dangers inherent in Russia - in the imbalance of the Russian temperament, in the immaturity of the Russian good-natured, childishly enthusiastic and shaky character and in his centuries-old habit of actively and responsibly building his state. They did not understand that Western democracies rest on a large and organized “middle class” and on a property-owning peasantry, and that in Russia there is still neither one nor the other.

They saw only the comparative poverty and moral flexibility of the Russian people, and for decades they demagogued them. And it never occurred to any of them that the people, not accustomed to political freedom, would not understand and appreciate it; that he would abuse it for desertion, robbery and massacre, and then sell it to the tyrants for personal and class profit... They sawed down the pillars and imagined themselves as “Atlantean” titans, capable of taking the state building on their shoulders. They laid dynamite and imagined that they would be able to demolish one roof, which would immediately grow again from the “uncollapsed” building. They sowed the wind in all four directions and, reaping the storm, were surprised that their sailing boat was capsized by a wave... On this political myopia, on this doctrinaire, on this irresponsibility, the entire program and tactics of the Russian revolutionary parties were built. They naively and stupidly believed in political arbitrariness and did not see the irrational organic nature of Russian history and life. And they realized their mistakes too late. The noblest of them admitted their misunderstandings and mistakes already in emigration (Plekhanov, Tsereteli, Fundaminsky), while others still admire their “February” madness... It was madness, and a destructive madness at that. It is enough to establish what it did to Russian religiosity of all confessions, especially to the Orthodox Church; what she did to Russian education, especially to higher and secondary education, to Russian art, to Russian law and legal consciousness, to the Russian family, to a sense of honor and self-worth, to Russian kindness and patriotism... It was madness on the part of the moderate revolutionary and semirevolutionary parties themselves, which were soon destroyed with all their plans, programs, personnel, newspapers and traditions. But it also revealed the insane carelessness and short-sightedness of the right-wing parties, which had neither creative ideas, nor social programs, nor loyal personnel in the country. They were only enough to hinder Stolypin's great reform. And the “extreme right” only knew how to deceitfully assure the Tsar of the “multi-millions” of their “union” and of its “loyal allegiance”, so that in a terrible hour of danger they would betray the Tsar and his family for arrest, abduction and murder... The revolution was also madness for the Russian peasantry. Russian peasantry

stood before the fulfillment of all her desires; it needed only loyalty and patience. Equality and full rights were given to him by the State Duma (a bill drafted by V. A. Maklakov). The land passed into his hands so quickly that, according to economists, by 1932 there would not have been a single landowner left in Russia: everything would have been sold and bought according to the law and notarized. The land was given to him as private property (reform of P. A. Stolypin, 1906). By the beginning of this reform, Russia had 12 million peasant households. Of these, 4 million households already owned land as private property, and 8 million were in communal ownership. Over 10 years (1906–1916), 6 million out of eight households signed up to be allocated from the community. The reform was in full swing due to the excellently organized resettlement; it would have been completed by 1924. But the revolutionary parties called for a “black redistribution,” the implementation of which was sheer madness: for only the “body of the earth” passed to the invaders, and the “right to the land” became controversial, shaky, fragile and precarious (i.e., urgent on demand); it was provided only fraudulently - by future expropriators, communists. So, historical evolution gave the peasants land, the right to it, a peaceful order, a culture of economy and spirit, freedom and wealth; the revolution deprived them of everything. The preparatory pressure of the Bolsheviks began immediately after the “black redistribution” and lasted 12 years. Following this (1929–1935), the communists began collectivization and, having destroyed at least 600,000 households and families with executions and exile, robbed and proletarianized the peasants and introduced state serfdom.

The revolution was also madness for the Russian industrial proletariat. War 1914–1917 put him directly before the legalization of free workers' unions. The revolution gave him the death of his best technically trained personnel; long years of unemployment, hunger and cold; enslavement in totalitarian trade unions; a decline in living standards for entire generations; falling real wages; state “sweatshop system” (Stakhanovism); a system of mutual political investigation, denunciation and concentration camps. The revolution was also a manifestation of madness on the part of the Russian industrial and commercial class, which, in the person of Savva Morozov, Ivan Sytin and others, financed the revolutionaries until they were exterminated by them. And when death was already at the threshold, this same class did not want or was unable to find means to fight the Bolsheviks in a timely manner. During the civil war in the south, when cities passed from hand to hand, the industrialists, after the whites left, counted their “losses” and “protories” and grumbled, and after the reds left, they counted their “remains” and thanked fate for salvation.

But the greatest madness of the revolution was for the Russian intelligentsia, who believed in the suitability and even salvation of Western European state forms for Russia and failed to put forward and implement the necessary new Russian form of participation of the people in the exercise of state power. Russian intellectuals thought “abstractly,” formally, egalitarianly; idealized what was alien without understanding it; “dreamed” instead of studying the life and character of their people, observing soberly and holding on to the real; indulged in political and economic “maximalism,” demanding immediately the best and greatest in everything; and everyone wanted to be politically equal to Europe or outright superior to it. And now people of this sentimental-dreamy generation are leaving earthly life without changing their minds and blaming this self-righteous stubbornness on the merit of “perseverance” and “loyalty”... They will never understand that it is stupid to swallow all the medicines that are useful to others; that palm trees and baobabs do not grow freely everywhere; that ostriches cannot live in the tundra; that a republic and a federation require a special sense of justice, which many peoples do not have and which does not exist in Russia. They will not understand that peoples who for centuries passed through the culture of Roman law, the medieval city, guild and through the school of Roman Catholic terror (Inquisition! religious wars!

Crusades against heretics! a formidable confessional!) is not a decree or a model for us... For, by the will of fate, we went through a completely different school - a harsh climate, the Tatar yoke, eternal defensive wars and the class-serf system. What is “great for a German” can be ruinous for a Russian... Thus, the madness of the Russian revolution arose not simply from military failures and fermentation, but from the lack of political experience, a sense of reality, a sense of proportion, patriotism and a sense of honor among the masses and among the revolutionaries. People have lost their organic national tradition and socio-political sobriety. In the most difficult hour of the historical war, when the monarch and the heir indicated by him extinguished the oath of allegiance among the people with a double renunciation, all this caused a collapse of legal consciousness, an insane crush and crush because of ephemeral full equality of rights and the equally imaginary enrichment of seizure. All this ferment did not arise from “poverty,” “oppression,” or “devastation.” The ferment came from a reluctance to defend Russia and hold the front and from a thirst for revolutionary plunder. According to the insightful words of Dostoevsky, the Russian common people understood the revolutionary calls (Order No. 1) and exemption from the oath as a “right to dishonor” given to them, and hastened to dishonorably collapse the front, be satisfied with the “obscene peace” and begin the dishonest redistribution of property. This dishonor brought internationalist demagogues to the top. Russian chronicles write about the Troubles that it was sent to us for our sins - “for the sake of our insane silence,” that is, for the lack of civic courage, for cowardly “burrowing” and non-resistance to villains. There is no doubt that these weaknesses and shortcomings played a role in the current revolution. But there were other sins, the most important: the loss of Russian organic and sacred traditions, unsteadiness of moral character, immeasurable political daring and lack of creative ideas. In certain emigration circles, prone to political doctrinaire and socialism, they again started talking about the “traditions,” “testaments” and “ideals” of the February Revolution (1917), about their unique salvation and the need to return to them. Since this implies the personal dreams of the February figures, we are not competent in this matter. This is a matter for future history and, moreover, its biographical part: the Februaryists have already published a number of memoirs, and their future biographers will probably be able to establish what their dreams, ideals and intentions were. But for Russia, the February Revolution is in no way reduced to these dreams and ideals: it represents a series of acts and events fatal to Russian history, which had a very definite political bias and inevitably led to very definite consequences. And when they begin to praise this unfortunate, shameful and painful era, and recommend this political deviation as the only salvation, then we feel obliged to openly and unambiguously formulate the essence of these acts and these “testaments.” Let us leave the figures of February to narrate their ideals and sigh about their dreams; Let us leave them to justify themselves before God, before their conscience and before the Russian people. We are not interested in their subjective political experiences, but in the objective state profile of February.

In the February revolution, it is necessary to distinguish the spontaneous mass process of military disappointment, confusion, indignation, rebellion, unbridledness, spiritual decay: it was not “ideals” or “testaments” that were at work here, but a reluctance to go to the front, mass lusts and passions. This was not politics, but a long and growing excess, encouraged and fueled by the left. Political tactics from above must be distinguished from this anti-state and anarchic “excess from below”. We will now talk not about what the “street”, “crowd” or “mass” did, but about those directives that were implemented from above, about the measures of the Provisional Government, which assumed “full power”. Of course, the leaders of February can tell us that the revolutionary street and SovietBolshevik situation was such that they could not do anything other than what they did; that they had no choice; what is at their disposal

there was neither strength nor means; that they simply “collapsed” along with the state apparatus, the army and the national economy and only tried to collapse more decently. But, if so, then what are the “traditions” and “testaments” of the February Provisional Government? Is it not to collapse in a liberal-humane-democratic pose and “figure politically” on a melting ice floe, carried away by the “hollow water of the revolution”? Such a tradition would not be worth talking about; There is nothing to call for such “covenants”. The situation, of course, is different: the Februaryists still support their directives and measures, consider them correct and call on new generations of Russian people to accept them and imitate them. After all, in fact, the government, which spoke and decided matters on behalf of the Russian state from March to November 1917, acted, commanded, permitted, issued decrees and laws, appointed and dismissed, laying out very specific paths and creating very specific traditions (“testaments”). . What were these paths and what traditions that deserved admiration and imitation? 1. The February tactics began in November 1916 with Miliukov’s speech in the State Duma, directed against the Tsar and seeking to undermine any confidence among the people in him and his family. The words “stupidity or treason” were perceived by the entire country as a justified accusation against the Emperor of national treason and as an “assault” signal for “revolution in the name of victory.” In fact, Miliukov did not have any data for such an accusation and he himself knew that he did not have any data. The investigative commission of N.K. Muravyov, consisting entirely of left-wing figures, subsequently established the complete groundlessness of this accusation. And the Emperor and his family subsequently sealed their loyalty to Russia with a terrible death. This means that treason was not on the side of the Monarch, but on the side of his insinuators and defamators (for Miliukov’s speech was not thought out and decided by him alone). This is “the directive of February: to raise a revolution during the war, regardless of the war, hiding behind its goals, and to begin this revolution with treasonous slander against the legitimate Sovereign. 2. The next act of the revolution was “Order No. I”. We are indifferent to the detailed history of its compilation and publication: the names of its compilers are also not important. It is significant that, according to its exact text and meaning, he did the following: 1. He introduced selected “Committees from the lower ranks” into the army and called representatives from “military units” to the Council of Deputies (points 1 and 2); 2. Politically - he subordinated the army to selected committees and the Council of Deputies, introducing dual power and giving the right to both the committees and the Council of Deputies to disavow the orders of the Military Command (point 3); 3. He contrasted the orders of the Military Commission of the State Duma with the orders of the Council of Deputies and thus introduced triarchy, that is, complete and final chaos (point 4); 4. He removed all the weapons of the army from the control of its command staff, placing them at the disposal of company and battalion committees; by this he defiantly degraded the entire Russian officer corps in the eyes of the soldiers and the entire people (point 5); 5. Out of formation and service - he proclaimed the “political rights of a soldier”, abolished standing at the front and saluting (point 6); 6. Finally, he abolished the subordinate titles of command personnel and turned soldiers' company committees into a trial for officers (point 7). With all this, he involved the army in revolutionary politics and revolutionary disintegration; and made her completely incapable of combat. We quote this order from the text published in issue 3 of Izvestia of the Petrograd Soviet. Its text, which we found in the French edition of Kerensky’s book, does not correspond to the original and original Russian text: it is translated inaccurately and softly, point four is completely missed, as well as the point about “failure to stand up at the front” and “failure to give honor.” It is in vain to point out that Order Number One concerned only the “garrison of the Petrograd District”: in fact, it was distributed throughout the Russian army, read and applied everywhere.

It is also important that this order was not canceled either by the Minister of War, or by the Provisional Government, or by the Revolutionary Duma. Moreover, the proclamation of the “political rights of the soldier” was confirmed a few days later by the entire composition of the Provisional Government, as well as by order No. 114 of the Minister of War Guchkov, as Kerensky also reports in his memoirs (p. 168 et seq., p. 395 of the French edition ). This is the second directive of February: to politicize the fighting army; to undermine the military chain of command within it; and, therefore, to bring revolution into it, to disintegrate it and deprive it of its fighting ability: all this out of fear that a loyal army might crush the revolution. 3. The next act of the revolution was an amnesty for all criminals, both political and criminal. It was given on March 19, 1917. The Head of the All-Russian Criminal Investigation Department, A.F. Koshko, mentions her more than once in his memoirs (vol. I, p. 214. P, 22. III, 151). For reasons prompted by false sentimentality and a complete lack of state sense, several hundred thousand experienced thieves and certified murderers were thrown into the chaos of the revolution, who then united at the congress of “criminal figures” and, of course, began, as one should have foreseen, a “new life": one part joined the Communist Party and even directly into the Cheka, the other "got involved" in the crowd and resumed its previous activities, but no longer threatened by the collapsed criminal investigation.

This is the third directive of February: from the “humane” faith in “man” and from the doctrinaire faith in “freedom” - to unbridle all the evil and criminal forces present in the country, from the Bolsheviks to professional recidivists. 4. The next act of the Provisional Government was a break with politically experienced and socially grounded forces, the liquidation of all available state apparatus, as allegedly counter-revolutionary, and a general disavowal of the previous administration. As a result of this, all forces capable of maintaining order disintegrated, and all possibilities were open to the forces of disorder. The place of a professional administrator has been replaced by an amateur; experienced law enforcement officials were replaced by inexperienced but nosy talkers; the most naive “public figures” took up a task about which they understood nothing; and even mediocre assistant professors and left-wing radical lawyers were introduced into the glorious and wise Government Senate. This is the fourth directive of February: to destroy the apparatus of state order that held the country together; nominate leftists in all places, regardless of their inexperience, inability, mediocrity, insincerity and adventurism; i.e., reduce the quality of government personnel in the country. The systematic destruction of the state apparatus carried out by the Provisional Government is explained primarily by the Februaryists' aversion to state coercion. 5. In the Russian liberal of the 19th century, a sentimental anarchist dozed: the liberal began with a dream of freedom, perceived from all Christianity only the demand for “humanity,” denied “violence,” and then “all coercion,” and ended in anarchy. So for Kerensky (Memoirs, Chapter I) - state coercion comes down to “terror” and “guillotine”; the death penalty is for him “a classic weapon of autocracy”; in the Russian pre-revolutionary administration he sees “the lackeys and executioners of Nicholas II.” All this, of course, is rejected with indignation. On the contrary, the Provisional Government “created a new state” based on “love for one’s neighbor”, from “humanity, tolerance, forgiveness and meekness.” Outwardly it looked like “weakness,” but in fact it required, you see, “great strength of character.” This is where this disintegration of power comes from; The Februaryists did not understand anything and now do not understand anything about the state, its essence and action. State secret

imposing; the power of commanding and perceiving suggestion; the secret of people's respect and trust in government; ability to discipline and willingness to be disciplined; the art of calling to sacrificial service; love for the Sovereign and the power of the oath; the secret of leadership and the inspiration of patriotism - all this they overlooked, dismantled and overthrew, assuring themselves and others that Imperial Russia was held together by “lackeys and executioners”, that the whole strength of the state lies in eloquent “persuasion” and that they master this art like no one else. It is clear why the Provisional Government did not organize any military units loyal to it; why at a critical moment it had only volunteer cadets and women’s battalions for itself; and, finally, why it could not defend the Constituent Assembly. For sentimental political amateurs, everything fell apart and went to dust.

Here is the fifth tradition of February: a state without coercion, without a religious basis, without monarchical reverence and loyalty, built on the forces of abstract argument and beautiful words, on the pathos of irreligious morality, on sentimental faith in “everything high and beautiful” and in the “reason” of the revolutionary people. In a word: “democracy” in a state of anarchic “tenderness”. 6. However, the destruction of the state apparatus carried out by the Provisional Government had another very sober basis: fear of the right and the “counter-revolution” they were allegedly preparing. The fear of the right was psychologically understandable: the left had been fighting the Imperial Government for too long; they were too impressed with his administrative apparatus; Too severe retribution awaited each of them in the event of the failure of the revolution and the triumph of conservative statehood. Added to this are inertia and myopia. But politically this fear was anti-state and unfounded. Anti-state - because the salvation of Russia required the unification of all political and state-experienced forces, which were located precisely on the right, and not in the circles of the revolutionary underground, which opened the “All-Russian Constituent Assembly” with the singing of the vile “international”. This fear was unfounded because the “sheep”, having lost their “shepherd,” scattered, and the threatening cries of Markov II about the “multi-million-strong Union of the Russian People” were deceptive: he was simply looking for subsidies and currying favor with the Sovereign. Throughout 1917, the danger was from the “left,” not the right. This was understood by all sober and patriotically minded people, except for the Provisional Government, which fought against the “right”, including the democratically minded Kornilov and Denikin, and fraternized with the left - in the Soviets and in the commissariats of the disintegrating army. This is the sixth directive of February: to be wary of an imaginary counter-revolution; disrupt her endeavors by all means; believe in the revolutionary democracy of the Bolsheviks and fraternize with them. 7. It would, however, be unfair to attribute only sentimental conciliationism to the Februaryists. On the internal social front they waged a disguised but successful offensive. The author of this article was in the summer of 1917 a member of the Volost Executive Committee and chairman of the Volost Committee for elections to the Constituent Assembly. He had the opportunity to observe the agitation of the Socialist Revolutionary Party among the peasants and he himself read and explained aloud to members of the Volispolkom the order of the Minister of Agriculture Chernov, which put forward two theses: 1) Highly cultured landowner estates must be preserved until the Constituent Assembly. 2) There are extremely few such estates. After hearing this order, the peasants concluded that “the Provisional Government allows the immediate division of all remaining estates to begin,” while the commentator proved to them the anarchic, criminal and anti-state nature of this pogrom order. Thus, Chernov called for agrarian pogroms; Kerensky listened to calls from the localities for help and refused protection;

and provincial leaders of their parties organized mobile pogrom detachments. This is another tradition of February: to immediately carry out the desired redistribution of property, carrying it out in the form of actual seizure and destruction, but in a sentimentally nonresistance-disguised form, attributing it to the “revolutionary activity of the masses”; The Constituent Assembly had to be “presented with a fait accompli.” It goes without saying that no force could keep the soldiers in the army with the news that the “black redistribution” in the country was in full swing. 8. At the same time, the Februaryists, having disintegrated the army and order in the country and disguisedly encouraging the “black redistribution”, tried, to reassure the allies, to continue the war, which ended in the disgrace of Tarnopol and Riga. The imaginary “betrayal of the revolution” by Commander-in-Chief Kornilov was supposed to cover up this entire pathetic failure. This is the eighth tradition of February: the tradition of complete state and strategic nonsense. We've had enough of this: the main traditions of the February revolution have been revealed and formulated. They were expressed not in words, in which the commonplaces of radical liberalism, revolutionary democracy and sentimental humanity were poured out affectively, but in deeds, in orders, appointments and removals, as well as in the inevitable consequences of all this, which destroyed Russia, its freedom and its democratic possibilities. This entire political line has demonstrated such state naivety, such political lack of will, such governmental incapacity that shame and horror take possession of the Russian heart when now again calls are heard for the revival of these traditions and when the newspapers bring proof that the Februaryists are again going to take control of “ full power."

But it’s a terrible dream, may God be merciful!

Why did the monarchical system collapse in Russia? 35 years have passed since in Russia - so unexpectedly, so quickly, in a few days, and, moreover, so tragically and so helplessly - the monarchical system was crushed, abolished and died out. The thousand-year stronghold has fallen apart. The state form that held and built national Russia as a sovereign has disappeared. The sacred foundation of national existence was subjected to decay, desecration and villainous eradication. And the Dynasty did not fight for its throne. The throne fell, and no one then raised or unfurled the fallen banner; no one stood under him openly, no one stood for him publicly. It was as if the oath had never been taken, as if all the sacred obligations of the monarchy had faded away both above and below. There were many honest, and brave, and faithful; but their will was, as it were, paralyzed and their cadres were scattered throughout the country. And a desperate and disastrous adventure began, which continues to this day; and the end is not yet in sight. And so, in all these 35 years, I do not know of a single attempt to illuminate this tragic collapse, to explain this state collapse, to indicate the historical reasons and those political mistakes that led Russia to such a collapse. For, let’s say this openly and unequivocally, the collapse of the monarchy was the collapse of Russia itself; the thousand-year-old state form fell away, but it was not the “Russian republic” that was established, as the revolutionary semi-intelligentsia of the left parties dreamed of, but the all-Russian dishonor predicted by Dostoevsky and the impoverishment of the spirit unfolded; and from this spiritual impoverishment, from this dishonor and decay, the state Anchar of Bolshevism, prophetically foreseen by Pushkin, grew - a sick and unnatural tree of evil, sending its poison to the wind to the whole world to destruction. In 1917, the Russian people fell into the state of the rabble; and the history of mankind shows that the mob is always curbed by despots and tyrants. This year, which sixteen-yearold Lermontov prophetically designated “Russia’s Black Year” almost 100 years earlier, the Russian people became untied, fell apart, stopped serving the great national cause and woke up under the rule of internationalists. History, as it were, pronounced a certain law out loud: in Russia either autocracy or chaos are possible; Russia is incapable of a republican system. Or even more precisely: the existence of Russia requires autocracy - or religiously and nationally strengthened, autocracy of honor, loyalty and service, that is, a monarchy; or a godless, unscrupulous, dishonest autocracy, and, moreover, anti-national and international, that is, tyranny. And returning in thought, imagination and heart to the pre-revolutionary time, when Russia, remaining Russia, organically and at the same time spontaneously grew and blossomed, we cannot help but ask ourselves how it was then - both in a close dynastic circle and among the bureaucrats, both among the intelligentsia and among the masses - how is it then that people did not see that the collapse of the monarchy would be the collapse of Russia itself? How did they not see that saving political form, which alone could lead and build Russian life and preserve Russian culture? What kind of blindness was this? What did the Russian people lack in order to courageously survive difficult times and preserve the religiously sanctified and historically justified state form? What was lacking—political foresight and understanding, or loyalty, or discipline, or patience? For, in fact, we are firmly convinced that if the Sovereign Emperor had foreseen the inevitable chaos, the poison of Bolshevism and the future fate of Russia, he would not have abdicated, and if he had abdicated, he would have first ensured the legitimate succession to the throne, and would not have given up the people into submission to that state-helpless and previously “bypassed to the left” empty place, which was called the Provisional Government. And the civic spirit would awaken in the Russian inhabitants; and the Russian peasantry would have behaved differently. But there was no foresight; and the principle of state awakened immediately only in the heroic minority, who decided to resist to the end... From them the white army was formed.

What was missing in Russia? Why could a thousand-year-old form of state salvation and national-political self-affirmation disappear with such catastrophic ease from the very first impulse of popular, street and soldier rebellion? Let us answer: Russia lacked a strong and faithful monarchical sense of justice. Legal consciousness - not in the sense of “reasoning” only and “understanding” only; but in that deep and holistic meaning, which should now be our main concern: legal consciousness feelings, legal consciousness - trust, legal consciousness - responsibility, legal consciousness - effective waves, legal consciousness - discipline, legal consciousness character, legal consciousness - religious faith. The monarchical sense of justice was shaken throughout Russia. It was obscured or supplanted in wide circles of the Russian intelligentsia, partly the Russian bureaucracy and even the Russian generals - by anarcho-democratic illusions and a republican way of thinking, implanted and spread around the world behind the scenes since the French Revolution itself. It had its eternal competitor in the common people's soul - a craving for anarchy and an arbitrary dispensation... As a result of this, it apparently shook the imperious confidence in the reigning Dynasty itself. Let's start with the masses. Throughout Russian history, the Russian common people have never lost their inclination to oppose the burdensome law with their own lawless or illegal initiative. “It’s high to God, it’s far from the Tsar”; you have to manage yourself; you need to allow yourself more than what the authorities allow; one must not be afraid of delinquency and crime and “change one’s fate” oneself. There is a limit to patience. Discipline is only good in moderation. Rus' is great and flat. We need to run into the distance, look for a “free” life and settle down in a new way. And throughout Russian history, the Serf Prikaz had to work tirelessly. People threw off the state tax: “a hateful tax fell on the world”... And they went “to freedom, to the steppes and forests. This is where this multitude of “free, walking people” comes from, about whom the chronicles tell; people without a settled lifestyle, without an organic economy, but, nevertheless, feeding. This is where these “daring, good fellows” come from, with atamans in velvet caftans and with buried wealth; Legends were made about them and songs were sung, even until now, and now all over the world (song about Razin, song about Kudeyar...). And in the old days there was no hard line between robbers and Cossacks; this line appeared only when the “free people” acquired a settled position and property, when the nationalization of “daring and good fellows” began, and when the brave Cossacks settled and defended the Russian outskirts. Then anarchy gradually accepted law and citizenship, and by virtue of faith and conscience returned to monarchical allegiance. This is exactly what the Russian masses thought and felt: order comes from the Tsar; Only tsarist power can save and build Rus'. “Woe to that kingdom which is owned by many”; “Better a formidable king than seven boyars.” But anarchy, unleashing, licentiousness, encroachment and pogrom create a more profitable opportunity. Hence these riots, with robbers or self-proclaimed leaders. From time to time, a nationwide revolt arose (the Troubles, Razinovschina, Pugachevschina, Leninschina), when Grigory, or Stepan, or Emelyan, or Ilyich (“Pugachev with a university education”) was present, who destroyed or directly prescribed anarchy of encroachments and pogroms. And Razin’s appeals “I am going to destroy all bureaucracy and power, and make sure that everyone is equal to everyone”; and Pugachev's proclamations; and Lenin’s “rob the loot” are phenomena of the same meaning and order. Power came calling for rebellion and robbery; a certain “tsar” or a fake, self-proclaimed, imaginary “liar” legitimized anarchy and property redistribution - and the legal consciousness of the Russian people, succumbing to turmoil, “crookedness” and “theft,” celebrated a holiday of anarchy, revenge and self-enrichment. Bad forces took over, and Russian history experienced a great failure.

This is what happened in Russia in 1917. A terrible war with terrible setbacks shook confidence in the military command, and therefore in the throne. The peasant village experienced an era of agrarian overpopulation and the great reform of Stolypin. The issue of land acquisition became a source of intense anxiety among all peasants. And suddenly the abdication of the two Sovereigns from the Throne extinguished the oath, and allegiance, and all sense of justice; and the left parties - Lenin calling for robbery, Minister Viktor Chernov sending out ambiguously pogrom circulars, Minister Alexander Kerensky openly professing and practicing state non-resistance, and all their agitators scattered throughout the country - brought upon the unleashed soldier, sailor and peasant the right to disorder, the right to autocracy, the right to desertion, the right to seize other people's property, all those powerless, destructive, imaginary rights that the Russian commoner had always dreamed of in his anarchic-rebellious instinct and which were now suddenly given to him from above. The temptation of dishonor and permissiveness became too great, and disaster became inevitable.

The monarchical face of the Russian common people's legal consciousness seemed to fade and disappear in turmoil, and the terrible and bloody mug of all-Russian anarchy came forward.

It would be in vain to doubt that Russian legal consciousness really had its own monarchical face, which supported the Russian state. Anyone who wants to be convinced of this should at least turn to the wealth of state wisdom and monarchical feeling that has been accumulated in Russian common sayings and proverbs (see Dahl, Snegirev, Illustrov, Maksimov and others) - and, moreover, over the centuries. Let us recall some of this spiritual wealth, which for too many years has weakened the propaganda of the “People’s Will”, “Black Peredelites” and other destroyers of Russia.

“Without God the light does not stand, without the Tsar the earth is not ruled”, “As God is in heaven, so is the Tsar on earth”, “Without the Tsar the earth is a widow”, “Without the Tsar the people are orphans”, “With God and the Tsar Rus' is strong”, “Heart the Tsar is in the hand of God”, “The Tsar’s answer is to God alone”, “The Tsar’s eyes see far”, “Near the Tsar - close to honor and death”, “When the sun is warm, but when the Tsar is good”, “Not enough sunshine for everyone, The Tsar cannot please everyone,” “The Tsar is good, but the servants are evil.” “The Tsar’s favors are sown in the boyar’s sieve”, “Opression is not from the Tsar, but from the Tsar’s favorites”, “The will of the Tsar is the law”, “Where is the Tsar here and the truth”, “There is no greater mercy than in the Tsar’s heart”, “The Tsar has bell throughout Russia”, “The good of the kings is in the truth of the judges”, “The people think, but the king knows”, “When all the people sigh, they will reach the Tsar”, “The Tsar and the beggar - without comrades”, “In the blind kingdom of the crooked Tsar ", "The king's eye is falling far away" ... Isn't that enough? We have already heard the thousand-year state experience of the Russian people, who knew how to trust their Tsars, honor them, love them and serve them with faith and truth. But the Sovereigns abdicated the throne, and the oath faded away in the people’s hearts. The face of the people's loyalty, responsibility and formidable service turned away and the mug of a traitor, criminal and embittered slave stepped forward. From monarchy to anarchy, from anarchy to enslavement by the Antichrist for many years of unrest and tyranny. Such was the temptation of the Russian common people. Let us now move on to a consideration of the Russian intellectual legal consciousness. When speaking about the Russian intelligentsia, one should keep in mind not just the “upper” social system, as comparatively more educated (in the old days - the boyars and the service class), but that cadre that in one way or another is associated with the academy and the academically educated. The history of this frame begins in Russia, essentially speaking, with Lomonosov and Moscow University. The social elite of old times, of course, had their monarchically loyal and their monarchically disloyal representatives; but the previous disloyalty boiled down to the fact that the boyars and especially the “princes,” who had not forgotten their appanage reign and dignity, “were looking for the kingdom.” This was not republicanism, but a special kind of “monarchism in its own favor”, which was so acutely suspicious of

Ivan the Terrible and who subsequently gave the most demonstrative and negative fruit in the person of Prince Vasily Shuisky, a boyar, “smart” enough for any intrigue, but completely devoid of the “gift of sovereignty.” The Russian intelligentsia that we have in mind slowly matured under the Empresses Elizabeth and Catherine II; her foreign “professors” were the encyclopedists, Voltaire and Rousseau, her practical school was the first French revolution; her political actions were the treacherous murder of Emperor Paul and the Decembrist conspiracy. This determined its direction; this is its tradition; and to this day it has not completely freed itself from this political tradition. This direction was revolutionary-republican, for its part prepared by the revolutionary-monarchist tradition of the 18th century (noble coups of 1730, 1740, 1741 and 1762). However, the tradition of the 18th century. (“revolutionarily” to place a new queen on the throne) received a new direction: Rousseau and Voltaire and Robespierre and Danton convinced the Russian intellectuals of that time that a republic meant “freedom” and that therefore it was superior to a monarchy...

Hence this baseless dream of building Russia without a Tsar at its head. The first realization of this dream was to be the liberation of the Russian peasantry without land, as projected by the Decembrists; it would inevitably proletarianize and brutalize the all-Russian peasantry and would resume Razinovism and Pugachevism on an unprecedented scale. Emperor Nicholas I kept Russia on the brink of destruction and saved it from a new “senseless and merciless rebellion.” Moreover, he gave the Russian intelligentsia time to come to their senses, acquire national-state meaning and invest in the reforms of Emperor Alexander II prepared by him. Pushkin carried out this necessary evolution of the nationalization of Russian legal consciousness - the first, in himself, and for himself and for others. 10 years after his death, Dostoevsky experienced the same evolution, who saw in hard labor the bottom of the all-Russian common people, who had turned away from republicanism and socialism, and clearly showed the Russian people both his faithful national-monarchical face (in “The Diary of a Writer”) and his non-religious temptations and danger, and his anarcho-criminal face (“Demons”).

Gradually, a monarchically loyal Russian intelligentsia emerged and strengthened, surrounding Alexander II the Liberator and implementing his reforms. But it was precisely these reforms, which so brilliantly demonstrated the creative powers of the loyally surrounded Russian Sovereign, that embittered the republicans and revolutionaries who had not changed their minds and prompted them to seek ways of Western imitation at all costs. The "Westerners" were a loyal outpost of this trend; Narodnaya Volya and similar organizations went openly to terror; Bakunin and Nechaev formed the extreme left of this movement, which, like Peter Verkhovensky (“Demons”), sought fraternization with the criminal world. A whole series of attempts on the precious life of the Tsar-Liberator followed: by shots, undermining of the palace, a train explosion and, finally, bombs. It would be in vain to explain this by the fact that the gentlemen “People's Will” considered the new reforms “insufficient” and sought to deepen them. Not at all. Here it was about the monarchy: its creative successes, its democratic reforms in many respects, its growing popularity among the people all this was not scary for the Republican-Socialist revolutionaries from underground circles; they had to drive a wedge of mistrust, fear and compromise between the Tsar and the people. Reform in their eyes suppressed and weakened the revolution. Changes had to come not through the Tsar and not from the Tsar, but besides him and against him; these changes should not have attracted the hearts of the people to the Tsar, because this slowed down the revolutionary republic in the eyes of one part of the revolutionaries, and the anarchy of the black redistribution in the eyes of another part. All this was a movement of revolutionary maximalism, which later, at the turn of the 20th century, unfolded in the form of Bolshevism.

It would be unfair and historically incorrect to confuse such moderate “Westerners” as Granovsky and Turgenev with immoderate

Westerners like Herzen; it would be even more unfair to declare Herzen an “early Bolshevik.” But the ideological and spiritual divide took place right here. Should we believe in the salvation of the monarchy for Russia? Should we build Russia by faithfully helping its Sovereigns, through them and on their behalf? Or consider the monarchy the main obstacle to Russian progress and demand for Russia “consistent and complete rule of the people,” i.e., a Constituent Assembly, elections” according to the four-member formula, a republic, a federation, etc. And this watershed was especially clear and completely unambiguous formulated by one of the most prominent political ideologists of “February” F. F. Kokoshkin, who contrasted the “old hated monarchy” with the republic, which undoubtedly in our eyes cannot but be the best form of government (Reslublika, pp. 12–13). This was the hidden thought of the constitutional democratic party: the monarchical system, even the parliamentary one, was for the “cadets” from the very beginning “nothing more than a compromise” (ibid., p. 7) and F. F. Kokoshkin even admits that they “stood on the basis of a socialist worldview” (ibid., p. 6). All this taken together defines the watershed we mentioned above. The sincerely loyal monarchist intelligentsia, which in the last years before the revolution grouped around Stolypin and his agrarian reform and about which foreign observers of this reform (for example, the Berlin expert Professor Sehring) gave such a brilliant review, was opposed by a secretly disloyal intelligentsia, for which the republic was "indisputably the best form of government." Monarchy was for them a temporarily necessary means, a tactically acceptable transitional step. It was as if they were just waiting for the hour of her disappearance or overthrow to strike. And so, they waited... But they, of course, not only and not just “waited”, but did everything possible to politically isolate the Tsar and his faithful assistants and compromise all their construction. This is where the “cadet” leaders categorically refuse negotiations on joining the tsarist ministry; this is where their struggle against Stolypin and his reforms comes from; this is where Miliukov’s slanderous speech came from in November 1916 (“stupidity or betrayal”). That is why in the abdication of the Sovereign they saw not an all-Russian catastrophe, but the hour of “liberation” of Russia from the “hated regime”, the hour of transition to the “best form of government”!..

It is remarkable that this Russian pre-revolutionary republicanism embraced not only the entire left-wing sector of “public”, but also part of the more right-wing one. The Russian radical intelligentsia could hardly name any monarchist in its ranks; perhaps only Ilya Fundaminsky, but already in the era of emigration... And how he shocked with his sentiments and speeches the rest of the left sector of the emigration, which took special credit for trampling “on the old positions.” As for the pre-revolutionary time, we can confidently say: to the left of the constitutional democratic party, the entire Russian intelligentsia, and especially the semi-intelligentsia, considered the monarchy an “obsolete” form of government. And if anyone wanted evidence from us, then it would be enough for us to point to the so-called “humorous magazines” of 1905–1906: they were all full of poems, pamphlets and caricatures, one way or another praising regicide or directly calling for it ( oh, of course, covertly, but in daringly transparent hints!). These magazines were bought by the public in great demand and were commented on at all crossroads. There was one enemy: the Sovereign and the Dynasty, and this enemy had to be compromised; deprived of trust and respect and put at risk of exile or murder.

Let us ask: why did all this politically inexperienced, short-sighted and halfeducated crowd become republican? Why? Where and in what did they see the republican abilities and virtues of the Russian people? What were they thinking? What were you hoping for? There can be only one answer: “to the West!” A republic is possible and satisfactory, why would it be impossible for us? a republic is (according to F.F. Kokoshkin) the best way of government; besides, he will immediately improve us”... We do not need to answer this childish

babble; History has already given an answer to it, and a terrible answer at that. Equally to the right of the Cadets were republican figures like A.I. Guchkov, who promptly praised the Young Turk coup and considered himself called upon to carry out something similar in Russia. This, of course, was not an accident: the publication of the notorious “Order No. I” for the army, issued when he was the Minister of War of the Provisional Government and was never canceled or disavowed by him; It was not an accident that his trip to Headquarters to accept abdication from the hands of the Sovereign. Psychologically, one can understand that the latest ministerial appointments did not seem convincing to many; and that the influence of a certain sinister figure moving in the spheres could both disturb and outrage many. But this figure has already disappeared, and with it the danger it caused. And the idea that the Imperial Throne is irreplaceable in Russia, that it is impossible to abdicate the Sovereign and that one must help him to the end, and not abandon him from the very beginning, was apparently alien to many. This is what we can establish on the issue of the political consciousness of the Russian intelligentsia of the pre-revolutionary period. She squandered, babbled, cheapened her loyalty to monarchical Russia; she did not save, but vulgarized her sense of justice. And with childish frivolity, she imagined herself and the Russian common people of the republican to be a mature people. She was completely unable to comprehend and comprehend the tragedy of the isolated Tsar, as the tragedy of perishing Russia. So, the monarchy in Russia collapsed - so unexpectedly, so quickly, so tragically helplessly - because there was no real, strong monarchical sense of justice in the country. In the difficult, decisive hour of history, the faithful, convinced monarchists found themselves far from the Sovereign, not united, scattered and powerless, and the fake “multi-millionstrong Union of the Russian People”, the stability of which the far-right leaders falsely assured the Sovereign, turned out to exist only on paper. All this could not but affect the well-being of the Sovereign and the ruling Dynasty. The terrible hour was approaching when the Emperor could feel isolated, betrayed and powerless; when a fight for the Throne might be necessary, but there might not be enough strength for this fight. And that hour has struck. This is neither a condemnation nor an accusation. But 35 years have passed, and for the sake of restoring the monarchy in Russia, we are obliged to speak out the historical truth. The reigning Russian Dynasty left its throne then, in 1917, without entering into the fight for it; and the fight for it would be a fight for the salvation of national Russia. Of course, this abandonment of the Throne had its psychological and moral foundations. It was preceded by a long and, moreover, aggressively formalized pressure of revolutionary terror, sometimes supported, sometimes covered up by the republican-minded part of the intelligentsia. The assassination attempts on the benevolent reformer Alexander II, which ended in his villainous murder, could in themselves shake faith in the Dynasty, faith in its mission and its trust in the Russian intelligentsia. The murder of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich and direct threats of regicide in the illegal and even legal (“humorous”!) press should have renewed this feeling. The stubborn opposition of the left to the Duma, the “Vyborg Appeal” and the murder of P. A. Stolypin in the presence of the Tsar - all this spoke the language of distrust of the Throne, the language of hatred and threat. Meanwhile, no resistance to these threats, no disinterested monarchical mobilization of the public, no sincere, organized impulse to the Throne was observed in the country. Russian popular monarchism remained passive and did not give the Dynasty a living feeling - trust, love, support, weight and unity. In this state of affairs, the will of the Sovereign could feel isolated, lonely, powerless, or even, as the generals of the main command inspired, a direct hindrance in the cause of national

unity and salvation.

In addition, in the first abdication of the Throne and in the second refusal to immediately accept power, there was so much living patriotism, fear of causing a civil war at the front and in the rear, so much royal unselfishness, modesty in taking into account one’s personal strengths and Christian acceptance of one’s tragic fate (“day Job the long-suffering" was the Tsar’s birthday, which the Tsar himself often recalled) that the tongue does not dare to say a word of judgment or reproach. And yet, the historical truth must be spoken out - for the sake of the future. In his remarkable study, legitimately justified and laconically precise (“Imperial All-Russian Throne, Paris, 1922), Senator Korevo raises the question of whether Sovereign Emperor Nicholas II had the right to abdicate the throne and gives the following answer: “In Russian Basic laws do not provide for the abdication of the reigning Emperor. Abdication before occupying the Throne is considered possible, but in principle only when there is no difficulty in further succession to the throne and when the reigning Sovereign allows and sanctions such abdication. From a religious point of view, the renunciation of the Monarch, the Anointed of God, is contrary to the act of His Sacred Coronation and Confirmation” (pp. 26–38–42).

Further, Senator Korevo points out that the Sovereign transferred the right to the throne to Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich, “without verifying his consent” (p. 41), that is, without ensuring the continuity of the legitimate heir to the throne in the most difficult hour of history. Korevo, in fairness, completely rejects the right to abdicate for an heir; he considers the main and fundamental condition for the legality of abdication to be “for this there should not be any difficulty in the further inheritance of the Throne,” and abdication for the heir could not but create such difficulties (pp. 29–30). Korevo admits that Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich ascended the throne at the hour of the abdication of the Sovereign; that he did not directly renounce the throne, but also did not immediately perceive the supreme power and conditioned such perception on the “will of the great people” who had a say in the Constituent Assembly. And so, Korevo is right when you characterize all this as “a complete violation of the Basic Laws”; and in explanation of such violation he refers to “revolutionary violence and treason” (pp. 125, 42).

In reality, the situation was such that both the Sovereign and the Grand Duke renounced not just their “right” to the throne, but their religiously sanctified, monarchical and dynastic duty to guard the throne, rule with authority, save their people in the hour of greatest danger and return them to the path of loyalty, responsibility and obedience to your legitimate Sovereign. It is difficult for us now to understand that the last two sovereigns of our ruling dynasty - Nicholas II and Mikhail II - none of their entourage (military or civilian) told them in the form of a loyal council that, by virtue of the Russian Fundamental Laws, to which they swore allegiance and to which they constitute The most basic and strict system of a monarchical state is that there is no right to abdicate the throne in an hour of great national danger and with complete insecurity in future inheritance. The absence of such advice can be explained by betrayal, fatigue, and confusion of people. But these explanations are not enough: in the depths of events, behind all this, the absence of a strong and faithful monarchical sense of justice is hidden and revealed - in the highest circles of the army and bureaucracy. If there was treason, then the Tsar had the right to dismiss the traitors and call on the faithful; and the subsequent civil war showed that there were such faithful ones and that they would do anything. But those who advised the Tsar and Mikhail Alexandrovich to abdicate should have known and understood that they were no longer acting as monarchists, but as republicans.

And then the Tsar’s personal decision took place: he renounced for himself and for his heir. To be a member of a dynasty means to have not only a subjective right to the throne (in

legal order), but a sacred duty to save and lead one’s people, and for this to lead them to a sense of responsibility, to a sense of rank, to legitimate obedience. The dynastic title is a calling to power and an obligation to serve the government. One of the axioms of legal consciousness in general is that unilateral renunciation of public legal obligations by the obligor himself is impossible; It is precisely this axiom that is recognized in the Russian Basic Laws. In the most difficult hours of historical life, the Monarch guards his power and seeks national salvation with his power. Let us remember Peter the Great during the hours of the Streltsy riots; or at the time when “suddenly Charles turned around and moved the war to Ukraine”; or during the Prut sitting and misfortune. Let us remember Emperor Nicholas I, marching through the streets of St. Petersburg to meet the rebel Decembrists... Would Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich abdicate power during the Razin uprising? Would Peter the Great have abdicated, giving in to the revolt of the Streltsy? Empress Catherine during the Pugachev uprising? Emperor Alexander III under any circumstances?..

But over the past decades, the confident and powerful feeling of the Russian ruling Dynasty has seemed to have wavered. Perhaps the revolutionary pressure weakened her faith in her calling, shook her will to power and faith in the power of the royal title; as if the feeling had weakened that the Throne obliges, that the Throne and loyalty to it are the essence of national salvation and that each member of the Dynasty can one day become an organ of this salvation and must prepare himself for this fateful hour, saving his life not out of timidity, but in confidence, that the legitimate succession to the throne must be ensured at all costs. This is where this historical event comes from: the Dynasty, represented by two Sovereigns, did not strain the energy of its will and power, stepped away from the throne and decided not to fight for it. She chose the path of non-resistance and, scary to say, went to her death in order not to cause a civil war, which one people had to wage without a Tsar and not for the Tsar... When you contemplate this living tragedy of our Dynasty, your heart stops and it becomes difficult to talk about it. Only silently, to yourself, do you remember the words of Scripture: “Like a sheep led to the slaughter, and like a lamb without blemish, the one who shears it is silent”... All this is not condemnation or accusation; but only recognition of legal, historical and religious truth. The people were freed from the oath and left to the will of their seducers. A stream of the most damned assertive temptation in history poured into the open door, and those who poured in this temptation wanted power over Russia at any cost. They were ready to lose the great war, reign in terror, rob everyone and exterminate the ruling Dynasty; not for any “guilt,” but in order to completely extinguish any monarchical sense of justice in the country.

Future history will show whether they succeeded or not. And we, the generation of Russian people who have lived through this revolution through grief and torment, have the responsibility to ask ourselves what is the essence of a healthy, strong and deep monarchical sense of justice and how can we revive it in Russia. We have already raised this question more than once, but we did not consider any of our answers to be exhaustive and comprehensive. Meanwhile, for a Russian person, if national-patriotic feelings live in him, it is natural to return to this question and seek a comprehensive answer. One of the basic formulas of this answer should be expressed as follows: the Russian people had a Tsar, but forgot how to have him. There was a Sovereign, there were countless subjects; but the attitude of the subjects towards their Sovereign was decidedly not up to par. Over the past decades, the Russian people have shaken their monarchical sense of justice and lost their willingness to live, serve, fight and die in a way

as befits a convinced monarchist. We know that this does not apply to all Russian people. We remember and will never forget those valiant military feats that were performed by the Russian guard, army and navy in the fight against the turmoil of 1905 and the enemy invading Russia - from the private to the commander-in-chief. However, “the ability to have a Tsar” knows not only the form of military feat, but also the form of civic valor, statesmanship, political tact and political cohesion. And in this regard, the Russian people were not up to par in the fateful hours of history. We know that this does not apply to all Russian people. Both at the top and at the bottom of the people there were people of sincere devotion and service. We won't name names; Let us only point out the tradition of A.D. Samarin and P.A. Stolypin and remember the whole cadre of Russian senators, diplomats and members of the State Council. Their service and state merits are unforgettable. But there was no single and organized monarchist party that would guard the throne and be able to help the monarch. And those who tried to pass themselves off as such a “party” followed a group line, not a state one, and did not understand their historical and state assignments. Let us ask our historical memory - where was and what was this “monarchical party” doing in the difficult moments of the hesitation of the earth and the throne, in the painful and then tragic hours of the Tsar’s life? When the insinuating and seemingly good-natured sly Sukhomlinov, appointed Minister of War in 1909 and almost appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army in 1914, tries for several years in a row to assure the Sovereign, citing telegrams from the Amur GovernorGeneral Unterberger, that war is not threatening at all with Germany, and with Japan; when he then, to the horror of Stolypin, tries to abolish the fortresses near the Wall (Warsaw, Novogeorgievsk, Ivangorod); when he then begins to demonstratively extort hundreds of millions from the Ministry of Finance for allegedly arming the Russian army, in order not to use these loans (by the beginning of the 1914 war, he had not used 250 million rubles!) and to leave the Russian army without training and without shells , - what did these “monarchists” do to open the eyes of the gullible monarch and save the army? Nothing! – When the shadow of an imaginary “pagan” appeared at the throne, spreading the fatal poison of debauchery, boasting, gossip, slander and corruption, what did this “party” do to cover up the purity of the throne and protect its national aura? When and where did they dare, saving Russia, to earn the disfavor of the Sovereign by telling the truth, as Philip Metropolitan and Prince Yakov Dolgoruky did in their time, and later Stolypin, Kokovtsov, Dzhunkovsky, Samarin, Tyutchev and others? For the later act of V.M. Purishkevich was not party, but personal... No, they did not dare to openly speak the worthy and saving truth, but behaved like “know-nos” and “horonyaks”...

And when they saw that the guard lay bones on the battlefields and lost its first-ranking composition, did they think that the imperial throne had lost the main cadre of its closest defenders and that it was necessary to fill this terrible gap with a new, ideologically unshakable selection? And were they able to convincingly report this to the selfless Sovereign, or did they continue to reassure him with empty boastful announcements about the “multi-million Union of the Russian People”, not understanding anything about the events and preparing the February defenselessness of the throne?!.. And when Sukhomlinov’s sabotage, attributed for some reason to his “frivolity,” brought matters in 1915 to the great collapse of the front, did this “party” dare to present to the Sovereign that in an unsuccessful war the burden and responsibility of the high command should not fall on the Monarch; that grand strategy requires will, strong-willed thinking, experience, knowledge and especially military talent, and not just personal charm and benevolent nobility; that every

war is only one page in the history of the people, and the Sovereign is called upon to review all its pages and should not give up the throne, this eternal source of national legal consciousness, as a guarantee of the success of this particular war? Which of the then “party” monarchists was mature enough, far-sighted and independent enough to “straighten straight to the Tsar” without thinking about personal consequences? When the inevitable happened and Headquarters did not prove itself to be the strong-willed strategic center necessary for the war (let us remember, for example, General Evert’s refusal to attack on the Western Front in 1916!), despite the fact that the army was rich in valiant, experienced and inspired commanders; when the Tsar felt overworked, and, seeing the revolt of the St. Petersburg mob and the behavior of the Duma, hesitated about the throne - where were the representatives of this supposedly “multi-million-strong Union of the Russian People” then? Did their organizational circle rush to the foot of the throne in order to strengthen the nervously overworked and family-conscious Sovereign, in order to give him at least a twenty-thousand-strong reserve of loyal and unshakable monarchists of all types of weapons, or did it hide in irresponsibility and obscurity, leaving the Sovereign alone to solve a terrible question? Which of them decided to tell him that the Russian Basic Laws do not know the right to renounce, that the Anointed One does not renounce his throne at all in the hour of national trouble; that the succession to the throne at this hour is not prepared and not ensured, that it is necessary to defend the throne as a guarantee of the unity of Russia; that to renounce means to untie the whole country from a three-century oath and plunge it into anarchy, that there are still faithful people and that they are ready to fulfill their duty to the end?! The throne did not have such faithful and courageous advisers. The throne was isolated by them, abandoned, left to its own fate. There were commanders who advised the Emperor to abdicate. Why weren’t there wise officers and politicians who would have begged not to abdicate, but to fight for the throne as a source of national salvation?!

And then, when the Tsar and his family were left alone in Tsarskoe Selo, what did this “party” do? Did she rush to save the throne? Did she try to force members of the Provisional Government and the Soviet rabble to save the Emperor and take him abroad; to find those means that would be valid and would encourage the revolutionaries to honor and protect the life of the Emperor and his innocent children? Where have these people gone, who until then knew how to spend two hundred thousand rubles of annual government subsidies on just their wretched magazine “Zemshchina”? – And then, when the Emperor was taken to Tobolsk, did they manage to replace the traitor Solovyov with at least one of their faithful people for communication? – What about the tragedy of Yekaterinburg? What did they do to prevent it? Where were they all at that time? Have you changed your clothes? Did you take cover? Were you saved? And they betrayed their own and the All-Russian monarch?.. - And, finally, when danger began to threaten all members of the Dynasty, which of these “monarchists” tried to persuade each of the Grand Dukes to take care of themselves not for themselves, but for Russia? Which of them managed to raise the dynastic question to the proper height, at which it is not possible to be a member of the Dynasty? mean to have the “right” to arbitrary renunciation, and does not mean to prepare for

passive revolutionary martyrdom, but it means being obliged to take the throne at the appointed hour, prepare for this and consider yourself an organ of national salvation? And if none of the “faithful” monarchists thought about this then, then what were they thinking about? And did they think about anything other than personal salvation? I know that there were heroic confessors, like the Moscow Archpriest Vostorgov, who went to death and accepted it; or like that monarchist Matusov, whom I saw in the basement of the “cheka”, where he, in all his service orders and in his party badges, defiantly demanded that he be shot for his loyalty to the Sovereign. But no matter how many there were, they did not constitute what Russia needed, that is, a thoughtful, organized political party defending the national throne. There was no such party in Russia. History confirms to us that there was a party “head” that constantly sought from the government either electoral or propaganda subsidies,

pleased with the abundant receipt and responded with rude antics to insufficient receipt or outright refusal (see V.N. Kokovtsov. “From my past.” II., pp. 164–165, etc.). But this was not a ministry, but a personal dispensation; not a party of monarchists, but a group of extorting supplicants; it was not the support of a throne, but an assembly of flatterers. And those of them who later managed to escape abroad did this in exile: “If there is no subsidy from you, we will take it from another source, but then we will work against you.” From such people - neither then nor now - one should expect nothing but harm for the monarchy. The monarch needs far-sighted people who can understand the signs of history and correctly anticipate emerging dangers. The monarch needs truth-loving people, and not those who draw obsequiously optimistic horizons where history hangs over people like a black cloud. The sovereign needs conscientious advisers, not subsidy catchers. The Sovereign needs a cadre of unshakable champions, knowledgeable, understanding, firm in will, for whom actions speak louder than the evil ones and flattering words.

Russia needed a real monarchist party, but it didn’t exist then. Why? How to explain this? There was no real, responsible monarchist party, with a deeply thought-out program and correct, active political tactics in Russia before the revolution. That is why the monarchists could neither support the throne and dynasty, nor put forward their strong cadre in the fateful days, nor defend the inviolability and life of the abdicated Sovereign. Russian monarchists believed that they were called upon to praise, congratulate, wait for orders, please, defiantly obey, ask for subsidies and assure of their devotion; but independent political thinking, but state responsibility, but the closure of a loyal, active cadre, but the creation of a real, strong support for the throne - all this “was not included” in the calling of the “Russian” monarchist party. The monarchists seemed to “hang” on the throne, but did not constitute its social and political foundation. And at that moment, when the throne formally fell silent, it turned out that the monarchists crumbled into dust and disappeared.

The monarchical system collapsed in Russia because the Russian imperial throne had a historical tradition of legal consciousness in the country, but did not have an ideological and strongwilled cadre, far-sighted, united and capable of active speech. Russian monarchists are obliged to realize this, admit it with bitterness and sorrow, condemn themselves and not return to this “policy” of empty phrases and boastful propaganda. Real politics is not done with words, resolutions, enthusiasm, or congratulations; Moreover, it does not become empty words and deliberately untruthful assurances that “there are darkness, and darkness, and darkness among us”... This must be ended: the monarchist is guilty of his Sovereign not by boasting and deceit, but by truth and threateningly honest service. There was no monarchical party in the true sense of the word in Russia due to the fact that the country’s very political culture was primitive in this regard: it was only just beginning to take hold, strengthen and find its forms. The very idea of a “political party” was banned until 1905. Until then, Russian political parties could only exist and work illegally, without permission or even prohibited; and those of them who embarked on this path earlier might already have, it would seem, some organizational experience. However, their experience turned out to be meager, helpless and ineffective. Suffice it to recall, for example, that the Social-Democratic Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, who had been busy in their underground for a long time, did not think at all about defending their “constituent assembly”, did not have any party power personnel in reserve and almost went home not on tiptoe, when an armed sailor advised in the ear of their chairman and main brave man, Viktor Chernov, to end this founding “gimmick” “voluntarily”.

The Russian people simply did not yet know how to build a party and set it in motion.

True, the revolutionaries learned to organize small conspiracy-terrorist groups and develop their activity: secretly conspire, get money, forge passports, evade police surveillance, change safe houses, give illegal overnight stays and appearances, handle a revolver and a bomb and organize prison escapes. But in vain they imagined that, having mastered all these robber techniques, they had learned political activity. A clever “assassin” like Savinkov is not yet a politician at all, and all his fuss has only the meaning that it is trying to interfere with someone else doing real government work. This political inability, this lack of understanding of healthy statehood was revealed by the left parties during that demagogic “auction” into which they turned the “constituent” elections and during their daily “lawmaking”. After this failure, they could only return to their previous tactics: assassination attempts (on Uritsky, Volodarsky, Lenin) and local uprisings (Yaroslavl, Tambov, Kronstadt).

By this I do not at all want to say that the “art of the party” was given to the Bolsheviks alone... On the contrary, it must be admitted that their organization was always conspiratorial and totalitarian, and not loyal to the party. They started with street recruitment and all the time selected purchased hirelings, seduced greedy people and calculating divers. They constantly put pressure on the masses - with hunger, fear, promises and handouts, corrupting human conscience and sense of justice; and in this way they built not a party, but a totalitarian state apparatus, realizing the triumph of the political police over the unthinking, deceived and defenseless ordinary people... But those who did not succeed at all in the “art of the party” were the Russian monarchists. They did not understand at all what exactly was the calling of the monarchist party in Russia, where the “absolute” power of the monarch rules... One of two things: either the monarchists are loyal and accept this “absolute” power, but then they have nothing to indulge in - neither independent thought, nor independent actions; or they don’t accept it - and then it’s better for their party not to exist... Here we find the most important reason for their political failure. Russian party monarchists, due to their political naivety, have always been inclined to confuse the autocracy of the monarch with absolutism and perceive the power of the legitimate Sovereign as absolute. Meanwhile, this is far from the same thing and the power of a legitimate monarch cannot be absolute. The term “absolute” power comes from the Latin verb absolvo, which means I untie, permit, permit everything. And so absolutism claims that the monarch is above all right and law; as if his power knows no boundaries; as if everything is allowed to him - every arbitrariness, lawlessness, illegality and crime. The “autocracy” of the monarch indicates precisely the opposite: the legal and legitimate nature of his power. The autocratic monarch is the highest legal body of the state; its supremacy is established by law and is legal supremacy. The power of the monarch is not given to him either from foreign or from domestic forces (for example, from the army, from the guard, from the popular vote, from the nobility, from financial circles); no, it belongs to him by force of law and elevates his responsibility to higher sources, legal consciousness - to conscience, to patriotism, to God. He carries it out independently of any foreign will, precisely insofar as the law assigns him his basic powers legislative, executive, judicial and military. This is his “autocracy”.

This must be thought through and understood once and for all: autocracy rejects, condemns and excludes absolutism; and absolutism rejects the fundamental rights of the Sovereign, for it does not recognize him as a legitimate monarch, it denies his high title as the supreme subject of law, he reduces his title to that of a tyrant, he

corrupts and destroys the very legal form of the monarchy. That is why absolutism is incompatible with autocracy, this highest manifestation of the rule of law on the throne, the monarch’s sense of justice, and the sense of duty and responsibility of the supreme person in the state. Tiberius, Caligula, Nero and other Roman tyrants were not autocrats: they received their power “by the grace of the legions” and ascended to the throne without recognizing any law, right, or boundaries of their power. Like tyrants, they deployed their absolutism, ruled through fear and villainy, covered it all up with their imaginary “divinity” and collapsed into crime and shame. Louis XI, Louis XIV, Ivan the Terrible followed in their footsteps and brought disasters to their peoples and states. The absolute monarch “dares everything” and “can do everything”, whatever his political or other lust desires (“son bon plaisir”). But the autocratic Sovereign does not “dare” everything, but only what is legal, provided by laws, right, legal, state, conscientious, honest, pleasing to God. The tyrant is not bound by law and law; he is called to licentiousness and carries it out in the most fantastic and ferocious forms. But this is precisely what he degrades and disgraces his title of monarch. On the contrary, an autocratic monarch knows the legal limits of his power and does not encroach on rights not assigned to him; he knows that the Sovereign, who does not observe the law and the law, himself undermines your power...

We advise anyone who has not mastered these fundamentals of the monarchical system to carefully read and think through at least the Roman historian Suetonius (“Life of the 12 Caesars”), Tacitus’s “Annals” and Jacob Burckhard’s “Culture of the Italian Renaissance.” It is necessary to understand and assimilate what “absolutism” is, what it brings into the soul of the monarch and what truly terrible consequences it leads to. On the contrary, all sovereigns who comprehended the danger of absolute arbitrariness did not humiliate, but exalted the title of monarch. Thus, Frederick the Great, who ceded to the miller in Sans Souci - by a judge's verdict - the right to the noise of the mill; Peter the Great, who always looked for written legality in everything and always reminded people that laws require observance; Alexander I, who knew how to refuse people in cases where he felt that “the law is above him”; and all the Sovereigns who knew how not to be burdened by the legal forms of their rule remained at the height of their throne. From here it is already clear that a legitimate monarch will value every free and responsible word, every honest objection, every state-creative initiative of his subjects. Peter the Great used to say: “I am glad to hear useful things from the last subject”... “It is fun to listen when subjects openly tell their Sovereign the truth; this is what we need to learn from the British” (after visiting the House of Lords incognito). But the tyrant will not tolerate in his subjects either self-reflection, independent opinion, or free speech (Dzhugashvili!).

Therefore, the subjects of the autocratic Sovereign should by no means inspire, either themselves or him, that he is an “absolute” ruler who demands praise, flattery and unconditional obedience, and does not tolerate either independent opinion or creative initiative. Let us remember that the main concern of Peter the Great was to awaken creative initiative in his people and point it in the right direction. On the contrary, the pre-revolutionary party monarchists in Russia considered their only task to be glorification, blind obedience, pleasing, courtesy and lack of courage to have their own judgment... That is why their “party” had neither an independent judgment about what was happening, nor an organizational cadre, nor an action plan, nor appropriate decisions and speeches. There was no mature political opinion here and there was no struggle for the throne... And the Sovereign and Empress, carelessly relying on the assurances of this “party,” found themselves isolated and handed over to their enemies. This was not a deliberate "betrayal"; but this was passivity from the inability to have a Tsar; it was a betrayal of senselessness, lack of will and powerlessness. Expectations were disappointed; hopes are not justified. And the tall captives remained unrescued...

If Russian monarchists wish to participate in the future in the creation of Russian history, then they must first of all reconsider and condemn their past, renew themselves, be reborn, take new paths and not imagine that everyone except them is to blame for the tragedy of the Russian throne. They are the first to blame, for they presented themselves as faithful and devoted.

"Every nation deserves its own government" How many times have we had to listen to this stupid, frivolous and callous saying from foreigners in exile! Usually people pronounce it with importance and disdain, the tone of historical revelation. “After all, here in the West we have wonderful peoples and, as a result, they have cultural and humane governments. And you, in Russia, have always had the kind of government that your insignificant people deserved; here it is now: the same thing, only topsy-turvy”... And, unfortunately, such an interpretation of Russia, its magnificent history and its modern tragedy is not limited to salon chatter. There is still, and now continues to be replenished, a whole literature that hammers into people this understanding of Russia. There is also a special publishing tradition in Europe: to translate from Russian literature everything that the Russian pen has created in the form of self-exposure and self-flagellation, and to silence, not to translate, what the true Face of Russia reveals. One experienced Russian writer even told us that when Europeans translated Bunin’s “Village” for such purposes and asked him to write about this book, two influential European newspapers returned his article to him because it did not say “precisely because of this kind of vileness and consists of all Russia,” and it indicated that Bunin generally understands in man only one life of dark and depraved instinct and paints it with similar features among all peoples.

Nowadays, Europeans, obeying the same behind-the-scenes directives, are repeating the same mistake: they are doing everything possible so as not to see the real Russia, in order to bind it, confuse it and identify it with the Bolsheviks, and in order to convince themselves that the Russian people “deserve” it the oppressive, destroying and exterminating “government” that is now terrorizing him. Let us accept this stupid and false saying for a moment and think it through to the end. Well, we ask, did the Dutch in the years 1560–1584 “deserve” the dictatorship of Cardinal Granvela and the Count of Egmond that ruled then, or did they “deserve” the reign of the brilliant William the Silent, or the “inquisitorial” terror of the Duke of Alba? Is it worth asking such ridiculous and dead questions? Well, the English in the 11th century, from 1625 to 1643, “deserved” Catholic executions from Charles the First, Stuart, then until 1649 they “deserved” a civil war, from 1649 to 1660 they “deserved” Protestant terror from Cromwell, and with In 1660, did they “deserve” again Catholic terror from Charles the Second, Stuart? What fool would agree to listen to such an interpretation of history? What did the French “deserve” during the era of their long revolution, from 1789 to 1815 - the royal power of Louis XVI, or the talkative Constituent, or the ferocious Convention, or the vile Directory, or the militant despotism of Napoleon, or the Bourbon restoration? And the Germans, over the past 30 years, “deserved” first the Prussian rule of Wilhelm II, then the Social Democratic Republic (1918–1933), then Hitler, and now in the east of Germany - Soviet power, and in the west - occupation semi-anarchy? Is it possible to come up with some less superficial and less absurd historical and political standards? What can we say about the small European states now enslaved by communists? Shall we say that our Serb brothers “deserved” the government of Joseph Broz and Moisei Piyade? Or let's say that the Czechs and Hungarians “deserve” their tormentors. The Romanians “deserved” their Anna Rabinson, and the Bulgarians their murdered Dimitrov? Or will we not say these shameless nonsense?

Yes, the people are responsible for their government if they themselves are “of sound mind and memory” and if they freely chose it. And there is no doubt that since the people are organically connected with their government - not in the order of conquest, invasion, occupation, unscrupulous political deception, anti-national suppression, international domination and revolutionary terror, but in the order of peaceful, long, national development, in so far as between the legal consciousness of the people and the legal consciousness government there is an organic interaction and similarity. The veche, which freely elected a prince or mayor, was responsible for them. But who would dare say that the Russian people were responsible for Biron, who rose to power through base servility and anti-national suppression? There is no doubt that the Russian people would have to answer for their shameful “constituent assembly” of 1917 - if ... if they were then “of sound mind and strong memory”; but one can be absolutely sure that in his right state of health he would not have chosen such a “constituent.” Historically, the fact is undeniable: then the people were unsettled by the initial failures of the great war, they were unleashed by the extinguishing of the monarchical oath and were distraught - both by the revolutionary rule of the Februaryists and by the Bolshevik agitation. But how could the Russian people “deserve” to be subjugated by international deception and domination, by a totalitarian system of investigation and terror unprecedented in history, by revolutionary conquest, invasion and suppression? What brutal inclinations, what villainous soul, what hellish vices would he have to have in order to “deserve” all this? Who must this people be to “deserve” such treatment, such humiliation, such management? We will understand these words from the mouth of a German Nazi, who declared us “Untermensch” and killed millions of our brothers in captivity and at work, but we will never understand and forgive such words from the mouth of a man with a Russian surname and a Russian pen. But this is precisely the thought of Mr. Fedotov, expressed by him in the article “People and Power” (New Journal, book 21). We have long been accustomed to the fact that the writings of this “professor” are irresponsible, ambiguous and seductive. He hates “prerevolutionary Russia” with blind hatred and is always ready to denigrate it with blatant lies. Meanwhile, Russia - all that it was, from the veche to the State Duma, from Nestor to Pushkin, Dostoevsky and Leskov, from Sergius the Venerable to Benjamin of Petrograd and John of Latvia - was and is non-revolutionary and pre-revolutionary Russia. And so Mr. Fedotov’s judgments have a place not in the emigrant press, but in Pravda and Izvestia. For if he sometimes pronounces the truth, it is according to the method of the Soviet press - only in order to envelop and distort it in a veil of untruth and temptation. It is unforgivable for a Russian person who knows the Soviet system to say that the Russian people are responsible for their communist government, namely: “either for approving it, or for tolerating it.” Let Mr. Fedotov go there and teach the Russian people what ways there are to “not tolerate” the Soviet government. But he knows very well that there are no such methods, and prefers to irresponsibly brand those who raised uprising after uprising there, continuing the tradition of the White Army. It is unforgivable for a Russian person claiming to be a “historian” to say that “Russian ethics is egalitarian, collectivistic and totalitarian”; this is ignorant nonsense - she was always Christian-hearted, heart-fair and freedom-loving to the point of anarchy. It is unforgivable for a Russian person who considers himself educated to say that the Russian “monarchy has long ceased its educational mission bequeathed by Peter”, that the Russian “bureaucracy has made politics a matter of personal gain”, that the Orthodox “Church has thrown out social ethics from its everyday life and only knew how to defend power and wealth." All this is not true, all this is a temptation, all this is the corruption of emigration from the rear and propaganda against Russia, so useful to our foreign enemies and communists. And all this untruth (and many others!) did not need to be piled up in order to say in the end that

The Russian people need repentance. Yes, of course, he needs not only repentance, but long-term moral cleansing. But above all, Mr. Fedotov and similar detractors of historical Russia need him. “Every people deserves its own government”... No, on the contrary: every people deserves, both morally and politically, a better government than the one it has, because it is the best government that will make it the best. Every government is called upon to act in accordance with the instinct of self-preservation inherent in its people; each is called to see further than his people, to be wiser than them and to suggest to them the right paths of life. It’s time to understand this and not repeat the political vulgarity overheard abroad from the enemies and despisers of the Russian people.

Federation in the history of Russia In order to find the right and saving path for Russia, Russian political thinking must first of all free itself from formalism and doctrinaire and become grounded, organic and national-historical. The state system is not an empty and dead “form”: it is connected with the life of the people, with its nature, climate, with the size of the country, with its historical destinies, and - even deeper - with its character, with its religious faith, with the way of its feelings and will, with his legal consciousness, in a word, with what constitutes and defines him

"national act". The political system is a living order, growing out of all these data, expressing and reflecting them in its own way, adapted to them and inseparable from them. These are not “clothes” that people can throw off at any time to put on another; it is rather the “structure of the body” organically innate to him, it is his backbone, which bears his muscles, his organs, his blood circulation and his skin. People who imagine that the political system is something abstractly invented and arbitrarily changed, that it can be borrowed at discretion or taken “from someone else’s shoulder,” that all you have to do is “introduce it” and everything will go as planned, reveal complete political blindness. They are reminiscent of that crazy old woman who, while living at a resort, asked everyone in a row who was being treated with what and kept exclaiming: “Does this help you?!” maybe I should try this too?!” There could be only one answer to her: “Yes, it helps me, but it can ruin you!” So it is in politics... For, truly, it is foolish to imagine the state uniform as the most ridiculous of fancy dress costumes (“Bebe”), which can equally be put on a man and a woman, on an old and a young one, on a tall one and on a short one, on thick and thin: they all equally “masquerade” and “become foolish”... Neither in medicine, nor in politics are there any all-healing remedies or cures. People don't have all the right clothes. There is no single, all-encompassing state form. No and never will be!

So, for example, both before the revolution and in emigration there were naive Russian people who certainly demanded an “English constitutional monarchy” for Russia... Well, if they can turn Russia into a small island, with a maritime climate and worldwide navigation, with a thousand-year past Great Britain, with the English character, legal consciousness, way of feeling and will, with the English temperament and level of education - then their political demand will become meaningful. And if they cannot make such a transformation, then why baseless dreams and idle talk?!.. And this is the case in all matters of politics. This is how the problem of the federal system is solved. People who propose a federal system for Russia on the grounds that it “helps” some other nations must first of all ask themselves: “What does the history of Russia itself tell about this? Is there any data to hope for success in this matter? Carefully studying the history of Russia, we see that the opportunity to establish a federal unity was given to the Russian people four times: 1. - in the Kiev period, before the Tatar invasion (1000–1240); 2. – in the Suzdal-Moscow period, under the Tatar yoke (1240–1480); 3. – in the era of unrest (1605–1613); and finally 4. - in 1917 during the so-called “February Revolution”. Let's establish historical facts. 1. In the Kiev period, in Russia, not yet devastated by the Tatars, culturally flourishing and internationally respected, the creation of a single state on the basis of a treaty was facilitated, apparently, by the fact that the princes were closely related by blood to each other and listed their principalities in common undivided "dynastic" ownership. It would seem that the unity of Rus', conscious and

spoken by Vladimir Monomakh, as well as the pressure of the Turkic-Polovtsians, which lasted almost two centuries, should have led the princes to a saving, lasting unity. However, this required a legal consciousness of a strong and long “breath,” which did not exist in Rus'. The princes did not have it, who fueled their ambition and lust for power with the beginning of “tribal seniority” and personal competition when “moving” from city to city. The princely warriors did not have it, who often moved with the princes from fief to fief and became involved in their competition and enmity. He was not present at the veche, which generally represented a centrifugal force in the state and changed princes according to its mood. The princes did not trust each other, intrigued, waged endless strife and brought either the Polovtsians or the Poles to the Russian land. The motives of envy, ambition and self-interest prevailed. The beginning of the treaty in Rus' was fragile; Russian legal consciousness interpreted the obligations arising from the contract in a precarious manner (“my word, I gave it, I want it back”). Everyone agreed with each other for a period of time (princes in Lyubech 1097, warriors with princes, veche with princes), that is, until treason, often plotting treason itself at the moment of the “row” (agreement). It is enough, for example, to remember that Prince Vasilko Rostislavich was slandered by David Igorevich, treacherously captured by Svyatopolk Izyaslavich and barbarously blinded by him upon their very return from Lyubech, where everyone kissed the cross for mutual fidelity. Added to this were: the fragmentation of Rus' along with the proliferation of the clan; decay, characteristic of any large flat space; and that peculiar Slavic “persistence on one’s own”, which was already noted by ancient Byzantine writers. This is where these wise denunciations, pronounced in a groaning tone, come from, which we find in the “Tale of Igor’s Campaign” (XII century):

“Strife by the princes leads to filthy destruction: reproach for brother to brother - this is mine, otherwise this is mine - ... And the princes themselves commit sedition for themselves; and the trash themselves, with their victories, will appear on the Russian soil”...

As a result, the invading Mongols found Rus' in a state of confusion and helplessness. The rival princes turned out to be incapable of even a strategic conspiracy that could have put at their disposal an army of up to 300,000 warriors. The Mongols beat them separately; the heroism of the princes and their squads perished in vain; and the fate of Russia was sealed for 250 years... The Federation failed, and a unitary state was still far away. Vladimir Monomakh (died 1125) still hoped for a negotiated unification of Rus'. But already his grandchildren - Andrei Bogolyubsky (died in 1175) and Vsevolod the Big Nest (died in 1212) lost this hope. They seek salvation in autocracy; They are not looking for the division of the land into “volosts”, but for the expansion of their unified grand-ducal territory. They are supported in this by the common people (the “lesser”, “little” people) and the clergy, while the boyars and industrial merchants join the party of disintegration. Thus, the Monomakhovichs, popular among the people, for the first time uttered a new political word: the contractual principle is beyond the strength of Rus', there is no salvation in the federation, it is necessary to seek salvation in autocracy (unitary principle). 2. In the Suzdal-Moscow period, under the Tatars (1240–1480), it turned out that the princes did not understand the historical lesson given to them and did not learn free, contractual unity. They continued to split their inheritances, wage endless, cruel strife among themselves, denounce each other to the Golden Horde, crush each other with Tatar forces and weaken Rus' politically and strategically. National feeling diminished, national unity faded, and the beginning of a state federation again failed in Russia. “For 234 years (1228– 1462), northern Rus' endured 90 internal strife” and “everything influential, thoughtful and well-intentioned in Russian society” learned to appreciate the autocracy of the Moscow prince (Klyuchevsky, II., pp. 56–57). This autocracy developed and strengthened slowly but steadily: the line of tribal seniority was gradually replaced by the line of direct sonship; the principality became the personal property of the prince, a hereditary fiefdom,

which he, as a settled owner, bequeathed to his children at his discretion; and, finally, there was a desire to promote the eldest son’s destiny as the main and sole power. It is remarkable that the idea of state unity in Russia was still put forward by the Monomakhovich family. The great-great-grandson of Vladimir Monomakh, Alexander Yaroslavich Nevsky, serves her in word, deed and sword (d. 1263). His son, Daniil Alexandrovich of Moscow, begins the autocratic gathering of Rus' on behalf of Moscow. It was on this path that Russia was saved from the Tatar yoke, united, pacified and exalted not by a federal, but by a unitary and authoritarian statehood. The Russians failed to achieve treaty unity for the second time. Slavic blood was drawn to individualization; the endless plain encouraged this craving; legal consciousness, feeding on religious feeling and unformed national feeling, did without the traditions of Roman law and strict volitional education; the small-state cell, as always and everywhere, kindled personal ambition and lust for power; and as a result of all this, the biological individual insisted on instinctive individualization and did not sufficiently develop into a civic and morally disciplined person. All these features were not overcome in the subsequent history of Russia; and to this day they represent the main difficulty and danger of Russian statehood. In view of this, salvation had to be sought as before not in a federation, but in a unitary form, that is, in an authoritative autocracy.

3. During the Time of Troubles (1606–1613), when the country disintegrated into anarchy prepared by the breaking reforms of Ivan the Terrible; when robbery and murder became an everyday occurrence; when people lost their residence and work, and as a result, their faith in honest work; when impostors, up to fifteen in number, wandered around Rus'; when the Russian and Polish mob destroyed the people and the state; when people were stolen and exhausted and the area of living agriculture was reduced to one twenty-third of its former size, then the beginning of a strategic unification was put forward from the periphery and, moreover, precisely by the northern cities. However, not in order to extinguish the Moscow autocracy and replace it with a federation, but in order to save Russia by restoring an authoritarian and unitary monarchy. The fate of the first militia, corrupted by the betrayal of the Cossacks, continued to testify to the great difficulty of even a patrioticstrategic agreement in Rus'. The fate of the second militia, which met near Moscow with the same willful betrayal (for part of the Cossacks went with Zarutsky to Kolomna, and the other part still dreamed of robbing all the military men and marrying them off from Moscow”...), testified to the same thing. The Russian people were once again convinced that federation was not and would not be given to them - and they did not hope for it. Everyone was thinking about the new Tsar: some about Vladislav of Poland, others about his father Sigismund, others about Philip of Sweden, others even about the Habsburgs, others about the “Marinka Little Raven”, others and the best ones about the Russian “born” Sovereign... But everyone a united and non-federal Rus' was presented. So, at the Zemsky Sobor of 1613, the question was not about a method of saving unity, but about a person capable of ruling Russia as a sovereign.

4. And again the “time of troubles” came in Rus' in 1917. Under the cover of the Provisional Government, which reduced state power to “appeals” and “persuasions” and stubbornly avoided any coercive measures, anarchy broke out in Russia - political, military, economic-organizational and criminal. Freed by the Sovereign and his Heir from the monarchical oath, encouraged by the anarchy of the Provisional Government and seduced by the propaganda of left-wing parties, the people “destroyed Rus'”, preparing the final collapse of the Russian state. The national tragedy led to the fact that sober patriotic forces, who fought unanimously for the state unity of Russia, were forced to retire to the outskirts in order to fight revolutionary anarchy from the periphery to the center; the central one

the position was captured by the revolutionary dictatorship, which gradually established “unity” in the country, but an anti-national and anti-state unity, a unity without a homeland, outside of law, outside of freedom, a unity of terror and slavery, in order to call this unitary tyranny “federal” state, and thereby violate both the federal and unitary forms of statehood... Thus, anarchy for the fourth time destroyed the federal principle in the history of Russia. One must be a completely short-sighted and politically naive person to imagine that this historically proven thousand-year inability of the Russian people to federate has now been replaced, as a result of long humiliations and deep demoralization, by the art of building small states, loyally obeying laws, observing eternal treaties and overcoming political differences of opinion. for the sake of the common good. In fact, there is every reason to expect the opposite.

About Russian national identity Modern generations of Russian people are going through a difficult historical school, which should free them from all political and national illusions and open their eyes to the uniqueness of the Russian people, to the precious originality of their culture, to their state tasks and to their enemies. Enough with blindness, naivety and gullibility! Anyone who loves Russia is obliged to observe vigilantly, think objectively and draw conclusions. Only then will the lessons sent down to us not be in vain. Living in pre-revolutionary Russia, none of us took into account the extent to which organized public opinion in the West was opposed to Russia and against the Orthodox Church. We visited Western Europe, studied its culture, communicated with representatives of its science, its religion, its politics, and naively assumed that they would have the same friendly complacency towards us with which we approach them; and they watched us, not understanding us and leaving their thoughts and intentions to themselves. We, of course, read from the perspicacious and wise N. Ya. Danilevsky these warning, precise words: “Europe does not know (us) because it does not want to know; or better to say, she knows as she wants to know, that is, in accordance with her preconceived opinions, passions, pride, hatred and contempt” (we will only add: and her power-hungry intentions). We read and thought: “Is this really true? But, after all, we have allies in Europe? After all, Europe takes into account the voice of the Russian government and even curries favor with Russia! Not all people there are charged with hatred... And why would they hate us?

Now we are obliged to accurately answer all these questions for ourselves; Danilevsky was right. Western peoples are afraid of our numbers, our space, our unity, our growing power (while it is, in fact, growing), our mental and spiritual structure, our faith and church, our intentions, our economy and our army. They are afraid of us; and for complacency they convinced themselves - with the help of newspapers, books, sermons and speeches, confessional, diplomatic and military intelligence, behind-the-scenes and salon whispers - that the Russian people are a barbaric people, stupid, insignificant, accustomed to slavery and despotism, to lawlessness and cruelty; that his religiosity consists of dark superstition and empty rituals; that his bureaucracy is characterized by widespread corruption; that a war with him can always be won through bribery; that he can easily be provoked to revolution and infected with reformation - and then dismembered in order to crush him, and crush him in order to remake him in his own way, imposing on him his callous rationality, his “faith” and his state form. Russian emigrants who love Russia and are faithful to it, who do not disappear into other people’s confessionals and do not serve in foreign intelligence services, are obliged to know all this, to monitor that contemptuous hatred and the plans being hatched; they have neither the grounds nor the right to expect salvation from the West, nor from Pilsudski, nor from Hitler, nor from the Vatican, nor from Eisenhower, nor from the world behind the scenes. Russia has no sincere well-wishers in the world. The Russian people can only rely on God and themselves. The Russian people can only free themselves: in slow torment, grind away the Bolshevik yoke; instill national Russianness in the party periphery; strengthen your spiritual strength in catacomb Orthodoxy; and slowly but steadily undermine the Soviet system, its bureaucracy and its terrorist grip; and then - wait for a favorable world situation, throw off the hypnosis of communist devilry and return to your historical path. And we, Russian patriots scattered everywhere, must understand this, pronounce it to ourselves and, helping with all our might to this internal process, prepare for this historical hour in order to rush to the aid of our people in time - with firm faith in God, with new creative ideas, with thoughtful plans, with all the strong-willed energy that would then be required from a Russian person.

The Russian people will be liberated and reborn only through independence and each of us

(regardless of age and generation) will be all the more necessary for him, the more he manages to maintain his independence, his independent view, his energy, his spiritual “unsoldness” and “unmortgaged” in emigration. We know that there are people who think and act differently, all the time trying to “tie their shuttle to the stern of a big ship”: to cling to “Pilsudski”, then to “Hitler”, then to the Vatican, then to the world behind the scenes. And, knowing this, we warn them: their ways are anti-national, spiritually false and historically hopeless. If they are “supported”, then only on a certain condition: to serve not Russia, but the interests of the supporter; to take into account not the Russian national good, but the program of money-givers. They may be helped - but not to save and build Russia, but to act in it on the instructions of someone else's headquarters or someone else's government; in other words, they will be helped to acquire the title of foreign agents and Russian traitors and forever deserve the contempt of the Russian people. Do we really need to remember the history of these thirty years? The story of how the Russian White armies were abandoned by the French in the south, the British in the north and the Czechoslovaks in Siberia; the story of how Pilsudski treated Denikin and Wrangel; how Baron Malzahn negotiated with the Soviets in Rapallo; how Lloyd George hastened to start trading with the “cannibals”, and the German Reich Chancellor Wirth invested Vatican capital in forest concessions in the Russian north; how in Moscow Brockdorff-Rantzau entertained Chicherin at night with music and something else; how Father (and then Prelate) Michel d'Herbigny traveled to Moscow twice (1926 and 1928) to conclude a “concordat” with Satan, known to him, and, returning, printed abominations about the Russian people and the Orthodox Church... Is it really all this and much more? much else forgotten? It would be extremely interesting to read the honestly written memoirs of those Russian patriots who tried to “work” with Hitler: did they find an understanding of the “Russian problem”? sympathy for the suffering of the Russian people? agreement to liberate and revive Russia? at least on the terms of “eternal German-Russian friendship”? And one more thing: when did they manage to realize that they were being brazenly deceived? When did they realize that neither foreign policy (in general!) nor war (in general!) are waged because of other people's interests? When did each of them come to the moment when he, hitting himself on the head with his fist, called himself “a political blind man mixed up in a dirty story,” or also “a naive squire of the Russian national enemy”?.. For years we have been observing all such attempts by Russian emigrants and again and again we ask ourselves: from what clouds did these ordinary people fall to earth? where do they get these sentimental dreams about the “selflessness” of international politics and the “wisdom” of foreign headquarters? Where do they get this confidence that it is they who will be able to “persuad” and lead such and such (no matter what!) a united foreign center with its preconceived decisions, and not that it will play them and use them as runaway semi-traitors? There were so many of them, such undertakings! They started, they hoped, they calculated, they wrote, they served, they “cooked,” they whispered and boasted about their successes... And what came out of all this?.. But there were also more “smart” ones: these soon realized that Russian patriotism did not promise success, that it was necessary to go for separatism and dismemberment of Russia. Before our eyes, one such “figure” invented the idea of “a Turanian national minority, oppressed by Russian despotism and eager to accept the Catholic faith”; and now, he had already been given a speech before members of the Hungarian parliament, to whom he outlined his “projects”, and he had already received the Hungarian order... And then? Then he died, and Hungary fell first to Hitler and then to Stalin. Meanwhile, a group of emigrant separatists whispered with the Germans about the “liberation” (?!) of Ukraine and created a powerful center of separatist and anti-Russian propaganda in Berlin, until Hitler dispersed them as unnecessary. And right there, before our very eyes, Russian emigrants poured into the world behind the scenes, hoping to instill in it understanding and sympathy for Russia, and left the stage: some publicly announcing that they had stumbled upon a demand for blind obedience and a rock-solid enmity towards national Russia, others voluntarily disappearing

behind the Iron Curtain, others, surrendering their positions and ending their lives in the cemetery.

The years passed and the convulsions of World War II ended. And so the same attempts began again to “tie your shuttle to the stern of a large ship,” agreeing in advance with its course and direction. And again you ask yourself: what is this - the same childish naivety or much worse?! For, in essence, none of the foreigners saw the light in anything, changed their minds, changed their attitude towards national Russia in any way, and did not recover from their contempt and lust for power. And those of us who have the opportunity to follow world public opinion, anxiously foresee in the future the same movement along the same rails, leading Western politicians to the dead end of previous mistakes.

No, Russia will be saved only by independence, and we all need to guard our complete spiritual independence!

About the revival of Russia When Russian patriots talk about the revival of Russia, they usually imagine the restoration of a worthy state form, the resumption of a meaningful economy based on private property, and the revival of a free Russian culture. It seems that the totalitarian regime will collapse, the intervention of the communist state in all spheres of human life will cease, free, creative initiative will be revived - and Russia will rise up like a long-sleeping hero... We have absolutely no doubt that everything mentioned is necessary and that it will be useful and significant, but we constantly think with sadness that all this is not enough; that there is something else, the most significant and deepest, such that is not mentioned here, but which constitutes the very nature of human existence: these are the personal qualities and attractions of a person; this is how he will behave in his personal life; and even deeper: this is his faith, his conscience and loyalty; this is his character; it is what he is capable of accomplishing in public life and what he cannot help but do. In a word, the matter does not at all come down to the external order, structure and “success” of life, but to the internal structure, structure and character of a person. With outward decency, order and freedom of social life, a person can raise in himself a godless, unscrupulous and shameless traitor, a corrupt scoundrel, a frightened and trembling sycophant - in a word, a pathetic and pity-worthy creature, on whom there is no state, much less a great and glorious spiritual life. You can’t build a culture. The more depravity nests behind the screens of parliament and all institutions, the closer the state will be to turmoil and ruin, the more unbearable the historical trials will be for it. And if there is a lot of this corruption and depravity, if the Russian people measure everything in life by personal greed, and not by material dignity, then how will we revive Russia? What can we oppose to the pressure of external forces seeking to instill corruption and disintegrate our fatherland? How do we cope with the temptations of anger, revenge, actual seizure (robbery), lies, denunciation and, most importantly, corruption? And if we do not cope with these pressures and temptations, then we will not revive Russia, but will betray it to the world behind the scenes and squander it on the world market... Russia collapsed before our eyes not because the Russian man was strong in evil and malice, like the Germans, but because he was weak in good; and in the fateful hour of history (1917) he was unable to extract from his good nature and fatigue, from his smiling, songful and lazy soul - that energy of will, that determination of action, that art of organization, that ability to resist evil with force, which the hour demanded of him tests. The Russian man turned out to be weak in goodness and submitted to non-Russian people, who constitute an insignificant minority in the country (about 50,000 Bolsheviks), but who turned out to be strong in evil, strong in dishonesty and the will to power, strong in direct and ferocious murder. And then something unprecedented and unheard of happened in history: an evil minority, having seized power, brought the good-natured majority of the people to their knees in order to remake them, break their moral backbone, and finally mix up the concepts of good and evil, honor and dishonor, right and wrong - and accustom him to unconditional obedience through hunger and fear. It was a systematic school of evil and betrayal, the main principle of which was formulated by the security officer Yakov Agranov in 1921: “moral is what is useful at the moment for the international proletariat (i.e., the Bolsheviks)”... It was a school that always threatened with unemployment and the destruction of the family , exile, concentration camp and death. Everyone was captured by it: no one could evade it. It was a school of eternal pretense, lies and denunciation... Will Russian history forget about that village Komsomol member who denounced his mother about her “stealing” ears of grain from the “collective” field (she wanted to cook porridge for his little brothers!)? The mother was shot, and the informer was glorified as an example throughout the Soviet press, with his vile portrait reproduced? How can we forget the voice of the Moscow favorite artist V. I. Kachalov -

Shverubovich, demanding the death penalty for innocent people from the former industrial bourgeoisie. For 35 years now, Russian people, forced and intimidated by Soviet power, have been betraying each other in order to save themselves; they swear allegiance to Marxism and “diamatism” without understanding anything about them; enroll in a party that is considered the destroyer of their homeland; they try to think and say what they are told to do; inform on neighbors and colleagues under the threat of dismissal from service, i.e., family hunger; demonstrate devotion and “pathos” that they do not have; they hide their faith, praising atheism and unbelief - in a word, they betray Orthodoxy and Russia, serving the Bolsheviks and wasting the last traces of their own views and convictions. Truth and lies are mixed together. When signing a false interrogation report, a Russian person must add the word “sincerely,” knowing that the entire content of what was written contradicts the truth. Good and evil have become indistinguishable: everything is built on class and personal hatred, on vulgar and deceitful flattery without end and edge, on the mechanism of established formulas. And during the war years, the official church was also involved in this system of lies, as publicly testified by Exarch of the Baltic Sergius, who was subsequently killed by security officers on the highway. We know very well that this Bolshevik depravity spreading in Russia is forced; that almost everyone who succumbs to it goes through a more or less long period of persuasion, threats, deprivations, dismissals, semi-exiles, exiles, arrests, prisons and, of course, deliberately invented humiliations. In order to break the back of a strong person, it takes, of course, more effort and time than that of a weak one; but a strong man can be shot. We also know that in Russia there are people so strong that they develop for themselves a kind of mask, a guise of imaginary loyalty in face and in words; They have been abroad and can be seen inside Russia. But what exactly they think and feel, no one knows about this, not even the Gepeuk about the Gepeuk. We know, finally, that in Russia there are certain heroes of the spirit, connected in one way or another with the secret Church, which does not accept the “patriarch” Alexei with his prayers for the “leader” Joseph Vissarionovich and the success of his worldwide villainy. We know how to honor and appreciate these heroes, and we have no doubt about their religious and historical significance; on them and from them the true one will be reborn An Orthodox Church that will be able to repel Catholics, atheists, Protestants, and their countless sects. So, the demoralization that has now settled in Russia is not free, but imposed; we must not forget this. The Russian people did not themselves become impoverished in the qualities of their soul, but were robbed through fear, hunger and humiliation. The sprouts of goodness and the instinct for evil are still alive in him; we have plenty of living evidence for this. And when we read in the messages of a Polish Jew who returned from there, how he, being a librarian, first to feed himself, and then to protect himself from denunciations, tore pages from books and sold them for smoking, then we have no doubt that he never voluntarily I would treat neither the Torah, nor the Talmud, or indeed any book that deserves this name. People in the Soviet Union are forced to steal in order not to die; women - to indulge in the vile caresses of a communist in order to feed their mother and children; everyone must publicly express feelings that they have never had... And all this is attributed by foreigners to the “Russians”, as if the very quality of Russianness remained free and as if Russia remained a free national space on earth...

