There is nothing more difficult than national characteristics. They are easily given to strangers and always evoke vulgarity for "one's own", who has at least a vague experience of the depth and complexity of national life.

G. Fedotov

Starting this article, I painfully feel the truth of the words of the Russian thinker, taken out in the epigraph. Before me are very serious difficulties, both intellectual and moral. I don't know if I can handle them.

Byzantium is a whole millennium: from the period of formation in the 4th-6th centuries to the violent death of the Constantinople statehood from the sword of the Ottoman Turks on May 29, 1453. The Russian Christian tradition is also a millennium, the calendar completion of which we are just experiencing. A millennium is next to a millennium. “The abyss calls upon the abyss…” And here are the intellectual difficulties: they are inseparable from any attempt to take the millennium, as they say, synchronously, as a single subject of consideration, compared with another subject of the same scale and order, taken again as a whole. It is in the eyes of God, according to the biblical text, a thousand years as one day; when a person (well, at least Oswald Spengler) claims the same thing, he almost sins with the desire to “be like the gods”, which is spoken of by another, even more famous biblical text of the Book of Genesis. Human optics, and in particular the optics of a specialist in cultural history, are necessarily different. The historian concentrates his professional attention on how the entire composition of culture is transformed from the surface to the very depths, how the sign of the simplest words and the real volume of the simplest concepts change from epoch to epoch, even from generation to generation - what can we say about a thousand years! Just when our distant ancestors suddenly seem very close to us, we must beware of optical illusion. Just when a centuries-old quotation fits too well into our historiosophical reasoning, it is prudent to ask ourselves again: what if we imperceptibly changed its meaning?

But let's look at the matter from the other side: substitution is not the only incident that can happen to meaning. It was not for nothing that Bakhtin said that “semantic phenomena can exist in a latent form, potentially and be revealed only in the semantic cultural contexts of subsequent epochs favorable for this disclosure”; and he also introduced the concept of "big time". In the "big time" meaning sprouts like a grain, outgrows itself, it changes without being replaced, it departs from itself, like a river departs from its source, remaining the same river. “Big time” is not a fantasy, but a reality, however, one that makes it especially difficult to describe one's mind from fantasies. It is even more real than an isolated historical moment; the latter is essentially our mental construction, because historical time is a duration that is not divided into any moments, like water, which, according to the well-known expression of the poet, is difficult to cut with scissors. But it is quite clear why demonstrative knowledge cannot do without this construction; only within a historical moment does a fact in its original context have such a meaning, the scope of which lends itself to fixation. Now, outside the historical moment, it finds itself in a new context of new facts, intertwines with them into a single fabric, becomes a component of a pattern that appears on this fabric and becomes more complex before our eyes, and then its meaning is no longer so much the boundaries of volume, but the supporting dynamic lines, leading somewhere and pointing somewhere.

Here is one example worth thinking about in more detail. We read that when the Greek bishops advised the establishment of punitive justice in newly baptized Russia according to the Roman-Byzantine model - “it is worthy of you, prince, to execute robbers,” Prince Vladimir reacted to their advice with doubt and displeasure. Georgy Fedotov spoke on this occasion about the "reflection of the gospel light" in the "holy doubts" of the prince; Does a sober history give grounds for this? Within a historical moment, this collision looks, in general, rather prosaic. Barbarian law, among our ancestors, as well as among other peoples at the same stage of development, punished crimes with monetary fines - virs. It was a custom of their fathers and grandfathers, to which they were accustomed, which simple self-respect impelled them to defend against strangers, even if they were teachers in the faith; but besides, this custom was advantageous. The chronicle speaks about the material side of the matter without hesitation: with the funds delivered by the traditional way of action, you can buy weapons and horses, and this is so necessary in endless wars ... Everything would be discouragingly simple if the ancient narrator did not mention another motive for princely doubts - the fear of sin . Calling this a pious stylization, explained by the narrator's belonging to the monastic class, is not a solution, at least in a conversation about "great time". The question immediately arises: why is there nothing remotely similar to such a stylization, if, say, Gregory of Tours in his story about Clovis, who baptized the Franks in exactly the same way as Vladimir Svyatoslavich baptized Russia half a millennium later, although Gregory of Tours is a very pious and Is Clovis the chosen one of God for him? And it's not just not, it's even impossible to imagine. (“History of the Franks” by Gregory of Tours has just been published in Russian translation, so that the reader will be able to appreciate the striking contrast for himself.) Of course, Clovis (like many other barbarian leaders who converted to Christianity) did not occur to anyone to canonize, and Vladimir was canonized saints, but this also has its reasons. It's not just that our ancestors were kinder than the Franks, but then what? And why didn’t the pious stylization go the other way, say, by introducing conditional ascetic features that are remarkably absent in the traditional appearance of Vladimir, who entered the tradition as the founder of feasts, a Christian poverty-loving, but above all, generous to his squad? “Behold the same worker with his people, for the whole week (every Sunday) set a feast in the yard in the Gridnitsa and come as a boyar, and Grid, and Sotsky, and Ten, and a deliberate husband with princes and without a prince; your abundance was from meat, from cattle and from beasts, by abundance from everything. And most importantly: if the expression of fear of the possible sinfulness of punitive justice in the mouth of Vladimir is not a historical fact (which, in fact, no one has proven, although no one, of course, has refuted), in its place in the text of the annals this is a fact - a fact of ancient Russian consciousness . We will not exaggerate the significance of this fact, but the movement of historical time immediately adds others to it, for example, The Tale of Boris and Gleb. And here, too, the meaning in the "great time" grows out of the topical meaning and outgrows it. The topic of the day explains the propaganda of seniority in the grand ducal succession. But she does not explain why the Tale was so unusually read and rewritten, why it was so loved. The poignant image of doomed meekness, refusing to defend itself and voluntarily betraying itself to murderers, entered the “great time”, and in it it is combined with the version of St. Vladimir’s doubt whether it is “worthy” to execute the enemies of statehood, into a single drawing, which is the prototype for many things, which came much later...