However, what is important to us now is not the delusions or predatory intentions of foreigners (no matter which ones!), but the state of the Russian soul and the Russian spirit. This state should be designated as humiliated and depraved. It is possible to deny this only by losing a living sense of good and evil. Insecurity always humiliates a person and corrupts him. But that is precisely why she sets him the first and main task: to realize this humiliation and recognize this depravity. It must

be realized in a great and nationwide act of repentance.

We understand that we speak and see all the great difficulties of this sacred matter. But the Russian people will not be able to be reborn without purifying themselves, and will not be able to purify themselves without recognizing from the depths of their hearts their current state as humiliated and corrupted. In Russia, all non-communists are humiliated; for they dare not think out loud and act from free conviction; Moreover, they completely lose the ability to have conviction - or they go to the “secret church”. They are humiliated by the fact that out of fear they must turn their lives into complete pretense and hypocrisy and work for their intimidators (enemies of Russia!..). And there are hardly many who, wearing this mask, keep in the depths of their souls a pure and faithful act of independent personal conviction, or, let’s say even more and more sacredly, an act of free faith. Essentially speaking, free faith in the Soviet state is a prohibited, illegal and disloyal state; as well as free belief and free speech. This doesn't need proof; this is reliably known to everyone who, being capable of free faith, free conviction and free speech, tried to realize these precious states contrary to the dominant and generally binding worldview... His fate was predetermined. And whoever doubts this, let him read the wonderful confessional books of the priest Father Michael of Poland... And without free faith and without free convictions, life inevitably turns into humiliating and corrupting slavery.

So, the Russian people need repentance and cleansing. Tens of years of diabolical Bolshevism have already purified some and trampled others into the dirt. And so, those who have been purified must help those who have not been purified to restore in themselves a living Christian conscience, faith in the power of good, a true sense of evil, a sense of honor and the ability to be faithful. Without this, Russia cannot be revived and its greatness cannot be recreated. Without this, the Russian state, after the inevitable fall of Bolshevism, will crumble into abyss and mud. And it would be in vain for anyone to argue that this process became possible and even began after the treacherous concordat between the Bolsheviks and the so-called “patriarchal church.” This concordat could only lock those sacred doors that lead deep into the soul to tearful repentance and volitional cleansing. It is monstrous to offer a Russian person trust in security officers and semi-security officers! It is corrupting to think and talk about the fact that the sacrament of repentance can be performed before the Antichrist. It is pointless to indulge oneself with illusions of moral purification before the “upcoming” and victorious devil. Repentance is the establishment of a sacred and pure connection with the Lord, and not with Satan and his (it makes no difference whether they are faithful or unfaithful) servants. All the difficulties of this penitential cleansing must be thought through and overcome: for religious people in the order of the church (according to confessions), for non-religious people - in the order of secular literature, which is sufficiently sincere and deep, and then in the order of personal conscientious action. We must understand and think through to the end the nature of the corrupting poison that the communists wield; all the capabilities and forces of the state are overextended and used to the end in order to make people deceitful and cowardly slaves. And so, the Russian person must find this deceitful and cowardly slave within himself, trace him in all the nooks and crannies of his soul and cast him out as befits a free, worthy and spiritual person. Without this, Russia will not be reborn.

We must prepare the coming Russia The question has been raised more than once in emigration: is it now possible to draw up a future Russian “constitution”, that is, to set out in the form of a series of bills the state structure of the future Russia? – I think that this is not feasible now; and, moreover, because we do not have specific data: we do not know the time (when will this be?), space (in what territory?), the national composition of the future Russia, its social structure, the state of the people's legal consciousness, its economic and international position. A “Constitution” would be a conclusion from two premises: first, the fundamental principles which we consider true and necessary; second – specific data; conclusion – “constitution”. But we do not have a second premise and therefore the conclusion is impossible. But some fundamental principles can and should be agreed upon now. 1. And so, first of all, let us establish that, unlike the pre-revolutionary Russian intelligentsia, which considered only abstract “ideals,” our generations must think realistically and historically, in order not to fall into dreamy, abstract, lifeless programs like anarchists of all shades (from Kropotkin to Rodichev), or constitutional democrats (from Kokoshkin to Miliukov), or all kinds of socialist parties. To think realistically means to proceed from the Russian historical, national, sovereign and psychological reality, in the form in which we inherited it. We cannot, together with Peter Kropotkin, preach the free redistribution of property in the square (all household junk is dumped in one pile and everyone, at his own discretion, freely takes for himself whatever he likes). But we cannot believe, together with Rodichev, that as soon as the monarchy falls, “everything will go smoothly and everything will fall into place because everyone will embrace freely and brotherly...” We cannot, together with moderate liberals, demand an “English constitution” for Russia “, for our climate, our character, our history, our sense of justice, our territorial composition, our education and our faith are completely different from those in England. But we cannot believe, together with F. F. Kokoshkin, who enjoyed the greatest respect in the German scientific world, that Russia will find its salvation in universal and equal suffrage and its unity in federal dismemberment. Politics is not a fantasy or a utopia; and a fantasizing politician is engaged in harmful work. The experience of our generation is sufficient to leave these chimeras behind once and for all.

2. Let us further establish that all state recipes, ideas and slogans have become dead, weathered or distorted over the past 30 years. We must not and dare not take anything for granted; everything is subject to revision, new understanding, in-depth criticism, new content. The concepts of freedom, equality, democracy, suffrage, republic, monarchy, federation, socialism were hitherto understood formally, in isolation from legal consciousness and its axioms, in isolation from the people’s mental structure and from the national tasks of the state. It was believed, and in the West it is still generally believed, that freedom and equality are indisputable ideals; that democracy is an axiom for every “decent” person; that election is always higher and more useful than appointment; that a monarchy is always worse than a republic; that the enemy of the federation is the enemy of the human race; that socialism can only be rejected by supporters of capitalist exploitation, etc... We cannot take on faith all these party and often disastrous prejudices. We cannot proceed from this, just as we cannot proceed from the indisputability of the opposite provisions. We must reconsider the political “ideals” of the pre-revolutionary intelligentsia and reject everything that is untenable. We must reject the very way of posing political questions - dreamy-doctrinaire, rational-formal, international, searching-demagogic. Before us is not an “ideal”, not a “dream” and not a “doctrine”, but the vital task of recreating Russia. And we must understand Russia as a living, organic-historical, one-of-a-kind, Russian-hereditary state, with its special faith, with special traditions and needs.

3. But this is precisely why we should not chase other people’s supranational abstract forms of life. There is not and cannot be a single state form that would be the best for all times and peoples. What is politically constructive in one country, among one people, in one era, with such and such a climate, temperament, economy, can turn out to be destructive in other conditions. Therefore, Western Europe and America, which does not know Russia, do not have the slightest reason to impose on us any political forms, neither democratic nor fascist... We are ready to repeat this a hundred times: Russia will not be saved by any types of Westernism, neither old nor new. All political forms and means of humanity are useful to know and understand correctly. But a creative combination of them and others, still unknown, must be chosen and created by Russia itself, must be prompted by its own tasks, in addition to any foreign prescriptions or its own prejudices and doctrines. We must understand and remember that any pressure from the West, no matter where it comes from, will pursue not Russian, but goals alien to Russia, not historical interest, not the good of the Russian people, but the interest of a pressing power and an extorting organization... Therefore, the behavior of Russian people and parties quietly conspiring with one or another foreign power or behind-the-scenes international organization about the future structure of Russia seems to us to be a manifestation of either irresponsible political frivolity or outright betrayal.

So we must reckon with only two great realities: A. With historically given Russia, with its goals and interests. B. With correctly understood and assimilated axioms of legal consciousness and statehood, nurtured in us by two thousand years of Christian experience. The future Russian state structure must be a living and true conclusion from Russian history and from these Christian indisputable axioms, but so as not to strive to implement these axioms blindly, to the extent of utopian maximalism, but to the extent of their historical capacity in the living fabric of modern Russian people's life . 4. It is especially important now to extract the idea of state and politics from that prerevolutionary vulgarity and from that revolutionary mud into which this idea has imperceptibly become entangled in Western democracies and in the communist regime. On the one hand, politics is not at all a combination of mass demagoguery and calculated behind-the-scenes intrigue, ambitious hustle and unprincipled compromise, party dominance and meaningless blind voting. On the other hand, it is not at all reducible to violence and treachery, to despotism and terror, to class struggle and totalitarian methods of government. Politics is not the dark business of despicable rogues. When an official begins to trade in his business, as we see today in some of the largest democracies in the world, or when he becomes an outright robber, as is the case under communism; or vice versa - when an adventurer and a robber become officials - then the state goes to destruction. In fact, politics has completely different tasks, a completely different nature, a completely different spiritual core, namely: the powerfully inspired solidarity of the people; authoritative education of personal, free legal consciousness; defense of the country and spiritual flowering of culture; creating a national future through taking into account the national past, collected in the national present. This requires people of high spiritual strength, people of the first rank. That is why it is necessary to express, prove and vitally inculcate the view that state and political activity requires not a clever rogue, not a cunning intriguer or something even worse, but a man of religious and morally strong character, a man of quality and called to power.

It requires high-willed, moral, educational and professional qualifications. This is not a public matter at all, not amateurish, not street. Hence, in a high sense, the aristocratic nature of the state, not in the class, but in the spiritual sense; hence the importance of moral and mental tradition, the selection of characters and professional training. Humanity will soon begin to openly declare that one cannot tolerate the political promotion of a scoundrel only on the basis that he promised to become pleasing to the backstage or popular among the masses. Politics requires quality people. Only they will be able to carry out all the compromises related to politics without sacrificing either themselves or state power. In politics, cunning, violence, and sometimes cruelty are necessary. But the people instinctively sense the real extent of the need for such compromises and forgive the wise politician a lot in the name of the main and fundamental thing. There are unclean sides and deeds in politics and government; they cannot be denied; you can't deny them. But that is why politics requires a big idea, clean hands and sacrificial service.

The West does not know or value Russia Wherever we, Russian national emigrants, are in our exile, we must remember that other peoples do not know us and do not understand that they are afraid of Russia, do not sympathize with it and are ready to rejoice at any weakening of it. Only small Serbia instinctively sympathized with Russia, but without knowledge or understanding of it; and only the United States is instinctively inclined to prefer a unified national Russia as a nondangerous antipode and a large, loyal and solvent buyer. In other countries and among other peoples, we are alone, incomprehensible and “unpopular”. This is not a new phenomenon. It has its own history. M.V. Lomonosov and A.S. Pushkin were the first to understand the uniqueness of Russia, its distinctiveness from Europe, its “non-Europeanness.” F. M. Dostoevsky and N. Ya. Danilevsky were the first to understand that Europe does not know us, does not understand us and does not love us. Many years have passed since then, and we had to experience and confirm for ourselves that all these great Russian people were perspicacious and right. Western Europe does not know us, firstly, because the Russian language is alien to it. In the ninth century, the Slavs lived in the very center of Europe: from Kiel to Magdeburg and Halle, beyond the Elbe, in the “Bohemian Forest”, in Carinthia, Croatia and the Balkans. The Germans systematically conquered them, massacred their upper classes and, having thus "decapitated" them, subjected them to denationalization. Europe itself displaced the Slavs to the east and south. And in the south they were conquered, but not denationalized, by the Turkish yoke. This is how it happened that the Russian language became alien and “difficult” for Western Europeans. And without a language, the people are dumb (“German”).

Western Europe does not know us, secondly, because Russian (Orthodox) religiosity is alien to it. From time immemorial, Europe was ruled by Rome - first pagan, then Catholic, adopting the basic traditions of the first. But in Russian history it was not the Roman, but the Greek tradition that was adopted. “The Greek religion, separate from all others, gives us a special national character” (Pushkin). Rome has never responded to our spirit and our character. His self-confident, imperious and cruel will always repelled the Russian conscience and the Russian heart. And we, without distorting it, perceived the Greek religion in such a unique way that one can speak of its “Greekness” only in a conditional, historical sense. Europe does not know us, thirdly, because the Slavic-Russian contemplation of the world, nature and man is alien to it. Western European humanity moves by will and reason. A Russian person lives first of all with his heart and imagination, and only then with his will and mind. Therefore, the average European is ashamed of sincerity, conscience and kindness as “stupidity”; Russian people, on the contrary, expect from a person, first of all, kindness, conscience and sincerity. European legal consciousness is formal, callous and egalitarian; Russian is formless, good-natured and fair. A European, raised by Rome, privately despises other peoples (and European ones too) and wants to rule over them; For this, he demands formal “freedom” and formal “democracy” within the state. Russian people have always enjoyed the natural freedom of their space, the freedom of stateless life and settlement, and the freedom of their internal individualization; he was always “surprised” by other peoples, got along good-naturedly with them and only hated invading enslavers; he valued freedom of spirit above formal legal freedom - and if other peoples and peoples had not disturbed him, did not interfere with his life, then he would not have taken up arms and would not have achieved power over them.

From all this arose a deep difference between Western and Eastern Russian culture. Our whole culture is different, our own; and moreover, because we have a different, special spiritual way of life. We have completely different churches, different worship, different

kindness, different courage, different family structure; We have a completely different literature, different music, theater, painting, dance; not such a science, not such a medicine, not such a court, not such an attitude towards crime, not such a sense of rank, not such an attitude towards our heroes, geniuses and kings. And at the same time, our soul is open to Western culture: we see it, study it, know it, and if there is something, we learn from it; we master their languages and appreciate the art of their best artists; we have the gift of empathy and transformation.

Europeans do not have this gift. They understand only what is similar to them, but even then they distort everything in their own way. For them, Russian is foreign, restless, alien, strange, unattractive. Their dead heart is dead to us too. They proudly look down on us and consider our culture either insignificant or some kind of big and mysterious “misunderstanding”... And nothing has changed in this for thirty years of revolution. So in mid-August 1948, a congress of the so-called “church-ecumenical” movement took place in Switzerland, in which 12 prominent Swiss theologians and pastors (of the Reformed Church) were chosen for the same “world” congress in Amsterdam. And what? The congress was dominated by “brotherly” sympathy for Marxism, the Soviet Church and the Soviet state, and a dead, cold, disdainful attitude towards national Russia, its Church and culture. The question of Russian culture, its spirituality and religious identity was not raised at all: it was equated to zero. Marxism is “theirs” for them, European, acceptable; and the Soviet communist is closer and more understandable to them than Seraphim Sarovsky, Suvorov, Peter the Great, Pushkin, Tchaikovsky and Mendeleev. The same thing happened later at the “world” congress in Amsterdam, where a monstrous mixture of Christianity and communism was being prepared. So, Western Europe does not know Russia. But the unknown is always scary. And Russia is huge in terms of its population, territory and natural resources. The huge unknown is always experienced as a real danger. Especially after Russia in the 18th and 19th centuries showed Europe the valor of its soldier and the genius of its historical commanders. Since Peter the Great, Europe has been wary of Russia; with Saltykov (Kunersdorf), Suvorov and Alexander the First Europe is afraid of Russia. “What if this overhanging mass from the east moves west? The last two world wars have reinforced this fear. The world politics of the communist revolution has turned it into unceasing anxiety.

But fear humiliates a person; therefore he covers it with contempt and hatred. Ignorance, saturated with fear, contempt and hatred, fantasizes, maligns and invents. True, we saw captured Germans and Austrians who returned to Europe from Russian camps and dreamed of Russia and the Russian people. But the European majority and especially its democratic ministers feed on ignorance, fear Russia and constantly dream of its weakening.

For a hundred and fifty years now, Western Europe has been afraid of Russia. No Russian service to the pan-European cause (the Seven Years' War, the fight against Napoleon, the salvation of Prussia in 1806–1815, the salvation of Austria in 1849, the salvation of France in 1875, the peacefulness of Alexander III, the Hague Conference, the sacrificial struggle with Germany 1914–1917) – does not outweigh in the face of this fear; no nobility and selflessness of the Russian Sovereigns dispelled this European malice. And when Europe saw that Russia had become a victim of the Bolshevik revolution, it decided that this was the triumph of European civilization, that the new democracy would dismember and weaken Russia, that it was possible to stop being afraid of it, and that Soviet communism meant “progress” and “calm” for Europe . What blindness! What a misconception! This is where this basic attitude of Europe towards Russia comes from: Russia is a mysterious, semi-barbaric “emptiness”; it must be “evangelized” or converted to

Catholicism, "colonize" (literally) and civilize; if necessary, it can and should be used for its trade and for its Western European goals and intrigues; however, it must be weakened in every possible way. How? By involving her at an unfavorable moment in wars that were ruinous for her; preventing it from accessing the free seas; if possible, then by dividing it into small states; if possible, then by reducing its population (for example, through maintaining Bolshevism with its terror - the German policy of 1917-1939); if possible, then by planting revolutions and civil wars in it (following the example of China); and then - by the introduction of an international backstage into Russia, the persistent imposition on the Russian people of Western European forms of republic, democracy and federalism that are beyond their strength, its political and diplomatic isolation, the tireless denunciation of its imaginary “imperialism”, its imaginary “reactionality”, its “lack of culture” and aggressiveness "

We must understand all this, make sure of it and never forget it. Not in order to respond to enmity with hatred, but in order to correctly foresee events and not succumb to those so characteristic of the Russian soul sentimental illusions.

We need sobriety and vigilance. In the world there are peoples, states, governments, church centers, behind-the-scenes organizations and individuals who are hostile to Russia, especially Orthodox Russia, especially imperial and undivided Russia. Just as there are “Anglophobes”, “Germanophobes”, “Japanophobes”, so the world is replete with “Russophobes”, enemies of national Russia, who promise themselves every success from its collapse, humiliation and weakening. This must be thought through and felt to the end. Therefore, no matter who we talk to, no matter who we turn to, we must vigilantly and soberly measure him by the measure of his sympathies and intentions in relation to a united, national Russia and not expect salvation from the conqueror, help from the dismemberer, or help from the religious seducer. - sympathy and understanding, from the destroyer - benevolence and from the slanderer - truth. Politics is the art of recognizing and neutralizing the enemy. Of course, it doesn’t come down to this. But those who are incapable of this will do better if they do not interfere in politics.

World politics of Russian sovereigns On January 21, 1933, in issue No. 4690 of the French magazine L'Illustration, a remarkable article was published by the Italian historian Guilelmo Ferrero, who spent the last part of his life in Geneva and died there in 1941. The article entitled “Former Russia and the World Balance” expresses a number of true and fair thoughts about the world politics of the Russian Sovereigns in the 19th century. These thoughts sounded in Europe, as in a country of the deaf and dumb, and did not, of course, have the slightest influence on the public opinion that had taken root here. Europe does not know Russia, does not understand its people, its history, its socio-political system and its faith. She never understood her Sovereigns, the enormity of their task, their policies, the nobility of their intentions and the human limit of their capabilities... And, strangely, every time someone who knows tries to speak the truth and correct the cause of general ignorance, he encounters evasive indifference and unfriendly silence. They don’t object to him, they don’t refute him, they simply “stay with their own.” Europe does not need the truth about Russia; she needs a lie that is convenient for her. Its press is ready to print the latest nonsense about us, if this nonsense has the character of blasphemy and slander. It is enough for any hater of Russia, for example, from the “Grushevsky Ukrainians,” to spread about the notorious fake “testament of Peter the Great”, about “Muscovite imperialism”, supposedly identical with communist world conquest, and about the “terror of tsarism” - and European newspapers accept this falsehood chatter in earnest, as a new justification for their old prejudices. It is enough for them to utter this politically and philologically false word “tsarism” - and they already understand each other, hiding behind it a whole nest of bad emotions: fear, arrogance, enmity, envy and ignorant slander... We need to understand this attitude, this reluctance to truth, this fear of reality. All the visible admiration of the European for “exact knowledge”, for “encyclopedic education”, for “reliable information”, in a word - the whole ethics of truth - falls silent as soon as the matter touches Russia. Europeans “need” a bad Russia: barbaric, in order to “civilize” it in their own way; threatening with its size so that it can be dismembered; aggressive, to organize a coalition against it; reactionary, in order to justify its revolution and demand a republic for it; religiously decaying, in order to break into it with the propaganda of reform or Catholicism; economically untenable to lay claim to its “unused” spaces, to its raw materials, or at least to lucrative trade agreements and concessions. But, if this “rotten” Russia can be used strategically, then the Europeans are ready to enter into alliances with it and demand military efforts from it “to the last drop of its blood”...

And so, when in such an atmosphere one of them says a few truthful and fair words about Russia, then we must single them out from the general chorus of voices. Ferrero, like others, does not know the history of Russia and does not understand its fate, nor its system, nor its tasks. For him, as for all Europeans (oh, how rare are the exceptions!), Russia is “a distant, semi-barbaric empire”, “an oligarchy of eastern satraps”, a country of “despotism that has crushed a hundred million people”, “a huge military state founded and controlled by the sword, eccentric, half-Europeanized”... Apart from these dead vulgarities, he knows nothing about Russia. And therefore, he cannot understand and explain the world politics of its Sovereigns. But he honestly pronounces it: “This policy,” which persistently and hereditarily sought a “stable balance” in Europe and Asia, is for him “one of the great secrets of the history of the 19th century,” which “would be important to study and understand.” And so Ferrero has the courage to recognize this policy, to precisely formulate its essence and its significance for the whole world and with the greatest

will mark its forced cessation with alarm. Let's give the floor to him himself. The nineteenth century brought Europe “very few wars,” “few bloody and few devastating, except perhaps the war of 1870. Germany, France, England, the United States - were proud, until 1914, of the order and peace that had dominated the universe for a whole century, of the wealth they were able to extract from this order and peace, and of the corresponding progress. They considered all these “miracles that blinded the 19th century” to be their business and their pride. But now we know that we had nothing to do with it, that it was an almost free gift presented to Germany, France, England, the United States, the entire West the last heirs of Byzantium,” that is, the Russian Tsars.

"After 1918 we too soon forgot that from 1815 to 1914, for a century, Russia was the great balancing force in Europe." “From 1815 to 1870, Russia supported and reinforced the German world, helping it directly and indirectly. In 1849, she saved Austria by sending her army to Hungary to suppress the Magyar revolution. Bismarck was able to unify Germany and create an empire between 1863–1870 because the St. Petersburg government gave him freedom, if not outright encouragement. Then in St. Petersburg they wanted to strengthen Germany so that it would be a counterweight to England and France, Russia’s enemies in the Crimean War. But after 1870 the German world quickly assumed gigantic proportions and ambitions. And so Russia is gradually separating from him and moving to another camp. In 1875, she prevented Germany from attacking France. After 1881”... “Russia is getting closer and closer to France. Why? Because German power is increasing." Finally, in 1891, a real alliance was concluded with France, and at the beginning of the twentieth century, “England and Russia, two rivals, unite against the German danger.”

No matter how the secret of this “consistent, century-long policy of European balance” pursued by the Russian Emperors is explained, “it is indisputable that if Europe enjoyed peace for a whole century, only with a break from 1848 to 1878, then it owes this to a large extent to such Russian policy . For a century, Europe and America were at the banquet of general prosperity guests and almost hangers-on of the Russian Tsars. But “the paradox does not end there: this huge military empire ... “was also the guardian of order and peace in Asia. The hurricane, which has been ravaging Asia for more than 20 years (now 39 years!), began only in 1908 with the Turkish revolution, and in 1911 with the Chinese revolution. From 1815 until these revolutions, Asia was in a comparative order, which Europe made extensive use of to spread its influence and organize its affairs. But this order was maintained mainly by fear of Russia. In Turkey, in Persia, in India, in Japan, there were Anglophile parties. Everyone succumbed to the intrigues or even the dominance of England, because England seemed to be a defense against the Moscow empire and the lesser evil.” Thus, “both powers helped each other, fighting against each other; and their Asian rivalry was the most paradoxical collaboration in world history.” It is clear that the “collapse of tsarism” in 1917 “became a signal for Asia to revolt against Europe and against Western civilization.”

Now “everyone is busy with the new government that has taken possession of Russia,” trying to unravel its intentions, and “forgot about the empire of the Tsars, as if it had disappeared completely”; and meanwhile, “the consequences of its collapse are only just beginning to be felt.” “The Tsars of Russia no longer bestow gifts of peace and order on a daily basis to Europe and Asia,” and “Europe and America find nothing that could replace this policy of balance that has been regulating the life of the universe for a century.” All this was written in 1933. Since then, a lot has happened that confirmed Ferrero's predictions and fears. Peace-loving Russia still lies in prostration, in ruin, humiliation and torment. Its place is taken by the Soviet Union, which encroaches on “everything.” This is new, fundamentally non-Russian and hostile

national Russia, the pseudo-state has become a revolutionary and military aggressor unprecedented in the history of mankind - and the world trembles in anticipation of a new destructive war. The United States had to become the regulator of the world balance. But let's go back to the past, to the "unsolved mystery" put forward in Ferrero's article. The voice of political honesty, civil courage and sincere misunderstanding always makes a deep impression, especially in our lied world. This voice deserves attention and respect. The first thing that needs to be established to clarify the problem and political “secret” put forward by the Italian scientist is that there was a spiritual-organic connection between the Russian Sovereigns and the Russian people. This connection was very rarely interrupted; and the sovereigns who did not know how to establish it (Anna Ioannovna under the influence of Biron, John the Sixth due to his youth and Peter III due to his foreignness) passed through Russian history like shadows. Foreign blood that poured into the Russian dynasty (due to “equal” marriages) was usually overcome in the next generation. This was facilitated by deep spiritual circumstances: 1. The originality of the Russian spiritual way of life, which is not compatible with the Western European way of life and imperiously demands assimilation. 2. The Orthodox faith, which involves the main sensibility of the human soul in religion and does not put up with formal ritualism and conventional hypocrisy. 3. The specialness of the Russian state destiny, tragic in its very essence: it must be understood with trembling hearts and accepted with conscience and will. 4. The power of moral radiation emanating from a monarchically feeling and willing people, directed towards the Sovereign and his House. 5. The sensitive talent of the Russian Sovereigns, who interpreted their service religiously and were inspired by faith in the Russian people, and especially by love for them. Because of all this, the precious connection between the monarch and the people was established quickly and firmly. This gave the Russian Sovereigns the opportunity to feel and contemplate their country, to live in the mainstream of its history and to think from its tragic fate. They, so to speak, “grew into” Russia, which was greatly facilitated by the artistic talent of the Russian person. The Russian people, contemplating their Sovereigns with their hearts, involved them (already in the rank of heir!) in a reciprocal heartfelt contemplation, and the Sovereigns, instinctively and intuitively, discovered the most essential: the mental and spiritual way of life of the Russian people, their historical fate, their future paths and , especially its dangers. They remained human and could make mistakes (underestimate one thing and overestimate another); this placed on the Russian people the duty of truth and direct standing before the Sovereign. But mostly they rarely doubted.

By the beginning of the 19th century, the Russian people needed, first of all and most of all, peace. He fought, according to the exact calculation of General Sukhotin and the historian Klyuchevsky, literally two-thirds of his life - for his national independence and for his place in the sun, which all his neighbors disputed. For centuries these wars wasted his best strength: the most faithful, the bravest, the strongest in spirit, will and body perished. These wars delayed its cultural and economic growth. They had to end. Meanwhile, since the Seven Years' War (1756–1762), Russia was involved in Western European tensions and wars: it became a member of the “European Concert” in the position of a great power and could no longer abandon this path. Following it brought us a whole series of the greatest state-harmful complications: the partitions of Poland, Suvorov's campaign and protracted wars with Napoleon, which ended, as is known, with the devastation of a number of provinces, the burning of Moscow and a war of liquidation outside Russia. In general, a lot of glory, a lot of unnecessary burden and

huge losses.

After the Napoleonic wars, Russia's position became clear. Diplomatically and strategically, “to leave Europe” would mean leaving the European powers ahead of us to conspire in freedom against Russia, plotting evil against it, while they themselves passively wait for a new invasion

"twelve tongue" This outcome would be tantamount to self-betrayal. Technically, economically and culturally, this departure would be an even greater mistake. But while remaining in the “European concert,” it was necessary to take into account the inevitability of new strategic involvement in Western affairs and rivalries. There was only one thing left, wise and true: to steadily and skillfully maintain a balance of power and long-term pacification in Europe and Asia. And so, starting with the first French Revolution, which for the first time showed Europeans the full scope of this infectious mental illness of the masses, Russia had to reckon with two bloody dangers coming from Europe: war and revolution. Catherine II and Paul I already understood this. What a European war can give Russia was then shown by Napoleonic campaigns. What can cause a mass uprising in Russia was shown by Razin's rebellion, Streltsy conspiracies under Peter the Great and Pugachev's imposture. The Russian sovereigns of the 19th century saw both of these dangers, which did not at all alarm the Russian revolutionary intelligentsia. Therefore, they sought to protect Russia - both from unnecessary wars and from revolutionary madness. They wanted to lead the people, if possible without wars and decisively without revolution, onto the path of reforms, far-sightedly prepared by Emperor Nicholas I and excellently implemented by Emperor Alexander II.

Now history has confirmed their political line: to build Russia with a global balance of power; not to allow it to fall into the elements of rebellion; and raise the level of its culture and legal awareness. At the beginning of the twentieth century, when Russia most needed peace and loyal progress, it was war and revolution that brought it a collapse unprecedented in history and turned it into a hotbed of global infection... Throughout the 19th century, Europeans did not believe either in the peacefulness of Russia or in the wise and progressive plans of its emperors. They assured themselves that Russia was striving for territorial expansion and wanted to conquer all its neighbors. Of course, fear has big eyes; but the power of judgment, called “mind” in the community, is given to a person for something... The Europeans made for themselves something like a “scarecrow” from Russia. This is explained, by the way, by the provincialism of their political horizon: they could never imagine the space with which Russia was already fertilized, and at the same time burdened; they all imagined that Russia, with its low population density, needed their patches of territory overcrowded with residents; they did not understand that expansion only makes sense towards less populated countries and that Russia, with its Orthodox faith and its open spaces, could never reach the monstrous German thought - to exterminate the population of a conquered country in order to give it to its inhabitants... In fact, In fact, it was not the Russians who were drawn to conquer Europe, but the Europeans of different states dreamed (following the Swedish king Gustav Adolf!) to push Russia to Asia and take away its “advanced” European lands. The last half century has clearly confirmed this desire - both on the part of Germany (two campaigns against Russia, the Baltic states and Ukraine, all the way to the Volga and the Caucasus!) and on the part of Poland, which definitely motivated its expansion to the east by the “need to provide its future generations” with indigenous Russian lands and still inhabited by the Russian people.

All this forces us to recognize the peaceful and balanced policy of the Russian Sovereigns in the 19th century as rationally correct, far-sighted and wise. It is the direct opposite of the Soviet revolutionary conquest and can seem “imperialist” or “mysterious” only to an ignorant European, once and for all afraid of the “Russian colossus” and rejoicing every time he is given a reason to proclaim that this colossus has “feet of clay.” And if European newspapermen knew and understood what kind of political stupidity is needed in order to repeat their identification of the Russian national policy of “balance” with the Soviet policy of revolutionary conquest of the world, then many of them would tear out the remnants of the hair on their heads...

World self-deception 32 years have passed since the communists took over Russia and turned it into a springboard for the world revolution, and during this time, it would seem that the so-called “world public opinion” could and should have considered what happened to national Russia and what it represents itself newly emerged, hostile to national Russia and different from it in all its goals and means, a new state. This government, unprecedented in history, of a state unprecedented in the world, was something that the cultured Western Europeans, with their egocentrism and chess thinking, could not, of course, immediately comprehend. They understood “Bebel”, and “Lenin” rose; They hoped for a democratic harvest, but totalitarian despotism grew. However, from the very beginning the Bolsheviks did not hide either their goals, their plans, their tactics, or their attitude towards the rest of humanity; everything was spoken out loud and everything was done almost openly. The communists “believed” that economic “anarchy”, economic crises and bourgeois imperialism were undermining and would very soon destroy the “capitalist” countries; and by virtue of this stupid and short-sighted doctrine, against which he tried in vain and for a long time to argue, now finally heard, “Komprof” Varga, did not hesitate to speak loudly in the presence of the supposedly “half-dead” old man about how best to finish him off and how to deal with his inheritance .

Lloyd George already saw that he was dealing with “cannibals,” but decided to “trade with them.” Already the Social Democratic government of Germany (Noske!) figured out the question of what to expect from the Comintern, and decided not to let it in, but for now to play out “pseudo-friendship” against the Entente (Rapallo). Since then, the Comintern, its Executive Committee, its Politburo, its Council of People's Commissars, its Cheka-Gepeu - acted openly everywhere: they developed detailed plans for propaganda, the organization of a world war: they set out these plans in resolutions, translated these resolutions in volumes into all languages and everywhere they were sold openly; carried out these resolutions and taught the universe with their parties and “actions,” shaking to the roots Italy (1920), Bulgaria (1923), Estonia (1924), England (1926), Austria (1927), and China (1928), then Germany (1929), then Spain (1931–1935), then France (1934) and the United States (1934), etc. And all this was constantly covered and explained by serious and responsible anti-communist literature published by Russian emigrants in all European languages. Stalin's terror of the thirties (collectivization of peasants, party trials and executions, “purge” of the Red Army, Yezhovshchina, concentration camps) was described and discussed in detail throughout the world press. It would seem that Europeans and Americans, at least the most far-sighted and sensitive of them, could understand what the matter was and what the Soviet

power…

But then the Second World War began and revealed that mental laziness, inveterate prejudice against Russia, economic and trade interests, complete ignorance of Russian history and secret pro-communist propaganda carried out everywhere (both by the communists and the semi-revolutionary “behind the scenes”) overshadowed political farsightedness and prevailed over sober understanding and led great and small powers to a number of gross (political, economic and strategic) mistakes. Neither the Germans, nor the British, nor the French, nor the Italians, nor the Americans “realized” with imagination and thought a new phenomenon in world history and the fate of national Russia; and failed to draw strong-willed and practical conclusions from this. Neither the heroic Churchill, nor the crafty Roosevelt, nor the self-confident Mussolini, nor the stupid fanatic Hitler understood the nature and intentions of Stalin, did not understand the difference between national Russia and the Soviet Union, did not comprehend the fate and originality of the Russian people, and made the greatest historical mistakes. Hitler started to fight the communists and the Russian people at once - and died. Mussolini understood the communists, but did not know Russia at all and succumbed to Hitler's hypnosis. Churchill and Roosevelt “agreed” with their fierce enemy in Tehran, in Yalta, in Potsdam and out of political naivety and “allied loyalty” gave him all the small states of Eastern Europe and

Manchuria with China in Asia; They gave it up, and their successors clutched their heads when it was too late. Have the great powers and their governments now understood the global situation? Has world “public opinion” now understood past mistakes and future dangers? Unfortunately, not yet. There are some keen-sighted politicians and clear-minded strategists who see both mistakes and dangers. Their names should not be mentioned out of caution. But along with them, the pro-communist press and semirevolutionary behind-the-scenes organizations continue their propaganda and do everything possible to “mix the cards” in order to avert the eyes of influential politicians, present lies as truth and thereby, on the one hand, make its work easier for world communism, and on the other – make it difficult for non-communist states (both politically and strategically) to resist intelligently and successfully... And the first thing they are trying to do is to confuse the Soviet state with Russia: everything is done in order to pass off the policy of the communists as the cause of the Russian people, and even worse, even more stupidly, in order to pass off the entire Soviet revolution as an insidious and villainous trick of “Russia” , allegedly thirsting for world conquest and therefore “pretending” to be communist. Such articles are now distributed, for example, by the so-called Committee for the Struggle for Democracy (“behind the scenes”!) throughout all countries of the Western bloc.

About the dismemberers of Russia National Russia has enemies. They do not need to be called by name: for we know them, and they know themselves. They did not appear yesterday, and their deeds are known to everyone from history.

For some, national Russia is too large, its people seem to them too numerous, its intentions and plans seem to them alarmingly mysterious and, probably, “conquering”; and its very “unity” seems to them a threat. A small state is often afraid of a large neighbor, especially one whose country is located too close, whose language is alien and incomprehensible, and whose culture is foreign and original. These are opponents - due to weakness, fears and lack of awareness. Others see national Russia as a rival, although not in any way encroaching on their property, but “might one day want to encroach” on it, either through overly successful navigation, or rapprochement with eastern countries, or trade competition! These are ill-wills - due to maritime and trade rivalry.

There are also those who are themselves obsessed with aggressive intentions and industrial envy: they are envious that their Russian neighbor has large spaces and natural wealth; and so they try to convince themselves and others that the Russian people belong to a lower, semi-barbarian race, that they are nothing more than “historical dung” and that “God himself” destined them for conquest, subjugation and disappearance from the face of the earth. These are enemies out of envy, greed and lust for power.

But there are also long-standing religious enemies who cannot find peace because the Russian people persist in their “schism” or “heresy”, do not accept “truth” and “obedience” and do not give in to church absorption. And since crusades against him are impossible and you cannot put him at the stake, then only one thing remains: to plunge him into the deepest turmoil, decay and disasters, which will be for him either a “saving purgatory” or an “iron broom” sweeping Orthodoxy into the garbage pit of history. These are enemies out of fanaticism and ecclesiastical lust for power.

Finally, there are those who will not rest until they manage to take control of the Russian people through subtle and infiltration of their soul and will, in order to instill in them, under the guise of “tolerance,” atheism, under the guise of a “republic,” submission to behind-the-scenes moves, and under the guise of “federation” - national anonymity. These are ill-wishers - behind the scenes, moving “on the sly” and most of all sympathizing with the Soviet communists, as their (“somewhat over-salted”!) vanguard.

One should not close one’s eyes to human enmity, especially on a historical and global scale. It is unwise to expect goodwill from enemies. They need a weak Russia, exhausted in unrest, in revolutions, in civil wars and in dismemberment. They need a Russia with a declining population, which is what has been happening over the past 32 years. They want a Russia that is weak-willed, immersed in unimportant and endless party feuds, always stuck in discord and multi-willedness, unable to improve its finances, spend its military budget, create its own army, reconcile the worker with the peasant, or build the necessary fleet. They need a dismembered Russia, which, out of naive “love of freedom,” agrees to dismemberment and imagines that its “good” lies in disintegration.

But they don’t need a united Russia. Some people think that Russia, split into many small states (for example, according to the number of ethnic groups or subgroups!), will cease to hang as an eternal threat over its “defenseless” European and Asian neighbors. This

sometimes spoken out openly. And just recently, in the thirties, a neighboring diplomat assured us that such self-dismemberment of the “former Russia” into ethnic groups had allegedly already been prepared by underground negotiations in recent years and would begin immediately after the fall of the Bolsheviks. Others are confident that a fragmented Russia will fade from the scene as a dangerous – commercial, maritime and imperial – competitor; and then it will be possible to create excellent “markets” (or markets) for ourselves among small nations, so responsive to foreign currency and diplomatic intrigue. There are also those who believe that the first victim will be a politically and strategically powerless Ukraine, which at an opportune moment will be easily occupied and annexed from the west; and behind it the Caucasus will quickly become ripe for conquest, fragmented into 23 small republics that are always at war with each other. Naturally, religious opponents of national Russia expect complete success from all-Russian dismemberment: in many small “democratic republics”, complete freedom of religious propaganda and confessional seduction will reign, the “primary” confession will disappear, disciplined clerical parties will arise everywhere and work on confessional conquest “former Russia” will boil. A whole bunch of sophisticated propagandists and a heap of false literature are already being prepared for this.

It is clear that the behind-the-scenes organizations expect the same success from the all-Russian dismemberment: among the impoverished, frightened and helpless Russian population, infiltration will spread uncontrollably, all political and social heights will be seized on the sly and soon all republican governments will serve “one great idea”: an unprincipled one humility, nationless civilization and irreligious pseudo-brotherhood. Which of them needs a united Russia, this great “scarecrow” of centuries, this “oppressive” state and military massif, with its “outrageous” national egoism and “generally recognized” political “reactionality”. United Russia is a nationally and state-strong Russia, observing its own special faith and its own independent culture: all this is absolutely not needed by its enemies. It's clear. This should have been foreseen a long time ago. It is much less clear and natural that this idea of dismemberment, weakening and, in essence, the liquidation of historically national Russia, has now begun to be expressed by people who were born and raised under its wing, who owe it the entire past of their people and their personal ancestors, their entire mental structure and their culture (since it is generally inherent in them). The voices of these people sometimes sound simply blind and naive political doctrinaire, because, you see, they remained “faithful” to their “ideal of a federal republic,” and if their doctrine is not suitable for Russia, then so much the worse for Russia. But sometimes these voices, no matter how scary it is to say, are imbued with sheer hatred of the original historically formed Russia, and the formulas uttered by them sound like irresponsible slander against it (such, for example, are the articles of the “federalists” published in the New York “New Journal”, articles for which both the editors of the journal and the core group of its employees are entirely responsible). It is remarkable that the judgments of these latter writers, in essence, are very close to that “Ukrainian propaganda”, which for decades was cultivated and paid for in the greenhouses of German militarism and now continues to pronounce its program with increasing bitterness.

Reading such articles, you involuntarily remember one pre-revolutionary assistant professor in Moscow, an unequivocal defeatist during the first war, who openly declared: “I have two homelands, Ukraine and Germany, and Russia has never been my homeland.” And you involuntarily contrast him with one contemporary Polish figure, wise and far-sighted, who told me: “We, Poles,

We absolutely do not want Ukraine to separate from Russia! An independent Ukraine will inevitably and quickly turn into a German colony, and we will be taken by the Germans in pincers - from the east and from the west. And so, bearing in mind the Russian dismemberers, we consider it necessary to draw the attention of our like-minded people to the problem of the federation on its merits. And for this we ask for attention and patience; for this question is complex and requires from us careful consideration and irrefutable argumentation.

Russia haters We must never forget about them. We should not imagine that they have “calmed down” and are “inactive”, satisfied that they gave us communists, others have been supporting them for 36 years or playing them in their favor... This is not enough for them: they also need to humiliate and denigrate Russian culture, portray the Russian people as a slave people, worthy of their slavery, it is necessary to prepare for the dismemberment of the Russian state and the conquest of Russian territory, it is necessary to distort, humiliate and conquer its Christian-Orthodox confession. Efforts in this direction did not stop throughout the Bolshevik revolution. They continue to this day. Moreover, one of the favorite forms of this propaganda is to entice purely Russian or underRussianized writers into their networks and encourage them, as supposed “experts” on the issue, to appear in print with articles or with a whole book of denigration and slander. For this, scientists are promised (and sometimes actually given!) a department; “secret doors” and sources are opened for writers, paths to radio broadcasting, passport easements, rewards and lecture tours. Let's face it: anyone who wants to make a career in emigration must go to the enemies of Russia and, with an innocent face, join their ranks. The author of these lines knows this technique of “solicitation” both from others and from himself, for similar (sometimes completely detailed!) proposals have been made to him more than once. He also knows “Russian” people who, discovering their Polish, or Swedish, or Baltic, or at least Turanian nature, entered this path and made a career in emigration.

We do not at all want to say by this that anyone who criticizes Russia, the Russian people and Russian culture has “sold out” and is deliberately slandering. No, there may be people who hate Russia and are ready to say any nonsense and any abomination about it without being bribed: what should we do with them if they don’t like Russia (for example, Catholics; however, not only them!). Let us just remember the obscene pamphlet published by a certain Mrs. Bertha Eckstein in 1925, under the pseudo-English pseudonym “Sir Galahad.” The pamphlet was called "Idiocy's Guide to Russian Literature." Here everything is sheer ignorance, everything is distorted, abused, distorted and, moreover, with some kind of aplomb of cheeky know-it-all! ). The Russian is a cruel, evil, stupid, devoid of dignity, sexually perverted “exhibitionist” (29); non-musical, anti-poetic (51.88–89.111, etc.) “all-cretin” like Kutuzov and Platon Karataev (44), incapable of any creativity (47), always ready for destruction (38), it doesn’t matter whether it’s “Tatar Turgenev” (102.142), “Ivanushka the Terrible” (99.101) or “Vankya the Gatekeeper” (50.61). In a word: Russia is a creative “emptiness” (47. 109. 119), and the Russian people are a “spring rabble” (100). Isn't that enough? – Let us immediately recall the book about Russia by the Catholic Gurian, published several years later in Germany shortly before Hitler’s installation as support for Reich Chancellor Brüning and Prelate Kaas with their pro-Soviet policies. He, by the way, portrayed Lenin as a great educator in the history of mankind... And we have no evidence to suspect him of “insincerity”: who knows, maybe he and his predecessor believed in their temptations and were “convinced supporters” your blind and evil nonsense? Does human stupidity have its limits? One cannot confidently attribute all blindness and all ignorance to the deliberate deceit or corruption of the author! Perhaps also a simple lack of power of judgment, poverty of spirit, fanaticism of other faiths, or, finally, “confessional discipline”...

However, it is much more difficult for us to believe that those heaps of lies and slander about Russia, about the Russian Sovereigns and their national policies, which were published in the book of the Russian professor Gogel (1927, in German) and in the articles of Mr. A. Saltykov (1938 in Belgium) testify precisely to their spiritual blindness and low power of judgment, for they, as people (I won’t say “Russians”), but who grew up in Russia and spent their entire career there, could and should have known where the end of the truth and where the lie begins.

We will not object to Mr. Gogel, who was assistant secretary of state of the State Council until 1912, with his antics against the Russian Sovereigns and Grand Dukes, against the Russian bureaucracy and the Russian people as a whole, especially against the Great Russians. But when he, for example, reports about Emperor Alexander III that he “always had a bottle of vodka sticking out from behind the top of his boot” (pp. 42. 51); when he talks about the unprecedented “binges” of Emperor Nicholas II (p. 53); when he invents that Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich, as the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian army, “worked with a whip” (117), and that the Russian army generally adhered to “the discipline of the whip and stick” (135); when he characterizes the Russian bureaucracy as a “pack of wolves,” as an unscrupulous “gang,” as a “creeping cancer” (59.107.34.125.49.120.126), as a sect of spiritual eunuchs (66.114); when he refuses to speak at all “about the Great Russians as a people” (139. 143, etc.), then, reading all these false obscenities, you involuntarily ask yourself where he is leading and why he is trying? And only gradually do you begin to understand the hidden tendency of this whole “composition”: only people of a different blood can give the Russian chaos true discipline and state form... Faith in Russia has been lost; she needs a foreign owner... in the person of a German. This book was probably published because it was part of a series published by the “German Society for the Study of Eastern Europe,” one of whose chairmen, a professor of Russian history in Berlin, Hoech, in the twenties, provoked Professor S. F. Platonov in a “confidential” conversation and then betrayed him Soviet Ambassador Krestinsky. Saltykov came after Gogel with his teaching that Orthodoxy did not awaken in the Russian people either love, thirst for truth, or a sense of beauty and rank: our people remained the child of non-existence, eternal death and chaos; the Russian soul is nihilistic, alien to order and hierarchy and hates state authority; she is “devoid of love” and “hates every form”... But it was precisely these words of public self-spitting, published in the Catholic press, that made us doubt the independence of Saltykov’s judgments and remember his main predecessor, Chaadaev... It became clear which way the enemies of Orthodoxy are going - Catholics, and from where we should expect their further attack. And so, several years ago, this new attack, prepared by the hateful antics of Mr. Fedotov against Russia and Orthodoxy, against Russian Sovereigns, Russian officials and the Russian people, to the desecration of which Fedotov seemed to invite in his slanderous articles, took place in German: haters of Russia have been calling each other for a long time.

We mean the weighty book of the Russian-Swedish Catholic Alexander von Schelting “Russia and Europe in Russian Historical Thinking” (1948, p. 404), written in German by a person who knows Russian well, with exact quotes and with a claim to illuminate “ to the root" the entire history of Russia. He supposedly knows the main ailment of Russia and can show it the path to salvation. Namely: the whole point is that Russia should not have accepted Christianity from Byzantium: only Roman Catholicism, which is equivalent for the author, European culture and civilization, could save Russia from troubles. For this thought, Mr. Shelting has two reasons: firstly, his Catholic faith (a source that is not convincing for anyone except Catholics!), and, secondly, the opinions of his authoritative mentor, whom he himself calls his “leader” "(pp. 330. 170. 213), namely, Peter Chaadaev (1793–1856). He naively attributes to him “encyclopedic erudition,” which he is delighted with (46. 185): he constantly “learns” from him, extols him, praises him, questions him as a prophet (45. 54. 87. 138. 142. 144 198). Unnoticed, Shelting “drowns” in Chaadaev and becomes his naive and faithful “shadow”; Chaadaev does not recognize any values on earth other than Roman Catholicism... Where could Chaadaev have such universal awareness? After all, he carried it out already by the beginning of the thirties, when he still did not have the opportunity to master either historical sources about the Catholic Church or large scientific works on this issue. This also applies to the historians of Europe and Germany, with the exception of Niebuhr. Historical science was then still in

children's shoes; scientific research was either absent or primitive; the primary sources were not yet published...; and for Protestantism in particular, Chaadaev never had any understanding: he could only blindly believe what Catholic propaganda invented about his church and the Middle Ages and repeat what was confirmed. As for the history of Russia, it must be admitted that here the power of Chaadaev’s judgment was completely pointless. The first volumes of the history of Karamzin, a patriotic narrator, but in the sense of exploring the sources of a helpless one, were published in 1818 and were subsequently brought to light only until the Time of Troubles. 130 years have passed since then. During these decades, Russian historical research, like all Russian culture, experienced an era of great prosperity and fruition; what was created in Russia by literature, music, theater, painting, architecture, sculpture, science, religious research, folklore, excavations, prehistory, publication of sources - all this was gradually acquired and rose from the depths of the people's spirit and all this represents the greatest wealth . 130 years ago, all this could only be anticipated, shrewdly anticipated like Pushkin, as “already present” and at the same time only “future”. Here are two examples.

1. During this time, for example, they collected and studied the very folk songs that were “simply sung” back then; and the further this study went, the more both Russian and non-Russian people (for example, Professor Rudolf Westphal (1826–1892)) were equally amazed at the richness of the melody, and the creative rhythm of these songs, and their expression, and especially their completely unique tonality and harmonies; and so far no one has succeeded in either reducing this treasure of national songs to Western European forms, or musically classifying their types. 2. As for Russian historical research over these 130 years, both in the detailed study of the material and in inspired syntheses, we must simply admit that Chaadaev’s inventions were completely absurd and groundless and have long since been overthrown and scattered. At the beginning of the 19th century, Russia stood immediately before the great flowering of its culture, and Chaadaev did not see a single bud, not a single ovary from all this wealth and cursed the entire nature of the Russian spirit, predicting its drying up and death. But his curse struck not Russia, but himself. So, Chaadaev’s judgments, which constitute the “law” for his student Shelting, turned out to be in fact pointless and paradoxical inventions; and from the point of view of modern science they are ridiculously outdated, naive and sweepingly pretentious. And those who now read his notorious letters begin to feel sad, indignant and ashamed of him; To know so little and to rant so self-confidently and pointlessly was inadmissible even then! But for the Catholic Schelting this rant is close and incidental, and he does not hesitate to reproduce it as “the truth” in spite of all truth and all evidence.

When, for example, Chaadaev says that the Russian people are “nothing”, “emptiness”, Tabula rasa, without history, without nationality, without tradition and without self-initiated activity - then in fact it was he himself who did not know anything about his fatherland, above whom he abused; – didn’t know anything, couldn’t know, and didn’t want to. This “emptiness” lived within himself; this “nothing” expressed only his own ignorance. It was he who lost all the traditions of his people in order to renounce Orthodoxy in contemptuous words and set Catholicism as the measure of perfection. However, he did not completely join the Roman Church, as Pechorin, Prince Gagarin and some other members of the then intelligentsia did. His “literary” activity consisted of writing letters to prominent foreigners - in French and in an instructive tone - letters that were rewritten at his home. In these letters he reviled his people and his fatherland; and when prominent people of that time, such as the philosopher Schelling, did not deign to answer him, he was amazed and indignant. So he remained - a groundless correspondent, a Catholic snob, an ignorant scoffer of his

homeland, a smug paradoxist...

If, for example, you read from Chaadaev that the “orders” of the European Middle Ages were more like the Kingdom of God on earth, then you involuntarily ask yourself: what is this, complete ignorance, a deliberate lie or sick delirium? – Or, when you read from him that the whole reformation is a deplorable event; or that Europe lived for centuries as a real federation; that history in general is only history if a single principle dominates in all matters, etc., then we see before us a groundless dreamer with a lack of education long since overcome. And it becomes embarrassing. But Shelting is his student and follower; and it's not hard to imagine where this leads. What Chaadaev has with aplomb, based on the impossibility of real knowledge, turns out to be a reluctance for Shelting to know the historical truth, for he needs all these fantasies, errors and deliberate naiveties in order to instill in his reader his own doctrine, which in general has such view. Shelting seeks to inspire the reader that the modern totalitarian communist regime, with all its dangers and plans to take over the world, expresses the real spiritual substance of the Russian people. Russia and Bolshevism are one. We had already heard this before Shelting from modern half-Russian imbeciles or traitors. But this is the first time that this lie is being developed into the whole “Chaadayev doctrine”. Russian history, you see, was a continuous stream of humiliation and slavery. That is why the Russian, like a slave, seeks compensation for himself in the form of conquering the world: this slave has a dream about worldwide despotism and the exploitation of other peoples. Aggressiveness is in the Russian blood, like the will to expansion. This was already the case with the Slavophiles: their entire doctrine, their praise of the Russian people and especially Greek Orthodoxy, is rooted not in any religious faith, and not in sincere patriotism, but in unbridled ambition, in the “mania of grandiosity” that grew like ancient Jews, out of humiliation and out of thirst for compensation. The Russian intelligentsia does not know how to steal at all; she is only trying, like Shatov in “The Possessed,” to forcibly take possession of faith in order to abuse it politically and nationalistically.

Shelting's entire book is filled with such distortions, omissions or slander. So he claims that Peter the Great “hated, persecuted and destroyed” “everything Russian” and sought the complete Europeanization of Russia; This absurd fiction is completely untrue, but it turns a brilliant man into a stupid fanatic. You read something like this and think: what is more here ignorance, hatred or swagger? Pushkin’s well-known patriotic rebuke given to Chaadaev is completely hushed up: “I swear to you on my honor that I would never agree to change my homeland, nor to have a different history than the history of our ancestors, which the Lord sent us...” This distorts the spiritual image of Pushkin, with his wondrous insight and patriotism: for he knew spiritual experience of such depths of Russia, which remained inaccessible to the spiritual outcast Chaadaev. But Shelting, quoting Shatov’s words from “Demons,” attributes their meaning to Dostoevsky himself, while in fact Shatov, along with Kirillov, Verkhovensky and Stavrogin, is among the “demons” seducing Russia... - Here is the pure in spirit and thoughtful A.S. Khomyakov is portrayed as an “obsessed” “ambitious” and a predecessor of the Bolsheviks... Shelting and his all-distorting Catholic propaganda need to portray the religious-lyrical dreams of the Slavophiles as the “unparalleled” claim of the Russian slave, as the limit of national and religious pride. But about German imperialism, prepared by Fichte the Elder (“Speeches to the German People”), Hegel (“Philosophy of Right”), and other publicists and generals, and finally implemented in 1914–1918 (Wilhelm II), and then 1933-1946 (Hitler), he has nothing to say. Who are the “Slavophiles”? These are famous Russian imperialist conquerors. And the Bolsheviks? These are the followers of the Slavophiles, who adopted from them: 1) socialism, 2) pan-Slavism. – Such is the level of education and truthfulness of this newest (but far from

the latter) a hater of Russia. As for Russia, we must admit that history has indeed brought a lot of suffering and humiliation to the Russians. Suffering was overcome by national fidelity, prayer, patience, work and humor, while the humiliation of the foreign yoke was eliminated by active, nationwide military effort. But neither Chaadaev nor Shelting want to know about this self-liberation of the Russian people: they only need former humiliations for their false constructions. Let us ask, however, what kind of foreigners liberated Russia from the Tatar yoke? What kind of foreign “benefactors” finished off the Troubles? What “twelve languages” drove Napoleonicism out of Russia? Which “conquerors” extinguished the class-serf system in Russia and introduced great reforms in the 20th century? But if Shelting knows at least these basic facts, i.e. that everything was just the opposite, then why does he write nonsense? Self-liberation is the only human-worthy way to end dependence, and the entire history of Russia is nothing more than self-liberation; and whoever doubts this will soon receive new strong confirmation of this in the 20th century.

Yes, the Tatar yoke delayed cultural development in Russia for 250 years. However, serfdom also existed in Europe, everywhere except Sweden. European serfdom, with all its lawlessness and ugliness, began to fade away in 1788 (Denmark), and this process ended in Austria in 1850. Russia lagged behind Europe in this by only eleven years (1861) and extinguished its serfdom on such favorable terms for the peasants that any European peasant would be happy with. But the liberation of the peasants could be realized in Russia only when the Russian Emperor, after seven palace coups (1725–1825), during which three Sovereigns died (John VI, Peter III, Paul I), managed to assert his independence from the class-reactionary nobility (his "autocracy"). Shelting shows no knowledge or understanding of this tragic and lengthy process at all. Catholicism and the desecration of the Russian people are important to him; the rest is indifferent to him. It is important for him to show that the Russian soul is the soul of a slave, thirsting for the conquest of the world.

Let us ask: when in 1917 Russian soldiers left the front and fled to their homes, was this a manifestation of Russian national aggressiveness? How did the will of the Russian soul for expansion manifest itself when the Russian army in 1939 allowed the small Finnish army to inflict defeat after defeat on itself? Or, perhaps, the dream of conquering the world became especially relevant in the Russian soul, when in 1941 from 4 to 5 million Russian soldiers laid down their arms before the German aggressors and, together with their officers, went into German captivity in defeatism?.. Or all of these historical manifestations, once foreseen and predicted by Dostoevsky, remained unknown to the Catholic pamphleteer? Or does he despise his European readers so much that he considers it possible to impose on them “for salvation” any lie, and such a lie?

In the history of foreign literature about Russia, the name of Alexander von Schelting will be blacklisted along with other names like the Marquis Custine, the suspicious Madame Eckstein, the Nazi Rosenberg and other haters of our people and fatherland. And this will happen completely regardless of whether modern emigration understands such “literature” or not. For just recently one emigrant magazine found it possible to recommend this confessional pamphlet as a “detailed and objective work” “especially to foreigners who want to get acquainted with Russian thought of the 19th century”...

What does the dismemberment of Russia promise to the world?

1. When talking with foreigners about Russia, every faithful Russian patriot must explain to them that Russia is not a random accumulation of territories and tribes and not an artificially coordinated “mechanism” of “regions”, but a living, historically grown and culturally justified ORGANISM, not subject to arbitrary dismemberment . This organism (see “N.Z.” 92 and 93) is a geographical unity, the parts of which are connected by mutual economic nutrition; this organism is a spiritual, linguistic and cultural unity that has historically connected the Russian people with their nationally younger brothers - spiritual mutual nourishment; it is a state and strategic unity that has proven to the world its will and its ability to defend itself; it is a real stronghold of European-Asian, and therefore universal peace and balance (see “N.Z.” 45 and 46). Its dismemberment would be a political adventure unprecedented in history, the disastrous consequences of which humanity would suffer for a long time.

The dismemberment of the body into its component parts has never given and will never give either healing, creative balance, or peace. On the contrary, it has always been and will be a painful discord, a process of decomposition, fermentation, decay and general infection. And in our era, the entire universe will be drawn into this process. The territory of Russia will boil with endless strife, clashes and civil wars, which will constantly escalate into global clashes. This outgrowth will be completely inevitable due to the fact that the powers of the whole world (European, Asian and American) will invest their money, their trade interests and their strategic calculations in the newly emerging small states; they will compete with each other, achieve dominance and “strongholds”; Moreover, imperialist neighbors will come out and attempt to directly or covertly “annex” unsettled and unprotected new formations (Germany will move to Ukraine and the Baltic states, England will encroach on the Caucasus and Central Asia, Japan on the Far Eastern shores, etc.). Russia will turn into a giant “Balkan”; into an eternal source of wars; into the great hotbed of unrest. It will become a global ferment into which the social and moral waste of all countries will pour in (“infiltrators”, “occupiers”, “agitators”, “scouts”, revolutionary speculators and “missionaries”; - all the criminal, political and religious adventurers of the universe. Dismembered Russia will become an incurable ulcer of the world.

2. Let us establish right away that the dismemberment of Russia being prepared by the international behind the scenes has not the slightest basis for itself, no spiritual or realpolitical considerations other than revolutionary demagoguery, absurd fear of a united Russia and long-standing enmity towards the Russian monarchy and Eastern Orthodoxy. We know that Western peoples do not understand and do not tolerate Russian uniqueness. They experience a single Russian state as a dam for their trade, linguistic and aggressive expansion. They are going to divide the all-inclusive Russian “broom” into twigs, break these twigs one by one and use them to kindle the fading fire of their civilization. They need to dismember Russia in order to lead it through Western equalization and decoupling, and thereby destroy it: a plan of hatred and lust for power. 3. In vain they refer to the great principle of “freedom”: “national freedom” supposedly requires “political independence”... Never and nowhere has the tribal division of peoples coincided with the state one. All history provides living and convincing evidence of this. There have always been small nations and tribes incapable of state independence: trace the thousand-year history of the Armenians, a temperamental and culturally distinctive people, but not a state one; and further, ask - where are the independent states of the Flemings (4.2 million in Belgium, 1 million in Holland), or the Walloons (4 million)? Why aren’t the Welsh Cymrys and Scottish Gaels (0.6 million) sovereign? Where are the states of Croats (3,000,000), Slovenes (1,260,000), Slovaks (2.4 million), Wends (65,000), French Basques (170,000), Spanish Basques (450,000), Gypsies (up to

5 million), Swiss Lodins (45,000), Spanish Catalans (6 million), Spanish Gallegos (2.2 million), Kurds (over 2 million) and many other Asian, African, Australian and American tribes? So: the tribal “seams” of Europe and other continents do not coincide at all with state borders. Many small tribes were saved in history only by adjoining larger, more powerful peoples, state-based and tolerant: to separate these small tribes would mean either handing them over to new conquerors and thus completely damaging their original cultural life, or destroying them completely, which was It would be spiritually destructive, economically ruinous and politically absurd. Let us remember the history of the ancient Roman Empire - these are many peoples “included”, who received the rights of Roman citizenship, were unique and protected from barbarians. What about the modern British Empire? And so, this is precisely the cultural task of a united Russia.

Neither history nor modern legal consciousness knows such a rule: “as many tribes, so many states.” This is a newly invented, absurd and disastrous doctrine; and now it is being put forward precisely in order to dismember united Russia and destroy its original spiritual culture. 4. Further, let them not tell us that the “national minorities” of Russia were under the yoke of the Russian majority and its Sovereigns. This is a nonsense and false fantasy. Imperial Russia never denationalized its small nations, unlike at least the Germans in Western Europe. Take the trouble to look at the historical map of Europe during the era of Charlemagne and the first Carolingians (768–843 AD). You will see that almost from Denmark itself, along the Elbe and beyond the Elbe (the Slavic “Laba”!), through Erfurt to Regensburg and along the Danube, there were Slavic tribes: Abodrites, Lyutichs, Linons, Hevels, Redarii, Ukrs, Pomorians, Sorbs and many other. Where are they all? What's left of them? They were conquered, exterminated or completely denationalized by the Germans. The conqueror’s tactics were as follows: after a military victory, the leading layer of the defeated people was invited into the German camp; this aristocracy was massacred on the spot; then the beheaded people were subjected to forced baptism into Catholicism, dissenters were killed in the thousands; those who remained were forcibly and irrevocably Germanized. The “beheading” of a defeated people is an old all-German technique, which was later applied to the Czechs, and in our days again to the Czechs, Poles and Russians (which is why the Bolsheviks were introduced into Russia with their terror). Has anything like this been seen or heard in the history of Russia? Never and nowhere! Russia has preserved as many small tribes as it has received in history. She singled out, however, the upper layers of the annexed tribes, but only in order to include them in her imperial upper layer. She never dealt with forced baptism, extermination, or all-levelizing Russification. Forced denationalization and communist leveling appeared only under the Bolsheviks.

And here is the proof: the population of Germany, which absorbed so many tribes, was brought through merciless denationalization to all-German homogeneity, and in Russia general censuses established first over a hundred, and then up to one hundred and sixty different linguistic tribes; and up to thirty different confessions. And gentlemen dismemberers forget that it was Imperial Russia that maintained the tribal composition for the political dismemberment they were undertaking. Let us at least recall the history of German colonists in Russia. Have they undergone denationalization in 150 years? They moved to the Volga and southern Russia in the second half of the 18th century and later (1765–1809) – numbering 40–50 thousand. By the beginning of the 20th century, this was the richest layer of the Russian peasantry, numbering about 1,200,000 people. Everyone kept their language, their confessions, their customs. And when, driven to despair by the expropriation of the Bolsheviks, they poured back into

Germany, the Germans were amazed to hear the original Holstein, Württemberg and other dialects in their mouths. All reports about forced Russification were refuted and disgraced.

But political propaganda does not stop at obvious lies. 5. Next, it must be established that the very dismemberment of Russia represents a territorially insoluble task. Imperial Russia did not look at its tribes as firewood to be transferred from place to place; she never drove them around the country arbitrarily. Their settlement in Russia was a matter of history and free settlement: it was an irrational process, not reducible to any geographical demarcations: it was a process of colonization, departure, resettlement, dispersion, mixing, assimilation, reproduction and extinction... Open the pre-revolutionary ethnographic map of Russia (1900 –1910) and you will see extraordinary diversity: our entire territory was dotted with small national “islands”, “branches”, “environments”, tribal “bays”, “straits”, “canals” and “lakes”. Take a closer look at this tribal mixture and take into account the following reservations: 1) all these color designations are conditional, because no one stopped Georgians from living in Kiev or St. Petersburg, Armenians in Bessarabia or Vladivostok, Latvians in Arkhangelsk or the Caucasus, Circassians in Estonia, Great Russians everywhere etc.; 2) therefore, all these colors on the map do not indicate “exclusive”, but only “predominant” tribal population; 3) all these tribes over the past hundred to two hundred years have entered into intermixing with each other, and children from mixed marriages have entered into more and more tribal intermixings; 4) also take into account the gift of the Russian spirit and Russian nature to unforcefully and imperceptibly Russify people of other blood, which is conveyed in the southern Russian proverb “father is a Turk, mother is a Greek, and I am a Russian person”; 5) extend this process to the entire Russian territory - from Araks to the Varanger Bay and from St. Petersburg to Yakutsk - and you will understand why the Bolshevik attempt to ostentatiously divide Russia into national “republics” failed.

The Bolsheviks failed to assign each tribe its own special territory because all the tribes of Russia are scattered and scattered, mixed in blood and geographically mixed with each other.

Politically isolated, each tribe claims, of course, the flow of “its” rivers and canals, fertile soil, underground wealth, convenient pastures, profitable trade routes and strategic defensive borders, not to mention the main “mass” of its tribe , no matter how small this “array” may be. And now, if we ignore the small and scattered tribes, such as the Votyaks, Permyaks, Zyrians, Voguls, Ostyaks, Cheremis, Mordovians, Chuvashs, Izhoras, Talyshins, Kryztsy, Dolgans, Chuvans, Aleuts, Laks, Tabasarans, Udins, etc. ., and if we look only at the national core of the Caucasus and Central Asia, we will see the following.

The settlement of larger and more significant tribes in Russia is such that each individual “state” had to give up its “minorities” to its neighbors and include abundant foreign “minorities” in its composition. This was the case at the beginning of the revolution in Central Asia with the Uzbeks, Tajiks, Kyrgyz-Kaisaks and Turkmens: here attempts at political disengagement only caused bitter rivalry, hatred and disobedience. The same was the case in the Caucasus. The long-standing national enmity between the Azerbaijani Tatars and the Armenians required a strict territorial division, but this division turned out to be completely impracticable: sick territorial nodes with a mixed population were discovered, and only the presence of Soviet troops prevented mutual massacres. Similar sick knots were formed during the demarcation of Georgia and Armenia, simply due to the fact that in Tiflis, the main city of Georgia, Armenians made up almost half of the population, and, moreover, the most prosperous half.

It is clear that the Bolsheviks, who wanted, under the guise of a “national

independence" to isolate, denationalize and internationalize Russian tribes, solved all these problems with dictatorial arbitrariness, behind which party-Marxist considerations were hidden, and with the force of Red Army weapons. Thus, the national-territorial delimitation of peoples was a hopeless matter from time immemorial. 6. To all that has been said, it must be added that a number of Russian tribes live to this day in a state of spiritual and state-political lack of culture: among them there are those who are religiously in the most primitive shamanism; For many, all “culture” is reduced to handicrafts; nomadism is far from being eliminated; having neither the natural boundaries of their territory, nor the main cities, nor their written signs, nor their secondary and higher schools, nor their national intelligentsia, nor national self-awareness, nor state legal consciousness, they (as was known to the Russian Imperial Government and as this was confirmed under the Bolsheviks) are incapable of the most elementary political life, not to mention solving the complex problems of justice, popular representation, technology, diplomacy and strategy. In the hands of the Bolsheviks, they turned out to be political “dolls”, put on the “fingers” of the Bolshevik dictatorship: these fingers moved, and the unfortunate dolls moved, bowed, obediently raised their hands and babbled party-Marxist platitudes. Demagoguery and deception, expropriation and terror, destruction of religion and everyday life were presented as the “national flourishing” of Russian minorities, and in the West there were fools and corrupt correspondents who sang this “liberation of peoples.”

The inevitable question is: after these tribes are separated from Russia, who will take possession of them? What foreign power would play tricks on them and suck the life juice out of them?.. 7. Since then, decades of Bolshevik tyranny, famine and terror have passed. Since then, the hurricane of the second war has swept through and a post-war “national cleansing” has been carried out. For 33 years now, the Bolsheviks have been killing or starving out rebellious sections of the population and transferring people of all Russian tribes and nations en masse to concentration camps, to new cities and factories. The Second World War displaced the entire western half of European Russia, taking some (“Ukrainians”, German colonists, Jews) east to the Urals and beyond the Urals, and others to the west, as captive “ostarbeiters”, or refugees (including A whole mass of Kalmyks voluntarily went to Germany). The Germans then occupied Russian territory with a population of about 85 million people, shot hostages en masse and exterminated about one and a half million Jews. This regime of executions and movements then continued under the Bolsheviks after they reoccupied the territories they had conquered from them. Then reprisals began against national minorities: the German colonists, Crimean Tatars, Karachais, Chechens and Ingush should be considered almost destroyed; and now the massacre continues in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Representatives of the UNRA estimated the dead residents of Belarus at 2.2 million, and in Ukraine at 7–9 million. In addition, we know for certain that the departing population of Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states is being replenished by the population from the central provinces, with other national traditions and inclinations.

All this means that the process of extinction, national reshuffling and tribal mixing in Russia reached unprecedented proportions during the revolution. Entire tribes have disappeared completely or are reduced to insignificance; entire provinces and regions will wake up after the revolution with a new composition of the population; entire counties will be desolate. All previous plans and calculations of the dismemberers will turn out to be groundless and untenable. If the Soviet revolution ends with the Third World War, then such changes will occur in the tribal and territorial composition of the Russian population, after which the very idea of the national-political dismemberment of Russia may turn out to be a completely unviable chimera, a plan not only treasonous, but simply stupid and

unfeasible. 8. And yet, we must be prepared for the fact that the dismemberers of Russia will try to carry out their hostile and absurd experiment even in the post-Bolshevik chaos, fraudulently passing it off as the highest triumph of “freedom”, “democracy” and “federalism”: - to the Russian peoples and to the tribes for destruction, for adventurers thirsting for a political career for “prosperity,” for the enemies of Russia for triumph. We must be prepared for this, firstly, because German propaganda has invested too much money and effort in Ukrainian (and maybe not only Ukrainian) separatism; secondly, because the psychosis of imaginary “democracy” and imaginary “federalism” gripped wide circles of post-revolutionary ambitious people and careerists; thirdly, because the world behind the scenes, which decided to dismember Russia, will retreat from its decision only when its plans suffer a complete collapse. 9. And so, when, after the fall of the Bolsheviks, world propaganda throws into the allRussian chaos the slogan “peoples of the former Russia, be dismembered!”, then two possibilities will open up: - or a Russian national dictatorship will arise within Russia, which will take the “reins of government” into its strong hands, extinguish this disastrous slogan and lead Russia to unity, suppressing any and all separatist movements in the country; - or such a dictatorship will not work out, and an unimaginable chaos of movements, returns, revenge, pogroms, collapse of transport, unemployment, hunger, cold and anarchy will begin in the country (see “N. 3.”, 11). Then Russia will be engulfed in anarchy and will betray itself to its national, military, political and religious enemies. It will create that whirlpool of pogroms and unrest: that “Maelstrom of evil spirits” that we pointed out in paragraph 1; then individual parts of it will begin to seek salvation in “being about itself,” that is, in dismemberment. It goes without saying that all our “good neighbors” will want to take advantage of this state of anarchy; all sorts of military interventions will begin under the pretext of “self-defense”, “pacification”, “restoration of order”, etc. Let us remember 1917–1919, when only the lazy did not take badly lying Russian property; when England sank allied Russian ships under the pretext that they had become “revolutionarily dangerous”, and Germany captured Ukraine and reached the Don and Volga. And now the “good neighbors” will again use all types of intervention: diplomatic threat, military occupation, seizure of raw materials, appropriation of “concessions”, theft of military reserves, individual, party and mass bribery, organization of mercenary separatist gangs (under the name “national-federative armies"), the creation of puppet governments, the incitement and deepening of civil wars along the Chinese model. And the new League of Nations will try to establish a “new order” through absentee (Paris, Berlin or Geneva) resolutions aimed at suppressing and dismembering National Russia.

Let us assume for a moment that all these “freedom-loving and democratic” efforts will be temporarily crowned with success and Russia will be dismembered. What will this experience give to the Russian peoples and neighboring powers? 10. At the most conservative estimate, there are up to twenty separate “states” that have no undisputed territory, no authoritative governments, no laws, no courts, no armies, and no undeniable national population. Up to twenty empty titles. But nature does not tolerate emptiness. And into these formed political pits, into these whirlpools of separatist anarchy, human depravity will pour: firstly, adventurers trained by the revolution under new names; secondly, hirelings from neighboring powers (from Russian emigration); thirdly, foreign adventurers, condottieres, speculators and “missionaries” (re-read Pushkin’s “Boris Godunov” and Shakespeare’s Historical Chronicles). All this will happen

interested in prolonging chaos, in anti-Russian agitation and propaganda, in political and religious corruption. Slowly, over decades, new, fallen or separated states will be formed. Each will wage a long struggle with each neighbor for territory and population, which will be tantamount to endless civil wars within Russia. More and more greedy, cruel and unscrupulous “pseudo-generals” will appear, obtain “subsidies” for themselves abroad and begin a new massacre. Twenty states will contain 20 ministries (20 × 10, at least 200 ministers), twenty parliaments 20 × 200, at least 4000 parliamentarians), twenty armies, twenty headquarters, twenty military industries, twenty intelligence and counterintelligence services, twenty police forces, twenty customs and prohibition systems and twenty worldwide dispersed diplomatic and consular missions. Twenty upset budgets and coin units will require countless foreign currency loans; loans will be given by “powers” under guarantees of a “democratic”, “concession”, “commercial and industrial” and “military” kind. The new states will turn out to be satellites of neighboring powers, foreign colonies or “protectorates” in a few years. The federal inability of the Russian population, known to us from history, and its equally historically proven craving for “independent figure” (see “N.Z.” 80 and 81) will complete the matter: no one will remember the federation, and the mutual bitterness of the Russian neighbors will force they prefer foreign slavery to all-Russian unity.

11. To clearly imagine Russia in a state of this long-term madness, it is enough to imagine the fate of “Independent Ukraine”. This “state” will first have to create a new defensive line from Ovruch to Kursk and further through Kharkov to Bakhmut and Mariupol. Accordingly, both Great Russia and the Don Army will have to “bristle” at the front against Ukraine. Both neighboring states will know that Ukraine relies on Germany and is its satellite; and that in the event of a new war between Germany and Russia, the German offensive will go from the very beginning from Kursk to Moscow, from Kharkov to the Volga, and from Bakhmut and Mariupol to the Caucasus. This will be a new strategic situation in which the points of maximum advance of the Germans until now will be their starting points. It is not difficult to imagine how Poland, France, England and the United States will react to this new strategic situation; they will quickly realize that recognizing Independent Ukraine means giving it to the Germans (i.e. recognizing the First and Second World Wars as lost!) and supplying them not only with South Russian grain, coal and iron, but also ceding to them the Caucasus, Volga and Ural Mountains. This may begin the sobering up of Western Europe from the “federal” intoxication and from allRussian dismemberment. 12. From all this it is clear that the plan for the dismemberment of Russia has its limit in the real interests of Russia and all humanity. As long as abstract conversations are carried on, as long as political doctrinaires put forward “seductive” slogans, rely on Russian traitors and forget the imperialist lust of their enterprising neighbors; as long as they consider Russia finished and buried, and therefore defenseless, the matter of its dismemberment may seem decided and easy. But one day the great powers will realize in their imagination the inevitable consequences of this dismemberment and one day Russia will wake up and speak; – then what is solved will turn out to be problematic and what is easy will be difficult. Russia, like a prey thrown up for plunder, is a magnitude that no one can master, on which everyone will quarrel, which will bring to life incredible and

unacceptable dangers for all humanity. The world economy, already thrown out of balance by the loss of healthy production in Russia, will see itself in front of the consolidation of this infertility for decades. The world balance, already more precarious than ever, will be doomed to new unprecedented trials. The dismemberment of Russia will not give anything to distant powers and will incredibly strengthen its closest neighbors - the imperialists. It is difficult to think of a measure more beneficial for Germany than the proclamation of a Russian “pseudo-federation”: this would mean “writing off” the First World War, the entire interwar period (1918–1939) and the entire Second World War - and open the way for Germany to world hegemony . An independent Ukraine can only be a “springboard” leading the Germans to world leadership. It is Germany, having embraced the old dream of Gustav Adolf, that is trying to push Russia back to the “Moscow era”. At the same time, she, considering the Russian people as the historical “manure” intended for her, is completely unable to understand that Russia will not perish from dismemberment, but will begin to reproduce the entire course of its history anew: it, like a great “organism,” will again begin to collect its “members” ", moving along the rivers to the seas, to the mountains, to coal, to bread, to oil, to uranium. The enemies of Russia are acting frivolously and stupidly, “injecting” the politically insane idea of dismemberment into the Russian tribes. This idea of dismembering the European powers was once put forward at the Congress of Versailles (1918). Then it was accepted and implemented. And what? A number of small and self-defending weak states appeared in Europe: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania; land-rich, but inconveniently protected Poland; strategically hopeless, because Czechoslovakia is insurmountable and internally divided everywhere; small and disarmed Austria; a cut-down, offended and weakened Hungary; the ridiculously bloated and strategically worthless Romania; and not the still vast, but newly offended Germany, dreaming of revenge. Thirty years have passed since then, and when we now look back at the course of events, we involuntarily ask ourselves: perhaps the Versailles politicians wanted to prepare abundant and unprotected booty for warlike Germany - from Narva to Varna and from Bregenz to Baranovichi? After all, they turned this entire European region into some kind of “kindergarten” and left these defenseless “red caps” alone with a hungry and angry wolf... Were they so naive that they hoped for a French “governess” who would “educate” the wolf? Or did they underestimate the vitality and proud intentions of the Germans? Or did they think that Russia would still save the European balance, because they imagined and convinced themselves that the Soviet state was Russia? Whatever the question is, it’s absurd...

It is difficult now to say what exactly these gentlemen were thinking about then and what they were not thinking about. It is only clear that the dismemberment of Europe they prepared, concluded between German and Soviet imperialism, was the greatest stupidity of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, this stupidity taught them nothing and the recipe for dismemberment was again taken from diplomatic briefcases. But it is instructive for us that European politicians started talking at the same time - about pan-European unification and about all-Russian dismemberment! We have been listening to these voices for a long time. Back in the twenties in Prague, prominent socialist revolutionaries publicly blabbed about this plan, avoiding the word “Russia” and replacing it with the descriptive expression “countries located east of the Curzon Line.” We then noted this promising and, in essence, treasonous terminology and drew the corresponding conclusion: the world behind the scenes is burying a united national Russia... This is not smart. Not far-sighted. Hasty in hatred and hopeless for centuries. Russia is not human dust or chaos. It is, first of all, a great people who have not squandered their strength and have not despaired of their calling. This people is hungry for free order, for peaceful labor, for property and for national culture. Don't bury him prematurely! will come

HISTORICAL HOUR

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He will not change his coffin and will demand his rights back!

A rebuke to the dismemberers It was a conversation conducted in a rather motley society. Representatives of several nations gathered at the hospitable host - there was one American, one of Eisenhower's supporters, one liberal Englishman, one French Belgian and two Russians. And, as is usual in such cases, representatives of Western peoples spoke as great experts on Russian history and the Russian question, while representatives of the Russian people, pushed aside, dejected by the political nonsense being presented and somewhat confused by the ignorant aplomb of foreigners, remained silent. The picture is typical and characteristic for our time... Well, what can you object to an Englishman who asserts with one breath that John the Fierce massacred all the Kazan Tatars and that Stalin is fulfilling in every detail the “Testament of Peter the Great”? Or - to an American who knows for certain that Russians constitute a minority in Russia and that communism is the only thing that keeps Russia from complete collapse, so that the collapse of communism will immediately “resolve the entire Russian question”? What should I say to a Belgian who considers the complete disarmament of Germany, as well as the independence of Estonia and Latvia, to be the surest guarantee of European peace?.. An experienced politician could immediately see that this entire set of historical absurdities and inventions comes from a single well - from the press, inspired by the world behind the scenes... Kuzma Prutkov has wise advice: “Only talk about what your concepts allow you to talk about.” But now the time has come when world politics was led by people whose concepts for this great and complex matter are absolutely insufficient, do not know historical facts, do not understand causes and consequences, do not have political experience, do not see the banner, do not foresee dangers, and most importantly, nothing not knowing, they imagine themselves to be “perfectly knowledgeable”... What kind of good and salvation can be expected from them? Perhaps this conversation would have frozen on the absurdities uttered if one of our compatriots, a man with energy and humor, had not offered a general and main conclusion: “I think,” he said, “that I will express our common opinion if I say that the world must at present seek salvation - in general dismemberment. After all, the essence of freedom lies in the independent will of man, and the essence of democracy lies in the self-government of each people according to its own concepts and views. Therefore, every true liberal and every true democrat must demand independence and self-government for all peoples, tribes and communities of the world. In this, after everything that has just been said here, none of those present will want or even dare to object to me ... " No one expected such a conclusion, and for a few moments a confused silence reigned... He continued. “All people are free and all peoples of the world are equal. Why are African Botokuds, Dualas, Bodimans, Mbangis, Bajobs, Diboms or Niocons worse and inferior than other people? Where did this view come from that Africa is a no man's land that anyone can occupy? Where does this point of view come from, that the Arabs of Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Libyan and others, with their ancient and high culture, are the people of an inferior race that needs powerful patronage and must submit to the infiltrated Europeans? Why is it so difficult for Egypt to regain its independence? Why did India, a country of ancient and peculiarly deep culture, belong for so long not to itself, but to the British? Let us remember this classic attack by the British on the Dutch Boers, later reproduced by Italy in Abyssinia... What a violation of freedom! What an anti-democratic way of doing things! But Mussolini did not pretend to be a democrat, but with fascist directness slaughtered the population that was inconvenient for him... Let's open a map of Australia and Indochina and ask ourselves (as consistent liberals and democrats), what does this theft of other people's property mean? Why

South America can be in the form of a system of independent states, always busy with revolutionary upheavals, while Africa is a veritable stripe of conquering possessions? One of two things: either liberalism, democracy and free political division of the universe, or a colonial system that violates the laws of liberalism and democracy!” It’s hard to imagine how angry the foreigners were when they barely allowed the representative of national Russia to finish speaking. The Englishman was the most angry; all red with anger, he repeated the same question: “Do you really want to destroy the entire English Empire?!” “What do you think,” the Belgian interrogated, “Germany should again be allowed to arm itself and attack its defenseless neighbors?!” And only one American was silently thinking about something and, finally, taking out a notebook, began to write some notes in it, probably suspecting the Russian speaker of secret communism... The owner did not interfere in the conversation; he just smiled kindly and somewhat mysteriously.

When the storm calmed down a little, our like-minded person proposed developing his objection. “Let’s be at least a little fair! If you believe that national Russia (which only completely ignorant people can confuse with the communist state of Stalin), that it has seized territories that do not belong to it and that this must be put to an end by its dismemberment, then let us ask ourselves on what basis England owns Spanish Gibraltar, Dutch South Africa, Zanzibar, Kenya, Uganda, Labrador and countless others, lands and harbors seized by it? Why has England not yet appropriated either the islands of Ezel, Kronstadt, the Solovetsky Islands, or Vladivostok?! The entire so-called world “colonization” is nothing more than the seizure of lands and ports that do not belong to you... You have grabbed the entire earth’s surface in pieces and now you do not see that the world is infected with the disease of decay. Look: colonies, dominions and territories are already being separated from England, from France, from Holland and from other states. The historical era of colonization is coming to an end. Communist propaganda has been working in this direction for 35 years, and you have not been able to oppose it with anything. The colonialist is declared a class enemy and an oppressor to be overthrown. So what are you doing? Instead of understanding the revolutionary communist meaning of this dismemberment, that is, the destruction that threatens you all - for yesterday the Chinese, Indians and Malays rose up, today the Arabs are organizing to throw off your yoke, tomorrow the blacks will rise up - and you will be expelled from all your colonies - instead, you borrow the slogan of dismemberment and disintegration from the Bolsheviks and are preparing to bring its implementation - not to the Soviet country, you will not succeed, but to the liberating national Russia in order to weaken it, already exhausted and exhausted by the revolution. You are going to resolve the “Russian question” with the psychosis of state dispersion and do not think about how this process will resonate in the rest of the world. If one sixth of the universe is engulfed in the process of postrevolutionary disintegration and boils into dismemberment, then you can be absolutely sure that the remaining five-sixths, prepared for the same thing - and awakened by pointless nationalism, and religious ferment and communist propaganda - will disintegrate uncontrollably . Your slogan of the dismemberment of Russia is nothing more than the Bolshevik infection and the deepening of the revolution perceived by you!”...

The American raised his eyebrows, fixed his gaze on the speaker and briefly scribbled something in his notebook. “Nowadays, the further deepening of the revolution is pure madness. Your salvation lies in the pacification of the east, and not in inciting civil wars throughout the entire space from Riga and Warsaw to Vladivostok and Hong Kong. You need solvent markets for sales, markets that could replace the disappearing colonies, and you are planning great political, economic and military devastation and impoverishment of the East. Having dismembered national Russia, you will suffocate in your factories, capital and products from lack of sales and

you will begin to dream of a united, loyal and solvent Russia. And you can be sure: it will recover, but only by overcoming (diplomatically, economically and militarily) the temptations of collapse imposed on it by you. You constantly reproach Imperial Russia for the seizure of territories that do not belong to it, as if such a seizure constituted your privilege and monopoly, and, moreover, throughout all continents. But name me at least one colony captured by Russia on a continent alien to it! France is free to seize Indochina with a population of twenty-three million or African spaces equal to half of all Russia; Belgium, Portugal, Holland, England - all are free to lay hands on distant and alien lands and tribes. But Imperial Russia is completely innocent of this. Its territory is not collected from everywhere by occupations or parforce hunts; they belong together. This means that they, spatially adjacent to each other and geographically merging with each other, need each other politically, economically and culturally. They were united not by the arbitrariness of the sword or the caprice of the conqueror, but by the slow organic development of the peoples inhabiting it. This has been happening for centuries. Neighboring peoples got to know each other, learned to understand and complement each other, and it is natural that the most gifted, Christian and cultural people, the Russian people, led this matter. But never, remember this, the Russians never practiced the denationalization of other, small and uncultured tribes; For the first time after the Germans, the communists, these doctrinaires of Western Marxism, took up this matter. Take a historical atlas of the ninth century and try to make a list of those Slavic peoples who occupied the entire eastern half of Western Europe from Denmark to Dalmatia: Abodrites, Linons, Lyutichs, Redarii, Ukrs, Hevels, Sorbs and many, many others. Where are they all? All were either massacred or denationalized by the Germans; and even their names are not mentioned, unless it is written in the guidebook - “remains of the pagan era.” Then take the statistics of the Russian population and marvel at this dispute about the number of tribes preserved by imperial Russia: some scientists count 160 small tribes, and others 166. Russia did not denationalize anyone, did not eradicate anyone, exiled everyone, left national freedom to everyone.” In 1916, I treated my lungs in the Caucasus, in Teberda, and lived in a boarding house with the prince of the local Karachay people. His last name was Krym-Shamkhalov. His grandfather concluded eternal peace and annexation with Emperor Nicholas I; and his grandson Murzakul Baksanuk Pashayevich, a Mohammedan by faith, a colonel in the Russian army, all wounded in the Japanese war, could not find a place for himself from melancholy that his wounds did not allow him to participate in the First World War against the Germans. I will only add that now the entire people of Karachay are massacred by the Bolsheviks for their rejection of communism. What about the German colonists in Ukraine, the Volga and Siberia? They moved to Russia at the end of the 18th century, numbering several tens of thousands, and by the 20th century there were already 1,200,000 of them and they all retained their faith and even their dialects (Saxon, Wirtemberg and others), and they all got rich. And precisely because Russia sheltered them in its spatial depths and preserved their freedom. Only the Bolsheviks undertook to eradicate them, and not because of their Germanness, but because of anti-communism. “And what are you telling us about Latvians and Estonians? It was Imperial Russia that saved these and many other peoples from destruction. And all these peoples know very well that due to their military weakness they cannot resist the Germans, and once captured by the Germans, they will be forcibly denationalized like the Western Slavs. I understand that you do not want to arm the Germans. As soon as they arm themselves, they will again attempt to take possession of Ukraine, its grain, its iron, its coal, break through to the Volga and Caucasian oil and seize world hegemony; but a disarmed Germany is a European front open to communists. What's the matter?.. Your military weakness and unwillingness to strengthen yourself militarily

so much so as not to fear either the communists or the Germans. You want to still own the world without defending it properly; and you won’t succeed”... Here the American stood up to say goodbye to the owner, and the conversation ended. But, when leaving, he wrote down the name and address of the speaker and said a few words to him separately, clearly agreeing on a further meeting.

About the Russian idea

If our generation has had the lot to live in the most difficult and dangerous era of Russian history, then this cannot and should not shake our understanding, our will and our service to Russia. The struggle of the Russian people for a free and dignified life on earth continues. And now, more than ever, it is fitting for us to believe in Russia, to see its spiritual strength and originality, and to speak out for it, on its behalf and for its future generations, its creative idea. We have no one and nothing to borrow this creative idea from: it can only be Russian, national. It must express Russian historical originality and at the same time Russian historical vocation. This idea formulates what is already inherent in the Russian people, what constitutes its good strength, in what it is right in the face of God and is unique among all other peoples. And at the same time, this idea shows us our historical task and our spiritual path; this is what we must protect and nurture in ourselves, educate in our children and in future generations, and bring to real purity and fullness of being - in everything, in our culture and in our way of life, in our souls and in our faith, in our institutions and laws. The Russian idea is something living, simple and creative. Russia lived it in all its inspired hours, in all its good days, in all its great people. We can say about this idea: it was so, and when it happened, the beautiful was realized; and so it will be, and the more fully and strongly this is implemented, the better it will be...