So, we have to talk about the "big time".

This task not only allows, but forcibly requires a certain measure of what is otherwise called superficiality, and nothing can be done about it. If a cartographer has marked a city on a map with a circle, it is not customary to get angry with him on the grounds that this city does not really have such a consistent geometric shape. Something else is required of the map - that the scale be maintained.

And yet, how easy it is to make the constants of the psychology of the people the subject of rhetoric, whether patriotic or serving, so to speak, national self-flagellation, and how difficult it is to talk about them, demanding from oneself an answer for one's words. There is no and, apparently, there cannot be a prefabricated methodology for distinguishing the guessed potential being of later revealed meanings, which Bakhtin spoke of, from the most trivial modernization.

But the moral difficulties.

The millennial anniversary of an event so important in its consequences for Russian culture, moreover, for the whole of Russian life, is a national holiday. For me, as for a Russian, this is my holiday; I cannot but have an emotional relation to it along with the mental one, just as I cannot, of course, but rejoice that the strengthening of the positions of common sense in our society makes it possible to celebrate it not only within the church walls, but also outside it. At the celebration, not only empty conventionality, but also more internal considerations of spiritual tact encourage us to speak solemnly. But how to combine with this the analytical sobriety required of a professional humanist, not to mention the highest, spiritual sobriety, which is so strongly recommended precisely by our thousand-year tradition? Another side of the same question:

being Russian and comparing Russia, Russia with Byzantium, I myself find myself inside one of the two objects of comparison. Every real Russian, unless he violates his own nature, is mortally afraid of overpraising his own - and he does the right thing, because it does not suit him. It is not given to us to assert ourselves - either individually or nationally - with that innocence, as it were, with a clear conscience, with that absence of doubts and problems, as others sometimes manage to do. (Perhaps, such a statement is also related to the characterization of Russian spirituality.) But Russian excesses of self-irony, "self-criticism", well known from the entire experience of our culture, are also a dangerous temptation. How to measure truth? “It is difficult to keep the scales of a jeweler in your hand all the time,” as Vasari said.

I have a path between the scylla of loveless and therefore incomprehensible hypercriticism and the Charybdis of romantic myth-making on the themes of history. What can you say? “Do not despise me, my lords and brethren, for we know our thinness and I despise my conscience ...”

“The incomparable, most beautiful center of the entire inhabited earth” - these were the words used by the Byzantine writer Theodore Metochites at the beginning of the 14th century to call Constantinople, and this was not empty rhetoric.

Such was the living feeling of the Byzantines - and not only the Byzantines. There were far more real grounds for it a thousand years ago than in the time of Metochites. In the 10th century, the capital on the Bosphorus was, without any doubt or comparison, the most magnificent city and the most brilliant cultural center in the whole of Christendom. “They dreamed of Constantinople among the cold mists of Norway, on the banks of Russian rivers, in strong castles of the West, in the banks of greedy Venice” (V. N. Lazarev). It will be at least two centuries before there are cultural centers in the West that can compete with it. The highly centralized state, whose territory became more compact after the Arab conquests of the 7th century, but still stretched from Lake Van to southern Italy, is a model of power completely unattainable in early feudal Europe. But the most important thing is the state, according to the criteria of its own self-consciousness, inside this self-consciousness is quite logical, coherent and convincing, not only the first in the world, but the only one in the world. It, as Metochites will say, is incomparable with anything. There are only three criteria: first, it is correct - the Orthodox - professed Christian faith; secondly, it is a highly civilized style of state and diplomatic practice, complemented by the literary and philosophical culture of the ancient type; thirdly, it is a legitimate succession in relation to the Christian-imperial Rome of Constantine the Great. The first criterion completely rejects Eastern rivals: Asian powers from the Caliphate to the Celestial Empire, comparable to Byzantium in terms of statehood and level of urbanism, are not Christian. He partly deflects Western rivals; the final division of the churches will become a fact of church life in 1054, and a fact of popular consciousness by the 13th century, especially after the defeat of Constantinople in 1204 by the knights of the IV crusade, but doubts about the orthodoxy of Western Christianity grew and were already vigorously expressed by Patriarch Photius in the 60s years of the ninth century. The second criterion completely rejects Western rivals; even the empire of Charlemagne at the turn of the 8th and 9th centuries was only a short-lived attempt to repeat the Roman-Byzantine pattern, an ephemeral conglomerate of disordered territories. He partly works against eastern rivals; for all their brilliance, Eastern civilizations do not correspond to the ancient norm, and therefore remain barbaric. Finally, the third criterion is completely sufficient in itself to exclude in general any possibility of rivalry from any side.

But it is necessary to talk about him, about this criterion, about his worldview foundations, about his strength. History itself, and then the Christian interpretation of history, linked Christianity and Rome in a very special way. Byzantine writers were fond of noting that the birth of Christ coincided with the reign of Augustus. This is evidenced by the Christmas stichera of the poetess Cassia, or Cassiana (IX century):

When August reigned on earth,

many peoples are exterminated; when God was incarnated from the Most Pure One, idols of polytheism are abolished The name of the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate entered the Christian Creed: “... he was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate ...” Of course, remaining in memory as the crucifier of Christ is a terrible honor. But even this once again reminded that the earthly, state framework for the universal Sacred History is the universal Roman power. Only it at least partly corresponds in scale. The tragic irony of the plot of the Passion of Christ with full necessity implies an absolutely serious attitude towards the secular authority of the Roman law (which the Apostle Paul especially spoke about), as well as to the sacred authority of the Jewish high priests who killed Christ (who are in the Greek and Slavic text of the Gospels, and in the Byzantine literature, and in Russian folklore are called by the same word as Christian bishops). “There is no power lower than from God” - otherwise Golgotha ​​would be just an accident, causing nothing but pity. The participation of a Roman official and Roman soldiers in the execution of Christ can in no way be an argument against the election of Rome in secular history; their accomplices are the Jews, the chosen people in Holy History, especially the high priest Caiaphas, whose rank is so holy that, according to the Gospel of John (11, 51), it gives him the ability to prophesy, Judas Iscariot, personally chosen by Christ among the twelve apostles, - all the elect. Rome for the Christian consciousness is the very world that is under the dominion of the “prince of this world,” that is, the devil, but which must be saved and sanctified. Having united all the lands of the Mediterranean civilization, the Roman Empire was indeed, in a sense, a world. The Roman authorities persecuted early Christian preachers for a long time, but these preachers dispersed around the world along the roads paved by Roman soldiers. Even at a time when Christians were being thrown to the lions, Christians believed that the Roman order was a barrier against the coming of the Antichrist. And when at last the Roman emperor Constantine accepted the Christian faith under his patronage, an experience was experienced that was never repeated later, but which powerfully determined the medieval consciousness in general and forever shaped the Byzantine consciousness. The geographical area of ​​the Roman laws, the spread of Greco-Roman culture and the free practice of the Christian faith was one and the same. All the highest spiritual values, both religious and secular, - the Bible transmitted by the Church, and Homer transmitted by the school, Greek philosophy, Roman law and others - which only a person of the Christian area knew, were contained within the borders of one and the same state, in within its framework, within its bosom. Beyond its borders - the world is at the same time heterodox (infidel), foreign culture (barbarian) and, moreover, lawless, as if not the world, not the cosmos, but chaos, "outer darkness". The dual unity of the Roman Empire and the Christian Church is a world unto itself.