What is the essence of this idea? The Russian idea is the idea of the heart. The idea of the contemplative heart. A heart that contemplates freely and objectively; and transmitting his vision to the will for action, and thought for awareness and speech. This is the main source of Russian faith and Russian culture. This is the main strength of Russia and Russian identity. This is the path of our revival and renewal. This is what other peoples vaguely sense in the Russian spirit, and when they truly recognize this, they bow down and begin to love and honor Russia. In the meantime, they don’t know how or don’t want to find out, they turn away and judge Russia down; and they speak about her words of untruth, envy and enmity. 1. So, the Russian idea is the idea of the heart. She claims that the main thing in life is love and that it is through love that life together on earth is built, for from love will be born faith and the entire culture of the spirit. The Russian-Slavic soul, from ancient times and organically predisposed to feeling, sympathy and kindness, took this idea historically from Christianity: it responded with its heart to God’s gospel, to the main commandment of God, and believed that “God is Love.” Russian Orthodoxy is Christianity not so much from Paul as from John, James and Peter. It perceives God not with the imagination, which needs fears and miracles in order to be afraid and bow before the “power” (primitive religions); - not with a greedy and imperious earthly will, which at best dogmatically accepts a moral rule, obeys the law and itself demands obedience from others (Judaism and Catholicism), - not with a thought that seeks understanding and interpretation and then tends to reject what it seems incomprehensible (Protestantism). Russian Orthodoxy perceives God with love, sends up a prayer of love to Him and addresses the world and people with love. This spirit determined the act of Orthodox faith, Orthodox worship, our church hymns and church architecture. The Russian people adopted Christianity not by the sword, not by calculation, not by fear; and not by mentality, but by feeling, kindness, conscience and heartfelt contemplation. When a Russian person believes, he believes not by will or mind, but by the fire of his heart. When faith contemplates it, it does not indulge in seductive hallucinations, but strives to see true perfection. When faith desires it, it does not desire power over the universe (under the pretext of its orthodoxy), but perfect quality. This is the root of the Russian idea. This is her creative power for centuries.

And all this is not an idealization or a myth, but the living force of the Russian soul and Russian history. Ancient sources, both Byzantine and Arab, unanimously testify to the kindness, affection and hospitality, as well as the love of freedom of the Russian Slavs. Russian folk tales are all imbued with melodious good nature. Russian song is a direct outpouring of heartfelt feeling in all its modifications. Russian dance is improvisation resulting from an overflowing feeling. The first historical Russian princes are heroes of the heart and conscience (Vladimir, Yaroslav, Monomakh). The first Russian saint (Theodosius) is a manifestation of real kindness. Russian chronicles and edifying works are imbued with the spirit of heartfelt and conscientious contemplation. This spirit lives in Russian poetry and literature, in Russian painting and in Russian music. The history of Russian legal consciousness testifies to its gradual penetration by this spirit, the spirit of fraternal sympathy and individualizing justice. And the Russian medical school is its direct offspring (diagnostic intuitions of a living suffering personality).

So, love is the main spiritual and creative force of the Russian soul. Without love, a Russian person is a failed creature. The civilizing surrogates of love (duty, discipline, formal loyalty, the hypnosis of external law-abidingness) are, in themselves, of little use to him. Without love, he either vegetates lazily or tends toward permissiveness. Believing in nothing, Russian people become an empty being, without an ideal and without a goal. The mind and will of the Russian person are brought into spiritual and creative movement precisely by love and faith. 2. And with all this, the first manifestation of Russian love and Russian faith is living contemplation.

Contemplation was taught to us, first of all, by our flat space, our nature, with its distances and clouds, with its rivers, forests, thunderstorms and blizzards. Hence our insatiable gaze, our daydreaming, our contemplating “laziness” (Pushkin), behind which lies the power of creative imagination. Russian contemplation was given beauty that captivated the heart, and this beauty was introduced into everything - from fabric and lace to housing and fortifications. From this, souls became more tender, more refined and deeper; contemplation was also introduced into internal culture - into faith, prayer, art, science, and philosophy. Russian people have an inherent need to see what they love alive and in reality and then express what they saw with an action, a song, a drawing or a word. That is why the basis of all Russian culture is the living evidence of the heart, and Russian art has always been a sensual depiction of insensibly perceived conditions. It is this living evidence of the heart that lies at the basis of Russian historical monarchism. Russia grew and grew in the form of a monarchy not because the Russian people gravitated towards dependence or political slavery, as many in the West think, but because the state in his understanding should be artistically and religiously embodied in a single person - living, contemplative, selflessly loved and publicly “created” and strengthened by this universal love.

3. But the heart and contemplation breathe freely. They demand freedom, and their creativity fades away without it. The heart cannot be commanded to love, it can only be ignited with love. Contemplation cannot be prescribed what it should see and what it should create. The human spirit is a personal, organic and self-active being: it loves and creates itself, according to its inner needs. This corresponded to the original Slavic love of freedom and the Russian-Slavic commitment to national-religious identity. The Orthodox concept of Christianity corresponded to this: not formal, not legalistic, not moralizing, but liberating a person to living love and to living conscience. Corresponding to this was the ancient Russian (both church and state) tolerance of all other faiths and all other tribes, which opened Russia the way to an imperial (not “imperialist”) understanding of its tasks. (see the wonderful article by Prof. Rozov: “Christian freedom and ancient Rus'” in No. 10 of the yearbook “Day of Russian Glory”, 1940, Belgrade).

Freedom is inherent in Russian people, as if by nature. It is expressed in that

organic naturalness and simplicity, in that improvisational lightness and ease that distinguishes the Eastern Slav from Western peoples in general and even from some Western Slavs. This inner freedom is felt in everything: in the slow fluency and melodiousness of Russian speech, in Russian gait and gestures, in Russian clothing and dancing, in Russian food and in Russian life. The Russian world lived and grew in spatial open spaces and itself gravitated in spacious unconstrained conditions. The natural temperament of the soul attracted the Russian person to straightforwardness and openness (Svyatoslavovo “I’m coming to you”...), transformed his passion into sincerity and elevated this sincerity to confession and martyrdom... Even during the first invasion of the Tatars, the Russian people preferred death to slavery and knew how to fight to the last. It remained this way throughout its history. And it is no coincidence that during the war of 1914–1917. of the 1,400,000 Russian prisoners in Germany, 260,000 people (18.5 percent) tried to escape from captivity. “No other nation has given such a percentage of attempts” (N. N. Golovin). And if we, taking into account this organic love of freedom of the Russian people, take a mental look at their history with its endless wars and long-term enslavement, then we should not be indignant at the relatively rare (albeit cruel) Russian riots, but bow before that power of state instinct, spiritual loyalty and Christian patience, which the Russian people have demonstrated throughout their history.

So, the Russian idea is the idea of a freely contemplating heart. However, this contemplation is intended to be not only free, but also objective. For freedom, fundamentally speaking, is given to a person not for self-restraint, but for organically creative selfformation, not for objectless wandering and willfulness, but for independently finding an object and staying in it. This is the only way that spiritual culture arises and matures. This is exactly what it consists of. The entire life of the Russian people could be expressed and depicted like this: a freely contemplating heart sought and found its true and worthy Object. In its own way the heart of a holy fool found him, in its own way - the heart of a wanderer and pilgrim; Russian hermitage and eldership devoted themselves to religious objects in their own way; in its own way, the Russian Old Believers clung to the sacred traditions of Orthodoxy; in its own way, in a completely special way, the Russian army nurtured its glorious traditions; in their own way, the Russian peasantry carried out the tax service and in its own way, the Russian boyars nurtured the traditions of Russian Orthodox statehood; in their own way, those Russian righteous people who held the Russian land and whose appearance was artistically shown by N. S. Leskov affirmed their objective vision. The entire history of Russian wars is the history of selfless objective service to God, the Tsar and the Fatherland; and, for example, the Russian Cossacks first sought freedom, and then learned objective state patriotism. Russia has always been built by the spirit of freedom and objectivity, and has always staggered and disintegrated as soon as this spirit weakened - as soon as freedom was perverted into arbitrariness and encroachment, into tyranny and violence, as soon as the contemplative heart of the Russian person clung to pointless or anti-objective contents... This is the Russian idea: freely and objectively contemplating love and life and culture determined by this. Where the Russian man lived and created from this act, he spiritually realized his national identity and produced his best creations - in everything: in law and in the state, in solitary prayer and in social organization, in art and science, in the economy and in family life, in the church altar and on the royal throne. God's gifts - history and nature - made Russian people exactly like this. This is not his merit, but this determines his precious originality among the host of other peoples. This determines the task of the Russian people: to be like this with all possible fullness and creative power, to guard their spiritual nature, not to be seduced by other people’s ways of life, not to distort their spiritual face with artificially transplanted features, and to create their life and culture precisely by this spiritual act.

Based on the Russian way of life, we should remember one thing and take care of one thing: how can we fill the free and loving contemplation given to us with real objective content; how can we truly perceive and express the Divine - in our own way; how could we sing God’s songs and grow God’s flowers in our fields... We are called not to borrow from other peoples, but to create our own in our own way; but in such a way that this is ours and in our own way, created in fact, is true and beautiful, that is, objective. So, we are not called to borrow spiritual culture from other peoples or imitate them. We are called to create our own in our own way: Russian, in Russian.

Since ancient times, other peoples had a different character and a different creative way of life: the Jews had their own, the Greeks had their own, the Romans had their own, the Germans had another, the Gauls had another, the English had another. They have a different faith, different “blood in their veins,” different heredity, different nature, different history. They have their own advantages and disadvantages. Which of us would want to borrow their shortcomings? - Nobody. And the virtues are given to us and given our own. And when we are able to overcome our national shortcomings - through conscience, prayer, work and education - then our virtues will blossom so that none of us will care about strangers. think.

So, for example, all attempts to borrow their strong-willed and mental culture from Catholics would be hopeless for us. Their culture grew historically from the predominance of the will over the heart, analysis over contemplation, reason in all its practical sobriety over conscience, power and coercion over freedom. How could we borrow this culture from them if in our country the relationship of these forces is the opposite? After all, we would have to extinguish in ourselves the powers of the heart, contemplation, conscience and freedom, or, in any case, give up their predominance. And are there really naive people who imagine that we could achieve this by drowning out the Slavs in ourselves, eradicating the eternal influence of our nature and history, suppressing our organic love of freedom, throwing out of ourselves the natural Orthodoxy of the soul and the immediate sincerity of the spirit? And for what? In order to artificially instill in ourselves the spirit of Judaism, alien to us, permeating Catholic culture, and then - the spirit of Roman law, the spirit of mental and volitional formalism and, finally, the spirit of world power, so characteristic of Catholics?.. And in essence, for this , in order to abandon our own historically and religiously given culture of spirit, will and mind: for in the future we will not have to remain exclusively in the life of the heart, contemplation and freedom, and do without will, without thought, without life form, without discipline and without organizations. On the contrary, we have to grow from free heartfelt contemplation our own, special, new, Russian culture of will, thought and organization. Russia is not an empty container into which you can mechanically, arbitrarily, put anything you want, regardless of the laws of its spiritual organism. Russia is a living spiritual system, with its own historical gifts and tasks. Moreover, behind it stands a certain divine historical plan, which we do not dare to renounce and which we would not be able to renounce even if we even wanted to... And all this is expressed by the Russian idea.

This Russian idea of contemplative love and free objectivity does not in itself judge or condemn foreign cultures. She just doesn’t prefer them and doesn’t make them her law. Each nation does what it can, based on what it is given. But the bad people are those who do not see what is given to them, and therefore go begging under other people’s windows. Russia has its own spiritual and historical gifts and is called upon to create its own special spiritual culture: - a culture of the heart, contemplation, freedom and objectivity. There is no single universally binding “Western culture”, before which everything else is “darkness” or “barbarism”. The West is not a decree or a prison for us. His culture is not an ideal of perfection. The structure of his spiritual act (or rather, his spiritual acts), perhaps, corresponds to his abilities and his needs, but it does not correspond to our strengths, our tasks, our historical calling to a spiritual structure.

corresponds and does not satisfy. And we have no need to chase after him and make a model out of him. The West has its own errors, illnesses, weaknesses and dangers. There is no salvation for us in Westernism. We have our own paths and our own tasks. And this is the meaning of the Russian idea. However, this is not pride or self-aggrandizement. For, wishing to follow our own paths, we do not at all claim that we have gone very far along these paths or that we are ahead of everyone. Similarly, we do not at all claim that everything that happens and is created in Russia is perfect, that the Russian character does not have its shortcomings, that our culture is free from delusions, dangers, illnesses and temptations. In reality, we affirm something different: whether we are good or bad at a given moment in our history, we are called and obliged to follow our own path - to purify our hearts, strengthen our contemplation, exercise our freedom and educate ourselves towards objectivity. No matter how great our historical misfortunes and downfalls may be, we are called to be ourselves, and not to crawl in front of others; create, not borrow; turn to God, and not imitate your neighbors; to look for Russian vision, Russian content and Russian form, and not to go in pieces, collecting for imaginary poverty. We are neither students nor teachers of the West. We are students of God and teachers of ourselves. The task before us is to create a unique Russian spiritual culture - from the Russian heart, with Russian contemplation, in Russian freedom, revealing Russian objectivity. And this is the meaning of the Russian idea.

We must understand this national task correctly, without distorting it or exaggerating it. We must care not about our originality, but about the objectivity of our soul and our culture; originality will “apply” itself, blossoming unintentionally and directly. The point is not to be like anyone else; the requirement “be like no one else” is incorrect, absurd and unfeasible. To grow and blossom, you don’t have to look askance at others, trying not to imitate them in anything and not learn anything from them. We need not to push away from other peoples, but to go into our own depths and ascend from it to God; we must not be original, but strive for God’s truth; one must not indulge in East Slavic delusions of grandeur, but seek with the Russian soul objective service. And this is the meaning of the Russian idea.

This is why it is so important to imagine our national calling as vividly and concretely as possible. If Russian spiritual culture comes from the heart, contemplation, freedom and conscience, this does not mean that it “denies” will, thought, form and organization. The identity of the Russian people does not at all lie in being in lack of will and thoughtlessness, enjoying formlessness and vegetating in chaos; but in growing the secondary forces of Russian culture (will, thought, form and organization) from its primary forces (from the heart, from contemplation, from freedom and conscience). The originality of the Russian soul and Russian culture is expressed precisely in this distribution of its forces into primary and secondary: primary forces determine and lead, and secondary ones grow out of them and receive their law from them. This has already happened in the history of Russia. And it was true and wonderful. It should continue to be this way, but even better, more complete and more perfect. 1. According to this, Russian religiosity must continue to be based on heartfelt contemplation and freedom, and always observe its act of conscience. Russian Orthodoxy must honor and protect the freedom of faith - both its own and that of others. It must build on the basis of heartfelt contemplation its own special Orthodox theology, free from the rational, formal, deathly, skeptically blind reasoning of Western theologians; the eye should not adopt moral casuistry and moral pedantry from the West, it should proceed from a living and creative Christian conscience (“you are called to freedom, brothers,” Gal. 5.13), and on these foundations it should develop the Eastern Orthodox discipline of the will and organizations.

2. Russian art is called upon to preserve and develop the spirit of loving contemplation and objective freedom that has guided it hitherto. We should not be embarrassed at all by the fact that the West does not know Russian folk songs at all, is barely beginning to appreciate Russian music and has not yet found access to

our marvelous Russian painting. It is not the business of Russian artists (of all arts and all directions) to worry about success on the international stage and on the international market - and to adapt to their tastes and needs; It is not appropriate for them to “learn” from the West - neither its decadent modernism, nor its aesthetic winglessness, nor its artistic pointlessness and snobbery. Russian art has its own covenants and traditions, its own national creative act: there is no Russian art without a burning heart; there is no Russian art without heartfelt contemplation; there is no one without free inspiration; it does not exist and will not exist without responsible, substantive and conscientious service. And if this is all, then there will continue to be artistic art in Russia, with its own living and deep content, form and rhythm. 3. Russian science is not called upon to imitate Western scholarship, either in the field of research or in the field of worldview. It is called upon to develop its own worldview, its own research. This does not mean at all that a single universal logic is “optional” for a Russian person, or that his science may have a goal other than objective truth. It would be in vain to interpret this call as the right of the Russian person to scientific lack of evidence, irresponsibility, subjective arbitrariness or other destructive outrage. But the Russian scientist is called upon to bring into his research the principles of the heart, contemplation, creative freedom and a living, responsible conscience. The Russian scientist is called upon to love his subject with inspiration the way Lomonosov, Pirogov, Mendeleev, Sergei Solovyov, Gedeonov, Zabelin, Lebedev, and Prince Sergei Trubetskoy loved him. Russian science cannot and should not be a dead craft, a burden of information, indifferent material for arbitrary combinations, a technical workshop, a school of unscrupulous skill.

The Russian scientist is called to saturate his observation and his thought with living contemplation - both in natural science, and in higher mathematics, and in history, and in jurisprudence, and in economics, and in philology, and in medicine. Rational science, which knows nothing except sensory observation, experiment and analysis, is a spiritually blind science: it does not see the object, but observes only its shells; her touch kills the living content of the object; she is stuck in parts and pieces and is powerless to rise to the contemplation of the whole. The Russian scientist is called upon to contemplate the life of a natural organism; see a mathematical subject; to discern in every detail of Russian history the spirit and destiny of one’s people; grow and strengthen your legal intuition; see the integral economic organism of your country; contemplate the holistic life of the language he is learning; to comprehend the suffering of your patient with a medical eye. This must be accompanied by creative freedom in research. The scientific method is not a dead system of techniques, schemes and combinations. Every real, creative researcher always develops his own, new method. For the method is a living, searching movement towards an object, a creative adaptation to it, “research”, “invention”, getting used to, feeling into the object, often improvisation, sometimes transformation. The Russian scientist, by his entire nature, is called upon to be not a craftsman or an accountant of phenomena, but an artist in research; a responsible improviser, a free pioneer of knowledge. Far from falling into comic pretentiousness or the amateurish swagger of self-taught people, the Russian scientist must stand on his own two feet. His science should become a science of creative contemplation - not by abolishing logic, but by filling it with living objectivity; not in trampling on fact and law, but in seeing the integral object hidden behind them.

4. Russian law and jurisprudence must protect themselves from Western formalism, from selfsufficient legal dogma, from legal unprincipledness, from relativism and servility. Russia needs a new legal consciousness, national in its roots, Christian-Orthodox in its spirit and creatively meaningful in its purpose. In order to create such a legal consciousness, the Russian heart must see spiritual freedom as the objective goal of law and the state and be convinced that it is necessary to cultivate in the Russian person

a free personality with a worthy character and objective will. Russia needs a new political system, in which freedom would open up bitter and weary hearts, so that hearts would cleave to the homeland in a new way and turn to the national government in a new way with respect and trust. This would open the way for us to seek and find new justice and true Russian brotherhood. But all this can be realized only through heartfelt and conscientious contemplation, through legal freedom and substantive legal awareness.

Wherever we look, no matter what side of life we turn to - to education or to school, to the family or to the army, to the economy or to our multi-tribalism - we see the same thing everywhere: Russia can and will be renewed renewed in its Russian national structure precisely by this spirit - the spirit of heartfelt contemplation and objective freedom. What is Russian education without a heart and without an intuitive perception of a child’s personality? How is it possible in Russia for a heartless school that does not educate children for subject freedom? Is a Russian family possible without love and shared contemplation? Where will the new rational economic doctrinaire, communistically blind and unnatural, lead us? How will we solve the problem of our multi-tribal composition, if not with our hearts and not with freedom? And the Russian army will never forget the Suvorov tradition, which asserted that a soldier is a person, a living center of faith and patriotism, spiritual freedom and immortality... This is the main meaning of the Russian idea I formulated. She is not made up by me. Her age is the age of Russia itself. And if we turn to its religious source, we will see that this is the idea of Orthodox Christianity. Russia received its national mission a thousand years ago from Christianity: to realize its national earthly culture, imbued with the Christian spirit of love and contemplation, freedom and objectivity. The future Russia will also be true to this idea.

About a sense of responsibility When future historians of Russia want to understand and illuminate the essence of the white movement, the white struggle and the white idea, they will have to assimilate the basic spiritual impulse that controlled and moved the white hearts. This impulse was love for national Russia, a living, powerful sense of responsibility for everything that happens in it, and a sense of self-worth, a sense of honor that led people into a struggle for life and death. These were the three main sources that are destined to build a new Russia in the future, feeding its new sense of justice and creating its spiritual culture. Let's say it frankly and unequivocally: a generation of irresponsible self-interested people and irresponsible ambitious people will not liberate Russia and will not renew it; he does not and will not have those spiritual forces and qualities that built true Russia in the past and which are necessary for its future. A Russian person, having gone through all national humiliations, troubles, deprivations and suffering, must find a spiritual beginning in himself and establish himself in it - comprehend and accept his spiritual nature and calling; and only then will the doors to the future Russia open before him. Man, as a spiritual being, always seeks the best, for some mysterious voice calls him to perfection. He, perhaps, does not know what kind of voice this is and where it comes from... He, perhaps, feels the powerlessness of his thoughts and his words every time he tries to say what this perfection consists of and what paths lead to it. But this voice is clear to him and has power over him; and it is the desire to respond to this call and the search for paths to perfection that gives a person the dignity of the spirit, imparts spiritual meaning to his life and opens up for him the opportunity to create real culture on earth. And man is called upon to be on earth precisely a spirit - not just a living being like animals and insects, and not only an animated creature, thinking well and wanting every benefit for himself, capricious and varied in feelings and freely fantasizing. All these spiritual abilities are given to him, but not for abuse, but for good and responsible service. And so, the first thing every person who wants to create culture needs is a sense of his destiny, his calling and responsibility. One could say that people are divided into two large categories: some – irresponsibly seeking in life either their own pleasure (these are “stupid” people!) or their own benefit (these are “smarter” people!); others feel themselves to be standing before something Higher and Sacred, so that, even without being able to say what this Highest is and where this Sacred is found, they do not doubt their very presence before Him. The world is not a “free pasture” for them, given to them for personal feeding and organization; Nor is it for them a random accumulation of “impressions,” “phenomena,” pleasures and troubles. They feel and see the great meaning of the world’s rotation and their own lives and do not rest in the stream of “insignificant vanity” and “petty rubbish” (A.K. Tolstoy) in which so many are drowning.

This feeling of anticipation and calling at once calms them and worries them; calms down - because it gives them a feeling of some higher “guideliness”; creativity, meaning in life and self-esteem; disturbing - because it evokes in them a living sense of spiritual task, higher responsibility and their own imperfection. This imposes on them the duty not to put up with everything that happens in them and in the outside world, the duty to evaluate, look for the right standards, choose, decide and create. This calls them immediately to work, to discipline and to inspiration. Such confirmation of one’s own spirituality and acceptance of it is the fundamental basis of living religiosity. For the Supreme that man faces is the Lord, His calls and His divine emanations. And a person’s calling is determined precisely from above. And the spiritual dimension of human life and all its affairs has the same

single source. And a person’s responsibility in the final dimension is always responsibility before God.

It goes without saying that a person is not always clearly aware of this and can rarely accurately articulate what he feels. But this doesn't change anything essentially. Consciousness is not the first and not the most important stage of life, but a secondary, later and subordinate one. And consolidation of deep and sacred vital forces in the word is not given to every person, it is not always given and not easy. What is important and precious here is not speculation or verbal description, but a firm and deep-rooted sense of destiny, calling and responsibility. Human spirituality does not at all coincide with consciousness, is by no means exhausted by thought, and is by no means limited to the sphere of words and statements. Spirituality is deeper than all this, more powerful, richer, more significant and sacred.

Man's spirituality consists first of all in the confidence that within his own soul there is the best and the worst, in fact the best; one whose quality and dignity do not depend on human arbitrariness; one that must be recognized and before which it is proper to bow. One must listen to this best and highest, experience it with concentration, delve into it, surrender to it. And as a person carries out this, he becomes convinced that this highest and best is not at all limited to his personal limits, but is in him, as it were, the radiation and energy of a truly Higher and Perfect Principle, which he will face throughout his entire life. own life. Communicating with this Beginning, a spiritual person cannot help but rejoice in Him, cannot help but desire Him and love Him. And very soon he makes sure

that this joy is natural and healing, that this desire is precious and it is vital that this love opens to him real access to the light of life, to true freedom, to authentic being and personal spiritual dignity. In this activity, a spiritual person learns to bow before God, honor himself, see and appreciate spirituality in all people and desire the creative development and fulfillment of spiritual life on earth. This is real culture.

All this could be expressed this way: the basis of true spiritual culture is the personal, sincere religiosity of the culturecreating person. Religiosity is the living foundation of true culture. It brings to a person precisely those gifts without which culture loses its meaning and becomes simply unrealizable: a sense of anticipation, a sense of task and calling, and a sense of responsibility.

Standing before the Supreme is the first gift of religiosity. It is in vain to think that this feeling “humiliates” a person or gives him “slave traits.” This opinion indicates that this person is far from true freedom: he is afraid of falling into a “slave” position precisely because he still feels like a “recent slave”, or a “half-slave”, or, if you like, a “freedman” . A person who has found his freedom and established himself in it knows that no conditions, neither external nor internal, can take this freedom away from him; for because other people treat him like a slave, his freedom will not fade away, but will only deepen to the limits of external inaccessibility; he himself will never adopt a slave attitude. Freedom, generally speaking, is not “given”, but “taken”: it is taken by the spirit as its inalienable property and is observed by it as an inalienable shrine. But in order for this to happen, freedom must find its source in that Highest, to whom it has the happiness to stand and from which all spirituality and all freedom emanate. This is exactly what the wise Thomas Carlyle meant when he wrote: “There is no nobler feeling in the breast of a man than this wonder at that which is higher than him”...; “a person cannot know at all if he does not worship something in one form or another”... It must be said even more: a person cannot create culture without feeling that he is about to accomplish exactly what he must accomplish in his cultural creativity. A “creator” without a supreme principle, without an ideal before which he bows, does not create, but is arbitrary, “plays around”, amuses himself

or simply being outrageous (like Picasso and other modernists). New generations following us must recognize that the worship of God does not humiliate man, but for the first time completes his existence and elevates him. The person who “worships nothing” deceives himself, for, in fact, he worships himself and serves his unspiritual and anti-spiritual lust. And his culture will not be a culture, but a pointless encroachment and arbitrariness, devoid of the main thing, incapable of either cognizing the truth, or creating something artistic, or committing love, good and pure, or seeing and revealing fair rights.

The one who is to come measures himself precisely by what he is about to experience. This is exactly what should be kept in mind when reading the Gospel words: “Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5.48). He who stands before God measures and evaluates himself by the rays of Divinity. He who stands before perfection judges himself by the highest criterion available to man. The prospect first lifts a person’s gaze, then his heart and his will; it evokes in him new thoughts, a new understanding of himself, other people and the entire universe. The structure of his soul, which hitherto was like a one-story house, is being built on and elevated. His eye begins to see new “spaces”, assimilates them and introduces them to his life. Or you can say: his soul is experiencing some kind of sacred inspiration. His heart perceives new, heavenly rays and learns to rejoice in them, expect them and tremble from this expectation. His will learns to get out of everything purely personal, petty and vulgar and concentrates on the best, on the objectively best, on the perfect; she learns to imagine this best not only “above”, but also “ahead”; she finds in him a vital task for her future.

This is how a living conscience awakens and strengthens in a person. Not conscience, remorseful for not doing good in the past or for committing evil in the past; but conscience, as creative energy, the energy of love and will, directed forward, into the future, towards upcoming accomplishments. It also gives a person that highest happiness on earth, which is expressed in the words spiritual dignity and vocation. Spiritual dignity consists in the fact that the “upcoming” person affirms his life by accepting the Divine, love for Him and loyalty to Him, He accepts His rays and these rays penetrate his soul to the very bottom. He is imbued with them, as if nourished and vivified by them, and they impart to him their fire, their light and their warmth. In them he finds his being; so that the very being or nature of his personality is determined and sanctified by them. In the depths of his soul, it is as if a temple is being built, and in this temple an altar and a throne with an unquenchable lamp are established. And not in the sense that this temple, and the throne, and the lamp would be “accessible” to him, as to a “parishioner” coming from outside; but the meaning is that this temple is his own abode, and this throne is his own shrine, and this lamp is his own burning. Not only “there is a flame in him,” but he himself, in the fullness of his spiritual being, is this flame. And this flame is his Main thing, which he cannot refuse, which he values above all his “other things” and which he cannot change. And feeling this with certainty, he begins to comprehend what it means to “honor oneself” (Pushkin!) and what self-esteem is.

This is where the final and unconditional root of spiritual responsibility is hidden, without which it is unworthy for a person to live on earth and it is impossible to create a spiritual culture. Man, as a free and mature being, is responsible for his life, for its content and for its direction. It is spiritual, natural and inevitable. Spirit is a living force, an energy that feels itself choosing, deciding and acting; and this feeling of well-being is not an illusion or a deception. The secret of freedom, or, as it is usually said, “free will,” is that the power of the spirit is able to concentrate, strengthen itself, increase its strength and overcome its internal difficulties and its external obstacles. The human spirit is not "free" in the sense that it is "not affected by anything", or that it does not carry any

the burden of “impacts” and “causes”; but in the sense that he was given a gift

self-strengthening, self-liberation, which he must accept and in the use of which he must become skilled and strengthened. The ordinary will of man is nothing more than need, attraction, passion or stubbornness. But the spiritual will of a person is the gift of freeing oneself from any unacceptable and rejected influence, both internal and external. The human spirit is inherent in this living feeling: “I could have acted differently in the past,” and, accordingly, “I can choose, decide and carry out my decision in the present.” I repeat: this is not an illusion or self-deception, for this power of self-empowerment is truly inherent in the human spirit. To the inexperienced - and inexperienced - it may seem that he “doesn’t know how” or “doesn’t know how to start”; that he is “weak” and “helpless.” But this will seem to him only as long as he maintains a “mental” and not a “spiritual” attitude. For a person’s soul may indeed be “spiritually incapable” and feel “spiritually weak and helpless”; she inevitably remains “under the pressure of circumstances” and “inclinations”; It is natural for her to hesitate, put off, not dare, look for excuses and refer to the “environment” that “sets” her. But for the spirit all this is unnatural, alien, strange and dead. The spirit is living energy: it tends not to ask about its ability, but to implement it; not to refer to the “pressure” of drives and circumstances, but to overcome them with living action. As Carlyle once said: “Begin! Only by doing this will you make the impossible possible.”

Freedom of the spirit consists in the fact that it is not determined by “drives” and “circumstances”, but it defines itself, either evaluating its drives and modifying its circumstances, or extracting from itself decisions and accomplishments that go against all circumstances and drives. There is no and cannot be complete, total, absolute freedom; and one can only rejoice that a person is deprived of such properties and abilities. For it is difficult to even imagine what kind of nightmarish creature a person would be, capable of manifesting some kind of metaphysical arbitrariness every second, doomed to such properties as bad manners, unforeseenness in decisions and actions, insanity, chaotic capriciousness and the ability to fail at any moment into an unprecedented abyss of evil. Communication with such people would exclude all mutual trust, all education, all law and order and all participation in the beautiful cosmos and in the Kingdom of God. One can only thank God that such freedom is not given to man. In fact, freedom is the power and art of a person to determine himself and his life towards spirituality in accordance with his destiny, his calling and his responsibility.

This is where the human spirit comes from this unconscious but firm confidence: “I could have done it differently, but I didn’t do what I could”; or: “I had to do such and such an act and could have done it, but I didn’t”; and accordingly: “much in my present and future is given to me as ready-made and unchangeable, but my personal course of action depends on my choice and decision, and, consequently, on my calling and on my responsibility.” With such a feeling and understanding, the phenomenon of a calling conscience and the phenomenon of a reproaching conscience receive their full meaning and significance. The calls of conscience endlessly expand the horizon of human possibilities, affirming in each of us the ability to find the path to perfection and take it, return to it after mistakes and falls, and always contemplate the distance in which this perfection awaits us. And reproaches of conscience illuminate for us those mistakes and falls that we were unable to avoid; Moreover, they seem to indicate to us exactly why these mistakes and falls took place, what specific efforts our free will did not make “then” in order to avoid deviations and failures, and what specific efforts must be made “now” in order to strengthen ourselves for the future. And the practical meaning of Christian repentance and confession “in the spirit” is precisely to revive in a person’s soul a sense of anticipation, the energy of conscience, faith in one’s calling, a thirst for spiritual freedom and a sense of responsibility... From here it is already clear what great significance “sacred discontent” has "of the human spirit by itself, as well as sober, honest, sincere self-condemnation, with which a spiritually recovering soul “gets sick.”

So, the coming spirit is called, and the called person is responsible; and at the heart of it all lies the gift of self-liberation imparted to the human spirit over. How simple, clear and indisputable it is: a person should live not by states, but by actions, and accordingly be responsible for these actions. The human spirit is not like water, spreading shapelessly and splashing limply in its bed. It is not like sand, lying passively while lying down, and passively crumbling, “sliding” when pulled down. The human spirit is personal energy and, moreover, intelligent energy; rational - not in the sense of “consciousness” or rational thinking,” but in the sense of objective contemplation, sighted choice and action due to a spiritually sufficient reason. So I contemplated, so I loved, so I chose, so I committed - and therefore I recognize this act as my act, I support its grounds and motives and accept responsibility for what was done, I recognize my mistake as an error, I recognize my “premeditated intention” as such, - and my guilt, and my merit (if there is one), and I am ready to bear the consequences of what I have done and be responsible for them. One who is incapable of this cannot be considered either an activist, or a person of character, or a morally mature personality, or a creator of culture, or an educator, or a doctor, or a priest, or a soldier, or a judge, or a politician, or a citizen. He is a timid man in the street, a coward, a careerist or a swindler. He doesn't trust himself; and therefore he should not be trusted. In old Rus' they said about such people: “runner and runner.” And what could be more pathetic than an irresponsible official or politician who has the authority, is called to act, is obliged to decide - and dreams of one thing: to take credit for his life’s successes and evade “retribution” under the law of responsibility?..

From this it is already clear that it is necessary to distinguish between prior liability and subsequent liability. Preliminary responsibility is a living sense of destiny and calling, and at the same time – a living will to perfection. The person has not yet committed the act; maybe he hasn’t decided what to do yet; maybe he hasn’t even chosen his highest value and hasn’t outlined his highest goal. He only senses active strength and volitional energy within himself, he foresees the possibility and inevitability of future actions - and binds them with intention and internal commitment to carry out “the best.” He places himself before the Face of God and “stands”; he hears the call to perfection and interprets it as his “calling”; he accepts this calling and, as it were, “charges” his soul with the will to perfection. Even before he commits, he already knows about his responsibility. And this sense of responsibility immediately disciplines him, concentrates him and inspires him.

The significance of this preliminary responsibility in cultural creativity is fundamental and great. To be convinced of it, it is enough to imagine a person who takes on some creative work and is deprived of preliminary responsibility. What will a painter create who does not know anything higher and sacred above himself, does not feel his calling to say, more accurately, vigilant and significant, and does not at all intend to create “the best best”? He will only indulge his pictorial lust, paint here and there, be capricious, demagogue or tease an imaginary viewer, be arbitrary and outrageous. Isn’t it the same with the poet, musician, sculptor and architect? It is from here that all modern “modernism” in art arose... What does an irresponsible scientist learn, who has not bound himself internally to an ascetic oath - to contemplate tirelessly, to exhaust all possible means and ways for verification, not to spare experimental efforts, not to pass off a hypothesis as the truth and to assert with force finality is only the reliable and obvious? It’s scary and disgusting to think about what his scientific culture will turn into. What can you expect from an irresponsible judge who does not require either a correct sense of justice from himself, or evidence in the study of the fact, or insight into the soul of the defendant, or accurate knowledge of the law? Such a judge, no

who knows neither the destiny, nor the vocation, nor the desire to implement the “best best” will create a regime of arbitrariness, corruption and nepotism. An irresponsible politician is an intriguer and a careerist, a figure as morally repulsive as socially destructive; and yet modern statehood is teeming with such people - both in democracies and in totalitarian states. Who would want to be treated by an irresponsible doctor? Who would entrust their children to an irresponsible teacher? Who would want to receive prayers and sacraments from an irresponsible priest? What kind of commander would win a battle commanding irresponsible officers leading irresponsible soldiers into battle? – People who did not know that there is a sense of destiny and calling, and that there is a will to achieve “the best,” are not capable of creating real spiritual culture. This is the verdict on both them and the false culture they create... This is the essence, this is the meaning of responsibility, both preliminary and subsequent, in the matter of creative renewal and deepening of the future spiritual culture. And the one who thinks this through will take upon himself the responsibility of explaining it to others. And the Russian people will immediately understand that this is most important in the revival of Russia.

Russia is a living organism When we are asked how it could happen that the Russian people during the Second Patriotic War (1914–1917) preferred property redistribution to national salvation, we answer: it happened because the Russian common people, as well as the radical intellectual legal consciousness, were not on the height of those national-power tasks that were entrusted to him by God and fate. The Russian man saw only the nearest; his political thinking was narrow and petty; he thought that personal and class interest constituted the “main thing” in life; he did not understand his majestic history; he was not accustomed to state selfgovernment; he was not firm in matters of faith and honor... And above all, he did not feel with his instinct of national self-preservation that Russia was a single living organism.

And this is where we need to start now. We need to understand this and strengthen it in our children. Russia is an organism of nature and spirit - and woe to those who dismember it! Grief is not from us: we are not avengers and do not call for revenge. Punishment will come on its own... Woe will come from the inevitable and terrible consequences of this blind and absurd undertaking, from its economic, strategic, state and national-spiritual consequences. Our descendants will not remember kindly these ambitious people, these doctrinaires, these separatists and enemies of Russia and its spirit... And not only our descendants: other peoples will also remember a united Russia, having experienced the consequences of its deliberate dismemberment; they will remember her the way the farsighted Italian historian Guilelmo Ferrero already remembered her in 1932. So, Russia is a single living organism. It is stupid and ignorant to reduce its historical growth to the “hoarding of the Monomakhovichs”, to the “imperialism of the Tsars”, to the ambition of its aristocracy or to the slavish and predatory vindictiveness of the corrupt Russian common people (as the under-Russified Swede Alexander von Schelting previously agreed in his recently published book; his book is a real example of contempt for the Russian people and hatred of Orthodoxy)… Anyone who reads the “tablets” of Russian history with an open heart and honest understanding will understand this growth of the Russian state in a completely different way. It must be established and stated once and for all that any other people, being in the geographical and historical position of the Russian people, would be forced to follow the same path, although none of these other peoples would probably show either such complacency, or such patience, or such fraternal tolerance as have been shown throughout the thousand years of development by the Russian people. The course of Russian history was formed not according to the arbitrariness of the Russian Sovereigns, the Russian ruling class, or, especially, the Russian common people, but due to objective factors that every nation is forced to reckon with. Forming and growing in this order, Russia has turned not into a mechanical sum of territories and nationalities, as Russian defectors tell foreigners, but into an organic unity. 1. This unity was first of all geographically prescribed and imposed on us by the land. From the very first centuries of its existence, the Russian people found themselves on an open and only conditionally divisible plain. There were no boundary lines; Since ancient times, there was a great “passage yard” through which the “migrating” peoples poured - from the east and southeast to the west... Emerging and taking shape, Russia could not rely on any natural borders. It was necessary either to perish under the eternal raids of either small or large predatory tribes, or to repel them, pacify the plain with weapons and develop it. This went on for centuries; and only the enemies of Russia can portray this matter as if the aggression came from the Russian people themselves, while the “poor” Pechenegs, Polovtsians, Khazars, Tatars (Horde, Kazan and Crimean), Cheremis, Chuvash, Circassians and Kabardians “moaned under oppression of Russian imperialism” and “fought for their freedom”... Since ancient times, Russia has been an organism eternally forced to self-defense.

2. Since ancient times, Russia has been a geographical organism of large rivers and remote seas. The Central Russian Upland is its living center: first “portages”, then canals were supposed to connect distant seas with each other, connect Europe with Asia, West with East, North with South. Russia could not and should not become a travel, trade and cultural barricade; its global vocation was, first of all, creative mediation between peoples and cultures, and not isolated and not separating... Russia should not have turned, like Western Europe, into a “bed-and-bed” system of small states with their outposts, customs and eternal wars. She had to first overcome her inner “Nightingales-Robbers” (the feat of Ilya Muromets!) and the “Gorynych Serpents” (the feat of Ivan Tsarevich!), who lay in the way of good people and cut off all roads - in order to then become a great and universally accessible cultural space.

And this expanse cannot live on the upper reaches of the rivers alone, without owning their lower reaches leading to the sea. That is why - everyone, every people in the place of the Russians would be forced to fight for the mouths of the Volga, Don, Dnieper, Dniester, Western Dvina, Narova, Volkhov, Neva, Svir, Kem, Onega, Northern Dvina and Pechora. The economic landmass always suffocates without the sea. Block the mouth of the Seine, Loire or Rhone to the French... Block off the lower reaches of the Elbe and Oder to the Germans, deprive the Austrians of the Danube - and you will see where this will lead. But can their “land mass” be compared with the Russian massif? – This is why the notorious plan of Gustavus Adolphus: to lock Russia in its hopeless forest-steppe territorial and continental bloc and turn it into an object of pan-European exploitation, into a passive market for European greed, did not testify to the state “wisdom” or “foresight” of this enterprising king , but about his complete ignorance of eastern affairs and his narrow provincial horizon, for he did not see anything beyond his Baltic and did not comprehend, due to his own “provincial” imperialism, that Europe is only a small peninsula of the great Asian continent... Nations that want to block Russia’s access to the seas in the future must remember that the point here is not at all about “catching the tread of modernity,” as the arrogant separatists of the Russian plain now express it, and quickly “dismembering,” but about truly see a problem of continental size and not stand in the way of global development. It is neither smart nor far-sighted to provoke the future Russia into a new struggle for “the doors of its own home,” for this struggle will inevitably begin and will be harsh and merciless.

3. Defending its nationality, Russia fought for its faith and religion. In this way, Russia, as a spiritual organism, served not only all Orthodox peoples and not only all the peoples of the Euro-Asian territorial area, but also all the peoples of the world. For the Orthodox faith is a special, independent and great word in history and in the system of Christianity. Orthodoxy has preserved and carefully nurtured what all other Western confessions have lost and what has left its mark on all branches of Christianity, Mohammedanism, Judaism and paganism in Russia. Every attentive observer knows that the Lutherans in Russia, and the Reformed in Russia, the Anglicans in Russia, and the Mohammedans in Russia, differ from their foreign co-confessors in their soul structure and religiosity, moving away from their prototypes and approaching, unnoticed by themselves, Orthodoxy... And Catholicism is over by the fact that it openly developed and put forward an intermind-imitative form of confession: “Catholicism of the Eastern rite” - a form that is apparently Orthodox-free-prayerful, but essentially Catholic-slyly-insincere, simulating in rituals an unaccepted and not even achieved Spirit Orthodoxy...

And with all this, the Orthodox Church has never converted non-believers to its faith by sword or fear, openly condemning this and prohibiting it already in the early centuries of its spread. She was not likened to the Catholics (especially under Charles and the Carolingians, and in France during the “Night of Bartholomew” and religious wars,

under Alba, in the Netherlands and everywhere, as far as they had enough strength, for example, in the Baltic states), - not to the Anglicans (for example, under Henry VIII, during the English revolution and civil wars). In religion, as in all culture, the Russian organism created and gave, but did not eradicate, did not cut off or rape... 4. The spiritual organism of Russia further created its own special language, its own literature and its own art. All Slavs of the world respond to this language as if it were their native language. But in addition to its special and great linguistic merits, it turned out to be the spiritual instrument that transmitted the beginnings of Christianity, legal consciousness, art and science to all the small peoples of our territorial area. Living and creating in their own language, the Russian people, as befits a great cultural people, generously shared their gifts with their pacified and annexed former neighbors, felt deeply into their lives, listened to their originality, learned from them, chanting them in their poetry, adopted them art, their songs, their dances and their clothes, and simply and sincerely he considered them his brothers; but he never drove them out, did not seek to denationalize them (according to German custom!) and did not persecute them. Moreover, he often composed alphabetic signs for them for the first time and translated the Gospel into their language (cf., for example, the works of I. A. Yakovlev in the creation of Chuvash writing and the spiritualization of their language). The vital and cultural significance of the Russian language quickly became apparent after the revolution and the separation of the western outskirts from Russia. Unfortunately, few people know that all railway communication between Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Bessarabia could and did happen until the Second World War - in Russian, because the small nations did not mutually know, did not recognize and did not want to recognize neighboring languages, and everyone spoke and thought in Russian... Few people also know how judges of the Baltic states, right down to senators, who studied Russian law in Russian, preparing for the “hearing” of any complex case, turned to Russian law and to the exemplary works of remarkable Russian lawyers (from Tagantsev to Tyutryumov!) - they looked for rights and truth for their fellow tribesmen and then selected new words in their languages to convey and consolidate the received Russian law. As for Russian art, there is no need to dwell on its national and global significance. And so, due to the fact that throughout the Russian space and over the course of centuries, there was no people equal in talent, in faith and in culture to the Russian people or competing with them (in language, in organization, in creative originality, in vital energy and in political foresight), the Russian people turned out to be a naturally leading and ruling people, a “kulturtrager”, a peopleprotector, and not an oppressor. Every talent, every creative person of any nation, growing into Russia, worked its way up and found state and national recognition - from the Jews Shafirov, Levitan, Antokolsky and the Rubinstein brothers to the Armenians Loris-Melikov, Delyanov and Dzhanilev; from the Germans Baron Delvig, Hilferding and Father Kliment Zederholm to the Lithuanians Yaguzhinsky, Baltrushaitis and Churlianis; from the Georgian Chavchavadze to the Karachai prince Crimea-Shokhmalov and to the Tekin Lavr Kornilov. Who persecuted the Kazan and Kasimov Tatars in Russia after the pacification? Mordovians? Zyryan? Lapps? Armenians? Cherkesov? Turkmen? Imeretin? Uzbeks? Tajiks? Sartov? Which of them was not seen by the walls of Russian universities - taking exams, which of them was prevented from believing in their own way, dressing in their own way, getting rich and observing their customary law?.. One day, a complete and impartial dictionary of figures of Russian imperial culture will reveal this nationwide brotherhood, this nationwide cooperation of Russian peoples in Russian culture.

5. Further, Russia is a great and united economic organism.

All its parts or territories are connected with each other by mutual economic exchange or “nutrition” - a distinctive feature of any organism. The grain-bearing south of European Russia is needed not only by Little Russians, but by the entire country, right up to the far north. The forested north, with its non-drying moisture and non-freezing access to the Baltic Sea and the ocean, is necessary for all the peoples of Russia, including those of Central Asia. It is absurd to think that the Caucasian peoples, clinging to oil and manganese, will flourish for the glory of England or Germany, betraying Russia to them. It is childish to dream that the “Donetsk All-Great Republic” will “not give” either coal or iron to the north. Or as if the “high ambassadors” of Mordovia, Cheremisia and Chuvash, having cut off the Great Russians from the Volga and Caspian Sea, will achieve from the League of Nations an armed campaign against Moscow to suppress its “Vse-Volga imperialism”... How much in all such plans is political amateurism and doctrinaire, the very thing that destroyed “Februaryists” and which they are still proud of!.. The economic mutual nutrition of Russian countries and peoples will sooner or later be organically restored; and if early, then to the peaceful prosperity of all the peoples of the Empire; and if it is too late, then as a result of many hardships, after a series of wars and at the cost of much blood. Labor, raw materials, finished goods and a single currency - either will circulate freely from the Curzon Line to Vladivostok and from Baku to Murmansk, and then the peoples of the Russian space will maintain their independence and prosper economically; or Russia will be covered with internal borders and customs, and forty powerless and helpless states will live in poverty on forty monetary systems, rack their brains over forty operational issues, wage customs and other wars with each other, and sit without the necessary raw materials and exports. For Russia is a single economic organism. 6. It goes without saying that with this the organic unity of Russia is only outlined. One day it will be revealed with due care and established with full evidentiary force. We will give here just one more instructive proof. An outstanding Russian anthropologist of our time, enjoying worldwide recognition, Professor A. A. Bashmakov, establishes a remarkable process of racial synthesis that took place in the history of Russia and included all the main nationalities of its history and territory. The result of this process was a kind of majestic organic “uniformity in difference.” It is in this uniformity with difference, writes Bashmakov, “that lies the key to the Russian riddle, which combines these two opposite principles into a single stable and moderating relationship; it summarizes the whole history of these ten centuries, which solved, between the Euxine Pontus and the fiftieth parallel, that problem which other races had tried in vain to solve, and which consisted in the creative consolidation of human waves, eternally renewed and eternally disintegrating. “This Russian success, where a hundred other different races have failed, must necessarily have an anthropological equivalent, a formula summarizing... the expression of this historical power which led to success after a thousand years of adaptation of the Slavic race. “This is the formula. The Russian people, Slavic in their language, mixed by blood and by multiple heredity, which makes them related to all the races that succeeded each other before them on the Russian plain, currently represents a kind of homogeneity, clearly expressed in cranial measurements and very limited in scope deviations from the central and middle type of the race he represents. Contrary to what everyone imagines, Russian homogeneity is the most established and most pronounced in all of Europe...”

American anthropologists have calculated that variations in the structure of the skull in

the population of Russia does not exceed 5 points per hundred, while the French population varies within 9 points, and the Italian - within 14 points, and the average cranial type of the purely Russian population occupies almost the middle between the nonRussified peoples of the Empire. It is also in vain to talk about the “Tatarization” of the Russian people. In fact, the opposite happened in history, i.e., the Russification of foreign peoples: for for centuries, foreigners “kidnapped” Russian women who bore them halfRussian children, and the Russians, who strictly adhered to national affinity, did not take wives from foreigners (of foreign faiths) ! someone else's language! someone else's character!); Frightened by the Tatar yoke, they stuck to their own and thereby preserved their organiccentral purebred. This entire centuries-long process “created in the Russian type a point of concentration of all the creative forces inherent in the peoples of its territory.” (See the work of A. A. Bashmakov, published in French in 1937 in Paris, “Fifty centuries of ethnic evolution around the Black Sea”). So, Russia is a single living organism: geographical, strategic, religious, linguistic, cultural, legal and state, economic and anthropological. This organism will undoubtedly have to develop a new state organization. But its dismemberment will lead to long-term chaos, to general disintegration and ruin, and then to a new gathering of Russian territories and Russian peoples into a new unity. Then history will decide the question of which of the small nations will survive this new gathering of Rus'. We must pray to God that complete fraternal unity between the peoples of Russia will be established as soon as possible.

About Russian nationalism When we look forward and into the distance and see the coming Russia, we see it as a national state, protecting and serving Russian national culture. After a long revolutionary break, after a painful communist-international failure, Russia will return to free self-assertion and independence, find its sound instinct of self-preservation, reconcile it with its spiritual well-being and begin a new period of its historical flourishing.

The Russian people have endured humiliation for thirty years; and there seems to be no end to them. For thirty years, dark and criminal people have been trampling his hearths and altars, forbidding him to pray, beating his best people - the most religious, the most steadfast, the bravest and the most nationally devoted - suppressing his freedom, distorting his spiritual face, squandering his property, ruining his economy , they are corrupting his state, weaning him off from free labor and free inspiration... For thirty years they have treated him as if he were deprived of national dignity, national spirit and national instinct. These years of violence and shame will not be in vain: the people’s body cannot be “denied health” - it will break through to it at any cost; It is impossible to extinguish the people's sense of their own spiritual dignity - these attempts will only awaken them to new awareness and new strength. What the Russian people are experiencing now is a strict and long apprenticeship, a living school of spiritual purification, humility and sobriety. The first awakening may be passionate, immoderate and even bitter; but what follows will bring us a new Russian nationalism, with its true strength and in its true measure. It is this nationalism that we must now articulate and formalize. In contrast to all internationalism, both sentimental and ferocious; in opposition to any denationalization, everyday and political, we affirm Russian nationalism, instinctive and spiritual, we profess it and raise it to God. We welcome its revival. We rejoice in his spirituality and his uniqueness. And we consider it precious that the Russian people should not bind themselves to any internationalist “sympathies” or “obligations.” Every people has a national instinct, given to it by nature (and this means from God), and gifts of the Spirit, poured into it from the Creator of all good things. And for each people, instinct and spirit live in their own way and create a precious originality. We must value this Russian originality, take care of it, live in it and create from it: it was given to us from time immemorial, in embryo, and its development was given to us throughout our entire history. By revealing it, realizing it, we fulfill our historical destiny, which we have neither the right nor the desire to renounce. For every national identity reveals the Spirit of God in its own way and glorifies the Lord in its own way. Each nation marries, gives birth, gets sick and dies in its own way; heals in his own way, works, manages and rests; in his own way he grieves, cries, gets angry and despairs; smiles, jokes, laughs and rejoices in his own way; walks and dances in his own way; sings and creates music in his own way; speaks, recites, jokes and orates in his own way; observes, contemplates and creates painting in his own way; explores, cognizes, reasons and proves in his own way; in his own way he is begging, charitable and hospitable; builds houses and temples in his own way; in his own way he prays and acts as a hero... He is lifted up in spirit and repents in his own way. It is organized in its own way. Each people has its own special sense of right and justice; different character; other discipline; a different idea of the moral ideal, a different family structure, a different churchliness, a different political dream, a different state instinct. In a word: every nation has a different, special mental structure and spiritual and creative act. This is the case from nature and from history. This is how it is in instinct and in spirit. This is what we have all been given from God. And this is good. This is wonderful. Various herbs and flowers in the field.

Various trees and clouds. Rich and beautiful is the garden of God; abundant in forms; sparkles with colors and views; shines and pleases with diversity... Everyone wants to sing and praise God: the dawn, and the lily of the valley, and the feather grass, and the forest, and the field, and the road, and the dust blown by the wind.

And in this all things, and all people, and all nations are right. And it is fitting for every nation to be, to show off, and to glorify God in its own way. And in this very diversity and polyphony, praise is already being sung and exalted to the Creator; and one must be spiritually blind and deaf not to comprehend this. That is why the idea of extinguishing this diversity of praise, of abolishing this wealth of the historical garden of God, of reducing everything to dead similarity and monotony, to the equality of sand, to indifference after the difference that has already shone in the world, can only be born in a spiritually dead, sick soul. This flat and vulgar chimera, this all-destructive, anticultural and godless idea is the product of a rational soul, evil and envious - it doesn’t matter whether this chimera strives to militantly crush all peoples under one people (the chimera of German National Socialism) or to dissolve all national cultures into colorlessness and formlessness of all-confusion (the chimera of Soviet communism). In any case, this ugly chimera, in which extreme nationalism meets extreme internationalism, is of non-Russian origin, like all nihilism, and of non-Christian origin, like all egalitarianism.

Christianity brought to the world the idea of a personal, immortal soul, independent in its gift, in its responsibility and in its calling, special in its sins and deeds, and self-active in contemplation, love and prayer - that is, the idea of the metaphysical originality of man. And therefore the idea of the metaphysical originality of a people is only a true and consistent development of Christian understanding; Christ is alone in the universe, He is not only for the Jews and not for the Hellenes only, but His gospel goes to both the Hellenes and the Jews; but this means that all nations are recognized and called, each in its own place, with its own language and with its own gifts (cf. Acts 2:1-42, 1 Cor. 1-31). The Monk Seraphim of Sarov once expressed the view that God cares for every person as if he were His only one. This is said about a personal person. What should we think about the individual people - that they are condemned by God, rejected and doomed? The Lord dresses each lily in a special and beautiful robe, feeds and feeds each bird of the sky, and counts the hairs falling from a person’s head, but rejects the uniqueness of the people’s life, given and given from Him, the creative praise of the living nation that ascends to Him? ! With all their history, all their culture, all their work and singing, each people serves God as best they can; and those peoples who serve Him creatively and with inspiration become great and spiritually leading nations in history. And so, nationalism is a confident and strong feeling that my people also received the gifts of the Holy Spirit; that he accepted them with his instinctive sensibilities and creatively transformed them in his own way; that his strength is abundant and is called upon to further creative achievements; and that therefore my people are entitled to cultural “independence”, as a “guarantee of greatness” (Pushkin), and as an independence of state existence. Therefore, nationalism manifests itself, first of all, in the instinct of national self-preservation; and this instinct is a true and justified state. One should not be ashamed of it, extinguish it or suppress it; it is necessary to comprehend it in the face of God, to spiritually substantiate and ennoble its manifestations. This instinct should not lie dormant in the soul of the people, but should be awake. He does not live at all “beyond good and evil”; on the contrary, he is subject to the laws of good and spirit. It must have its manifestations in love, sacrifice, courage and wisdom; he must have his festivals, his joys, his sorrows and his prayers. From it must be born national unity, in all its instinctive “beeness” and

"ant-likeness". It must burn in the national culture and in the creativity of the national genius. What is nationalism? Nationalism is love for the historical appearance and creative act of one’s people in all its originality. Nationalism is faith in the instinctive and spiritual strength of one's people, faith in their spiritual calling. Nationalism is the will for my people to bloom creatively and freely in God's garden. Nationalism is the contemplation of one’s people in the face of God, the contemplation of their soul, their shortcomings, their talents, their historical problems, their dangers and their temptations. Nationalism is a system of actions arising from this love, from this faith, from this will and from this contemplation. That is why national feeling is a spiritual fire, leading a person to service and sacrifice, and the people to spiritual flourishing. This is a certain delight (Suvorov’s favorite expression!) from contemplating one’s people in God’s plan and in the gifts of His Grace. This is thanksgiving to God for these gifts; but at the same time, there is sorrow for one’s people and shame for them if they are not up to the level of these gifts. Hidden in national feeling is the source of dignity, which Karamzin once designated as “national pride”; - and the source of unity that saved Russia in all the difficult hours of its history; – and the source of state legal consciousness, connecting “all of us” into a living state unity. Nationalism experiences, professes and defends the life of its people as a precious spiritual self-empowerment. He accepts the gifts and creations of his people as his own spiritual soil, as the starting point of his own creativity. And he's right about that. For the creative act is not invented by each person for himself, but is suffered and nurtured by an entire people over the course of centuries. The mental way of work and life and the spiritual way of love and contemplation, prayer and knowledge - with all its personal originality, also has a national nature, national homogeneity and national originality. According to the general socio-psychological law, similarity unites people, communication strengthens this similarity, and the joy of being understood opens souls and deepens communication. That is why the national creative act brings people together and awakens in them the desire to open up, speak out, give “what is cherished” and find a response in others. A creative person always creates on behalf of his people and turns first of all and most of all to his people. Nationality is, as it were, the climate of the soul and the soil of the spirit; and nationalism is a true, natural craving for one’s climate and one’s soil.

It is no coincidence that Russian cordiality and simplicity of manner have always shrunk and suffered from the callousness, stiffness and artificial tension of the West. It is no coincidence that Russian contemplation and sincerity have never been valued by European reason and American efficiency. With what difficulty does a European grasp the peculiarities of our legal consciousness - its informality, its freedom from dead legalism, its living craving for living justice and at the same time its naive indiscipline in everyday life and its craving for anarchy. With what difficulty does he listen to our music - to its naturally flowing and neverending melody, to its daring rhythms, to the unique tonalities and harmonies of Russian folk songs... How alien to him is our non-rational, contemplative science... And Russian painting - the most wonderful and significant, along with the Italian, has not yet been “discovered” and is not recognized by the snobbish European... Everything beautiful that has been hitherto created by the Russian people came from their national spiritual act and seemed alien to the West.

Meanwhile, only those who are established in the creative act of their people can create something beautiful, perfect for all peoples. A “world genius” is always and first of all a “national genius,” and any attempt to create something great from a denationalized or “internationalized” soul gives, at best, only an imaginary, “on-screen” “celebrity.” True greatness is always

soil. A true genius is always national: and he knows this about himself. And if prophets are not accepted in their homeland, it is not because they create out of some “supernational” act, but because they deepen the creative act of their people to a level, to a depth that is not yet accessible to their same-tribal contemporaries . A prophet and genius is more national than his generation, in the highest and best meaning of the word. Living in the uniqueness of their people, they carry out a national act of classical depth and maturity and thereby show their people its true strength, its calling and future paths.

So, nationalism is a healthy and justified mood of the soul. What nationalism loves and what it serves is truly worthy of love, struggle and sacrifice. And the coming Russia will be national Russia.

Dangers and tasks of Russian nationalism Everything that I have expressed to justify and substantiate nationalism forces me to finish and admit that there are sick and perverted forms of national feeling and national policy. These perverted forms can be reduced to two main types: in the first case, national feeling clings to what is not the main thing in the life and culture of its people; in the second case, it turns the affirmation of one’s own culture into a denial of someone else’s. The combination and interweaving of these errors can give rise to the most diverse types of sick nationalism. The first mistake is that the feeling and will of a nationalist are attached not to the spirit and not to the spiritual culture of his people, but to the external manifestations of national life - to the economy, to political power, to the size of the state territory and to the aggressive successes of his people. The main thing - the life of the spirit - is not valued and not taken care of, remaining completely neglected or being a means for what is not the main thing, that is, turning into an instrument of economy, politics or conquest. According to this, there are states whose nationalists are satisfied with the successes of their national economy (economism), or the power and splendor of their state organization (statism), or the conquests of their army (imperialism). Then nationalism is torn away from the main thing, from the meaning and purpose of people's life - and becomes a purely instinctive mood, exposed to all the dangers of naked instinct: greed, immense pride, bitterness and ferocity. He becomes intoxicated with all earthly temptations and can become completely perverted.

The Russian people were protected from this mistake, firstly, by their innate religious meaning; secondly, Orthodoxy, which gave us, in the words of Pushkin, a “special national character” and instilled in us the idea of “Holy Rus'”. “Holy Rus'” is not a “morally righteous” or “perfect in its virtue” Russia: it is an orthodox Russia that recognizes its faith as the main thing and a distinctive feature of its earthly nature. For centuries, Orthodoxy was considered a distinctive feature of Russianness - in the fight against the Tatars, Latins and other infidels; over the course of centuries, the Russian people comprehended their existence not by the economy, not by the state and not by wars, but by faith and its content; and Russian wars were fought to protect our spiritual and religious identity and freedom. This has been the case since ancient times – until the end of the 19th century inclusive. Therefore, Russian national self-consciousness did not fall into the temptations of economism, statism and imperialism, and it never seemed to the Russian people that their main concern was the success of their economy, their state power and their weapons.

The second mistake is that the feeling and will of a nationalist, instead of going into the depths of his spiritual heritage, goes into disgust and contempt for everything foreign. The judgment: “my national existence is justified in the face of God,” turns, contrary to all the laws of life and logic, into an absurd statement: “the national existence of other peoples has no justification in my face”... As if the approval of one flower gave grounds to condemn everything the rest, or - love for his mother forced him to hate and despise all other mothers. This mistake, however, is not at all of a logical nature, but psychological and spiritual: here is the naive exclusivity of primitive nature, and ethnically innate complacency, and greed, and the lust of power, and the narrowness of the provincial horizon, and the lack of ambition, and, of course, the lack of spirituality of the national instinct. Peoples with such nationalism very easily fall into delusions of grandeur and into a kind of aggressive rampage, no matter what you call it - chauvinism, imperialism or something else.

The Russian people were protected from this mistake, firstly, by their inherent simpleminded modesty and natural humor. Secondly, the multi-tribal composition of Russia, and thirdly, the case of Peter the Great,

who taught us to strictly judge ourselves and instilled in us a willingness to learn from other peoples. Thus, it is unusual for the Russian people to close their eyes to their imperfections, weaknesses and vices; on the contrary, he is rather drawn to a suspiciously repentant exaggeration of his sins. And his natural humor never allowed him to imagine himself as the first and leading people of the world. Throughout his entire history, he was forced to deal with other tribes who spoke languages incomprehensible to him, defended their faith and their way of life, and sometimes inflicted heavy defeats on him. Our history led us from the Varangians and Greeks to the Polovtsians and Tatars; from the Khazars and Volga Bulgarians through the Finnish tribes to the Swedes, Germans, Lithuanians and Poles. The Tatars, who imposed their long yoke on us, seemed to us “unchristian” and “filthy,” but they honored our church, and our enmity towards them did not turn into contempt. The infidels who fought with us, speechless to us (“Germans”) and unacceptable by the church (“heretics”) were not easily defeated by us, and, inflicting defeats on us, forced us to think about their advantages. Russian nationalism went through - both in the internal pacification of its country and in external wars - a harsh school of respect for enemies: and Peter the Great, who knew how to “raise a healthy cup” “for his teachers”, showed in this the primordial Russian trait - respect for the enemy and humility in victory. True, pre-Petrine nationalism had features that could lead to the development of national pride and harm Russia as a whole. It was precisely in the Russian people that an irrational feeling developed and grew stronger, according to which the Russian people, instructed by the holy, catholic and apostolic church and led by their faithful kings, preserve the only right faith, defining by it their consciousness and their way of life: this is a kind of national standing in truth, from which it is impossible to retreat or give up anything, so that we cannot adopt anything from others, it is sinful to mix with others, and we have nothing to change. We should not learn from infidels or heretics, for only false science and false skill can come from false faith. This view by the 17th century was formulated as follows: “Anyone who loves geometry is an abomination before God: and these are spiritual sins - to study astronomy and Hellenic books”... And also: “if they ask you if you know philosophy, answer: there are no Hellenic greyhounds, I have not read rhetorical astronomers, I have not been with wise philosophers, I have seen philosophy below my eyes, I am studying the books of the gracious law”... Russian governmental self-consciousness has long ceased to correspond to this popular feeling. Since the second half of the 15th century, if not earlier, especially after the walls of the almost completed Assumption Cathedral in Moscow (1474) collapsed due to homemade inept construction, with the light hand of John the Third, the Russian government invites architects and doctors from abroad and all kinds of technical experts: “heretical science” is already visiting and serving, but has not yet been implanted or adopted. Boris Godunov dreamed of founding either an academy or a university in Moscow; False Dmitry thought of establishing a Jesuit higher school here. The need to study secular “heretical” science became more and more obvious, but the conservatism and provincialism of church-national well-being and self-conceit sanctioned the immobility of life and consciousness. The spiritual inertia of the people has become dangerous... Peter the Great had to break into this feeling and force the Russian people to learn what was necessary. He realized that a people lagging behind in civilization, technology and knowledge would be conquered and enslaved and would not defend themselves and their rightful faith. He realized that it was necessary to distinguish the main and sacred from the unimportant, non-sacred, earthly - from technology, economy and external life; that earthly things must be returned to the earth; that the faith of Christ does not legitimize backward forms of economy, life and statehood. He comprehended the need to give the Russian consciousness the freedom of a secular, exploratory view of the world, so that the power of the Russian faith would establish in the future a new synthesis between Orthodox Christianity on the one hand, and secular civilization and culture on the other. Peter the Great realized that the Russian people had exaggerated the competence of their historical

a religious act that had taken shape, but had not yet revealed its full power, and that he underestimated the creative power of Christianity: Orthodoxy cannot sanction such a way of consciousness, such a system and way of life that would destroy people's independence and betray both faith and the church to their enemies. He learned a lesson from the Tatar yoke and from the wars with the Germans, Swedes and Poles: the West beat us with our backwardness, and we believed that our backwardness was something faithful, Orthodox and sacredly obligatory. He was confident that Orthodoxy cannot and should not make a dogma for itself out of ignorance and from the forms of external life, that a strong and living faith will work out, comprehend, and ennoble new forms of consciousness, life and economy. Christianity cannot and should not be a source of obscurantism and national weakness. And so the heavenly and the earthly were separated in Russian well-being. At the same time, the national was separated from the religious and church. Russian well-being awoke, and the era of Russian national self-awareness began, unfinished to this day. The Old Believers did not accept this division and became faithful guardians of the Russian Orthodox-national feeling in all its inviolability, naivety and pretentiousness. It was touching and even useful; not because the Old Believers are right in church terms, but because for centuries, in spiritual integrity and with moral zeal, they have maintained fidelity to the original form of Russian religious and Russian-national well-being. Loyalty can be touching and useful even in ritual trifles, for they embody the depth and sincerity of religious feeling. Meanwhile, Russia, the Russian spirit and Russian nationalism faced a new path. It was necessary to distinguish in cultural creativity - church and religious, and then - church and national; open for yourself access to secular civilization and secular culture and bring the religious-Orthodox spirit, the Johannine spirit of love and freedom, into your secular national identity, into your new national-secular culture and national-secular civilization. This problem has not yet been solved by us; and the future Russia will be busy resolving it. 1. The Church and religiosity are not the same thing, for the Church can be likened to the sun, and religiosity can be likened to the sun’s rays scattered everywhere. The Church is the creator, the guardian, the living center of religion and faith. But the Church is not “all in all”; it does not absorb nations, states, science, art, economy, family and life - it cannot absorb them and should not try to do so. The Church is not a totalitarian and omnipotent principle. The “theocratic” (i.e., strictly speaking, ecclesiastic) ideal is alien to Orthodoxy; the Orthodox Church prays, teaches, sanctifies, prospers, inspires, confesses, and, if necessary, denounces, but it does not rule, does not regulate life, does not punish secular punishments and does not take responsibility for secular affairs, sins, mistakes and failures (in politics, in the economy, in science and in the entire culture of the people). Her authority is the authority of revelation and love; it is free and based on the quality of her faith, her prayer, her teaching and her works. The Church leads by spirit, prayer and quality, but not by all-absorption, as Savonarola in Florence, the Jesuits in Paraguay and Calvin in Geneva tried to do. It radiates a living religiosity, which should freely penetrate the life and all the vital affairs of the people. The religious spirit has a place everywhere where a person lives and works, in every secular matter: in art and science, in the state and trade, in the family and on arable land. It purifies and comprehends all human feelings, including national feeling; and the national feeling, religiously ennobled and meaningful, invisibly and inadvertently permeates all human creativity.

Thus, the Church cannot and should not arm the army, organize the police, intelligence and diplomacy, build the state budget, manage academic research, manage concerts and theaters, etc.; but the religious spirit radiated by it can and should ennoble and purify all this secular activity of people. Living religiosity should shine and warm where the Church does not openly interfere or from where it directly removes itself.

2. The Church, as a unity of fellow believers, is supranational, for it also embraces fellow believers of another nation; but within a single nation, the “local” church organization inevitably acquires national features. Not only Russians belong to the Orthodox Church, but also Romanians and Greeks, Serbs, and Bulgarians; and yet Russian Orthodoxy (as a church, and as a ritual, and as a spirit) has peculiar features of Russianness. So, ecclesiastical and national are not the same thing. A nation, as a unity of people with a single national act and culture, is not determined by belonging to a single church, but includes people of different faiths, and different confessions, and different churches. And yet, the Russian national act and spirit was nurtured in the bosom of Orthodoxy and historically determined by its spirit, as Pushkin pointed out. Almost all the peoples of Russia of the most diverse faiths and confessions have more or less joined this Russian national act:

And the proud grandson of the Slavs, and the Finn, and the now wild Tunguz, and the friend of the steppes, the Kalmyk.

And all of them, without knowing it themselves, mysteriously joined the gifts of Russian Orthodoxy, intimately embedded in the Russian national act. Russian nationalism spread the hidden rays of Russian Orthodoxy throughout Russia. But from this it is already clear that national and church are not the same thing. Russia was aware of this difference: the ecclesiastical from the religious and the ecclesiastical from the national for two centuries after Peter. During these two centuries, Russia nurtured its secular nationalism, conceived in the Orthodox Church and imbued with the Christian Johannine spirit of love, contemplation and freedom; she nurtured it and at the same time introduced it into all areas of secular culture: into Russian secular science and literature that has arisen since then; into secular Russian art that emerged and quickly matured to global significance; into a new secular order of law, legal consciousness, law and order and statehood; into the new way of Russian social life and morality; into the new way of Russian private and public economy. The Orthodox Church was by no means alien to all this. She remained, as it were, the mother of grown children who went into the freedom of vital religious work and work, but did not leave the spirit of her light and Spirit. She remained the guardian mother of prayer and love, an adviser and accuser, a womb of purification, repentance and wisdom, an eternal mother who receives a newborn and prays for the deceased. This is her spirit she freed the peasants, created a quick, just and merciful court, created the Russian zemstvo and the Russian school; it is her spirit that has increased and strengthened the Russian national conscience and sacrifice; it was her spirit that forged and strengthened the Russian dream of perfection; it is her spirit that brought the power of heartfelt contemplation into the entire Russian culture, inspired Russian poetry, painting, music and architecture and created the Pirogov tradition in Russian medicine... But you can’t count everything. And yet, what was created in Russia in the 18th and 19th centuries was precisely a secular national culture. Russia was given a great task - to develop a Russian-national creative act, faithful to the historical roots of the Slavs and the religious spirit of Russian Orthodoxy - an “imperial” act of such depth, breadth and flexibility that all the peoples of Russia could find in it their ancestral womb, their fertilization and driving training; to create from this act a new, Russiannational, secularly free culture (knowledge, art, morality, family, law, state and economy) - all this in the spirit of Eastern, Johannine Christianity (love, contemplation and freedom); and, finally, to see and pronounce the Russian national idea leading Russia through the spaces of history.

This task is long and difficult, solvable only over the centuries - with inspiration and prayer, selfeducation and persistent work. For two centuries, the Russian people have only begun to resolve it, and what they have accomplished testifies not only to the greatness of this task and not only to the extraordinary, historically,

its ethnically and spatially determined complexity, but also about those powers and gifts that were given to it for this from Providence. This work was started with extraordinary success, interrupted by political unrest and the communist revolution, and now remains unfinished. To complete this work, it will take another century of free creative flowering, and there is no doubt that Russia will resume it after the end of the revolution. And so, Russian nationalism is nothing more than love for this historically established spiritual appearance and act of the Russian people; it is faith in this calling of ours and in the powers given to us; he is the will for our flourishing; it is the contemplation of our history; our historical task and our paths leading to this goal; it is vigorous and tireless work dedicated to this original greatness of the future Russia. He asserts his own and creates new things, but does not at all deny or despise someone else’s. And his Spirit is the spirit of Johannine Christianity, the Christianity of love, contemplation and freedom, and not the spirit of hatred, envy and conquest.

This is how the idea of Russian nationalism is defined.

On the organic understanding of state and democracy Anyone who wants to truly understand the essence of the state, politics and democracy must, from the very beginning, abandon artificial inventions and false doctrines. So, for example, it is a nonsense fiction that all people are “reasonable,” “good-natured,” and “loyal”; life testifies to the opposite, and you have to be completely blind not to see this, or completely lied to hypocritically deny it. In the same way, it is a false doctrine that the right to vote can be granted to people regardless of their internal properties and qualities; let's say quite precisely - regardless of their legal consciousness. This is the greatest misconception that the state interest consists of the sum of private interests and that a healthy state can be built through competition and compromise between centrifugal forces. This is a blind prejudice, as if a million false opinions can be “compressed” into one “truth”; or as if “honestly” counted “free” votes are capable of indicating the true good of the people and the state: for it is necessary not only to “honestly” count, but it is precisely honest and reasonable votes that must be counted, and not party ballots.

So, the life of the state is formed not arithmetically, but organically. The people themselves participating in this life are not abstract “citizens” with empty “ballots” in their hands, but living individuals—physical, mental, and spiritual organisms; they not only need and demand freedom, but they must be worthy of it. Anyone can submit a ballot; but not everyone can responsibly cope with the burden of state judgment and action. A person participates in the life of his state - as a living organism, which itself becomes a living organ of the state organism; he participates in the life of his state in everything - physical labor, carrying weapons, military hardships, stress and suffering; with his loyal will, loyalty of heart, sense of duty, fulfillment of laws, with all his (private and public) legal consciousness. He builds the state by instinctive and spiritual devotion, family life, payment of taxes, service and trade, cultural creativity and even the glory of his personal name.

And not at all in the sense that the state, like a kind of totalitarian “Leviathan,” is “everything in everything,” absorbs everything and enslaves everyone; but in the sense that the “fabric of state existence” is made up of the organic life of all its citizens. Each individual crime is committed “in the fabric” of the state, harms it and destroys its living nature; and every good, noble and cultural act of a citizen is carried out in the fabric of the state, builds and strengthens his life. The state is not some kind of abstraction hovering over citizens; or some kind of “I’mcrushing-you-all”, like a fairy-tale bear that sits on the inhabitants of the house and crushes everyone. The state is not “out there somewhere,” outside of us (the government, the police, the army, the tax department, the bureaucracy); no, it lives in us, in the form of ourselves, for we, living human individuals, we are its “parts”, or “members”, or “organs”. This participation is not reducible to external affairs and external “order”; it includes our inner life. But this “inclusion” does not mean that “we dare nothing,” but “the state dares everything”; that we are slaves and the state is a slave owner; that a citizen should live according to the principle “what do you want?” Not at all. Totalitarian perversion is at once a sick, absurd and criminal phenomenon. All free, private initiative, spiritually creative, internal moods and external actions of citizens are included in the state (they build it, strengthen it, shake it, improve it, or, on the contrary, destroy it). Let's think through this using live examples.

Thus, the initiative sacrifice of citizens can support the army, win the war and save the state (Northern Russian cities and Nizhny Novgorod residents in the Time of Troubles). Popular panic during war, floods, earthquakes, epidemics can cause irreparable harm to the state. Political slander, which undermines trust in the legitimate Sovereign, tears the hearts of citizens away from him, isolates him and destroys the state (according to the rule: “I will strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered”). In a country where citizens experience military service as an honor, as

Indeed, as valiant service, mobilization proceeds completely differently than where people “cut their fingers, tear their teeth, and refuse to join the royal service.” An official who honestly follows the “state penny” builds his own state; an official who mutters to himself “the treasury is a staggering cow, only the lazy don’t milk it” is an enemy of his country and his state. The day on which patriotic loyalty fades in the hearts will be fatal for the state (February October 1917). A political body has, first of all, a mental and spiritual nature: a people who have lost their sense of spiritual dignity, deprived of responsibility and sense of state, who have renounced honor and honesty, will inevitably betray and destroy their state. It is not for nothing that the wise word was said: “the world is governed from the nursery”: for the education of a citizen begins precisely from the nursery, to continue at school and end at the academy. A citizen is inseparable from his spirit and his sense of justice: a spiritually corrupted person will cast a shameful and disastrous ballot in the elections; a person with a demoralized sense of justice will harm his state at every step - by failure to fulfill his duties, arbitrary exaggeration of his powers, petty offenses and daring crimes, bribery and embezzlement, electoral corruption and espionage. This is not a citizen, but a traitor, a corrupt slave, a walking crook, an uncaught thief. What kind of voting is he capable of? Who can he “elect” and where can he be chosen? What does he understand about state affairs? No wonder the wise word was said: “the city is held together by ten righteous people”...

The state affair is not at all the “sum” of all private claims, or a compromise of personal desires, or a balance of “class” interests. All these lusts and interests are short-sighted; they do not look either into the vastness of the state or into the historical distance. Each moneygrubber cares about “his own” and does not understand that a real citizen thinks about the general. State affairs begin precisely where the common life lives, that is, something that is important to everyone and unites everyone; what either everyone will have at once, or what everyone will not have at once; and if it doesn’t, then everything will fall apart and be abolished, and everyone will crumble like sand. Such is the joint and common security of life; such is the national army; such is the honest police; such is the just court; such is a faithful and wise government; This is public diplomacy; such are schools, roads, the fleet, academies, museums, hospitals, sanitary service, law and order, all kinds of external improvement and the protection of personal rights. If this is “private lust,” then whose is it? If this is a class interest, then what class? “None. Who needs and benefits this? To everyone, for it is common; in it everything is “one essence.” And while everyone provides for himself and desires for himself, he will not think about it and will not create it. And to that extent he is not a Citizen, but a money-grubber and grabber; and his voting on state affairs will be entirely a tragicomic misunderstanding (“Constituent Assembly” of 1917!). The state is composed of the people and is led by the government; and the government is called upon to live for the people and draw its living strength from them, and the people must know and understand this, and give their strength to the common cause. The faithful participation of the people in the life of the state gives the latter its strength. This expresses the democratic power of true statehood. The word demos means people; The word “kratos” expresses strength, power. A real state is “democratic” in the sense that it draws its best strength from the people and attracts them to faithful participation in its construction. This means that there must be a constant selection of these best forces and that the people must be able to correctly build their state. One should not think that the very method of this selection of the best forces has been found once and for all and that this method is applicable in all countries and among all peoples. In fact, every nation in every era of its life can and must find the method that is most suitable and appropriate for it. Any mechanical borrowing and imitation can only give dubious or downright disastrous results here.

If this qualitative selection does not occur or fails, then incapable or simply vicious elements rule and the collapse of the state begins. And if the people are unable to correctly build their state - due to political senselessness, or due to private acquisitiveness, or due to lack of will, or due to moral decay - then the state will either perish, or begin to be built according to the type of “institution” and “ guardianship" (see "N. Z.", pp. 40–41). From here it is necessary to draw a conclusion: the mechanical, quantitative and formal understanding of the state, which is carried out in Western democracies, is neither the only possible nor correct. On the contrary: it is fraught with the greatest dangers; it does not respect the organic nature of the state; it separates the public right of man from his quality and ability; it does not unite citizens in general, but compromises their self-interested voices. Therefore, this form of “statehood” and “democracy” does not promise Russia anything good and cannot be borrowed or reproduced.

Russia needs something different, new, high-quality and constructive.

Prerequisites for creative democracy The political trend that seems to predominate in the modern world should be designated as “fanaticism of formal democracy.” Fanaticism - because this movement has turned its slogan into a “confession of faith,” into a panacea (all-healing remedy), into a criterion of good and evil, into an object of blind loyalty and oath; since it was necessary to choose between a totalitarian regime and formal democracy, because there is nothing else (while in fact there is much more!). This is the fanaticism of formal democracy, which reduces the entire state structure to the form of universal and equal voting, distracting from the quality of man and the inner dignity of his intentions and goals, reconciling himself with the freedom of malice and betrayal, reducing the whole matter to the appearance of a “ballot” and to the arithmetic of votes (quantity). But in reality, such “democracy” does not guarantee anything: neither from general corruption, nor from treacherous conspiracies, nor from the exploitation of the weak, good, dark and stupid by swindlers, nor from anarchy, nor from tyranny, nor from totalitarianism. History (1914–1951) has just taught new cruel lessons, joining the old ones (from the Greco-Roman era, from the Renaissance and from the revolutions of modern times). But does a fanatic heed the lessons of historical experience? How many times have formal democracies degenerated, lost their creative power and destroyed states! And we, Russian patriots, absolutely need to think through this issue to the end and come to an agreement with each other. The democratic system is not always and everywhere in place. It has its necessary foundations or “prerequisites”: if they are not present, then democracy does not give anything except long-term decay and death. What are these prerequisites for creative democracy? 1. First: the people must understand freedom, need it, value it, be able to use it and fight for it. All this together should be designated as the art of freedom. Without it, democracy is doomed. The fact is that freedom does not at all consist in “untying” citizens or in “unbridling” the people, but in replacing “external coherence coming from above” with internal selfconnection, self-discipline. A free people knows its own rights, keeps itself within the limits of honor and law; he knows why he is given freedom: he fills it with true creative initiative - in religion, selfgovernment, in the economy, in communication, in science and in art. He will not follow the scoundrels who tempt him with “permissiveness,” but will silence them. He will not allow totalitarians to take away his freedom, but he will be able to defend it. A people deprived of the art of freedom will be overtaken by two classic dangers: anarchy and despotism. If he perceives freedom as permissiveness and begins to abuse it (violate all laws, invade other people’s homes, rob other people’s property, kill his real or imaginary enemies, destroy, burn and smash), then anarchy will ensue, which will first lead the country and state to destruction , and then will be replaced by tyranny, sometimes its own, internal; sometimes foreign, aggressive.

If he does not understand what he needs freedom for and is unable to use it, then he will give it to any adventurer for promises of private or class profit. He will sell it to the despot who will be able to inflame his passions, organize his shameless personnel, captivate people with unrealistic plans and “reward” the crowd with “bread” and “shows.” Then democracy will die. History bears witness to this countless times. Isn’t it clear that the first danger (anarchy) overtook Russia in 1917 and

its implementer was Vladimir Ulyanov and that the second danger (despotism) overtook Germany in 1933 and its implementer was Adolf Hitler? 2. The second prerequisite for creative democracy is a sufficiently high level of legal awareness. In each of us there are two forces, usually opposing each other: the power of instinct and the power of spirit. Instinct, taken by itself and not restrained by the spirit, is the wolf in man: it is predatory, cunning and cruel. But he is more cunning and resourceful than a timber wolf. A man of naked instinct knows neither faith, nor conscience, nor pity, nor honor; he laughs at honesty, despises kindness, does not believe in any principles. Everything is good for him, whatever is beneficial for him. He seeks wealth and power. He is exactly as Friedrich Nietzsche described him with delight and admiration in his anti-Christian work “The Will to Power”, where Nietzsche appeals to the “supreme beast”, to the “wild” and “evil” man with a “gay belly”, with a “rude ”and “wild” disposition, to godless pleasure. The spiritless instinct is opposed by the spirit in man, the beginning of the heart, rational will, responsible leadership and conscience. The spirit manifests itself in a thirst for the sacred, in the search for God, in the ability to self-control and active love. Legal awareness is one of its main manifestations: “I am a person with spiritual dignity and rights, I know what I can, should and cannot; and I honor the same free and responsible personality in every other person.” A person who has a healthy sense of justice is a free subject of rights; he has the will to loyalty (law-abiding), he knows how to guard both his own and others’ powers, duties and prohibitions; he is the living support of law and order, self-government, army and state. A person deprived of legal consciousness is like a beast and behaves like a wolf. A person who is capable only of obedience out of fear turns into a wolf as soon as fear disappears. A person without a sense of responsibility and honor is incapable of either personal or public selfgovernment, and therefore incapable of democracy. If the people do not have a sound sense of justice, then the democratic system turns into a sieve of abuses and crimes. Unprincipled and sneaky people turn out to be corrupt, they know this about each other and cover for each other: people commit treason, profit from it and call it “democracy”. Only a strict authoritarian (by no means totalitarian!) regime can save them and their country from destruction. 3. The third prerequisite is the economic independence of the citizen. By this I do not mean wealth, or entrepreneurship, or land ownership, but the personal ability and social opportunity to feed one’s family with honest, even waged, labor. A free citizen should feel like an independent worker in life, not expelled from the life of his country, but organically included in the real circulation of life. Only those who feel themselves to be self-supporters, bringing benefits to their people, have the basis for independent judgment in politics, for incorruptible expression of will and voting. He has a certain creative soil under his feet and in his soul that real way of thinking that leads to a correct understanding of state economy and to a correct feeling of state benefits and needs. Without this, democracy quickly degenerates into a continuous battle of groundless grabbers: no one thinks about the state and its structure, about the homeland and its salvation, because everyone is busy with personal gain.

A person who is personally incapable of honest work is a professional in dark ways, a dangerous swindler, a master of deceit, a corrupt hand. He lives outside the rule of law and legal consciousness and therefore turns out to be a political idiot. After lost wars, civil wars and lengthy revolutions, the country finds itself with an innumerable number of such abandoned adventurers,

as if created in order to disintegrate and destroy all democracy. The lucky ones become “nouveau riche” (high-money upstarts); the unlucky ones create a ready-made hired cadre for all kinds of “pseudo-generals”, for extreme parties, for foreign espionage and bandits. A person who does not have the social opportunity to feed his family with honest work is a tragic phenomenon of the unemployed. He is not to blame for his misfortune and often watches with horror how long-term unemployment demoralizes him and destroys him... Mass unemployment is extremely difficult to cope with, because it is caused by complex reasons: economic crises, overpopulation, economic backwardness of the country, destructive wars and revolutions. And these reasons are more easily amenable to the brilliant initiative of one person, if there is one, than to parliamentary discord. On both of these paths, democracy is perishing from the abundance of the rabble in the country, unaccustomed to honest work and thirsting for handouts, entertainment and adventures. The historian, of course, will remember the degeneration of ancient Roman democracy, the disintegration of the Italian civil community during the Renaissance, the War of the Roses in England, the Russian Troubles, the Thirty Years' War in Germany and the first French Revolution; he will remember another seven million unemployed in pre-Hitler Germany, take into account the state of some powers in modern Europe - and add to this his forecast for post-Bolshevik Russia. Having established the basic preconditions for a vibrant and creative democracy, we must further point out the following: 4. There is a minimum level of education and awareness, beyond which every vote becomes its own caricature. What is needed here is not an elementary literacy, which allows a person, instead of “attaching a hand” smeared with ink, to draw his last name in letters. Here you need an understanding of the election process itself and the proposed programs, an intelligent assessment of candidates, an understanding of the state and economic system of the country and its needs, a correct vision of political, international and military dangers; and, of course, familiarity with sources of truthful information. Baba Avdotya spoke in 1917 about her participation in the election of the “constituent assembly”: “I came to the volost, people were crowding on the porch; They ask – are you up for election? for the elections... - what, where? - I say: Avdotya Mitroshkina, from Pogorelye Vyselki, - they found it on a piece of paper, marked something, and put a cross on my palm with chalk, go home, they say; Well, I went”... So the socialistrevolutionaries made up their “majority” in the “constituent body”. Nor is such an education sufficient to accept a correctly written check from the party secretary waiting for “literate voters” in front of the ballot boxes... There is a level of uneducation, lack of education and ignorance at which it is not the people who vote, but the deceived crowd; and from this arises not democracy, but ochlocracy (rule of the dark crowd). And you have to be completely naive to imagine that people who have been deceptively fooled for 30-40 years will tomorrow become “conscious citizens”, capable of understanding the state’s harm and political benefits: one has only to proclaim “freedom” and “equality” - and that’s it They will immediately declare themselves supporters of the republic and the federation, Kerensky and Fedotov, because they will “correctly” understand the “good” of the state...

5. But this is not enough: political experience is needed, which in the future Russia both the more educated strata and the less educated masses will be deprived of. You need to think about it and imagine everything clearly. For thirty to forty years in a row, people were weaned from independent thinking, from political and economic initiative, from responsible decisions through hunger, fear and torture; and from morning to evening, from birth to death, people’s souls were filled with dead and false schemes of vulgar Marxism and the vulgarities of “diamatism”. What kind of citizens, what kind of democrats did the communist government prepare with this? Not citizens, but slaves

totalitarian state; not politicians, but scared to death careerists; The Soviet regime trained not activists, but sneakers and informers; people completely devoid of a state outlook and honest yes, exactly honest - experience and independent - yes, exactly independent - understanding. A man who has been in prison for thirty years, starved to death in chains, who has forgotten how to stand and walk - what kind of participant in a sports competition is he? And democracy is precisely a political sporting competition... This person needs to be led by the hand, and not heaped with ten-pound bags of responsibility... What naivety, what irresponsibility, what historical blindness is needed to imagine that the skills of a totalitarian clerk and a totalitarian day laborer can create a “democracy” capable of anything... How low do modern “democrats originally from Russia” regard the regime that they swear an oath! Years and years must pass until the Russian person comes to his senses, shakes off these humiliating habits and, standing up to his full height, again finds his way of life, his dignity, his Russian independence and his independent talented intelligence.

There is such political inexperience in which “people’s self-government” is impossible and in which democracy can only be falsified, as in the shameful memory of the “constituent system” of 1917. This is, of course, what hopes are pinned on. 6. Meanwhile, real, creative democracy presupposes in a person a whole series of properties and abilities, without which it becomes a deceptive act and a waste of national property. A participant in a democratic system needs personal character and devotion to the homeland, traits that ensure certainty of opinion, integrity, responsibility and civic courage. Without this - and he is an empty place, a cardboard brick in the wall, a rotten log, a rusted ring in a chain, a traitor provided in advance. Democratically, a regime in which such people prevail does not collapse only if there is no one to push it. Characterless people are incapable of any good undertaking; they only seem human; they are imaginary quantities. Citizens who have learned internationalism are citizens of all other states, but not their own. Voters who do not have definite views and do not know how to defend them are like those rubber animal toys that are inflated from behind and then foreign air comes out of them with a squeak, and they themselves fall on their sides. What can we say about the corrupt ones? After all, only foreigners will have money; but to a beggar it is difficult to impute his corruption. A person devoid of a sense of responsibility should not be allowed into any public matter at all: he will ruin everything, say a word and hide in the crowd behind its many-headed elusiveness. And civil courage is an essential condition of life for every democrat, in every democracy.

It would be in vain to point us to the history of Western peoples. Just by virtue of the fact that it was a different story. And also due to the fact that not a single Western people sought salvation in democracy after 30-40 years of totalitarianism. And especially due to the fact that what may be healthy for one people can bring death to another! And how can one not ask oneself: why is democracy so difficult for the Balkan peoples, Asian peoples and South American peoples? Did democracy save Spain or ruin it? Why did Germany, which began the history of its democracy a hundred years ago, end in totalitarian collapse? Why can’t a democratic regime, played out according to all the rules of parliament, take modern France out of the ravine, despite its political experience, civilization and citizenship? And how has the healing power of democracy manifested itself in modern Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania? Shouldn't the victorious tone be abandoned once and for all, arguing with democratic experience in the West?

And may there not be a single slanderer among the emigrant publicists,

who will decide, against all odds, to attribute to us a hidden sympathy for the totalitarian regime. We have seen left-wing totalitarianism and right-wing totalitarianism; we experienced both regimes, including arrests, interrogations, threats, bans; and even more than that, we have had the opportunity to study both regimes to the core and treat both with undisguised moral and political disgust. But we think much higher and better about democracy than formal democrats. And we affirm the following: a country deprived of the necessary prerequisites for a healthy creative democracy should not introduce this regime until these basic prerequisites are created. Until then, the introduction of a democratic system can only be disastrous for this country.

Optimism in politics The dark decades we have lived through should, it would seem, have cured us of that naive political optimism that was instilled in the nineteenth century by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and which at one time gave birth to the great French revolution. “Man is good by nature, and he just needs to be freed, then everything will work out on its own.” This is the premise on which the anarchists, liberals and democrats of the 19th century built their programs. We do not confuse anarchists with liberals, or liberals with democrats; these are different doctrines and programs, but the naive optimism of human freedom is inherent in all of them to this day (see, for example, the article by V. A. Maklakov “Heretical Thoughts” in the 19th book of “New Magazine"), although to varying degrees.

It seemed that the experience of the great French revolution alone should have proved that political freedom in itself does not “ennoble” a person, but only untie him, release him to freedom as he is, with all his drives, interests, passions and vices, which he takes out into the street. It would seem that the experience of all subsequent wars and revolutions, of all economic and political development over a hundred and fifty years (“capitalism” and “democracy”) should have exposed and refuted the naive and sentimental premise of such optimism. This experience showed unambiguously and clearly: no, man is a complex being; charged with passions, but sometimes capable of kindness; not a beast, but sometimes with tendencies towards bestiality; calculating and greedy, but not without conscience; susceptible to divine rays, but also very easily converted to evil; natural, but with unnatural gravity; capable of both valor and the most foul spiritual “underground” (see Dostoevsky); and too often spineless, unstable, mired in pettiness and cowardice. “Freedom” does not remake him for the better, but only “reveals” (in the photographic sense) him with all his traits, inclinations and passions. “Freeing” him does not mean making him internally capable of bearing external freedom and not turning it into unbridledness. It was in vain that the anarchist Kropotkin insisted to the end that man is bad because he is oppressed by the laws of the state, and that immediately after the fall of the state, laws and power, free, solidary and harmonious cohabitation of people will be realized.

These naive illusions, hopefully, will be put to rest for a long time, for centuries: our dark decades have given us an unforgettable lesson. We have seen what internally unfree people turn external freedom into. We saw how the villains deliberately unbridled the masses in order to bridle them in a new way, in their own way, “in their own way,” in a totalitarian way; we saw how the masses followed them, creating for themselves a new, unheard of and unprecedented yoke of communism. And when we now talk about how free the Russian people were under their Sovereigns and how this freedom increased with the growth of spiritual culture, they believe us only with difficulty: for whole generations of Russian people grew up anew in slavery, into whom lies were drilled into them about the historical Russia's past.

The politics of the future must look at man soberly and take him as he is. She will mean by freedom - first of all, internal freedom: the spiritual, moral and political self-control of a person; his ability to recognize good and evil, to prefer good and to bear responsibility; his ability to curb the criminal in himself and voluntarily maintain loyalty to the laws; his willingness to put the interests of his homeland and state above his own. People must be educated for this inner freedom, from their youth, from generation to generation: the intelligentsia, workers and peasants, in public schools, in gymnasiums, in universities, in the army, in public and political life. One cannot proceed from the belief that anyone who knows how to dress, put on shoes and earn their daily food is capable of actively participating in the construction of the state; and as if anyone who is capable

Without coercion in conversation Touch everything lightly... - politically “smart and very nice"...

However, this is not enough: one must understand what is happening in the soul of a person who votes in any state. Firstly, he is not competent in most of the issues on which he casts his vote: he does not know these subjects; he does not understand what exactly is useful for the people and the state and what is harmful; he either votes at random, or replaces the benefit of the state with his own personal benefit. He is asked: what do the people as a whole need, what is the benefit of the state? And he answers, lending his voice: “this” is more profitable for me, not “that”! People “dance” from “their stove”; vote for their own “skin”; They care about personal profit, and only the most “developed” and “conscious” replace the state with their “class” or “profession”. “Tomorrow I need to vote on three essential issues of life,” one outstanding scientist writes to me from Switzerland, “but I don’t know what to vote for; I would have to study each question separately, spend at least a week on each, but I don’t have time; you’ll have to vote at random...” This is the position of an honest scientist. What is the competence of ordinary people? Secondly, each person who goes to cast his vote carries within himself his entire complex composition: here is both an acquirer and a citizen; both a selfish man and a patriot; both conscientious and a careerist; both a class “demander” and a real politician, and perhaps an unscrupulous evildoer; and often all this “complexity” is simplified - and just a cunning selfish person goes to vote. Western democracy is formal: it “believes” in the “freedom” of voting, which is supposedly the best mentor and “sacred right.” Voting must be “free” and “secret”: every person must have the secured sacred right to cast his vote from his inner “selfish”, from the “careerist”, from the class demander and unscrupulous evildoer. And then all these perplexed and misunderstood votes of selfish people will be counted, and according to the naive faith of Jean-Jacques Rousseau - “extremes will disappear, and the never-erring General Will will be clarified”... The dark decades we have lived through force us to ask the question: yes, that’s it, is it so? Is truth determined by pressing misunderstandings? Is what is useful to the state known through the arithmetic calculation of private desires? Is the citizen’s right to “secretly” and “freely” grab the public pie for himself really sacred? Is it good to equate the voice of an honest patriot with the voice of a traitor, the opinion of a political sage with the opinion of a clever careerist, the judgment of Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin with the judgment of the Socialist Revolutionary Chernov, the voice of Klyuchevsky with the voice of Abram Krylenko, the opinion of Mendeleev with the opinion of Father Makhno? Is the path of formal democracy, which operates arithmetically with private desires, correct and salutary? And so we think that this path is wrong and dangerous; and for the coming Russia it could become downright disastrous. We must look for other ways. But doesn't this mean that we recommend totalitarianism with its vote rigging, which essentially deprives the vote of any meaning? No. God save Russia from all totalitarianism - left, right and middle. But in this case, is there only the path of Western European democracy left? We know that many people think this way: they have driven themselves into an imaginary dead end and see neither prospects nor outcome: either a totalitarian dictatorship or formal democracy. Meanwhile, this formula itself already indicates new outcomes: 1. Dictatorship, but not totalitarian, not international, not communist; a dictatorship organizing a new informal democracy, and therefore a democratic dictatorship; – not demagogic, “promising” and corrupting, but state, ordering and educating; not a fading freedom, but a handing over to true freedom. 2. Democracy, but not formal, not arithmetic, not suppressing mass misunderstandings and private desires; democracy that relies not on the human atom and is not indifferent to its internal lack of freedom, but on

educated by her, a self-governing, internally free citizen; a democracy of quality, responsibility and service – with suffrage understood and practiced in a new way. And behind these two possibilities lies a multitude of new political forms in the most varied combinations, starting with a new, creative, purely Russian people's monarchy. But there is no such form anywhere! Strange objection! It’s as if there’s nothing new in the world! Or as if we, Russians, can only borrow from other peoples their fashions and their mistakes... ...Ah, if we were born to adopt everything, At least we could borrow a little from the Chinese Their wise ignorance of foreigners...... So that the unclean Lord destroy this spirit of Empty, slavish, blind imitation... Russia needs something different, something new! And the Russian people will create it.

What is the state - a corporation or an institution? 1. When we find categorical statements in the left-wing organs of the Russian foreign press that “democracy is now recognized by all and finally,” we are amazed at the political myopia and party naivety of these writers. In fact, “democracy” is now experiencing a “great and protracted crisis”, which can have only two outcomes: either the triumph of dictatorship and tyranny of the totalitarian trend (which God forbid!), or a complete renewal of the democratic principle towards the selection of the best and political education . The idea of “formal democracy”, put forward over the last hundred and fifty years as a worldwide political panacea (all-healing remedy), has already led a number of states, and after them the rest of humanity, to the greatest difficulties and disasters and has come up against a totalitarian system that has grown out of its consistent implementation . Only doctrinaires can fail to see this.

What has actually happened in the world over the past thirty years is a spiritual denunciation and rejection of the totalitarian system, no matter whether it is left or right; but not at all a political justification for formal democracy. On the contrary, it was “formal democracy” with its internal emptiness, errors and temptations that led to left and right totalitarianism: these two political regimes are related to each other, like an ugly reaction to painful exaggeration, or like tyranny arising from decay; or as slavery returning to those who failed to find and maintain the spiritually correct measure of freedom. Now we are experiencing a period when humanity has not yet become disillusioned with either formal democracy or legal totalitarianism; when some naively intend to cure failed totalitarianism with formal democracy, while others organize in order to replace formal democracy with right-wing or left-wing totalitarianism.

We insist on the third outcome for Russia and consider it the only correct one. In order to understand it, it is necessary to pose the whole question with all possible political and legal clarity. The state, as a multi-headed (or aggregate) legal entity, can be either a “corporation” or an “institution.” What is it really? Let us ask ourselves first: what is a “corporation” and what is an “institution”? A corporation (such as a cooperative) consists of active, empowered and equal members. They unite into a single organization of their own free will: if they want, they enter it, if they don’t want, they leave it. They have a common interest and are free to acknowledge it or reject it. If they recognize it and are part of this corporation, then they thereby have the authority to act to satisfy it. They are authorized to formulate their common goal, limit it, elect all necessary bodies by vote, approve them and disavow them, “revoke” their will, cancel their decisions, condition their participation “insofar as”. Cooperation begins with the individual: with his opinion, will, decision; with his “freedom” and interest. It is built from the bottom up; she bases everything on voting; it is organized on the basis of freely recognized (and, accordingly, freely limited, freely rejected) solidarity of interested figures. “Everything through the people” is the ideal of formal democracy.

On the contrary, the life of an institution (for example, a hospital, a gymnasium) is built not from below, but from above (even when the institution itself was established by popular vote). People interested in the life of this institution receive benefit and benefit from it, but do not themselves formulate either their common interest or their common goal. They do not have the authority to act on behalf of the institution. They "pass" through it, but do not constitute it or build it. They passively accept care, services, benefits and orders from the institution. Not them

are heard in the institution, and they are heard in the institution. The institution itself decides whether it “accepts” them or not; and, if “accepts,” under what conditions and for how long. They do not choose its organs, they do not have the right to “disavow” or “change” them; and they cannot even always voluntarily reject his services and “leave”. Consequently, the institution is built on the principle of guardianship over interested people. It has its own rights and obligations, its own charter, its own organization; but it does not receive all this from those under its care; it does not report to them, and its organs are not chosen, but appointed. Hospital patients do not choose their doctors; Gymnasium students in the gymnasium cannot change the director, and inspectors and cadets cannot leave the cadet corps without permission; students are admitted to the university, but do not define its goals and objectives, and professors do not listen to their orders. And since the state is an institution, the people in it do not govern themselves and do not dispose of themselves, but are educated, cared for and obeyed. And so, supporters of formal democracy believe that the more consistently it is transformed into a corporation, the better organized the state is. And supporters of the totalitarian system are convinced that the state is better organized, the more consistently all self-government is excluded and suppressed, the more the state is turned into an institution. The principle of corporation, carried out consistently to the end, will extinguish all power and organization, disintegrate the state and lead it to anarchy. The principle of establishment, carried out consistently to the end, will extinguish all human initiative, kill the freedom of the individual and spirit and lead to hard labor. Anarchy cannot be cured by hard labor; this is barbarism. Hard labor is not made healthier by anarchy - this is madness. Only the third way is saving. Which one? And how to find it? First of all, we must understand and fully think through that the corporate system requires citizens to have a mature legal consciousness. Anyone who wants to participate in governing the state must be able to manage himself, understand the essence of the state, its tasks and goals, the organic nature of people's life, the meaning and meaning of freedom, the technology of social organization, the laws of politics and economics. If this is not the case, the common interest will remain unconscious, replaced by private self-interest and personal desires, the principle of solidarity will remain an empty word, the common goal will be lost, authority will be replaced by “fist law” - the falsification of statehood and collapse will begin. The state will perish or will form again as a dictatorial institution. And in relation to all citizens with an immature legal consciousness (children, minors, the mentally ill, savages, politically senseless, criminals, abnormal, greedy rogues, etc.) - the state will always remain a guardianship institution. Those who are not able to realize and vitally formulate their public interest and to whom it is absurd to give the right to vote - the state will always patronize and guide. But the matter is not limited to this. People generally live in the world not to waste their time and energy on political organization, but to create culture. Politics should not consume their leisure time and take them away from work, but should provide them with order, freedom, legality, justice and technical and economic conveniences of life. Seething in political disagreements, passions and intrigues, in vanity, ambition and lust for power is not culture, but a waste of strength and life opportunities. Therefore, politics should not consume more time and will than necessary. The corporate system tends to squander the strength of the people; the structure of the institution, if it is at its best, is to save them. To top it all off, political affairs require special knowledge, study, training, experience and talent that “everyone” has never possessed and will never possess; political construction has always been and will always be a matter competent minority.

Therefore, the state will never cease to be built according to the type of institution, especially in those relations where unified power and discipline are necessary: namely, in matters of public education, order, court, administration, defense,

diplomacy and some others. This does not mean at all that the principle of selfgovernment is excluded from state life and construction, that it is condemned and rejected; but this means that the scope of its application is limited by the very essence of the matter: 1) the compulsory nature of the state union in general (nationality - citizenship, loyalty without any “insofar as”, taxes, military service, judicial verdict and punishment); 2) the very technology of state and especially military construction (issues requiring secrecy and personal responsibility, issues of strategy and tactics are not voted on); 3) the current level of legal awareness in the country; 4) the necessary economy of forces (people do not live in the world in order to politicking).

All this means that the modern extremes (formal democracy and totalitarian regime) are unhealthy delusions. The state, in its healthy implementation, always combines the features of a corporation with the features of an institution: it is built both from above and from below, and according to the principle of imperious guardianship, and according to the principle of selfgovernment. There are public affairs in which corporate self-government is appropriate and useful; and there are cases in which it is decidedly inappropriate and unacceptable. Voting in the Russian army in 1917 was a manifestation of political cretinism and revolutionary intrigue (at the same time). Similarly, there are government affairs that can only be conducted on the principle of authoritative instructions, assignments and penalties; and there are matters in which selfgovernment is necessary, because totalitarian centralism kills life in them (cf. the Soviet system). It is absurd to build the entire state according to the model of a hospital or a school: for statemature citizens are not sick or schoolchildren; their conscious solidarity is precious, their political activity is necessary, their public legal authority is constructive; all this is powerful political cement.

This also means that a politician organizing a state must take into account, first of all, the level of popular legal consciousness available in a given country and in a given era, using it to determine the life combination of an institution and a corporation that will be best “under given living conditions.” These living conditions are: 1. Territory and its size (the larger these sizes, the more necessary is strong power and the more difficult it is to implement a corporate system). 2. Population density (the higher it is, the easier it is to organize the country; the smaller it is, the more necessary the beginning of the establishment). 3. The sovereign tasks of the state (the more grandiose they are, the fewer citizens they understand and are accessible to, the higher the level of legal consciousness should be, the more difficult the corporate system). 4. Economic tasks of the country (a corporate state can easily cope with the primitive economy of a small country). 5. The national composition of the country (the more homogeneous it is, the easier it is for the people to govern themselves).

6. Religious affiliation of the people (homogeneous religiosity of the masses makes it easier to govern, heterogeneous religiosity makes it difficult; the abundance of anti-state sects can become a direct danger to the state, etc.). 7. The social composition of the country (the more primitive and simple it is, the easier solidarity will be for the people, the simpler the management). 8. The cultural level of the people (the lower it is, the more necessary the beginning of the institution). 9. The structure of the national character (the more stable and spiritually individualized the personal character of a given people, the easier it is to implement a corporate system;

a people individualized not spiritually, but only biologically, and, moreover, characterless can only be controlled by imperious guardianship). All this is indicated here for example only; In all this, the clause “all other things being equal” is implied. So: there is not and cannot be a single standard, a single exemplary system for all peoples and states. And the one who always repeats “everything through the people” reveals his superficiality and his political inability. The idea of the “institutional state” is represented in history by the monarchical (and dictatorial) beginning; despite this, the monarchical form of the state is capable of coexistence with the broadest cooperative self-government (for example, England; Russia before 1917). The idea of a “corporation state” is represented in history by the republican (and democratic) beginning; despite this, the republican form of the state is capable of degenerating into complete totalitarianism, approaching dictatorship (Germany after 1933; Russia after 1917). Extreme slogans - “everything from above” and “everything from below” - so tempting for people of primitive thinking and passionate temperament, are equally untenable and dangerous. Anyone who tries to do everything “from above” will kill the creative independence of his people, alienate them, embitter them, isolate himself, choke in the networks of a formal and corrupt bureaucracy and undermine the vitality of his state, regardless of whether he is leftist or a right-wing totalitarian. Anyone who tries to build everything “from below” will decompose the state into a system of small and powerless communities, make unity and law and order impossible, give predominance to bad quantity over creative quality, drown in the waves of demagoguery and unrest and find themselves under the heel of a tyrant. The state, by its very essence, is not a private-legal organization, like a cooperative, voluntaryfree, but a public-legal, imperious-imperative, obligatory-compulsory one. And by this alone it is already predetermined that it will never cease to be an institution and will never turn into pure cooperation. The spirit of the institution may temporarily recede into the background, but woe to the republic or democracy in which it disappears completely! In the hour of unrest, revolution, war, natural disaster, general danger, hunger, infection - the most democratic, archfederal republic will remember the leading, commanding and compulsory guardianship of the institution and will not decide “everything through the people,” as our Russian superdemocratic bunglers demanded in 1917

The coming Russia will have to find for itself its own, special, original state form, a combination of “institution” and “corporation” that would correspond to Russian, national historical data, starting from the post-revolutionary legal consciousness present in Russia and ending with the national territory. In the face of such a creative challenge, calls from foreign parties for formal democracy remain naive, frivolous and irresponsible.

Fundamentals of Democracy

Every political system has its own vital foundations - in the mental structure of the people, in their sense of justice and in their social structure. These foundations disappear, and the political system degenerates: first into its ominous caricature, and then into its direct opposite. The absence of these foundations in the life of a people means that this people is incapable of such a political system; that this state system should not be introduced at all for fear of disastrous consequences. Thus, it is absurd to propose a monarchical or aristocratic system for Switzerland or for the United States; the introduction of a republic in Germany could only end in demagogic tyranny; to overthrow the monarchies in Greece, Yugoslavia or Spain would mean putting these countries on the brink of destruction, etc. History teaches us all this at every step; but the doctrinaires do not learn from history; they themselves think to teach history, subordinating it to their theoretical inventions.

Likewise, democracy has its vital foundations - in the spirit of the people, in their sense of justice, in their social structure. Without these foundations, democracy will degenerate into either ochlocracy (dominance of the mob) or tyranny. What are these basics? Democracy (in Russian – “rule of the people”) presupposes in the people the ability not only to lead public life, but precisely to rule the state. For this, the people need, first of all, a confident and living sense of state responsibility: “the fate of my people, my state, my own, my children and grandchildren depends on what I do, how I behave and what I vote for: for I answer all this; I must do all this with honor and conscience.” This is immediately a feeling of a creative connection between oneself and the state, and a feeling of standing (to God, the homeland and conscience, honor and future generations). A people deprived of a sense of responsibility is not capable of democracy: it will behave irresponsibly and the whole thing will perish. And as long as this feeling is not cultivated in him, the burden of the rule of the people can only be placed on him blindly, from doctrinaireism and from one’s own irresponsibility. Secondly, democracy is not feasible without free loyalty and without elementary honesty. A people who have not learned to honor the law and voluntarily observe it out of conscience will not respect either their state structure or the laws they themselves have issued; every kind of crime will turn out to be the main form of his life, and a “black market” will be established in all his affairs. Not only that, but this people will be incapable of control, justice, coercive measures, or mobilization of their army; for at the basis of all this lies voluntary observance of the law, a sense of duty and integrity. But where laws are not respected, property laws are especially and constantly trampled upon: the boundaries between “yours and mine”, between “mine and the public”, between “mine and the government” are lost; all kinds of theft and fraud, corruption and bribery are introduced into life; people are not ashamed of criminality and democracy becomes its own caricature. The very first war will fail him in disgrace.

Thirdly, democracy requires from the people a state-political outlook that corresponds to the size of the country and the sovereign tasks of this people. For a small, unthreatened people, a provincial political horizon is enough: a Dane can do without the horizon that an Englishman needs; a citizen of the Principality of Monaco may not see beyond his bell tower; but the American “isolationist” is a short-sighted “hillbilly”; and the Russian Kaluga resident, who rejects the fight for the sea shores on the grounds that “we Kalutsk people don’t need the sea,” is incapable of democracy. A people who do not understand their historical and sovereign tasks will create a pathetic caricature of a democrat and destroy themselves and their culture. Fourthly, democracy requires from the people masses - known knowledge and

independent thinking about what is known. There is a degree of popular ignorance at which democracy can only be introduced in order to violate it. A people who know neither the history nor the geography of their country will not see themselves; and all his votes will be meaningless. The people who do not understand their economy will be deceived by the first gang of demagogues. The people, unable to independently think about their fate and their state, will cling to the false slogans suggested to them and will run after the flattering traitors. The global situation is a complex situation - diplomatically, strategically, economically, nationally, and religiously. What kind of democracy is a people capable of if they do not know anything true about other peoples, about their lives, interests, claims, plans and intentions? No way! He is politically blind and diplomatically deaf; in financial matters he is like a child; he is not competent in matters of culture and science; in matters of strategy and war he is helpless. What does his vote weigh? A dark person’s “right to vote” will always be stolen by a political swindler...

Fifthly, popular rule is feasible only where the people have inherent strength of personal character. What will a person without self-esteem do with his “voice”? He will sell it more profitably to the first clever buyer of votes. What will the election campaign turn into for a people deprived of moral discipline? In pogroms, in massacres, in civil war. Masses of people, unlearned of mutual respect and trust, are incapable of honest organization, collusion, or coordination of forces. A people without character will quickly decompose the “rule of the people” into anarchy, into a war of all against all. However, in addition to these spiritual foundations and conditions of democracy, there are also social basics.

Firstly, a people who have lost their settled home, family strength and respect for work becomes groundless and politically bankrupt; he approaches the Roman plebs of the era of Caesarism. People cease to be political individuals and become dust, tragic rubbish, blown by the wind. Remember the War of the Scarlet and White Roses; re-read Shakespeare's historical dramas and don't give yourself any illusions! Anyone who does not have a settled home easily becomes a “landsknecht” looking for himself as a “condottieri.” He who does not value the traditions of his honest family and his family hearth quietly turns into an adventurer. Whoever is deprived of the meaning of work ceases to be a citizen. A people in this state is incapable of state self-government, a corporate system, and democracy.

Secondly, a participant in the rule of people must have strong-willed independence and civic courage. This doesn't come easy. This is easiest for a person who stands on his own two feet in property: a peasant owner, people of the “middle class”, qualified personnel of the proletariat, wealthy citizens. It is in these layers that democracy has its main support. An impoverished people, descending to the state of the rabble, will quickly degenerate and destroy all democracy.

Finally, a certain historical, national and state fabric of solidarity. People must be drawn into it by work, nepotism, legal consciousness, religious feeling and patriotism. It holds together every state, especially a democratic one. There is no it, there is no this invisible creative fusion into national unity and the corporate structure of the state becomes impracticable. Then we must seek salvation in the institutional state, which will have to slowly but persistently strengthen this fabric of solidarity and develop corporate skills, that is, democratic abilities among the masses...

Such is the basis of democracies.

Democracy - immediately and at all costs We must foresee that sober political considerations will not convince the “doctrinaires of democracy.” They inspired themselves once and for all that the democratic form of state life is the highest and independent value, the air of being, the light of life, the joy of existence, the guarantee of all justice, the meaning of creativity... So they raised this question before the start of the revolution, when, according to their directives, from all corners countries, it happened that resolutions were passed: as long as there is no truly democratic constituent assembly, it is impossible to teach, study, treat, be treated, sit, discuss, decide, trade, print, or conduct any kind of business whatsoever. life. In a word, democracy or destruction! It would seem that the experience of history could teach them something: in 1917, democracy unfolded in Russia in complete freedom and brought with it absolute destruction. But do the doctrinaires learn from History? More than thirty years filled with disasters have passed. And here we are again faced with the same question and hear again the same solution and the same answer: democracy immediately and at all costs, regardless of anything, at any cost, for it is the air of being, the light of life, the joy of existence, guarantee of all justice, the meaning of creativity, etc. l.

Our patriotic anxiety about Russia tells them nothing. We ask: what will a person who is not ripe for it and experiences it as unbridledness make of political freedom? After all, we lived through 1917 with our eyes open and our hearts bleeding! We watched and learned. We studied and learned. We ask: how will such a person fill his political rights now, after thirty or forty years of revolutionary slavery? What will such a person give to his country, abusing all freedoms, choosing crookedly, voting corruptly, resolving all issues of the state on the basis of theft, revenge and greed? What can be done if it turns out that he himself becomes the most dangerous enemy of others and the common freedom?

We must anticipate that these questions will tell the doctrinaires nothing. They will answer us something like this. “In order to accustom people to true freedom, it is imperative to give them complete freedom. In order to awaken legal consciousness among the people, everything must be left to their discretion. In order for honesty to awaken, it is best to give people the opportunity to steal and not to steal - only then will they understand from their own experience that it is shameful to be a thief. In order to accustom people to meaningful voting, it is necessary to give them the right to use their vote freely: for ten, twenty, thirty, and maybe more years, they will trade their votes (selling them for foreign currency), vote for demagogues, for international agents , for political crooks and simply for their domestic swindlers, and later, having gone through all this, they will learn to vote smarter and better. All peoples followed this path and learned democracy this way; The Russian people are no better than others. When a child learns to walk, the first time he falls; what of this? The shooter does not immediately hit the target, but first misses a lot and for a long time. Only by self-government do people become accustomed to self-government. He who is afraid of water will never learn to swim: Russia must become a democratic state as soon as possible and at any cost, at any cost. This is the main thing; it's the most important. If she suffers more and more, then this is not significant. Let democracy be realized, at least at the cost of all-Russian disintegration and a new significant decrease in the population in Russia! No price is too high for the science of freedom. We have to choose. One of two things: either totalitarian slavery or consistent democracy. There is no third way!”

This is what the political doctrinaires will tell us... We will answer them.

“No, there is a third outcome, and it is this that must be found and implemented in

life is a firm, national-patriotic and, in theory, liberal dictatorship, helping the people to highlight their truly best forces and educating the people for sobriety, for free loyalty, for self-government and for organic participation in state building. Only such a dictatorship can save Russia from anarchy and protracted civil wars. In order to accustom people to freedom, it is necessary to give them as much freedom as they are able to accept and fill with life, without destroying themselves and their state; immeasurable and unbearable freedom has always been and will always be a real political poison. In order to awaken a sense of justice among the people, it is necessary to appeal to their honor, protect them from pogrom excesses by government prohibitions and leave to the discretion of the people no more than how much they can lift and carry without destroying themselves and their state. Immense powers never led to good, but only caused political intoxication and unbridled passions. And now not a single state constitution grants such powers to any people. In order for honesty to awaken and strengthen, it is by no means necessary to release all criminals from prison (as was done in Russia in March 1917) and it is by no means necessary to provide them with impunity. Honesty is a type of free loyalty, and it is cultivated over generations. Sentimental and false non-resistance only encourages the evil spirit in people. In order to accustom people to the state's faithful will, we must start with a limited right to vote: give it only to those who are sedentary, only to families, only to those who are hardworking, only to those who have never served the Communist Party, only to those who are mature in age, only to those who are acceptable both to voters and to the national government. In other words: we must start with a system of property qualifications that ensure the necessary minimum of integrity, honesty and state sense, so that in the future, as the people and the country improve, the circle of voters can be expanded. Anything else would be doctrinaire madness and the destruction of Russia. Why tell a deliberate lie, as if all nations followed this path? In fact, no nation has had such a space, such a climate, such borders, such a historical burden, such a multinational composition, such difficulties and temptations, such heroic sacrifice, such a state and such a culture! No people have ever gone through such martyrdom and corruption as the communist revolution brought with it. It is stupid to refer to a falling child, because now the issue is not about a child’s bruise, but about the existence of Russia. It is even more stupid to refer to a shooter who misses, because a miss is no big deal, and the secondary doctrinaire outrage against freedom and the participation of the people in state self-government (for the first outrage took place in 1917 and lasted from February to December!) will inevitably end in a new stream of national disasters. The most important thing is the existence of Russia. She must first of all rise from enslavement and resume her economic and spiritual life. And then only, to the extent of its existing abilities for the corporate-state form, can it think about its democratic vestments. Russia must continue its great, age-old, religious-national cause, its universal cultural service. This is the main thing, this is the most essential. It cannot and should not pay “any price” for this pseudo-democratic unbridledness, which doctrinaires call “freedom”; from this unbridledness they themselves will be the first to die if they do not manage to escape beyond the cordon again. But our grief is not about them, but about Russia. The slogan “democracy immediately and at any cost” once already led to a totalitarian dictatorship in Russia. He threatens the same dictatorship in the future, but this time it will be anti-communist.

We understand that for doctrinaires, their doctrine is more valuable than Russia: that’s why they are doctrinaires. But Russia is dearest to us and we do not want either an all-Russian disintegration or a new extinction of the Russian people in civil wars prepared by the dismemberers.”

May the Lord save us from this!..

Fanatics of the “social contract” It is remarkable that all the dismemberers of Russia, no matter what they are guided by, utter the same word, formulating the same directive: Russia must become a federal state, it must be built on a general voluntary agreement of its peoples and its citizens. In this they see the highest and last word of “democracy”; That’s why they are ready to classify everyone who disagrees with this directive as “reactionaries”, “imperialists”, supporters of despotism, terror, etc.

Indeed, there is an old doctrine (known for a long time, but usually attributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau), according to which every state rests on a “social contract,” on an agreement between all citizens; such an agreement, which was actually observed only in a few federal states (see N. 3. No. 69, 70, 72) and had a completely different form and different content there, is considered - tacitly - presupposed and binding everywhere. Political thinkers have tried more than once over the centuries to formulate this fictitious (i.e., fictitious, created by the imagination, or, as lawyers say, “presumed” (i.e., assumed in the form of a conditional assumption) contract, according to which every citizen voluntarily and freely joins his state and undertakes to obey its laws. Even if, they say, such an agreement never existed, it must be considered as having taken place and fundamentally justifying the existence of the state.

And this teaching has its fanatics, who are not satisfied with “fiction” and “presumption”, but want to bring their people to the actual implementation of the social contract. They do not want to calm down until the state in their country is built on universal, free “option”. They achieve this repeatedly and at any cost. The great and shameful failure of 1917, when the Russian people did not follow the path of federation, but indulged in crime, murder, anarchy and civil war, which led them to many years of totalitarian slavery, does not bother them at all. They are ready to “start the fairy tale all over again.” Their utopian state should be built in the form of a corporation of unfettered “investors” and become something like consumer cooperation. They are unable to think and desire less than this maximalism. And they will not comprehend the fact that the state has always been and will always be an institution until their death.

This legal and historical blindness must be overcome once and for all in Russia. In reality, the very belonging of a citizen to any state is determined not by his free “option”, but by the laws of the state itself and the decision of the authorities applying these laws. Let us take any, the freest and most democratic constitution, and we will immediately be convinced that the principle of “voluntary self-ascription” and “unfettered self-deduction” is not recognized in it. People acquire the rights and responsibilities of citizenship at their very birth, when the option is absolutely beyond their power. States take into account who you were born from, where you were born, when you were born, and subsequently how many years you lived in the country and how you behaved during this time. Each of us is considered a citizen and is excluded from citizenship according to the laws of a given country, and nowhere does a unilateral expression of will resolve this issue. Find at least one state that would allow everyone to join and leave by unilateral declaration; or else - a state that would give its citizens the right, by mutual agreement, to “secede” from it and join another; or the right to establish new states or states within its borders. History knows of unilateral renunciations of citizenship, but they are accompanied by removal beyond the border and create the powerless status of a “refugee” or “emigrant.” History also knows the unilateral fall of cities, communities and entire countries (for example, Ireland). But these acts are committed outside the law and in violation of loyalty. These are illegal acts

they are disturbances, upheavals or outright revolts; these are revolutionary acts that can lead to pacification or civil wars. But the right to unilateral secession from the state, or the right to abdicate and fall away is not recognized anywhere; no democratic constitution knows about it. But the dismemberers of Russia, who want to turn it into a federation, call precisely for such extra-legal upheavals, for apostasies, for acts of “free” treason, for revolutionary uprisings. They dream that after the fall of the Bolsheviks, the citizens of a united Russia will again fall into chaos and permissiveness, will disintegrate their state with impunity, and will implement so many “social contracts” at their own discretion, and will establish, regardless of anything, so many new “states”, as much as they please, with the fact that each of these new formations will have its own government, its own army, its own coin and its own diplomacy. The thirtyyear revolution is not enough for them: they want to prolong and deepen it after the fall of the Bolsheviks. After the endless fury of the “Montagnards” (revolutionaries-centralists-unifiers), they want an endless fury of the “Girondists” (revolutionaries-decentralizers-dismemberers). That is why they want the “Russian nationalities” to no longer take into account the existence of a single Russian people and state, but to take advantage of the post-Bolshevik turmoil to carry out general arbitrariness and disintegration - on the basis of a falsely understood doctrine of the “social contract”.

Every resident of Russia should be given the right to determine at his own discretion which state he wants to belong to - Russia or some other: whoever wants will gravitate to Turkey, some to China, some to Poland, some to Germany. Let others establish new states. - Tungusia, Chuvashia, Cheremisiya, Ukraine, Belarus, Zyriania, Georgia, Crimea, or, like it was in 1917, the Morshan Republic, Saransk Federation, Sychevsk Democracy, Chukhloma Canton, Novorzhevsky State, Poshekhonsky Soviet, Buzuluk Khanate, Ivanovo -Voznesensk Socialist Oligarchy and Minsk Prelacy. Fanatics of the “social contract” still dream that, after the revolution of totalitarian tyranny, a revolution of general unleashing, minority anarchy and disintegration of Russia will begin in the name of a false doctrine - the era of the destruction of the “convict” Empire (Mr. Fedotov’s expression), the era of its conquest by strengthened and predatory foreigners . They dream of turning Russia into a multitude of politically insignificant and strategically powerless dwarfs - and thus handing it over for conquest and enslavement to Western and South-Eastern states. The property of Russia will become, in essence, “nobody’s”; and according to old Roman law, “nobody’s property belongs to the first invader”... But the fanatics of federalism go to this extent.

Read about this from Mr. Fedotov (in book XVI of the New Journal) and take into account the fact that not a single employee of this magazine found the courage to disassociate himself from his formulas: on the contrary, everyone began to “adjoin”, scrape and halfagree with him, as if he were considered a leader or “political instructor” among them... Here are his true formulas: “If there were no separatisms in Russia, they would have been created artificially.” (Who would create?.. – Ed.). “The division of Russia would still have been a foregone conclusion.” (Who... the powerful “behind the scenes”?.. – Ed.). “Russia is a doomed Empire.” Its “peoples will demand the exercise of their constitutional right to secede.” And “even if Great Russia wins and keeps the peoples of the Empire with it by force, its triumph can only be temporary.” “There is no place for Austria-Hungary in the modern world” (“New Journal”, book XVI, p. 168). It is not difficult to guess from which environment this program is coming and who is behind it... But Russia itself will have the last word for itself.

Party structure of the state It would seem that what could be more natural and valuable in a free state than the free formation of parties? Free citizens look for like-minded people, find them, organize and nominate their candidates for elections! After all, this is part of the very essence of democracy!.. If this is not the case, then democracy dies... Isn’t it so? However, the history of recent decades has shown that democracy falls apart precisely because of its party structure. If the formation of a party is free, then who can prevent people from organizing a party that demands a monopoly for itself? They did not prevent this in Russia; did not prevent this in Italy; they failed to resist this in Germany, Austria, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Spain and Portugal. And now in Yugoslavia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria and China... Did England, under the socialist government, ban Anglofascism? And where is the course of affairs in the states of South America, where parties have been busy with civil war for a hundred and fifty years now and are now only thinking about successfully reproducing European “lessons”? Is it not in party democracy itself that the principles are laid down that are ruining it, opening the doors to either right or left totalitarianism?! We understand that supporters of party freedom are willing to hush up this degeneration of democracy through partisanship, this anti-democratic epidemic that has seized modern democratic states: it all seems to them that this is a whole series of “accidents” or “outrageous abuses”, which “in a decent society” are better off not to mention it at all, just as in the house of a hanged man they don’t talk about the rope. They are afraid to say that modern democracies are dying and decaying precisely because of the party structure and doctrinaire liberalism. They are afraid and do not know how to fight. And we will try to draw responsible conclusions from the lessons of history. A party is a union of citizens organized in order to seize state power into their own hands. All parties, both democratic and anti-democratic, strive for this. The difference between them is that democrats consider it necessary to comply with the rules of the constitution, while anti-democrats tend to neglect them. Among these rules there are written and unwritten (traditional, “self-evident”), observing everything means “playing fair” (in English: “fer play”). This game is, of course, a rare exception. Thus, demagogic promises, party nepotism, opaque or simply shady financing, insinuations against honest people of another party while covering up their own outrages, depriving opponents of free speech in meetings and all the machinations of the world behind the scenes - do not in any way constitute a “fair” game, but are practiced more or less everywhere in democracies. And so democratic parties are striving to seize power through permitted and semi-permitted means, and anti-democratic parties through permitted and unauthorized means. The first - in order to resume the “game”, that is, the struggle, after some time, and the second - in order to destroy other parties and leave power for themselves “forever” (which, of course, they will not succeed).

It goes without saying that totalitarian parties do not deserve the slightest sympathy: we have seen plenty of how and who they are made up of and where they lead. However, now we need to “put a magnifying glass on” not only totalitarian parties, but the idea of the party as such – the principle of party membership in general. A political party is always a part of the whole, a small part of all citizens, and nothing more; and she herself knows this, which is why she calls herself a “party” (from the Latin word “pars” - part). But she encroaches on much more, on the whole, on power. state, to seize it. She seeks to impose her entire private (party) program on the state, contrary to the sympathy and wishes of all other citizens who either did not speak out at all (25 percent of absenteeism on

elections!), or spoke not in her favor. Due to this alone, each party is a minority imposing its will on the majority. And due to this alone, any democratic system would have to allow only coalition governments, which would have to find a saving compromise between the pariahs (“parts”) in order to represent the whole. But history shows that in today’s passionate and inflamed spirit of partisanship, such an agreement is achieved only with great difficulty: the parties do not want each other. Thus, the party system inflames ambition and party competition, and the “parts” push each other out of power. At best, this results in a “swing” that is harmful to the state: to the right, to the left, to the right, to the left - regardless of the true state business. The root driver is marking time, the crewmen take turns tearing the carriage into their nearest ditch, the coachman is missing or he is indifferently inactive, and the traveling passengers anxiously watch the wayward crewmen and await their fate...

In this case, the winning party is considered to have received a “majority” of votes in the election. What is this “majority”? At best, a majority of the votes cast, and not always an absolute majority of them (more than half), and sometimes a relative majority (i.e., more than other parties). But it rarely happens that more than 75 percent participate in elections. voters; and it happens that the number of voters drops to 60 and 55 percent. everyone who has the right to vote. Then the party that receives 38 percent can seize power. up to 28 percent all voters, and maybe even less. And this is a formally fictitious “majority,” i.e., an avowed minority that lays claim to state power; and in some states (Romania) another 10–20 percent is attributed to him “in the form of a bonus” on paper. voices (“dead souls”). But even if any party received 51-60 percent. votes of all voters, then this “majority” is usually composed, even in the oldest and most venerable democracies, not of its conscious and convinced supporters. Election statistics have long noted that matters are decided by the nonpartisan, wavering, “floating” masses, which are not associated with the party program, but vote “according to their mood.” Thus, in England, victory is always given by the “hollow water” of public mood: then it will rush to the right and the wheels of the conservative mill will turn; then to the left - and the millstones of all-grinding socialism will jump. Isn’t it instructive that, for example, in Switzerland out of 100 percent. only 14 percent of voters. have a party affiliation, and 86 percent. they vote “according to their mood,” and party committees in all countries know this and therefore cast a “fishing net” as far and wide as possible in order to abuse non-party votes by the party.

Thus, the “majority” of votes is obtained through pressure (“agitation”) and chance, lust for power and demagoguery; and how often it develops for the most absurd and disloyal reasons. Some believed demagogic, almost always unfulfilled and unfulfilled promises; others were bribed - checks were handed out directly in front of the polling station (see Bryce's study); still others voted blindly, due to misunderstanding or stupidity; fourth because they preferred the “lesser evil”; fifths were intimidated; sixths succumbed to mass psychosis, etc. “This,” they will tell us, “is indifferent: he cast a ballot for our party, and the rest does not concern us... We cannot understand why he voted this way and not otherwise: out of fear, because of personal gain, out of conviction, as a result ignorance or stupidity. And why should we care about his sense of justice? What is important is the ballot in the ballot box, not the legal consciousness of the voter..." And it was these gaps in the living legal consciousness that were noticed and used for evil by totalitarian parties: if the legal consciousness of the voter is indifferent, then why not build elections on sheer stupidity, lies, cowardice, corruption and vicious demagoguery?.. But, even if you conditionally “forget” all this and, making a stupidly respectful face,

agree that such and such a party “really” received a “majority” in the elections, then it remains to resolve the deepest and most important question: is the majority (the most arithmetically accurate! (the most loyal!) really a criterion of state goodness? Is rightness , dignity, usefulness, statehood of a program - is decided by quantity? Doesn’t history know such examples when the people voted for tyrants, for adventurers, for totalitarian parties, for the expulsion of the best people (Aristides), for the death penalty for the righteous (the death sentence for Socrates was 360 votes out of 500 were cast)? Of course, someone could take the view that “the majority of votes is the measure of good and evil,” “benefit and harm,” “health and illness,” “salvation and destruction”; but it’s unlikely Will it be possible to recognize this view as the most intelligent, thoughtful and deep? We ask ourselves, like Russians: was it not a minority in the country that gave Russia the reform of Peter the Great, the liberation of the peasants, zemstvo self-government and Stolypin’s land reform? And wasn’t it the majority of votes that elected the “Constituent Assembly” in 1917 of disastrous memory?

We've had enough for now! The party principle is experiencing a great and profound crisis in modern states. He reduces politics to quantity and to conventional formalities. He neglects a living sense of justice, splits the state and instills in the people the spirit of civil war. Moreover, he is preparing the downfall of the formal democracy that has nurtured him. We have no doubt that humanity, sooner or later, will be forced to look for new ways and solutions - and the sooner this search begins, the better. But we will need to return to this issue later.

From democracy to totalitarianism In our time, there is a fairly widespread prejudice that a democratic system protects human society from a totalitarian regime and that any retreat from democracy towards an authoritarian system brings people closer to totalitarianism. Is this true? Both of these forms of state - authoritarian and democratic - are well known to us from history. Every state governed by power, regardless of popular election and control, is an authoritarian state: such are all patriarchal communities, all theocratic states, all dictatorial republics, all aristocratic hereditary republics, all individual dictatorships and all unlimited monarchies. The authoritarian system does not exclude popular representation, but gives it only advisory rights: the head of state (individual or collective) listens to the advice of the people, but rules independently.

Such authoritarian legislation and rule do not at all lead to a totalitarian regime. Totalitarianism consists in excluding any and all independent activity of citizens; their personal freedom, their corporate organization, their local and professional self-government, their discretion in personal and family affairs, their economic initiative and their cultural initiative. Such a regime (or one approaching it) is noted in the history of mankind in the form of a rare and shortterm exception, in the form of failed experiments that are not at all related to the authoritarian form of the state. Such a regime could not be consistently implemented until the 19th century due to the lack of technical conditions (railroads, telegraph, telephone, radio, aviation) and administrative sophistication (organization of universal dependence and mutual denunciation); it appeared for the first time, strictly speaking, only in the 20th century. The history of Russia is instructive for us: our country developed politically, grew stronger and flourished culturally under an authoritarian form of state, and now it is begging, suffers humiliation, has stopped its cultural growth and is dying out physically - precisely under a totalitarian regime...

This regime is determined by the total volume of government regulation. Meanwhile, the authoritarian system does not encroach on such a volume at all: it can be content with a small amount of administrative intervention and does not at all claim comprehensive intrusive guardianship of life. Moreover, great sovereigns always sought to accustom citizens to free initiative and unleash their initiative. And when corrupt scribblers, wanting to please the left or right totalitarians, begin to attribute totalitarian tendencies to Peter the Great, then they only reveal their ignorance and their deceit. Peter the Great had one great task, conscious of himself: to awaken the creative initiative of the Russian people in all areas of life; and what he himself called “the captivity of the people” was the awakening of their will to live

amateur performances.

And one should not imagine things in such a way that an authoritarian system leads to totalitarianism, and a democratic system saves and provides for peoples from it. It is precisely the democratic system that can reveal a tendency to systematically expand its administrative control. We are now seeing this process in Europe. The tendency to intervene in all aspects of life in order to regulate it with power arose in history either for theocratic-church motives, or from democratic-socialist motives. Thus, the idea of the all-consuming, put forward by Plato (V-VI centuries BC), was of a theocratic nature (the power of God-contemplating philosophers): he wanted to regulate the entire life of citizens (up to and including property, marriage, education and music). The attempt of the Catholic monk Savonarola

to introduce church-state-compulsory virtue in Florence (1494–1497) was also of a theocratic-clerical nature. The reign of the Reformed Calvin in Geneva (1541–1564), which tried to subject to state regulation the beliefs, morals, entertainment, actions and even facial expressions of citizens, and did not hesitate to organize investigations and denunciations, as well as expulsions and executions (1542–1546 was executed 58 people and 75 expelled) - also had a clerical-theocratic character. The same character was inherent in the sentimental-communist state of the Jesuits in Paraguay (XVII-XVIII centuries).

On the other hand, socialism, as economic and then cultural totalitarianism, has had a revolutionary-democratic character since ancient times. This was already the case with ancient Chinese communism (more than 1000 years BC). This tendency is even more clearly expressed in the communist conspiracy of Abdullah Ibn Maymun (9th century AD), which led to the establishment of community of property and wives in certain areas of Khuzistan and Arabia. European socialism of recent centuries has revived this tendency and appears under the banner of revolutionary democracy. The French Revolution (late 18th century), with its democratic dictatorship, with its terror and totalitarian tendencies, had only one step left to take to complete communism, to which the communist Babeuf tried to lead it (1797), however, he was beheaded in a timely manner.

Throughout the entire 19th century, it was the revolutionary democracy of Europe, while continuing to consider itself a democracy, that preached and prepared for the ultimate expansion of the state-administrative scope, i.e., an approach to a totalitarian regime; The Bolsheviks are nothing more than an extreme, strong-willed and consistent branch of this flow. And now, after the terrible and demonstrative experiences of left-wing totalitarianism in Russia, and then in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and East Germany, it is European social democracy that is doing everything possible to implement economic and cultural totalitarianism (starting from industry and ending with the “nationalization” of medical care, etc.) ... This is why the opposition between democracy and totalitarianism is a prejudice, an illusion and a mistake.

True, a democratic state can also reveal freedom-loving tendencies and defend the freedom and initiative of citizens; This is the case today in Switzerland and the United States. But a democratic state can also put forward a totalitarian-minded majority (for example, in England, in Sweden), which will begin to introduce a totalitarian-socialist regime in accordance with all the rules of universal voting, parliamentary meetings and ministries. This is what the European Social Democrats are now trying to achieve, with loud and sympathetic exclamations from the New York Socialist Messenger. For the Social Democrats of all countries are, according to their main idea and plan, the third totalitarian party in the world (after the communists and Nazi-fascists). And the fact that they are trying to implement their left-wing totalitarianism in an evolutionary order and according to all the rules of formal democracy does not in the least make them non-totalitarians. Totalitarian hard labor, introduced gradually, does not change its nature; and we remember very well what socialdemocratic oppression reigned in Austria before Dollfuss came to power, and in Latvia before Ulmanis came to power.

So, a democratic system does not in any way protect people from a totalitarian regime. The gradual introduction of socialism will mean a transition to the dictatorship of a socialist majority, but let us not forget, a majority composed according to the conditional and distorting schemes of formal democracy. The totalitarian nature of socialism has now begun to be understood among the socialists themselves. Here and there among them they began to talk and write in confusion that they “don’t want totalitarianism”, that they would try to “combine socialism with freedom”; or else that they want “not socialism”, but “freedom-loving

social reforms." But this confused babbling does not change the plan hatched over 100 years. Their comrades in power are doing their job, and the logic of political development will determine the fate of their totalitarian venture.

About formal democracy There are two different understandings of state and politics: mechanical and organic. The mechanical defends the human instinctive individual and its private interests; it measures life quantitatively and formally. The organic comes from the human spirit and goes back to national unity and its common interests; it is qualitative and seeks spiritual roots and solutions. Which of these understandings is desirable and salutary for the future Russia? Let us first consider the mechanical view. It sees in man, first of all, an instinctive individual who has his own “wants” and “needs”: everyone wants to work less, enjoy and have more fun; to be fruitful and make money, to have your own irresponsible opinions and to express them freely; look for likeminded people anywhere and unite with them; not to depend on anyone and to have as much influence and power as possible. After all, people are born “equal”, and therefore each of them should be given the same rights to defend their “wants” and “needs”: these are “inviolable rights of freedom” that “do not tolerate restrictions.” Therefore, every human individual should have an equal say in public affairs. How many people, so many equal votes. Whatever anyone likes, let everyone defend it without hindrance. Let like-minded people of all countries unite freely; let the votes cast be counted; the majority vote will decide everything. “Then everything will go smoothly and everything will fall into place...”

As for the quality of all these “desires,” plans and undertakings of all these “like-minded people,” and especially the motives and intentions of all these “voters,” no one can care about them: all this is protected by inviolable “freedom,” inviolable "equality" and "secrecy" of voting. Each "citizen", as such, is considered in advance to be intelligent, enlightened, well-intentioned and loyal, incorruptible and "respectable"; everyone is given the opportunity to reveal all their “valor” and cover up all their plans and undertakings with words about the “public good”. Until he is caught, he is not a thief; Until he’s caught red-handed, he demands everyone’s respect. Anyone who has not yet been caught in the act of a crime (for example, betrayal, foreign espionage, enemy agents, plotting, bribery, embezzlement, forgery, cheating, trafficking in girls, forging false documents or coins) is considered a political “gentleman” regardless of his profession and a full-fledged citizen (“everyone knows about his art, but you can’t prove it”). The main thing: “freedom”, “equality” and “vote counting”. The state is a mechanical balance of private (personal and party) desires; the state is built as a compromise of centrifugal forces, as a performance of political actors. And politics must move “along the resultant” (along the parallelogram of forces!) of mutual distrust and competing intrigues...

Unfortunately, this view (as far as I know) has not been expressed anywhere in such openly distinct forms. It is not a doctrine; this is only a silent political “dogma”, rooted in the world and passed off as the self-evident “essence of democracy”: everyone is formally free, everyone is formally equal, and everyone fights with each other for power, for the sake of their own interests, covered up by the common good. Such a formal and quantitative understanding of the state makes its fate dependent on how and with what that meaningful void and that indifferently homeless quality that is provided to people by formal “freedom” are filled. The state and government are only a “mirror” or “arithmetic sum” of what is happening in the soul and in the legal consciousness of the human mass. There, something is always cooking by itself, in this impenetrable and, at the same time, inviolable cauldron: any interference is prohibited as “pressure”; any restriction or influence is branded as “restraint

freedom." Every citizen is guaranteed the right to crooked and crafty political paths, to disloyal or treacherous plans, to sell his vote, to vile voting motives, to underground conspiracies, to unnoticed treason, to secret “double citizenship” - to all those basenesses that happen to people so profitable and so often seducing them. The citizen is given the unlimited right of secret self-seduction and seduction of others, as well as discreet self-sale; the freedom of insincere, deceitful, insidious, insinuating speech and ambiguous, calculated suppression of the truth is depersonalized to him; he is given the freedom to “believe” liars and scoundrels, or pretend to believe (selfishly feign such and such or an opposite political mood). And for the free expression of all these spiritual temptations he is given a “ballot.” “Motives for voting” must be free; the formation of parties does not tolerate restrictions; to limit political propaganda means to “show violence”; it is impossible to judge and condemn for “political views”: this would mean an attack on “heart knowledge” and “persecution for a way of thinking” (in German “Gesinnungsjustitz”). Freedom of opinion must be complete; government officials do not dare to encroach on it and curtail it. And the stupidest, most harmful, disastrous and vile “opinion” is “inviolable” simply because there was a harmful fool or traitor who proclaimed it, hiding behind his “inviolability.” Is it possible to make him think about his opinion passively? How to prevent him from putting his opinion into practice - in a whisper, on the sly, by secret conspiracy, by underground organization, by the unnoticed accumulation of weapons depots?... Freedom of speech, unions and weapons only expresses and implements freedom of opinion...

It is clear that all this immediately disarms the state in the face of its enemies and corrupters and at the same time provides these enemies and corrupters with complete freedom and impunity. The state and government are obliged to provide the people with the ability to seduce, and the corrupters and traitors - the freedom to seduce; Naturally, the next vote sums up the success of the secured temptation. And this order will continue until temptation undermines the very idea of voting and the very readiness to obey the majority (for, according to the recently expressed revolutionary formula of the Belgian Spaak: “the minority is not obliged to obey the majority”): then voting will be replaced by an uprising and an organized totalitarian minority will take over

power.

This means that the formal-quantitative understanding of the state opens the door wide to all political adventures, coups and revolutions, which we observe from year to year, for example, in South America. And truly, the scoundrels of the whole world would be complete fools if they did not notice and use this magnificent opportunity to seize power. True, the American “gangsters” did not think of this and played “mischief” outside of politics: the Sicilian “maffiators” are also content with private profits. But it wasn't that hard to figure out. Nature abhors a vacuum; and as noble motives (religious, moral, patriotic, spiritual) weakened and eroded in human souls, absurd, evil, vicious and greedy plans, suggested by totalitarian demagogues on the left and right, inevitably poured into the resulting voids of formal freedom .

So, formal freedom includes the freedom of secret betrayal and open destruction. The mechanical and arithmetical competition of private desires from the very beginning prepared in souls the possibility of blind bitterness and civil war. As long as the centrifugal forces agreed to moderate their demands and find a compromise, the state could balance over the abyss; but the “prophets” of the class struggle arose and brought the moment of civil war closer. What can a formal-mechanical understanding of the state oppose to them? The persuasion of the “chief persuaders”? Sobs about dying freedom?! Or ideas of sentimental “humanity,” forgotten conscience, rejected honor? But this would mean “interfering” and thereby renouncing formal freedom and

mechanical understanding of politics! This would mean losing faith in political arithmetic and falling into sheer “democratic heresy”!.. For formal democracy does not allow one to doubt the good intentions of a “free” citizen... Jean-Jacques Rousseau also taught that man is by nature reasonable and kind; and that the only thing he lacks is freedom. You just need to not interfere with him freely extracting from his good-natured heart the guiding “general will”, wise, infallible, saving... Just don’t interfere... - and he will extract it!..

People believed this two centuries ago. The French encyclopedists and revolutionaries believed, followed by anarchists, liberals and supporters of “formal democracy” around the world. They believed to such an extent that they even forgot about their faith and its dangers: they decided that this was the “undoubted” “truth” itself and that it required reverence for freedom, respectful formalism and an honest counting of votes in politics. And now two centuries of this practice have confronted modern politicians with the greatest political earthquake in world history... What should they do? Curtail formal freedom? Abandon the mechanics of private desires? Cancel voice arithmetic? But this would mean doubting the “sacred” tenets of modern democracy! Who would dare to do this? Who disavows himself? And what then can we oppose to the totalitarians on the left and on the right? But if there is a dead end here, then what then? Is it really possible to agree to the ugliness and atrocities of a totalitarian regime? Impossible!..

Quantity rate

When you read articles and programs of modern Russian foreign parties, you can’t help but be surprised at the hasty carelessness with which they all (or almost all) rush to testify to their “faith” in formal democracy and “demand” a Western democratic system for Russia. Their motives are, in essence, clear: 1. They reject the totalitarian regime (and in this they are right); but they don’t know how to oppose it with anything other than Western formal democracy (and this is short-sighted and helpless). 2. They seek support from foreign parties, behind-the-scenes organizations and the like, obviously non-Russian or anti-Russian environment (which is always dangerous or downright disastrous), and there they don’t even want to talk without an oath to the formal democratic system: so they have to adapt. 3. Only such a formal democratic system provides them all with hope for political participation in the future, and the emigrant party only lives by this hope (“I will be a minister, you will be a governor,” he and she will be senators”...). 4. They still live by the prejudice that every democracy guarantees a person “rights” and “freedom” and that outside democracy “there is no culture” (both are refuted by history).

Reading their magazines and newspapers, you understand all this and still are surprised. After all, “democracy” is not a matter of faith, but of experienced knowledge. Well, the experience of thirty years of emigration, and often sixty to seventy years of life, did not teach Russian politicians that democracy is not an unambiguous value and equal to itself everywhere? Haven’t they realized yet that democracy is not just a “state form” that can be imposed on any people, “it will do, it will do, not straight, so askew”?.. After all, democracy presupposes among the people the economic independence of the citizen, a high level of mass legal consciousness , personal character, certainty of political understanding and outlook, civic courage and especially an experienced understanding of state affairs (see “Our Tasks,” 134–135). How did they not understand that Western European formal democracy is neither the only nor the best type of democracy?

Russia should not borrow or imitate, but search and find its own, only suitable for it. We, the Russian people, have no one to rely on; and we must lift and carry our time ourselves. We cannot hope that some other, non-Russian people will be able to understand the uniqueness of Russia, comprehend its soul, its spirit, its faith, its natural difficulties and internal (mental-spiritual!) shortcomings and invent that new political the system that it needs... Foreigners do not know Russia and do not understand it; they are afraid of it and are going to impose their political stamp on us, in the hope that it will disintegrate and weaken the Russian State.

But Russia really needs something completely special and different.

The author of these lines does not doubt at all (and has not doubted for a long time) that the people should participate in the political life of their state: this is necessary for the state for unity, it can be very useful for the government for information and control, it is important, worthy and educational for the people themselves . This has great spiritual, moral, political, economic and military significance. But the form of this participation and the degree of this participation must correspond to the mental and moral level of the people, as well as the personal abilities and spiritual maturity of the person. The whole task is to learn to correctly recognize these abilities and correctly distribute these rights. And this task cannot be hushed up or circumvented. The time has passed when Ulyanov-Lenin, that stalwart representative of Russian political radicalism, insisted that “every cook” was capable of ruling the state. Already in 1921–1922, he openly reprimanded: “We are people like

as if they were half-wild,” “not able to take a single step with their rights and with their power”; “We must first of all learn to read, write and understand what we read”; “we weren’t taught how to manage the state in prisons,” etc. Even then, this smart adventurer realized that he had babbled nonsense, that the personal dishonesty and mass lack of culture of communists was ruining the Soviet state and that politics required quality. But the bet on the unprincipled and godless communist had already been made and all he had to do was to single out worthless human material and destroy quality Russian people. Stalin continued this matter with even greater ferocity. It is still impossible to completely ignore the quality of the voting person; and this is tacitly recognized, as a general rule, by all constitutions and all parties. That is why minors and young people are not given the right to vote (they are not yet capable); crazy people also don’t vote or get elected (no longer capable); criminals lose their public rights temporarily or forever (they have proven their worthlessness). Let us also recall the women who were recently denied voting rights by the “most democratic” Switzerland in a number of cantons, and, moreover, through a popular vote of a “referendum” (women have their own, non-political calling).

This means that there are categories of people who are recognized as incapable and not called upon to build a state by their own will; and also, that in different states these categories of people are defined differently. But after this, the fanatics of formal democracy begin to have blindly naive and unjustified optimism; or it may be that these people do not want to see real life and its dangers... Everyone, everyone, everyone else is recognized as politically mature citizens, full-fledged voters, competent judges of benefit and harm, political “good” and “evil”: all of them “called upon” to manage legislation, national education,

defense of the state, the welfare of the people, freedom, culture and economy of the country - and, moreover, regardless of what ignorance, what demoralization and depravity, what stupidity, what limited outlook and what treacherous plans live in their souls... Fanatics of formal democracy even strive to expand the right to vote in every possible way: they want to recognize the political authority of every non-crazy adult, call for freedom of incompetent and malicious judgment, and allow as many ordinary people as possible to vote at the ballot box. First of all, all women, despite the organically correct principle of division of labor (“you take care of the house, and I am in the service”; “you build family life, and I am the state”); regardless of the education of women and their natural, organic burden (childbirth); and not at all protecting their feminine dignity, their highest moral, spiritual and religious calling. They need to drag all women to rallies, to the street, to the podium, to force them to judge and reason beyond the limits of their preparedness, to involve them in party discord, in political slander, in swearing and fights (for now they fight in both parliaments and senates! ); they need to destroy many marriages and families - by party-political passionate disagreement between husband and wife. They then seek to push back the voting age as far as possible: “Why 21 and not 20? Why not 19? Why not 18? He who earns his bread is an adult citizen. Independent earnings are a sign of political maturity!”… - Well, many boys and girls earn their living already at school: another second-grader rehearses two preparatory students, and then feeds himself through the entire gymnasium. Who doesn’t remember ten-year-old “cigarette smokers” on the street? tavern and elevator piccolos? In Western Europe, it is not uncommon for five- and seven-year-old children to deliver newspapers home... and in some countries, labor

minors are used in workshops and factories... And Soviet street children undoubtedly earn their own living... In revolutionary Russia, the gentlemen “Februaryists” went even further: in March 1917, out of revolutionary joy and as a sign of fraternal affection, they released all criminals from prison and gave them the right to vote, as evidenced by the head of the All-Russian Criminal Code, not without indignation and not without contempt. Wanted, intelligent and gifted Arkady Frantsevich Koshko (now deceased). Well, prison is a good school of life; and the “innocent sufferers” (fraudsters, robbers and murderers) had every reason to enter into the joy of the February and then October regime and show their “civic spirit”... And indeed: they showed it! They only “offended” the crazy people and bypassed the nursery...

They forgot to give freedom to the crazy. Or, at least, carry out a revolutionary check and democratic purge among them, in order to leave only violent and idiots out of the vote... - For mercy, there are so many kind and gifted people among the mentally ill! The mentally ill were the poet Batyushkov, the noble Gleb Uspensky, the gifted Garshin, the brilliant Vrubel, the poet Kölderlin, the romantic Schumann and the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, so popular among mystical ladies... And, finally, Dmitry Ivanovich Pisarev himself, whose nihilistic merits are generally recognized and sung even in encyclopedic dictionaries , – sat in a madhouse because he imagined himself to be a “god”... (fact!). How can you deprive crazy people of the right to vote - indiscriminately?

And children should not be offended: their souls are pure, trusting and kind; they would probably vote for “justice” - all of them: jackdaws, wolf cubs, murrelets, saffron milk caps and everyone else... Unfortunately, we must admit that this tendency to expand the voting cadre is considered by fanatics of formal democracy to be a real manifestation of “democracy” or its direct criterion: the more people have the right to vote, the more “democratic” the given regime is... For they proceed from a false view, as if a person “truly” participates in state life then and precisely by sticking a prescribed ticket into the state “box” from time to time in order to speak out on an issue in which he understands little or nothing and to betray his personal, class or party lust for the national and state benefit...

On political depravity and blindness When you observe political life year after year in the formal democracies of the West, you are amazed at the extent to which the principle of quantity has suppressed and supplanted the demands of quality. Where does this confidence come from that public affairs is so elementary, simple, accessible and easily understandable that it does not require any qualifications, neither mental, nor moral, nor political? A shoemaker takes a long time to learn shoemaking; political training is supposedly not needed in politics. A potter without skill is worthless; and in state affairs, the first person he meets, who has reached twenty years of age and is clearly not raging in madness, supposedly understands, even if his political competence is zero. Look at the analytical power of judgment a worker in an electrical workshop develops when he needs to determine why your plug was “burnt out”; he contemplates your entire apartment; traces the path of wires; mentally and then technically isolates every switch and every lamp... And achieves his goal. He studied this. He owns his subject. He understands, knows, judges and serves responsibly. But government affairs are infinitely more complex; politics is infinitely more responsible and the horizon needed here is not at all on an apartment scale...

And suddenly it turns out that the state is a matter of the street. Just as anyone can walk on the street, everyone is allowed, everyone is good for this, so in politics, quality is not needed. There is no need for any “competence” here; no analysis, no synthesis, no information, no understanding, no responsibility; “go” - and that’s it. However, this is also an illusion, because civilization reminds us at every turn that walking down the street is a whole art, otherwise you will end up in a hospital or a morgue. But to judge in politics - to choose, to be elected, to join parties, to demand, to conspire, to remain silent at an advantageous moment, to lie at another moment, to dive in, to please and to crawl through - this is all available to everyone, this is given to everyone “by nature”; for this purpose neither quality nor qualification is required. And so politics, indifferent to the quality of people, declines in quality, and state decomposition begins. Just think: according to the dogma of formal democracy, the right to vote should inalienably belong to everyone who has lived in the world for the required number of years, who has not been committed to an insane asylum and who has not been convicted of a serious criminal offense with deprivation of rights. Everyone is competent in matters of justice, freedom, economy, technology, family, school, academy, church, court, army and national salvation... Is that all? Of course everything!! Only “enemies of democracy”, “reactionaries”, “fascists”, “totalitarians” and other “suspicious” or “outcast” people can doubt this. Let's assume that this is so and draw conclusions. Let us count the rest as honest and competent citizens. Here they are: all the uncaught thieves, scammers, speculators, notorious internationalists, deserters, corrupt traitors to the motherland, suddenly disappearing diplomats, child buyers, molesters, drunkards, opium smokers, cocaine slaves, brothel keepers and keepers, professional smugglers, gangsters, apaches, pimps , sharpers, pimps and pimps, horse thieves, moneylenders, political and non-political conspirators of all sorts and calibers, bribe takers, immoral swindlers... In a word, all that moral rot, all those social scum that together form the political mob. This is the same urban rabble that Carlyle stunningly portrayed in his History of the French Revolution; the same mob who, having torn Madame Lamballe’s body to pieces, carried her genitals around the city on a pole all day; the same mob that in England was artistically depicted by Shakespeare (in the Historical Chronicles), and in the Russian Revolution was established with such skill by Shmelev and Korovin (in the book about Chaliapin). In the basements of Cheka, I listened for hours to the excited outpourings of this mob, all these “anarchists-

combinators,” terrible half-sailors released by Kerensky from prisons of ferocious murderers, drunken semi-intellectuals, sadists, scoundrels who joined the communists and have already stolen from them... Outpourings in which truth and lies, vile boasting and implausible cynicism were mixed into a disgusting unity. I have remembered for the rest of my life the program anthem of the first years: “There is no God, there is no need for a tsar, we will kill the constable, we will not pay taxes and we will not join the soldiers”... Such were all these “greens”, “Makhnovists”, and all other banditry “ atamanism,” which showed itself in 1917–1921 in Russia... And in the future Russia, on the basis of “universal and equal” voting, they will be joined by security officers, NKVD suicide bombers, professional informers, lied to Soviet careerists, active atheists, commandants of concentration camps, grave robbers (in pursuit of gold teeth), robbers of corpses, sellers human meat cutlets (1921–1932–1933), “former” urks, sneaky “hierochekists”, hired spies of foreign powers and all other destroyers of Russia. Formal democracy would never dare deny them the right to vote. All of them will be recognized as “full-fledged” citizens, “highly competent” in the matter of saving Russia, and educators of the Russian people. Moreover, voting rights will be recognized for those who should be classified not as a mob, but as a mass of political blindness! People who do not understand the meaning of freedom, duty, service and responsibility; people who absolutely do not understand the state, its life and its interests; people who do not know the Russian past and cannot understand the historical tasks of Russia; people with the horizon of a village, a hut, a Soviet dugout, a hut, a plague, a yurt... Where will they, the blind, lead our country, if not into decay and not into a pit? True, you can’t exact punishment from a blind man, but isn’t it crazy to trust him with guidance? All this does not mean that people who are politically vicious and politically blind should be “deprived of all rights”... But this does mean that the public rights granted to them must be proportionate to their state horizon and their political power of judgment. Public rights are rights that grant a person participation in the decisions of the state and in the creation and exercise of its power. It is absurd to give “power rights” to vicious and blind people, it is absurd and disastrous. It is absurd to proclaim such freedom, which unleashes vicious and blind forces in the state, absurd and disastrous. What is necessary and salutary here is not the “deprivation of all rights,” not the transformation of a person into a “slave” or into a “thing,” but a limitation of his public capacity, such a limitation that corresponds to his spiritual defectiveness and at the same time curtails the power of his vicious or blind spirit. What does this mean and how can it be done?

What is the right to vote? The right to vote is the recognized power of judgment and the power of decision in public affairs. How is it possible to “recognize” this power of judgment in a person who actually does not have it? “It doesn’t exist, but we will pretend that it exists...” “This person does not understand what the state, law, freedom, justice, honor, conscience, homeland, faith, spirit and culture are; but we will pretend that he understands all this and that his judgment weighs and means something...” Such pretense is impossible anywhere, neither in technology, nor in crafts, nor in medicine, nor in agriculture, for everywhere such a course of action will entail punishment: the incompetent ignorant's airplane will catch fire, the train will derail, the car will overturn, the sewn boot will fall apart, the sick will die, the seeds will not sprout, the cows will stop milking, the horses will be spoiled. But in politics this pretense was accepted and began to be implemented. It’s nothing that a person is asked about the good of the state, and he answers about the benefit of his pocket and the benefits of his class. He was left to judge the law, and he began to organize such power centers that are good only for putting pressure on the rest of the people (trade unions, behindthe-scenes conspiracies, totalitarian parties, Vikzhel, etc.). He was entrusted with maintaining creative freedom, but he preferred to sell it to dictators (no matter which one - left or right), for “bread” and for “shows”... He was asked about justice, and he proclaimed equality, that is, the greatest injustice and the greatest violence. He was entrusted with the question of honor, conscience and faith, and he proclaimed the right to dishonor, freedom from conscience and persecution of believers.

Would anyone dare to say that we are “exaggerating”? No one, of course; for if such a person were to be found, he would give himself away completely, of which camp he is an agent and propagandist. It is high time to say and affirm: the totalitarian system is not an accidental phenomenon; it was born out of the qualitative decline and spiritual degeneration of democracy. Belief in quantity has reduced quality. Hypocritical pretense in the matter of the power of judgment and decision placed power in the hands of the political mob, and the political mob followed, as always, behind demagogues and tyrants, sold them freedom and right and led to the crisis of our days. When I talk about the mob, I associate this concept not with menial labor, not with poverty or “lack of birth,” but with the baseness of the soul. This baseness of soul can be found in all social strata, especially in our time, when an educated and semi-educated mob has appeared - and the nobility of the soul lives and often manifests itself in the poor, exhausted from menial labor. The mob includes people of evil and vicious will; people without honor and conscience; people with dead moral and social sense; people are unprincipled in their rapacity; people of vicious professions. You can’t reason like that, they will tell us, you can deprive the right to vote only on the basis of reliable, formal signs, and not on the basis of cardiac science: and we have not found legal grounds for distinguishing the rabble from the non-rabble! I answer my opponents: “You are like a person who would say: since I do not know how to distinguish a plague rat from a nonplague one, I propose to give freedom of circulation to all rats, as such; or else: I do not know the reliable, formal signs of diphtheria bacteria; therefore I reject all disinfection; And I don’t treat my son, who fell ill with diphtheria: I’m afraid to upset not only the diphtheria bacillus, but also some innocent bacteria... Let’s proclaim the freedom and equality of all bacteria!!!”

So, let people of vicious will prosper!.. And they will also tell us: “You are talking about state and political blindness; but how to recognize it? you recognize other people as blind, and these others recognize

blind you and me... Where is the reliable and formal sign? I answer my opponents: “Since we still do not know how to recognize who is blind and who is sighted in politics, then there is no need to explore this issue: recognize everyone as sighted and surrender to the will of fate! Somehow everything will be sorted out... After all, it’s the same as if you suggested: it’s better not to delve into the question of physical vision, we won’t learn anything anyway, let’s better put the blind on steam locomotives, airplanes, cars, entrust them with the work of painting and the work of artillery "... So, let the political blind lead the state!.. The historical hour has come when people will either abandon such reasoning or finally embark on the path of destruction of civilization and culture. The right to vote gives participation in state power, and state power has now lost its boundaries, forgotten its limits and has developed such methods of domination, enslavement and suppression of the individual that even the Catholic Inquisition did not know. State power has mastered such technical, chemical and psychological (psychiatric) skills that make it a spiritually dangerous and infinitely responsible force. A totalitarian state, armed with radio waves, aeronautics, the atomic bomb, gas chambers, subcutaneous injection of poisons and hypnotic suggestion, has become a terrible and disastrous superpower. These terrible means must not be given into the hands of irresponsible adventurers, into the hands of political power-hungers, into the hands of embittered parties, into the hands of imperialist violent

peoples

Nowadays everyone thinks and talks about a “third, atomic war.” But such a war may not take place, and precisely because everyone foresees it and everyone fears it. But further political development may go completely differently, along even more terrible paths.

Let us establish three main trends in modern politics. 1. Development towards conspiracies and coups. South America has been a practical breeding ground for this method of gaining power for 150 years. Thirty-four years ago the Communists took this practice into their own hands; They have since developed a whole practical doctrine, set it out in resolutions of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, and have since applied it throughout the world. The technique of conspiracy and coup is now more developed than ever, and the emphasis is always on the worst elements of the country, on adventurers, losers, ambitious, power-hungry, envious, corrupt, traitors, perverted and sadists. Clandestine schools have been operating for a long time, in which these dark people are systematically taught the techniques of this dark business...

2. Trade unions, which from the very beginning thought not about the state, but about class interest and pursued a policy of numbers, pressure and force, gradually learned to resort to a political strike. The railroad workers realized that they could stop all transport in the country; a conspiracy of electric workers could stop current and traffic and plunge the country into darkness; a conspiracy of coal miners to interrupt all coal supply and heating; strike of bank employees - stop the normal flow of trade and finance and etc. The psychology of conspiracy has taken hold of the syndicates of workers and employees. It also spread to military circles, if not directly to the army. Let us remember the German “Steel Helmet”; Let us remember that Italian fascism arose from “cells of comrades” (fascio di combatimento); Let's remember the union of “veterans in the United States”. In South America, conspiracies break out every now and then in the armies.

The principle of the democratic “majority” was opposed by a new principle: the conspiracy of an initiative minority. These minorities are gradually learning from

communists use the technology of conspiracy and coup and begin to understand that the will to power, the energy of pressure, the trump card of a strike and other threats can weigh more than the counted majority of passive votes. 3. This is countered on the side of democratic governments by blind faith in the supposed loyalty of citizens, in numbers and counting, as well as faith in almost unlimited freedom of speech, press, organization, agitation, party and professional propaganda. In other words: the cult of “acracy,” that is, semi-power and anarchy. The modern state has potentially terrible power. But actual weak power is implemented. The wedge of a monstrous conspiracy may break into this politically weak or empty place: the trade union of atomic and atom bomb enterprises will unite with the trade union of aviators (who and how can prevent this?) and establish a tyranny of atomic fear and unbridled depravity. For the terrible force that the communists have actually already deployed in the states they have captured is not protected in countries with weak power; and examples of many “atomic” betrayals, escapes or “disappearances” revealed this unequivocally. And we are unlikely to be mistaken if we say that the communists have long taken this weak and empty place into account and are working in this direction. We counter this with a thesis for Russia: power should be in the hands of quality and strong people. Quality selection is required. The right to vote should belong to loyal citizens, and not to traitors, not to the mob and not to the blind. The participation of the people in state building should be expressed in the selection of the best. What is needed is not quantitative, but qualitative “rule of the people.”

It is necessary to limit public capacity The future is hidden from human sight. We do not know how state power will develop in Russia after the Bolsheviks. But we know that if it is anti-national and anti-state, subservient to foreigners, dismembering the country and patriotically without ideas, then the revolution will not stop, but will enter a phase of new destruction; and then everything we propose will be delayed. But the hour will come when the Russian national government will take the paths we indicate for the sake of saving Russia. We don't know when this will be; but we know for sure what we should desire to save Russia. The formation of state power must be removed from the hands of the crowd, the street, and the rabble and transferred into the hands of the best, state- and nationally-minded citizens. These citizens, as state-capable citizens, should be identified as a politically mature and actively building core. Any further elections and voting will be carried out by them and only by them. They will form that sober layer, that state-minded cadre that can lead the people and the country to revival. All the rest will by no means become “slaves” and will by no means cease to be citizens; but they will not have political activity, the right to formulate the state will, or participate in the construction of state power.

This is indicated by the words: their political capacity will be limited. Jurisprudence distinguishes a person's legal capacity from his legal capacity. In property relations, there are many persons who do not have legal capacity, i.e., who do not have the right to independently perform legal acts. Roman lawyers already knew and understood that minors, the mentally retarded and the insane could not be included in normal and free property circulation. On the one hand, they are ignorant, helpless and defenseless, and any rogue can seduce them, deceive them, involve them in unprofitable deals and rob them: it is necessary to protect them themselves from unscrupulous fellow citizens and malicious foreigners. On the other hand, they are not able to be responsible for their expressions of will, promises and obligations (irresponsibility!), and it is impossible to impute their behavior to them (insanity!); their capacity to act would be harmful or even disastrous both for themselves and for their fellow citizens. Therefore, modern law places such persons (minors, minors, feeble-minded, blind, deaf-mute, drunkards and spendthrifts) under guardianship or trusteeship. They remain legally capable and have recognized and protected rights, but cannot perform legal acts.

This has been the case for thousands of years, and moreover in matters of personal property benefit; and no one even thinks of challenging or condemning the validity and justice of such an order. And suddenly, in matters of public good, national benefit and state salvation, we see a complete oblivion of all caution, all sobriety and all realism in life. A country teeming with politically juveniles and minors, the politically weakminded, the patriotically insane (internationalists!), the morally blind, the socially deaf-mute, the party drunks and national wasters (dismemberers!) is trying to build its state with the obligatory participation of all these obviously irresponsible and insane individuals. The legislation is silent about their political incapacity, and the people themselves are surprised - why can’t they succeed? And he goes to his death, not understanding what is happening to him.

And so, just as in property matters people are recognized as incompetent in the interests of the whole society and the dispossessed themselves, and no one screams about their imaginary lack of rights; It is absolutely necessary to recognize a whole number of people as politically incompetent - in the interests of the entire people, the state and the disenfranchised themselves. A citizen and an active citizen are not the same thing. An incapacitated citizen retains all his legal rights: the right to

state protection, the right to territorial residence, general rights of initiative and inviolable personality, the right to work, all social rights, all property rights, all family and inheritance rights; he retains all his public legal obligations, with which he mainly builds the state, his state (duties: tax, military, in kind, etc.). He does not become a “slave” at all. He just has no say in government affairs.

The time has passed when people - either out of liberal naivety, or out of optimism, or out of stupidity - believed in the “free play of good and evil forces” (both in an individual and in the state) and believed that “ there is great benefit from evil forces in life.” Over the long years of the world revolution, we could finally become convinced that the “free play” of good and evil forces leads to the victory of the evil forces and that giving freedom to evil is either sentimental stupidity, bordering on betrayal, or a crafty and deliberate crime. Just as in the economy, liberals gradually learned that creative balance is not given to the multitude of self-determined people who flounder helplessly in their own greed; that an unregulated economy leads to anti-social phenomena, to the reincarnation of capital, to overproduction, to stock market crashes, to protracted crises and depressions; that the private initiative economy should not be suppressed or eradicated, but organized and included in expedient regulation, without falling into socialism; Likewise, an era is coming when such creative regulation will be recognized as necessary in politics. The freedom of man, his beliefs, his convictions and political opinions should not be suppressed, but it must be nurtured, formalized and spiritually guided.

An ordinary person, going to the polls, carries within himself a moral personality, a layman, a patriot, a self-seeker, a citizen, a careerist, a state-minded voter, and an insatiable class demander. Nothing is said to him “from above” out of respect for his “freedom”; but from the outside and from below they openly and persistently inspire him to affirm in himself a class demander, a philistine, a self-seeker and a careerist, and to forget everything else. In countries of formal democracy, all kinds of tempters, political hucksters from different parties and even countries are buzzing around the voter like flies, promising, inviting, exciting, frightening, hesitating, throwing propaganda leaflets or offering direct sops (either “bread” or “shows” , then just a check). They make promises to the selfish, intimidate the average person, invite the careerist and incite the class demander. In a difficult, complex and extremely responsible for voting - everything is done to bring down a person and capture his vote in order to lower the political level of the voter; and all this in the name of “freedom”.

And to allow this order, in which there are elements of the bazaar, stock exchange, excitement and sports, in post-revolutionary Russia would be insane and disastrous. For over the years of revolutionary humiliation and revolutionary filth, selfishness, careerism, class way of thinking, civic cowardice and corruption have become so widespread and rooted, such strength and have distorted the soul to such an extent, pushed aside the patriot, drowned out the citizen and extinguished state thinking, that awakening this will require special long-term, educational efforts on the part of the national government. Sooner or later it will succeed. But salvation can only be expected from the selection of truly capable personnel, from the best people. How is it possible to accomplish this?

It is necessary to limit public capacity When twenty years ago the author of these lines appeared in print with a series of articles revealing the crisis of modern democracy, he encountered obvious signs of irritation, resentment and anger on the left. This was understandable: this criticism insulted political “faith,” undermined people’s worldview, and encroached on the “moral” foundations they had internalized. “Democracy,” as the “banner of life,” was then, and for many it remains now, a “sacred dogma” of existence, a criterion of goodness, a cherished ideal, that highest goal to which they dedicated their lives, for which they fought, made sacrifices and with hymns they escorted their comrades to the grave, who had heroically “fallen in the fatal struggle”... It replaced people’s lost religion, and their “democratic humanity” with its false sentimentality, directed exclusively to the left, constituted the last distorted remnant of Christianity. They expected, and still expect, from democracy - they expect with confidence, with pathos, with inquisitorial intolerance - “salvation” for the future Russia. Whoever accepts this faith is a “man,” a doer, a builder of the future; “doors”, “salons”, newspapers and publishing houses are open to him; he will be invited to all sorts of “coordinating” “subordination”, and in the “decisive days of Russian emigration” (as they are now arrogantly and stupidly expressed) he will be allowed to sit at the same table with the talkative and pretentious “leaders” and receive “his share” in the distribution of the spoils “numismatic collections”... But whoever does not accept this belief will be shamelessly slandered, cast out, isolated and democratically executed through a system of organized “silence.”

It was so twenty or thirty years ago, and it remains so now. There is a democratic inquisition that exists in the world and works unitedly. And the more persistent and active it is, the more sacrifices, torment and blood will be required in the future in order for people to sober up and come to their senses from this demagogic frenzy... One day this Inquisition will, of course, be eliminated, just as the Catholic Inquisition became obsolete and died out, but before From then on, we, all of us, who do not share this blind faith and have other, religious and spiritual foundations of our worldview, must be prepared for all slander and all intrigue. A non-democrat must know and remember that the laws of honor, decency, law and freedom, when applied to him, will be interpreted in the most perverse and harmful sense for him; that the democratic inquisition will always demand “humanity” - to the left, even for a known and exposed atomic spy, but will never remember “humanity” when it comes to patriots and heroes of the right-wing mentality. The last ten years have provided more than enough illustrations and evidence of this.

But all this applies to the “ideologists” of democracy. Meanwhile, the historical process develops on its own, independently of these fanatics and inquisitors, and clearly indicates that the crisis of democracy is deepening and aggravating... Its main features can be described as follows: 1. Historically, democracy has protested against “bad” governance and “bad” rulers of the old regime. Her claim was that she was called upon to indicate excellent rulers and fair governance. Democracy claimed to highlight a new, true political selection: a new “aristocracy” of freedom, justice, honesty and character; and all this was to be carried out periodically by general and equal elections. And this claim is too often not justified. Elections began to highlight too many party ambitions; “figures” lacking political and economic experience; people with internationally undermined patriotism of “politicians” who care not about the state business, but about class and party gains; demagogues like Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, Thälmann, Thorez, Togliatti, Dmitrov, Bevan and John Lewis; international dives like Parvus-Gelfand, Radek and Leon Blum; adventurer-traitors like Alfred Rosenberg, Pierre Laval and the Norwegian Quisling; speculators-acquirers like Stavitsky; shortsighted politicians like MacDonald and Chamberlain-Munich; and many many parliamentary careerists. So

Thus, democratic elections did not provide a new qualitative selection and nominated people of a small state-world scale. 2. Further, the crisis of democracy is caused by the fact that its form deprives the state and state power. Over the past century, the complexity and responsibility of government tasks has increased. The cultural, economic and national life of peoples differentiated (that is, became more and more complex and multifaceted), and the unity and strength of state power declined in democracies. Democracy brings stratification to the state, self-affirmation of a selfish individual, the idea of class struggle, party intransigence and volitional stagnation. Democracy wants to build everything on “collusion” and at the same time unleashes centrifugal forces. She does not want strong power and pushes large, strong-willed and strong people. It fundamentally involves everyone in politics and awakens in people ambition, lust for power and a thirst for prominence. Her policy very easily takes on the features of unprincipled dexterity, demagoguery, intrigue and trade. In this way she wastes time and energy and violates the principle of saving energy. Democracy achieves state unity only with great difficulty; she despises the principles of authority, subordination, leadership and coercion; and does not understand that behind this lies a craving for revolution and anarchy. A unified, strong, durable, stable and responsible power is not desired by it and is not given to it - and this is the beginning of the crisis and collapse. It can only succeed in small and, moreover, non-belligerent states like federal Switzerland; or in states with stable prosperity (United States, former England).

3. So, the involvement of everyone in politics, in voting, in electing and in candidacy is part of the very essence of a democratic system. But every vote is a judgment about the fate of the people, about the state, about the structure of power, about national culture, about the church, about the army, about finances, about school, about education, about law, about the court and about the economy of the country. And since “everyone” is by no means competent in all these great matters and responsible tasks, almost all of these expressions turn out to exceed the personal power of judgment of the voter. People judge and decide about things about which their concepts do not at all allow them to judge. Therefore, they answer the wrong question; they replace a responsible and difficult question with an irresponsible and easy one. They are asked about the common and common good of the people and the state, and they answer about their personal or party interests. They lack legal consciousness, knowledge and civic courage. Therefore, democratic voting tries to extract public salvation from a multitude of erroneous and misunderstood judgments, from a heap of selfish answers. That is why the wise Thomas Carlyle exclaimed with genuine despair: “The world abounds with idiots, and you have achieved universal suffrage!” Therefore, democracies too often choose not the best and most competent people, but mass “pleasers”, promisers, flatterers, demagogues, loudmouths and ambitious people. Voting here is irresponsible, and the secret procedure “buries all loose ends in the water.” The rest is completed by the arithmetic counting of votes: it decides which of the parties, breaking through to power by hook or by crook, “won” and at the moment “has the right” to seize state power. So, the principle of democracy is the irresponsible human atom and its personally interested and incompetent will. This is already the beginning of the crisis. 4. A democrat is built by the election mechanism. This mechanism is supposedly based on “freedom of thought” and “views”; and it is precisely because of this that in public affairs he grants to every ignorant the right to ignorance, to every fool the right to stupidity, to every greedy person the right to corruption, to every unscrupulous person the right to intrigue, to every undetected traitor the right to treachery. Formal freedom does not allow even thinking about instilling responsibility and attaching a personal voice to the foundations of a healthy sense of justice. Regarding the mental and moral rank of people, the principle of equality does not allow

stutter. But blind and vindictive partisanship often unfolds in all its harmfulness. But party work requires, first of all, personal ambition and money. And so, it turns out that democracy strains and unleashes the forces of ambition among the people and makes them dependent on financial allocations. It would be naive to think that party funds needed for the publication of newspapers and brochures, for propaganda and agitation, for the maintenance of organizational centers, for traveling speakers and for bribing necessary persons, can be collected through party membership fees. These funds usually come from behind the scenes, from sources that, for example, in the modern United States, are constantly subject to suspicion and hopeless “verification”: neither party donors nor party money recipients are interested in public and unambiguous reporting, and everything is drowned in darkness. The most striking examples of party "subsidization" are the relations between Lenin and Ludendorff (through Parvus-Gelfand), the widespread outpouring of currency by the National Socialists throughout Europe and the endless waste of Russian national funds which has been practiced for 36 years by Soviet communists throughout the world to pay party and electoral votes in all countries of the world... It goes without saying that in addition to such obviously foreign sources, each country also has its own internal ones: sometimes semi-international, sometimes national-capitalist, sometimes governmental, sometimes confessional...

In any case, history establishes as a fact that democratic elections require large party funds and expenses and that the sources of these “subsidies” are drowned in international darkness and do not meet with adequate exposure and resistance in democracies. This is the fourth main source of the crisis of democracy: party dependence on impenetrable “subsidies”, sometimes internal, sometimes directly from the enemy, often simply corrupt... Anyone who carefully considers the dangers I have indicated, which open up for a democratic regime at every step, will easily understand the political events of the last twenty years; he will be able to correctly foresee the upcoming political evolution. The state is a strong-willed and effective principle. Its needs and benefits require keen vision and determination. A regime incapable of making strong-willed decisions will inevitably get bogged down in party trade and intrigue, waste time, miss life-saving opportunities and disappoint its citizens. As a result, voting citizens have long since begun to cool down on their “right to vote”; and the more often they are disturbed by the call to the ballot box, and the more difficult the life of the country, and the stronger the volitional fluctuations and indecision of the government, the more acute the crisis of democracy becomes; especially when the last remnants of civic sacrifice dry up in wars, and left or right demagogues beckon with “saving” programs, flatter mass passions and promise strong-willed policies. The democratic masses of the most advanced states are unable to understand the falsity and unrealizability of these demagogic promises: this exceeds their power of understanding and judgment. In addition, they value private profits and close their eyes to the incompatibility of this coveted profit with the national good or even public salvation. They are especially tirelessly and systematically taught to this by socialist parties, which think according to the schemes of a class program and international solidarity: “Why arm yourself when, as a last resort, you can fraternize internationally?”; “What do we need colonial possessions when the hour has struck for the expropriation of the steel industry?”; “There’s no point in spending money on building a fleet when it’s better to raise workers’ wages and thereby attract their votes in the elections!”; “It is impossible to increase the budget for aviation when several million party semi-intelligentsia demand lucrative positions in the ranks of the socialist bureaucracy!”; “maybe the free provision of glasses, wigs and corsets is much more important for public health than the proper import of fats and meat?”...

In all such formulations of the question, the meaning of state existence is completely lost; the democratic regime begins to decompose the state alive and enters a period of acute crisis (modern England). Another path to the same crisis leads through the machine of parliamentarism. Parties do not think about the state and its fate, but about their voters. Voters must be pleased, otherwise failure in the next elections threatens. But this pleasing consists in providing them with real benefits: the peasants have their own desires, the workers have theirs, the urban philistines have theirs... Everything that is burdensome for them must be prevented; They need to push all sorts of relief and handouts through parliament. And then, as luck would have it, competing parties come forward and promise to advance even more. Hence this specific “parliamentary” atmosphere: “I will never let you carry out such and such a reform, because I want to carry it out myself; reform is necessary and good, but it should come not from you, but from me; if you don’t let me carry it out either, then let it fail...” And again: “Any ministry that saves the country not according to my recipe must fail!..” Or again: “You failed my ministry, okay: for I’m the one who will fail every ministry of yours, even if it were even smart and if it offered at least some wise and fair reforms...” Parliament is turning into some kind of sports ground, completely devoid of “sports gentlemanliness.” The "forest" is forgotten; only “trees” remain; and people, clinging to trees, try to inflict weakening blows on each other with sticks. And only on one point are the enemies ready to agree: not to let people with a strong, independent character lead the way, even if wisdom and righteousness were entirely on their side. There are such noisy and boring machines that grind heavy stones into gravel; they do not build, they only grind. No state needs such a legislative machine; and if parliament begins to grind gravel, then it disappoints the people and ruins the state.

The third path of this crisis leads directly to dictatorship! This is the path of lack of will and creative impotence of the middle parties and deceptive demagoguery on the part of the extreme parties - either the left or the right. The experience of history shows that the masses value in democracy not freedom, but profit. Freedom is needed by those who lead a spiritual life; Immense freedom is especially desirable for ambitious people, careerists and demagogues. The broad masses dream of an easy and quick improvement in their material condition: fewer taxes, fewer duties, less work, the absence of class (and, if possible, educational) restrictions, easy enrichment, easy career advancement, the strength of “social gains,” comfort and convenience. (cars, motorcycles, bicycles) and a stream of entertainment. Little has changed since antiquity, which put forward the slogan “bread and circuses”; This was precisely formulated to me recently by an Italian teenager who boiled everything down to the slogan “I want fun (“io volo divertisi”). Likewise, the view that the masses of the people strive for equality is naive and incorrect; not at all, they want inequality in their favor (“ôte toi de l`a que je m`y mette”) and consider this “fairness”. At the heart of this imaginary “egalitarianism” are greed and envy. That is why during periods of historical impatience (after natural disasters, epidemics, wars, during economic crises, revolutions and civil wars) the hearing of the masses turns out to be especially acute and responsive to any “strong-willed” programs of property shift, transfer or simply robbery. And we must admit that the democratic system, which accustoms the masses not to service, but to acquisition, not to sacrifice, but to claims, is preparing its own downfall precisely in this direction. For every “promiser” there is a more shameless competitor; For every social demagogue, there is a superior preacher of criminal robbery (Lenin: “rob the loot”). And if democracy organizes a real “auction” of state power, then it will be swept away by a revolution that allows “free expropriation” - and the people will give up “freedom” for profit and “equality”, for free, predatory inequality in their favor. And then it will all culminate left or right

totalitarianism... The evolution of the democratic regime over the past 20 years has been taking place precisely in this direction. Before our eyes, democratic Germany organized for itself a government lack of will, accumulated 6 million unemployed, renounced freedom and voting and collapsed into the right-wing totalitarianism of Hitler, taking with it the entire eastern half of Europe (1933– 1945). Before our eyes, the democratic China of Sun Yatsen disintegrated and fell into the bloody totalitarianism of Maotzentung. Before our eyes, the collapse of the English empire is taking place, the metropolis of which has indulged in demagogic socialism; and you also need to know that in the first half of 1953, Attlee and his party went so far to the left that they put in their program a new return to socialism (a new seizure of industry, interference in the construction of ships and aircraft, in the food supply, a return to free treatment, etc. d.): they forgot nothing and learned nothing...

And now all the dangers we have indicated are approaching France and Italy. It is instructive that anxiety about the stability of democracy, caused by the dangers we have indicated, is also found in the circles of “believing” democrats themselves. I will give a few illustrative excerpts from the modern press. This is what the authoritative democratic newspapers of objective Switzerland wrote, for example, over the past month. France “with its parliament, completely incapable of either leadership or prudent accounting, with this parliament throwing out of the saddle all the contenders for the post of minister-president, one after another, has sunk to the lowest level of its political development.” “Of the twenty political crises that broke out after the country’s liberation from occupation, the current crisis is the most malicious, threatening most likely to develop into a state crisis...” This crisis “extinguishes all hope for a speedy normalization of current economic and payment relations... And that desperate policy of desperate measures ( Desperado-Politik), which has now become inevitable, will soon take revenge on the entire French economy.”

The words of the Chairman of the French Parliament, Herriot, sounded even more harsh: “In our country, all politics have reached a dead end. In the eyes of the whole world, we find ourselves unable to regulate our own internal affairs. Never before has France suffered from such anemia. Our threatened, defamed and despised country is perishing from the fact that everyone demands sacrifices from the other, but does not want to accept them upon themselves... Anyone who looked through the French newspapers L'Aurore, Le Figaro, Le Monde,” found in them words of real political despair. What to do? Where is the salvation? The dissolution of parliament? In updating the constitution? We answer: in the renewal and ennoblement of the national legal consciousness... These words had just been written when the telegraph brought from Poe the text of the last speech of the French President Vincent Auriol. Here is a literal excerpt: “Democracy is the most difficult of all regimes.” It requires great civic courage, agreements and unanimity from citizens and their representatives! Otherwise it degenerates into anarchy and powerlessness. Therefore, state authority is needed in order to combat this disease, which threatens all free regimes and especially the regime in France. State authority is necessary to protect national sovereignty from attacks by various interests that wish to put pressure on parliament. A revision of the French polity is necessary, but even more urgent is a reform of political mores in France.” In conclusion, Oriol recalls the behest of the great French king Henry the Fourth (first of the Bourbons, 1555–1610): “We were born not only for ourselves, but, above all, to serve our homeland...” The wise and true words of Oriol, alas, are constitutional powerless and helpless head of state!

The results of the latest elections in Italy are discussed in an even more serious tone. In recent years, it seemed that De Gasperi's cautious but wise and social policies were consolidating the country's financial, economic and international position. But the June 1953 elections yielded unexpected results: the weakening of the central, creative parties and the radicalization of wings; – a powerful strengthening of the left wing and some small strengthening of the right wing. The communists and their squires, the left socialists Nenni, who had 8.1 million votes in 1948, received 3.6 million this time (an increase of one and a half million). Catholics (“Christian Democrats”), who now received 10.8 million votes, have lost two million in five years. And so people are alarmedly asking themselves: what will happen if such a phenomenon resumes at the next elections in 1958? Then the communists will collect 11 million votes, and the Catholics only 9 million - and Italy will become a province of the Comintern on the paths of legal democracy!

The following must be taken into account. Both men and women voted. The percentage of active participants was unusually high, higher than in 1948. Of the 30.2 million votes cast, 28.3 were cast, which is almost 94.7 percent. Of the men, 93.5 percent exercised their right to vote, and of women, 94.7 percent. – The age limit for elections to the Senate was 25 years; for parliamentary elections - 21 years old. These 4 years give a total of those 2 million votes that were given to the extreme parties. It is important to note that religiously Italians are considered Catholics by almost 99 percent. the entire population. Marxists are excommunicated in Italy. Vast auxiliary organizations were launched by the Catholics to attract votes to the Catholic party; but the elections showed that only 40 percent. Catholics followed the church, while the rest did not take into account either its prohibitions or its threats. The decline in the Vatican's political authority was catastrophic; and the secrecy of voting concealed massive state-religious sin.

As a result, Italy turned left. The deceptive calls of the communists for “international peace”, for “socialist well-being”, etc. prevailed. The weakness of political judgment among Italian women and boys and the freedom of communist lies have shaken the entire edifice of the Italian state. And the Swiss democratic press draws such conclusions. “The danger that now threatens Italy is the possibility that democracy, in the name of democratic principles, will destroy democracy, that is, itself.” Before the first war, there were no communist or fascist parties, and parliamentary elections and government formation were truly democratic procedures. Nowadays, from the experience of the last 35 years, everyone knows that communists are political cheats. But if a sharper invites someone to play cards, then he has only two possibilities: either beat the sharper with his own cards, or, even better, not sit down at the table with him at all. In relation to present-day Italy, this means that it is necessary to put an end to the previous short-sighted and over-tolerant policy towards the Communist Party. To endure any longer on behalf of democracy and watch as a force hostile to democracy destroys democracy would be the suicide of democracy. And the whole fate of Italy, and at the same time the fate of free Europe, depends on whether De Gasperi and other democratic parties, including the Social Democrats of Saragat, understand this, and whether they will be able to find new and bolder decisions or not.”

It is difficult to say what “bolder” solutions can be found by principled democrats who barely have a majority in the country? It is impossible to ban the Communist Party, which owns almost ten million votes in the country and is represented by 70 deputies in the Senate and 218 deputies in Parliament; and the right-wing Social Democrats will not agree to this, because it is more profitable for them to rely on their extreme left “brothers”. “True democrats” cannot decide on a civil war! But they also cannot deprive Italian women and boys of the right to vote... To decide on radical socialist reforms in the country is

would mean renouncing his program and starting an “overture” to a communist “opera”. What remains is the right-wing fascist coup, carried out by Catholics... But the fascist card in Italy has already been played, compromised and beaten. This concern among Swiss newspapers about the sustainability of democracy in Europe is well founded. People like Benito Mussolini, who have the courage to openly admit their leftist mistakes, break away from the socialist doctrine in the name of a social program, and begin a new political selection on a formally undemocratic basis, are rare and their task, as the history of the twentieth century has shown, is extremely difficult. Democracy has raised and stirred up the thicket of humanity everywhere, and communism has provoked and mobilized from this thicket the human scum, which is now ready to drown any new political selection. The history of fascism in Italy and National Socialism in Germany has clearly demonstrated this. That is why we have every reason to say that the crisis of democracy is getting worse. And you involuntarily ask yourself: are the people of Europe really not satisfied with those amazing socio-political lessons that were revealed in Russia, Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and China? Is it really only what has been experienced on one’s own skin that can open people’s eyes? Is a school of communist slavery and despair really necessary?

What kind of elections does Russia need?

No matter how the further course of events develops in Russia, no national elections will be possible in the first years after the fall of the Bolsheviks: one does not choose in chaos; in a state of general fermentation, return, resettlement, without settlement and registration - elections are impossible. Any attempt to hold elections and proclaim a “constituent assembly” will be a deliberate falsification, party fraud, political fraud. It is clear in advance that such a “democracy” that begins with deception and falsehood will be doomed. Until the national dictatorship selects an honest and ideological government apparatus capable of honestly compiling legal electoral lists, until then it is impossible to talk about elections. To imagine the situation in such a way that some kind of haphazardly put together “half-assembly” planted from behind-the-scenes cracks will proclaim itself a “constituent” and declare “universal, equal and direct” voting in the form of an electoral law means directly anticipating the falsification of elections, as inevitable, or even prepare it as “desirable”. It’s unlikely that anyone would dare to commit such a historical disgrace... Before any compilation of electoral lists, a general, nationwide enumeration of citizens must be carried out. First of all, a law must be passed by virtue of which the right to vote cannot belong to, in addition to minors (men under 25 years of age, women under 30 years of age), the feeble-minded, the insane, the deaf-mute, known drunkards and cocaine addicts, to the following categories of persons: internationalists forever; for ordinary communists - 20 years; members of the Council of People's Commissars, Politburo, Cheka, GPU, NKVD, Ministry of Internal Affairs - forever; to executioners and authorized commanders of concentration camps - forever; exposed political informers - 20 years; urkam – for 10 years; for everyone who served in foreign intelligence - for 20 years; persons of vicious professions (which will be listed in the law) - for the entire duration of their trade and for another 30 years upon termination of it (such professions include: robbers, twice convicted thieves, buyers and concealers of stolen goods, horse thieves, smugglers, brothel keepers and keepers , pimps and pimps, members of terrorist parties and organizations, sharpers, black market speculators, illegal moneylenders, etc.). This law must be made widely public at least one year before compiling the lists.

The proposed nationwide selection of citizens involves, firstly, all the people locally - in villages, towns, plants, factories and urban areas; secondly, representatives of the central government. A year before the lists are compiled, the head of state gathers provincial and city chiefs to special congresses to explain to them the main task of the new enumeration and selection. Here a single, general instruction is developed, which is transmitted to the localities and published for general information. Provincial and city leaders explain it to their subordinates (county, district and factory government representatives), and they explain it to village and district assemblies. Heeding this instruction, the people must be convinced and believe that the communist revolution is over, that the party nightmare is over, that a new, reasonable construction is beginning, based on love for Russia, on integrity, honor and honesty, on private initiative, on loyalty to a loyal government and on selection of the best people. The people must understand that what is expected of them is not party pretense, not lies, not denunciations, not mutual betrayal and servility to the authorities, but the compilation of electoral lists with the elimination of all those who have lost the right to vote. This elimination takes place by closed vote on the basis of a general, not yet electoral list of residents compiled by the precinct commander. Anyone against whom five challenging notes have been filed, without a signature, but indicating the legal basis for the challenge, is subject to voting. For example: Semyon

Semenovich Gaiduk is dismissed as an informer; or as an executioner; or as a buyer of stolen goods; or as an internationalist. Notes are read aloud, are not subject to discussion, are recorded and immediately destroyed; the person recused has the right to object publicly; his objection is not discussed; the issue is decided by a simple majority in a closed vote. In all cases where the district commander sees that unsuitable elements have not been allocated, but valuable elements have been allocated, he is obliged to appeal the proceedings to the provincial and city commander and have the procedure repeated. Where a united Communist majority and its successful intrigues are discovered, the precinct may be left without an electoral list at all. This is the first stage: a nationwide search. After it, electoral lists are drawn up in the usual manner and with all guarantees of legality, fairness and non-partisanship. These lists determine the composition of politically capable citizens for 10 years. It is these and only they who are active citizens. Once the deadlines have passed and the lists have been approved, the elections themselves are held in the following order. Elections should not be “totalitarian”. Everyone included in the lists has the right to exercise their right to vote and not to exercise it. But elections should not be party-based either: there should be no party programs, posters, or campaigning. The selection of the best must be done by the people themselves, completely freely and without any party “promises”, pressure, prompting and other tricks. Russia needs not party conspirators, not party tricksters and turnarounds, but people of real life and honor. Freedom of voting must be guaranteed by its secrecy. Elections should take place not on the basis of party proposals and recommendations, but on the principle of personal fame and respect. This requires elections in precincts or small districts. With this procedure, at least as many people will be elected as there are total polling stations (one per precinct), or twice, three and four times as many. This means that in the first stage, not members of the State Duma will be elected, but electors and, moreover, electors of electors. This means that what is desirable is not direct elections, but multi-level ones, where at each “stage” a calm, sober, business-like selection of people is possible, with an increasingly serious and deep awareness of the purpose and meaning of election, and where parties are increasingly losing their harmful influence . Roughly speaking: villages elect volost electors, volost electors elect district members, district provincial electors, provincial members of the State Duma; in cities - small polling stations send their electors to the city district, district ones to the main city assembly, which elects members of the State Duma. The people must accept the “task for the best”, and, feeling free, they must really invest in this matter and unite on it. These would be general elections (with an increased quality and age level), equal (since no one would have more than one vote), secret (according to the method of voting) and multi-degree. So, I consider it absolutely necessary to carry out a nationwide search, raise the age level and strict, but fair and popular removal of vicious elements. Further, I consider it equally necessary to liberate the people from totalitarian pressure from above and from party agitation from below: the goal and task of elections - the selection of the best - must be powerfully suggested to the people by the national dictatorship, but in realizing this goal the people must preserve their freedom. A dictatorship should not impose, but only offer its candidates to the people. And yet, I do not consider it either expedient or constructive to leave election proceedings to chance, empty quantity and behind-the-scenes intrigue.

The shock experienced by the Russian people was too deep and long-lasting. It was not for nothing that the Bolsheviks boasted of their “stiffness,” “handedness,” and “bone-breakingness.” During the entire period of their dominance, they sought to carry out their bone-crushing operation on every Russian person: to bring him culturally, economically and morally to his knees and to break his spiritual backbone. Let him try to get back on his own feet after this... As a result, the revolution inflicted such ulcers on the legal consciousness of the Russian people that they, left to their own devices, will not soon cope with. But that is precisely why liberation from the yoke should not lead him to temptation coming from political parties. The true task of elections, the selection of the best, should not just be indicated from the national center (proclaimed); but its very resolution must be met with help and assistance. After thirty or forty years of political depravity and terror, the Russian people, freely elevating their best citizens to the top, will need the help and control of a state-minded center. But this help and this control will receive special strength and significance precisely then if the same help and the same control are provided to the dictatorship by the people themselves. By investing in this selection, the people should be able to correct on the fly possible mistakes of the authorities helping them. Help and control must be simultaneous and mutual; and the selection must be joint and general.

For this to happen, we must abandon blind faith in the number of votes collected and in its political significance. We must look for qualities and demand them from those elected. For, in fact, an increase in the number of votes does not transform error into truth, an adventurer does not become a statesman-wise person, a traitor like Laval is not trustworthy. And if everyone, literally everyone, were to blindly demand politically disastrous measures, then these measures would not become politically salutary. Further, to do this, one must abandon faith in the party's recommendation and seek reliable and direct knowledge of the recommended candidate. In fact, the party does not promote the best people at all, but those who agree with it and are obedient to it. European political experience is replete with examples where the best people were not nominated at all because they did not think along party lines, but had their own personal views; Moreover, there is a known tendency in European democracies not to nominate the best precisely because they are the best, outstanding, strong, energetic, independent and therefore supposedly “dangerous” people for democracy. Suffice it to recall the political career of Churchill, who for a long time was “pushed” (that is, they did not give him a chance) for his obvious superiority. Parties are not only not infallible, but are usually tendentious, one-sided and think not about the state as a whole, but about themselves. Further, we must abandon the mechanical and arithmetic understanding of politics, from behind-thescenes and abstract candidates, unknown to anyone except the party center; we must return to natural, organic communication in politics, in which personal knowledge, personal respect and personal trust are decisive. Elections should not be a palming off of party careerists by party careerists, but a real selection of the truly best people. It is foolish to seek national salvation in an impersonal mechanism, in party intrigue, in the morally and religiously indifferent stuffing of notes into ballot boxes and counting of votes.

We must further abandon large constituencies with party lists and the so-called “direct” (essentially “crooked” and dead) elections and turn to small constituencies where everyone knows each other well, where it is almost impossible for a random adventurer or professional to get ahead. political diver. We need to turn to thoughtful, checking and double-checking elections, multilevel elections that create careful selection and give responsible preference.

And to top it all off, we must look for state unity in elections, and not endless fragmentation in the direction of ambition and lust for power. It would seem that,

What could be fairer than a proportional system? “How many votes are collected, so many deputies”... Arithmetic “justice” itself! In fact, the proportional system directly gives rise to baseless party adventurism. You just need to “acquire” votes, capture more naive and gullible fools into your cleverly placed networks, and “he”, who came up with a seductive program, will be guaranteed a place in parliament. It goes without saying that it is not parties that are emerging, but scraps, splinters, scraps of parties: not one of them is capable of taking power, leading the state and protecting the country. But is this important to petty ambitious people and careerists? It is important for them to “get out into the public eye,” “to appear,” to talk their way into a ministerial or semi-ministerial post; and for this there are “compromises” with other semi-parties and sub-factions. And so the state business turns into a small bazaar of political speculators, into an unstable balance of many groups and small groups, into a compromise of political “dives” and “wipes”. Let's face it: into political depravity.

Meanwhile, in fact, people who create politics are called upon to seek unity, state salvation, a certain unified program that is necessary for the state; they are called upon to look for common, unified things that everyone either will or won’t have at once - law, order, a strong army, an incorruptible court, an honest administration, educational schools, strong finances, economic and cultural prosperity of the people. Politics, by its very essence, means unity, not disunity, the general, not the particular (whether personal or class), the strength of the people, and not exhaustion. This unity is the basis of the state: the unity of citizens among themselves and the unity of citizens with the authorities. That is why all those theories and doctrines that try to convince us that the basis of politics is the eternal and inescapable struggle of citizens with state power are wrong: for, de, power means “pressure” and “oppression,” and citizenship means “freedom” and “ independence". All these theories are of revolutionary origin and anarchic nature. On the contrary: the state is founded and maintained by the voluntary recognition of power on the part of citizens, on the one hand, and the respect and trust of state power in citizens, on the other hand. You cannot build a state on hostility. From the eternal and hated opposition of citizens, only revolution, decomposition and death of the people can grow.

That is why the future Russia needs an electoral system that rests on the mutual cooperation of the people and the authorities, on their conscious unification around a single state goal. The electoral system I propose here rests on the clearly stated premise that the state is neither a corporation (all from below) nor an institution (all from above), but a combination of both. The state is an institution that seeks, in a corporate spirit and in a corporate form, popular trust and strength, and therefore honors the freedom of its citizens and seeks their sympathy and assistance; and at the same time, the state is a corporation that seeks strength and durability in the institution and therefore honors the authority of its power and does not encroach on its overthrow and desecration. This organic-spiritual unity of the government with the people and the people with the government must penetrate the entire electoral system from the very bottom and create the following order. Elections should be divided into small areas where everyone knows each other and where the socially unfit elements are as well known to everyone as the socially valuable and respectable people. Further, elections should be built on the form of a gradually ascending “ladder” (three- and four-stage elections). In principle, two parties should participate in the selection of the best - the people and the government. Both participating parties have the right to offer their

candidates and approve (or disapprove) of other people's candidates, competing with each other in finding the best and testing each other in identifying truly worthy people. Let's explain this with an example. In each village, volost voters are elected, who will then gather in the volost. Let's say that in a given village we need to choose four voters. And so the village assembly elects four from itself by secret ballot, and the head of the district also appoints four from himself. This is the first stage of selection. On the same day, immediately after the first stage, a list of four elected candidates is presented to the head of the district, of whom he is authorized and obliged to approve two and reject two; and the village assembly is presented with a list of four nominated candidates, of whom the assembly confirms two by secret ballot by a majority vote. If both sides are somewhat faithful to their task, that is, they are looking not for flatterers, not for weasels, not for party demagogues and not for “fascists,” but for truly the best people, then a double check will give the necessary results: the four best will be “approved” and “confirmed.” . Township elections held using the same system will give the same results for the county. This is the second stage of selection. District elections (third stage) will produce provincial electors. Finally, people will gather in the province, many times and comprehensively selected and eliminated in terms of moral and political quality, and they will carry out the elections of the required number of members of the “State Duma” in the usual manner, without the intervention of the administration, freely and secretly. A similar procedure for selecting the best will be carried out in cities, but not in four stages, but in three: elections by precincts, elections by city districts and citywide elections. Such an election system introduces into the legal consciousness of the participants a certain new internal motive: the motive of competition over quality. Each side is encouraged to nominate an uncontested candidate; one who cannot be removed without causing disgrace; one whose qualities speak for themselves; and at the same time, it is necessary to nominate him from this environment, not a “speaker” who ran in from the outside, not an unknown political intruder, but a local, settled, famous one, who has declared himself in life both in word and in deed. And is it worth offering to a notorious rogue if he faces deliberate rejection from the other “partner”? Isn’t it flattering to pride and ambition to propose candidates whose merits will be unanimously recognized? The legal consciousness and self-esteem of each side receives a special incentive and encouragement to nominate the truly best people, against whom the other side could absolutely not object: a strong-willed competition about dignity arises, a search for objectively the best people, a struggle for impeccable candidates. The political “semaphore” moves the “arrow” from quantity to quality, because each side knows that the “unsuitable” will be taken away. What is important is not the candidate’s party affiliation, but his suitability, usefulness, fairness, honesty, intelligence, experience...

In one case, such cooperation between the government and the people will take on the meaning of mutual advice and guidance (“that’s who we need!”); in another, the meaning of correction (“no, it’s a mistake!”); in the third - the meaning of direct rejection (“Where do we need these kind of things?!”); in the fourth - direct solidarity (“we are looking for people like that!”); in all cases, the meaning of mutual verification and mutual assistance in maintaining a single and common state backbone. It must be foreseen that such an order can only succeed under two main conditions: firstly, if there is a nationally-minded and non-party dictatorship in the country, which does not fall into either right-wing or left-wing totalitarianism, but values the free selection of the best people in the country; secondly, with the state sobering of the people. Totalitarianism will destroy the corporate principle of statehood and will either suppress or distort popular opinion; people who are not sobered up by the state will senselessly break into

disintegration and anarchy and will follow those demagogues who destroyed Russia in 1917. Then our election system can give the most disgusting and disastrous consequences: a totalitarian dictatorship will appoint and confirm only the extreme right, and the people will choose and confirm only the extreme left. Quality will be forgotten. The extreme parties will triumph and the elections will turn into a vile spectacle of party fights and general collapse. What Russia needs after the revolution is a state-wise and wise dictatorship and a statesober people, who have found their old historical attitude: “To conduct the affairs of state honestly and formidably”; leave “crookedness” and “cowardice”, “thieves’ custom” and “turmoil” and understand that the one who “disparages Rus'” is destroying himself. There is a level of legal consciousness at which no election system will help: the demoralized mob is generally incapable of elections (that is, of selecting the best), it will inevitably select the worst, and, moreover, for private profit (this or that type of corruption). And similar to this: if the dictatorship ends up in the hands of adventurers-demagogues, then they will “select” for themselves a retinue and a party as low in the level of legal consciousness as they themselves are low. There is not and cannot be an election system that would save the state from scoundrels if a scoundrel political level prevails in the country. But such electoral systems are possible and real that would give progress and success to the worst elements of the country, despite the fact that the general level of legal consciousness is much higher than this political rabble. Demagogy and corruption can destroy a country through a demagogic and corrupt election system. And the main post-revolutionary danger for Russia is that from the outside (or, God forbid, from the inside!) a disastrous system will be imposed on it, in which the worst elements have a free hand, and the best people are deprived of the opportunity to say their free word and cannot be brought forward And up. The point here is not at all to single out the “literate”: literacy in itself does not provide anything. Among Russian ordinary people, especially among peasants, there have always been many healthy and even wise people who cannot read or write: and “literate” people often immediately turn out to be rogues and scoundrels. The point here is to identify state-minded, not party-minded and not corrupt people. The mob is not at all the “rabble” of labor and calloused hands, or the rabble of little education, but the rabble of will, heart and vice. It is impossible and disastrous to bring to us from Western Europe the idea of antistate “sport in politics,” the idea of privately interested hustle and bustle around state affairs, the idea of class struggle, which is always fraught with civil war. It is impossible to turn Russia into a mortal fight of countless spiders in a huge jar, as the gentlemen behind-the-scenes dismemberers want! It is disastrous to give parties the right to plot and prepare coups; or auction off Russian state power at the price of fraudulent promises (“who is bigger?! – as was the case in the elections to the Constituent Assembly of 1917). All this would be a matter of political blindness and state betrayal...

No, Russia needs something completely different: an organized focus on quality. The political mob, political blindness and anti-state partisanship will destroy our Motherland. We need a genuine identification of state-healthy elements of the country, no matter what tribe, no matter what nationality they belong to.

About political success Let us ask ourselves: what is true political success and what axiomatic foundations determine the essence of politics? The most dangerous prejudices are those that are kept silent and not spoken out. This is the case especially in politics, where prejudices flourish wildly and ineradicably. And so the first political prejudice should be formulated as follows: “Everyone knows what politics is, there’s nothing to talk about...” “Everyone knows”... But how does he know this? Where does people get a correct understanding of all the subtle, complex and fateful things that politics contain? So, is this correct comprehension inherent in people “by nature”? Or maybe it is given to them in a dream? Where does this prejudice come from, as if every person “goes without saying” everything that is revealed only to a deep, far-sighted and noble spirit? Is it not from this prejudice that the modern political crisis has arisen? It is not without reason that humanity is gradually coming to the conviction that our century is the era of the greatest political failures known in world history. And maybe it’s time to learn from these failures and think about new paths leading to salvation...

It would be extremely interesting and instructive to trace through the entire history of mankind and establish what data, what prerequisites lead to real political success and what must be done to achieve such true political success in life? In this area, human experience is extremely rich and instructive - from antiquity to the present day... Who, strictly speaking, had political success? What paths did he take to get there? Who, on the contrary, crashed and why? And, in the end, what is “political success” and what does it consist of?

Let us establish first of all that in the uncertain and easily degenerating sphere of "politics" individuals and entire parties can have apparent success, which in reality will be a fatal political failure. People too often, when talking about politics, mean all sorts of affairs, troubles and intrigues that help them seize state power, without stopping at any suitable means, tricks, meanness and crimes. People think that everything that is done for the sake of state power, because of it, around it and on its behalf is all “politics”, completely regardless of what the content is, what the purpose is and what the value of these acts is. The most insidious intrigue, the most heinous crime, the most vile government is, from this point of view, “politics,” if only state power is involved.

Thus, history knows people and parties who made their bad and criminal policies, without caring or even thinking about the true goals and objectives of the state, about political communication, about the welfare of the people as a whole, about the fate of the nation, about the homeland and its spiritual culture. They were looking for power, they wanted to rule and command. Sometimes they didn’t even know what they would do after seizing power. Sometimes they openly reprimanded that they were pursuing the interests of one single class and did not want to know anything about the people as a whole or about the fatherland. They were ready to sacrifice the people, their homeland, its freedom and culture - in the name of seizing power and in the name of class abuse of it. Sometimes they fraudulently hid behind a “social program” in order to create their own desires, lusts and interests after seizing power... History knows many adventurers, ambitious people, predators and criminals who seized state power and abused it. One must be completely blind and naive to classify these robber deeds as what we call Politics.

When we see in ancient Greece during the Peloponnesian War, how people of the upper class are bound by such obligations: “I swear that I will forever

enemy of the people and that I will do as much harm to him as I can” (see Aristotle and Plutarch), then we refuse to admit that this is “political activity”... When in the same Greece ambitious, greedy and frivolous tyrants seize power everywhere, then this is not Politics, and the death of politics. When in Miletus the democrats, having seized power, take the children of the rich class and throw them under the feet of the bulls; and the aristocrats, having returned to power, collect the children of the poor class, cover them with tar and burn them alive (see Heraclitus of Pontus), then this is not Politics, but a series of shameful atrocities. When we study the history of such Roman “Caesars” as Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Vitellius, Domitian, we feel that we are suffocating with disgust for all their baseness and cruelty, for their depravity and villainy - and there are no arguments that would force We cannot recognize their activities as “political” and “state”: they remain criminal and depraved. When tyrants reigned in Italy in the 15th century—almost every city had its own—then their atrocities could be called “politics” only due to a misunderstanding. There is not that treachery, there is not that cruelty, there is not that robbery, there is not that blasphemy that they would not commit; there is no unnaturalness before which they would stop. Names such as Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Ferrante of Arrogon, Philip Maria Visconti, Sigismund Malatesta, Everso d'Anguillari - should find a place in the history of world criminals, and not in the history of Politics. For politics has its healthy foundations, its noble, spiritual axioms - and the one who tramples on them counts himself among the atrocities. Robespierre, Couthon and Marat were not politicians, but executioners. The totalitarian despots and terrorists of our day disgrace politics and abuse the state; they belong among paranoids, progressive paralytics and criminals, and not among political rulers. And so, if such people “were successful”, if they managed to seize power in the state and bring about the triumph of arbitrariness and self-interest in their lives, then this means that they “succeeded” in their private life, to the grief of the people and the country, and the people were experiencing an era of disasters and humiliation, perhaps an outright political catastrophe. From a formal point of view, their everyday struggles and their careers had a “political” character, because they sought and seized state power. But essentially their activities were anti-political and anti-state. As adventurers and careerists, they “succeeded”; but as “politicians” they were a disgraceful failure, for they destroyed their people in want, fear and humiliation. Their “tool”—the state apparatus”—had political meaning and national significance; but their goal violated any political meaning and the consequences of their deeds were destructive to the state. The path they followed seemed to them, and perhaps even to the masses, “political”; but what they did, and the way they acted, and what they created - all of this was in fact anti-state, anti-social, lawdestructive, anti-political and disastrous: the source of injustice, countless suffering, hatred, murder, collapse and decay.

All this means that Policy cannot be considered formally and assessed by external appearances. It is not a wild race of adventurers; it is not a pursuit of power by criminals. There is a basic and general rule according to which no human activity is determined by the means or instruments that it uses - neither medicine, nor art, nor economics, nor politics. Everything is determined and decided by the highest and objective life goal that these means are designed to serve. State power is only a means and an instrument designed to serve some higher purpose - and nothing more. The matter is determined by the great, meaningful task that state power is called upon to serve and actually serves. Politics is not an empty “form” or an external method; it depends on the goal and the task, so the goal determines both the form of power and the method of its implementation. Politics is there at once: both content and form. And therefore true political success does not consist in

to seize state power, but to build it correctly and direct it to the right and high goal.

So, we must distinguish between true political success and imaginary one. The private, personal life “success” of a tyrant is an imaginary success. True success is public success and the flourishing of people's life. And if anyone is satisfied with the arrangement of his personal career and neglects the well-being of the people and the flourishing of their national life, then he is a traitor to his people and a state criminal.

So what is true politics? Politics is, first of all, service - not a “career”, not a personal life path, not the satisfaction of vanity, ambition and lust for power. Anyone who does not understand or does not accept this is incapable of true politics: he can only distort it, vulgarize it and make a caricature or a crime out of it. And let them not tell us that the “majority” of modern politicians look at things “differently”: if this is so, then all the troubles, dangers and infamy of modern “politics” are explained exactly this.

Service presupposes in a person an increased sense of responsibility and the ability to forget about his personal “success or failure” in the face of the Cause. True Political service does not refer to individual groups or independent classes, but to the whole people as a whole. Politics in its essence does not divide people and does not inflame their passions in order to throw them at each other; on the contrary, it unites people on what they all have in common. Folk life is organic; each part needs and serves the others; no part can or dare to suppress the rest by using them irresponsibly. Each of us is interested in a very real way in the wellbeing of each of our fellow citizens: one person in poverty without help puts everyone in the position of callous traitors; one beggar is a threat to everyone; one person with the plague will infect everyone; and every madman, every drunkard, every morphine addict is a common danger. Therefore, true politics affirms the organic solidarity of all with all. And therefore, true political success is available only to those who live by organic contemplation and thinking.

Such a program of universal organic solidarity is not clear to everyone, and the more spiritually short-sighted and self-interested a person is, the less accessible it is to him. History knows countless living examples of the fact that the masses did not at all want real politics and the program corresponding to it, but flocked to the anti-political and anti-state proposals of demagogues. In the 19th century, such destructive practices, such political depravity were formulated and proclaimed by Karl Marx with his class party and program...

But the wise and faithful should not be tempted by this: they must maintain their understanding and their program even if this threatens them with isolation and persecution. One must have enough civic courage to cope with isolation, to accept persecution, in other words, to come to terms with one’s personal political failure. We must be sure that another time will come, other sober and wise generations will come who will recognize this apparent political “failure” as a true political success and will find the real true words to condemn political depravity.

But if a true politician finds sympathy among his contemporaries, then he must lead the fight and try to attract wide circles of the people to the right path. For politics is the art of uniting people, of bringing the many-headed and diverse desires of people to one denominator. The point here is not that people “agreed with each other on anything,” for they can agree on an anti-political program and on anti-state grounds:

after all, robbers, and exploiters, and terrorists, and child buyers are conspiring... We need political unity, political both in form and in content: loyal, legal, free in form, and nationwide, fair, organic and building in content. And this is the task of true politics. Therefore, politics is a strong-willed art – the art of social unrest. It is necessary to organize and correctly express the united national will, and, moreover, in such a way that this unity does not squander the power of the collective decision along the way. For history knows many examples of where “unity” was seemingly successful, but in fact no longer had any real willpower behind it: along the way, so many “undesirable concessions” were made, those insincere crafty “compromises” were concluded right and left, that people they grew cold and only pretended to “agree”; in fact, no one wanted either unity or its program, and when construction began, everything collapsed like a house of cards. This is why politics is the art of compatible and decisive excitement: weak-willed politics is a misunderstanding or betrayal, always a source of disappointment and disaster.

It follows from this that politics needs free and undeceitful (sincere) will. True unity rests on voluntary consent: people should unite not under coercion, not out of fear, not out of deceit and not for mutual deception. The less intrigue there is in politics, the healthier, deeper and more productive it is. A group of deceivers, provocateurs, saboteurs, in a word - dishonest and irresponsible people will never create either a healthy state or a correct policy. The more conspiracy there is in politics, the more lies and deception there are. The stronger the influence of the mysterious and ambiguous behind the scenes, the more lies, betrayal and self-interest there will be in the political atmosphere. It is impossible to unite and agree on everyone; it will never succeed. It is necessary to unite the best, the smartest, capable of responsible service, not bound by any behind-thescenes “orders” and “prohibitions”; and this unification should attract the reasonable majority of society and the people. And at the same time, we must always remember that this “majority” is not capable of creating and creating, contemplating and building a policy: it is only capable of responding to an idea and supporting a program. All significant and great reforms have always been conceived by an enterprising minority and carried out by them; and the majority only agreed, participated and obeyed. This does not at all mean a call for a totalitarian system, the most sick, perverted and humiliating of all political regimes. But this means a call not to overestimate the voice of the masses in politics, because the masses do not live by organic contemplation and thinking, accessible only to the best minority, which is called upon to implement it and involve the masses in it by proving and showing...

In order to create this unity, the best people of the people (that is, those who want and can serve the general organic solidarity) must agree and agree with each other, close their ranks and then begin to unite the people. If the country's best politicians do not do this, then this matter will be snatched from them by anti-government anti-politicians. This means that politics requires the selection of the best people - visionary, responsible, service-minded, talented organizers, experienced unifiers. Each state is called upon to select the best people. A people who does not succeed in such selection goes towards unrest and disasters. Therefore, everything that complicates, falsifies or undermines the politically substantive selection of the best people harms the state and destroys it: every power-hungry conspiracy, every ambitious party intrigue, every corruption, every political nepotism, every family patronage, every kind of attracting unfit for the state elements to the voting, all concealment, all party, tribal and confessional promotion of unfit elements... Whoever wants true political success must carry out with all his might a substantive selection of the best people.

And what this selection can and should offer to the people is a feasible optimum within the limits of general organic solidarity. A number of questions immediately arise here: how to achieve this goal? what measures are needed? what laws should be made? and is it possible to immediately find and implement “universal justice”? In response to these questions, it is always necessary to find and propose the best possible outcome. You should never dream about the maximum and set yourself maximum tasks: nothing will ever come of this except deception, disappointment, bitterness and demagoguery. What is needed is not a fantastic maximum, but the best that is feasible (sober optimism!). This immediately means: politics is impossible without an ideal; politics must be sober and realistic. It is impossible without an ideal: it must comprehend every event, pierce with its rays and ennoble every decision, call from afar, warm hearts close... Politics should not wander from case to case, mend existing holes, carry out unprincipled and unprincipled bargaining, indulge in frivolous myopia: true politics sees clearly his “ideal” and always retains his “idealistic” character.” And at the same time, it must be soberly realistic. Its sober “optimum” should not rest on illusions and should not dare turn into a chimera. But this is precisely where the complete ignorance of the masses and the blind doctrinaire of half-educated demagogues lead; and the worst thing happens when such doctrinaireism succeeds among the ignorant crowd and when it manages to consolidate its power with a system of terror... A sober and intelligent “optimum” (the best opportunity! the greatest that is feasible!) always takes into account all the real capabilities of a given people, a given moment in time, and the existing mental, economic, military and diplomatic conditions. This optimum must be historically justified, grounded, vigilantly calculated, and implementable. True politics is both idealistic and realistic. She always looks into the distance, ahead decades or even centuries; she doesn't deal with small things. And at the same time, she is always responsible and sober and does not take into account utopias and unnatural chimeras. Politics without an idea turns out to be petty, vulgar and powerless; it tires and bores everyone. Chimera politics is self-deception; it wastes its strength and disappoints the people. True politics has large outlines, it is significant and beneficial; and its strength increases from implementation; and at the same time, she does not deceive anyone, but saves energy and encourages folk creativity. Time judges her, and the judgment of future generations always justifies her.

In order to realize this possible “optimum” in life, politics needs the best possible state structure and the best possible replacement of government seats. The state is a power organization, but at the same time it is also an organization of freedom. These two requirements, like two coordinates, determine its tasks and its boundaries. If the organization of power fails, then everything falls into disorder, everything disintegrates into anarchy - and the state disappears into chaos. But if the state neglects freedom and ceases to serve it, then spasms of coercion, violence and terror begin and the state turns into a great convict prison. The correct solution to the problem is for the state to derive its strength from freedom and use its strength to maintain freedom. In other words, citizens must see spiritual strength in their freedom, protect it and elevate their spiritual freedom and strength to state power. The freedom of citizens must be a sure and powerful source of state power.

Power is called upon to command and, if necessary, to coerce, judge and punish. The state must never run out of impressive will; the force of his imperative must always be able to insist on its own and cause obedience. But this domination must certainly provide citizens with

freedom, respect it and preserve it. The external activities of the state (establishing order, collecting taxes, legislation, court, administration, organizing the army) are not something independent and cannot be maintained as a purely external process, as the work of a “driver”. If all this activity becomes a purely external matter (forcing, squeezing, pushing, sentencing, punishing, “shouting” and executing) - something mechanical, pressure and pressure, appealing not to the heart and spirit, but to fear and hunger (as in totalitarian states), then the state sooner or later collapses and disintegrates. For in fact, state life is an expression of internal processes occurring in the people's soul - instinctive drives, motivation, volitional decisions, impression, self-esteem, obedience, discipline, respect and patriotic love. The state and politics live by the legal consciousness of the people and draw their strength and success from it. And here it is important, on the one hand, the legal consciousness of the best people, and on the other, the legal consciousness of the masses, their average level. The sense of justice holds, and the state lives; disintegrates, becomes clouded, legal consciousness weakens - and the state disintegrates and perishes. Legal consciousness essentially consists of free loyalty.

That is why every true policy is called upon to educate and organize national legal consciousness. This education should be carried out in free loyalty (not in intimidating slavery!) and accustom citizens to free loyalty, that is, to voluntary observance of the law. Therefore, a true and wise politician must ensure that the state structure and composition of the government are acceptable to the national legal consciousness and truly evoke in it both sympathy and readiness to assist. Thus, if the people's legal consciousness thinks and feels authoritarianly, then it simply will not succeed in a democratic system. On the contrary, a legal consciousness with an individualistic and free structure will not tolerate tyranny. It is absurd to impose a monarchical system on a people living by a republican sense of justice; It is stupid and disastrous to involve people with a monarchical legal consciousness in a republic that is alien and unnatural to them. State structure and government are the “functions” of the internal life of the people, its expression, its manifestation, its generation; they are the functions of his legal consciousness, that is, his spiritual structure in all its historically emerged originality.

Every true politician knows that state power lives by the free legal consciousness of citizens; therefore, she must give this freedom room for healthy breathing and express this freedom in life. And the people are called upon to fill their freedom with loyalty and see in the government their government, protecting their freedom and creatively supported by the people. Therefore, true state power is called upon not only to “bind”, but also to liberate; and not only liberate, but also accustom citizens to voluntary self-obligation. The authorities “knit” to provide people with freedom; it liberates people to learn voluntary submission and unity... However, state power is by no means called upon to unleash evil forces among the people. Woe to the people if such a power arises - it doesn’t matter whether it liberates evil out of stupidity or out of depravity. Freedom is not the unbridledness of the evil and the right to evil deeds. Negative forces must be curbed and neutralized; otherwise they will abuse freedom, compromise it and destroy it. Evil must be bound so that good can deploy its forces freely and fearlessly. Therefore, true politics powerfully binds and organizes life in order to free and encourage the best forces of the people.

But the associated forces of evil must not perish. True politics is wise, cautious and saves the strength of the people. Therefore, it is inherent in the art of sparing negative forces and volitional charges and finding a positive use for them, showing the evil, envious, destroyer, criminal, robber, rebel and traitor the opportunity to come to their senses and begin positive work...

This is the essence of true politics. This is the path that leads to true political success. Politics is the art of freedom, the education of an independently creative subject of law. A state that despises the free human personality, suppresses it and excludes it, is a totalitarian state, an absurd, unnatural and criminal institution; it deserves to disintegrate and perish.

Politics is the art of law, that is, the ability to create a clear, viable and flexible legal norm. A state that issues laws that are dark and incomprehensible, unfair and ambiguous, lifeless, pedantic and dead, undermines people’s trust in the law and loyalty, unleashes arbitrariness and corruption in rulers and judges and itself undermines its strength. Politics is the art of justice, that is, the ability to empathize with the personal uniqueness of people, the ability to take care of the individual person. A state that brings an unfair equation to everyone, that cannot see the uniqueness (i.e., natural inequality!) of living people and therefore tramples living justice, accumulates negative charges in the people that will one day explode and destroy them. This is the essence of true politics. It is created through state power and therefore must keep this instrument clean; state power, having become dishonest, ferocious and greedy, deserves overthrow and shameful death. Politics gives a person power, but not for abuse and not for arbitrariness; a dirty person who abuses his power and acts arbitrarily is a criminal before the people. On the contrary, a true politician experiences his authority as a service, as an obligation, as a burden and strives to comprehend and master the art of power. And until his art copes and finds a creatively correct solution to the problem, and until he himself is freed from his obligation, he must bear the burden of his service - responsibly and courageously - even if it concerns his personal life and death. State power is not a light comedy or a masquerade where one takes off the mask whenever one wants. No, she has a tragic quality; Every minute it can turn into a tragedy that will take over both the personal life of the ruler and the general life of the people. Therefore, a true politician is obliged to risk his life like a soldier in battle; and that is why timid and cowardly people are not called to politics.

And true political success is available only to those who take up the matter with responsibility and love... There is nothing more pathetic than an unscrupulous and irresponsible politician: this is a person who wants to figure, but does not want to devote himself entirely to his calling; who is always not up to par in his activities; who does not know how to pay with his earthly personality; who runs from his own shadow. He is a coward by vocation who cannot achieve political success. And there is nothing more dangerous and harmful than a politician without a heart; this is a person who is deprived of the main organ of spiritual life; who loves neither his neighbor nor his fatherland; who does not know fidelity, this expression of love, but is capable of betrayal at every moment; who from the very beginning already betrays every undertaking; who does not have a single ray of God for the country he rules; a cynic by vocation who may have “success” in his personal career, but will never have true political success. A historical uproar may arise around his name, which fools and villains will mistake for “fame.” Streams of blood may spill around him; catastrophic disasters and suffering may occur from him, but he will not find creative ways for his people.

History knows such tyrants; but no Nero, no Borgia Caesars, no Marats were honored as they are now honored during life and after death.

Modern people have lost their living sense of good and evil; they mistake perversion for achievement, low intrigue for manifestation of intelligence, ferocity for heroic will, unnatural utopia for the great world “program”. Our contemporaries have forgotten the precious axioms of politics, law, power and state. They “cancelled” the devil in order to surrender to him and worship him... And they experience the greatest, most shameful failure of gaming history (the Russian Revolution) as the greatest political success. But the hour is not far off, and sobering up is approaching.

About the sovereign

When you listen to modern political opinions and sentiments, you imperceptibly come to the conclusion that our radical contemporaries convince themselves and each other that the era of the monarchy has irrevocably “passed” and the era of the republic has “finally” arrived, and that the monarchist is thereby a reactionary, and a republican is a friend of everything “lofty and beautiful,” all light, freedom and enlightenment. This view is instilled and spread artificially, from behind the scenes and, moreover, in anticipation of the political naivety and blindness of the mass “citizen.” There is no doubt that in our era (during the 19th and 20th centuries) the feeling of envy has burst out of the underground in politics and people, without hesitation, indulge in it in all sorts of forms and forms, starting from pointless love of freedom and ending with the latest cry of fashion, starting from modernism in art and ending with the kidnapping of children from wealthy fellow citizens, starting from the flat and evil doctrine of equality and ending with political intrigue or communist conspiracy. It should be especially noted that the natural and precious sense of one’s own spiritual dignity, unfortunately, has become obsolete and distorted into a false doctrine of the imaginary “equality” of all people, which blinds us in economic and political matters. This is what primarily explains the responsiveness of the mass “citizens” to the Republicans’ propaganda. At the same time, the sense of rank, so essential in all matters of spiritual culture and especially in religion, fades. “Enlightened” godlessness came to mean “freedom” and “equality”; the feeling of envy spread to the other world and the image of the “demon-devil” turned out to be the most tempting of all temptations. It is remarkable that this egalitarian republicanism, instilled in the naive masses and accepted by them, is fraught with its own danger and its own punishment. Namely: the conspiratorial and revolutionary overthrow of the monarchical system will quickly lead not to republican freedoms and “joys”, but to the personal tyranny of the next adventurer or to a party dictatorship. Wherever strong power is necessary and salutary - and in a revolutionary period of unrest and disintegration it is especially necessary everywhere - what is formed is not a many-headed and many-voiced republic, but a centralized dictatorial system of either a personally despotic or party-totalitarian character, in which not only are there no such longed-for “republican joys,” but in which arbitrariness replaces law and new inequality arises, opening the door to all dubious or worse elements of the country. And so the frogs, who sought a republic, “are executed for their deeds” (Krylov) and slowly, slowly, with insincere reservations, begin to comprehend the purpose and benefit of the monarchical system.

In this regard, a number of features of our troubled times become clear. People turn away from the monarchy because they have lost the correct understanding. Awakening to political “consciousness,” they look at state power with a greedy, envious eye from below, and the feeling of their own smallness, subordination, and humiliation gnaws at them with resentment. What does such an eye see in a monarch? The highest “exaltedness”, which can neither be “accepted” nor “visited”. He is “big” and I am small. But why is he so especially “great”? And why am I so absolutely small, to the point of defenseless submission? After all, justice requires equality... And here is a system of triumphant inequality! He has “all the power”, and I am “nothing”, obliged to blindly obey. He is one of the richest men in the country, and I can barely live and somehow get by. He can do whatever he wants and is not subject to any responsibility; There is only one “free” person in the whole country, and that is him, and we, the rest, are no more than his “subjects? He can do whatever he wants to me, including taking away my property and executing me; and I have to endure everything. His whole life is pure entertainment and pleasure... What luxurious palaces, what furnishings, what clothes, collections, precious stones, dishes, servants, horses, cars... What

feasts, what women, what honor! And no one chose him. And he doesn't need anyone's approval. They even assure that he is not bound by any laws and that his every desire is a law for everyone. In a word, in the monarchy everything is arranged in such a way as to outrage every “decent” person and accumulate “public indignation.” And the heredity of this title has only the meaning that it perpetuates this “outrageous” system and order. This is how the envious and greedy gaze from below looks and sees the Emperor. This view is especially characteristic of our era, and moreover because modern “enlightenment” has been implanting in souls for more than one hundred and fifty years a materialistic attitude that teaches us to see the external, sensual, public, superficial and weanes us from seeing in life and deeds the internal, insensible, intimate, deep. Spiritual and religious objects - for the sake of comprehension and implementation of which it is only worth living on earth - say less and less to modern man, so that, in the end, he generally ceases to take them into account and declares them non-existent, a reactionary invention. There are more and more people who are spiritually blind and, moreover, extremely happy with their blindness. “Everything that they can’t weigh, don’t measure, - Everything, they shout, must be trashed! “Only that, they say, and really, is what is sensitive for our body”... (A.K. Tolstoy). This is how it is with them in everything, including in politics. What attracts and satisfies them is formal democracy, which does not require the power of judgment from the citizen; This “rights” that untie a person and are not related to legal consciousness; This

“self-determination” and “self-government”, not ensured by the spiritual independence of a person; this is the “head of state”, who does not lead anything and does not lead anywhere - the illusion of law and the state and the reality of crafty careerism and behind-the-scenes intrigue. It is natural and inevitable that people who live by such a spiritual act, in which there is no spirit, no heart, no mind, no conscience, no contemplating eye, but there is only superficial information, calculation, reason, resourcefulness and external observation, do not have internal organ for the perception of the Sovereign and for living monarchical service. They lose the King both in their hearts and in their heads; they do not understand the monarchy and say about the Sovereign those superficial nonsense and vulgarities that we have just described. Relatively recently, in exile, one superficial and chaotic publicist, naively considering himself a “historian,” answered my direct question whether he was a “monarchist” and answered angrily: “I’m not a lackey,” as if only lackeys could be monarchists …. But they are so spiritually bruised, these chatterboxes. Modern historical experience has shown us what they are preparing for themselves and their people. We are obliged to show them that there is a true idea of the Sovereign, which they have lost with their envious hearts and formal minds. But at the same time, we make no illusions to ourselves: they are unlikely to see what is shown, most likely, they will not understand what we mean, and they will probably not accept it in the sense of agreement. What does a blindfolded person see? What will the one who has renounced reason in the name of flat reason understand? How will a person accept it with his heart if he has excluded his heart from life and has made his heartlessness and empty-heartedness a special virtue? Music won't say anything to a deaf-mute. The joys of honor and honesty remain inaccessible to those who seek life and political success at any cost. We foresee all this. But this does not change the essence of things at all. To correctly see the idea of the Sovereign, one must understand that the supreme power that belongs to him in the state is by no means unlimited, and the supreme responsibilities that bind him place on him such a burden that a person can cope with only by sacrificing himself entirely, asking for grace-filled help from above and relying on nationwide faithful service in one's own country. This means that the work of the Sovereign is selfless service and that this service consists of state supreme power. Such unity

ruling and serving has essential, determining significance; it cannot and should not be terminated. A citizen who sees only the rule of the monarch takes the path of protest, which easily turns into indignation, conspiracy, rebellion and revolution. The monarch, who understands his work only as the will of power, imperceptibly falls into anti-state “absolutism”, despises the right and law, becomes a despot and tyrant, begins to reign in terror and degenerates the entire state life. In reality, the sovereignty of the Sovereign must be comprehended - both by himself and by the citizens as a service and, moreover, in every act performed; and his service consists precisely in the fact that he heads, and in many cases embodies the beginning of power in the state.

The sovereign rules. But not because he is “power-hungry,” but because he is called to this and is obliged to do so: this is his ministry. And there is nothing more absurd than if they begin to reproach him for this rule. A sovereign incapable of power is a sick, dangerous and, perhaps, disastrous phenomenon for the entire people. Under a powerless monarch, turmoil and confusion begin in the state: the source of order, legality and discipline, the source of organized state will, dries up; everything fluctuates, the strong-willed life of the state stops, the throne is surrounded by ambitious and power-hungry intriguers, outbreaks of arbitrariness and anarchy appear everywhere, a rapid change of ministers begins, the waste and plunder of precious power and loyalty begins. Or, next to the weak-willed Sovereign, his illegal, strong-willed “double” appears - sometimes in the person of his wife or relative, sometimes in the person of a “temporary worker” chosen by the Sovereign himself, or a cleverly advanced intriguer...

Power is a function of the will, and the Sovereign must be a strong-willed person. A weakwilled or weak-willed Sovereign, always wavering or changing his decisions, “stops” himself and turns out to be his most dangerous enemy. He deadens and corrupts the life of the state and prepares a sad end for himself. It is better for him to renounce his right in advance and not ascend the throne. For the very essence of the monarchy is the decisive unanimity of will, opposed to “polyphony”, “difference of will” and the need for endless “discussions, votes and multi-hearted, but insincere agreements. Monarchy needs a single will, and not wavering lack of will; in the personal and responsible exercise of power, and not in complacent avoidance of decisions and decisive measures.

Therefore, we must admit that a weak-willed and powerless monarch is only an appearance of the Sovereign: he exists, but in such a way that it is as if he is not there. And everything that happens under him is attributed to the monarchy and the monarchical system without sufficient grounds: for republican chaos begins in the country; and this republican chaos with its disastrous decay, with its turmoil is completely unreasonably considered a “monarchical regime.”

The sovereign is called to power; he is obliged to rule and lead. And for this he needs independent will and a heightened, comprehensive sense of responsibility.

So, the first thing that needs to be understood in the position of the Sovereign is the limitation of his power and the limitlessness of the responsibilities that bind him. The power of the Sovereign is limited primarily by the laws of nature and laws human nature.

The sovereign is forced to take into account the climate of his country, its geographical position, its space and volume, its past history. To do this, he must study all this, see, as if from a distance, the possibilities and impossibilities of his state, its needs, requirements and dangers, the fates that threaten it and its sovereign tasks. And so the whole life of the Sovereign is study and teaching, peering, feeling and contemplation. And, moreover, not theoretically abstract, like that of scientific researchers, and not amateurish, like that of a free man in the street, but practical-political, creative, coupled with effective

plans and with the greatest responsibility. A sovereign who does not know his country and the laws of its nature cannot rule: what roads will he pave? what channels will it run? What plant and animal culture will he teach his people? what kind of forests will he plant? what kind of dry winds will it take away? which swamps will it drain? which steppes will be irrigated? Which metals and minerals, fossils and rocks will he indicate? The Great Sovereigns understood all this and took care of all this, starting from Emperor Adrian, who traveled around his state for 28 years, and ending with the French king Henry IV and especially the most brilliant of the Sovereigns, Peter the Great. Without this, how to advance your country, how to organize its defense, how to awaken the initiative of your people? And the Emperor is for all this answers... Further, he must understand the laws of human nature and fruitfully take them into account. He must know the natural needs of his people - for food and clothing, on land and at sea, in work and in rest, in time of war and in time of peace. He must understand the uniqueness of those peoples whom he is called to rule, their character, their faith, their customs, their national strength and weaknesses, their family life and their way of feeding, in order to suggest to each of them better work and better self-government and that each of them I felt recognized, appreciated and found my place in the heart of my Sovereign. To do this, the Sovereign must tirelessly study his heritage all his life, feel like a student of his state and, moreover, a student burdened with imperious responsibility - according to the stamp that twenty-five-year-old Peter the Great ordered for himself and vitally applied when going abroad: “I am I demand me into the rank of those who teach and teach.”

This shows how great the labor burden of knowledge lies on the Sovereign. His education must begin in childhood and end only with his death. The history of mankind will require special attention from him, which will reveal to him the experience of government endured by peoples and monarchs, political and diplomatic art, and, finally, strategy, as an obligatory science of kings and generals. How will a sovereign who does not understand this manage his sovereign affairs? What reform can he conceive and carry out? How does he recognize people? Which ministers to appoint? What kind of war will he be able to think through and prepare? Which commanders should you choose? What victories to win? – It is clear that the life of the Sovereign is filled with responsibility and work, like never before for anyone else. For the average person is responsible for himself and for his family; an official for the work entrusted to him; and the Sovereign is for everything, for the entire life and destiny of his people. But he bears much more, and especially a great responsibility for his royal family and its continuation, as well as for the entire dynasty. A sovereign who receives his throne by blood succession must have good natural heredity. A physically or mentally ill monarch will not be able to bear the burden of his calling and the throne. Misfortune, of course, can befall every person, and it is not always possible to protect against illness (physical or mental). But it is enough to remember the two sons of the Bavarian king Maximilian II (19th century) - Louis and Otto, who suffered from mental illness, to understand what state difficulties could arise from this. The sovereign is naturally and inevitably responsible for the health of his heirs and must foresee everything that can be foreseen. A marriage that obviously threatens sick offspring is unacceptable either in the sense of parental permission or in the sense of adult independent will. And this means that each member of the dynasty must be ready to renounce his strongest love and infatuation in the name of the laws of “eugenetics” (the science and practice of healthy offspring). Here the monarch's sacrifice knows no bounds. In matters of marriage, the Tsar has as little freedom as in matters of education and everyday life, for the marriage of a king is a dynastic and statewide matter; and therefore it is better to renounce the throne in the name of “allconsuming” personal love than to introduce diseased heredity into the dynastic succession.

The entire life of the Emperor is structured in this order. She has her own "royal"

obligatorium,” i.e., a system of duties dictated by the throne and binding the monarch. Quite regardless of whether these duties correspond to the personal inclinations of the Sovereign or do not correspond, he must become a “master” in them execution.

He must know the military system, be able to command, understand the composition of the army and modern weapons; he must truly value the available reserve of his armies, generals and commanders and be able to choose capable ones. The burden of divorces, parades, shows and exercises is never lifted from him. He must understand the structure of the national court from bottom to top, understand the axiom of its independence, strive everywhere for a “swift, just and merciful” court and wisely dispose of his rights of pardon (forgiveness of those convicted) and abolition (forgiveness before trial), pardoning wherever possible, and courageously refusing clemency where necessary. He must understand the meaning and significance of popular representation - its introduction, expansion and limitation, the meaning of the convocation and dissolution of the chamber - the meaning, limits, temptations and dangers of suffrage. He must exclude from the popular representation the element of “rivalry” with the throne, and organize it on the basis of mutual faithful assistance and loyal cooperation; and this will require great patience, tact and wisdom from him. He must vigilantly and correctly navigate the state of international affairs and understand all the intricacies of diplomatic work and the environment. He must develop in himself that “charm” of treatment, that imperceptible tact, that slight caution in words and deeds that will never become “false” and will always remain natural and wise manifestations of imperious patriotism. The history of all countries is replete with examples of how the international tactlessness of the Sovereign brought disasters upon his people. Further, the Sovereign is the called and responsible educator of his people. He must correctly understand his character, the level of his legal consciousness and his national idea. He must become convinced of the vital impotence in which the ignorant people find themselves - in the danger emanating from half-education and “halfscience” (Dostoevsky’s expression) and in the harm that the gap between the intelligentsia and the common people brings with it. In a word, ministers of public education must receive deep and guiding ideas for public education from their Sovereign. The education of the people means instilling in them patriotism, self-esteem, the power of judgment, a sense of responsibility - and, as a result, the ability to self-government. To educate a people means to educate them for freedom, for this high art that combines independence of being and fidelity to the subject. And the calling of the Sovereign is not to suppress free faith and free creativity in his people, but to grow and strengthen them. Full power is given to the monarch not for totalitarian rule, as others interpret “absolutism,” confusing it with “autocracy,” but for the liberation of his people to free religiosity and independent creativity. This is exactly how Peter the Great understood his sovereignty.

It is clear that in matters of political convictions and religious faith, the greatest tact and real art are required from the Sovereign. Under no circumstances can the sovereign think along party lines and be a party member. There are many parties, but one people and one Sovereign. There are many parties, but there are many more non-party parties than party ones (in Switzerland, for example, 86 percent of voters are not registered in any party). “The king’s heart is wide,” there is a place for the whole country in it. The party king with the party badge is a decline and distortion. The eagle gaze of the Sovereign must look into the “sun” of his people and leave the townsfolk to look askance at the party program and spoils.

The Emperor’s attitude towards confessions is even deeper and more subtle. It is natural for a sovereign to have, in addition to his royal patriotism, two sources of inspiration religious faith and popular love. Faith will probably lead him to a well-known, nationally recognized confession and to the corresponding church in which he was born and spiritually nurtured. But this does not mean that he can and should drown the power of his royal judgment in the opinions of the clergy of his day: neither secular power should encroach on the church and church affairs, nor the clergy should encroach on the power of the Sovereign, on its subordination and absorption. Mutual advice and mutual support form here the limit of joint freedom. This was the ancient Orthodox tradition in Rus'. The opposite was true in England under the Stuarts, where, for example, King James II, a Catholic and adherent of the Jesuits, found himself, by virtue of his royal rights, the head of the Protestant Church... But this also does not mean that the intolerance of other confessions, characteristic of Catholics, is appropriate for the state and, moreover, the royal power. : confessional affiliation should not become (as it was under Emperor Charles V) synonymous with state loyalty, so that everything non-Catholic was declared rebellious and subject to retribution. On the contrary, a monarchical state is called upon to be tolerant of other faiths and can make exceptions from this only for perverted and non-loyal-aggressive faiths.

Finally, one of the most important callings of the Sovereign and the Dynasty is to have a true, creative and sustainable social, not at all socialist, idea, that is, a plan for conducting state affairs in the steady direction of free spirituality, justice and economic productivity. A sovereign who does not have a creative social idea will rule from case to case, from instigation to instigation, and perhaps according to an outdated and harmful state tradition, or perhaps from whim to whim. Meanwhile, he is called to a kind of social clairvoyance: his insight and far-sightedness must correctly see what exactly (and precisely among his people) can unleash the creative forces, move him to economic and cultural flourishing and awaken in him the will to justice. For this, the Sovereign is called upon to stand above all classes, classes and all parties: he must be free from the conspirators who nominated him, from the legions who proclaim him, from the bankers who finance him and from the world behind the scenes trying to bind his state will. Thus, Empress Elizaveta Petrovna and Empress Ekaterina Alekseevna were not free from their conspirators and from the class they led, and therefore did not have a nationwide social idea. Peter III tried to get through to her, but failed, and did not have time. Paul I dreamed about it, but his assassins were afraid of this idea, and history did not give him time. The real search for her lived in the soul of Alexander I; he started with them, but wars and conspiracies burdened his reign too much. Preparatory work began under Nicholas I (the liberation of the throne from the pressure of the nobility, both reactionary and revolutionary; the creative plan for the abolition of serfdom by the power of the Sovereign - from Zhukovsky, Pushkin and Gogol; codification of Speransky; preparatory committees 1826, 1835, 1839,1840, 1846 , 1848 and 1849) and carried out by Emperor Alexander II, for whom the revolutionary philistinism took revenge for them with a vile murder. Precious time was then lost until 1906, when the revolutionary encroachments of the popular mob finally prompted Emperor Nicholas II to accept the social idea of P. A. Stolypin...

The embodied bearer of the social idea was Peter the Great. From the history of other countries, we could point, for example, to the social plans and measures of Octavian Augustus, Emperor Hadrian, Henry IV of Bourbon, the consolidator of the French Revolution Napoleon Bonaparte (“Code Napoleon”) and many other Sovereigns (starting with the ancient, socially minded kings of Greece and Rome). It is impossible to count here all the duties borne by the Sovereign and describe all their burdens. But enough has been said for us and it’s time to turn to the main conclusions arising from a correct understanding of the Throne.

After everything we have said and established (“N.Z.” 199–200), it is difficult to imagine a person who would have enough ignorance or political naivety to talk about the “privilege”, or even more so about the “irresponsible privilege” of the Sovereign. Only people exhausted from ambition, envy and thirst for equality, or simply stupid by nature, could insist on this: they will, according to Kozma Prutkov, talk about what their concepts do not allow them to do and their judgments will be completely unfounded and stupid.

There are many citizens, but one Sovereign. And from each citizen a thread of legal subordination goes to the Sovereign; and this thread obliges and binds the Sovereign. There is only one sovereign in the country and from him a thread of power goes to every citizen; and this power binds and obliges the Sovereign. And so in everything and always, he is bound by someone else’s subordination and his own power, even when at a given moment and in relation to a given citizen, neither power nor subordination seems to be expressed in anything specific. The Sovereigns are well aware of this connection with each citizen and individually; they use it always and everywhere to the extent that they need it - both when they go out to the rebels (cholera riot, Decembrists), and when the inscription on the document decides the fate of the offender (the resolution of Alexander III on the release of “this fool Tsebrikova"), and when, like Emperor Nicholas II, passing by, they salute a person in a student uniform who does not bow (Artsybashev). The thread of the Sovereign, connecting him with his subject, is not broken even in his absence (portraits, prayers for the Sovereign, “Mirror”, Anthem, universal salutation in the troops, palaces, postage stamps, royal boxes in theaters, retinue uniforms, crew calls, and much more, scattered throughout the life of a monarchical country). It is not the case that a person who has not seen his Sovereign directly all his life lived “in isolation” from him. In space, the meeting of two people may not have taken place, but the threads of legal consciousness are of an immaterial nature and live invisibly and intangibly: they do not stop because they remain without real life tension, and do not lose their existence because they are not thought about. After all, the sun also shines from behind the clouds, and there are many people who find it difficult to bear the rays of the sun without any coverings. And yet, the sun, with which the people’s consciousness so readily compares the Emperor, also shines through the clouds; it also retains the nocturnal sleeping nature in its power.

Therefore, we must admit that there are no “interruptions” in the service of the Sovereign: at every minute of his life he bears the entire burden of his service and his responsibility. From early childhood he must accept the entire “load” of his preparatory work, studies and studies, regardless of the fact that he may be attracted to completely different subjects. From early childhood, educators will develop in him that all-interested observation, that special merciful courtesy, that resourceful tact that he needs in accordance with his calling. It represents the beginning of national unity, synthesis, an organic center in which everything must converge and be reconciled. Therefore, he needs a special range of vision, a special horizon of long distance and a special art of intense fusion, which requires lively activity and tireless insight. Without this insight, he will not recognize and highlight the best people: he will be surrounded by insinuating people, flattering people, people who are “funny” and “telling jokes”, experienced malingerers, vicious actors, careerists.

The title of Sovereign, his duties and service require from him, further, memory, but not mechanical, but organic, as well as creative imagination, in silence growing new “fruits”, new plans and transformations. It is clear that this case encroaches on his entire personal life, involving it entirely. Therefore, it is natural and necessary for the Sovereign to accustom himself to the fact that he does not and never will have a simply “personal” life, a “private” life, as such, which “concerns no one but him.” One could say that the Sovereigns spend their lives as if in a large glass room, the walls, floor and ceiling

which consists of huge magnifying glasses, so that all the people look into these glasses all the time, see everything - both superfluous and unnecessary, and often, on the contrary, do not see the most important thing; and always remains ready for all sorts of gossip and rumors. The personal life of the Sovereign is in everything and always the property of his people: it cannot be isolated from this great historical stream, it is impossible to declare it “indifferent” on a national scale. To say “that no one cares” means to say the wrong thing and make a whole series of mistakes in life. That inhuman debauchery that Caesar Tiberius indulged in on Capri was, of course, a manifestation of his “personal life,” but at the same time it constituted the central rot of the popular Roman existence. The personal character of the Dutch-English king George III is forever inscribed in the history of the English people. The merciful Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich built the mercy of his people; Peter the Great created the Russian national strategy with his courage, will and foresight; The personal life of Empress Catherine II Alekseevna was organically and politically reflected in the life and fate of her people. The personal life of the righteous Marcus Aurelius diffused purity and spiritual fragrance around itself. And so - everywhere, always and in everything. This means that the spiritual and political responsibility of the Sovereign is comprehensive and continuous. Everything relating to the Sovereign personally and his family, everything is the property of his people, everything is included in the halo of his state image, or, conversely, in the darkening and distortion of his appearance. Low street companies brought down Emperor Nero. Byzantium knew vile temporary workers, whose mere appearance at the throne already ruined the throne. The monarch is the eternal center of national attention; on thousands of imperceptible paths, every word of his, every deed of his is transmitted in all directions, as curious or even precious news, as something subject to discussion, and perhaps even imitation, as a kind of event of the day or a model. And thus, the entire private and personal life of the Sovereign remains organically included in his public ministry. To verify this, it is enough just to give yourself at least an approximate account of how many spiritual, political, diplomatic and other tactlessness each Sovereign has to listen to and reflect and, in reflecting, neutralize... What resourcefulness he needs, what breadth of views, what condescension and noble kindness!.. Meanwhile, every careless answer risks giving rise to harmful rumors and gossip.

So, for example, at the congress of Russian foreign writers in Belgrade, Zinaida Gippius considered it decent, sitting at dinner next to the chivalrous King of Yugoslavia Alexander I and flirtatiously playing with her notorious lorgnette, to ask him a question: “Tell me, King, are you really for the monarchy?” ?... How many times did representatives of the Italian aristocracy come to the King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel, in the era of Mussolini to pour out their anti-fascist feelings and did not want to understand why he listened to them in silence and only at the end of the audience made it clear that they had said “troppo molto”... But there is and careless answers that could directly destroy the Emperor... On the other hand, what vast opportunities are opened up for the Sovereign by his heartfelt sensitivity and creative tact in his immediate life, especially due to the inherent imitativeness of the courtiers. The simple attention and sympathy of the Sovereign is enough to help out and put a decent person on his feet... The Sovereign, as a benefactor, as a patron of literature and art, as a comforter of the suffering, as a source of justice and well-deserved rewards, has before him a vast field for good deeds. And his noble heart cannot help but find quiet joys in this. In view of all this, it must be admitted that the Sovereign, having mastered his calling and the fullness of his responsibility, begins to feel like a captive, and often

a martyr to his throne. All his life he is called to live not according to his taste, desire and choice, but at the call of the throne, now preparing himself for the future, now perceiving the given circumstances and upcoming people, now sacrificing everything, the main thing and loved ones, now forcing himself to overcome existing things in the name of his people. the torment of life, which he cannot refuse. With this in mind, it is not difficult to understand that the Sovereign, standing before the throne, aware of his full and clear responsibility and not sensing a call to power, may have hours, days and years when he will dream of rejecting the throne, about the liberation of one’s personality and one’s private life from this captivity and martyrdom; especially if the throne awaiting him is surrounded by bad, base and depraved people. In this regard, one cannot help but recall the remarkable and deeply felt letter from Grand Duke Alexander Pavlovich, which he wrote on May 10, 1796 to his friend Viktor Pavlovich Kochubey.

“Yes, dear friend, I will repeat again: my situation does not satisfy me at all. It is too brilliant for my character, which only likes peace and quiet. Court life is not made for me. I suffer every time I have to appear on the court stage and my blood turns bad at the sight of the baseness committed by others at every step in order to obtain external distinctions that are not worth a penny in my eyes. I feel unhappy in the company of such people whom I would not want to have as my lackeys; and meanwhile, they occupy the highest places here, such as 3..., P... B..., both S..., M... and many others who should not even be named, and who, being arrogant with the lower ones, grovel before who are they afraid of? In a word, my dear friend, I realize that I was not born for the high rank that I wear now, much less for the one destined for me in the future, which I swore to myself to renounce in one way or another... I know that you will condemn me, but I can’t do otherwise, because I set peace of conscience as my first law, but could it remain calm if I took on a task beyond my strength?

Whoever once feels and thinks about the Sovereign’s work and calling will be convinced of the sacrifice of his service. The situation is not at all that he will face a fate full of entertainment, pleasures and all kinds of self-indulgence, as other frivolous adventurers, ambitious and envious people imagine. It must be directly admitted that the closer the pretender to the throne himself is to such a view, the less he understands his calling, the less capable he is of becoming a Sovereign, the more he will distort his ministry and harm his people. On the contrary, the Sovereign must be ready to sacrifice all his strength, his leisure, his passions, his personal happiness (in love and marriage), his health and his life. A great prototype of this was given in history by all truly great monarchs, especially Peter the Great. The sovereign, upon ascending the throne, becomes not just a ruler, but a captive and martyr of his power. This is how Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich understood this matter, answering his mother Empress Maria Feodorovna when accepting the throne from Konstantin Pavlovich: “This is still a question, which of the two victims in this case should be considered higher - whether on the part of the one refusing or on the part of the accepting...” Enough think about how many monarchs fell at the hands of murderers, in order to extinguish once and for all envious conversations about the privileges of the Sovereign and his title and see all this in a new way, from the depths and in true greatness.

About the state form This complex and very important question must be posed with caution and with complete impartiality of thought. First of all: the state form is not an “abstract concept” and not a “political scheme”, indifferent to the life of peoples, but a structure of life and a living organization of the people. It is necessary that the people understand their system of life; so that he knows how to organize himself – exactly “this way”; so that he respects the laws of this system and puts his will into this organization. In other words: it is the living legal consciousness of the people that gives the state form implementation, life and strength; so that the state form depends primarily on the level of the people's legal consciousness, on the historical political experience acquired by the people, on the strength of their will and on their national character. It is absurd to put a person at chess who does not understand the game and its rules, who does not know how to conceive a game plan, who does not want to put his thought and his will into the game. A sports squad that does not play football will fail the competition. Suvorov prepared each battle, explaining to the soldiers the course and meaning of the upcoming operation; and it was thanks to this that he won fight after fight. So it is in political life: it is made by living people, their patriotic love, their understanding of the state, their character, their sense of duty, their organizational skills, their respect for the law. All this needs to be brought up. It is absurd to introduce a state form into the country without taking into account the level and skills of the people's legal consciousness. Further, the state form must take into account the territorial size of the country and the size of its population. In the Republic of San Marino (59 square kilometers, 9,000 inhabitants!), executive power still belongs to two “captains” elected by the “Grand Council” (parliament) for 6 months, and one of them is usually chosen from among visiting foreigners... Some, very small The cantons of Switzerland still gather once a year for their “one-day meeting” - in the square, and, in case of rain, under umbrellas... Already in most other cantons of Switzerland, this is impossible. Further, the state form must take into account the climate and nature of the country. The harsh climate complicates the entire organization of the people, all communications, all management: nature influences the character of the people, the country's food supply, its industry; it determines its geographical and strategic boundaries, its defenses, the nature and abundance of its wars. All this must be taken into account in the state form. The multinational composition of the population makes its own demands on the state form. It can become a factor of disintegration and lead to disastrous civil wars. But this danger can be overcome: by the nature of the country and the mountainous love of freedom of the peoples in solidarity (Switzerland); they are also due to the long and free selection of emigrants, the overseas position of the country and the commercial and industrial character of the state (United States); or - finally - the religious-cultural predominance and successful political leadership of the numerically strongest tribe, if it is distinguished by true amiability and kindness (Russia).

Conclusions:

– Every people and every country is a living individual with its own special characteristics, with its own unique history, soul and nature. Each nation therefore has its own, special, individual

state form and constitution corresponding to him and only him. There are no identical peoples and there should not be identical forms and constitutions. Blind borrowing and imitation is absurd, dangerous and can be disastrous. Plants require individual care. Animals in the zoological garden have - according to their genus and species - individual regimes. Even people have dresses made to measure... Where does this ridiculous idea come from that the state structure can be transferred by mechanical borrowing from country to country? Where does this naive idea come from that the most unique English statehood, nurtured for centuries in a unique country (mixed blood! island! sea! climate! history!) by the most original people (character! temperament! legal consciousness! culture!) - can be reproduced by any people with any legal consciousness and character , in any country of any size and with any climate!? One might truly think that educated politicians have not read at all neither Aristotle, nor Machiavelli, nor Montesquieu, nor Buckle...

What kind of political superficiality is needed in order to impose the state form of monarchy on all peoples, even those who do not have even a shadow of a monarchical sense of justice (for example, the United States, Switzerland or rebellious Mexico, where Emperor Maximilian was killed by rebel republicans three years later) upon accession in 1867)?! However, isn’t it equally irresponsible to force the life of a people who for many centuries endured a monarchical legal consciousness (for example, England, Germany, Spain, Serbia and Russia) into a republican form?! What kind of political doctrinaire was needed in order to compose in Russia in 1917 some kind of super-democratic, super-republican, super-federative constitution and plunge Russia with its most individual history, soul and nature into the chaos of senseless and stupid decay, which only could end in the tyranny of unscrupulous internationalists! How right was one of the drafters of the electoral law for the constituent assembly, who said three years later (1920) with grief and horror: “What were we thinking then?! What did we do? After all, it was just psychosis! We tried to surpass all known constitutions in democracy - and ruined everything!..” Unfortunately, this intelligent, honest and courageous patriot, who died soon after in a Soviet prison, is not at all imitated by emigrant politicians...

Nowadays, almost all emigrant parties, following their own political doctrinaire and the whispers of their international “patrons,” are again demanding a democratic, federal republic for Russia. They know what came out of the “one-day” constituent assembly in 1917; they know that since then the Russian people have been robbed into poverty, trying to turn them into slaves; they know that for thirty years they have been deprived of all correct knowledge of internal and external affairs and turned into political blindness; they know that the Russian people have been systematically weaned from all independent knowledge, judgment and understanding, from independent work and from personal responsibility; that they were humiliated for thirty years, their faith and all the spiritual and moral foundations of life were destroyed, accustoming them to hungry corruption and vile mutual denunciation... They know all this and consider this a suitable condition for the immediate introduction of a democratic republic...

What can we expect from the implementation of these programs, other than new national disasters? Years of national recollection, settling, calming, understanding, awareness, restoration of elementary legal consciousness, return to private property, to the principles of honor and honesty, to personal responsibility and loyalty, to self-esteem, to integrity and independent thought will pass - before the Russian the people will be able to make meaningful and non-disastrous political elections. Until then, it can only be led by a national, patriotic, not at all totalitarian, but authoritarian - educating and reviving - dictatorship.

The best should rule The first thing we must do when discussing the structure of the Russian state is to shake off the hypnosis of political formulas and slogans. Let us leave it to the “believing” democrats to believe in the necessity and salvific nature of this regime and free ourselves for impartial observation and experimental research. And one more thing: let’s leave it to people seeking success from the crowd to vilify “aristocrats” or completely ignore the idea of aristocracy as supposedly “reactionary”, “counter-revolutionary”, “old regime”, etc. When we think about the coming Russia, then we must be free, completely free from the fear of not pleasing someone and of receiving “condemnation” from someone, be it Western Europeans or our own, home-grown left-wing radicals or right-wing radicals. We are guilty of God and Russia - the truth, and if someone doesn’t like it, then so much the worse for him. Usually “democracy”, as the rule of people “favorite” and chosen by the people, and “aristocracy”, as the rule of people “hereditarily privileged”, are opposed to each other. This is a mistake that must be understood and rejected. It is the product of political passions, demagoguery and bitterness. The best people in the country should rule the state, and the people often choose not the best, but flatterers they like and unscrupulous demagogues that worry them. It is the best who should rule the state, and they often come from the state-educated and through generations of educated strata of the people. Democracy deserves recognition and support only insofar as it realizes true aristocracy (i.e., it elevates the best people to the top); and the aristocracy does not degenerate and does not harm the state precisely insofar as the truly best forces of the people enter its composition. Let's make sure of this.

"Aristos" means "best" in Greek. Not “the richest”, not “the most well-born”, not “the most influential”, not “the most dexterous and cunning, not privileged, not older in age. But precisely the best: a sincere patriot, state-minded, politically experienced, a man of honor and responsibility, sacrificial, intelligent, strong-willed, organizationally gifted, farsighted and educated. One could add other qualities to this, for example, brave, warmhearted; but it is difficult to discard at least one of the above and classify among the “best” a person who is greedy, corrupt, internationalist, dishonest, lacking state intelligence and experience, a weak-willed fool, an organizational loser or a naive ignoramus. It is the best who must rule in all states and under all regimes. Any regime is bad if it is ruled by the worst. It is absurd and unnatural to say: “We demand democracy, at least in it weakwilled fools, corrupt ignoramuses, dishonest scoundrels and similar social scum are elected, promoted and ruled.” On the contrary, it is necessary and correct to answer: “A democracy that does not know how to highlight the best does not justify itself; it is destroying the people and the state and must fall.” It is crazy to introduce democracy in a country in order to destroy the state and people, as they did in Russia in 1917. And what the rule of the truly worst people leads to, the Russian people have been experiencing for themselves for the past thirty-two years... A harsh school!

One could call our demand a political axiom (i.e., a self-evident truth): the best must rule. You can make mistakes in recognizing these best people in life, you can agree and disagree in assessing them, but the task of identifying them is indisputable and fundamental. One could express this in the form of a slogan: make way for honest and intelligent patriots! Dear them - regardless of whether they belong to any estate, class, to any party or not! What matters is the quality of a person: his political value and his political will; and it doesn’t matter his origin, his profession, his class and party affiliation. It is his moral and mental strength that is important, not his ancestors; What is important is his loyalty to his homeland, what matters is the direction of his will, and not his party card. Party affiliation (any party affiliation!) does not certify quality

person, but only replaces or obscures him. And the quality of a person is first and most precious. Therefore, every election must have in mind a single, main and necessary goal: highlighting the qualitatively best sons of the people and entrusting them with political affairs. It is stupid and blind to be seduced by demagogues who, hiding behind a party label, fiercely defend the interests of some class, estate, national minority, territorial district, or simply their own!

Firstly, because public affairs seeks a single, common, national interest, and not private desires; and the demagogue, who inflames passions precisely in the direction of private desires, openly testifies to his political unworthiness: he is a falsifier in politics; he is like a gypsy praising a fake horse; in relation to the naive and gullible people, he acts as a corrupter of children, building his well-being on fraud and lies.

Secondly, because his very demagoguery testifies to his qualitative failure: he inflames passions in order to advance and destroy the state business, turning it at best into a matter of private lust, and at worst into a matter of his personal self-interest. Russia can only be saved by highlighting the best people who defend not party or class interests, but the interests of the whole people. Everyone should agree and focus on this. This must be explained to the Russian people themselves, first of all. For this, all measures must be taken, such as: liberation of the people from all and any parties; the introduction of voting by constituency with the nomination of personal, personally known candidates; and, most importantly, the development of a special type of competitive cooperation in finding and nominating the best people - cooperation between the state center and voters. This proposal will be substantiated and outlined in further issues of Our Tasks. Democratic elections are only a conditionally appropriate means for an absolutely correct goal (selection of the best). If such an end and such a means collide, then the conditional means must yield to the unconditional end. The requirement that the best rule relates to the very nature, to the very idea of the state; a system in which the worst are in power will be doomed and will collapse sooner or later, with greater or lesser shame. Every state is called to be an aristocracy in our sense of the word: monarchical, dictatorial, and democratic; and it could be said with confidence that if historically legitimate states had been at the political heights, they would have extracted these truly best from all strata of the population; and then professional revolutionaries would have nothing to do in the world!

Therefore, the question of “national elections” (according to the four-fold formula - universal, equal, direct and secret suffrage) is a question of means, and not of a higher indisputable goal or dogma. This means may be expedient in one state and in one era, but inexpedient in another country and in another era. It is childish to believe in this remedy as a political “panacea”. Not every nation is and is not always capable of selecting the best to power through such elections. The question must be posed differently: which people and when, with what size of state, at what level of religiosity, morality, legal consciousness, education and property wealth, under what election system, in calm or stormy periods of life, really solved this problem successfully?

Let us therefore ask: what grounds do modern emigrant democratic parties have for believing that the Russian people, after the all-corrupting, spiritually devastating and corrupting era of communism, after the introduction of widespread poverty in the country (rich soviet careerists don’t count!), after thirty-two years of slavery, after weaning off

independent thinking, after complete and chronic ignorance in matters of politics, economics and diplomacy, after the ingrained habit of fear, theft, denunciation and saving his life by groveling, will he be able to carry out such elections? If they have serious reasons, they should not be kept silent; and if there are none, but there are reasons to the contrary, then why irresponsible programmatic idle talk? Russia needs an election system that would give it a sure way to find and select its truly best people for power. Members of the international party, notorious destroyers and executioners of the Russian people, “diving” communists, repainted traitors, etc. cannot and should not participate in these elections of the best people. And this means that these elections can be neither general nor direct. The best people can be found only by those who have not lost honor and conscience, by those who have suffered, and not by those who tortured the sufferers. Otherwise, Russia will again be given over to the power of the political rabble, which will turn from the red rabble into the black rabble in order to create a new totalitarianism, a new hard labor and a new decomposition. God save us from this!

Russia needs freedom He who loves Russia must want freedom for her; first of all, freedom for Russia itself as a state, its international independence, its sovereign independence; further – freedom for Russia, as a national, albeit multi-membered unity, that is, creative freedom, loving cultivation of Russian and all other Russian-non-Russian national cultures; and, finally, freedom for the Russian people, as a multitude of spiritual and economic individuals, freedom for all of us, as living subjects of law: freedom of faith, the search for truth, creativity, labor and property.

This requirement of freedom is fundamental, indisputable, axiomatic... It must be thought through and felt to the end. It must be accepted with spirit and will so as not to hesitate. The future Russia must be free and will be free. He who rejects this axiom of life will prepare for it and for all of us, and for our children and grandchildren - decay, temptation and enslavement. One can argue here not about freedom itself, but only about the extent of it and the forms of its political and economic implementation. It is necessary, first of all, to admit that the old dispute between “liberals” and “antiliberals” has lost its former meaning and has been renewed. Over the past decades, events have occurred in the world that have made this dispute obsolete. For the first time in its history, the world saw a totalitarian state and experienced what it means to be deprived of all freedom; he saw and understood that such a system rebels both against God and against all the laws of the nature he created; that it turns a person into either a slave or a machine; that such a system serves the cause of the devil and that it is therefore doomed and disastrous! As a result, the debate about freedom has moved and deepened. It turned out that it revolved on the surface of life and concerned only some individual types of personal freedom, the extent and forms of which can still be debated, resolving this controversial issue differently in different countries, for here, as in all human affairs, there is no single , a saving recipe for all times and peoples. It turned out that the liberals did not foresee that extreme or untimely and inappropriately granted freedom leads to licentiousness and enslavement; they did not foresee that a person who is not ripe for freedom can abuse it in unbridled ways and sell it for personal or class interest, for private profit; that enslavers will arise in the world, to whom he will surrender into slavery; They will be able to clamp down on the unbridled, drive away people of honor and conscience, organize the evil, force their new slaves to serve themselves for fear more than for conscience - and then encroach on the enslavement of all other peoples of the whole world. Liberals realized with horror that they wanted something completely different: they were preparing for an idyll, but depravity came... And even the most extreme liberals anarchists - saw with disgust the ugly riot of the mob and the living hell of totalitarian communism (Prince Peter Kropotkin). But it was already too late. Immense freedom is either a childish dream or a temptation of the devil, and in life it is both together. Evil is hidden not at all “in coercion” and not in “statehood,” as Leo Tolstoy preached, but in the godless and evil human will, to which it is insane to grant “freedom.” And therefore, every freedom must have its own measure and form, and, moreover, each people has its own special...

On the other hand, it turned out that the opponents of liberalism foresaw much more accurately the dangers of unbridledness and tyranny; but they also denied only certain types of freedom, which they considered corrupting and dangerous. They did not even think of rejecting all freedom and all liberty, but always understood man as an independent being, called to internal (spiritual) self-government and self-activity. Already pre-Christian Roman law, which uttered the paradoxical statement - “a slave is a thing,” was unable and did not want to implement this spiritually unnatural generalization and

constantly retreated from him in the direction of law and freedom. And after the triumph of Christianity, with its teaching about the personal, morally responsible and immortal soul, man appeared to us as a living and creative center of moral activity. The most consistent anti-liberals, like the English philosopher Hobbes, began with human initiative and freedom, trying to reconcile and balance many competing personal centers without extinguishing their life and creativity; and no one thought about the possibility or desirability of communist bedlam.

So, the newest totalitarian state was a great shock both for supporters of political freedom and for their opponents. No one expected this outcome, such a denouement. Before such a finale, the old disputes have lost their meaning and now the whole question must be posed and resolved anew. The historical punishment was very severe and instructive: whoever does not value freedom, this God's good - who abuses it or trades in it - is deprived of it, deprived entirely, to the end, to destruction, so that others, from his example, learn to appreciate it... We had in pre-revolutionary Russia: freedom of faith, research, speech, press, labor, property, incomplete freedom of unions, free elections to the legislative assembly, extremely ramified and comprehensive public self-government - and they grumbled... And only when real complete unfreedom came - complete to the end, to destruction - then we realized how free we were in Imperial Russia and what we had lost... - not “we, the Russian bourgeoisie” and not “we, the Russian intelligentsia” - but we, the Russian people of all ranks, classes and tribes... For everyone has lost everything.

The Russian people grumbled that individual rights were not sufficiently protected - it would seem that they should have improved the corresponding laws and procedures in the country, because the protection of personal rights in no country fell from the sky, but they “believed” in the revolution, which for the first time “all will give and arrange”; and the revolution rejected the individual and completely abolished and trampled on his rights. Russian people were drawn to the expropriation and socialization of lands - some wanted to receive someone else’s property in unlimited quantities and for free, - others “believed” that the Russian peasant only dreams of having nothing belong to him, but only everything to the community; and the revolution took everything away from everyone, extinguished private property and introduced the coveted “socialism.” Russian people grumbled about state censorship: “let everyone write whatever they want and let no one bother him”; For this stupid and naive immensity, history gave them the communist monopoly of thought, speech, printing and teaching. Russian people moved away from their Church and did not participate in its life, and told each other shallow jokes about the clergy; and so the devil of history raised a whirlwind of godlessness, persecution and blasphemy. Then the Russian people realized that they were free and became slaves; that Imperial Russia never sought to create a totalitarian regime; that Russia under the Sovereigns was built not at all by police oppression, as radical newspapermen wrote then, but by national self-government. Only completely ignorant and malicious foreigners, and now their home-grown slanderers without shame and conscience, can talk about the “despotic system” or “people’s slavery” in Russia in relation to the twentieth century. On the part of foreigners, this is to a certain extent understandable: they do not understand that space itself has always required decentralization and self-government in Russia; that the danger of anarchy in Russia has always been greater than the possibility of authoritarian clampdown; that the very breath of the Orthodox Church provided us with the recognition of the personal principle and the involvement of the heart in the construction of the state; that our multi-tribalism, multilingualism and multi-religion made our self-government ineradicable; that the most powerful Russian Sovereigns, like Peter the Great, cared most about raising people's initiative; that the most conservative Russian Tsar, Nikolai Pavlovich, systematically

prepared the liberation of the peasants and directly called serfdom “the beginning of evil.” Foreigners do not know Russia, they measure it with their own little yardstick, and therefore they make mistakes. Another thing is the home-grown vilifiers, who even now have the shamelessness to write about Russia as a “convict empire”, which was allegedly held together by the “lust of power” and the “joy of humiliating the weak” (see the article by the notorious Fedotov in the 16th book of the “New Journal”) . Let us say to ourselves one day: the culture of legality and freedom undoubtedly needed further improvement in Russia, but by the beginning of the twentieth century, the Russian people had basically the freedom they could afford, which they lost entirely under the Soviets. Under Emperor Nicholas II, popular initiative in Russia continuously strengthened and grew: both in the heyday of Zemstvos and Cities, and in the works of the State Duma, and in the movement for the restoration of Orthodox Conciliarity, and in Stolypin’s personal land ownership, and in the growth of cooperation, and in the movement for free workers' unions, and simply in the cultural initiative of the population itself, unconstrained by the government, in all walks of life. In a word: Russia was threatened not by the “autocracy of the throne,” but by the unbridledness of the people, over which the revolutionary parties worked; the danger lay not at all in the “despotic regime”, but in the lack of strengthening of the mass legal consciousness; What was scary was not the reaction, but the revolution... After the revolutionary enslavement, the Russian people will perhaps understand that they have hitherto lived not in slavery, but in freedom; that freedom is an inalienable human right to legally regulated independent activity, but by no means the right to revolution or robbery; that freedom will always have its legal limits; that the measure of freedom varies among different peoples and that it depends on the rootedness and non-seizability of the national legal consciousness. We have no doubt: Russia will regain its freedom, strengthen it and accustom its people to free loyalty. But in the devilish school of totalitarian communism, she will learn to value freedom, not to abuse it, not to trade it, and to steadfastly maintain its legal limits.

Rationale for freedom A person is entitled to freedom for two reasons: 1) due to the fact that he is a living organism; 2) due to the fact that he is a living spirit. 1. Every living organism (from plants to humans) is an independent being, with its own internal, mysterious independent activity and special life instinct. This instinctive initiative can be influenced from the outside (for example, by watering, fertilizing and grafting in plants; food, breed improvement and treatment in animals; nutrition, treatment, in a word, spiritual education in people); but nothing can suppress, stop or cancel it. The body lives by itself according to its own internal laws. By studying these laws, intertwining with them and combining them, one can to a certain extent direct the life of an organism, but one can extinguish its spontaneous activity only by ceasing its existence. This is the natural freedom of man: he is by nature self-active, he builds himself - in health and in illness, in needs and in aversions, in nutrition and work, in love and reproduction. His instinct is characterized by an internal expediency, which must be recognized, encouraged, spiritually educated (discipline) and arranged in freedom. There is nothing to replace this initiative: this cannot be achieved either by hypnosis, or by order, or by fear. All such attempts are doomed to failure in life, to mutilation of the body, to the weakening of its functions and to the humiliation of its soul and spirit. The communists tried to do this: as materialists, they equated man with a machine and put him in the position of a “robot” or a slave. They took away from him property, free economic initiative, freedom of labor and freedom of objective judgment. In response to this, man seemed to have diverted his instinct from the collective sector of life, from collective property, from collective initiative, from communist labor and communist public opinion. The creative instinct hid and withdrew into itself: it focused on the private sector of life and abandoned the communist economy and communist culture to mutilation, plunder and degeneration. That is why communist transport is falling apart, houses are not standing at all, the collective land will not give birth, the collective farm cow will not calve, and the level of communist education is falling uncontrollably: free initiative has been taken away from the human body and its instinct has gone out of life. In the coming Russia this must be corrected and restored: man's personal creative instinct must be recognized, encouraged, spiritually disciplined and built in freedom. Russian people will again have access to private property: they will have freedom of labor and freedom of objective judgment. And all of Russia will quickly be reborn and bloom.

2. But man is not only a living organism: he is a living spirit. The spirit deserves freedom of faith and love, contemplation, convictions and creativity. The spirit is a living person, responsible before God and responsible for himself before other people - for his beliefs and views, for his doing and not doing. And responsibility presupposes freedom. In this case, we must understand not “metaphysical freedom of will,” but the absence of socio-political coercion in our spiritual self-determination; not the absence of laws (criminal, civil and political), not the unbridledness of man, not the abuse of rights and advantages, but the legal protection of a person’s inner spiritual life. Man has a sacred, inalienable right to spiritual self-determination and spiritual creativity; to see God in heaven and His robe in earthly nature: to choose a confession and a church; love what you like and reject what you don’t like. Independently heed the law of your conscience and try to implement it; see beauty and try to depict it artistically; develop your own views, beliefs and worldview; cognitively explore what captivates him and independently seek the truth; find a living subject of law within yourself and determine your political views; build your own family, home and life. All this spiritual activity is complete only when it is not regulated in its inner being by mandatory prohibitions and regulations

from the outside, from other people or from government authorities. She must be self-initiated and self-active, obeying only the conscientious (God's) call and the personal talent of a person. Then she is ruled by inspiration; then she can be whole and sincere; then it blooms and bears fruit. Then she's free. And all the so-called “rights of personal freedom” have only the meaning that they politically protect the creative initiative of man, as an organism and as a spirit. We must understand that religious faith can be whole and sincere only when it is free. Command and demand are powerless to create faith. Ban and persecution cannot stop it. For faith is the flower of Grace, the gift of the blowing Spirit. And all orders and prohibitions can only lead to pretense and hypocrisy. But it is not the best people who will pretend and be hypocrites, but the worst. Therefore, confessional persecution gives advantages to the worst people and selects liars and malingerers. Faith is a personal and voluntary connection of the soul with God; that is why it cannot be encroached upon, it cannot be extorted, it cannot be pursued and driven away. And Imperial Russia understood this and spoke out openly. In Article 67 of the Basic Laws (in the Code of Laws see Volume I, Part I, Section I, Article 45), freedom of faith was assigned to all Russian citizens, including pagans: “Yes, all peoples residing in Russia glorify God. the Almighty in different languages according to the law and confession of their forefathers, blessing the reign of the Russian Monarchs and praying to the Creator of the universe to increase prosperity and strengthen the strength of the Empire.” Imperial Russia understood that only sincere belief is complete and that only free belief can be sincere. We have no doubt that the future Russia will restore this freedom - not the freedom of temptation, evil seduction, perversion, Satanism and godless propaganda, but the freedom of contemplation and confession of God. Next, we need to understand that a person can love, contemplate, explore and create only by inner gift and attraction, according to the requirements of the heart, inspiration and conscience. All this is only complete when you are free. You cannot fall in love by order and fall out of love on the basis of a prohibition. It is absurd to expect artistic art from “social orders” cemented by hunger and terror. A scientist who is ready to research according to a prescribed method and template is not a scientist, but a malingerer devoid of spiritual dignity. For creativity is always a matter of freedom and objective inspiration. Finally, we must make sure that all living sources of human quality - from elementary decency to the highest levels of holiness - are a matter of freedom, that is, not imposed or forced by other people, independent acceptance and implementation . Thus, the feeling of one’s own spiritual dignity - this living foundation of personality and its service (moral, social, civil and military), brought up in us by Christianity, is a matter of free experience and free affirmation: whoever does not perceive the son of God in himself, no terror will correct him . In order for a sense of honor to awaken in a person, it is necessary to extinguish the slave in him; and conscience is a direct manifestation of personal freedom in goodness; and patriotism can be awakened and stirred up in people so that it freely ignites in them, but it is impossible to impose it. Both the highest heroism and the purest self-sacrifice are manifestations of free, good will.

Whoever takes freedom from people deprives them of all sources of good in life. The path to faith, to love, to humility and heroism, to evidence and artistic contemplation is the path of freedom, of personal appeal to the ray of Grace. Submission without freedom leads, at best, to legalism (to external, dead loyalty), but not to love. And without free love, every good thing in life dries up: faith and knowledge, conscience and honesty, sense of justice and loyalty, art and economic work, patriotism and sacrifice. And therefore, state power, suppressing human freedom, building everything on totalitarianism and terror, undermines its own strength and the strength of the people it governs.

And now the future Russia will have to make a choice - between a free person and a slave, between educating the people for free quality of spirit and totalitarian terror. And now it is already clear what exactly she will choose. Russia must counter the madness of left-wing Bolshevism not with the madness of right-wing Bolshevism, but with the right measure of freedom: freedom of faith, the search for truth, labor and property. This will not be freedom of unbridledness. There will be no freedom of temptation, crime, exploitation, betrayal, espionage, revolution and anarchy. This will be the freedom of a healthy, organic instinct and the freedom of spiritual experience, the limits of which will be indicated in the law. Russia is large, populous and multi-tribal, multi-faith and multidimensional. Many waters flow in it and various streams flow. It has never been a single, simple mass of people and will not be so. It was and will be an Empire, a unity in plurality: a state of spatial and everyday differentiation and at the same time organic and spiritual unity. It will continue to be built not by fear, but by love, not by class arbitrariness, but by law and justice, not by totalitarianism, but by freedom.

What's next in Russia? Having weighed everything we have said about the foundations of popular rule, every soberminded and responsible democrat must sadly admit that the Russian people, after thirty years of defeat, violence, impoverishment and all kinds of depravity, will be incapable of implementing a democratic system until they restore their honor, conscience and national-state meaning. Now in his soul all the elementary and necessary foundations of popular rule have been undermined, desecrated, perverted or outright abolished by the totalitarian communists. The Russian people exist, but their existence is like the martyrdom of their own street children. His condition - religious, spiritual, intellectual, volitional, political, economic, labor, family and everyday life - is such that the introduction of popular rule promises him not law and order, but chaos, not revival, but disintegration, not division, but “a war of all against all.” ; this would be the last and bitterest disaster. The nightmarish era of revolutionary “Jacobinism” would be followed by an era of protracted “Girondist” anarchy - with a ferocious far-right tyranny in conclusion. It is childish and irresponsible to close your eyes to this.

Therefore, the first thing that an ideological and responsible democrat must pronounce is a pessimistic diagnosis and prognosis: the communist revolution did not bring Russia closer to democracy; on the contrary, it undermined all its living foundations that were present in Imperial Russia. The revolution has been going on for 32 years; and it's not over yet. During this time, the communists did everything to kill the sense of state responsibility and spiritual leadership in the non-communist masses of the Russian people; to make the state principle hateful for the Russian soul, a synonym for meaningless hard labor; to wean the Russian people from free and faithful political will; to extinguish the citizen in his soul and accustom him to slavery; to instill in him contempt for the humiliations of selective comedy. What kind of “rule of people” can be built on this? During these long, painful years, the Soviet government did everything to wean the Russian people from free loyalty, to mix it in their souls with groveling, with crude flattery and vile denunciation. In Soviet Russia, law became equivalent to arbitrariness and violence; all respect for the law was extinguished in souls; crime has become a basic and necessary form of life. Back in 1919, a directive was formulated from the Council of People's Commissars: “the essence of the revolution is the open violation of all rights, including the revolution’s own decrees.” And according to this directive, the official became a robber and bribe-taker, and social trash was elevated to officials. The persecuted Russian man in the street, in order of vital self-defense from revolutionary robbery, turned “blat” into a natural and inevitable way of struggling for existence. Everything was done from above to mix “mine” and “yours,” “mine and the government’s” - into one indistinguishable pile, in order to erase all property legality and honesty from the souls. What kind of democracy can be built on such “theft”?

The communists to this day continue to do everything to deprive the people of the Russian national-state outlook and replace it with world-revolutionary frenzy, arrogance, and the self-confidence of international adventurism. That sense of sovereign rightness and sovereign measure, which was cultivated for centuries in the Russian soul and on which all of Rus' was built from Kyiv to St. Petersburg, was trampled upon and disintegrated. For four decades, the communists have been draining, without any national meaning, the sacrifice, sense of duty and strength of service inherent in the Russian people, as rarely in any other; Russian patriotism is being squandered; Russian self-sacrifice is disappointed; The Russian citizen is undergoing the greatest compulsory school of political depravity. One must not know history at all and understand nothing about politics in order to try to build democracy on this depravity.

Russian people have never lived with someone else's thoughts. He always preferred to think “stupidly”, but independently; go into confusion and drown in discord, but do not blindly obey someone else’s authority. And now, for the fourth decade, the ability for independent thought has been beaten out of him, through revolutionary “study”, hunger, fear, obsessive propaganda and the party monopoly of the press. In his education, everything is vulgarized, distorted and lied to; in his forced “worldview” everything is dead, conventional, godless and immoral. For entire generations he has been cut off from true knowledge - both about himself and about other peoples. He is blind in politics and often does not know about his blindness, and more and more often you mistake your blindness for higher mental “sight.” One can offer him rule of the people only in the hope of replacing the totalitarian stencil of the communists with a new, also totalitarian party stencil. What could be more disgusting to a true democrat than such a falsification of “rule of the people”? Or will they try to create a new “democratic fascism” so that, while praising freedom, they will trample on it on behalf of a new pseudo-democracy, unheard of in history? After the Bolsheviks, Russia can be saved either by the greatest state discipline of the Russian people, or by a national-state-educating dictatorship. What kind of psychological naivety is needed to “believe” that the Russian people, who have always suffered from a lack of character, willpower, discipline, mutual respect and trust, will find in themselves precisely after these long years of slavery and corruption this super-control, this super-moderation, super-will and super-solidarity for the implementation of a democratic system?

All the spiritual and all social foundations of democracy have been undermined - right down to the settled way of life, right down to faith in work, right down to respect for honestly acquired property. The fabric of national solidarity is torn to shreds. An unprecedented thirst for revenge has accumulated everywhere. The masses dream of shaking off the hypnosis of vile fear and responding to protracted organized terror with violent, disorganized terror. And at this moment they will be offered: 1. “Democratic freedom”, 2. “The right of all self-determination” and 3. “The doctrine of popular sovereignty”. Who will be responsible for the inevitable consequences of this?..

About free loyalty When we talk about “loyalty,” we mean the consent and willingness of a citizen to recognize and abide by the laws of his country. The English word "loo" means "law, right"; According to this, “loyel” should be translated as “faithful, honest, law-abiding.” And every legal order, every political system rests on the consent of citizens to faithfully and honestly observe the existing laws: not to arbitrarily exaggerate their powers, not to arbitrarily underestimate their duties and avoid everything prohibited. Citizens cannot be forced to do this. There is no regime that would ensure mechanical obedience of citizens. True, our contemporary generation of totalitarian terrorists has invented measures that scare citizens away from any open disobedience and reinforce their obedience through fear, hunger, exile, all sorts of humiliations and insults, torture and executions. But anyone who thinks that this regime ensures “law-abidingness” in the country is sorely mistaken. Never and nowhere else has the arbitrariness of officials and party members, the daring of the “urks” who recognize only “blat”, the sophisticated dexterity of desperate citizens and, most importantly, the internal disgust of all honest and freedom-loving people for the “decrees” of “their country”, and for the unnatural and barbaric orders of “their authorities” did not achieve such development and such strength. People obey because they have failed to overcome their fear; they submit and curse; they “sign” and internally renounce. And they are waiting only for such a confluence of circumstances, and are looking only for those loopholes that would give them the opportunity to fulfill their vital need for disobedience and their dream of “illegality.”

In vain do corrupt journalists write in Europe that communism “educates” the Russian people to be law-abiding and disciplined and strengthens loyalty and law and order in Russia. In reality, the opposite is happening: the unnatural regime, consolidated by fear and treacherous denunciation, decomposes Russian legal consciousness to the depths, undermines its foundations (religiosity, self-esteem, honor, conscience and faith in goodness), cultivates in people a taste for “blat” and indifference to "good name" Never before and nowhere has fear fostered a sense of justice, and the slave order of life has not led people to free obedience. Nowhere else has tyranny taught citizens to respect the law and justice, and has not instilled in them voluntary loyalty. Meanwhile, true loyalty is free and voluntary. Each of us is called to it and each of us must ourselves, without coercion and fear, comprehend its essence, recognize its necessity for the homeland and its significance in our own lives and voluntarily impute to ourselves our powers, responsibilities and prohibitions, legally speaking, our entire “ legal status." In this, no one will ever replace “me”: neither parents, nor teachers, nor the police, nor judges, nor the government. Neither jailers nor executioners will force this from a person. This is a matter of the spirit and, moreover, of the personal spirit and free spirit. You cannot be “faithful” out of fear; such loyalty is short-lived: fear will pass, and the person will become a traitor. You cannot be “honest” under duress; and where coercion ends, out of such “honesty” grows deception or outright meanness. You can only be honest, faithful, and law-abiding yourself, out of personal conviction, by virtue of a personal decision, at the call of personal honor and conscience, out of self-esteem, on the basis of a strong faith in God. Without this, there is no sense of justice and loyalty: a person turns from a citizen into a rogue, into a trickster, into an adventurer, into a hypocrite, into a semi-traitor; he becomes an eternal candidate for criminal charges or deserters and he himself consoles himself with the saying - “not caught, not a thief.” He is not a pillar of law and order, but a living hole in it. In a government building, he is a “cardboard brick.” In the army, he is, according to the ancient Russian word, “a runner and a runner.”

A true state is maintained neither by coercion nor by fear, but by the free loyalty of its citizens: their fidelity to duty, their aversion to crime,

the integrity of officials, the honesty of judges, the patriotism of voters, the sense of state of parliamentarians, the civic courage of writers and scientists, the proactive courage and discipline of soldiers. All this cannot be replaced by anything. Man is an independent volitional center, a subject of law, and not an object of terror and exploitation. He must build himself, control himself, manage himself and be responsible for himself. This is the basic essence of all law, legal order and statehood. Only with such an understanding will the meaning of the idea of a “social contract” be revealed to us. This idea has its own strict limit in state life, namely: it pronounces the basis of human legal consciousness, and not the principle of state form. Each of us is called to behave as a person freely committed to his people to loyal observance of the laws and his legal “status” (i.e., his powers, duties and prohibitions). Such a “social contract”, which J.-J. writes about. Rousseau, never was and never will be, and Rousseau himself knows this. But every person must experience something similar to this in the depths of his legal consciousness, imposing on himself (freely and voluntarily) the spiritual - volitional selfobligation of a citizen. At the heart of the idea of a “social contract” is the true need to appeal to free self-obligation and voluntary loyalty in the soul of a citizen; for without this loyalty there is no citizen, but only an empty appearance of it; and there is no state, but only illusion. Peoples and states are supported only by the legal consciousness of their citizens and their rulers. And the entire future of Russia depends on his upbringing. But how absurd it is to turn this call for personal legal consciousness into the basis of a state form and to recognize only those regimes that are supposedly based on a “social contract” - as a uniform historical event, or as an incessantly repeating political procedure. This is exactly how the idea of a “social contract” was interpreted by the first French Revolution; it was with this that she shook and tormented her country to its foundations; It was precisely this prejudice that she left as a legacy to subsequent French revolutions (1830, 1840, 1870), as well as, alas, to Russian doctrinaires. But the fact is that there are no such regimes at all, there have never been and never will be: for any “constituent assembly” is only a crude caricature of a “social contract”, and no “referendum” is able to implement it. The social contract requires in theory that everyone vote without exception and that the general decision be unanimous; for only then will the beginning of universal voluntariness really be realized. To achieve this is hopeless, naive, absurd and disastrous. General voluntariness, transformed into a state form, will lead to the order of the previous Polish Sejm, where one dissenting or protesting voice disrupted every decision (“I won’t allow it!”). This order existed in Poland from 1652 to 1764; he “blew up” 48 of the 55 Sejms, undermined Polish legislation and the state and weakened the country; and even the constitutions of 1764 and 1791, which formally abolished this order, failed to overcome it in practice. Now, before our eyes, the introduction of “unanimity” and the right of “veto” is ruining the organizational work of the League of Nations (UNO).

The claim of a citizen to be given the right to conclude any “social contracts” within his state, to dismember his country, to federate or not to federate with whomever he pleases, to stop the organization of the state and the operation of the law by declaring his disagreement, to declare a unilateral “withdrawal” and “ entry”, etc. All this is the path to anarchy and corresponds to the program of anarchism. Therefore, all this is stateless and anti-state, politically senseless and nationally disastrous.

Do the Russian “Girondists” really not understand all this... No, of course they do. Why do they demand this, predict it as “inevitable” and keep silent about the disastrousness of all this for Russia... Because they accepted the task of dismembering Russia at any cost and extinguished the Russian

national loyalty.

In search of justice No matter how destructive and ferocious the manifestations of the Russian revolution were, no matter how much it trampled upon all freedom and all justice, we must not lose sight of the fact that the Russian people followed the Bolsheviks in a vague and helpless search for a new justice. The “old” seemed unfair to him, the “new” attracted him with “justice”. Added to this, of course, are not good motives: greed, vindictiveness, anger, ambition, etc.; but for indulging these passions, the Russian people were cruelly, unimaginably punished by the revolution itself. And to understand the revolution correctly means to understand it not only as a punishment of evil will, but also as a delusion of good will. And only those who will return to the original search for justice and restore this old tradition of the Russian soul and Russian history will be able to lead the Russian people out of the revolution.

The Russian people must be returned to this quest. He must repentantly recognize the error he suffered through - his misfortune, and his punishment, and his sin. He must see ahead other, new, creative paths that truly lead to justice - paths indicated by Christianity, but hitherto not found or traversed by humanity. He must understand that it was precisely evil passions that prepared his enslavement, for they hardened his heart, corrupted his mind, undermined his state will and weakened his instinct of state self-preservation. Having become hardened, he followed godlessness, dishonesty and lack of rights, and they only could lead him to greater injustice.

One day all peoples will understand that socialism and communism in general do not lead to justice, but to new inequality, and that equality and justice are not at all the same thing. Because the point is this. People are not equal by nature: they differ from each other in gender and age; health, growth and strength; sight, taste, hearing and smell; beauty and attractiveness; bodily skills and mental abilities - heart and mind, will and imagination, memory and talents, kindness and malice, conscience and dishonesty, education and lack of education, honesty, courage and experience. You need to make sure of this; this needs to be thought through - once and for all and to the end. But, if people are not the same by nature, then how can justice demand that unequal people be treated equally... That they be given equal rights and the same creative opportunities... In fact, justice does not require this at all; on the contrary, it requires that the rights and duties of people, as well as their creative capabilities, be substantively consistent with their natural characteristics, their abilities and deeds. Thus, it is justice that requires laws to protect children, the weak, the sick and the poor. It is justice that requires that paths in life be opened to the capable that will remain closed to the incapable. (“Make way for honesty, courage, intelligence and talent”). Income tax establishes fair inequalities; on the contrary, the communist’s “party card” establishes unjust inequality.

Equalizing everyone in everything is unfair, stupid and harmful. But this does not mean that all inequality will be fair. There are unfair advantages (eg impunity for influential officials); but there are also fair benefits (eg labor benefits for pregnant women). There are correct, fair inequalities (i.e. advantages, privileges, concessions, protections), but there are also incorrect ones. And often people, indignant at other people’s, untrue privileges (“it’s unfair”), begin to rebel against all privileges in general and demand universal equality. This demand is unfair; it stems from a hardened and therefore blinded heart, and a hardened heart does not see human diversity and begins to “bring everyone to the same denominator.”

But, besides this, the universal equation is harmful in terms of life; it is impossible to equalize everyone “upwards” (that is, to make everyone equally educated, well dressed, rich and healthy). Any deliberately fast equation can only move "downwards", lowering the overall level (i.e. making everyone equally uneducated, poorly dressed, poor or sick). This is what the communist revolution aimed at; so that there were no capitalists and “kulaks,” she made everyone beggars; so that there would be no professional caste of scientists, she flooded the teaching staff with ignoramuses and talkers, and thereby spread all-Russian ignorance. And so, from communist equality, the Russian people became half-sick, ragged, exhausted, poor and ignorant - they lost everything and gained nothing.

However, the experience of the revolution also revealed that such an equation is in fact simply impracticable. No human measures, no terror can make people “the same” and erase their natural differences; people are born, grow and live – unequal by nature; and equal treatment of unequal people only creates injustices that are painful for them and morally disgusting. Revolutionary alignment “downwards” leads to the fact that the worst people (careerists, malingerers, sycophants, unprincipled, unscrupulous, corrupt, “hunters”) move forward and upward, while the best people suffocate and suffer all kinds of persecution (in the words of Shmelev: “vile” above like foam, and the righteous are stoned." As a result of this, the worst unite into a new privileged layer (“party”) and create a new, reverse inequality - the helplessness of the impoverished people in front of the all-powerful party official, political informer and executioner.

From here it is already clear that justice not only does not require equality, but on the contrary: it requires vitally true, objective inequality. We must treat people not as if they were the same by nature, but as required by their actual properties, qualities and deeds - and this will be fair. It is necessary to give good people (honest, smart, talented, selfless) more rights and creative opportunities than bad people (dishonest, stupid, untalented, greedy) - and this will be fair. It is necessary to place various responsibilities and burdens on people: greater ones on the strong, rich, and healthy, and lesser ones on the weak, sick, and poor, and this will be fair. If two people apparently commit the same crime, but one commits it out of malice and the other out of frivolity, then justice will require not the same, but different punishment for them. So

in everything.

This is how we must comprehend Russian history. It was necessary to free the peasants from serfdom not because “all people are equal,” but because the privilege of soul ownership was unfair, harmful to life, and humiliating for both sides. It was necessary to carry out Stolypin's agrarian reform precisely in order to free the peasants from the forced, arithmetic (per capita) equation in the community and to unleash their creative, naturally unequal labor forces. Only revolutionaries blinded by class hatred could abolish, in the name of equality, vital, objectively justified and therefore fair privileges associated with education, organizational talent and experience, and put ignorant communists and mediocre “advanced people” at the head of the Russian state and economy; and the harmful consequences of this measure have been crying to heaven for more than thirty years. Only from envy and hatred can one demand, instead of justice, a new, reverse inequality and praise it as the highest achievement. “That’s it, madam,” the coal miner said to the Marquise during one of the French revolutions, “now everyone will be equal: I will ride in your carriage, and you will trade coal...” For in fact, justice requires vitally true, objective inequality : in one case there are privileges, in the other – deprivation of rights; in one case punishment, in the other - forgiveness; in one case, sovereignty, in the other - unconditional obedience. And until people understand this, until they insist, following the French Declaration of Rights, on universal equality, they

not to understand and not to implement justice. Equality is monotonous. It does not take into account the complexity of life and human differences. But precisely because of this it is abstract, formal and dead. It does not see a living person and does not want to see him. Justice is diverse. She knows that life is infinitely complex and that no two people are alike. That is why it is not abstract or formal, but concrete and vital. She peers at a living person, strives to see him correctly and deal with him objectively.

Equality needs and is satisfied by formal rules. At the same time, supporters of equality imagine that simple, formal observance of these rules leads to justice. In fact, consistent and dead legalism always leads to injustice (“sumum jus – sum injuria”).

On the contrary, justice can neither be found nor established on the basis of formal rules, for it requires a living contemplation of diverse life. Therefore, it is impossible to come up with such fair laws that would be suitable for all times and peoples; but it is also impossible to ensure a fair system in any one country - by the force of laws alone. Every law is an abstract rule. No law can capture and provide for the fullness and diversity of life. Therefore, he, of necessity, conditionally equates people, connecting them with known, abstractly indicated properties and their deeds (if such turn out to be in reality - for example, “man”, “of such and such an age”, “physically healthy”, “mentally normal”; or : “stole”, “hit”, “killed”, “deserted”, etc.) - known powers, duties or punishments. But between the law and a living person there is also the application of the law (administrative or judicial), that is, subsuming a specific life case under an abstract rule. And this is where the true reign of justice should unfold.

This does not mean that conditionally equalizing laws are indifferent to justice; but one cannot demand too much from them. It is necessary to demand from laws: 1. That they do not establish unfair privileges - relaxations, protections, lack of rights, oppression, as well as unfair equalizations. 2. So that all the inequalities they establish do not obviously violate justice. 3. So that they introduce such methods of applying the law (in management, self-government and court), which, on the one hand, would guarantee against arbitrary and non-objective application of the law, and on the other hand, would demand from officials, teach them and provide them with the opportunity enter everywhere

fairness amendments. For justice is not ensured by general rules; it demands more fair people. It requires not only satisfactory laws, but also living human quest and creativity. If a country does not have a living and fair sense of justice, then no laws, even the most perfect ones, will help it. What is needed here is not “rules”, but the right mood of the soul - the will to justice is needed. And if it is not there, then the best laws, drawn up by a sage or a genius, will only cover up the wounds of the injustices being committed.

We need to understand that justice is not given ready-made and is not established according to a recipe, but is creatively sought, publicly suffered and cultivated in life. There is no ready-made just system that only needs to be introduced (“anarchy”, “socialism”, “communism”, “cooperation”, “fascism”, “corporatism”, etc.). All such hopes and promises are hopeless and absurd. What is fair in one country may be unfair in another. What is fair in one era can later turn into blatant injustice.

Justice is a great and eternal national task that is insoluble

"once for all." This task is like life itself, which eternally entangles its threads and knots and always requires their new unraveling. And it is not the laws alone and not the rulers alone who must unravel these threads and untie these knots, but the whole people together, in continuous creative search and tension.

On educating the Russian people for justice It is possible to restore Russia, heal the wounds of revolution and war, and strengthen the greatness and great power of our homeland only based on the spirit of justice and serving it. And for this it is necessary, first of all, to undeceitfully assure the entire Russian people that the new, post-revolutionary order sincerely wants and practically seeks justice; and further it is necessary to educate and strengthen in the people themselves the will to justice, a healthy Christian sense of justice and a sense of nationwide, super-class and super-estate brotherhood. As soon as the people sense the spirit of justice, they will trust the new national government and open their hearts to it. And the new government must address this unfolding people’s heart with an authoritative promise to seek justice for everyone and with a demand for the same from the people. The new government must proclaim and implement the end of forced “equalization and depersonalization”; the end of revolutionary lawlessness, lawlessness, bribery; the end of “cutting off the top”, “poorism”, simplification, reduction of terror against the best and most successful. It must restore just rank and quality; to revive true authority and finally begin to educate the people towards living, creative justice.

It is impossible to educate people for justice without faith and religion, for faith in God is the main and deepest source of the sense of rank and the will to quality. Justice is nothing more than admiration and artistic feeling for a living person with the desire to see him correctly and treat him correctly. Justice is conscientious goodwill. Justice is national brotherhood. Justice is a living and sensitive sense of justice, which is ready to sacrifice its own and defend what belongs to others. Justice is a sense of proportion in the delimitation of human claims and interests. Justice is the art of seeking and finding “for each his own” (formula of Roman law).

To cultivate these abilities and sentiments among the people means to lead them to justice. And the Russian people, with their living moral sense, with their natural complacency and with their eternally Christianized conscience, will be able to not only appreciate the justice of the new government and trust it, but will also be able to open their souls to such a system of education. Then a new era of its history will begin. This new education should not only awaken the will to justice among the people, but also strengthen in them the spirit of sacrifice, that is, agreement in the name of the common, national-state cause to give up what is theirs and not to seek justice for themselves at any cost. True Christian and civic valor seeks justice for others and willingly sacrifices “its own” beyond all justice. And the stronger and more lively this spirit is in the people, the more powerful their state: for the sacrifice of the people is the source of real political strength.

It is remarkable that people often disagree with each other in their interpretation and understanding of “fairness.” This is explained not only by the fact that we all generally judge things and deeds “subjectively” and therefore disagree with each other; but even more so because we usually appeal to “justice” when defending our own interests, and immediately forget about it when someone else’s is discussed. We all think that justice is always “for us” and that any satisfaction of our desires and interests is “fair”. And at the same time, we do not notice that we are actually controlled not by the search for justice, but by personal self-interest; – that our reference to justice is actually worthless; - that every now and then we act in life as smugglers of injustice. Then it turns out that people can neither agree nor be reconciled; that justice becomes an empty and dead word and that in reality what is happening is not a search for justice, but a struggle of personal self-interest - a civil war of all against all. This happened in the history of Russia: people cheated (in the old days it was called “stealing”) and, according to the words of the chronicle, “disparaged Rus'.” This was the case in

Time of Troubles (1605–1613). This is exactly how the Bolshevik revolution arose (1917). With such a mood among the people, the state cannot exist; centrifugal forces prevail over centripetal forces; personal interest becomes higher than the general; everything crumbles into dust, into sand - and the storm of events carries this sand into the abyss. Hence the first requirement: each of us must learn to distinguish the question of justice from the question of personal interest and not cover up our self-interest with declamations about justice. “My claims” may be unfounded; “my benefit” may be contrary to justice; “my right” may not extend to the limits of my greed. However, this is not enough. Something more is needed: we must learn not to insist on our most just claims if the united and common interest of the homeland requires it. This is the second requirement. Justice, as has already been established, is not a ready-made program of events or a readymade system of life that can be immediately introduced and implemented. It is sought in continuous national creative contemplation and action, which starts from a historically given accumulation of injustices and semi-injustices. Every nation is forced to accept this heritage of centuries, this historically tangled fabric of vital threads and knots, as a starting point, as the initial basis of life. It is naive and childish to think that it depends on human arbitrariness to “immediately introduce a perfect order of life”; as if from the earthly vale to the blissful life there is only one step; as if the blissful “millennial kingdom” (hence the expression “chiliastic”, thousand-year), or “golden age” - can come from some kind of government or state reforms.

Since ancient times, people have been dreaming in their nightly minds a dreamy dream about a certain blissful “thirtieth Kingdom”, where absolute justice and complete freedom reign, where there are no weaknesses, no suffering, no illnesses, where one can do without labor and hardship, where people they know neither sin, nor prohibition, nor crimes, nor punishments, nor coercion, nor justice. “There” - all claims are justified, all errors are satisfied; people enjoy universal justice and universal happiness. At the same time, some think that this is a memory of the “lost paradise,” while others suggest that this is a premonition of “future bliss.” And the masses dream about this - sometimes in fairy tales, sometimes in dreams, sometimes in formless, silent expectation and lust.

If this “blessed kingdom” is seen by people in the other world and is associated with the future, afterlife, then human gaze becomes clear and sober for this earthly life: then he sees its imperfections and impossibility; he comprehends the weakness and sinfulness of the human being; he learns to spiritually appreciate work and hardship, suffering and illness; he is convinced of the need for prohibitions, coercion and punishment; he begins to come to terms with the inevitability of injustice in earthly life. For in fact, earthly life requires from a person work and patience, humility and sacrifice, renunciation and accommodation; here – quality is born from suffering and labor; here a person must pay for everything great - with tension and torment. And only love can cover and heal all this. This is precisely the spirit of Christianity, this is precisely the Christian sense of justice.

But if people lose faith in God and in the future life, then they begin to consider this here, thisworldly earthly life to be the only one, all-promising and non-binding. Then their spiritual gaze dims, and their earthly gaze becomes short-sighted and greedy: it no longer sees and does not want to see the imperfection and impossibility of earthly life; he clings to his maximalist chimera and begins to hallucinate. Then the “thousand-year dream” emerges from the unconscious, takes over the daytime consciousness, and the era of ferment and revolution begins. The soul becomes as if

"overworked", impatient, demanding and bitter. Then temperamental “interpreters” of this “overwork” and impatience appear, “prophets” of this exactingness, leaders of this bitterness. “Hymns” are written to this unrealizable chimera (for example, “Capital” by Marx); the “science” of the coming revolution is being formed; utopian ideas are sown; parties arise for the “immediate introduction” of the thousand-year kingdom (socialists, communists); politics begins to hallucinate; the blind will hardens and people try to break through to impossible bliss at the cost of much blood. What a painful awakening is in store for these people and nations! What a disappointment! A bloody chimera bursts into life, unleashing souls, undermining faith and morality, overturning the sense of justice and destroying the historical heritage of the people... It piles up the forces of state terror and economic technology, devastates and enslaves souls, tries to create a “new man” - and all in order to realize new, reverse inequality and drown people in a stream of unprecedented injustice. The lesson is truly cruel and sobering... But politics is a sober matter and does not tolerate hallucinations. And farming is a matter of living and healthy instinct and perishes from unnatural inventions. Justice is a matter of faith, conscience and national creative quest; it is not feasible through equalizing decrees and vengeful violence.

And our generation, which has lived through and suffered through all this tragic experience, must ask itself the question: was it worth the Russian people to give up their historically accumulated reserves of freedom and justice in the name of this reverse inequality and this enslavement? And then - another, more radical question: is justice such a precious good in the life of the people that, because of the specter of a “new, complete justice,” such immeasurable sacrifices can be made?.. Well, a person lives in the world in order to establish “ fair system"? Or does he need a fair system in order to unleash and fertilize his higher creative powers? What is better and wiser: to temporarily endure an unjust order in the name of the Motherland, or to give up the Motherland to the flood and plunder in the name of immediate “surplus justice”? And it seems to me that posing this question means already answering it. At least Russian history has already answered it and written its answer in bloody letters into the history of mankind.

Justice is existence and a precious beginning in the life of a people. But it is neither the highest nor the last value of the human spirit. It is natural to wish justice for your people in order to open a free path for creativity and quality - honesty, conscience, intelligence, talent, genius; but it is unnatural to kindle an envious chimera of equality in one’s people in order to “extinguish the highest abilities” (Dostoevsky, “Demons”); and it is equally unnatural to instill in one’s people that until “full justice” is established, one can neither live nor create culture (Russian revolutionary parties). For in fact, the entire culture of mankind, down to the present day, was created in the absence of “complete justice”; it was created thanks to the objective inequality of people and, moreover, precisely by the creativity of “higher abilities”... A person lives in the world not in order to be a pedant of justice, and not in order to demand “immediately” its “full” implementation. A thousand times right is the one who, neglecting the injustices befalling him, continues to serve God’s Cause on earth to the best of his ability. And, on the contrary, the one who stops his service (and, perhaps, his life) until the justice “due to him” is restored is wrong. In order for the people to creatively serve their homeland and their national culture, it is undoubtedly necessary and important for them to seek justice. But since “complete justice” is an endless task (no more than a “regulatory idea”), then all peoples have created and will create their own spiritual culture - in the absence of complete justice, i.e. in a historically given accumulation of justice, half-justice and injustice. We don't have to hide

this from our people; on the contrary, we must open his eyes to the fact that “complete” justice must be sought and created throughout one’s life, and not demanded “immediately” from others; and that we must come to terms with this once and for all. We must open his eyes to the fact that in the name of immediate “surplus justice” we cannot give up our state to the flood and plunder; that we should all be willing to temporarily endure injustice in the name of our homeland, because before we can enjoy a “just life,” we must secure at least some kind of life for ourselves. Life on earth is impossible without patience, humility and renunciation. These three foundations were commanded to us by the Gospel. Communists rebelled against these traditional virtues as “reactionary” and “beneficial only to the bourgeoisie.” And what? No historical regime has imposed on its “subjects” such a burden of exhausting patience, forced humility and humiliating renunciation as the communist system. What the Gospel revealed to us as virtue and wisdom, as religious service, the communists imposed on us in the form of hard labor obedience and, moreover, without measure, without honor, without freedom and without spirit - in the form of public depravity and in the form of political groveling; and what in the gospel teaching was voluntary self-restraint and in a Christian society created spiritual culture turned out to be a source of general cultural decline and destruction in the communist order...

That is why the construction of the future Russia must be based on the following basic rules: 1. Justice is precious and necessary in the life of the people, but it is by no means the highest value of life and the last goal of the state. 2. Justice cannot be confused with equality; and to demand universal equalization is unnatural and unfair. 3. The most important thing is that the government and the people sincerely want justice and mutually trust each other that this desire is sincere and vital. 4. It is necessary that people do not value justice more than what it costs, and do not set themselves the task of “immediately” achieving “complete justice.” 5. It is necessary to cultivate among the people a Christian understanding of justice, namely, a persistent search for it for others and sacrificial generosity in enduring injustices that befall one’s own lot. 6. It is necessary to cultivate a state-patriotic spirit among the people, ready, in the name of the united and common good of the Motherland, not to insist on the immediate satisfaction of their own just interests. Only on this path will we restore Russia. This is the only way to strengthen it.

About strong power Russia, as a national-political phenomenon, was created by a strong state power, which, however, never (even under Ivan the Terrible!) encroached on the totalitarian conduct of life, culture and economy. This has happened in the past. It will continue to be so. And we, Russian patriots, must remember this and, without being blinded by the ugliness of the communist-totalitarian dictatorship, which showed the world not strong power, but a violent and arbitrary trampling of life, independence and freedom, strengthen our national-state power - in its constitutional structure, in its state direction, in her strong-willed energy, in her adherence to law and freedom, in her political art and especially in her nationwide spiritual roots.

Strictly speaking, the very expression “strong power” should be considered strange and unnecessary: after all, power itself is a socially allocated and organized force - this is its essence and purpose; it is the clear focus of an authorized and powerful will, which everyone recognizes, respects it, obeys it and fulfills its demands and laws. What does the expression “strong power” mean?.. “Strong power”? Isn't this pleonasm? However, historically and politically this expression is full of deep and complex meaning.

In the history of nations, state power has often exaggerated its calling and its sphere of action; it directed its energies to the wrong ends, trampled its legal forms and abused its power. This caused protest and struggle. But this struggle, driven by passions - open, honest indignation and hidden personal ambition - not only sought to moderate exaggerations, correct errors, stop the lawlessness and abuse of historical power, but undermined and weakened the power itself. The struggle for a “new”, “better” statehood led to the undermining of the state organization itself. They created not just a “better government”, but a weak government, powerless, helpless, fragmented. Fearing abuse of power, they weakened the power itself, and at the same time undermined both the internal order and the external defense capability of the state. They came up with forms of power that made it difficult to concentrate, make decisions, and implement them. They introduced all sorts of “amendments” into the state structure, not noticing that these amendments undermine the action of power, but do not protect against anarchy, or against erroneous goals, or against abuses... Thus, they introduced competition between state bodies with each other (head of state, ministry , upper house and lower house); they introduced a multiheaded conspiracy and mutual struggle of many parties; the powers of the head of state were limited by his election and urgency and thereby put him under control and increased the slowness in the course of affairs; they began to allocate weak, weak-willed, insignificant people to power, dependent on the political scene; constitutionally enshrined the people's distrust of the authorities - and did not notice that with all this they created a real state anarchy and lack of will. They kneaded the modern state with the yeast of mutual distrust, class struggle, secret agreements and behind-the-scenes intrigues - and did not realize that all this corresponds to the ideas of anarchism, and not to the ideas of a healthy statehood. They fought against the lack of rights and arbitrariness of exaggerated power - and they were right in this; but they came to lawlessness from wasted power, to disintegration, to general political intrigue of all against all, to the secret power of all kinds of internationals, to “permanent revolution”, to civil war, to anarchy... And what is most instructive is that this weakening of state power historically corresponded not a narrowing of state tasks, not a reduction in their volume and scope, but the imposition on the state power of new tasks beyond its strength: the claim to great power, to colonial leadership, to world dominance and even to socialist regulation of the economy began... The position of the socialists turned out to be most contradictory and even more comical: “ consistent democrats,” who for a hundred years did everything to undermine and weaken state power, they were always rushing around with a plan for the reorganization of all life, which presupposed a monopolistic and totalitarian-strong state

power... And when such an ugly and painful power, which they needed, turned out to be anticipated by the Bolsheviks, then their resentment turned out to be lifelong and inexhaustible... There are states that can exist with a relatively weak government. But the hour may strike in their history, which will require unity, strong-willed energy, trust, command, speed, strong people and responsible decisions. And then everything will depend on their ability to quickly and successfully rebuild their order, their rhythm and their usual selection of people... There are historical conditions under which the state can weave the fabric of its life without having strong power. These are the conditions (I list them with the caveat “all other things being equal”). 1. Small size of the state. The smaller the state in terms of territory, the easier it is for it to do without a strong government. Space requires radiation of power to penetrate and work through it; it absorbs and weakens their effect. The larger the territory is subordinated to a single government, the stronger, the more authoritative this government should be, the more it should appeal to citizens. Therefore, the territorial size of Russia (before the revolution - 22.4 million square kilometres) requires strong power. It is enough to realize that the territory of Switzerland makes up one tenth of the Caucasus (together with Transcaucasia); that the territory of European France constituted one forty-fourth of what was then Russia; that Russia is five times the size of China, almost three times the size of the United States, and four times the size of all the (non-Russian) states of Europe put together. – Will a weak government be able to penetrate such space with its organizing and ordering rays?

2. Small population. The smaller the population of a state, the easier it is for it to do without a strong government. On the contrary, the more people enter the state, the more difficult it is to create political unanimity and unity of will, especially through collusion (be it “direct” or “representative” collusion). The voice of a weak government will always be drowned in the noise of “conspiring” millions. Therefore, the size of the Russian population requires a strong government for Russia. The population of indigenous Russia (160–170 million) numerically almost corresponds to the population of all of North America and significantly exceeds the entire population of Africa. Given the low population density (in pre-revolutionary Russia, 29 people per square kilometer in European Russia and 2.3 people per square kilometer in Asian Russia), the Russian people are always prone to a state of semi-anarchy and only with great difficulty become accustomed to law and order. What will a weak government achieve in Russia?.. The February Revolution clearly showed this. 3. Abundance of means of communication. The easier it is for people to communicate with each other within a single state - by movement (railroads and highways, cars, ships, airplanes), orally (telephone, radio) and in writing (mail, telegraph), the more united the country becomes. communication, everyday life and housekeeping; the easier a weak government can cope with its task; and back. The means of communication in Russia were previously and remain at a very low level. To see this, it is enough to compare Russia and Germany. In Russia, 1 kilometer of railway lines accounts for 262 kilometres. area, and in Germany by 7 kilometres. (square); in Russia 1 car serves an average of 850 residents, and in Germany 54 residents; In Russia, an average of 295 people use (or rather do not use!) one telephone, and in Germany 22 people. All this data dates back to before the Second World War and is based on, as always propaganda, calculations of Soviet statistics; in reality, things are probably even worse. Nevertheless, these data are quite indicative. And the Russian government should be stronger the more difficult it is for it to deal with the country’s human disunity.

4. Weak differentiation of the country. The fewer national, linguistic, religious, everyday, climatic and economic differences in a country, the easier it is to govern the state, the more satisfactorily it will cope with its task.

weak power; and back. Little coastal Portugal (the size of our smallest - the Black Sea province), with its 7 million inhabitants of the same tribe, of the same faith, speaking the same language and not affected by either climatic or economic differentiation and it created its own strong power and was internally at peace. Already in neighboring Spain, weak government usually leads to disintegration and civil war. What can we say about Russia?.. The number of its nationalities and language groups reaches 170. The number of its religions and confessions reaches 30. Its climate knows all the fluctuations from eternal night to the midday desert. Its nature requires organic and economic adaptation from us - to the tundra, and to the salt marsh, and to grapes, and to polar moss, and to the taiga, and to the mountains, and to the ocean. Blood and language, faith and way of life, economic structure and cultural level are differentiated in Russia to the highest degree. State unity is possible here only with the presence of a strong and wise government. 5. Freedom from great power tasks. – The simpler the national, cultural, economic and international problems of a country, the easier its state tasks, the more appropriate it is to have a weak government at its head. And vice versa: only a strong government will cope with the great power tasks of the country. Solder the internal multitude into organic unity; raise the cultural level of the masses; bring to life the economic prosperity of a large people; to establish labor balance and the greatest possible economic self-sufficiency (autarky) of the country; to find the right trade interaction with its neighbors and to introduce the country into the exchange and diplomatic body of world communication - all this requires a strong government, independent of party ebb and flow, not afraid of “deadlines”, not trembling before new elections, shrewdly leading its line from decade to decade. decade. – This is exactly how Russia was created. The appanage veche power was weak and could not resist the Mongols. The Moscow government would not have united Rus' if it had not become stronger. Russia needed Ivan Vasilyevich the Third to finish off the Tatars. John IV prepared the turmoil not only by the oprichnina and ferocious rule, but most of all by undermining the royal authority, that is, by weakening power. Russia needed Peter the Great to realize and develop its great power. The palace coups of the eighteenth century (1725, 1730, 1740, 1741, 1761, 1801 and 1825) undermined and weakened Russian state power and prepared Russia, according to the Decembrist plan, at the beginning of the 19th century for a noble republic with freed people without land, i.e. proletarianized and peasantry prepared for the new Pugachevism. Only a strong, super-estate and super-class power, emancipated from conspiratorial parties, could give Russia the great reforms of the sixties. So it will be in the future: a weak government will not lead Russia, but will ruin and destroy it.

6. High level of popular legal awareness. – The higher the level of people’s legal consciousness, the easier it is for a weak government to cope with its task; and back. Legal awareness is the ability to respect the law and the law, voluntarily fulfill one’s public duties and private obligations, build one’s life without committing crimes; it is based on a sense of one’s own spiritual dignity, internal discipline, will, mutual respect and trust of citizens in each other, citizens in the authorities and authorities in the citizens. The stronger and deeper the people’s legal consciousness, the easier it is to rule them, the less dangerous weak power is; and back. Russian legal consciousness has a difficult historical heritage: appanage strife, the Tatar yoke, unrest, the nomadic and predatory southeast, the uprisings of Razin and Pugachev, palace coups, revolutionary movements of the 19th and 20th centuries, the rule of the Bolsheviks. All this grew on that special structure of the soul, which can be characterized as plain indiscipline, as Slavic individualism and the Slavic craving for anarchy, as natural temperament, as the breath of Asia. All this, taken together, has developed in the Russian people a sense of justice that is only appealing to strong authorities (“strict authorities,” as Shmelev puts it). Weak power has always caused and will continue to cause in Russia for a long time a feeling of permissiveness and social disintegration.

7. Absence of military threat. – The more peaceful the borders of the state, the less wars and attacks threaten the people, the easier the weak government will cope with its task; and back. A weak government is generally incapable of waging war, because war requires will, discipline, preparation, concentration and extreme stress. That is why the Roman Republic appointed during the war (as well as internal difficulties) a dictator who exercised a single, strong and concentrated power. The usual dismembered and complex apparatus of state power should easily be simplified, concentrated and acquire some elementary dynamism in difficult and dangerous periods: and the easier this process of simplification and concentration occurs, the more combat-ready the state is threatened by war. – The history of Russia was such that in the first period of its life (1055– 1462) it had on average one year of war per one year of peace (data from S. M. Solovyov), and in the second period of its life (up to the twentieth century) it had an average of two years of war for one year of peace (data from General N.N. Sukhotin). We are not given the opportunity to foresee the future, but we have no reason to believe that the Russian borders are pacified, that the state property of Russia is secured internationally and that we are not threatened with new defensive wars. Apparently, the opposite is true, and Russia will need strong power as perhaps never before...

All laws of social life can be expressed as follows: the more difficult it is for a people to form a state, and the more necessary it is in a given period of its history, the stronger its state power should be. Weak power is a kind of “luxury” that only a people in exceptionally favorable conditions can afford; not the people who are still drawn to anarchy, that is, to powerless confusion, but the people for whom little power or anarchy no longer threatens confusion; - not the people whose external distance and sovereign tasks far outstripped the strength and flexibility of their legal consciousness, but the people who spiritually grew to their numerical and spatial dimensions, who ideologically, technically and organizationally coped with the burden of their state tasks. A people that cannot afford this luxury should not encroach on it, for this encroachment will be vitally groundless and dangerous and will certainly lead to the formation of utopian parties and disastrous attempts on their part.

By the strength of the flat space, the strength of the national temperament, the strength of Slavic individualism and the weakness of their social discipline, the Russian people were placed in conditions requiring not a weak, but a strong state center. Throughout its history, it has repeatedly discovered, and now, in the revolution, it has again discovered a craving for powerless confusion, for passionate destructive boiling, for chaotic redistribution of property, for anti-state disintegration. A Russian person is capable of maintaining order and building a state; he is capable of maintaining exemplary discipline, serving sacrificially and dying for his homeland. But this ability of his manifests itself and bears fruit not when it is left to itself, but when it is brought to life, consolidated and led by a strong and worthy state authority that impresses him.

This is why Russia needs a strong government. And she will have it. However, the idea of “strong power” is not at all as simple and generally understandable as many people think. It must be truly and deeply thought out. She is surrounded by temptations. It can be misinterpreted, illegally constructed and poorly applied in life. Greater forethought and clarity in definitions are needed here. Here exaggerations are just as harmful and dangerous as understatements... Fundamentally speaking, state power has a very specific and limited vocation. She is not at all “can do anything” and is not at all called upon to “manage everything.” On the contrary, everything that requires free breathing, voluntary self-determination on the part of a person, his creative initiative, is not subject to arbitrariness and the authoritative order of state power.

Man is not a machine, but a living organism. The human spirit does not live by order and does not create under compulsion. Nothing can replace the economic and labor initiative of human instinct; to prescribe to the human spirit love, faith, prayer, conscientious movements of the soul, a sense of dignity and honor, methods of scientific research and artistic contemplation is unnatural and absurd. Virtue and loyalty can be called upon; their benefits can be shown and explained; evil acts can be prohibited and punished. But the “Kingdom of God” and spiritual culture are not brought into existence by state command. This does not mean that the state authorities have absolutely “nothing to do”; but its work here is limited, it comes down to the legal provision of freedom, to preventing all evil and seductive undertakings, to organizing public education and to highlighting people of good will.

This means that strong power is not at all the same as “totalitarian” power".

In Russia, it has existed under the guise of communism for 33 years now, and for us, the Russian people, it has brought only ruin, grief and humiliation. Therefore, the prosperity of Russia and the Russian people requires the abolition of totalitarian authorities.

The strong power of the coming Russia must be strong within its true limits. It is not at all called upon to encroach on the immense and impracticable. Forgetting its limits and crushing under itself the entire free, creative life of citizens, it would inevitably begin to strain itself and compromise itself. She would be forced to claim omniscience, omniscience and omnipotence and would not be able to justify her claim. No convulsive fussiness, no menacing demands would have saved her. She would have to resort to terror and a system of denunciations, and this would only harm her: she would become, like the Soviet government, hated by the entire people; and free loyalty would not have established itself in Russia. The emanations of power would not be able to permeate the legal life of the people. No cruel or bad means would help solve an objectively insoluble problem - and it would turn out that the new government was undermining itself in the same way that the communist government was undermining itself.

The strength of power is determined not at all by the size of its encroachments and not by its readiness to resort to any and even the worst means. The power of government does not at all boil down to the fact that it is ready to exhaust people’s patience and waste people’s respect and trust. What is the strength of state power? The strength of power is, first of all, its spiritual and state authority, its respect, its recognized dignity, its ability to impress citizens. Setting yourself an impossible task does not mean showing strength; wasting your authority does not mean being strong. The power of power is not manifested in shouting, not in fuss, not in pretentiousness, not in boasting and not in terror. The true power of power lies in its ability to call without threat and meet with a faithful response from the people. For power is, first of all and most of all, spirit and will, that is, dignity and rightness at the top, which are answered by free loyalty from below. The less tension is needed from above and the greater the response it causes below, the stronger the power. Coercion may be necessary; but it is only a technical aid or a conditionally temporary replacement for true power. State power is, first of all, a phenomenon of the internal world, and then only of the external one. Power is strong not with the bayonet or execution. The bayonet is needed when the authorities are not authoritative enough; execution indicates a lack of loyalty from below. The government is strong by its dignity, its rightness, its will and the response of the people (i.e., observance of the law, trust, respect and willingness to creatively join in the initiatives of the government).

The authorities must remember, protect and strengthen this basic nature of theirs—spiritual and strong-willed. The apparatus of coercion always remains at its disposal -

that is, the ability to support one’s dictates by an external force. But external strength will never replace internal strength - neither its dignity, nor its righteousness, nor its spiritual impact. The Pugachev rebellion indicated that the spiritual authority of Russian state power was again (after Peter!) wavered; that the people’s “ideal of the Tsar” was not embodied by the St. Petersburg throne of that time... The best people of that era understood this: A.I. Bibikov, to whom the Empress entrusted the pacification of the Pugachev rebellion, wrote to von Wisin: “It is not Pugachev that is important, it is the general indignation that is important!” Historically, the situation was such that the loyalty of the Russian common people tried to impose its own conditions on the throne. The revolt, of course, had to be suppressed. But Mikhelson’s bayonet and the execution of Count Panin did not destroy the issue: it was necessary to accept the “correction” of the people’s legal consciousness and restore the true strength of imperial power with creative reforms. For the state is maintained not by the bayonet, but by the spirit; not by terror, but by the authority of power; not by threats and punishments, but by the free loyalty of the people. Therefore, when speaking about strong power in the future Russia, I mean first of all and most of all its spiritual authority. This spiritual authority presupposes the presence of a number of conditions. So, first of all, that special national inspiration of power is necessary, which should radiate from it: the people must confidently feel that this is our, Russian, national power, devoted to the historical cause, faithful, incorruptible, watchful and constructive; without this confidence there will be no trust, no respect, no willingness to “accumulate” and serve. Strong power is nationally convincing power. Further, in Russia the people's religious trust in the authorities is necessary: heterodox, heterodox or faithless authorities will always enjoy meager, curtailed, dubious authority in Russia. Power, divorced from God, cannot know what is supposed to be “God’s way”; it will be alien to the believing heart, and therefore will not attract hearts to itself at all. Strong power is religiously convincing power.

Further, the spiritual authority of the power will be greater, the more independent this power is. A dependent authority will enjoy neither respect nor trust. A person who does not stand or walk himself cannot lead: no one will follow him. Any dependence will undermine the authority of the authorities: dependence on foreign troops, on one’s own army, on any international open or secret organizations, on parties, on capital, on any ultimatum “pressure”, etc. Even dependence on the church would be undesirable and would contradict the ancient Russian-Orthodox tradition. Russian state power can only be determined by faith, conscience, honor and the Russian public good. It must be an autonomous and objectively convincing power.

Finally, this power should be the strong-willed center of the country in state affairs. Lack of will and weakness of will do not appeal to the Russian people. Lacking a mature strong-willed character himself, the Russian man demands will from his ruler. He prefers shouting, severity, firmness to persuasion, “discussion” and hesitation; he even prefers self-government to strong-willed nonentity. He needs the imperative persuasiveness of power. These are the basic conditions for the internal strength of power. Their external shape must correspond to them. This form could only be clearly outlined in the form of a constitutional draft with detailed explanatory commentary. Here it is possible to establish only the foundations of the future state structure of Russia, and then only briefly. These are the basics. 1. The strong power of the future Russia should not be extra-legal and not superlegal, but formalized by law, and serving by law, with the help of law - the national legal order. Russia needs power that is not arbitrary, not tyrannical, not unlimited. It must have its legal limits, its bases, duties and prohibitions - in all its instances and manifestations.

This also applies to the body of supreme power, no matter what it is called and no matter who it is represented by. The Russian people must realize themselves as a legal unity, as a Subject of Law, consisting of many subjects of law: as a living All-Russian Personality, which is built and led by a strong legal authority. 2. So, the Russian state will be a subject of law, a legal entity. A legal entity is organized either on the model of a corporation or on the model of an institution (see “N.Z.” No. 40 and 41). The corporation is built from the bottom up by equal members: this is selfgovernment realized. Each participant is an authorized member of the whole, deciding on his participation in the corporation, on its goals and objectives, on its charter and board. The legal life of a corporation is built through those whom it embraces and serves. Thus, consistent democracy tries to build a state on the principle of a strict corporation, reducing the principle of “institution” to a minimum. An institution is built from top to bottom, by the founder and a group of persons appointed by him: this is the implementation of care for people. The purpose and objectives of the institution are established from the very beginning by the founder; they are determined by the charter; the charter determines the structure of the institution and the methods of its operation. Some people run the institution and this is their service; other people enjoy the benefits of this institution, but are not authorized members of it. The legal life and activities of an institution are not built by those whom it serves (for example, a school, a hospital). Thus, an absolute monarchy tries to build a state according to the principle of strict institution. In real life the state is never a consistent corporation or a consistent institution. The state is always built - not only from the top down, but also from the bottom up. It always exercises authority and always has spheres of popular self-government. It is clear that a state in need of strong power will be more inclined to the form of an institution, and a state satisfied with weak power will be more like a corporation.

In the coming Russia it will be necessary to find the right, vitally appropriate, suitable combination of institution and corporation for the Russian legal consciousness. The participation of a Russian citizen in the construction of the Russian state will be precious, vital, necessary; but it will not have to weaken the strength of state power. This participation must not shake or disintegrate its unity, authority and strength. The drafter of the future Russian constitution must understand and remember that all institutions, rules and customs of the democratic system that strengthen centrifugal forces in politics or weaken the centripetal gravity of people's life must be rendered harmless especially for Russia and replaced by others that consolidate national unity. This will require the creativity of new state forms: new suffrage, new party principles, new forms of control, unity and leadership. A Russian citizen must be present with his loyal will and his respectful recognition in all affairs of his state, even where he does not participate in affairs by formal voting. The form of a “social contract” is not feasible in Russia: a nationwide conspiracy with an arithmetic count of votes will quickly collapse the Russian state. But this is precisely why the “social contract” must become a living, all-covering, unshakable prerequisite for Russian legal consciousness.

The task of the new state structure of Russia is to find a form in which the spirit of the fraternal corporation will saturate the form of a guardianship leading institution - with a ensured and continuous selection of qualitatively the best people to power. This institution must be carried by the corporate spirit that it itself nourishes and instills, accustoming the people to self-government, but not enslaving to the corporate scheme and doctrine. The new constitution of Russia should combine the advantages of an authoritarian system

with the advantages of democracy eliminating the dangers of the first and the disadvantages of the second.

3. The political system of the new Russia should be unitary in form and federal in spirit. The unity of the state towards the central authority cannot depend on the consent of many individual independent states (regional or national); this will destroy Russia. But a united and strong central government must highlight areas of regional and national independence and imbue national unity with the spirit of fraternal solidarity. 4. Strong power should by no means lead to forms of centralization and bureaucracy in Russia. The Russian state must be united, but differentiated. It must have a strong center, decentralizing everything that can be decentralized without danger to the unity of Russia. The central administration will not be able to do without appointed bureaucrats, but it will be necessary to find new forms for promoting from below people talented and worthy of appointment. And at the same time, the bureaucracy of the center must be matched by broad local, class and professional self-government. Russia must have a strong center, formally authoritative, but in essence and in spirit – popular and national.

5. All state affairs should be divided into two categories: central-all-Russian, supreme, and locally autonomous, grassroots. The first should include all national affairs, common to everyone, substantial for Russia as a great power. To the second - all the rest. Affairs of the first category should be in charge of a strong, authoritative center (which by no means excludes popular representation and is nourished by a free national corporate spirit). Affairs of the second category should be managed by self-government bodies, working in harmony with decentralized, local authorities of the center (which will ensure their organic support of the central government). A form of government must be found in which the grassroots force will be involved in the work of the authoritarian center, and the authoritarian center will have the opportunity to pour its healing power into that grassroots place that requires it through its weakness or its disorder.

In this organic unity, the most important thing is that strong power faithfully observe the measure of its manifestation: everything that can be done non-centrally must be performed autonomously; the power of the center should not suppress autonomous creativity

people in a corporation; but in the hour of need free men and autonomous corporations must receive support and health from a strong center. Then a strong government will be reconciled with the free initiative of the people. 6. As for the supreme authority (Head of State) in the future Russia, the following must be remembered. The collective (not individual) structure of this body will weaken its political power: other things being equal, the sole head of state represents a stronger volitional power than the collective body. In the same way - an elected Head in his powers is urgent (or even more so short-term), replaceable (or even more so easily replaced), dependent on other suppressive or authoritatively controlling bodies, deprived of independent initiative - will show weak power. As a general rule, he creates in the most responsible place of the state - a center of lack of will, intrigue and confusion.

These are the general foundations on which the state structure of the future Russia can and should rest. Modern generations of Russian people will be able to find appropriate forms of state existence, creatively new and nationally saving.

About the Russian state Art. 1. – In the order of God’s will, which arose, guided by God’s Providence for centuries, the Russian State is established as an institution in its spirit that is Christian and national, called to preserve and implement the law of truth in the life of the Russian peoples. Art. 2. – The Russian State is a legal unity, sacred, historically successive, powerful and effective. It rests on the fraternal unity of the Russian people, on their loyalty to God, the Fatherland, state power and the law. Art. 3. – The Russian State is united and indivisible. It has a single composition of citizens determined by law; a single, legally delineated territory; a unified state power, the structure of which is established by the fundamental law; a single set of laws, which includes all local codes. Any arbitrary withdrawal of citizens from the state, any arbitrary dismemberment of territory, any formation of independent or new state power, any arbitrary creation of new, fundamental or ordinary laws is declared invalid in advance and punished to the fullest extent of the criminal law, as treason or betrayal. Art. 4. – The Russian State is a legal union. Every Russian citizen has his own inviolable rights, his own established duties, his own inviolable prohibitions; all this is established by laws, protected by authorities and courts. All lawlessness, abuse of power, extortion and arbitrariness are persecuted. Everyone, without exception, is subject to the law. The basics of law and order are mandatory for everyone. Art. 5. – The Russian State is a sacred unity, for it unites people not only externally, but also internally, not only for fear, but also for conscience, not only in the face of all people, but also in the face of God. The Russian State serves the cause of God on earth: it protects and serves the life of the Russian national spirit in its unity and in its national and national totality.

Art. 6. – The Russian State is a historically continuous unity. It was founded by our ancestors; it was approved by the national sacrifices made to the fatherland under the leadership of Russian Princes and Sovereigns; it cannot stop and is not stopped by any temporary unrest, uprisings, invasions and dominance. Art. 7. – The Russian State is a unity of power, that is, public legal, and, moreover, supreme. It itself creates its own supreme power, not subordinate to any external force, to any other power, open or secret, to any other power. Russian state power is called upon to rule and command: it rules by right and is obliged, within the limits of law, to rely on force. Art. 8. – The Russian State is an effective unity. This means that Russian citizens are called to legal freedom and independent creativity, to voluntary law-abidingness (loyalty), to a faithful, shameless family life, to free labor and private property. They are subjects of law. They are obliged to invest their initiative, their heart, will and mind into the state business. They must, in every way possible, provide for their fatherland and the benefit of their people. They are obliged to promote all good and right initiatives of their government.

Art. 9. – The Russian State binds people into a fraternal union. The Russian is the Russian's brother and helper, always, everywhere and in everything. Any mutual untruth is prohibited. Any mutual oppression is criminal. Any malicious exploitation is punishable by law. Any abandonment in trouble is reprehensible and shameful. All for one - one for all.

Art. 10. – The Russian State connects Russian people with the fatherland and among themselves primarily, and in the event of a collision with other unions - exclusively. Therefore, dual citizenship is unacceptable; it is prohibited and punished as treason. Any affiliation of citizens with any international (international) associations is also prohibited. Art. 11. – The Russian State binds all its citizens with a single patriotic solidarity: a common fatherland, a common goal, a common power, a common law and order. The general is higher than the specific. Private interests must be yielded, subordinated, and serve as a means to a higher goal (Article 4). The Russian citizen owes his fatherland service and sacrifice; he owes his fellow citizens respect, peace and cooperation. Art. 12. – Any division of Russian citizens into hostile political camps is declared harmful, reprehensible and, in cases specifically provided for, punishable by immediate or permanent loss of public legal capacity. It is permissible to fight for class, party and corporate interests only insofar as these interests correspond to the single and common good of the people and the state. Art. 13. – The Russian court is called to be right, fair, merciful, speedy and equal. A Russian judge, always strengthening himself in the law of God, knows two sources in his decisions: the law of the Russian State and his conscientious sense of justice. He can neither bend his soul nor please those in power authorities.

Art. 14. – Russian state rank is an honest and responsible, merciful and strict title. He who commits falsehood or embezzlement destroys the fatherland and disgraces himself. Russian officials undertake to remember that they are called upon to build and beautify their homeland. Art. 15. – Every military person, from private to senior general, is called a soldier. Russian soldier is a high and honorable rank. He represents all-Russian national unity, Russian state will, strength and honor. The army is bone from the bone of the people, blood from its blood, spirit from its spirit. A person serving in the Russian army, whether for life or temporarily, exercises the honorable right of standing faithfully for the fatherland and shares in national glory. The military banner is the sacred banner of the entire Russian people. A disabled military person is an honorable person in the state. Art. 16. – The Russian language is the national language. It is mandatory in the army, navy and in all state and public institutions. The use of local languages and dialects in state and public institutions is allowed only along with the Russian language: it is mandatory in all communities with a foreign-language majority and is determined by special laws and decrees. This way one could formulate the basic axioms of all-Russian state order and unity.

On the rights and responsibilities of Russian citizens If someone asked the question what qualities a real citizen should have and what should be cultivated in future Russian citizens, we would answer this way. The first thing that distinguishes a real citizen is his inherent sense of his own spiritual dignity: he honors the spiritual principle in himself (his religiosity, his conscience, his reason, his honor, his convictions, his artistic flair, Christian speaking - his human adoption to God) ; and because of this, he honors himself as a spark of divine Fire, and does not do anything dishonest, godless, unscrupulous, humiliating and degrading his spiritual nature.

The second thing that distinguishes a true citizen is his internal freedom, transformed into an independent discipline. He is a kind of responsible, self-governing volitional center, he is that true subject of law who should be free internally and therefore take part in state affairs. Such a citizen deserves respect and trust. It is like a stone of statehood; bearer of fidelity and self-control; civic character.

The third thing that distinguishes a true citizen is that mutual respect and trust that binds him with other fellow citizens and with his state power. Not respecting your authority is not a sign of a “critical mind” and “freedom of thought”; this is a real misfortune, threatening betrayal and decay. To distrust one's fellow citizens is to suspect or outright despise them: political unity becomes impossible. If the government does not respect its citizens and does not trust them, then it is forced to rule not with freedom and fidelity, but with fear and oppression; and her creative power turns out to be undermined and doomed.

And finally, the fourth thing that distinguishes a real citizen is his ability to transform his freedom into voluntary loyalty. And this means experiencing and exercising one’s public legal rights as duties imposed on oneself; and their public legal duties as their precious and honorable rights. This is not a paradox or a play on words. Where a citizen has freedom of speech and press, he should experience it as a calling to be a civically courageous champion of truth and justice; and then his freedom will be at its height. Where he has the right to vote, he will never give in to absenteeism and party intrigue. He will experience paying the tax as his honorable right to replenish the state treasury; military service, as their honorable right to defend their people with arms in hand, etc... The more of this understanding and this skill in citizens, the higher the level of their legal consciousness and the stronger their state.

Taking all this into account, we could try to give such formulas to express the foundations of future Russian citizenship.

On the rights and responsibilities of Russian citizens.

Art. 1. – Russian citizenship is an honorable and binding title. He who bears this title is guilty of loyalty to the fatherland and the state, the supreme power and the laws of the country. Art. 2. – The acquisition and loss of Russian citizenship rights is determined by a special law. In all cases of transfer of foreigners to Russian citizenship, they take a solemn and public oath to Russia as the fatherland,

Russian fundamental laws, Russian supreme power and the Russian army. This oath is accompanied by a signature on non-dual citizenship. The subscription must be sealed and certified by the signature of five Russian citizens who enjoy the confidence of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs by their affiliation. Art. 3. – The right of free faith is a sacred and inviolable right. It belongs to all Russian citizens and is not diminished under any punishments or under any restrictions on public legal capacity. Art. 4. – Armed defense of the fatherland and the state is not only a sacred duty, but also an honorable right of every Russian citizen. Deprivation of this honorable right by court is one of the most shameful punishments and is accompanied by the loss of all public legal capacity (the right to vote, the right to public and government service, etc.). The male population is subject to conscription into the army in accordance with the provisions of the law. The rights and responsibilities of women in the defense of the country are determined by a special law. Art. 5. – Russian citizens are required to pay taxes and duties established by law. This duty is, in its essence, an honorable right to participate in the creation and replenishment of the domestic treasury. Malicious debtors are deprived of certain public rights by court and law. The tax established by the state indicates to each citizen not the largest, but the smallest share of his participation. Each excess of this smallest share constitutes a citizen’s domestic merit and entails honorable consequences determined by special by law

Art. 6. – Russian citizens are also required to serve all other duties imposed on them by law. Every manifestation of initiative, volunteerism and sacrifice here also constitutes a national merit and entails honorable consequences provided for by a special law. Art. 7. – All Russian citizens, not limited in their rights by law or by court, are equal before the law. The Russian legal order does not know of classes that would provide their members with unjustified advantages or restrictions on rights or remove their members from the scope of basic and general laws. Art. 8. – Only Russian citizens can hold military and civilian positions in Russia. Citizens of other states may be invited to serve only temporarily, under a contract of employment, subject to the signing of a solemn obligation not to harm the interests of the Russian State in any way. Art. 9. – In the fight against political unrest, robbery, enemy invasion or extreme national disasters, the Head of State has the right to declare certain categories of persons, both Russian citizens and foreigners, outlaws. This advertisement is printed in newspapers and posted in public places. It is valid for one month and must be renewed in the same manner.

Persons declared outlaws are subject to immediate arrest and harsh, speedy proceedings determined by a special law. From the moment they are declared outlaw, they lose all subjective public rights, except those specifically specified. Art. 10. – No one can be subject to prosecution, trial and punishment except on the precise basis of the law issued and promulgated before the commission of the act, and only in the manner prescribed by law. This does not apply to persons declared outlaws. Art. 11 – No one can be detained, taken into custody or otherwise deprived of liberty except in cases determined by law and in compliance with the rules prescribed by it. This does not apply to persons declared outlaws.

Art. 12. – Any detained person in cities and other places where the judicial power is located must be within twenty-four hours, and in other places of the State no later than within three days from the time of detention, either released or presented to the judicial power; the judicial authority, upon consideration of the charges, either releases the detainee, or decides, with a statement of reasons, to further keep him in custody. This does not apply to persons declared outlaws. Art. 13. – The home of every Russian citizen is inviolable. Carrying out a search or seizure in a home without the consent of the owner is permitted only in cases and in the manner determined by law. This also applies to persons declared outlaws.

Art. 14. – No one can be tried by any court other than the one to which his case is subject by law. Exceptions from this rule are allowed only in accordance with the law on states of emergency and martial law. Persons declared outlaws are tried by a special court, deliberately constituted for this purpose in accordance with the law. Art. 15. – Russian citizens who have reached the civil age of majority (20 years), can, within the general limits established by law, freely choose and change their place of residence and occupation, acquire and alienate property and freely travel outside the state. Restrictions on these rights, both for Russian citizens and foreigners, are established by special laws

Art. 16. – Property is inviolable. Forced alienation of real and movable property is allowed only when this turns out to be necessary for some state benefit. It is carried out only in a legal manner and, moreover, for fair compensation, taking into account the special, proven interests of the person. Art. 17. – Russian citizens have the right to organize meetings for purposes that are not contrary to religion, morality, the fatherland and the laws, peacefully and without weapons. The law determines the conditions under which meetings can take place, the procedure for closing them, as well as restrictions on places for meetings. Any meeting in which a call is made for disobedience to authorities and laws or for mutual hostility of citizens among themselves becomes from that moment an illegal gathering, participation in which is punishable by the court with the loss of public rights. Participating in a meeting with firearms or bladed weapons without special permission to carry them is equivalent to an attempt to start an armed uprising. Art. 18. – Within the limits established by the Basic Laws and a special law, everyone can express their thoughts orally or in writing, as well as disseminate them in written or printed form. Art. 19. – Russian citizens have the right to form non-political societies and unions for purposes that are not contrary to the Fundamental and other laws of the state. Every entity or union formed must be legally registered with a charter and a frank statement of its objectives. Secret societies and unions are prohibited. They, like their participants, are declared outlaws in advance. The conditions for the formation of companies and unions, the procedure for their actions, the conditions and procedure for granting them the rights of a legal entity, as well as the procedure for their closure are determined by a special law. Art. 20. – Russian citizens also have the right to form political parties, which are subject to mandatory registration. Anti-social, anti-state and revolutionary parties are prohibited. Their illegal formation and participation in them are punishable by law and court; any judicial conviction for this entails, in addition to punishment, the complete loss of public rights. Members of the party are prohibited from any state and public service, as well as election or appointment to legislative bodies. Anyone appointed, elected or

those appointed to such bodies must leave the party and give a solemn commitment to comply in their activities not with the instructions of their former party, but with the benefit of the fatherland and the state, as well as with the voice of their incorruptible sense of justice and their conscience. Art. 21. – Russian citizens have the right, individually or jointly, to address government authorities with a written statement of their requests and wishes. A joint application is permissible only on behalf of a registered society or union through its board or special deputation.

Art. 22. – The secrecy of correspondence is inviolable. The law determines which officials are responsible for violating the secrecy of letters entrusted to the post office. Postal secrecy does not apply to correspondence only of those who have been deprived of public rights by court or who have been declared outlaws. Art. 23. – For violation of the rights of citizens, officials are subject to civil and criminal liability on a general basis, and the consent of their superiors is not required to bring them to trial. Art. 24. – Foreigners arriving in Russia enjoy civil rights on the basis of the current laws of private international law. Of the public rights, they are granted freedom of belief, inviolability of the person, inviolability of the home, inviolability of property and the right of petition. Their jurisdiction, the right of movement and fishing, the right of assembly, the right of speech and press, the right of unions are subject to special laws and decrees. In particular, they are prohibited, under pain of expulsion from the country, from publicly uttering, distributing in writing or publishing in print opinions about Russia, its internal and external affairs.

Art. 25. – These decrees on the rights of citizens do not apply to citizens on active military service, as well as to all citizens located in areas declared under a state of emergency or martial law. The procedure for this announcement and the essence of the exemption from these regulations is determined by a special law. Art. 26. – All former members of the Communist Party, for whatever reasons and motives they joined it, and no matter how long they remained in it, are excluded from political life for 20 years; during this period they do not have the right to hold any positions in the state and public service, to publish, to elect or be elected. Deviations from this are possible only by way of personal abolition upon a personal petition addressed to the head of state.

Art. 27. – None of the Russian citizens has the right to accept any appointments, honors, titles or awards from foreign missions or rulers. Art. 28. – Every Russian citizen who is aware of someone’s malicious intent against the life, health, honor or property of one of his fellow citizens is obliged to warn the person threatened about the danger. Both together have the right to seek protection from the police authorities. In cases of particular importance, the warning person has the right to independently inform the police about the existing danger. Such statements are recorded and signed by the informant. In all cases of deliberate lies, slander, blackmail, etc., the police are obliged to make this protocol public by publishing it in the Police Gazette, and then bring the culprit to justice

responsibility.

Art. 29. – Each political denunciation is recorded, signed by the informer and with his exact address. Unnamed political denunciations are prohibited. They cannot have any legal consequences. If the author of such a denunciation is discovered, he will be brought to trial on charges of violating Art. 9 of the First Section;

If convicted, he is deprived of public rights for ten years. Art. 30. – Every political denunciation, without exception, is presented to the person against whom it is directed within three days. The name of the informer must be given to him. His objection is recorded. If he wishes, he is given a confrontation with the informer, optionally in the presence of three witnesses chosen by him. Art. 31. – The burden of proof lies on the denunciator, and not on the one against whom the denunciation is directed. Art. 32. – If the subject of denunciation is an act that is not legally provided for and not punishable, then the case is terminated. If the act is prescribed or punishable, then if the denunciation is confirmed or insufficiently refuted, the case is transferred to the magistrate. The magistrate judges not only the act and the person who committed it, but also the informer. The one who reported, at least correctly, but out of personal enmity, or out of malice, or knowingly falsely, is accused of violating Art. 9 of the First Section; If convicted, he is deprived of public rights for 10 years. So, approximately, one could imagine formulas that could determine the rights and obligations of Russian Citizens. Their main meaning is as follows: citizens are not given freedom of evil, dishonor and betrayal, denunciation and meanness, but they are provided with freedom of patriotic initiative corresponding to their spiritual dignity. Good forces directed towards goodness and salvation should not be bound, but untied.

Russia will be revived only by Russians It’s bad for a person who has lost all hope and hopes for nothing... He seems to be cutting off his prospects for his future; he stops believing in the possibility of something better; he blinds his spirit and weakens his instinct; he renounces his salvation and voluntarily “sinks to the bottom.” You can't live without hope. Doctors know this and do not take it away from the patient until the very end. All those who drowned and survived know this well; everyone forgotten on the battlefield and then found and rescued; everyone who went through bitter need. People need hope... But there is a wise hope and there is a foolish hope; sighted and blind; organically true and groundless; raising forces and extinguishing them. Wise, sighted, organically faithful, raising strength - leads, strengthens and saves; and stupid, blind, groundless and extinguishing forces - feeds the soul with illusions, disappoints and often outright destroys. And if anyone was really forced to go through all these types and shades, then it was us, the Russian people, who rejected the revolution and were temporarily weakened by the enemies of Russia: we experienced this everywhere, wherever we were, abroad or under the yoke, in our own country. unoccupied “living space”, or in Lubyanka, or in exile... And it would seem that we could and should, while living in this stream of vain hopes, learn real realism, a sober accounting of forces and political farsightedness. Have you learned? I have no doubt that many have learned. But there are also “many” others who have not learned this, and are unlikely to ever learn it: and age is not favorable; and the itch of political figure is insatiable, and blindness is congenital; and the power of judgment is very small. And so they will leave the stage, creating objectively hopeless situations for themselves... One has only to remember the whispers with which non-Bolshevik Russia was consoled and nourished in the first years of the revolution: they hoped for the Germans, who in reality dreamed of gaining a foothold in the Russian spaces they occupied; New people hoped for the French in Odessa, who in fact only dreamed of going home; new - on the Czechoslovaks, who were preparing, with the assistance of the French (Zhanin) and with the connivance of the British, the greatest robbery and betrayal in Siberia (Syrovaya); new on the British, who actively sank Russian ships under the pretext of their revolutionary nature and dreamed of profitable trade with the Soviet “cannibals”. Ataman Semenov acted most definitely in the Far East, reaching an agreement with the Japanese on “mysterious” terms - illusory benefits for the Japanese, illusory power for Semenov. Based on this type, one could call many similar later agreements with foreigners “Semyonovism”: this is a coordination that hides real subordination behind it; this is the division of Russian vestments in the absence and silence of Russia; this is an anti-national concoction under the “national” flag; this is an illusory benefit to a foreign power and illusory power to the “promiser”... And how many of them were there during these 36 years of such searches, as if they allowed us to “believe” and “hope”, hope and be consoled, consoled and, most importantly, figure. There were “whispers” of Polish, German, Italian, French, English, even Hungarian, and now almost Argentinean. And all these are not “rumours”, not “gossip”, and not empty words. Read about Polish whispers, at least in the memoirs of Zinaida Gippius (Merezhkovsky, Filosofov, Savinkov, Derenthal)... And how did it end? The Poles “promised”, “allowed”, and then, having got out of trouble, reconciled with the Bolsheviks, betrayed the White Crimea and prepared for themselves the conjuncture that ended with Katyn, the betrayal of Warsaw, which heroically rebelled against the Germans, and the military dictatorship under the guise of Rokossovsky. They even whispered with the Hungarians: there was a general with a Russian surname who declared himself a “Turanian” and reported to the Hungarian parliamentarians about the “liberation” of the “Turanian” peoples of Russia with the assistance of “tribal” Hungarians and about the thirst of these peoples to convert to the Catholic faith; whether they gave him money is unknown, but

the Hungarian Order of the Fathers procured him... Well, after all, he appeared before his death... What about German whispers?! Let us remember the work of the “Ukrainian Institute” in Berlin; Let us remember the party of “Russian National Socialists”, led by the stupidest of the German emigrants and, of course, the National Socialist police; Let us remember the articles of the most cheeky publicist in exile, always ready for anything, assuring both the National Socialists and us that the totalitarian system is a common phenomenon in the history of Russia. And at the same time, let us remember the German party “ideologist”, half-Estonian Rozamyagi, who called himself Rosenberg, who had already recruited a cadre of internal Russian governors on salary (up to Vyatka, Orenburg and Tiflis inclusive); and at the same time - the extermination of Russian prisoners of war, who died in their millions from typhus, hunger and cannibalism. Whispers – hopes – blindness – illusions – betrayal; but then – figuration. Only members of the EMRO, Vlasov and a group of honest Russian patriotic officers around him remained without illusions. It is impossible to remain silent about English whispers and hopes. Let us remember the struggle of the North-Western Army in 1919; the promises of the British and their insidious failure to fulfill them: they sent heavy guns without locks, rifles that did not fire, fencing rapiers; the “promised” English fleet remained idle; British tanks did not fight. And in the rear, conditions were set for Yudenich: the Estonians would enter St. Petersburg and establish federal democracy in Russia. And the Estonians themselves, having just been rescued by the White Russians, preferred not to help them, contrary to the promise, and to leave them to freeze during the retreat before Narva; and they themselves were already talking with the Bolsheviks (about the behavior of the British, see the brochure of Kuzmin-Karavaev, A.V. Kartashev to M.N. Suvorov. 1920, as well as Kuprin’s “The Dome of St. Isaac”). And subsequently, Lloyd George’s directive “you can trade with cannibals” by no means exhausted the English pro-Bolshevik policy. Let's just remember... Let's remember the insidious extradition of Russian generals and officers with P.N. Krasnov at their head: a highly gentlemanly act... Let's remember how, according to reports from Churchill the son, Churchill the father recognized it as more profitable for England to support the communist Titobroz and betray the white Serbian patriot General Mikhailovich. As early as 1942, English radio and English film extolled the heroism of Mihailoviÿ and his Chetniks; in the summer of 1943, unexpected and completely groundless “preparatory” “criticism” began; and at the armistice with Italy, Churchill demanded that the Italian-Balkan army hand over all its weapons to the communist partisans, which Tito used to exterminate Serbian patriots; the Tehran agreement followed, and the British assured themselves and others that Stalin’s old and then still loyal agent, Titobroz, was “a liberal, a democrat, only dreaming of turning Yugoslavia into a Western democracy.” It was in vain that the intelligent and experienced English intelligence officer warned Churchill about Titobroz’s communist plans... Churchill answered him: “Well, do you really want to settle in Yugoslavia after the war? No! Well, neither do I. So what do we care about this?..” And now Titobroz, who with one hand accepts millions in subsidies from the West, and with the other hand purchases precious stones from all the world’s jewelers, is honored by the English royal family in London.

And what about England’s relations with China?.. The main concern here was to save the extensive English “investments” in China and support export trade. Gentlemen love business and value it. And for this it was necessary to please Mao Tsetung (i.e. Stalin) and promote world communism. And now the directive of the liberal Lloyd George is being revived and implemented by the English conservatives. A serious and very knowledgeable correspondent writes at the beginning of this May (1953) from London. It is in vain that the British, who recognized the communist government in China, claim that “by this they do not express any approval of the regime itself. Americans look at this matter completely differently:

recognition of a regime is not simply a matter of fact, trade and profit, but also a matter of approval. Why, the correspondent asks, did the British not recognize the Franco government in Spain for so long and stubbornly explain this “rejection” as a protest and condemnation? Why did they not recognize the government of Patin in France, which controlled most of the French territory? Where is the logic here?”... But politics is clearly guided not by logic, but by “psychology” and the demagoguery of profit. If a neighboring power is inclined to right-wing dictatorship, then it is necessary to protest and demonstrate; and if it’s a left-wing dictatorship, then you have to adapt and think about profit. Here is the English directive. And the British attitude towards Mao Tsetung determines their attitude towards Chiang Kaishek. “For the Americans,” writes the same correspondent, “the nationalist generalissimo of China is the legal representative of the entire country; but for the British (as the gentlemen in the Lower House usually say) Chiang Kaishek is a completely discredited, failed, exhausted reactionary. According to the British, Formosa should have been annexed to the Chinese mainland and subordinated to the regime there... And red China should have been accepted into the League of Nations long ago. Peace in Asia means reconciliation with the communists..." If we take all this into account, Churchill’s attraction to Malenkov and desire to see him becomes understandable. And some hasty Lord Calverley has already nominated Malenkov for the Nobel “Peace Prize” ($32,000). Of course, there is a danger that Malenkov will not stay in his place until the visit of the “gravitating” Churchill. Meanwhile, from this gravity a bright and ominous ray of light falls on all past agreements with Stalin in Tehran, and Yalta and Potsdam. And it becomes clearer why England so stubbornly stays away from the European defensive alliance... To the right, “the doors are locked”; to the left “the doors are wide open.” In England they are called to rule - of course! – conservatives; but communist devastation and the abundance of other countries may not be at all unprofitable for the English world “business”...

Aren't these formulas still indicative? Aren't they still instructive? Have the Russian “patriots”, prone to whispering and figuration, still not seen the light? Or perhaps this mature policy, expressed in the words “betting on someone else’s weakening, dismemberment and impoverishment,” is characteristic only of England, while other powers are pursuing a different policy? But didn’t the slander of Chiang Kaishek and the surrender of China to the communists determine Truman’s Far Eastern policy? And was there any power that would object to the surrender of Yugoslavia to Titobroz? And is there any people and any government in the world that would understand the wise policy of European balance pursued by the Russian Sovereigns? Has the public opinion of the West, guided by the world behind the scenes, ever learned to distinguish Russia from the Soviet Union and Russian people from communists? Who do you trust with our national Russian interests, emigrant whisperers and figureheads?!

To all our considerations, anxieties and foresights, the hopeful whisperers can respond with their characteristic aplomb: “We know what we are doing... We also know the conditions under which we are supported in expenses and in all kinds of propaganda... We are saving Russia! We fight and resist, but our critics stand for passive non-resistance.” – Of course, we must anticipate such an objection. Let them object... “People’s lips are not locked”... And we respect freedom of speech so much that we even recognize the freedom of stupid and incorrect speech... But let’s look at this whole situation through a political lens. From the very beginning, some may want to admit that if they “assist in expenses” and in all kinds of propaganda, then they have “agreed” or, more carefully, “whispered in an armchair” to “unanimity”. However, a caveat is necessary here too. The fact is that political subsidies can be preliminary and subsequent. Preliminary information is given to make it easier to agree; This is an “introductory”, “positioning” argument, a bird in the hand. Subsequent subsidies are given after entering into the agreement to fulfill the conditions; not as collateral

the upcoming action, but how to implement it. For example, Titobroz received Italian weapons from England as a preliminary subsidy. The Ukrainian Institute in Berlin is still stuck on preliminary subsidies. But modern subsidies to Titobroz are considered to be subsequent subsidies. Neither logically, nor psychologically, nor politically - this is not the same thing and this should not be forgotten. But let’s assume that the parties whispered together in an armchair until they reached “unanimity.” Well, let us ask, are there such naive people among us who would believe that the subsidizing foreigners comprehended and recognized Russian national and great-power interests, adapted their plans, interests and programs to Russian ones, accepted ours as their own and pledged to respect, protect and to carry out the all-Russian good in the future as obligatory for them? That they “appreciated” and “decided to sacrificially save” Russia, just as Russia faithfully and sacrificially saved the Slavs during the Balkan War of the seventies, then Serbia in 1914, then France and England (Samsonov’s August offensive), then Italy after Caporetto (1936, Brusilov’s May offensive)?.. Are there such naive people among us? If there is, then they should be strictly forbidden to engage in politics, so that they don’t talk in vain, betray Russia and sow temptation! We know that there is no one to prohibit, that it is impossible to prohibit; and you can’t even interfere. But speaking the truth out loud is possible; It is necessary to open the eyes of yourself and others to the meaning of these whispers; and to remain in false illusions is absurd and harmful. No, there have not been and will not be such foreigners, such foreign governments, who would recognize state loyalty and the international legitimacy of Russian national interests and would really help the Russian patriotic emigration to fight for a great-power Russia. There are, were and will be individual foreigners, especially from those who lived in prerevolutionary Russia, to whom our open-hearted and kind people managed to show their external and internal open spaces, managed to open their hearts and managed to rebuild their understanding of Russia and instill in them instead of dull fear and evil contempt - sympathy or even love. There are those who have become familiar with the Russian Orthodoxy, who have gained insight into the issues of the Russian spirit, who have comprehended the place of Russian statehood and who have understood the history of our national difficulties, backwardness and imperfections. But these are individual people, with a non-provincial horizon, with a not hardened heart, with an inspired imagination. We know them, we appreciate them and we always rejoice when we hear them live or read their written word. But it is precisely because of these personal characteristics that these people do not feel like mediocre ordinary people in their countries, clichéd citizens, anti-Russian parliamentarians, assertive diplomats and aggressive generals. International honor and conscience are alive in them, as in ourselves; they do not call the communists “Russians” and the Soviets “Russia”; they understand that the Russian tragedy of the twentieth century is a worldwide tragedy, that the devilish Maelstrom, spinning in Russia, was born in the West and is striving to the West again, that the historical hour has struck when it is only decent to think about “annexations”, “dismemberments” and “businesses” Hitler and similar predatory blind people. They understand this. But when they talk about it publicly in their countries, they lose their “popularity” and are politically disavowed in their democracies. And it’s not with them, oh, of course, it’s not with them that the Russian figures are whispering in their armchairs... They are whispering with others who don’t know, don’t understand Russia, but who want to make a political career in their country; and where, in what country, can a politician who sympathizes with national Russia make a career? Only royal Serbia was like that.

The conclusion is clear. In all the armchair whispers, it is not foreigners who accept Russian interests, but the negotiating Russian emigrants who adapt to foreign donors, to their views, in a word - to their interests. Yes, they will tell us, but the interests of foreigners at present come down primarily to the fight against communism and communists; and within these limits it would be a mistake to avoid cooperating with them. We answer. Firstly, the very anti-communism of foreigners is by no means indisputable; He

ambiguous and unstable. How did the anti-communism of the British manifest itself, from 1917 to 1953? Is it that they have not yet followed Bevan, but are handing over one world position after another to the Soviet communists? Yes, they don’t want communism in their own country, but communism in other countries seems to them not only not dangerous, but somehow even “useful: in some countries it will destroy the national aristocracy and thereby ensure a “democratic regime”; in other countries he will prepare the dismemberment of the state and eliminate the great power; and subsequently he will open empty and hungry markets everywhere, which is so important for English export trade. It is remarkable that even in the United States there is a wisely cautious Eisenhower, a highly informed Hoover and a consistent McCarthy. - they do not at all consider the recently departed Truman to be any reliable anti-communist; This explains the strict “overhaul” of the entire state bureaucracy and the incessant anxiety in wide healthy circles of the people. After all, Roosevelt had advisers who inspired him with sympathy and trust in the greatest villain of history - the so-called “Uncle Joe”... After all, these employees survived under Truman... After all, the whole thing came to the point that behind almost every “bush” sat a communist - from the film to the pulpit and from the workers' union to the atomic business... What the next elections will bring is still a question...

Secondly, only completely inexperienced journalists can imagine and tell that in state and especially international affairs “unanimity” can be built on denial: “You are against communism and I am against communism; that’s great: let’s whisper until we are of one mind and cooperate fraternally.” This only happens in the childish imagination of ordinary people. In fact, what is meant is something completely different, namely: “What is your anti-communism to me if you do not fully accept my positive program? Do you pledge obedience to everything we direct? If we demand democracy, you will be a democrat; if we demand dismemberment, you will dismember; we demand economic, financial, military, diplomatic enslavement - you will enslave your people at our command... No? Don't agree? Go, we will find more obedient anti-communists”... Let us remember the English conditions set in Revel for Yudenich. Let us remember the Nazi demands from collaborators: everything had to be swallowed, from anti-Semitism to denunciations to the Gestapo, from totalitarian pathos to the execution of Russian hostages, from death camps for Russian prisoners of war to Auschwitz... We know that this led to Hitler's gasoline death and to the gallows for Rosenberg. But this fate befell them not because they imposed the entire program on their collaborators, but because both their program and their tactics were ferocious, absurd and defiant for the entire universe. Imposing their program is common to all parties in all countries. Is it conceivable for a socialist government to support a bourgeois-aristocratic counter-revolution in another country? Can it be seriously assumed that a foreign government, wishing to dismember Russia, will contribute to the propaganda of Unitarians defending the One Indivisible? A republican government will always be able to use someone else’s monarchy and will demand from it all the sacrifices and all the blood; but not a single republican minister will even think of restoring the crushed monarchy - it is unthinkable, impracticable; and it’s dangerous: they’ll vote out at the next elections...

In other words: subsidies are given only to like-minded people, that is, people who unconditionally accept the political and international interests of the subsidizing country. And not only interest, but also the blind prejudices of the donor. One must please the assignor; one must please the one who will “assist in expenses”; one must commit to please him to the end. And the emigrant whisperers know this. And therefore they compete with each other in pleasing; and they are indignant if armchair whispering happens to others besides them; and then they begin to whisper to the money givers about their competitors; whisper and “take away”; these are no good, they are extreme right;

and these are unacceptable - they are middle right; and these need to be driven out - they are not democrats enough; and these are not federalists at all, etc. You listen, you read these attacks: you follow all this fuss, all these emigrant “advancements” and “retractions” complaints, defamations, disavowals (not to say denunciations) - and your soul filled with sorrow and shame. Grief for Russia. Shame on these “Russian” people who convinced themselves that the salvation of Russia lies in being subsidized and being featured. But what then should we hope for? You can’t live without hope! We have two hopes. And first of all, to God, who is not completely angry and will have mercy. Secondly, for the spiritual healing of the Russian people, in all their tribes - both there, under the communist yoke, and here abroad, in captivity among foreign peoples; on what we - ourselves here, all of us and our brothers-compatriots - there - can do, thinking through our hearts, speaking responsibly and carrying out our Russian great-power interests with deeds. Russia can be liberated and revived only by Russians!

About Orthodoxy and Catholicism The significance of Orthodoxy in Russian history and culture is spiritually determining. In order to understand this and be convinced of it, you do not have to be Orthodox yourself; It is enough to know Russian history and have spiritual vigilance. It is enough to recognize that the thousandyear history of Russia was created by people of the Christian faith; that Russia was formed, strengthened and developed its spiritual culture precisely in Christianity, and that it accepted Christianity, professed, contemplated and introduced into life precisely in the act of Orthodoxy. This is precisely what was comprehended and expressed by the genius of Pushkin. Here are his actual words: “The great spiritual and political revolution of our planet is Christianity. In this sacred element the world disappeared and was renewed.” “The Greek religion, separate from all others, gives us a special national character.” “Russia has never had anything in common with the rest of Europe”...; “its history requires a different thought, a different formula...”

And now, when our generations are experiencing a great state, economic, moral and spiritualcreative failure in the history of Russia, and when we see everywhere its enemies (religious and political), preparing a campaign against its identity and integrity, we must firmly and accurately say: do we value your Russian identity and are we ready to defend it? And further: what is this originality, what are its foundations and what are the attacks on it that we must foresee?

The identity of the Russian people is expressed in its special and unique spiritual act. By “act” we must understand the internal structure and way of life of a person: his way of feeling, contemplating, thinking, desiring and acting. Each of the Russians, having gone abroad, had, and still has, every opportunity to be convinced by experience that other peoples have a different everyday and spiritual way of life from us; we experience this at every step and have difficulty getting used to it; sometimes we see their superiority, sometimes we acutely feel their unsatisfactoriness, but we always experience their foreignness and begin to yearn and yearn for their homeland. This is explained by the uniqueness of our everyday and spiritual way of life, or, to put it in the shortest possible way, we have a different act.

The Russian national act was formed under the influence of four great factors: nature (continentality, plain, climate, soil), the Slavic soul, a special faith and historical development (statehood, wars, territorial dimensions, multinationality, economy, education, technology, culture). It is impossible to cover all of this at once. There are books about this, some precious ones (Gogol. “What, finally, is the essence of Russian poetry”; N. Danilevsky. “Russia and Europe”; I. Zabelin. “The History of Russian Life”; Dostoevsky. “The Diary of a Writer”; V. Klyuchevsky. “Essays and Speeches”), then stillborn (Chaadaev. “Philosophical Letters”; Milyukov. “Essays on the History of Russian Culture”). In understanding and interpreting these factors and the Russian creative act itself, it is important to remain objective and fair, without turning into either a fanatical “Slavophile” or a “Westerner” blind to Russia. And this is especially important in the main question that we are posing here - about Orthodoxy and Catholicism.

Among the enemies of Russia, who do not accept its entire culture and condemn its entire history, Roman Catholics occupy a very special place. They proceed from the fact that there is “good” and “truth” in the world only where the Catholic Church “leads” and where people unquestioningly recognize the authority of the Bishop of Rome. Everything else goes (so they understand) along the wrong path, remains in darkness or heresy and must sooner or later be converted to their faith. This constitutes not only the “directive” of Catholicism, but the self-evident basis or premise of all its doctrines, books, opinions, organizations, decisions and actions. What is not Catholic in the world must disappear: either as a result of propaganda and conversion, or through the destruction of God.

How many times in recent years have Catholic prelates begun to explain to me personally that “The Lord is sweeping out the Orthodox East with an iron broom so that a united Catholic Church may reign”... How many times have I shuddered at the bitterness with which their speeches breathed and their eyes sparkled. And listening to these speeches, I began to understand how Prelate Michel d’Herbigny, the head of Eastern Catholic propaganda, could travel to Moscow twice (in 1926 and 1928) to establish a union with the “Renovationist Church” and, accordingly, a “concordat” with the Bolsheviks, and how could he, returning from there, reprint without reservation the vile articles of the communists, calling the martyred Orthodox patriarchal Church (literally) “syphilitic” and “depraved”... And I realized then that the “concordat” of the Vatican with the Third International did not materialize hitherto - not because the Vatican “rejected” and “condemned” such an agreement, but because the communists themselves did not want it. I understood the destruction of Orthodox cathedrals, churches and parishes in Poland, carried out by Catholics in the thirties of this century... I finally understood the true meaning of the Catholic “prayers for the salvation of Russia”: both the original, short one, and the one that was compiled in 1926 year by Pope Benedict XV and for reading which they are granted (by announcement) “three hundred days of indulgence”... And now, when we see how the Vatican has been preparing for years for a campaign against Russia, carrying out a massive purchase of Russian religious literature, Orthodox icons and entire iconostases, mass preparation of the Catholic clergy for simulating Orthodox worship in Russian (“Eastern Rite Catholicism”), a close study Orthodox thought and soul, for the sake of proving their historical inconsistency - we all, Russian people, must pose the question of what is the difference between Orthodoxy and Catholicism and try to answer this question for ourselves with all objectivity, directness and historical fidelity.

This is a dogmatic, church-organizational, ritual, missionary, political, moral and legislative difference. The last difference is vitally original: it provides the key to understanding all the others. The dogmatic difference is known to every Orthodox Christian: firstly, contrary to the decrees of the Second Ecumenical Council (Constantinople, 381) and the Third Ecumenical Council (Ephesus, 431, Rule 7), Catholics introduced into the 8th clause of the Creed an addition about the procession of the Holy Spirit not only from the Father, but also from the Son (“filioque”); secondly, in the 19th century, this was joined by a new Catholic dogma that the Virgin Mary was conceived immaculate (“de immaculata conceptione”); thirdly, in 1870, a new dogma was established on the infallibility of the Pope in matters of the church and doctrine (ex catedra); fourthly, in 1950 another dogma was established about the posthumous bodily and ascension of the Virgin Mary. These dogmas are not recognized by the Orthodox Church. These are the most important dogmatic differences. The church-organizational difference lies in the fact that Catholics recognize the Roman high priest as the head of the church and the deputy of Christ on earth, while Orthodoxy recognizes the single head of the Church - Jesus Christ and considers it only correct that the Church be built by ecumenical and local councils. Orthodoxy also does not recognize the temporal power of bishops and does not honor Catholic order organizations (especially the Jesuits). These are the most important differences. The ritual differences are as follows. Orthodoxy does not recognize services in Latin; it observes the liturgies compiled by Basil the Great and John Chrysostom and does not recognize Western models; it observes the communion bequeathed by the Savior under the guise of bread and wine and rejects the “communion” introduced by Catholics for the laity with only “blessed wafers”; it recognizes icons, but does not allow sculptural images in temples; it elevates confession to the invisibly present Christ and denies the confessional as an organ of earthly power in the hands of the priest. Orthodoxy has created a completely different culture of church singing, prayer and ringing; he has a different vestment; him

another sign of the cross; a different arrangement of the altar; it knows kneeling, but rejects the Catholic "squatting"; it does not know the jingling bell during perfect prayers and much more. These are the most important ritual differences. The missionary differences are as follows. Orthodoxy recognizes freedom of confession and rejects the entire spirit of the Inquisition - the extermination of heretics, torture, bonfires and forced baptism (Charlemagne). When converting, it observes the purity of religious contemplation and its freedom from all extraneous motives, especially from intimidation, political calculation and material assistance (“charity”); it does not consider that earthly help to a brother in Christ proves the “belief” of the benefactor. It, in the words of Gregory the Theologian, seeks “not to win, but to gain brothers” in faith. It does not seek power from the earth, at any cost. These are the most important missionary differences. The political differences are as follows. The Orthodox Church has never claimed either secular dominance or the struggle for state power in the form of a political party. The original RussianOrthodox resolution of the issue is this: the church and the state have special and different tasks, but help each other in the struggle for good; the state rules, but does not command the Church and does not engage in forced missionary activities; The Church organizes its work freely and independently, observes secular loyalty, but judges everything by its Christian standard and gives good advice, and perhaps even reproof to the rulers and good teaching to the laity (remember Metropolitan Philip and Patriarch Tikhon). Her weapon is not the sword, not party politics and not order intrigue, but advice, instruction, reproof and excommunication. Byzantine and post-Petrine deviations from this order were unhealthy phenomena. Catholicism, on the contrary, always seeks power (secular, clerical, property and personal suggestive) in everything and in all ways. The moral difference is this. Orthodoxy appeals to the free human heart. Catholicism appeals to a blindly submissive will. Orthodoxy seeks to awaken in man living, creative love and Christian conscience. Catholicism requires obedience and obedience from a person (legalism). Orthodoxy asks for the best and calls for evangelical perfection. Catholicism asks about the "prescribed," the "forbidden," the "allowed," the "forgivable," and the "unforgivable." Orthodoxy goes deep into the soul, seeking sincere faith and sincere kindness. Catholicism disciplines the outer man, seeks outward piety and is satisfied with the formal appearance of doing good (See “N.Z.” No. 119).

And all this is closely connected with the initial and deepest actual difference, which must be thought through to the end and, moreover, once and for all. Confession differs from confession in its basic religious act and its structure. It is important not only what you believe in, but also what, that is, what forces of the soul carry out your faith. Since Christ the Savior established faith on living love (Matt. 23. 37. Mark 12. 30–33. Luke 10. 27, cf. 1 John 4. 7–8. 16), we know where to look faith and how to find it. This is the most important thing for understanding not only your own faith, but especially the faith of others and the entire history of religions. This is how we must understand both Orthodoxy and Catholicism. There are religions that are born out of fear and feed on fear; Thus, most African blacks are primarily afraid of darkness and night, evil spirits, witchcraft, and death. It is in the struggle against this fear and in exploiting it in others that their religion is formed. There are religions that are born out of lust and feed on eroticism, taken as “inspiration”; such is the religion of Dionysus-Bacchus; this is “Left Hand Shaivism” in India; Such is Russian Khlystyism. There are religions that live by fantasy and imagination; their supporters are satisfied

mythical legends and chimeras, poetry, sacrifices and rituals, neglecting love, will and thought. This is Indian Brahmanism. Buddhism was created as a religion of life-denial and asceticism. Confucianism arose as a religion of historically hard-won and sincerely felt moral doctrine. The religious act of Egypt was dedicated to overcoming death. The Jewish religion sought first of all national self-affirmation on earth, putting forward henotheism (the god of national exclusivity!) and moral legalism. The Greeks created a religion of family hearth and visible beauty. The Romans are a religion of magical rites. What about Christians? Orthodoxy and Catholicism equally trace their faith to Christ, the Son of God and to the Gospel gospel. And yet their religious acts are not only different, but also incompatible in their opposites. This is precisely what determines all the differences that I indicated in the previous article (No. 118). The primary and fundamental awakening of faith for the Orthodox is a movement of the heart, contemplating love, which sees the Son of God in all His goodness, in all His perfection and spiritual power, bows and accepts Him as the real truth of God, as its main life treasure. In the light of this perfection, the Orthodox recognizes his sinfulness, strengthens and cleanses his conscience with it, and embarks on the path of repentance and purification. On the contrary, for a Catholic, “faith” awakens from a volitional decision: to trust such and such (Catholic-Church) authority, to submit and submit to it and force oneself to accept everything that this authority decides and prescribes, including the question of good and evil, sin and its admissibility. Therefore, the soul of an Orthodox person comes to life from free tenderness, from kindness, from heartfelt joy, and then it blooms with faith and corresponding voluntary deeds. Here the gospel of Christ evokes sincere love for God, and free love awakens Christian will and conscience in the soul. On the contrary, a Catholic, through constant efforts of will, forces himself to the faith that his authority prescribes to him. However, in reality, only external bodily movements are completely subordinated to the will; to a much lesser extent is conscious thought subordinate to it; even less is the life of imagination and everyday feelings (emotions and affects). Neither love, nor faith, nor conscience are subordinate to the will and may not respond at all to its “compulsions.” You can force yourself to stand and bow, but it is impossible to force yourself to reverence, prayer, love and thanksgiving. Only external “piety” obeys the will, and it is nothing more than an external appearance or simply a pretense. You can force yourself to make a property “donation”; but the gift of love, compassion, mercy cannot be forced either by will or by authority. For love - both earthly and spiritual - thought and imagination follow by themselves, naturally and willingly; but the will can fight over them all their lives and not subordinate them to its pressure. From an open and loving heart, conscience, like the voice of God, will speak independently and powerfully. But discipline of the will does not lead to conscience, and submission to external authority drowns out personal conscience is final.

This is how this opposition and irreconcilability of the two confessions unfolds; and we, the Russian people, need to think it through to the end. Anyone who builds a religion on will and obedience to authority will inevitably have to limit faith to mental and verbal “confession”, leaving the heart cold and callous, replacing living love with legalism and discipline, and Christian kindness with “commendable” but dead deeds . And his prayer itself will turn into soulless words and insincere body movements. Anyone who knows the religion of ancient pagan Rome will immediately recognize

all this is his tradition. It is precisely these features of Catholic religiosity that the Russian soul has always experienced as alien, strange, artificially strained and insincere. And when we hear from Orthodox people that in Catholic worship there is external solemnity, sometimes brought to the point of grandeur and “beauty,” but there is no sincerity and warmth, no humility and burning, no real prayer, and therefore spiritual beauty, then we know where to look for an explanation for this. This opposition between the two confessions is revealed in everything. Thus, the first task of an Orthodox missionary is to give people the Holy Gospel and divine services in their language and in full text; Catholics adhere to the Latin language, incomprehensible to most peoples, and prohibit believers from reading the Bible independently. The Orthodox soul seeks direct approach to Christ in everything, from inner solitary prayer to communion of the Holy Mysteries. The Catholic dares to think and feel about Christ only what the authoritative mediator who stands between him and God allows him; and in the communion itself, he remains deprived and diminished, not accepting the transubstantiated Wine and receiving, instead of the transubstantiated Bread, a kind of “wafer” replacing it. Further, if faith depends on the will and decision, then, obviously, an unbeliever does not believe because he does not want to believe, and a heretic is a heretic because he decided to believe in his own way; and the “witch” serves the devil because she is possessed by an evil will. It is natural that they are all criminals against the Law of God and that they must be punished. Hence the Inquisition and all those cruel deeds with which the medieval history of Catholic Europe is replete; crusades against heretics, bonfires, torture, extermination of entire cities (for example, the city of Steding in Germany, in 1234); in 1568, all residents of the Netherlands, except those named by name, were sentenced to death as heretics. In Spain, the Inquisition finally disappeared only in 1834. The rationale for these executions is clear: an unbeliever is someone who does not want to believe, he is a villain and a criminal in the face of God, Gehenna awaits him; and now the short-term fire of an earthly fire is better than the eternal fire of hell. Naturally, people who have forced faith from their own will try to force it from others and see in unbelief or dissent - not delusion, not misfortune, not blindness, not spiritual poverty, but evil will. On the contrary, the Orthodox priest follows St. Paul [11 Cor. 1:24), do not strive to “take power over the will of others,” but to “promote joy” in the hearts of people; and firmly remember Christ’s covenant about the “tares” that should not be weeded out prematurely (Matthew 13:25–36). He recognizes the guiding wisdom of Athanasius the Great and Gregory the Theologian: “what is done by force against desire is not only forced, not free and not glorious, but simply did not even happen” (Homily 2.15). Hence the instruction of Metropolitan Macarius, given by him in 1555 to the first Kazan Archbishop Gury: “By all sorts of customs, as possible, accustom the Tatars to him and bring them to baptism through love, and do not lead them to baptism through fear.” From time immemorial, the Orthodox Church has believed in freedom of faith, in its independence from earthly interests and calculations, in its sincerity of heart. Hence the words of Cyril of Jerusalem: “Simon the sorcerer washed his body with water in the font, but did not enlighten his heart in spirit, and came and went in body, but was not buried in soul and did not rise.” Further, the will of earthly man seeks power. And the Church, which builds faith on freedom, will certainly seek power. This is how it was with the Mohammedans; This has been the case with Catholics throughout their history. They always sought power in the world, as if the Kingdom of God were of this world; - all power: independent secular power for the pope and cardinals, as well as power over kings and emperors (remember the Middle Ages); power over souls and especially over the will of their followers (the confessional as a tool); party power in a modern “democratic” state; secret order power, totalitariancultural: the Jesuits are in charge of everything and in all matters). They consider power to be a tool for establishing the Kingdom of God on earth. And this idea has always been alien to both the Gospel teaching and the Orthodox Church. Power on earth requires dexterity, compromise, cunning, pretense, lies,

deception, intrigue and betrayal; and often crimes. Hence the doctrine that the end resolves the means. It is in vain that opponents present this teaching of the Jesuits as if hell “justifies” or “sanctifies” evil means; by doing this they only make it easier for the Jesuits to object and rebut. Here we are not talking about “righteousness” or “holiness” at all, but either about church permission, about permissibility, or about moral “good quality”. It is in this regard that the most prominent Jesuit fathers, such as Escobar a Mendoza, Sot, Tolet, Vascotz, Lessius, Sanketz and some others, argue that “actions are done good or bad depending on the good or bad goal.” However, a person’s goal is known only to him alone: it is a personal matter, secret and easy to simulate. Closely connected with this is the Catholic teaching about the permissibility and even non-sinfulness of lies and deception: you just need to interpret the spoken words to yourself “otherwise”, or use an ambiguous expression, or silently limit the scope of what is said, or remain silent about the truth - then the lie is not a lie, and deception is not deception, and a false oath in court is not sinful (for this see the Jesuits Lehmkuhl, Suarez, Busenbaum, Lyman, Sanketz, Alogona, Lessius, Escobar and others).

But the Jesuits also have another teaching that finally frees the hands of their order and their church leaders. This is the doctrine of evil deeds allegedly committed “at the command of God.” So, from the Jesuit Peter Alogona (also from Busenbaum) we read: “by the command of God you can kill the innocent, steal, debauch, for He is the Lord of life and death, and therefore you must fulfill His command.” It goes without saying that the presence of such a monstrous and impossible “command” of God is decided by the Catholic church authority, obedience to which is the very essence of the Catholic faith (we borrow all this data from the book of I. A. Ilyin “On Resistance to Evil by Force,” where authentic sources are indicated ). Anyone who, having thought through these features of Catholicism, turns to the Orthodox Church, will see and understand once and for all that the deepest traditions of both confessions are opposite and incompatible. Moreover, he will also understand that the entire Russian culture was formed, strengthened and flourished in the spirit of Orthodoxy - and became what it was at the beginning of the 20th century, primarily because it was not Catholic. The Russian person believed and believes with love, prays with his heart, reads the Gospel freely; and the authority of the Church helps him in his freedom and teaches him freedom, opening him the spiritual eye, and not frightening him with earthly executions in order to “avoid” the otherworldly. Russian charity and the “love of poverty” of the Russian Tsars always came from the heart and kindness. Russian art has entirely grown out of free heartfelt contemplation: the soaring of Russian poetry, and the dreams of Russian prose, and the depth of Russian painting, and the sincere lyricism of Russian music, and the expressiveness of Russian sculpture, and the spirituality of Russian architecture, and the feeling of Russian theater. The spirit of Christian love has also penetrated into Russian medicine, with its spirit of service, selflessness, intuitively holistic diagnosis, individualization of the patient, brotherly attitude towards the suffering; and into Russian jurisprudence with its search for justice; and into Russian mathematics with its subject-matter contemplation. He created the traditions of Solovyov, Klyuchevsky and Zabelin in Russian historiography. He created the tradition of Suvorov in the Russian army, and the tradition of Ushinsky and Pirogov in the Russian school. One must see with one’s heart the deep connection that connects the Russian Orthodox Saints and Elders with the way of life of the Russian common people and educated soul. The entire Russian way of life is different and special, because the Slavic soul strengthened its heart in the precepts of Orthodoxy. And most Russian heterodox confessions (with the exception of Catholicism) received the rays of this freedom, simplicity, cordiality and sincerity. Let us also remember that our entire White Movement, with all its state loyalty, with its patriotic fervor and sacrifice, arose from free and faithful hearts and is supported by them to this day. A living conscience, sincere prayer and personal “volunteerism” belong to the best gifts of Orthodoxy, and we have not the slightest reason to replace these gifts with the traditions of Catholicism.

Hence our attitude towards “Catholicism of the Eastern Rite”, which is now being prepared in the Vatican and in many Catholic monasteries. The very idea - to subjugate the soul of the Russian people through a feigned imitation of their worship and to introduce Catholicism in Russia with this deceptive operation - we experience as religiously false, godless and immoral. So in war, ships sail under a foreign flag. This is how smuggling is carried out across the border. So in Shakespeare's Hamlet, a brother pours deadly poison into the ear of his brother-king while he sleeps. And if anyone needed proof that Catholicism exists and in what ways it seizes power on earth, then this last enterprise makes all other proofs superfluous.

Church and life

It would seem that what could be more natural and indisputable for a believer than the introduction of human life to the Church and the introduction of Grace, which carries and builds the Church into the very depths of life? It would seem that one can raise not the question of the desirability and preciousness of this rapprochement, but only the forms and methods of its implementation... And yet this problem is much more difficult and complex than it seems. Moreover, its incorrect resolution is fraught with great dangers both for the Church and for life; and people who have not thought through these difficulties and complexities can distort and do harm. First of all, the concept of “life” includes an immense multitude of people (currently there are about two and a half billion inhabitants on earth), of which many belong to various church unions, and another multitude formally resides in one or another church (“registered”... ), lost all faith, and consequently, church affiliation. How is it possible to carry out the “churching of life” with such people? Further, whoever desires “churchification” probably has in mind a single process and a single “Church” and is unlikely to be inclined to sympathize and contribute subordinately to the whole life of all people to those other church societies that reject his own “church” as false, heretical and disastrous. You can, of course, close your eyes to this multitude of church societies and declare all other “churches” imaginary, essentially non-existent, a harmful or even disastrous falsification; but such deliberate blindness, such denial will in no way solve the problem and will not indicate any paths leading to a rapprochement between the Church and

life.

Statistics from the late thirties (1937) estimate that there are about 400 million Catholics in the world, 208 million Protestants (of all persuasions), 165 million Greek Orthodox, 14 million other Christians, and about 15 million Jews (before World War II). ., Mohammedans 310 million, Buddhists 227 million, Confucians and “ancestor worshipers” 300 million, Taoists 30 million, Shintoists 20 million, Hindus (Sikkas and Jains) about 280 million, primitive cults about 100 million, and Finally, freethinkers, atheists and irreligious people (outside the church, outside the confessional, “atheists”), according to the most conservative estimate, are about 60 million. What kind of unified, “ecclesiasticalization” can we talk about? Who will sympathize and assist him? And for what? And not all religions are included in these statistics! So, should all “other” religions and churches be abolished and one single one introduced? Which one? Let’s say frankly that those who pose the question this way simply do not know the history of mankind and do not understand the deepest essence of religion and religiosity... And it is just as naive to think that Catholics are able to put the idea of “churching in general” above the idea of Catholicism...; or that Protestants will promote the ecclesiasticalization of life among Mohammedans, Orthodox and fire worshipers...; or that Shintoists will want Orthodox churching throughout their lives...

So, at the very first contact with life, the idea of a single church turns out to be an illusion, and the program corresponding to it turns out to be a delusion. This question should not be raised on a single global scale. The diversity of religious experience, dogmatic teachings and church organization is such that this problem turns out to be imaginary and insoluble: the believers themselves will not allow each other to either pose or resolve it, for a worldwide religious massacre will begin. Consequently, it is possible to talk about “the ecclesiasticalization of life” only within the limits of individual religions and confessions. A separate, unique “churching” may turn out to be feasible (or impossible) within Jainism, a separate one within Lutheranism, a special one within Shintoism, a unique one in Mohammedanism, another in Catholicism, another in Orthodoxy. And therefore, we, Orthodox Christians, should leave other religions and confessions aside, and ask ourselves about the possibility and desirability of churching life among Orthodox Christians

peoples

And here is the first thing that needs to be established: with an incorrect understanding of the issue, both the Orthodox Church and the life of Orthodox peoples may be in danger of church totalitarianism. In fact, when we talk about the ecclesiasticalization of life, we must keep in mind two ways: 1. Life will freely receive the grace-filled spirit of the Church, 2. The Church will accept all essentially non-church tasks of life and invest in their resolution. 1. The first way seems natural and self-evident; The more religious grace in life, the higher the quality of life, the closer to completion and fulfillment the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer will be: “Thy kingdom come.” The condition for this path is only one thing: the church itself must guard its Spirit and be on high. Without this, there will remain only church appearance, illusion, sheer temptation and corruption. People will call “Church” something that does not deserve this name, and expect Grace as if from an empty vessel. The loss of purity of heart and prayerful fervor, the distortion of the Christian spirit, the depravity of the clergy, all sorts of corruption and intrigue “sacrilege”, the obvious or secret triumph of lies and everything else corresponding - all this can deprive the church organization of Light, Strength and Grace and interfere with any “ecclesiasticalization” of humanity life. World history knows entire eras of such decline, and its consequences have already been revealed and described more than once. This is, in basic terms, the first way. 2. But there is also a second way of “churching life.” It consists in the fact that the church enters life as an imperious and all-encompassing principle and begins to implement a kind of church totalitarianism. History knows living examples of this (let us recall, for example, Savonarola in Florence and Calvin in Geneva); but it is unlikely that it will be possible to find an example that would justify this encroachment. Let's start with the fact that under the system of church totalitarianism, all non-church and non-church people find themselves in the position of “outcasts” in life. Only people of a certain confession and church adherence are full members of society and the state. All power in the affairs of life belongs to the church; and the church gives full rights only to one of its members and, moreover, to obedient members. Church believers receive a kind of privilege or even monopoly of existence; “Churchliness” gives them a life “bonus.” Hence, in the history of mankind, there arose the desire of non-believers to feign faith so as not to be “left behind,” the willingness to pretend for the sake of a life “prize”; and as a result, something like church “fascism” arose. People of a certain confession formed, as it were, the central and exclusive core of society and the state, a clerical “aristocracy”, an allpowerful and all-governing “nobility”, perhaps half consisting of liars and malingerers. The path led through religious lies to power and church decay became inevitable.

At the same time, the church became, as it were, “everything in everything”: it extended its power to all life, a person, and tried to bear the burden of statehood, which was completely inconvenient for it. It is clear that the one who fights for something is responsible for that - for success and failure, for order and chaos, for the flourishing of the national economy and for its decline, for the rise of national spirituality and for its decay. The totalitarian church remains subject to this law of responsibility. By displacing and replacing the state with its power, it takes upon itself all its functions and all its responsibilities. It must not only delve into issues of politics and economics, but destroy them, being responsible for each and every consequence. A totalitarian church must maintain an army and police (external, criminal and political); weapons factories, “intelligence” and “counterintelligence”...; she must organize courts, build prisons and carry out executions (remember the Inquisition and the execution of Servetus in Calvin); she must lead

wars and make peace; it must pacify unrest, collect taxes, build a fleet, and refine all the crooked paths of diplomacy; it must build canals and railways, organize a stock exchange, regulate prostitution; Moreover, it tries to subjugate science (remember the story of Galileo!), art in all its branches - from literature to painting (remember the paintings of Botticelli, burned by Savonarola), from comedy to ballet. In other words, the totalitarian church will have to plunge headlong into the stream of worldly temptations and worldly dirt in which human life floats. It goes without saying that she will have to achieve success in these temptations and in this mud... For any political, economic and military failure will be a blow to the totalitarian church, compromising it, in essence, still the Church's cause...

And as a result of all this, her grace-filled service (service of Grace and service to Grace) will fade into the background, be reduced or cease at all.

The totalitarian church is something spiritually untrue and, in the highest sense, unnatural. For the work of the church is a work of love and freedom, and not of coercion. It is called upon to religiously educate people in freedom and towards freedom, to touch hearts, to purify them, to delight them with voluntary and joyful conversion, and not to encourage people to feign a faith they have not experienced. It must be faithful to the great religious law of “synergy,” that is, the free “co-creation” of the Spirit of God and the human spirit in people’s lives. It is wrong to replace the human, personally spiritual thirst for the Divine with “debate” and coercion of totalitarian church power. It is unnatural to build religion and the religious life of people not on love, but on fear and calculation. Therefore, totalitarian tendencies should have no place at all in the hearts of the clergy and in the affairs of the church. For the integrity of faith and religion - this highest jewel of the spirit - must bloom like a flower in the soul of a person, and not be imposed on him as authoritarian dictates, accompanied by threats and fear: religious integrity cannot be prescribed and imposed; it can only be freely endured by a person under the influence of freely received Grace. She is like singing; and that is why singing has such great importance and application in church worship. The singing of the heart is unforced. And this must always be remembered.

That is why the very “churching” of life is unforced. It can only blossom freely and will be distorted and destroyed by all sorts of totalitarian plans and attempts. Naturally, the church cares about everything in people’s lives, but this “business” is not the work of coercive power, whether it openly issues threats and executions or is covertly organized through intrigue and behind-thescenes pressure. The Church is called to pray, perform the sacraments, purify souls, cherish revelation and kindle hearts. But it is by no means intended to take away people’s freedom of independent contemplation, choice, decision and creativity. Moreover, it is called upon to release people into the world for worldly and playful work, to radiate living religiosity into this work, to comprehend it in the face of God and, giving people freedom of inspiration, to fill this inspiration with the spirit of Christian Grace. And I involuntarily remember my conversation with Archbishop of Latvia John Pommer, later a hieromartyr, a man of high wisdom and spiritual strength. He told me how one Catholic prelate publicly asked him: “Why doesn’t the Orthodox Church engage in charity, bequeathed to us all in the Gospel?” And how he answered him: “The work of the Orthodox Church is not a matter of acquisition and redistribution of earthly goods, which leads to false accumulation and false missionary work, but a matter of awakening living human hearts to love, mercy and charity... In Russia, charity blossomed as rarely anywhere; but it came from personal living kindness, awakened by the spirit of Orthodoxy”... -

For the Church is called to radiate grace into the hearts of believers, and not to participate in the earthly calculations of earthly hustle and bustle... It is in this that it is revealed that the “churching of life” has a deeper and more mysterious meaning than many people think. “Churchification” is not reducible to “ritualization.” It is most and above all the Christian spiritualization of the human heart; and then everything else. The Church, as the bearer and keeper of Christ's revelation, is a living rotten place, and not an imperious leadership; it is a source of love and gracious advice, and not a pedantic pressure on human life; it is a call, not an order. It is not called upon to turn people away from the world, as in Buddhism, but, on the contrary, to release them into the world as carriers of the Spirit taught to them, so that the world does not “secularize” them, but so that they spiritualize it.

And this is the main thing.

This has been the path of Orthodoxy in Russia over the past two centuries. Thus, in particular, the 19th century gave Russia a marvelous flowering of spiritual culture. And this flourishing was created by people “nourished” by the spirit of Orthodoxy, but who created completely freely, “released” into the world for free contemplation and work. They carried away the spirit given to them in their hearts, but did not know either church totalitarianism, or even direct clerical leadership, for the teachings and advice of the great Russian Elders (at least the Optina Hermitage) purified, deepened and wised human souls, but never claimed authoritarian leadership Russian creative talent. And if we pass our thoughts from Pushkin to Lermontov, Gogol, Tyutchev, L.N. Tolstoy, A.K. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Leskov, Chekhov, then we will see the brilliant flowering of the Russian spirit from the roots of Orthodoxy, but not under the leadership churches. And we will see the same thing in other branches of Russian art, in Russian science, in Russian law-making, in Russian medicine, in Russian pedagogy and in everything. The Orthodox Church prayed, taught and gave grace, but otherwise left the initiative of work and contemplation to the Russian people. We think and hope that this will continue to be the case.

What do we expect from our shepherds? A great struggle for religious purification and renewal began in Russia. We must foresee that this will be a struggle of great tension and long breathing. Russian people must regain their integral faith, in which heart and mind, contemplation and will will merge into a single stream of such strength that instinct itself will respond to it; then new creative ideas will be found and a new Christian culture will be created. We must expect advice and help in this matter from Christian shepherds. And the Orthodox clergy will find within themselves spiritual strength, wisdom and sincerity for this feat. What do we, Orthodox Christians, want from our shepherds? What requests do we go to them with? How can they deserve our love and our trust? I will not talk about theological education and preparation for spiritual shepherding, insightful and careful in personal communication. It goes without saying that clergy should know Scripture, Tradition and the entire teaching of the Church better than we do, and understand all this more deeply than we do, in order to help us in times of doubt and in the search for understanding. They must possess the mental and spiritual art of a shepherd, the deep feeling and clear gaze of a confessor who insightfully understands the individual human soul and is able to show it the right path in difficult moments of life. This knowledge is necessary, this art is precious; There can be no two opinions here. But it seems to me that we expect great things from them, what is most important to us is the true and living spirit of the Gospel, that spirit that testifies to us of Christ’s grace. I mean prayer power, a loving heart, and a free, living Christian conscience... What can a person receive theological instruction that comes from an abstract, dry, logical mind that does not contemplate Christ the Savior with its heart and does not help us see Him? What significance does abstract “exegesis” or deductive argument have in the contemplative and prayerful spaces of lived religiosity? Can they give religious evidence to a soul seeking God’s light and fire, yearning for the living God? How many times, listening abroad to the conversations and sermons of the heterodox clergy, have we thought about how rich they are in book education and how stingy they are in the gifts of the heart and spirit! How alien this is to the Russian Orthodox soul! Truly, there is no better religious teaching, no more effective preaching service, than the power and sincerity of personal prayer. For faith strengthens and spreads not from logical arguments, and not from the efforts of a compelling will, and not from the repetition of words and formulas, but from a living perception of God, from prayer fire, from the purification, uplifting and enlightenment of hearts, from living contemplation, from real perception Thank you. I believe that much depends on the priest’s ability to sincerely and selflessly pray with his heart, for if he is capable of this, and if he prays like this, in his solitude, then his church prayer will ignite, purify and enlighten the hearts of his parishioners. This flame of solitary prayer will burn in his church services, in his preaching, and in his life’s affairs. And we, his parishioners, will immediately feel in our hearts that “the Spirit Himself” is praying in him with “groanings that cannot be expressed” (Rom. VSH, 26) and that these sighs are transmitted to us along ineffable paths. A shepherd, who is characterized by this sincerity and power of prayer, is, as it were, a “burning bush” in his parish: his parishioners, sometimes without noticing it or understanding it themselves, become accomplices of his prayer; they convey the warmth of his faith; they join in his spiritual flight. His teachings are perceived in a special way: not only by the mind, but also by the heart, a living conscience and an honest will. His conversations are full of creative spiritual experience; they are imbued with living Christian contemplation; they come from the heart and are perceived with the whole soul. And even a simple meeting with him is experienced as consolation and silent encouragement.

And this is based on a certain religious law, according to which the depth of faith grows and strengthens in prayer, for prayer is the grace-filled ascension of the soul to God, illuminating, purifying and confirming. This is why the shepherd must be a living source and a living school of prayer.

The second thing we want to find in him is a living, loving heart. After all, the best Christian gospel and comfort comes from kindness and heartfelt understanding. While human feeling withers and stalls in mentally abstract theological constructions, while the mind coldly argues and pronounces judgments, quarrels in debates and turns to stone in hatred, so long does the entire revelation of the Lord Christ remain inaccessible to man. Heartless people do not comprehend the most important thing in the Gospel; but having understood it, they do not live by it and do not implement it. Callous greed makes a person blind and deaf. “Rivers of living water” (John VII, 38) flow only for loving people; for love opens sight and hearing to man, both for the revelation of Christ and for the life and suffering of other people.

If a priest has this love, then it is felt in his church prayer, heard in his sermon, and revealed in his deeds. Whoever talks with him or helps him has a special feeling: he feels that he has received from his confessor something precious, vital and encouraging, that he has experienced the light and warmth of spiritual fire, that he has felt living kindness, that he has come closer to what Christ meant when he spoke about love. For a living heart has a reserve of kindness for everyone: comfort for the grieving, help for the needy, advice for the helpless, a kind word for everyone, a kind smile for flowers and birds. And simply interacting with such a person becomes an imperceptibly living school of heartfelt sympathy, loving tact, and Christian wisdom. And all this is beautiful and gracious, for a true confessor is the bearer of the Christian spirit, the spirit of love and heartfelt contemplation.

And the third thing we are looking for and expecting from our shepherd is a free and creative Christian conscience. This conscience must live in him as an independent and independent force, as a criterion measure of good and evil, a measure by which we could test, straighten and strengthen our own conscience. Where we sometimes helplessly doubt and hesitate, he, as a master of conscience, must see clearly and deeply; where we wander and are mistaken, he must know and show the straight path; where we ask, he must have an answer. He must support us in temptations and enticements; he must be our support in hesitation and exhaustion. He must immediately see where there is dishonesty, insincerity, betrayal; but at the same time - to maintain justice in court and condemnation. For a conscientious Christian does not exaggerate, neither in affirmation nor in denial; his judgment comes from objectively seeing humility, but is pronounced with courage and strength, for it is not he who pronounces it, but the objective fire in him. We need a sincere and frank confessor, incorruptible in anything and everything, not greedy, sinless before the powerful and free from lust for power; we need a living hearth of Christian conscience, with a pure flame and gentle

world.

We ourselves must provide him with an independent and dignified life: we must once and for all renounce the demand for bribes in order to extinguish both in ourselves and in our pastor the idea that prayer is “bought” and grace is “sold”; so that there is no trade about the shrine; so that the pastor could pray freely, without thinking about “profit,” and the parishioner could turn to him for help, without taking into account his funds and expenses. Grace and money are foreign to each other; it is unworthy to measure God's work with a coin; It is impossible to humiliate your shepherd with need and extortion. The work of the church is a work of spirit, love and conscience, a work of prayer and contemplation; and parishioners must relieve their pastor of concern for earthly things, providing him with what is necessary and worthy.

I think that everything expressed here applies not only to Orthodox communities and pastors, but also to clergy of all Christian, and, perhaps, in the last, deepest dimension, not only Christian confessions. In any case, wherever the true spirit of Christ blows, parishioners

they will be happy to have in their shepherd a living source of prayer, love and Christian conscience; for these three foundations constitute the most precious and strongest bond of the Christian Church in general. At the same time, it does not seem to me that the expectations I have expressed are too high and difficult to implement, for the work of a priest, pastor and confessor is not an ordinary profession, similar to others, but requires a special calling and special gifts. These gifts are not given to everyone; but to whom they are not given, he should not encroach on this title. Here it is not so much a matter of “knowledge” and “skill” as of “inspiration”; not so much in ritual literature, but in the living fullness of feeling; not in the fulfillment of the “requirement,” but in the spirit of its fulfillment. A pastor who does not know about these requirements and has not strengthened his heart in them - on what will he establish his faith and prayer, how will he lead his parishioners to God, how will he fill his temple, how will he strengthen his parish?.. I ask and do not I find the answer...

This is the main thing. This is the most significant thing in the question of the future religious dispensation of Russia.

The main task of the coming Russia We are not given the opportunity to foresee the future course of events. We do not know when and in what order the communist revolution in Russia will end. But we know and understand what the main task of Russian national salvation and construction after the revolution will be; it will consist in highlighting the best people to the top - people devoted to Russia, nationally feeling, state-minded, strong-willed, ideologically creative, bringing to the people not revenge or disintegration, but the spirit of liberation, justice and super-class unity. If the selection of these new Russian people succeeds and happens quickly, then Russia will be restored and reborn within a few years; if not, then Russia will move from revolutionary disasters into a long period of post-revolutionary demoralization, all sorts of disintegration and international dependence. Every state is organized and built by its leading layer, by the living selection of its ruling forces. The minority always and everywhere rules: in the most complete and consistent democracy, the majority does not rule, but only singles out its “elite” and gives it general, guiding instructions. And so, the fate of states is determined by the quality of the leading layer: the successes of a state are its successes; the political failures and misfortunes of the people testify to their unsatisfactoriness or directly to their insolvency - perhaps to their lack of will, lack of ideas, myopia, or perhaps to their depravity and corruption. This is the fate of all peoples: they pay with humiliation and suffering for the shortcomings of their leading stratum. However, these humiliations and sufferings are not only the painful consequences of mistakes or crimes committed; they are at the same time a preparation for the future, a school for the new elite; they last only until this new national elite becomes stronger religiously, morally and politically. This is the meaning of historical failures like the Russian communist revolution: in suffering, a new spirit is born and tempered, which will lead the country in the future.

This birth and strengthening of a new spirit has now been taking place in Russia for more than thirty years. It happens behind the scenes, in hidden silence. We can be firmly confident that Russian hearts have not stopped loving Russia and have not forgotten how to believe, but have learned to correctly see evil and malice, have learned to appreciate their history, have learned and are still learning private prayer and mature volitional decisions. This process began in the early years of the revolution, and many of us participated in it and observed it. Now the Russian people, like never before, have been given evil state power in historical experience - the evidence of lies, vulgarity and violence, cruelty and enslavement was given. And all this - with the long-term impossibility of protest, with the impossibility of adequately responding to the unworthy and outrageous. This accumulation of evil experience, this increase in indignation and fear put every living soul before a choice: either to bend, adapt and come to terms with what was happening, to become a “catcher” and drown out faith and conscience; or develop a protective mask of conditional “loyalty” and go into the spiritual catacomb. In this spiritual catacomb, people learned to focus on the main thing and neglect the unimportant in life; they learned to light a lamp invisible to their enemies and, by its light, create a new hidden culture; they learned to pray in a new way and love in a new way and inwardly, in a silent whisper, to pronounce oaths of service and fidelity. They were spiritually renewed.

In the early years, the majority of Russian people wavered between these two possibilities: between spiritual decay and renewal. But some uncountable minority took this path at once. It is possible that few of them survived these painful decades and that few will live to see the rebirth of Russia. But they can be sure that not a single effort, not a single breath was wasted. Their task was to immediately weave - in all this collapse and despite all this disintegration - the fabric of a new Russia and gradually draw more and more people into this fabric. They could be sure that the evidence of evil given to the Russian people would incessantly

replenish their ranks, slowly but surely increasing the number of those being renewed. This was the meaning of that confession and martyrdom, which the best people of Russia went to from the very beginning, accepting persecution, arrests, trial, exile, slow dying and execution. They understood that they were called to resist and stand to the end; that with their seemingly doomed and hopeless “standing” they are doing the most important and necessary thing, serving that Russia in which one must believe, which is now seeking spiritual freedom for itself and, not succumbing to temptations, is seeking Christian brotherhood and justice. This is how the holy martyrs built the Orthodox Church, and the political heroes built the civic nature of Russia. They did their job and achieved a lot. And if we read in Soviet newspapers confessions that “believing youth have gone to higher educational institutions,” that in Soviet Russia priests “captivate the most lively minds,” and that “today’s believers are completely different people compared to what they were in the beginning revolution"; if we see that half of the Russian population, despite twenty years of persecution, openly classified themselves as believers in the census, then we must pay tribute to the feat of the Russian heroic minority. From here will come the revival of Russia, for here is hidden a living source of a new Russian quality.

The causes of the Russian Revolution are complex and deep; entire studies will be written about them later. But if we translate them into the language of spiritual quality, then we can say the following. Before the revolution, Russia became impoverished not in spirituality and kindness, but in the strength of spirit and goodness. There were many good and kind people in Russia; but good men lacked character, and good men lacked will and determination. There were many people of honor and honesty in Russia; but they were scattered, not united with each other, not organized. Spiritual culture in Russia grew and multiplied: science grew stronger, the arts blossomed, and the renewal of the Church took shape and matured. But in all this there was no effective force, no true idea, no confident and mature self-awareness, no collected strength; there was a lack of national education and character. There was a lot of youthful fermentation and vague temptations; there was a lack of mature objectivity and energy in self-affirmation. The state of the Russian national economy corresponded to this it was growing rapidly, but had not yet found either mature forms, or organization, or real penetration into the depth of natural wealth. The property-owning peasantry was just beginning to grow stronger; industrial enterprise had endless possibilities before it; the landowner economy has not yet recovered from its ills - extensiveness and noble amateurism; the workers had not yet found their national place and identity. The middle stratum has not yet strengthened in its property basis, in its state idea and will; and the infection of sentimental socialism and non-resistance had not yet been overcome. The immaturity and looseness of the national character corresponded to the immaturity and looseness of the national economy. This peculiar groundlessness and looseness of the healthy forces of the people was opposed by an untapped reserve of sick and destructive forces. The memory of serfdom and the age-old dream of land redistribution and anarchy still fermented among the peasantry; the agrarian overpopulation of the community teased the people with hopelessness and supported the illusion of a quantitatively inexhaustible land fund; the remnants of peasant inequality and lack of full rights completed this mood. The ferment of the working proletariat was fueled by peasant discontent, the class position of the workers, and the utopian revolutionary propaganda of socialism. The abundance of temperamental national minorities, led by their ambitious semi-intelligentsia, created a whole cadre of centrifugally minded “figures”. These “figures” with their radical revolutionary sympathies poured into the all-Russian reservoir of the confrontational intelligentsia and the unsettled, eternally dissatisfied, wandering semi-intelligentsia; and all this together made the qualitative selection of the state elite extremely difficult. During the nineteenth century, the sick tradition of the revolutionary front was formed and strengthened; it was believed that a “decent” person should be radical and uncompromising; he must condemn and deny everything that comes from

Imperial Government; he must, if not directly be a socialist, then “sympathize” and behind the scenes “help” the socialist parties. This tradition worked for a whole century to isolate and compromise the Russian Imperial government, assuming outstanding democratic-republican talents in the Russian people and presenting socialism as the surest criterion of democracy.

Pre-revolutionary Russia held on and was built not by these centrifugal forces, but in spite of these latter. The necessary selection of the leading stratum, the ruling bureaucracy and the cultural community was carried out despite all the difficulties, despite the isolating propaganda and the terror of the revolutionary parties. Ideological and honest people filled the ranks of the Russian army, the Russian navy and the Russian bureaucracy. The Academy of the General Staff has not become scarce. The Governing Senate stood at an exceptional height, whose cassation decisions contain a treasure trove of legal wisdom and justice. Russia had reason to be proud of its courts, its finances, its science, its art and its theaters. It had first-class diplomacy, excellent military intelligence and an experienced, dedicated cadre of public teachers. And when P. A. Stolypin took up the task of expanding the rural community and resettlement, he managed to select such a cadre of officials, about the quality of which there could be no two opinions.

Along with this, Russia has put forward a precious layer of non-official public: ideological and experienced figures of zemstvo and city self-government, an excellent cadre of doctors of the national-Russian intuitive school, an ideological and humane bar, talented merchants with traditions and on a grand scale, a cadre of energetic co-operators and agronomists. All this built Russia, gradually freeing itself (by the force of things, the course of life, the realism of objective tasks) from dreamy fermentation and growing into the mechanism of the state. What Russia needed most was peace and the completion of the Stolypin reform; the last thing she needed was revolution and socialism. Fate judged her differently: she sent her an unprepared and unsuccessful war, a socialist bloody revolution and the systematic destruction of almost all of her historically suffered culture. Historical scars and healing scars were revealed, souls became sick with hatred and revenge, became muddied to the very bottom, and the rising social bottom swallowed up its own, Russian national elite.

The outbreak of the communist revolution not only destroyed the old state, the old economy and the old culture in Russia, but sought, first of all, to sweep away the old leading layer and put a new one in its place. The first, negative task did not present any special difficulties: to remove, dismiss, deprive of property and housing, condemn to hunger and cold, arrest, exile, shoot - all this destructive business required only determination and cruelty. But the revolutionaries could not succeed in solving the positive problem - the creation of a new leading layer. Here we come across one of the main internal contradictions of the revolution. From the very beginning, the revolution turned not to the best, state-building forces of the people, but to its destructive and unbridled elements. It attracted not honest, faithful, patriotic people accustomed to discipline and responsibility, but irresponsible, demoralized, unprincipled, careerists, internationalists, robbers, deserters, and adventurers. This is a simple, historically indisputable fact. She needed people who were bad and cruel, capable of corrupting the army, seizing other people's property, informing and killing. Along with this, she appealed to ignorant and naive people who were ready to believe in the immediate revolutionary socialist reorganization of Russia.

And now there is no state regime, especially one that is “creatively renewing”

the regime cannot be built by such people and on such vicious foundations. A habitual offender who has made a political profession out of crime will remain a offender even after he is ordered to build a new life. The revolution gave the people the “right to dishonor” (Dostoevsky) and, having seduced them with this “right”, it began its selection, relying on “dishonor”. By doing this, she undermined the people’s legal consciousness, mixed up “allowed” and “forbidden,” confused “mine” and “yours,” abolished all legal boundaries and undermined all social and cultural restraints. What “leading layer” could have been selected based on these characteristics in this atmosphere? New people have come - despising the rule of law, denying individual rights, thirsting for predatory enrichment, deprived of knowledge, experience and skills; semi-literate nominees, state-inept “illegals” (Lenin’s expression), criminals who have adapted to the communists. The revolution legalized criminality and thereby doomed itself to failure. The revolution turned the robber into an official and forced its bureaucracy to rule by robber methods. As a result, politics became saturated with crime, and crime became nationalized. Years passed. On these foundations, a new communist bureaucracy emerged and strengthened: intimidated and servilely flattering in the face of power; nosy, greedy and thieving in matters of service; arbitrary and merciless in relation to subordinates and the people; trembling, selfish, lied in everything; accustomed to political denunciation and unaccustomed to their own, objective and responsible judgment; ready to lead his country, by order from above, to extinction and destruction. And all the failures of the revolution are explained not only by the unnaturalness of its program and its plans, but also by the failure of the layer it selected. When the collapse of the communist system becomes an accomplished fact and real Russia begins to revive, the Russian people will see themselves without a leading layer. Of course, the place of this layer will be temporarily occupied by sedentary and transient people, but their presence will not resolve the issue. The former, prerevolutionary elite disintegrated, died or was reborn; and what remains of it will be only a meager, albeit precious, remnant of the former national-historical heritage. And revolutionary selection will partly have to completely disappear due to its inconsistency and incorrigibility, and partly change for the better as if on the fly. What Russia will need first of all and most of all will be a new leading layer. This new elite, this new Russian national intelligentsia, must learn all the necessary lessons from the all-Russian revolutionary collapse. Moreover, she must comprehend the Russian historical past and extract from it the “mind of history” inherent in it. And history teaches us a lot. 1. First of all, the leading stratum is neither a closed “caste” nor a hereditary or hereditary “class”. In its composition, it is something living, mobile, always replenished with new, capable people and always ready to free itself from the incapable. This is an old and healthy Russian view. It was put forward by Ivan the Terrible, who realized the need for a new selection, but tragically distorted and destroyed it in the “oprichnina”. Peter the Great returned to this view, putting forward new people to the first and non-first places in the state, starting from Menshikov and Lefort, Shafirov and Yaguzhinsky and ending with his own students sent abroad. Since then, this tradition has given Russia Lomonosov and whole galaxies of famous scientists; the brilliant sculptor Fedot Shubin and a long line of famous artists from the people; a number of brilliant figures of the Catherine era, Speransky, Skobelev, Witte, Gubonin, Savva Mamontov, Tretyakov, Lavr Kornilov and his associates.

There is a certain general rule here: a person of honor and intelligence, talent and heart is not asked about his “ancestors,” for he himself is an “ancestor” for future offspring. The qualitative, spiritual charge inherent in man puts forward and must

put him in first place, regardless of his pedigree. The hereditary tradition of honesty, courage and service is a great thing, but it cannot make a fool smart, or a weak-willed person a called organizer of life. We all, from the ruler to the common man in the street, must learn to recognize people of a qualitatively spiritual charge and push them forward in every possible way, “moving apart” for them; only in this way will we be able to faithfully replenish our national elite in all areas of life. This demand is not democratic, as is commonly thought, but moralpatriotic and national-state. This is the only way we will recreate Russia: the road of honesty, intelligence and talent!.. 2. Belonging to the leading stratum - from the minister to the justice of the peace, from the bishop to the officer, from the professor to the people's teacher" - is not a privilege, but a difficult and responsible duty. This is neither an “easy and cheerful life” nor “resting on one’s laurels.” A dark, uneducated person can be forgiven for thinking that “real” work is precisely bodily and only bodily work, and that all mental and spiritual work is “pretense” and “parasitism”; but a person of spiritual or intellectual labor has no right to succumb to this view. At one time, the Russian populists succumbed to him; L. N. Tolstoy bowed before him, having mocked spiritual labor in his revolutionary demagogic fairy tale “About Ivan the Fool.” Tolstoy’s call for “simplification” was not only a protest against excessive luxury (which would be natural), but also a denial of all “non-physical” labor. This view gradually infected wide circles of the Russian intelligentsia. The “repentant gentleman” failed to find a measure for his “repentance”: he not only began to reproach himself for his insufficient inclination towards fraternal justice, but became infected with cultural nihilism in matters of law, state, property, science and art. This largely prepared the Bolshevik revolution with its equalization in matters of housing, food, clothing, education and property: “equalize” and “simplify” means lowering the level and undermining culture.

Leading your people is not a privilege, but a duty of the best people in the country. This responsibility requires from a person not only special natural qualities, training and education, but also a special kind of life in the sense of leisure, housing, food and clothing. These are people of a different mental and nervous organization, people of spiritual concentration, people of different needs and tastes, different life tension and rhythm. The thinker and the artist need silence. A scientist and a judge need a library. The official must be provided for and independent from the controlled inhabitants, etc. If this is a “privilege”, then it is a privilege that rewards superior work and obliges him to perform quality service. This “privilege” is nothing to be ashamed of; it must be accepted with dignity and responsibility, without allowing prejudice and envy to pour their poison into the soul. Rank in life is necessary and inevitable. It is justified by quality and covered by work and responsibility. The rank must be matched by strictness towards oneself in the one who is higher, and unenviable respect in the one who is lower. Only with this true sense of rank will we recreate Russia. End of envy! Make way for quality and responsibility! 3. At the same time, the bad tradition of “feeding”, that is, private profit from a public position, must be eradicated in Russia. A government official, just like an employee of a zemstvo or city government, must be content with the salary he receives (“salary”) and not supplement it with any “profits” or “extras” from the population he serves. The time when the state center distributed positions for “feeding” - the time of appanage-feudal and, further, class-serfdom - has passed irrevocably. A governor who lives by extortion (“the earth loves manure, and the governor brings food”); a judge who sells sentences and despises the law (“if I want, I judge by it, if I want, I sit on it”), the official is a bribe-taker and embezzler (“the treasury is a staggering cow, only the lazy one does not milk it”) - all these are sick and crooked phenomena of Russian history were in

resurrected on an unprecedented scale by the Russian revolution and must finally fade away along with it. Revolutionary all-selling; revolutionary waste; general revolutionary theft are explained by the confiscation of property and the economic and bureaucratic bedlam that was carried out by the revolution itself: people robbed by it returned to themselves what they had taken wherever they could, and did not consider such “self-reward” shameful. Psychologically, this is understandable; but, in essence, this is demoralization and plunder of the state. Public positions, from the smallest to the largest, should give a person a satisfying reward and should be experienced by him not as “feeding,” but as service. A person who is not satisfied with his legal salary does not have the right to take the corresponding position. A person who has taken a public position has no right to use it for private gain. An end to bribery, embezzlement and all corruption!.. Every power, every leadership obliges us to self-restraint!.. Only by this will we revive Russia. 4. Further, one of the main dangers of the leading layer is in too high an assessment of state power, its significance and calling. State power has its limits, indicated precisely by the fact that it is power that approaches a person from the outside, prescribes and prohibits him, regardless of his consent or disagreement, and threatens him with punishment. This means that all creative states of soul and spirit, presupposing love, freedom and good will, are not subject to the jurisdiction of state power and cannot be prescribed by it. The state cannot demand faith, prayer, love, kindness and convictions from citizens. It cannot regulate scientific, religious and artistic creativity. It cannot prescribe the expression of feelings or views. It should not interfere with moral, family and everyday life. It should not, unless absolutely necessary, hamper the economic initiative and economic creativity of people.

The leading layer is called upon to lead, not to persecute, not to intimidate, not to enslave people. It is called upon to honor and encourage the free creativity of the led people. He does not command (with the exception of the army), but organizes, and, moreover, only within the limits of general and public interest. You can lead only free people; Drivers are needed only for cattle, overseers are needed only for slaves. The best way to lead is by living example. Adventurers, careerists and predators cannot lead their people; and if they lead you, they will only lead you to a pit. State leadership has its limits, which are determined, firstly, by the dignity and freedom of the personal spirit, and secondly, by the initiative of a person’s creative instinct. The end of terror as a system of government... The end of totalitarian omniscience and omnipresence!.. Russia needs a government that faithfully observes its limits. 5. To this it must be added that the new Russian selection should build Russia not by arbitrariness, but by law. There will be laws and government regulations. These laws must be respected and executed by the officials themselves, for the official is the first person bound by the law. The idea that the law binds the average person and unbridles the arbitrariness of the ruler, condemned many times in Russian folk proverbs, but revived by the Soviet revolution, must disappear forever. The law binds everyone: the Sovereign, the minister, the policeman, the judge, and the ordinary citizen. There is only one “deviation” from the law: according to conscience, in the direction of justice, with the assumption of full responsibility. The formal, literal, pedantically mortal application of the law is not legality, but a caricature of it. “Extreme legality” should never turn into “extreme injustice.” Or according to Russian proverbs: “not every rod bends according to the law”; and “to do mercy is to speak with God.” This means that every application of the law requires impartial observation of life (intuition of fact) and impartial decisive discretion (intuition of law). Not enough law. A must see live event. And further, one must see through the law: 1. The intention of the legislator and 2. The highest goal of law (freedom, peace, justice). Therefore, any application of the law presupposes in the soul of the applying official a living creative legal consciousness (legal

understanding and legal conscience). And so, in this sphere there should be no place for any selfinterest, no crookedness, or, as the Russian chronicle expressed it, no “theft” and “cowardice”: no bribe, no indirect personal gain, no class interest, no kinship, no flattery. service, no indulging, no concealment, in a word, nothing from which pre-reform Russia groaned, with which the post-reform (after 1864) law and order so successfully fought, and which blossomed with the flowers of shame and scandal in the era of the revolution. The future Russia needs not arbitrariness, not tyranny and not administrative corruption, but a legal order established by a living and incorruptible legal consciousness. The rule of this legal consciousness is expressed in an old Russian poetic proverb: So that your judgment does not make others ill, Discuss the matter when everything is quiet within you, And then always with prayer, So that the Lord enlightens you... Otherwise, the trouble is: Without intent, you will crush the innocent And after the matter you will not correct it...

6. Further, the new Russian elite in the matter of government must guard and strengthen the authority of state power. It is impossible to build law and order without this authority. He was shaken even under the Imperial government; it was shaken and undermined under the Provisional Government; it was restored again, albeit in illegal, brutal and humiliating forms, by the Soviet government. The new Russian selection is intended to root the authority of the state on completely different, noble and legal grounds: on the basis of religious contemplation and respect for spiritual freedom; based on fraternal legal consciousness and patriotic feelings; based on the dignity of power, its strength and general trust in it. It must be remembered that this authority is a national, historically accumulating property. It is built up from generation to generation; he lives in souls invisibly, but decisively; it is called upon to serve as an instrument of national salvation. The revolution first shook it and then compromised it with blood, the party-class regime and the totalitarianism of the communist system. And so the struggle for the future Russia will turn out to be a struggle for the new authority of the new national-Russian government, because an authoritative government will not defend or revive Russia.

7. All these requirements and conditions will, however, be imperfect and non-defining if the latter is not met. The new Russian selection must be animated by a creative national idea. The people and the state do not need an unprincipled intelligentsia and cannot lead them... And where will they lead them, wandering in the dark and in uncertainty? But the previous ideas of the Russian intelligentsia were erroneous and burned in the fire of revolution and war. Neither the idea of “populism”, nor the idea of “democracy”, nor the idea of “socialism”; neither the idea of “imperialism” nor the idea of “totalitarianism” - none of them will inspire the new Russian intelligentsia and will lead Russia to good. We need a new idea – religious in origin and national in spiritual meaning. Only such an idea can revive and recreate the future Russia.

The Russian people need spiritual renewal In fact, what else does he need instead of that systematic violence that is called “socialism” or “communism”, and instead of that lied chaos that in most cases represents the so-called “democratic system”? We reject both this violence and this chaos. We tell them no! But this is not enough. Rejection does not define anything yet... A person creates by affirming, not by rejecting. It is not enough to reject the abomination of communism and the depressing, corruptingly ruinous stupidity of socialism: it is necessary to justify and establish private property... It is not enough to reveal and prove that nationwide self-deception that is usually carried out in democracy: we must find that healthy outcome that would not threaten the state with either tyranny or a totalitarian system , nor the decay coming from “party democracy”... And let them not tell us that our proposals are fantastic, utopian or impracticable! Let them look for, find and offer their own, not “our own” compromised and destructive, but their own – new, creative, life-true. Of course, the easiest thing is to insist on a failed invention: there is no need to think and no creativity is required; All that remains is to repeat your point, take over openly and secretly the propaganda apparatus, silence or simply dirty the enemy and... fall into the abyss.

But we do not want and do not dare to do this: before us is great Russia, its destruction or revival. And we know very well what exactly the failed inventors want for her. So, what do we offer and what will we advocate for life? First of all, we do not and will not believe in any “external reform” that could save us on its own, regardless of the internal, mental and spiritual change of a person. There is no such “electoral system”, no such state structure, no such church system, no such school system that would promise humanity, and in particular, especially Russia, renewal and revival, regardless of what his imagination contemplates and what will be the internal structure of his thoughts and moods and what will be the affairs of his life... It is impossible for crappy people with an evil will to renew and improve public life. The greedy will use all means; the corrupt one will sell everything; a person in whom there is no God will turn his whole life into a secret and obvious crime. External things in themselves do not provide a person with either spirituality or spiritual salvation; no political system will impart to a person neither love, nor kindness, nor a sense of responsibility, nor honesty, nor nobility. True renewal comes not from the outside to the inside, not from form to content, not from appearance to essence, but vice versa. And it’s strange, even scary, to prove this 2000 years after the birth of Christ; strange because people seem to have passed Christianity by; It’s scary because we don’t see how and how to restore and approve the rejected revelation.

Everything great and sacred comes from within - from heartfelt contemplation; from the depths from comprehending and accepting love; from the mysterious spirituality of instinct; from inflamed will; from the discerning mind; from a purified imagination. If inside is vague, unclean, evil, greedy, nasty, then no external form, no prohibition, no threat, no “suffrage,” especially universal, equal and direct, will help. We know: it is not our business to teach other peoples. They themselves made their own history for thousands of years; they themselves have mutilated their spiritual act, contributing to its impoverishment and formalization; They have now reached spiritual emptiness, spiritually meaningless technology and self-sufficient sports, so-called “modernism”, in which evil is presented as the main thing, and good is despised as unnecessary sentimentality; they themselves became victims of empty form in science, in politics, in art, in the cult of the machine and in everything else. It’s not for us to teach them, it’s not for us to correct them. And their complacency would make all our attempts ridiculous. Just listen to what Catholic prelates say about “God’s broom”, sweeping Orthodoxy out of world culture... Listen to how Protestants are going to “for the first time” bring the light of the Gospel into the “dark jungle

Eastern Russian paganism”... Delve into the arrogance with which the European “civilized” peoples discuss the “perfection of their constitutional forms”, not seeing anything special in the fact that the candidate for the Northern. America for President is wiping his face, strewn with rotten tomatoes and rotten eggs, neither in the fact that the formation of a workable ministry in France is becoming an insurmountable task, nor in the way the parliamentary police are taking away the massacre of the gentlemen of the Roman senators, nor in the demoralization that the English gentlemen have created socialists in organizing medical “care” for the sick... There was a time when the Russian intelligentsia considered the Western political system a “model” for Russia. That time has passed. We have seen and observed enough. We have learned that true construction is creativity, not imitation. We saw the true face of the West: first in Soviet communism, then in European socialism and, finally, in what is called the “free system”, in reality led from behind the scenes. Only people who are politically short-sighted or naively gullible can believe in the freedom of this system. For freedom does not at all come down to everyone voting on all issues; its roots lie much deeper, and it is expressed in much more significant manifestations, spiritual, creative and everyday.

So, we cannot believe that the revival and renewal of Russia will come from the installation in it of some other, non-communist, perhaps directly anti-communist form of government as such. I have met people who are unshakably confident that if they “proclaim a monarchy” in Russia, everything “will go smoothly and everything will fall into place.” You listen to such people and are surprised: for them, history seems to not exist. After all, a monarchical system cannot, as they say, “hang in the air”; at least two prerequisites, two foundations are necessary: firstly, the correct monarchical structure of the soul among the people, which could most accurately be expressed in words: one must be able to have a Tsar; and, secondly, those social forces are needed that would bear the God-given Sovereign - with devotion, fidelity, service, honor, honesty, and especially with that truth-telling in the face of the Sovereign, which he himself needs as “political air.” Do these prerequisites exist in Russia? Russia, after all, had the good fortune of being a monarchy and for some reason fell apart... Why? Is it because she has forgotten how to have a Tsar? Is it not due to the predominance of ambitious intrigue over loyalty and devotion? Is it because the monarchism of career has supplanted the monarchism of service? Well, has things improved since then? And significantly? Have the Russian people learned to have a Tsar? Or will they again betray him to be torn to pieces for their private profits? – This is what the “proclaimers” should think about. The monarchy must be prepared religiously, morally and socially; otherwise the “proclamation” will turn out to be an empty word and the beginning of a new decay...

But does this mean that we can expect great success from the “proclamation” of a republic? Only people who do not understand that a republic is always an expression of a special mental structure can think this way; that it is necessary to think and feel in a republican way in order for the republic to arise, strengthen and succeed. Where did the Russian people study and learn to think and feel this way? The “provisional government”, which conspired with the revolutionary crowd? Or the communists, who cleverly brought the revolutionary crowd to their knees? The Republican puts the cause of freedom above all else. Where did the Russian people learn this love of freedom? Isn't it in communist convict camps?.. Freedom is the ability to combine independence with loyalty; and yet both of these principles have been trampled upon in Russia for four decades now... Republicanism is the political art of building a state under a loose, dependent, undermined and indecisive supreme power. One can imagine what will begin in “republican” Russia after forty years of totalitarianism!..

To “proclaim” a republic in Russia means returning to the empty phrase-mongering of the Provisional Government and repeating the disastrous experiment of that time in a new, incomparably worse form. The state is not a mechanism, but an organism;

and every true and lasting form of life must be prepared organically in it. Let us only add to this that we have no reason to believe in the “organic preparation” of an allRussian republic or many small republics, neither historical, nor geographical, nor economic, nor cultural, nor spiritual, nor religious. One must not know or understand Russia at all politically in order to be a Russian republican. So: the Russian people need spiritual revival and renewal.

About objectivity and venality If I had to express and consolidate in one word the essence of the modern world turmoil, then I would say the word “venality.” The more this turmoil deepens and takes root, the more people lose the habit of serving and the more often and shamelessly they think about prey. Once infected with this, a person gradually gets used to focusing not on the Business and not on the Object, but to be interested in his personal “benefit”, his material profit or other personal and everyday gain. The most important issue in his life becomes his success, his “increase,” his prosperity. Sometimes he covers up this concern of his, the main concern of his existence, with words about “class interest,” or “party success,” or “successful deeds”; There are corresponding doctrines, ranging from “economic materialism” (the most important thing is the possession of the instruments of production and the class interest of the proletariat) and ending with “mercantilism” (the most important thing is the favorable situation and commercial prosperity of the country). But doctrine is for the majority an unnecessary luxury or burden: this majority does not theorize, but simply “practices,” asking themselves: “What good does this do me?”

Whatever a person does, whatever he does, wherever he serves, he is guided by his inner motives and cannot help but be aware of the purpose for which he does his work. And in every good deed there is some higher, super-personal task, an objective goal that gives the highest meaning to everything that Pushkin denoted with the words: “life is a mouse’s race,” and indicates to a person what and how he should do. This is the Cause that is truly worth living for, for which it is worth fighting even to death, and for which it is worth dying. A person imbued with this meaning, working in the name of this Cause, feels forward, responsible, involved and included in a certain objective “frame” and “front”. What he does turns out to be no longer service, but service. He carries an idea in his heart and knows what ideological pathos is, that is, inspiration that raises personal strength and expands personal capabilities. He will immediately understand if we say that service inspires him; or if we remember Suvorov’s exclamation: “Gentlemen officers, what a delight! to convey to others... - the inspired rise of the soul contemplating perfection, that which constitutes the very essence of Christianity.

It is in vain to think that “perfection” is an idle word, that it is not feasible in earthly life and only testifies to the naivety of the person who pronounces it and takes it seriously. “What can we say about perfection? We are all weak, sinful, passionate people, and for this reason alone, easily converted to evil... There are no perfect people, there never were, and there never are. And whoever considers himself perfect has fallen into the temptation of pride and selfexaltation”... I have heard such speeches more than once in Western Europe, and moreover, precisely from the lips of heterodox clergy. And every time I asked the pastor who instructed me in surprise: “Why does it say in the Gospel - be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect?” (Matt. 5.48, cf. Luke 6.35–36). And each time this was followed by a confused pause. My objector clearly did not understand something most important and profound, namely: the fullness of perfection, of course, is available to the only Lord; but the will to perfection, but the demand for “the best” from oneself - at every single moment of one’s service - is that very precious Gospel sun that was left to us by the Son of God and from the rays of which the human conscience was renewed and became a Christian conscience. Of course it’s true: there are no perfect people, there never were, and there never are. But the conscientious will tirelessly calls a person to seek, find and implement the best, most perfect mental order and the best possible outcome from every situation in life. She calls you to see the highest meaning of your life; to find yourself a super-personal task, your objective goal; to transform “cases” into “Business” and

“service” to Service; to always feel responsible and forthcoming, included and included in the spiritual-objective “frame” and “front”; to partake of the happiness of ideological pathos and that inspired elation of the soul that is given to it precisely from the contemplation of perfection. This means that a person’s religiosity does not end with Sunday worship, but unfolds in life and takes over all his activities. And the first thing it does is it renews internal motives, that is, the driving forces of his life. She contrasts the psychology of objective service with the psychology of personal success and production. It makes a person unsaleable, but holistically objective. Corruption and corruption should not at all mean betrayal of an idea for money. Such betrayal is only the crudest form of corruption: a person forgets about service and betrays his soul for personal monetary gain. This is what is called “bribe” or “extortion” in the service, and in Western Europe and America – “corruption,” which the new President Eisenhower, with evidence in hand, spoke so often and directly in his speeches recently. A person has certain public legal powers and duties; and instead of doing his duty of service - or, as they said in Rus' in the old days, “to conduct Tsarevo’s business honestly and formidably” - he acts in a way that is more profitable for him at the moment. Countless Russian proverbs, sharp and true, never tire of branding corrupt governors, judges, clerks and clerks. For abuse, extortion, extortion and bribes, Peter the Great taught his closest nobles with a baton, which has survived to this day (in the Narva Petrovsky Palace). But in Russia this was a remnant or relic of an era of national difficulties (endless defensive wars!), when the treasury could not pay proper salaries and resorted to a “feeding system.” This vicious attitude was slowly being eliminated; slowly but surely. Already by the beginning of the twentieth century, pre-revolutionary Russia did not know bribes - neither in court, nor in administration, and especially in diplomacy or in school (isolated cases of depravity were the exception). And it was completely in vain for foreigners to tell each other that “everything in Russia is for sale.”

But now... Now that we have experienced the revolution in Russia, with its elements of selfish betrayal and almost general corruption; when we saw revolutionary turmoil spreading throughout the world; when the skating rink of right-wing totalitarianism rolled through our lives, and then the even more difficult and terrible skating rink of the Second World War, we must understand and pronounce that the thirst for personal prey lurks in all peoples, both at the bottom and at the top; that the disease of corruption is spreading throughout the world like a real epidemic; and that “personal prey” that attracts, corrupts and corrupts is not only gold and “currency”, but also personal success, personal career, all kinds of political and magazine “promotion”, honor, power and behind-the-scenes influence. In a word, everything that lifts a person above the crowd, giving him the opportunity to “figure”, ascend and enjoy. For all this, modern man is too often ready to forget his silent conscience, to break with his spiritual dignity and his honor, to betray state secrets to his enemies, to receive double and triple salaries from other powers as a diplomat, to dishonestly slander and demagogue in elections and in every possible way - inventively, shamelessly and insatiably - to take advantage of the “favorable situation”. And all this at a time when an annoying buyer of corrupt people with an inexhaustible wallet appeared in the world. Modern man has ceased to believe in God and that is why he so easily and so willingly sells his soul to the devil.

Modern turmoil is turning into a kind of epidemic, first of all and most of all because modern humanity is losing its religious understanding of life and its religious attitude towards it. It does not sense spirituality and does not seek it. It does not see God and does not measure itself by His rays. Therefore, it loses its sense of its own spiritual dignity, conscience, and honor, and in general the entire highest spiritual and divine dimension of life. It forgets how to distinguish good from evil and honest from dishonest. Modern man is increasingly falling into “autism” (from

the Greek word “autos” - oneself), i.e. in “self-cultivation”: only his own lust, pleasure, success is important and precious to him. He lives in two dimensions: instinct and self-awareness; the third dimension - the main one, spiritual, religious - ceases to exist for him. For him, everything is a commodity that must be successfully exchanged for everyday success. Hence his venality. Hence all these modern types: tricky gentlemen, slippery divers, changelings, adaptable chameleons, unscrupulous journalists, corrupt scientists, politicians “without a backbone”, politicians of shameless pressure, party intriguers, spies and informers... He is always where it is more profitable; develops the view required by his donor or the organizer of his career; he is ready to speak “for a good communist”, in a year to preach the “Christian movement”, in two years to join the National Socialists, in three years to work in allied intelligence and, who knows, how far is he still from participating in a black mass or from secret heterodox order.

At the same time, we must also keep in mind the “favorable” conditions of our era. The harder life is, the worse and lower the standard of food and housing, the more difficult it is for a person to maintain honor and conscience, the more intrusive life’s “compromises” become, the more imperceptibly a person crosses the line of corruption. And one more thing: the more cowardly a person is, the more greedy and ambitious he is, the easier it is for him to cross this line of dishonor and betrayal. And then there’s this tantalizing technique, this tempting comfort, this heightened nervousness, yearning for entertainment, thrills, unknown pleasures. Added to this is unemployment, which threatens everyone and overtakes so many, and not only due to economic crises and refugees, but above all due to overpopulation in many countries and states. And to top it off - the temptations and threats of totalitarianism, now left, now right; both equally require unthinking and unfeeling obedience and readiness for any prescribed villainy; both promise and lie; both seduce and deceive; both threaten and bring their threats

in execution.

As a result, an epidemic of corruption is taking over the world. Before our eyes, people whom we considered ideological and persistent are beginning to double-deal politically, adapt for the sake of money and profile, come up with ambiguous slogans and in every possible way obscure the line separating good from evil and loyalty from betrayal. Meanwhile, national Russia needs something completely, completely different! And those who prefer a meager life and silent loneliness to crookedness and venality are right, a thousand times right: for in them, precisely in their objective, incorruptible standing, the coming Russia lives and prepares...

The idea of rank

Modern humanity has lost the sense of true rank. Therefore, it stopped believing in the idea of rank in general, shook it, shook it and tried to extinguish it completely: to declare every rank imaginary, arbitrary, deserving of neither recognition nor respect... “Everything in life is conditional and relative; whoever likes and benefits, then it’s good; whoever is strong, who knows how to impress and coerce, is superior; and the rest are human inventions, which it’s time to put an end to long ago...” This is the case in all matters of rank: in politics, in art, in science, in religion and the church - everywhere. And this is the very essence of the revolution - in the conscious, defiant trampling of all rank, in the ridicule of the very idea of rank; and everything else is a natural and inevitable consequence of this.

This is where our Russia lamented thirty years ago. And only later, too late, did the Russian people begin to understand that their enemies undermined their healthy sense of rank in order to falsify everything: to promote the worst, to elevate the unscrupulous and dishonest, to create a new social selection of dishonor, servility and violence, and when Russian people began to understand this, then they saw themselves in a yoke; They saw themselves faced with a choice: either participate in servility and dishonor, or perish in deprivation and humiliation. The rank was not just "canceled": it was stolen, abused, falsified and replaced with a new "antirank". And among modern humanity there are two different worldviews: ranking and egalitarian. They stand in struggle with each other - all over the earth and in all areas of culture. Let's see this through to the end. 1. People of equality (egalitarians) do not like and do not tolerate superiority: they turn away from it, try not to notice it; they are always ready to question it, criticize it, ridicule it, “push it aside” with intrigue or slander; or, even worse, falsify it by promoting “our own” with advertising - usually mediocre, stupid, crooked, ambiguous corrupters, but... submissive. “We do not tolerate any superiority,” the smart republicans of one of the democratic states told me verbatim: “We will be able to complicate and ruin the life of any outstanding person so that he does not become arrogant; but if, despite this, he achieves something, then we, perhaps, will erect a posthumous monument to him. in souls everything that is connected with creative imagination: they strive for equality, stereotyped similarity and kill individuality.” Listening to such confessions, I silently learn and remember Pyotr Verkhovensky (in Dostoevsky’s “The Possessed”). “No need for higher abilities! The higher powers have always seized power and been despots...they are driven out or executed. Cicero's tongue is cut out, Copernicus's eyes are gouged out, Shakespeare is stoned... Slaves must be equal... We extinguish every genius in infancy. Everything has the same denominator, complete equality...”

Thus, people of equality consider every spiritual rank to be an arbitrary invention, an encroachment or a usurpation: such was the spirit of the first French Revolution, which declared that “men will be born equal” and turned to the guillotine as proof. According to this view, what is essentially similar and identical in people, while what is different, special, original (especially excellent) is unimportant. One Soviet communist woman demanded loudly: “Everyone should do only what everyone can do” (down with higher abilities!). This view, historically speaking, will be born from family and social injustices, from resentment, envy of the “underground” (described by Dostoevsky), godlessness and spiritual blindness; it feeds on abstract thinking, turns away from all dissimilarity and despises all superiority. It expresses itself in “generally affirmative judgments” (“everyone is the same, everyone is equal,

everyone has everything equally!”) and in “generally negative” judgments (no one dares to be better, taller, richer; do not give anyone any advantages,” etc.). This view is irresponsible, arrogant, materialistic, envious, vindictive, godless, revolutionary and socialist. It does not take into account nature, which eternally produces infinite variety; and therefore it is unnatural. It does not take into account the spirit that protects each person as the only one of his kind and precious in his originality “son of God”; and therefore it is anti-spiritual. Politically, this view “believes” in universal equal suffrage, in arithmetic counting of votes, in “popular sovereignty” and gravitates towards a republic.

2. People who recognize the importance of rank (supporters of spirit and justice, individualists) do not believe in either natural equality or artificial and forced equality. They believe that all people, no matter how many there are, are born unequal, unique and original, and then, as they develop and improve, they become more and more original and unique. Not only is there no trouble or danger in this, but, on the contrary, it is natural, normal and spiritually desirable. But since people are by nature different and unique, justice requires that they be treated differently, that is, according to their properties, qualities, knowledge and deeds. For justice not only does not prescribe equality, but, on the contrary, it consists in objective inequality, established wherever possible.

So, “people of rank” see the natural dissimilarity of their neighbors, value their spiritual uniqueness and are convinced at every step by observation, mind and heart, that there is no equality in reality, that it is only invented by narrow-minded and envious people, and that its introduction would be unfair and violent . And if they notice a “similarity” somewhere, then they remain confident that behind this visible and superficial similarity lies a real and precious difference. The living essence of people is not what makes them similar, but precisely what makes them unique and

irreplaceable.

The rank view is born, historically speaking, from natural fatherhood and motherhood, and spiritually from religious reverence. It is nourished by attentive observation of nature, a sensitive conscience, a sense of justice, living, individualizing love and prayerful contemplation of the perfection of God. It is expressed in careful and thoughtful “private” judgments – sometimes positive (for example, “people are rarely alike”, “some people are envious”, “this person is smarter than others”, and “this one is more honest than many”; “I am happy to bow before her kindness" or "before his courage", etc.; hence the cult of heroes!); then negative (for example, “many people do not tolerate the superiority of others,” “there are people who are incapable of political voting,” “many demagogues do not think about social justice at all,” etc.). This view is driven by a sense of responsibility and justice; it is capable of sober humility and knows how to rejoice in someone else’s quality; it is spiritual, inclined to tradition and conservatism; it is natural, organic, loyal and religious. Politically it strives to select the best people, whether by appointment or by vote, and gravitates towards monarchy.

So, people are by nature unequal; and this is not a “trouble,” but a gift from God. We just need to recognize this gift correctly and treat it correctly. True, - that is, accordingly, fair. “Star from star is equal in glory” (1 Cor. 15:41); and in the same way, man differs from man in health, strength, abilities, moral quality, mental insight, volitional energy, spiritual contemplation and evidence. Blind not seeing it; it is absurd to deny it; It is harmful to neglect it. The patient is not fit to be a soldier; he will only burden the hospitals with himself. The weak cannot wear coolies and dig the ground: this will quickly destroy him. It is absurd to make a talented violinist a carpenter, a gifted mathematician a sailor, a brilliant poet a clerk, a capable merchant a cook, a forester by vocation a mechanic. But just as absurd or downright harmful -

make a robber an official, give traitors and swindlers the right to vote, introduce spies into the Foreign Office, appoint a counterfeiter as a minister, elevate a coward to marshal or a party intriguer to cardinal. How is it known that every fool is capable of understanding public affairs? How can one appoint a weak-willed prolaza as a commander (Bazin)? Can a man with a trade unionist horizon rule an empire (Mac-Donald)? Why don't they put a blind man behind a microscope? Is a godless ignoramus fit to be a priest? What kind of children will be raised by a lecherous governess? What kind of political elections are a corrupt, intimidated, lied to people capable of? So, there are two sides to the idea of \u200b\u200b“rank”: firstly, it refers to the inherent quality of a person - this is his actual rank; secondly, we mean his powers, rights and obligations, which are recognized by society or the state - this is his social rank. It is clear that these two ranks may diverge. A wise righteous man may have no social rank; an evil fool can climb into the ranks of ministers, generals and presidents. An honest person can be a beggar, a notorious rogue can be the director of a banking consortium. The rank of spiritual superiority (righteousness, genius, talent, knowledge, courage, strength of character, skill-understanding, political farsightedness) - and the rank of human authority (rank, rank, power, authority) - may not correspond to each other. For, on the one hand, when selecting the best, people are blind, careless and irresponsible, corrupt and insidious; on the other hand, ambitious, powerhungry and acquisitive people are energetic, assertive and often ready to use any means. But true social authority arises from the combination of both ranks. And when this connection is successful, then the idea of rank celebrates its spiritual holiday: before us is a great emperor (Peter I), a victorious commander (A.V. Suvorov), a righteous bishop (Theophan the Recluse), a perspicacious scientist (D.I. Mendeleev), a wonderful organizer (S.I. Mamontov), social educator (N.I. Pirogov), a generally recognized genius poet (A.S. Pushkin), composer (A.P. Borodin), painter (I.K. Aivazovsky). Then the rank of spiritual quality and the rank of human recognition coincide and the national culture blooms.

But both of these ranks may not coincide. If this is an exception, then it is felt by everyone as a sore spot: the best people talk about it, protest, are indignant, try to correct the matter; the worst ones turn away or, on the contrary, try to use this sore to their advantage (for example, a depraved temporary worker). If these phenomena turn out to be common or predominant, then this means that such a people in a given era cannot select the best, that the entire regime is untenable, that “honesty and talent have no path in life” and that social upheavals are coming. Such are, for example, callous and depraved parents, vicious clergy, corrupt officials; a bad king, a stupid and ignorant professor, a stupid and evil teacher; the dominance of mediocre “artists”, callous and cruel officers, judges without a sense of justice, parliamentarians without a sense of responsibility, police devoid of civic courage, etc.

Such a mass phenomenon of a sick and imaginary rank disappoints everyone, gives birth to undergroundness and revolutionism in the souls and throws people into the chimera of equality... At the same time, elementary justice forces us to admit and reprimand that pre-revolutionary Russia did not know such decomposition. flared up in her the chimera of equality has completely different reasons, these are: political naivety

people, anti-rank sentiments of the Russian intelligentsia, a transitional era in the economy, the growth of a semi-educated layer, military failures, and, as a final push, the sudden extinction of the monarchical rank and oath, provoked by well-known political circles. No social organization is possible without rank. A state with unsuccessful rank selection is weak, unstable, and may be downright doomed. Everything perishes from a sick and falsified rank: family, school, academy, church, army, state, ship, business enterprise. The whole point is

to recognize the truly best (people of natural rank) and promote them, assigning to them the necessary powers and responsibilities (social rank). It happens that this is best achieved by assignment, for example, in the church, in the army, in school, on the farm; often in the state. But it also happens that this is best achieved through elections, for example, in the academy, in cultural societies, in the life of the parish and in local government; sometimes in government affairs. But this does not have a single scale for all times and peoples; what is good in one country can ruin another; there is not and cannot be a political “panacea” (all-healing remedy). The appointment has its temptations and pitfalls; elections have their dangers and temptations. And perhaps the time is not far off when a new method of selection will be practiced, combining election with appointment and overcoming the shortcomings of both.

1. ELECTIONS. – The more envy and partisanship among the people, the worse their elections will be. The lower his level of education, the more meaningless the entire election procedure will be. The stronger the ambition of the people, the more unsuccessful their selection will be. The more influential the secret (religious or political) societies are in his life, the sooner his rank will be falsified and distorted. 2. PURPOSE. – The stronger the caste spirit in the country, the more unsuccessful all appointments will be (patronage, nepotism, flattery). Corruption (corruption) can directly compromise the entire appointing order. A poorly developed sense of responsibility and lack of control can directly destroy the state, built for purpose.

In fact, it is necessary to ensure that the social rank corresponds to the spiritual rank of a person; so that the one appointed would be one of his own and loved by the people; and so that the chosen one thinks not about party, not about class, not about provincial and not about personal benefit, but about the national benefit of the state. Then the question of rank will be correctly resolved.

But since phenomena of a “sick rank” are always and everywhere possible, in real life it is necessary to observe two rules: 1. There is a need for general confidence that both those appointing and electing are really looking for the best people, trying to match the burden of the powers given to the spiritual-natural rank of the people nominated (“the best people ahead!”). Any deviation from this rule will have a harmful effect on the state. 2. A general readiness is required - to loyally bear a possible mistake in rank and not to inflate an accidental phenomenon of a “sick rank” into a public or national scandal of disobedience. An unsympathetic, inexperienced, inept, weak-willed, incompetent boss must be helped - in the name of honor, in the name of conscience, in the name of patriotism, in the name of the national and state cause, and not to intrigue against him, not to sabotage, not to isolate him, not to make fun of him. This is taught by the idea of rank and the monarchical sense of justice, which encourages one to faithfully serve not only the great Sovereign. It is remarkable that in Russia the idea of rank has historically been based mainly on religious grounds and patriotic feelings. That is why the oath (“kissing the cross”) was so important in Russia. That is why for a thousand years the people believed in the righteous will of the Sovereign, in his heartfelt concern for all the people without exception and in his search for justice for all. Rank in Russia was maintained by faith and love and to this extent evoked sincere and selfless loyalty in souls. That is why Russia has never known a republican system.

Envy as a source of disaster Our time has brought suffering to people, frankly speaking, unprecedented in history, and the end of this era is not yet in sight. And anyone who takes the trouble to think and feel the world events unfolding in the twentieth century will quickly find their main source human envy. These events seem to sum up the previous centuries - their development, their degeneration and their my doctrine.

Envy, of course, is not a new phenomenon in history. The Bible begins with an act of envy (Cain and Abel); An Egyptian myth tells about the primordial act of envy (the evil and treacherous Seth kills the blessed Osiris)... There have always been envious people in the world, embittered by any advantage of others. But never before in history has envy become the main driving factor, the guiding false idea of the global crisis. And in our days, envy has not only become aware of itself, but has also articulated itself as a doctrine, turned into a world conspiracy (more precisely, into several parallel world conspiracies!) and developed a program, a system of struggle and an organization. It becomes the main motivation of peoples, or, as it were, the poisoned air that the modern masses breathe. Why? How did it work out? What explains this? We can answer these questions here only briefly so that our readers and like-minded people can think through everything to the end themselves... 1. The difference between rich and poor has always been and will always be. But the development of machine technology and capitalist production sharply contrasted each other with the ever-increasing wealth of some and the ever-increasing envy of others, the poor. The industrial helplessness of the poor mass of the population is the first source of aggravated envy; namely, not just poverty (people have always coped with it), but complete economic helplessness, unemployment, the absolute dependence of the have-nots on the haves. This should never happen anywhere; This should be a constant concern of the state. 2. Sooner or later, mass envy was bound to flare up from this: “why you and not me? yours, not mine? From here arose the doctrine of the opposition and irreconcilability of social classes, the desire for the redistribution of property, the doctrine of revolutionary revenge and class robbery. From the very beginning, this doctrine denied the spiritual, religious and moral factor of history, and recognized only the economic and property, “material” factor. The idea of “matter”, “materialism” then received a false philosophical interpretation, which immediately meant: a) “only matter is real in the world, “there is neither God nor spirit”, b) property-economic-production conditions (“matter”) decide all questions of history and culture. Flat souls with formal thinking are immediately and forever satisfied with this vulgarity that explains nothing, and out of envy the doctrine of godlessness and immorality is born - economic materialism. Among weak-willed and temperamental people (“Mensheviks”), all this is covered up by the concept of social equality, taken for “justice”; strong-willed and immoral people develop the doctrine of totalitarian Bolshevism-communism.

3. This is where the modern doctrine of socialism-communism arose. Personal spirit is seen as the beginning of antisocial tyranny and anarchy. Everything must be transferred to the full control and disposal of the state. But instead of the old elite, a new elite, an elite of envy and economic materialism, becomes the head of the state. It takes away everything, redistributes everything and organizes everything from a single totalitarian center. It breathes the class idea, class envy and hatred, revenge and reprisal. Socialism by its very nature is envious, totalitarian and terrorist; and communism differs from it only in that it displays these characteristics openly, shamelessly and ferociously. 4. This determines the character of the new “elite”. She rises from below and

goes through the school of alien thinking and blind obedience. These are people with the greatest claims (dictated by blind envy) - they claim to be all-understanding, all-skilled and allpowerful; and at the same time, these are people who are not at all formed personally and spiritually; they have no religion, no conscience, no sense of justice, no artistic taste, no evidence. In the words of Aristotle, these are “slaves by nature, who are sufficiently involved in the mind to understand other people’s thoughts” (Marx, Lenin, Stalin), “but not enough to have their own”... They don’t have them: they endlessly repeat the established formulas of others and invest in them their inexhaustible charge of envy and careerism. 5. This is how the modern world revolution takes shape and proceeds: new forces emerge - new dictators, new classes, new nations. These dictators belong to the semi-intelligentsia (see point 6), they think in a simplified way, they have neither a sense of justice nor a sense of responsibility, but are possessed by the will to unbridled power. These new classes have not the slightest idea of religion, spirit and culture; they value only technology and power and buy themselves power at the price of servile submission; themselves intimidated, they know how to rule only through fear; Born out of envy, they understand only what satisfies it. These new nationalities, having no history, not enduring any creative contemplation, neither a spiritual act, they push apart and disintegrate their cultural neighbors in order to take their place and install a spiritual and cultural emptiness - their insignificance - in the place of the former spiritual gardens and vineyards. The world is dividing and fragmenting, this makes it weaker and it faces the greatest danger in a state of powerlessness. 6. This whole process is led by the social environment that from the beginning was the best breeding ground for envy: this is the world's semi-intelligentsia. The semi-intellectual is a very typical person for our time. He does not have a completed education, but he has heard and read enough to impress others with his “mental literature.” In essence, he does not know and has nothing, but he does not at all know where his knowledge and skill end. He does not have his own thoughts, but intimidates himself and others with alien, cliched formulas; and when he tries to express something independent, he immediately reveals his wretchedness. The complexity and sophistication of the world, as an Object, is completely inaccessible to him: for him everything is simple, everything is accessible, everything is solved shoulder-to-shoulder and with aplomb. Its main organ is sensory perception, processed by a flat mind. He does not know the spirit; laughs at religion; does not believe in conscience; Honesty is a “relative concept” for him. But he believes in technology, in the power of lies and intrigue, in the permissibility of vice. “Semi-science,” writes Dostoevsky, “is the most terrible scourge of humanity, worse than pestilence, famine and war. Semi-science is a despot, the likes of which have never come before. A despot who has his own priests and slaves, a despot before whom everything bowed with love and with superstition, hitherto unthinkable, before whom even science itself trembles and shamefully indulges” (“Demons”).

And at the same time, he knows about his semi-intellectuality: he is offended by it, he does not forgive others for it, he envies, takes revenge and strives for primacy in everything: he is insatiably ambitious and power-hungry. And he easily learns and practices the art of playing on someone else’s, on mass envy. This is how most revolutionaries are. Dostoevsky showed the “underground” life of such a soul its frantic resentment and wounded pride. Communism unleashed this kingdom of vulgarity and godlessness, apelike imitation and self-righteous “image.” 7. It was in this environment that the chimera of universal equality and the prejudice of universal freedom matured. It was here that the idea of justice was replaced by “equation”: here it was, the French Revolution, which demanded the demolition of all bell towers, as offending the sense of equality; Here is the ironically brilliant formula of the German poet Eichendorff: cut off the tops until everyone becomes ragamuffins; here is Stepan's slogan

Razin, “so that everyone is equal to everyone.” A doctrine directed immediately against God, against nature and against justice. Prophetic lines are recorded by Dostoevsky in “The Possessed”: “Slaves must be equal... No education is needed, enough science!.. The thirst for education is already an aristocratic thirst. A little bit of family or love, and now there’s a desire for property. We will kill desire; we will allow drunkenness, gossip, denunciation, we will allow unheard-of debauchery; We extinguish every genius in infancy. Everything has the same denominator, complete equality...” Here the false idea of non-spiritual freedom arose and matured: not the freedom of faith and contemplation of God, but the freedom of godlessness; not freedom of conscience, but freedom from conscience - from responsibility, from spirit, from taste, from sense of justice. All this interfered with envy and the envious person; and all this was overthrown. Freedom has become unbridled morals, formlessness in art, totalitarianism in politics (freedom of power and arbitrariness). 8. All this led to the greatest religious crisis known in human history. People did not “lose God,” as was the case during the era of the fall of paganism, but took up arms against the very idea of God; they seek to compromise and corrupt the religious act of the soul; they are ready to eradicate all believers on earth. In the history of mankind, feelings of the sacred, mystery, contemplation, reverence, responsibility, sin and evil fade and disappear. There remains only vulgarity and one villainy. Friedrich Nietzsche exalted these remnants of culture and called people to daring crime. 9. It is remarkable that this corresponds to the growth of human population in all parts of the world. The number of people is already in the billions. Population density is increasing. Cities become some kind of “Babylons” and grow in breadth beyond measure. This intensifies the competition and busyness of life; this fuels envy and the thirst for enrichment in any way. Moreover, this leads to destructive international wars, which are tantamount to the self-destruction of humanity. The issue of overpopulation of the earth is resolved by the method of mass murder - wars and revolutions. And where medicine and hygiene find ever new ways to protect humanity from diseases and epidemics and prolong human life, there the process of mass murder of people comes into its own: class against class, state against state. 10. It is clear how technological progress affects the growth of social envy. The impossible becomes possible; space is encouraged; the air is conquered; comfort spoils people; entertainment is multiplying and taking on new forms; pretentiousness and envy increase; and the democratic system encourages people's conceit, overestimation of their own person and the tendency not to disdain any ways and means to achieve what they want. Now every worker has a bicycle, every shopkeeper has a car, every cook has her own incessant radio. Every frog is presented with the appearance of an ox that has not yet reached its size (Krylov); every “Hitler” dreams of dictatorship; every maid is going on a trip around the world; Every lazy person has the right to make your life miserable with his motorcycle. Technology reduces the spiritual standard of life along the entire line: noise appeals to the masses, radio shouts and gramophone discs are becoming more and more vulgar, “cinema” demagogues the crowd, goods are declining in quality, the decline in the level of newspapers is frightening and depressing. Earthly “joys” and “entertainment” attract people. The thirst for pleasure grows, and with it the will to wealth and power. Sober restraints weaken, wise measure is lost, vice is not repelled; modern man believes in his final mortality, but does not believe in his immortality and eternal life; and youth itself seems to him a short and fragile gift. So he is in a hurry; he “has no time.” The deceptive joys of nature seem to him to be the main or even the only ones. And so he is in a hurry to improve and use his “earthly conditions”; he is afraid of “missing out” and “not being in time.” His conscience is silent, he does not value honor. He begins to break without shame and “justifies” his insolence with moral relativism (“everything is conditional”). Pushing each other apart, people

they strive for “better” and “greater” and trample the weak and defenseless to death. And it is already difficult to distinguish a man from a beast, a party from a gang, a parliamentarian from a bribe-taking adventurer, the people from the mob. People of our time are losing their spiritual backbone: they are obsessed with envy and greed. This is where these new historical images of depravity come from: political robbers, professional traitors, party executioners, sadists of statehood, enemies of piety, artists of slander, destroyers of righteousness, outright liars, behind-the-scenes power-hungers, etc...

About education in the coming Russia It is not given to us to know when and in what order the revolution in Russia will end. Events unfold slowly, too slowly for one generation. We cannot and should not make ourselves illusions: complex, responsible and painful events still lie ahead, the meaning of which will be that the all-Russian peasantry will take control of the state and military apparatus of the country from within, overthrow or push aside the layer of international adventurers that has settled in power and begin to build a new national Russia. It is possible that of our older generations only a few will live to see the liberation of their homeland and only a very few will be able to take part in its revival. But it is precisely this foresight that obliges us to look forward and into the distance and prepare for the new Russian generations the material of conclusions and guiding lines that we have suffered and endured over these decades and which will help them cope with their difficult task. We must express and in writing (if possible and in print!) consolidate in clear and convincing formulas what history has taught us, what our patriotic sorrow has made us wise.

The coming Russia will need a new, objective education of the Russian spiritual character: not just “education” (now denoted in the Soviet Union by the vulgar and hateful word “study”), for education, in itself, is a matter of memory, ingenuity and practical skills in isolation from spirit, conscience, faith and character. Education without upbringing does not shape a person, but unbridles and spoils him, for it puts at his disposal vital opportunities, technical skills, which he - unspiritual, unscrupulous, faithless and characterless - begins to abuse. It must be established and recognized once and for all that an illiterate but conscientious commoner is a better person and a better citizen than an unscrupulous literate person; and that formal “education” outside of faith, honor and conscience creates not a national culture, but the depravity of a vulgar civilization.

New Russia will have to develop a new system of national education, and its future historical path will depend on the correct solution of this task. We saw how the Russian intellectual ideology of the 19th century set Russia on fire, caused a great fire and itself burned in its fire. We also know that the Russian people are alive and will restore their state from the ashes of the revolution. We, the Russian intelligentsia, are bone from the bone of the Russian people, spirit from spirit, love from their love and anger from their anger; we, who never believed in any “post-Petrine” abyss that supposedly separated us from our people, and now we do not Believing in no “gap” between domestic and foreign Russia, we are obliged to realize the reasons for our state collapse, to find its sources in the structure and way of the Russian soul, to find these sick deviations in ourselves and overcome them (all these national delusions and temptations , all this sick legacy of inheritance, Tatarism, class, serfdom, riots, conspiracy, utopianism and internationalism) to overcome and take a new path.

Russia will emerge from the crisis in which it is located and will be reborn to new creativity and new prosperity - through the combination and reconciliation of three foundations, three laws of the spirit: freedom, love and objectivity. The entire modern culture has failed because it failed to combine these principles and observe these laws. She wanted to be a culture of freedom and she was right in this; but it failed to become a culture of the heart and a culture of objectivity—and this entangled it in contradictions and led it to a great crisis. For heartless freedom became the freedom of egoism and self-interest, the freedom of social exploitation, and this led to class struggle, to civil wars and revolutions. And non-objective and anti-objective freedom has become the freedom of unprincipledness, unbridledness, unbelief, “modernism” (in all its forms) and godlessness. All this is interconnected; all this is a single process that has led to the great crisis of our days. Reaction

This resulted in the clamping of heartless and pointless freedom into the state-party, dictatorial vice - either communist or bourgeois-nationalist. This bureaucratically organizing clamp would seem to eliminate the well-known antisocial manifestations of freedom, its abuse, and establish greater sociality in the absence of freedom. In fact, he succeeds completely in unfreedom (a negative function), but he does not succeed in greater sociality (a positive, creative function): in place of the former free non-sociality, a new unfree anti-sociality is installed and the people find themselves in the worst and most severe living conditions known in history. Socialism and communism take away people's freedom and give them neither social justice nor spiritual creativity.

This is explained by the fact that only people with a heart and an objective will can implement social justice, for justice is a matter of living love and living conscientious contemplation, that is, an objectively attuned and structured soul. It is a mistake to mistake justice for equality, because justice is the objective inequality of people. It is naive to imagine that consistent doctrine and consistent reason are enough for justice to be found and established and for people to begin a new social life. For reason without love and without conscience, not rooted in the living contemplation of God, is a type of human stupidity and callousness, and stupid callousness has never made people happy.

Of the three great foundations of all human life and culture - freedom, love and objectivity - not one can be abolished or missed; all three are necessary and all three mutually condition one another. If heartless freedom leads to injustice and exploitation, then pointless freedom leads to spiritual decay and social anarchy. But heartless and pointless lack of freedom leads to even more grave slavish injustice and deep demoralization. Freedom is necessary for the human instinct and spirit, like air for the body. But it must be filled with the life of the heart and objective will. The more heart and objective will a person has, the less dangerous the temptations of freedom are for him and the more meaning it acquires for him. Salvation does not lie in the abolition of freedom, but in its heartfelt filling and objective implementation.

This is what determines the path of the future Russia. She needs a new education: in freedom and towards freedom; – in love and to love; – in objectivity and to objectivity. New generations of Russian people must be brought up for cordial and objective freedom. This directive is for today, and for tomorrow, and for centuries. This is the only true and main path leading to the flourishing of the Russian spirit and to the implementation of Christian culture in Russia. In order to fully understand this, it is necessary to focus on the idea of objectivity. The events of the last century have shown us that freedom is not at all the last and selfsufficient form of life: it does not predetermine the content of life, nor its level, nor direction. Freedom is given to a person for objective filling of it, for objective life, that is, for free life in the Object. What is an Object and what is objective life? Every creature on earth and every human deed has a certain purpose, which it serves. In this case, we can mean a purely subjective goal that calls a person to satisfy his personal needs and leads him to personal success in life. But one can also have in mind an objective goal, the last and main goal of life, in relation to which all subjective goals will turn out to be only a subordinate means. This is the great and main goal of man, which comprehends every life and every undertaking, a goal that is in fact beautiful and sacred; - not the one for which every individual bends and groans, tries to get rich, humiliates himself and trembles with fear, but the one for which it is really worth living in the world, because it is worth fighting and dying for. For an animal, this goal is procreation, and in serving this goal the mother

the female gives her life for the cub. But a person has a higher, spiritually true goal of life, in fact, precious and beautiful for everyone, or if we collect all these definitions in a simple and modest term - Subjective. A person is worth living in the world not by everything, but only by that which comprehends and sanctifies his life and his very death. Wherever he lives worthless - empty pleasures, self-sufficient accumulation of property, feeding his ambition, serving personal passions, in a word, everything that is non-objective or counter-objective - he leads an empty and vulgar life and will always betray his goal as soon as the choice arises between this empty goal and life itself. For he will immediately judge this way: if I save a life, there will remain hope for pleasures and pleasantries; I will die for pleasures and wealth - I will lose both them and my life. But if a person has an objective, sacred goal in life, then he thinks the opposite: if I betray my objective goal, then I will lose the very meaning of life, and what do I need a life without meaning and sacredness?.. - I don’t need such a life, but an objective one the goal is sacred and necessary even if my personal life on earth is interrupted... To live objectively means to connect yourself (your heart, your will, your mind, your imagination, your creativity, your struggle) with such a value that will give my life the highest, final meaning. We are all called to find this value, connect ourselves with it and truly interpret our work and the direction of our lives by it. We must see with the eye of the heart the objective meaning and purpose of our life. For in reality, we all serve some higher Cause on earth - God's Cause - the “beautiful life” according to Aristotle, the “Kingdom of God” according to the revelation of the Gospel. This is the single and great goal of our life, the single and great Subject of history. And so we must include our personal life in its living material fabric.

We will find our place in this fabric, seeing with the force of obviousness that the life of the Russian people, the existence of Russia - a worthy, creative and majestic existence - is included in this God's Cause, constitutes its living and grace-filled part, in which there is a place for all of us . Whoever I am, whatever my social position - from a peasant to a scientist, from a minister to a chimney sweep - I serve Russia, the Russian spirit, Russian quality, Russian greatness, not “mammon” and not “the bosses”, “ not for personal lust" and not for the "party", not for a "career" and not just for an "employer", but precisely for Russia, its salvation, its construction, its perfection, its justification before the Face of God. To live and act this way means to live and act in accordance with the main, objective calling of the Russian person; this means living objectively, that is, transforming service into service, work into creativity, interest into inspiration, sanctifying “deeds” with the spirit of Action, elevating concerns to a plan, and sanctifying life with an Idea. Or, which is the same thing, introduce yourself into the objective fabric of God’s Work on earth. Objectivity is immediately opposed to both indifference and reckless self-interest - these two traits of a slavish character. To educate for objectivity means, firstly, to lead the human soul from a state of cold indifference and blindness to the general and higher; open a person’s eyes to his inclusion in the fabric of the world, to the responsibility that is associated with this, and to the obligations that flow from this; awaken in him a sense and taste for matters of conscience, faith, honor, law, justice, church and homeland. Therefore, becoming an objective person means waking up and getting out of the hypnosis of inaction and fear, melting your inner ice floe and melting your spiritual callousness. For objectivity is opposed, first of all, to indifference.

To educate for objectivity means, secondly, to wean a person from narrow and shallow self-interest, from that “selfishness” and that unprincipled resourcefulness in which no cultural creativity and no social construction is possible. To become an objective person means to overcome in oneself the primitive and reckless instinct of personal self-preservation, that naive and cynical egoism, which is inaccessible to the highest dimension of things and

business A person who has not curbed his animal selfishness, his practical egocentrism, who has not opened his eyes to his calling to serve, who has not learned to bow before the highest Meaning and Cause, before God, will always be a socially dangerous being. Thus, Objectivity frees the soul not only from mental indifference, but also from the poverty and vulgarity of personal egocentrism. These two requirements contain the ABC of subject education. And we must admit that outside of it, any education in general is imaginary and illusory, and any education in general is dead and formal. The most important thing that a family and school should give a person is an objectively open gaze, an objectively living heart and an objectively ready will. A person must see and understand the fabric of God’s Work on earth in order to know how to enter into it and how to include himself in its life, so that his heart responds to phenomena and events in this fabric as important, precious, causing joy and sorrow ; so that the will is capable and ready to sacrifice its personal interest to this tissue and serve it not out of fear or duty, but out of love and conscience. Now, as perhaps never before, Russia needs such education. For previously in Russia there was a living religious and patriotic tradition of such a spirit and such upbringing. And now the old traditions have been broken, and new ones have not yet begun or taken shape. The system of subject education should bind and strengthen them. The spiritual objectivity of the soul is, as has been said, a way out of indifference and selfinterest. But by this overcoming, which has only a negative and not a positive meaning, objectivity is not defined and is not exhausted. Essentially, the idea of objective life and objective man can be described So.

Having overcome his indifference, a person must find real and worthy content for life. He must love wholeheartedly something that actually deserves wholehearted love and devotional service. This means that real objectivity has two dimensions: subjective-personal and objective-value. The first dimension, the subjective-personal, determines whether I am truly committed to my life's purpose, whether I am sincere in this devotion, whether I am whole in this sincerity, and finally whether I act in accordance with this devotion, sincerity and integrity. The second dimension, the objective-value dimension, determines whether I made a mistake in choosing my life goal, whether my “subject” is really objective, whether my goal is really sacred and whether it is really worth living for and worth fighting for and, perhaps, dying for. For in life there are different paths and crossroads possible. So, it is possible that a person is subjectively “objective”, but objectively not. This means that he is passionately, sincerely and actively devoted to a mistake, for example, to some harmful, seductive teaching, a false political goal, an absurd and crafty faith... Then a passionate and sincere boiling in emptiness or temptation arises. But the opposite is also possible, when a person speaks out in favor of a true goal, which is truly worth living and for which it is worth fighting to death, but he himself treats it coldly, having no love, no sacrifice, no struggle for it. Then the correct formula of the Subject appears, no more, and perhaps also an affected declamation about the Subject, true in content, but false in feeling and slippery and treacherous in life. Thirdly, it is also possible for a state of affairs in which a subjectively cold person talks coldly about objectively incorrect or seductive goals in life. However, the fourth possibility is true and spiritually significant, when a person is sincerely, wholeheartedly and actively devoted to the objective goal, that is, to the work of God on earth, for example, the church, science, art, the spiritual education of his people, the organization of a just life, the salvation of his homeland , development of free and fair law. And this possibility is the only true one.

Then the soul of a person is possessed by a double or genuine Objectivity. She captures his soul, comprehends his life, makes him whole and fiery and gives his life a religious meaning, even when he does not consider himself

neither believers nor church members - for the hidden religiosity is deeper than the obvious and the invisible church is more extensive than the visible one. Such a person experiences his Object - immediately - as a distant goal, as an objective-future-desired event, and at the same time - as a close reality, as an inspiring force, as a genuine fabric of being, which also captures his personal powers. A real person seeks in his life, first of all, Objectivity, that is, the Work of God on earth; he deepens to it every life task, every life relationship; he sanctifies all deeds from it, proceeds from it as from a task, and ascends to it as a goal.

All this gives him a special spirit - the spirit of search, responsibility and service, without which a person remains a philistine or a careerist, a servant of his passions or a medium of other people's influences, and perhaps even worse - a fox, a chameleon and a traitor. By the spirit of search, responsibility and service, objective people easily and quickly recognize each other, and the one who has once become familiar with it quickly learns to recognize it without error: he recognizes it from Confucius, and from Socrates, and from Marcus Aurelius, and from William Orange, and Carlyle; and here in Russia he will recognize it in the Orthodox elder, and in Peter the Great, and in Suvorov, and among the righteous Leskov - and he will be right, for this spirit really created and built Russia. And every such discovery, every such acquaintance will be a spiritual joy for him and will arouse in him a desire to include what he has learned in his life; and if this is a living person, then connect with him firmly and for a long time with fullness of trust and fraternal cooperation. Subject people are brothers before the Face of God; they are like living threads of God's fabric on earth; or – living streams of His stream; citizens of His slowly growing Kingdom. And this is precisely what explains their inherent desire - to awaken in others a sense of Objectivity, consciousness of the Object, a search for Objectivity, a sense of objective responsibility. That is why Objectivity could be described as including oneself in the Cause of God on earth, or as weaving oneself into His fabric, or as entering into His stream; as identifying your work with His Work, your success with His success, your strength with His strength. And this corresponds to measuring his standards and his successes - his life, his responsibility, his decisions, his rightness, his luck and victory. The fabric of this Cause is really present in everything: in nature and in man; in man himself (in body, soul and spirit), and in his culture; in individual life, and in national life; in the family and in education; in the church and in faith; in work and in the economy; in law and in the state; in science and art; in the deeds of a warrior and in the deeds of a monk. We must learn to perceive it, see it, rejoice in it, abide in it and serve it. And a person’s education is better and deeper the more it imparts this skill to him. One could say that Objectivity is the single and common source of all good motives of a person, for all of them are defined by the words “I want God’s Cause” and “I serve God’s Cause.” All good deeds and motives of a person are modifications of Objectivity: a loving and creative attitude towards nature, and self-education, and building a family, and friendship between two people, and economic inspiration, and a sense of responsibility and guilt, and a social sense, and a sense of justice, and true patriotism , and an act of conscience, and scientific conscience, and artistic contemplation, and prayer, and church consciousness - all these are varieties of the “divine” approach to God’s Work on earth. This is what all humanity always needs, but what only the best people seek and possess. All great religions wanted and still want this; all monastic orders; all organizations of brotherhood, honor and service (from the university to the army), they all seek precisely Objectivity in their field. And the spiritual level of each such human union is determined precisely by whether the will to Objectivity and the organization of Objectivity are placed at the proper height in it. For there is its own special Objectivity in the church, and its own special Objectivity in science and teaching, and its own Objectivity in court and administration, its own Objectivity in art, its own Objectivity in the army. And all that is called in life - partiality, nepotism, sacrilege, bribery, crookedness, civil cowardice, political corruption, envy, flattery, betrayal,

dishonor, careerism, slyness, intrigue, or, in Russian chronicle words, “dishonesty” and “theft” - all this that corrupts morals and creates a corrupt culture and a sick statehood, comes down to the lack of Objectivity in the soul and in life. But the opposite must also be said: there is no stronger and more fruitful unity on earth than the unity of people in spiritual Objectivity - in joint prayer, in the spiritual closeness of marriage and friendship, in true academic cooperation, in the military brotherhood of a united army, in subject-political unity, in patriotic enthusiasm. Anyone who has experienced the influence of Objectivity on the human soul will immediately understand if I say: An object is a certain living and sacred element, a substance or “essence” of spiritual life that brings many precious gifts to a person. And first of all, she gives him a sense of anticipation: “there is something higher and greater than myself, something that I see and for which I strive, that shines for me and calls me and with which I am connected with reverence and love.” And then - a sense of responsibility: for this task binds me, assigns responsibilities and powers to me, for the implementation of which I am responsible. Hence a new gift: a sense of real power, which is called to action, so that its decisions are not indifferent and its efforts are not powerless, but necessary and precious in terms of God’s Cause. Associated with this is a new precious gift - a sense of service, that is, an authorized and called upon independent work in the face of God, a feeling of bearing a burden, resolving tasks - in a word, creative participation in the work of world order. In a natural connection with this there are new gifts of Objectivity: on the one hand, genuine humility, for those who stand before the spiritual substance of the world feel their smallness and helplessness, and the one responsible knows what and to whom he is responsible, and the one who carries out the service learns modesty and humility; – and on the other hand, Objective service gives a person confidence in his own rightness, which is free from both conceit and pride, and a certain spiritual severity and authority, which stem directly from the feeling of Objective fulfillment, calling and strength. A person who lives by responsible Objectivity contemplation is an inspired person, and real inspiration is precisely the manifestation of Objectivity and its gift; a person, in inspiration, breathes the law of the Object itself, pronounces Its content, carries out Its rhythm; and this is the case everywhere - in art, in science, and in politics. That is why the objective person is inherent in the gift of correct goal setting, because the goals that he sees and sets always have distant power and high meaning; they are true in the earthly, empirical plane, but they are never limited to it and are not exhausted, because their main strength and their main meaning are in the “heavenly-earthly” plane, i.e. in the fact that they are included in the fabric of God Affairs. An objective person, whether he knows about it or not, and sometimes he doesn’t even know about it, is an instrument or organ of the Cause of God on earth, and therefore his fate is not indifferent in the highest plane of existence and he calmly entrusts himself to the Hand of God , - this is how Pushkin said it in his “Arion” and how Tyutchev said it about Pushkin himself (“You were the living organ of the gods”...). Such a person does not consider his earthly end to be “destruction” and does not believe in the failure or defeat of his earthly business: for he knows that “his” business is not only “his” business, but is an Objective Cause, and therefore God’s, that failure his is only an apparent failure and that his final victory is ensured by a higher Power. This could be expressed figuratively like this: all his life he seems to be holding onto the sky with his right hand. In any case, he firmly knows where his main support is and who ultimately decides his fate.

All this could be expressed in such a way that Objectivity gives a person a true sense of his own spiritual dignity. It is in vain that modern atheists believe that God is a fantastic being who resides somewhere “behind the clouds,” about whom we imagine all sorts of fears and before whom we humiliate ourselves all the time. In fact, faith in God does not humiliate or weaken a person, but on the contrary, it elevates him, transforms and strengthens him. This is explained by the fact that we perceive God’s presence and spirit in ourselves, and not with fear, but with love, not with protest, but with joy, and not with humiliation, but with transformation and ascension. This love and joy

This perception and contemplation of God's spirit with the heart and will, this implementation of His will as one's own, and the recognition of all this in thought - does not in the least humiliate a person, but transforms and elevates him. Atheists imagine a person’s relationship to God as the relationship of a small and weak thing to a slender and strong one, that is, as an external relationship - some kind of “extra-stability” and “confrontation”, terrible, threatening... - a mountain is about to collapse and will crush... In reality, all this is completely different. This is an internal relationship, a relationship of perception and love, presence and joy, from which arises the unique and mysterious unity of man with God. A person perceives the breath of God in the depths of his personal spirit - not with hearing or words, but with the heart: that mysterious and deep feeling that we call “faith” and “prayer”, as well as inspiration, conscience, evidence, or another act of contemplative love . Having experienced any of this - in one act or many, long or short - a person is renewed. The essence of this renewal is that man, according to the word of the Gospel, learns to be and live on earth as an earthly “son” of God. To do this, it is necessary for a person to love God and, together with God, to love that perfect thing that God loves; and desired God and together with God desired that divine thing which God desires; - and contemplated God and His creations with the ray of his heart’s contemplation and sought to see what God sees in people and in the world. Having experienced this, a person realizes and affirms his ability to “be at one with God,” to love Him and to love with Him, to desire Him and to desire with Him, to contemplate Him and to contemplate with Him together. And if a person has once realized this ability, appreciated its meaning and significance, actually proved it and approved it for himself, then this means that he has entered into the fabric of the spiritual Objectivity of the world, joined it and was included in it. This means that he became to God in the relationship of “son” to “Father”, became a human son. He ceased to be a wolfman, or simply “a man-son-of-an-earthly-father.” He became a man who received his Heavenly Father: a spark of His fire, a drop from His eternal water cannon, a valuable stone from His treasury, the breath of His lips; His organ, His bearer, His desire or temple, His son, who has the calling and right to say to Him “Our Father!”...

This is where the basic thing will be born, without which there is no spiritual personality: a sense of one’s own spiritual dignity; this is not conceit, not self-confidence, not vanity, not ambition and not pride, but precisely a sense of one’s own spiritual dignity, in which respect for one’s spirit is at the same time humility in the face of God; and these are not even “feelings,” for feeling is unstable and soon transitory; This is objective certainty, brought to the point of obviousness, to conviction, to the basis of personal life. This is not increased or exaggerated self-esteem, always hungry for someone else's recognition; here the point is not in assessing one’s earthly composition, but in the ability to establish oneself in one’s super-earthly composition, that is, to establish the altar of God in oneself and maintain the fire of God on it (according to the ancient hymn: “We will set an altar in your heart”...), and turn to God with the word “Father” and with the deeds of “Son”. It is accessible, worthy, and necessary for every person to set up this prayer altar in his heart, to delve into the calls of conscience and honor and make his will an Instrument of the Will of God - and thereby establish spiritual dignity in himself as the basis of personal life, as a true measure of people and their actions , as a sense of personal, social and political rank. From this, a person makes an unpronounceable orally and verbally, but eternally living “reasoning” or volitional decision, such as the following: “How will I accomplish this evil deed, I, who stand before my God and illuminated by His fire?”; or: “How can I enter into unity with God today, having betrayed my soul?”; or: “How can I be tempted by a bribe if I am called to weave the robe of God?”; “How can I justify this life of pretense and lies before the son of God living in me?”; “How can I lose the carrier of the Spirit within me?”; “If I commit this vileness,” then where will I escape from the breath of His mouth living in me?”; “What will remain of me if I extinguish His fire in myself?”... And all this is nothing more than the voice of one’s own spiritual dignity, giving a person a living conscience, an increased sense of responsibility, continuous standing, faithful and calm walking

in His ways, diligently weaving His robe. And if we express all this in a general, careful and stingy philosophical formula, then this is the Objectivity of the heart, will and deeds. This is what we need to educate new generations of Russian people for. This is what a free, worthy, civil Russian person needs. This is where the salvation and flourishing of the future Russia lies. And all our thoughts should be about how we can create a new Russian upbringing and education on these foundations.

Sense of Evil This is our misfortune and our danger: we live in an era of militant evil, but we do not have the right instinct for recognizing and defining it. Hence countless errors and wanderings. It’s as if we are looking and not seeing; we see but don’t believe our eyes; we are afraid to believe; and having believed, we still try to “convince ourselves” that “maybe all this is not so”; and inappropriately, and at the wrong time, we sentimentally refer to the Gospel “do not judge”, and forget the Apostolic “take away the evil from yourselves” (Cor. 1: 5-13). We make a mistake and are ashamed to say: “I was mistaken”; Therefore, we hold on to it, prolong it, get bogged down in evil and multiply temptations. And militant evil knows very well our blindness and helplessness and develops the most skillful camouflage technique. But sometimes he doesn’t need any special technique: he’ll just call himself differently and speak, like a wolf in a children’s fairy tale, in a “thin little voice”: “your mother came and brought milk”... And we, as if we were just waiting for this, are trusting “little goats” , – now “the doors are wide open” and are ready for anything.

We need vigilance for human falsehood, sensitivity to other people's insincerity, an ear for lies, a sense of evil; conscientious impressionability. Without this, we will be deceived like stupid birds, overfished like rabbits, and crushed like flies on glass. Childish gullibility still lives in us: the naive assumption that if a person says something, then he really means what he says; if he promises, then he wants to fulfill what he promised; if he talks about his past, he is not lying; if he develops “plans,” he takes them seriously; if he accuses another, then “he will not deliberately and maliciously slander”; if he praises someone, it is not because he was threatened, promised or already paid; if he presents himself as a “patriot”, then he cannot possibly belong to a hostile counterintelligence service; if he pronounces sacred words, it is not for the sake of provocation; if he wears any clothes (military, spiritual or foreign), then he internally matches his outfit; if he has money, he obtained it legally and honestly; if he promises food parcels, then out of sympathetic kindness, etc. We, like small children, judge the inner by appearance: by words, by clothes, by articles in the newspaper, and especially by promises, by personal

I'm complimenting and giving information.

But words without action carry no weight. Each of us has our own past, consisting of actions we have committed and, perhaps, are secretly committing even now. This past is by no means like the skin of a snake, periodically renewed; on the contrary, it grows from our soul and heart, it remains internally rotated and is carried by us throughout our entire life; it sounds in the intonations of the voice, it sparkles in the gaze, it comes through in the manners, it breaks through in the turns of speech and in the argumentation, it betrays us. Sometimes a person gives himself away with one look, one word, one statement of a question. Therefore, behind the words there must be well-known deeds; and we must judge not by speeches, but by deeds. A person must have a moral right to the words he utters. Sacred words cannot cover up dirty deeds. Great slogans do not sound from the lips of a traitor. You have to be spiritually blind and deaf to believe in the sincerity of a hired agent. Our generation is rich in disgusting experience of lies and hypocrisy; we are obliged to have a sense of evil and have no right to succumb to temptations. And clothes don't guarantee anything. Were the hiero-chekists who flew to Paris and seduced Metropolitan Evlogii and Metropolitan Seraphim (Lukyanov) not in robes? Didn't Skoblin have the right to wear the uniform of a white general? Doesn't the sharpie give himself away with a very immaculate tailcoat and a snow-white shirt with diamond cufflinks?

And newspaper articles should not mislead us. A person must have a vital right to articles, as well as to words and speeches, a right acquired by the deeds of life, its courage, its sincerity, its sacrifice, the integrity of its character. The modern world is rich in costumed writers who have disguised themselves more than once, writers for hire, writers of “whatever you want,” writers-hypocrites and traitors. We must learn to recognize them. It is even stupider to believe “promises”. Both under the Soviets and in emigration, we saw many “artsmen” who make their careers with unfulfilled, and often obviously unfulfillable, promises: while promising others in vain an imaginary “conjuncture,” they are gradually preparing a real one for themselves. It is even more stupid to believe praisers and flatterers. Flattery is a type of bribe that is not punishable and that people are not ashamed to take: both “gave” and “did not give”; and “took” and “did not take”; the bribery took place, but it cannot be proven. Meanwhile, a flatterer is always at the same time a slanderer: whoever does not allow himself to be bribed by flattery will be slandered by him. But we need to remember: modern humanity is teeming with morally and politically - compromised people who need to hide or dissimulate their past; lies, flattery and slander are their main life weapons. What do we do? 1) Move away from evil and do good. Do not get mixed up in that idle and harmful confusion of party intrigue and slander, to which so many devote their energies. Look for a real struggle, and not an emigrant career, which has always been and will always be empty talk. One must be, not seem; strike the enemy, and not be considered an “emigrant prominent.” 2) Close our ranks. Persistently, tirelessly search for people who deserve absolute trust: people of accomplished deeds; people of unshakable standing; people who were never sold anywhere and never hired for anything dirty; such people that if a clever slanderer presents us with “absurd evidence” of their imaginary dishonesty, then we will shrink away from the slanderer with disgust. You need to find people of absolute trust and connect with them firmly. 3) Constantly strengthen your sense of good and evil. Protect your sense of honor; do not reduce his demands; firmly believe that dishonor is my defeat and transition to the camp of the devil; and measure every new person to the requirements of complete honor and honesty. Always check your impressions and your inner judgment - when communicating with people of absolute trust. Resolutely move away from the dishonest; Do not trust those who are doubtful. Neither one nor the other is suitable for fighting - they will sell and betray. 4) Learn to accurately distinguish a sincere person from an insincere one. Strengthen in yourself a sense of falsehood and an ear for lies. Carefully accumulate relevant life experience within yourself and share it with people of absolute trust. And always and in all your social mistakes give yourself a clear and honest account.

To the history of the devil The devilish principle has its own history in the life of the human race. There is serious scientific literature on this issue, which, however, does not concern recent decades. However, it is precisely the last decades that shed new light on the past two centuries. The era of European “enlightenment” (starting with the French encyclopedists of the 18th century) undermined people's belief in the existence of a personal devil. An educated person cannot believe in the existence of such a disgusting humanoid creature “with a tail, with claws, with horns” (according to Zhukovsky), never seen by anyone, but depicted only in ballads and pictures. Luther still believed in him and even threw an inkwell at him; but later centuries rejected the “devil”, and he gradually “disappeared”, faded away, like an “outdated prejudice.” But it was then that he became interested in art and philosophy. The enlightened European was left with only the “cloak” of Satan, and he began to enthusiastically drape himself into it. There was a burning desire to learn more about the devil, to examine his “true appearance,” to guess his thoughts and desires, to “reincarnate” in him, or at least “to walk” in front of people in a devilish image... And so art began to imagine and depict it, and philosophy took up its theoretical justification. The devil, of course, “failed” because the human imagination is not able to contain him, but a culture of “demonism” began in literature, music, and painting. Since the beginning of the 19th century, Europe has been fascinated by its anti-divine forms: the demonism of doubt, denial, pride, rebellion, disappointment, bitterness, melancholy, contempt, selfishness and even boredom appears. Poets depict Prometheus, Dennitsa, Cain, Don Juan, Mephistopheles. Byron, Goethe, Schiller, Chamisso, Hofmann, Franz Liszt, and later Stuck, Baudelaire and others unfold a whole gallery of “demons” or “demonic” people and moods, and these “demons” are “smart,” “witty,” “educated.” ”, “brilliant”, “temperamental”, in a word, “charming” and evoke sympathy, and “demonic people” are the embodiment of “world sorrow”, “noble protest” and some kind of “highest revolutionism”.

At the same time, the “mystical” teaching is being revived that there is a “dark principle” even in God. German romantics find poetic words in favor of “innocent shamelessness,” and the left Hegelian Max Stirner openly preaches human self-deification and demonic egoism. The rejection of the personal “devil” is gradually replaced by the justification of the devilish principle...

Dostoevsky saw the abyss hidden behind this. He pointed to it with prophetic anxiety and spent his whole life looking for ways to overcome it. Friedrich Nietzsche also approached this abyss, was captivated by it and exalted it. His latest works - “The Will to Power”, “Antichrist” and “Behold the Man” - contain a direct and frank preaching of evil... Nietzsche designates the entire set of religious objects (God, soul, virtue, sin, the other world, truth, eternal life) as “a pile of lies born from bad instincts by natures that are sick and, in the deepest sense, harmful.” “The Christian concept of God” is for him “one of the most corrupt concepts “created on earth.” All of Christianity is in his eyes only a “crude fable about miraculous salvation,” and Christians are “a party of rejected nonentities and idiots.”

What he extols is “cynicism,” shamelessness, “the highest that can be achieved on earth.” He appeals to the beast in man, to the “supreme animal”, which must be unbridled at all costs. He demands a “wild man,” “an evil man,” “with a joyful belly.” He is captivated by everything “cruel, openly bestial,” criminal. “Greatness exists only where there is greatness

crime". “In each of us a barbarian and a wild beast is affirmed.” All that builds the brotherhood of people in life are the ideas of “guilt, punishment, justice, honesty, freedom, love, etc.” “must be completely removed from existence.” “Forward,” he exclaims, “blasphemers, opponents of morality, all kinds of baseless people, artists, Jews, gamblers - all rejected sections of society!..” And there is no greater joy for him than to see “the destruction of the best people and watch how they go step by step to destruction”... “I know my lot. - he writes. “One day my name will be associated with the memory of something monstrous, of a crisis that has never happened before on earth, of the deepest conflict of conscience, of a verdict brought against everything that was hitherto believed in, demanded, and revered sacredly.” I'm not a man, I'm dynamite..." Thus, the justification of evil found its essentially diabolical, theoretical formulas - and all that remained was to wait for their implementation. Nietzsche found his readers, students and admirers; they accepted his doctrine, combined it with the doctrine of Karl Marx - and began to implement this plan 30 years ago. “Demonism” and “Satanism” are not the same thing. Demonism is a human matter, Satanism is a matter of the spiritual abyss. A demonic person indulges in his evil passions and can still repent and convert; but a person into whom, according to the word of the Gospel, “Satan has entered,” is possessed by an alien, superhuman force and becomes a humanoid devil himself. Demonism is a transitory spiritual darkness, its formula: “life without God”; Satanism is the complete and final darkness of the spirit, its formula: “the overthrow of God.” In the demonic man there rages unbridled instinct, supported by cold reflection; Satanic man acts as someone else's instrument, serving evil, but able to enjoy his disgusting service. A demonic person gravitates towards Satan: playing, enjoying, suffering, entering into agreements with him (according to popular belief), he gradually becomes his comfortable home; Satanic man has lost himself and become an earthly instrument of the devil's will. Whoever has not seen such people, or, having seen them, does not recognize them, does not know the originally completed evil and has no idea of the truly devilish elements.

Our generations are faced with the terrible, mysterious manifestations of this element and still do not dare to express their life experience in the right words. We could describe this element as "black fire"; or define it as eternal envy, as unquenchable hatred, as militant vulgarity, as shameless lies, as absolute shamelessness and absolute lust for power, as trampling on spiritual freedom, as a thirst for general humiliation, as joy in the destruction of the best people, as anti-Christianity. A person who succumbs to this element loses spirituality, love and conscience; corruption and licentiousness begin in him, he indulges in conscious depravity and thirst for destruction; he ends with defiant blasphemy and mantorturing.” The mere perception of this devilish element causes disgust and horror in a healthy soul, which can turn into real bodily malaise, into a kind of “lightness” (spasm of the sympathetic nervous system!), into nervous dysrhythmia and mental illness, and can even lead to suicide. Satanic people are recognized by their eyes, by their smile, by their voice, by their words and by their deeds. We Russians have seen them in reality and live; we know who they are and where they come from. But foreigners still do not understand this phenomenon and do not want to understand it, because it brings them judgment and condemnation. And some Reformed theologians continue to write about the “usefulness of the devil” and sympathize with his modern rebellion.

The right to the truth We live in an era of great turmoil. Truth and lies, honor and dishonor, loyalty and betrayal, faith and hypocrisy - for more than thirty years now they have been deliberately mixed and replaced in order to spiritually deafen and blind people, to cause confusion, confusion and helplessness in souls and to crush the lost and weakened under someone else's power to them. With this intention - to deceive and enslave - a number of organizations come forward, of course, led by left and right totalitarians...

Anyone who has read the Soviet press for years and has not succumbed to its propaganda has undergone a good and clear school of mental and spiritual vigilance. In Soviet newspapers lies come in a continuous wave. It is presented in a tone of unquestioned authority and feigned, hypocritical pathos, characteristic of bad dramatic actors. You read and think: he’s lying! and he himself knows that he is lying; and doesn’t even hide his title... “Yes, I’m lying! Listen and shut up! And just try to disagree! And repeat my lies after me! Yes, without reservations, without hesitation! Confident! With sincere conviction! Lie sincerely! Deceive with me with pathos! A hypocrite with a temperament, so that I, the first Volg and a deceiver, have reason to make a gullible physiognomy!!!”... You read and feel that a quiet dizziness begins, accompanied by disgust for the liar and secret contempt for yourself... - for silence... And suddenly - in this stream of lies and deception - in the same tone - whole pieces of factual truth are spoken out... And this truth is spoken out precisely as part of a lie - to reinforce and certify it. You know that this is true... and you begin to not believe it either. Because she lies too! She lies in that she is pronounced in the same tone of insolent aplomb, with the same hypocritical and affected “gestures” (mental, moral and stylistic!). She lies by the fact that she appears, surrounded by lies, in a deceptive picture and for the sake of deception. And so you try to sift out in this compromised “truth” - the real truth from the lies, to retain one honest factual truth, to consolidate it and judge with it and with your free mind all the lies that surround it...

This tone of defiant and provocative lies, established from the very beginning of the revolution in Soviet newspapers and speeches, gradually but firmly captured everything in the Soviet Union: the court, and all other departments, and magazines, and science, and art, and lower school, and secondary education. , and higher educational institutions, and private conversations, and the very thinking of Soviet “citizens” and especially the worldview of Soviet youth, who in new generations have seen nothing else! Fear and hypnosis have introduced the greatest spiritual bad taste into the souls of people, of which many of them are naively proud... In the Soviet Union everything lies: everything is distorted, everything is ambiguous, everything deceives. Just think: what is called a “frank confession” in a Soviet court? What is considered in Soviet science a “proven” theory, a good textbook, scientific “merit”? What art is prescribed and rewarded, and what art is desecrated and forbidden? Here Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin is sent on the radio - why? to pass off the Soviet Union as Russia and clearly show the whole world the “freedom of Soviet art”... Why were the commissariats renamed into Ministries? Why did precious Russian names appear in Soviet propaganda - Alexander Nevsky, Peter the Great, Suvorov? Why was the blasphemous decoration of the “patriarchal church” put forward?.. In the Soviet Union, everything was lied to, even money, which is not worth its own currency and does not belong to its private owner; right down to tractors, which serve not labor, but enslavement; right down to police dogs that catch not private swindlers or state robbers, but martyrs of the regime and heroes of the struggle; right up to “corrective labor camps”, which do not correct anyone, but exploit and exterminate the best people of the country. In the Soviet Union, both “ranks” and “orders” lie, because ranks are given for betraying Russia, and “orders” are given for flatteringly pleasing her enemies...

People who grew up in this atmosphere take it with them, within themselves – abroad. And the most lively newspapers of the emigration (regardless of their direction) are the most enlightened: irresponsible, deceitful, morally cheeky and provocative. Terror weans people from the truth and accustoms them to lies; and they must notice it in themselves, condemn it and overcome it. This corrupt rule: “every person lies all his life in his own favor, and you just need to learn to lie intelligently, skillfully and plausibly,” is a product of the devil’s turmoil and means its triumph. We must understand and feel this. And those who lie should not imagine that we do not see their lies and do not know how to recognize them. How do we know this? By the eyes, restlessly running back and forth; by facial expression; by voice intonation; by gestures; on internal contradictions; according to discrepancies in their own testimony; by discrepancy with the facts; in this manner: to each interlocutor lie differently and differently, in order of adaptation...

And so, whoever lies like this loses the sense of truth in himself; and before other people and before God, he loses his right to the truth. The very truth begins to lie to him. And he feels it himself and doesn’t believe himself. And others don't believe him. And if he does not understand all this, then he himself will become an imaginary person, a social ghost, a counterfeit coin, a cardboard brick, a counterfeit product (a dummy) from a Soviet showcase. Does Con need him like this? Not the future Russia! In life you need to have the right to the truth! Not everyone who tries to talk her out can do it. A person with a slyly slanting gaze, with a false smile, with a hypocritical face, with feigned intonation, with affected gestures, with a muddy, lied or downright unscrupulous past, with crafty goals, with vainglorious acting habits - will express the very real truth insincerely, excite suspicion of everyone, to compromise the truth and harm it...

There must be a personal thought behind the word; character should be felt, and not a thirst for a new, reverse career; There must be sincere conviction, a sense of self-worth must be visible. The word must be hard-won and spoken from the heart. Then it convinces and wins; then it does not convey a lying half-truth, but an honest truth. And it is in vain to think that all this is a theoretical invention, for this is accessible to every simple and decent person, not burdened by any “theories.” In an era of greatest turmoil and lies, we need to preserve a sense of truth like the apple of our eye, and demand from ourselves and from people the right to the truth. For without a sense of truth we will not recognize a liar, and without the right to the truth we will destroy every truth, every belief, every proof, and everything sacred in life. Russia can only be built on mutual trust; and if the Russian people lie to each other, then they will disperse in the world and die from mutual distrust and betrayal. It is not for nothing that the Gospel calls the devil “the father of lies” (John 8.44).

What is conspiracy? Preliminary remarks 1. Not every person is capable of conspiratorial (i.e., secretly conspiratorial) activities. In the history of mankind, many conspiracies have failed due to the participation in them of people who were incapable, uncalled, untrained, frivolous and careless. In our time, in the era of sophisticated physical and mental torture, the use of new weapons of subcutaneous and intravenous injections, as well as hypnosis, secret work requires special training, a special school and strong will. In the absence of these conditions, every person and every organization is guaranteed complete failure.

2. Therefore, before undertaking this kind of activity, it is necessary to make sure of your personal ability for it, and then certainly undergo a special kind of technical, physical and mental training school. People who are talkative, expansive, emotional, impressionable, naive and stupid, forgetful, absent-minded, trusting, frank and sincere (these are not the same thing!), fearful and timid (these are not the same thing!), who cannot restrain their imagination , organically incapable of pretending and lying, unable to tolerate long periods of loneliness, colds, impatient, easily susceptible to suggestion and bodily pain - it is better not to take on such matters at all.

3. This warning applies especially to people who are vain and ambitious. They must once and for all make a choice between the success of their business and their personal success. People generally resort to secrecy and conspiracy when the success of their business requires it; This means that this success requires from them silence, inconspicuousness, modesty, i.e., precisely what their vanity absolutely cannot tolerate. A vain person wants to figure, to be exalted, to be famous. He is a braggart by nature. He will always tell unnecessary lies about himself, his party or organization, take credit for other people’s deeds and exploits, in the confidence that from boasting, as well as from slander, there will always be “something left”: listeners or readers will not believe everything, so at least they will take a particle with them. And in the future it is so easy to confuse whether he himself advertised himself and his party or whether the praise came from outsiders. The boasting of a vain person imperceptibly grows into “public opinion” or, at least, into rumors transmitted from mouth to mouth, it enters as praise into this general and irresponsible “they say”; and if they “talk”, then this is already “half glory”; a little more - and they will begin to honor, and from “honor” to “power” is just a stone’s throw away. Look, the braggart has already made a career. 4. So vain and ambitious people do not notice at all how their chatter and their defiant demeanor harm their cause and ruin their conspiracy. Modestly silent conspirators are difficult to find; they must be found, they must be treasured, their heads must not be risked. To be convinced of this, you only have to understand and grasp that the leaders of the world's greatest conspiracies were and are kept in complete obscurity. Lenin had it easy: the dirty work of “expropriations”, counterfeiting money, gold mining was done for him and for him by others (for example, Dzhugashvili-Koba-Stalin in the Caucasus, Litvinov in Romania, Yevsey Taratuta and Maxim Gorky in Moscow, Parvus-Gelfand in Berlin and Switzerland, General Hoffmann at the German headquarters and others); until the “favorable time” came (1917), because Kerensky’s power in the left direction was zero, it was possible to occupy the Kshesinskaya mansion and the Smolny Institute without conspiracy, and the whole struggle was already waged “on the street.” Masters of conspiracy are easier to find in the Socialist Revolutionary Party, but sometimes they also failed and died (with the possible exception of Yevno Azef, who lived out his days in Berlin as a wealthy rentier).

5. The mere mention of this last name should lead anyone to the idea that in conspiracy there is always a morally risky, slippery and compromising element. The conspirator must be a master of pretense, deception

and lies and not experience any disgust, shame, or remorse when using your skill. This comes much easier to an unscrupulous and immoral soul than to a noble and conscientious spirit. Where a professional sharper, swindler and executioner calmly carry out the secret orders given to them, regardless of the baseness and abomination of these tasks, there the ideological fighter must still find those internal foundations that would calm his soul in a moment of disgust, shame or conscientious reproach. He must always remember that the success of his conspiracy business can lead him into a dead end of ruthlessness, blatant lies, crime and betrayal. And we can confidently predict that a person who has not correctly resolved this problem of compromise will sooner or later either adopt the point of view of a professional scoundrel, perhaps an unscrupulous slave, or experience the exhaustion of life that brings with it moral contempt for oneself . A good goal never justifies a bad means, even the most expedient one: an evil deed, having generated good consequences, does not at all become a good deed: the causal connection between meanness and the desired improvement of life could be correctly foreseen, but perfect meanness retains all its vile properties. The art of doing nasty things without becoming a villain is a difficult art, which requires not only great internal school and discipline, but also constant purification of the soul.

Conspiracy skill offers in a person the ability to keep secrets and the ability to recognize people.

Secrecy 1. If you have a secret and you need to keep it, then understand first of all that only you yourself can keep it: someone else will have to “keep” it when you give it to him. Do not rely on others, on their silence and tact. If you yourself have not kept your secret, how can you demand silence from others? 2. A secret has its own laws: whoever breaks them destroys it. The essence of a secret is not that they know about it but do not talk about it (“an open secret”). Its essence is that people do not know what it consists of, nor that anything is hidden at all.

3. Therefore, if you have a secret, then do not have a mysterious or important appearance: do not whisper in the corners; do not drop meaningful hints; don’t talk about your “very interesting” acquaintances; do not pretend to be “initiated” into something; Don't report sensational news. Be simple, natural, modest. Know how to be silent without mystery; do not tease other people's curiosity; and when necessary, know how to be talkative about extraneous, publicly accessible subjects. Be like everyone else. Be subtle. And above all, know how to control your vanity; vanity is the main source of talkativeness. Train yourself not to value the judgment of people around you about you. Learn for the sake of the cause to calmly lose in their opinion: it is worth not much.

4. Obvious mystery always blurts out a secret. Be sure: if people find out that you have a secret, they will soon find out what it is. For everywhere there are many idle curious women and professional trackers (intelligence officers! counterintelligence officers! curious rumor-mongers!). Therefore, if the very presence of a secret has become the talk of the town, then extinguish it completely; and then, if necessary, tie it again, differently and more carefully. 5. To learn to keep a secret, do this: conceal to yourself your first serious disappointment or your first serious success. Make sure that no one in the world recognizes it from you. Or do this: if you find out some exciting “news,” force yourself not to tell anyone about it. If someone else talks about her in public

to you - listen and be silent; if he tells you incorrectly, don’t correct him; if they consider you an ignorant person, let them consider you, so much the better. Practice this silently; but don’t tell anyone that you are supposedly “practicing.” Learn to be alone with your secret so that it doesn’t “burst” you. By doing this you will develop impermeability to other people. Secure it internally - with the unconditional transparency of the soul before God and conscience. 6. Secret is a burden. This burden must be borne by yourself and alone. Accustom yourself to this and you will strengthen your character, for the essence of character is spiritual human independence.

7. The fewer people know about the secret, the more invulnerable it is; and vice versa the general knowledge of the secret makes her all vulnerable and kills her. 8. Intimate secrets that no one needs are easy to keep. It is much more difficult to keep those secrets that should be known only to a very few, but which many and, moreover, hostile people would like to get to. Start your exercises with personal secrets and then, only gradually, move on to important secrets. 9. You should tell another secret not when it is “possible” to do so (he is “not a traitor”, he is “not a gossip”, he is a “nice fellow”), but when it is absolutely necessary for the matter itself, and he has already proven , which deserves unconditional trust. It is always better not to finish speaking than to say something unnecessary and dangerous. When in doubt, it is always better to abstain. Do not make any allowances for yourself - neither for kinship, nor for friendship, nor for love; remember Samson and Delilah. 10. Don’t be naive: don’t think that you can bind another with a “word of honor,” or an “oath,” or a “promise.” For many people, the secret begins to “burst” precisely after they give their “word of honor” to remain silent. Never burden another with a secret: it can break out of him unnoticed and unexpectedly, against his will - in delirium, in danger, in a love frenzy, in a drunken state, in a trance of hypnosis. Only actual ignorance gives a firm guarantee. Therefore, a cautious silent person can include his awareness in the motivation of his further actions: observant enemies will later say: “if he did this, it means that he knew such and such”... 11. Develop close, instant observation; tireless attention; the ability to quickly concentrate and change decisions on the fly; the art of subjecting one's speech to internal censorship; the ability to correctly distinguish shades of meaning and choose words. This is necessary to keep the secret. 12. Train yourself not to rush to answer a question; Always give yourself a deadline to choose the smartest answer. Before answering, cut off internally all the threads leading to the secret. 13. Never write down your secret, or everything connected with it; and don't store it anywhere. Do not write down the names of your accomplices, their addresses, or secret passwords. Remember everything you need by heart. And if you can’t, then first strengthen your memory with mnemonic exercises. 14. If there are failures at first, don’t be discouraged. Keeping a secret is a difficult matter. Learn to check yourself after every conversation and note your mistakes; then you yourself will soon complement these rules. And remember: those who know how to keep a secret are always stronger than those who cannot. 15. And remember: nowadays enemies are almost everywhere and even walls often have ears. 16. And observe the general rule: the one who is exposed (generally known, stands in plain sight) should not conduct secret work, because he is like a fly under glass and he will not be able to hide anything; secret work should be carried out by inconspicuous people according to his instructions and orders. And the one who conspires should not

exhibit, that is, appear openly, advertise your work in newspapers, publish your name, chat about your work. Such self-promotion is tantamount to denunciation of oneself to the enemy: “I am here, it is me; You can kidnap me or kill me at any time."

Ability to recognize people 1. The one who undertakes to organize people must distribute powers and responsibilities among them, establish cooperation and subordination between them and, most importantly, place the right people in places suitable for them. This means that the organizer must have a good understanding of people - who is worth what and who can be entrusted with what. He must be firmly convinced that each of the members of his organization a) sincerely wants to do his job (not a crafty saboteur!), b) has the necessary strength and abilities for this (health, physical and mental strength), c) knows how to demand and demand , but knows how to obey himself, d) understood the task given to him. To do all this, you must first learn to recognize people; Those who are not capable of this will make only mistakes and ruin the work entrusted to them. 2. This is especially important for our future activities in Russia, where we will find entire cadres of people brought up in anger, lies, timidity, corruption and betrayal; a multitude of people with crushed pride and broken will, a boundless sea of people with illmannered and unstrengthened character; and a comparatively small minority of strong and faithful people. They will need to be unmistakably recognized, united with them and firmly waged the cause of saving Russia. 3. Someone else's soul is a mystery. There are no rational standards or rules for its mechanical measurement and definition. But a lively and penetrating intuition can receive as assistance a number of valuable instructions or advice that provide a guiding thread for a mental and moral diagnosis. None of these “rules” are self-sufficient; and only together can they help to correctly illuminate other people’s “darkness”. The main thing is that only a goodquality person can establish and study the good quality of others, for only he has a living measure of personal conscience. For the villain, all our instructions are powerless and fruitless. 4. Each person is involuntarily, by nature, as if “encrypted” in his body and reveals himself in his actions, and moreover, in such a way that his whole soul is secretly given in them. We must learn to “decipher” it correctly and accurately. Hence the first rule for recognizing a person: deeds and body mean more than words. Don't judge a person by his conversation or by his statements. Do not believe words accompanied by slyly prowling eyes or a contemptuous expression. Demand actions and compare them with words. Look closely at a person’s external appearance and compare it with his words and deeds. A vile, evil deed can expose both words and a hypocritically sweet expression on a face... Hypocrisy is now more widespread in the world than ever before... 5. So, what is most important is a person’s real actions and his personal presence in them: his intention (what exactly he wanted), and motive (why he wanted this), and the energy of the will he invested. A person’s words are clearly illuminated and comprehended only by the rays coming from his actions and from his entire personality. No matter how “bright” and “convincing” his words were, one cannot judge them definitively without knowing his deeds. A person’s deeds are learned only through cooperation with him (and even then not always and not immediately; let’s remember Azef, Gapon, “Fedorov-Yakushev”). Clairvoyant intuition is inherent only in brilliant people (for example, only P. N. Wrangel, at first glance, identified Fedorov-Yakushev as a provocateur and forbade him to enter into relations).

Hence: in any organization a certain gradualness of trust is necessary, like a ladder of inclusion. At first, a person with little knowledge is entrusted with only clear, small and harmless tasks; and, moreover, always with subsequent verification. They never let anyone in on unnecessary things. Awareness is very often a heavy burden for the informed and a great danger. On the one hand, I cannot report what I really do not know; and on the other hand, totalitarian organizations often do not reward, but kill their “too much” knowledgeable employee, even a loyal, obedient and very useful one... - “would betray”, “defect”, “let slip”, “begin to blackmail”... 6. In the body, the human soul is entirely hidden and fully manifested: in the structure of the head, in the features and expression of the face, in the shape of the arms and legs, in the eyes and in laughter; in the handshake, in the handwriting and in the gait. Nowadays, some of this has already been studied scientifically, and the established generalizations can be practically used. But each person must think through them, assimilate and apply them himself (see the especially instructive stories of A.F. Koshko, head of the AllRussian detective police, vol. I “Dactyloscopy”, vol. II. “Detective Apparatus”, and vol. III. “Ivan” Egorovich"). Only a few hints can be given here. a) Each face has its own dominant, stable expression. What does this person have? How does it change in a moment of anger, fear, failure, confusion, pleasure, triumph, laughter? Does the face become stupider, ruder, angrier? Does he reveal cowardice, lack of will, greed, vulgarity, concentration, confusion, calmness, contempt - or vice versa? Dostoevsky points out that the trait introduced into facial expression by laughter is especially significant for the soul of the laugher... b) We must learn to recognize a person by their eyes. The eyes of a frank person look completely different from the eyes of a secretive person. Who wouldn't detect the cunning and malice in Lenin's eyes? Who wouldn’t catch the boundless self-confidence and stupid cruelty in Dzhugashvili’s eyes? A person called to command and a person who is internally broken look completely differently. A lied person avoids looking into someone else's observing eyes: he always looks down to the right, then down to the left, sliding over someone else's face just for the sake of oncoming observation. There are eyes that are faithful and treacherous, good-natured and secretly evil, predatory, ruthless, sensual, stupidly glassy, intently thinking, hypocritically sweet, fiery and demonic, etc. A person incapable of physiognomy will always fail in assessing people. c) Learn to notice what a person does with your hand when shaking hands: does he take your hand (strong-willed nature), or give his? briefly, expressively, definitively, or does he hold your hand limply, for a long time and hesitantly? Does he give you just his fingers, in a hurry to take them away from you, or does he give you his whole hand? maybe he takes only your fingers and slips away so that you don’t learn too many secrets? does he press himself or let him press? as if wanting to express something (what exactly?) or hide something (what exactly?)... Learn this - and you will soon begin to confidently distinguish between the strong-willed and the weak-willed, tenacious, greedy, selfish, deceitful, flattering, chaste and depraved, straightforward and intriguing... d) Studying handwriting gives a lot. Here everything has its meaning: the position and inclination of the letters, their size, their completion and incompleteness, their tails under the line and above the line, weak and strong pressure, even and uneven, breaks between letters, the distance between lines, closedness of letters, curls, breaks , underlines and strokes. Here you don’t need to fantasize, you need to observe, study, accumulate experience, intuitively feel and check. You need to start with the handwriting of people you know well. e) Learn to notice people’s gait: frivolously bouncing, limply shuffling, firmly striking, insinuatingly creeping, mincing, confusedly stumbling, busily balanced, suspiciously turning around, obsequiously shuffling, etc.

f) Learn to evaluate people’s manners - sometimes cheeky and self-confident (sometimes from overcoming great shyness), sometimes constrained and restrained, sometimes boastfully showing off, sometimes flatteringly insinuating... How often complete falsehood is hidden behind feigned humility and sentimental “piety.” A number of essential instructions are given to us by chirology, that is, the scientific study of the hand. g) When talking, always sit the person facing the light and try to reveal as little as possible about yourself and learn as much as possible about him. Always pay attention to whether his eyes are lined, whether his cheeks are rouged: there are now many such “smeared” men; they especially penetrate into the ministries of foreign affairs, creeping in and sniffing around... The less you meet and talk with them, the better, because each of them is a ready traitor.

7. The most important thing is to establish a person’s loyalty, that is, his sincere conviction and steadfastness in his convictions. There are many people - and in our time, in the era of totalitarian terror, there are more and more of them - people who are generally incapable of convictions. They either remain silent out of timidity; either they are ready to lie in any direction, or they are secretly assigned to some behind-thescenes organization in order to remain silent and lie under its leadership and behind its defense. Such people are not difficult to recognize; they are, in essence, lukewarm and cool to everything; for them everything is “conditional” and “relative”; they are in no way complete or final; evil frightens them, but does not outrage them; They sympathize with good only when it wins; they are distinguished by their special “tolerance”, which they themselves pass off as “justice” and “multilateralism”; they love to “reconcile opposites”, willingly “talk” with people of hostile camps and pass off this semi-treacherous chatter as some kind of higher “dialectic”. Convinced people irritate and offend them with their conviction. Their mind, if it has one at all, is devoid of will; their feeling is unprincipled; they do not believe in anything and are in a hurry to “insure themselves” with both God and the devil.

In particular: do not trust affected people who tend to show more feelings than they actually have (they lie to themselves and others); Avoid homosexuals: their spiritual path can always change unexpectedly for them. Always check whether a person is inclined to treat his own shrine ironically; It can be useful to put a fatal question to a person’s forehead, gently but unexpectedly, looking intently into his eyes; It can be useful to let him feel that you “don’t really believe him”, and calmly, without offending, but also without helping, watch how he gets out of his delicate situation; It can be useful to ask him what he will do if, as part of the organization, he is ordered to commit “useful abomination.”

8. And always remember: the false tone of the answer can weaken any further oaths and assurances. A person is seen not in a state of mental balance, but in passion and excitement. Listen to the person with your conscience and believe most of all those “sediments” that will emerge in your soul at the end of the conversation. 9. Try to establish the person’s willpower. Will is not a flash or an impulse; Emotional people live in flashes and impulses. The will is not a tenacious and inert instinct. Will is the ability to confidently, persistently and for a long time push in one direction, struggling with obstacles. A strong-willed person is always inclined to attack; he always seems to be charged and taking aim; he usually looks to the future, intending to put his stamp on it. If he is a pessimist, then his pessimism is not timid or confused; if he is an optimist, then you hide his optimism behind a plan of action; he gets bored with weak-willed people and slightly despises them.

Signs of a weak-willed person: he does not subjugate circumstances, but adapts to them, mistaking them for “events” and always preparing to bend and duck under them (“fact-worship”); he is always inclined to put off unpleasant things

the matter is not taken up from the very beginning; he is afraid of responsibility and prefers not to take it upon himself; he doubts fruitlessly and hesitates for a long time; in doubt and in difficult times, he seeks authority. Such people often stay too long at a party (“they get stuck” and can’t leave); they put everything on the back burner; they repair a pencil not on their own behalf, but on their own behalf; do not push the thread into the needle, but put the needle on the thread. 10. Try to correctly assess a person’s mind and intuition. The mind is a creative principle; That's why a smart person always has a lot of his own thoughts. The mind has the ability to distinguish and to unravel (analysis!); Therefore, the mind brings clarity, precision and certainty to everything. Mind is the power of judgment (synthesis); therefore, he always seeks and finds correct explanations and viable combinations. However, the mind is not self-sufficient; without intuition (contemplation and vision) he is empty, blind and arrogant - a baseless inventor and logical phrase-monger. It is through experience and intuition that a person takes (perceives) objects and real life, foresees and creates. The semiintellectual does not understand this and that is why he falls into rationality and rushes around with abstract doctrines; he believes in semi-science and does not believe in God. So, the mind is not self-sufficient: without conscience it is cynical; without faith - he goes and corrupts. A mind without feeling is dry, dead and fierce; the mind without will is passive and sterile. Deprived of all this, the mind turns out to be limited and dull, truly incapable of creativity, unweaving, or judgment. Signs of a stupid person: he is quickly satisfied with the first impression and his own judgment; he is unaware of the limits of his own mind and easily falls into complacency; he overestimates his intuition and often speaks generally known things and, moreover, with aplomb; he does not see complexity and simplifies everything; he is short-sighted, frivolous and lacks a sense of cognitive responsibility; he is not inventive and often displays naive gullibility; in doubt and in difficult times, he becomes confused, seeks authority, or falls into a stereotype. Stupid people are often cunning. Cunning is not intelligence, but a surrogate for intelligence; it is instinctive resourcefulness; hence her ignobility, her unscrupulousness and intrigue. The real mind does not intrigue: it is too noble and clear for intrigue and has too much self-respect. Therefore, the schemer lacks real intelligence; it is shallow, low and limited.

It is wonderful that a person with an original and strong mind always creates “his own” words and formulas. A person with good intuition always and immediately distinguishes the important from the unimportant, and therefore speaks to the point, with correct and meaningful intonations. A person who boasts a lot and reduces all conversations to himself does not see the object because of himself and his judgments about objects are weak. The reasoner is always limited. True intelligence is determined not by memory, not by learned words, not by aplomb, not by eloquence and not by deft “dialectics”, but by the ability for independent, keen observation and analysis of events. 11. The human soul can neither be defined nor exhausted; That is why a real organizer must continuously observe its manifestations, delve into and capture the characteristic features of heterogeneous people. In particular, when choosing people who are faithful, energetic and effective, it is useful to keep the following in mind. Sentimental people are often not kind at all, but only cover up their grievances and their anger with false kindness. People who hide their feelings in the depths (“affective”) are usually more silent, truer to themselves, more stable and self-possessed than those who violently pour out their feelings (“emotional”).

The charge of activity is usually stronger in those who do not live out their temperament in sensual and erotic adventures. People who have a vivid imagination succumb to fear more easily, because fear intensifies in the soul from the concrete idea of “dangerous possibilities.” Therefore, the art of courage consists, first of all, in the ability not to think about danger and not to imagine the “worst of outcomes.” Everyone is afraid, but the brave control their imagination and suppress it with their will. People who are artistically gifted (especially in poetry, music and painting) are less adapted to decisive and reckless action. People who are suspicious of their health are not people of action. They are too dependent on their feelings and their well-being. People who are forgetful and careless are unbalanced in their mental associations and depend on their dreams and passions; therefore, they are less suitable for a long, strongwilled struggle. A liar in words will deceive and betray in deeds. It is not the ambitious who are called to power: the first, often subtle, corruption of a person begins with ambition and vanity, for his personal success can always turn out to be more important and dearer to him than the Cause. People who radiate the power of inner command aimed at serving the Cause are called to power. The one who pushes forward is always suspicious; but this does not mean at all that one who skillfully stays in the back rows thereby deserves trust. People who are easily offended, harbor grievances and accumulate underground feelings are not trustworthy and are always “fraught” with surprises. However, great resentment and vindictiveness often hide narrow-mindedness and even stupidity. Always ask a person why he gets into a state of excitement or passion, and in this direction look for his main driving passion. A passionate gambler and drunkard, he is always subject to disqualification when serving important assignments. Do not judge a man completely until you know and evaluate the character of his wife (or lover). 12. And one more thing: do not believe in the finality and infallibility of your own judgments about people. Always refine and deepen your observations. Always check your judgments - with those of others. Always be ready to admit your mistake; in any case, patiently listen to opposing opinions and objections. Do not allow yourself to be bribed by praise, flattery, insinuating servility and feminine coquetry. Maintain the right amount of distrust, but do not allow your suspicion to become excessive and lead you into a persecution mania. 13. Every struggle is associated with risk. In our time, political struggle is, as it were, a complete risk. The more careful the incumbent must be. All the more reason does he have to keep secret secrets. To inform the entire universe that I am acting conspiratorially, that I am the head of a large conspiratorial organization preparing a “revolution” or a “coup” is madness, indicating a complete misunderstanding of conspiratorial work and the hopelessness of the entire undertaking.

About the coming dictatorship

Our whole task at first will be to shorten as much as possible the period of inevitable chaos that will spill out in Russia after the fall of totalitarian communism. The absurd and vitally harmful clampdown was too long; the terror he used was too cruel and merciless; the injustice was immense; the violence was defiant; The bet was always placed on unscrupulous sadists who bought scoundrels, charmed fools and eradicated precious Russian people. Indignation was “driven inside”; the protests were drenched in blood. As soon as people sense that “the regime is over,” everything will boil over.

What will this “boiling” be expressed in? Is it worth describing? One thing can be said: the extermination of the best Russian people left life and freedom for the worst; system systematically reduced fear, groveling, lies, flattery and violence

moral level and brought to the surface of souls the ancient sediments of cruelty, the legacy of the Tatars. It is necessary to foresee the terrible, such that no persuaders can stop it, that will be beyond the capabilities of all non-resisters as such. Only a national Dictatorship, relying on loyal military units and quickly raising up a cadre of sober and honest patriots from among the people, can shorten the period of arbitrary revenge, wanton reprisals and corresponding new destruction. An attempt to immediately introduce “democracy” will prolong this chaotic boiling for an unforeseen period of time and will cost the lives of a huge number of people, both guilty and innocent. Whoever does not want this must demand an immediate national dictatorship. Yes, they will answer me, but - this dictatorship must be “democratic”! This concept can have three different meanings. 1. “Democratic dictatorship” can mean, firstly, that the dictator must be a party democrat. There is no reason to expect good from such a dictator in Russia. We saw “the full power” in the hands of such democrats: we marveled at their eloquence, heard their categorical refusals to pacify the pogroms, saw how they “defended” their constituent assembly and how they disappeared abroad without a trace. These people are born for reasoning, discussion, resolutions, intrigue, newspaper articles and escape. These are people of pose, not of will; people of the pen, and not of power; people of sentiment, appealing only to themselves. And a dictator saving a country from chaos needs: will, restrained by a sense of responsibility, a formidable presence and all kinds of courage, military and civil. Russian formal democrats are not at all created for Russia; they belong in Denmark, Holland, Romania: their mental horizon is completely unsuitable for a great power; their trepidation for the “purity” of their sentimental freedom-loving clothes is anti-state; their penchant for all kinds of amnesty and international solidarity, their adherence to traditional slogans and outdated schemes, their naive confidence that the popular mass consists everywhere and always of born and well-intentioned democrats - all this makes their leadership in post-Bolshevik Russia extremely dangerous and hopeless. Among them there is not a single Noske, who coped with the Kapp coup in Germany; not a single Mock, as in France, not a single Scelba, as in Italy, not a single Salazar, as in Portugal. And if they don't see this in the United States, then people there just

blind

2. “Democratic dictatorship” may mean, secondly, that the matter will be transferred to the hands of a small collegial body (directory), which will be subordinate to a large collegial body (cooptation parliament, recruited from all the February bison with the addition of propagandized emigrant youth and defected

communists). From such a “dictatorship” one can expect only one thing: the earliest possible failure. A collegial dictatorship is generally an internal contradiction. For the essence of dictatorship is in the shortest decision and in the sovereignty of the decider. This requires one, personal and strong will. A dictatorship is essentially a military institution: it is a kind of political generalship that requires an eye, speed, order and obedience. Seven nannies have a child without an eye. Medicine does not entrust surgery to a collective body. Gofkriegsrat is a simply disastrous establishment. The discussion seems designed to waste time and miss all opportunities. The collegiality of the body means multi-willedness, disagreement and lack of will; and always - escape from responsibility.

No collegial body will master chaos, for it in itself already contains the beginning of disintegration. In normal state life, with a healthy political system and with the availability of unlimited time, this beginning of disintegration can be overcome with success in meetings, debates, voting, persuasion and negotiations. But in the hour of danger, trouble, confusion and the need for instant decisions and orders, a collegial dictatorship is the last of the absurdities. Only those who fear dictatorship in general and therefore try to drown it in collegiality can demand a collegial dictatorship. The Romans knew the saving power of autocracy and were not afraid of dictatorship, giving it full, but urgent and targeted powers. The dictatorship has a direct, historical calling - to stop the decomposition, block the road to chaos, interrupt the political, economic and moral disintegration of the country. And there are periods in history when being afraid of a one-man dictatorship means leading to chaos and promoting decay. 3. But “democratic dictatorship” can have another meaning, namely: it is headed by a single dictator, relying on the spiritual strength and quality of the people he saves. There is no doubt that Russia will be able to revive and flourish only when the Russian people's power in its best personal representatives - all that there is of it - joins in this matter. The peoples of Russia, who have sobered up in humiliation, who have come to their senses in the many years of hard labor of communism, who have realized what a great deception is hidden behind the slogan of “state self-determination of nationalities” (a deception leading to fragmentation, weakening and enslavement from the rear!) - must get up from their beds, shake off the paralysis Bolshevism, fraternally unite their forces and recreate a united Russia. And, moreover, in such a way that everyone feels not like runts and slaves, intimidated by the bureaucratic-totalitarian center, but into loyal and self-active citizens of the Russian Empire. Faithful - but not slaves or serfs, but faithful sons and subjects of public rights. Amateurs - but not separatists, or revolutionaries, or robbers, or traitors (after all, they are also “amateurs”...), but free builders, workers, servants, citizens and warriors.

This bet on the free and good power of the Russian people must be made by the future dictator. At the same time, the way up from the very bottom should be open to quality and talent. The necessary selection of people should be determined not by class, not by estate, not by wealth, not by slyness, not by behind-the-scenes whispers or intrigues and not by imposition from foreigners but by the quality of a person: intelligence, honesty, loyalty, creativity and will. Russia needs conscientious and brave people, not party promoters and not hiring foreigners... And if democracy is understood in this sense, in the sense of national selfinvestment, national service, creative initiative in the name of Russia and qualitative upward selection, then it will truly be difficult to find a decent person, a Christian, a stateminded patriot,

who would not say with everyone else: “yes, in this sense, I am also a democrat.” And the future Russia will either realize this and show genuine creative people’s power, or it will spread out, disintegrate and will not exist. We believe in the former; gentlemen dismemberers are clearly seeking the second. So, the national dictator will have to: 1) reduce and stop the chaos; 2) immediately begin high-quality selection of people; 3) establish labor and production procedures; 4) if necessary, defend Russia from enemies and robbers; 5) put Russia on the road that leads to freedom, to the growth of legal consciousness, to state self-government, greatness and the flourishing of national culture. Is it possible to think that such a national dictator will emerge from our emigration? No, there's no chance of that. There should be no illusions here. And if, God forbid, Russia were to be conquered by foreigners, then these latter would install either their own foreign tyrant, or an emigre collegial dictatorship - for a greater shameful failure.

Outlines of the future Russia Thinking about the future Russia and preparing it in our thoughts, we must proceed from its historical, national, religious, cultural and sovereign foundations and interests. We dare not trade them, nor squander our all-Russian, national property. We do not dare promise anything on behalf of Russia - to anyone, nothing. We must remember her, and only her. We must be faithful to her, and only to her. A generation of Russian people that behaves differently will be designated in Russian history as a flabby and treacherous generation. Certain compromises are inevitable in the future; but they should be kept to a minimum; and they will be found and installed by the future Russian state power. She, not us. Because they talk differently with state authorities and completely differently with a dependent, half-starved emigrant. Politically, a compromise is a balancing mutual concession of two forces seeking mutual and joint balance. And we, scattered and discordant emigrants, are not a force, but the embodiment of state weakness. Therefore, we cannot and do not dare offer or conclude compromises - for Russia, instead of Russia, on its behalf. For we immediately put her in the position of the weaker party, immediately betray her sovereign interest and find ourselves in the false position of a person who has pledged to defend foreign or other religious benefits in the future Russia.

And there are such “sirs” in emigration. There are those who propose to voluntarily cede Ukraine to Germany: “We have so much land, and poor Germany is overpopulated; it would be a manifestation of international justice.” There are also those who themselves, being originally Protestants, speak on the radio about the union of Orthodoxy with Catholicism and cheekily declare that in this matter “there are absolutely no difficulties.” And there are also real dismemberers, some with a claim to a “small throne” or “half-throne” for themselves, others are simply “liquidators” and plunderers of Russia... This is the first requirement presented to emigrant politicians: loyalty to National Russia. The second requirement: – do not put forward empty and vague slogans. We must proceed from real historical experience, look in it for building and saving outlines for the future Russia and propose politically meaningful and tactile.

Meanwhile, emigrant publicists are satisfied with empty words. Some people say “democracy” and think that they have said something. Meanwhile, the democracy of the Swiss cantons, with the direct participation of citizens, has nothing in common with the democracy of the English type (electoral, parliamentary and monarchical). What do they want? What voting right do they consider saving Russia and why? Or maybe they are going to imprison, like Sieyès, one, “great elector”, say Kuskov or Chernov, who will “elect” all his followers? After all, the history of “democracy” also knows such tricks... And the “democrats” quietly blurt out that after the Bolsheviks there is nothing to think about elections, a dictatorship will be necessary!.. - Others pronounce the word “republic” immediately and fall into anti-monarchist convulsions... But Rome both under Caesar and under Augustus it was a republic; and the Venetian Republic with the Doge was never a monarchy; and the Provisional Government (of ill memory) introduced a “republic” in Russia; and the sovdepiya (sovnarkomiya) was an undoubted republic; the republic was introduced by Cromwell, and subsequently by Robespierre... And the Central American states (starting with Mexico) and South American states (ending with Chile and Argentina) with their system of eternal coups are not republics? What bright future is being prepared for Russia under this flag between tyranny and anarchy?.. Or, perhaps, the whole meaning of this slogan is to deprive Russia forever of love and trust in the Sovereigns, and there is every tyrant and every

will anarchy be good? - Others proclaim a “federation” - as if they were blind and did not understand that the “Soviet federation” has nothing in common with either the Swiss or the North American, and that these two are distinguished from each other like a star from a star... And those who talk about “monarchy”, do they think that Tiberius, Nero, and Caligula were “monarchs” (let them only honor Tacitus and Suetonius), that the despicable Andronicus Komnenos of Byzantium was a “monarch”, and wise, quiet Marcus Aurelius, and the great Peter, and the immoral Henry VIII, I Richard III, and Harun Al-Rashid, and Antigonus I of Macedon, the wise and creative sovereign, and the mad Eric XIV of Sweden, and John VI Antonovich!.. History knows many sovereigns whose rule only undermined everything bright, sacred and powerful that was inherent in the monarchical beginning. What kind of monarchy is constructive and salutary for Russia and why exactly? And why do some stand for an autocratic monarchy, while others stand for a constitutional one (and these latter - is it really only to please the radical democrats?.. oh, a vain hope!..). And what kind of “constitution” will revive and establish Russia?

After the events of the last fifty years, all these slogans in themselves do not mean anything, because the old political concepts have now eroded, distorted and become dead. He who confines himself to them says nothing and deceives himself and others with them. The time has passed when the Russian intelligentsia imagined that all it had to do was borrow a ready-made state form from the West and transfer it to Russia - and everything would be fine. Now Russia is in an unprecedented historical position: it cannot and should not “borrow” anything from anyone. She must herself create and forge her own social and state image, one that will be historically necessary for her at this moment, which will be suitable only for her and will be saving for her; and she must do this without asking the permission of any nurses or any seducers or buyers. A modern Russian politician, no matter what age he belongs to and no matter what country he is in, must think through to the end the tragic experience of the Russian collapse and then turn to history. He must find in the history of mankind the living and healthy foundations of any statehood, the basic axiom of law and public health, and trace their development and fate in Russian history. Then the fate of the Russian state will be revealed to him - the sources of its strength (how did Russia hold on and become stronger?), the course of its great power (the growth of Russia despite all difficulties and obstacles!) and the reasons for its periodic collapses (the drying up of state feeling and sacrifice). And let him look at the current situation in Russia and let him try to imagine its future outlines... And then - let him publicly express what he sees. Then he will emerge from the idle crowd of walking or imposed words and from the crowd of pseudo-political slogans. And what he expresses about the outlines of the future Russia will have the meaning of a healing recipe for Russian state ailments. He will not repeat the false prophecy of the sick dreamer Merezhkovsky that the revolution will bring to Russia the “Kingdom of the Holy Spirit.” He will not repeat the stupidity of another modern publicist that Russia needs a “federation of provinces.” He will be protected from the disastrous and treacherous formula, according to which “there will be no Russia at all, but a federation of many small socialist states.” But what will be revealed to him?

He will outline for us a system in which the best and sacred foundations of the monarchy (which ones exactly?!) will absorb everything healthy and strong that holds up the republican legal consciousness (what exactly?!). He will outline for us a system in which the natural and precious foundations of a true aristocracy (which ones exactly?) will be saturated with that healthy spirit that holds true democracies (what is this spirit?). Autonomy will be reconciled with many independent wills; strong power is combined with creative freedom; personality

voluntarily and sincerely submit to super-personal goals; and the united people will find their personal Head to connect with him with trust and devotion. And all this must be accomplished in the eternal traditions of the Russian people and the Russian state. And, moreover, not in the form of a “reaction”, but in the forms of creative novelty. This will be a new Russian system, a new state Russia. And let them not tell us that we “could be wrong.” We know this ourselves. But these mistakes - if they are mistakes - Russia will forgive us: for we loved only her, served only her and sought only her good. When you try to peer into the outlines of the future Russia, you feel, first of all, to what extent its features are obscured by the darkness of revolutionary chaos and to what extent caution is necessary in judgments about the Russian future. Not only was everything “shocked” and “shifted,” as the insatiable “deepeners” of the revolution tried so hard to achieve; no, everything was consciously and deliberately broken, turned upside down, turned inside out in the interests of the Marxist experiment. The Bolshevik revolution in Russia acted like a huge monkey that was taught vivisection (“cutting alive”) and put into kindergarten. The communists did not have a positive ideal; their program was purely negative and was expressed in two theses: “down with everything bourgeois” and “let’s do the opposite.” And for this it was necessary to break everything. None of them knew what this notorious “socialist culture” consisted of: science, court, management, exchange of goods, morality, legal consciousness (which they called “self-consciousness”), family. According to Lenin’s frank admission, they, the old illegals, “were not taught how to trade and manage in prisons.” None of them knew what economic and labor motives guide a healthy person, and what ones should be imposed on the hitherto unprecedented monster called “socialist man.” None of them thought about what state forms all this could take; and they themselves mocked their own, first published “Soviet constitution”

“vilifying” words, openly pronouncing that “the revolution is called upon to trample

all and all laws, including those that she herself established.” After all, the wise Marx and Engels promised the socialist abolition of the state and some completely meaningless “leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom” - a real example of radical idle talk and deception. The communists jumped. And it turned out that it was necessary to build unknown what and unknown how. And ruthless and shameless experiments began on the living, and seduced, and suffering, and rebelling, and pacified by executions of the Russian people... In this terrible process, which has now lasted 33 years, a lot has been demolished, destroyed and irreparably destroyed. And the Russian soul itself changed in these torments and humiliations: the weak decomposed, the strong became tempered, the good perished, the evil hardened; and the poison of temptation poured into the souls - fear, groveling, betrayal, demoralization and the most shameless revolutionary careerism. In 1920, one prominent Moscow scientist, who knew Lenin before, wrote to him: “you have syphilitized Russia with the spirochetes of laziness and greed!” – and he was right. But to this infection we must add one more thing: the poison of mismanagement, irresponsibility, general mutual distrust, defensive pretense, lies and vulgarity imposed on everyone (unbelief, godlessness, soullessness and materialism). This poison will remain for a long time. There is no former Russia. It was a historically formed organism that grew up in the struggle with nature and with enemies, in deprivation and suffering. It was not yet a strong body, but it was getting stronger and healthier. The Dostolypin and Stolypin peasant-owners grew stronger and richer. The worker grew mentally and became stronger. A high quality industry developed. Intensive landowner farms were selected and strengthened, while the backward ones sold their land to the peasants and remained cultural nests in the ocean of peasants. Russian national capital was also being strengthened. Powerful cooperation blossomed. A sea of enlightenment poured into all layers of the people. The intelligentsia was sick of temptations

godlessness and blind opposition. The court was ideological, honest and incorruptible. Certain branches of management - horse breeding, criminal investigation and military intelligence - are far ahead of Europe. And about the bureaucracy that carried out Stolypin’s agrarian reform, the Berlin scientist, Professor Sehring, who observed all local production, spoke and wrote: “This is a European exemplary bureaucracy: people are ideological, convinced, knowledgeable, honest, proactive; any country could envy such a frame..." All this was and all this is not. And there are the masses of the people, exhausted by vivisection, robbed, humiliated, starved, bitter, and, alas, politically demoralized. One day this revolutionary inheritance will go to the Russian people of the next generation: what they receive will not depend on them; but what they will have to do to save Russia, they must know and will decide for themselves. The responsibility for this will fall on them. What will this legacy be? The Russian people will emerge from the revolution poor. There will be no rich, no prosperous, no middle class, not even a healthy, economic peasant at all. The poor peasantry, proletarianized around “agricultural factories” and “agricultural cities”; a poor worker in industry; poor artisan, poor city dweller. Socialist justice made them all “starved people of these lands.” Of course, a repainted communist will emerge, having stolen and hidden it; but he is quickly recognized by his very “wealth” and is unlikely to agree to leave it to him. An emigrant who returns with funds will also be a rare exception. This will be the people of a “classless society”: robbed, but not at all forgetting that they were robbed, nor what exactly was taken from them, nor those who subjected them to “expropriation”. There will be urban and rural residents; people of various specialties; various training; various gravity. But everyone will be poor, overworked and bitter.

The state center, having robbed everyone, will disappear; but the state coinage, left as an inheritance to the heirs, will have minimal purchasing power on the international market and will be in complete contempt on the domestic market. And it is difficult to imagine that state property, looted and configured, would be left by the communists in an economically flourishing form: for it, in all likelihood, will go through a period of fierce struggle for power. So, what awaits is the poverty of citizens and the impoverishment of the state: the classic consequence of all long revolutions and wars. The first thing that the Russian people will do after the fall of the communist yoke and terror is that they will try to spontaneously, spontaneously, regain what was robbed and economically arranged in a new way, to restore their rightful possession. One must imagine the one hundred and thirty million Russian peasantry “looking” for the land that was taken from them: people will return from exile, from concentration camps, from cities and “agricultural towns”, “to themselves”, to look for their land and pay off the robbers. One must imagine a working population of forty million, now with such difficulty attached to factories for “sedentary” vegetation and exhaustion, looking for where to “better” settle down or how to return to the land. One must imagine the thirty-million-strong Soviet “bureaucracy” that has lost its “communist leadership”, ownerless, unemployed, lagging behind the evil shores and not attached to the good ones, accustomed to trembling, pleasing and not having its own convictions. We must add to this the communist gangs, entirely consisting of people who do not hope for forgiveness, welded together by a long joint crime and shed blood; whoever of them can will hide abroad, to “theirs” and “half-friends”, in order to realize what they have hidden and engage in lies and slander; but those who do not succeed will sit in the country, sitting back and trying to continue the failed business. From here dozens of adventurers will emerge, in Pugachev’s fashion, climbing into the ranks and attaching themselves to separatist groups and peoples. Of course, there will be all sorts of foreign “centers” ready to subsidize these shameless “adventurers”, just like it was in

China. National grievances and tribal claims will be kindled from the outside - both by foreign enemies and “their” traitors, who have long dreamed of eliminating Russia. And to all this will be added the discord of intellectual-emigrant “political parties” that have secured fictitious “programs” and behind-the-scenes subsidies...

If we imagine the absence of a strong and authoritative state power and the passionate desire to “bring everyone before a fait accompli,” then the picture of chaos will be complete. And anyone who imagines all this will inevitably see himself faced with two questions: 1. What “democratic elections”, what “electoral lists” can we think about in this case? And whoever talks about them now is either talking idle talk naivety or lying deliberately.

2. Isn’t it clear that in order to save many guilty people from being torn apart in the streets and many innocent people from severe poverty and death, a unified and strong state power will be necessary, dictatorial in scope of powers and state-national in nature.

How can people, Russian by love and understanding, think that Russia will be led out of this chaos by a government that is the weakest in strength, the most difficult to organize, in Russian space, chaos and demoralization, completely impossible to implement and after the revolution completely devoid of a mass cadre in the country - namely, democratic government?! We, for our part, see and foresee the opposite: if anything can inflict new heaviest blows on Russia after communism, then it is precisely the persistent attempts to install a democratic system in it after totalitarian tyranny. For this tyranny managed to undermine in Russia all the necessary prerequisites for democracy, without which only the riot of the mob, general corruption and venality, and the emergence to the surface of more and more anti-communist tyrants, similar to what happened in Ancient Greece - and during the Peloponnesian War , in Rome during the era of the so-called “Caesars” (starting with Tiberius, with few exceptions!), and in Italy during the Renaissance with its ferocious “condottieri”, devoid of patriotism, honor and conscience...