This is not just an ideological construct. At the end of antiquity, it was so, or almost so, in fact. And then the following happened: the Roman Empire was divided (irrevocably - in 395) into the Western Empire with its capital in Rome (or Ravenna, or another Italian city) and the Eastern Empire with its capital in Constantinople (New Rome). The Western Empire ended in 476, but the Eastern Empire continued to exist for another millennium. About a hundred years after her death, the Western European scholars, who did not favor her, called her Byzantine; a scholarly nickname that accentuated the gulf between “real” antiquity and the “dark ages” came into use, from time to time regaining the status of a swear word (for example, in the liberal journalism of the last century). The Byzantines themselves never called themselves either Byzantines or Greeks; they called themselves Romans (in medieval Greek pronunciation - Romans). From the point of view of the continuity of state succession, they had every right to this, which even their enemies could not deny. The Ostrogothic king Vitigis, waging war with Justinian I (VI century) for power over Italy, ordered to mint on coins not his own image, but the image of Justinian; whoever owns the real power, the sign of power belongs to the Roman - Roman - emperor. And in general, the barbarians, the young peoples of Europe, who were at enmity with Rome, and then with the New Rome, did not even think to deny their only legitimacy in the world. They treated her with deep respect and deep envy.

Over time, they attempted to appropriate this legitimacy for themselves. Charlemagne, king of the Franks, was crowned on Christmas Day 800 in the city of Rome as Roman emperor by the bishop of Rome; it never occurred to him to proclaim himself, say, a Frankish or German emperor. Of course, in Constantinople, the imperial title of Charles and all his heirs was perceived as a flagrant usurpation. The Bulgarian and Serbian kings, who entered into an open struggle with the New Rome, did so not by any means in the name of an incomparably later idea of ​​self-determination, but by claiming to recreate under their own rule the same one and only Orthodox state, next to which no other could exist. (Perhaps that is why the wars against them were waged with particular ferocity - for the Byzantines they were not a belligerent side, but impostors, seditious ones.) Even for Dante, as the author of the treatise On the Monarchy, it is undeniable that there should be only one world power of Christians and that this must be a Roman state.

In modern times, the main categories of state thinking have shifted so much that we need to strain ourselves, trying to understand all the reasons and all the consequences of that way of thinking. We involuntarily substitute in our imagination the theology of the sacred power with the new European ideology of the union of the throne and the altar. But these things are quite different.

Not so long ago, European states were considered or at least called Christian; but no one saw anything strange in the fact that there are many Christian states, that they do not have a single head, that they are at war with each other. Everyone is accustomed to the fact that any Christian monarchy, if its tradition or its obvious insignificance does not forbid it, can quite arbitrarily proclaim itself an empire, and its sovereign - emperor. For example, Queen Victoria was given the title of Empress by Prime Minister Disraeli; Napoleon III not only proclaimed himself, following the example of his uncle, Emperor of France, but also presented his henchman Maximilian (later shot) with the title of Emperor of Mexico; Prussian King Wilhelm I was declared German Emperor after winning the Franco-Prussian War. It's a matter of prestige and nothing else. Such is the world in which the theocratic idea has gone out of political reality, in which religion is a private matter. Everything was planned differently. In the language of early Christianity, retained in both the Orthodox and Catholic traditions, Christians are a race, a people of God. The existence of this people as a people is conceived with the same literalness and concreteness as the existence of the chosen people in the Old Testament; but this time the chosen people are gathered "from every tribe, and tongue, and people, and tribe" (Apocalypse, 5, 9) in order to unite all mankind in themselves: "and there will be one flock and one Shepherd." As an idea it was serious. No wonder the ethno-cultural antagonisms that flared up in empirical life appeared on the surface of consciousness as heresies, that is, other interpretations of the same universal doctrine - African Donatism, East Syrian and Malabar Nestorianism, West Syriac, Coptic-Ethiopian and Armenian monophysitism. Separatism hides in the bowels of the subconscious and is shown in the light of day in the guise of universalism. That Nestorian author of the 6th century, whom we more or less conditionally call Cosmas Indikopleustus (in the traditional Russian transmission - Indikoplov), seemed to have no particular reason to admire the Roman state, for which he was a dissident. But this is what he says about her: “The kingdom of the Romans has a share in the dignity of the kingdom of the Lord Christ, surpassing others and, as far as possible in this life, remaining invincible until the end of time.” In theory, the universality of the Christian empire should correspond to the universality of the Christian faith in the same way as in the Islamic concept of the caliphate; if political practice here and there gradually moves away from theory, theory retains its rights and continues to judge practice. For a medieval person, this was indisputable. The pathos of the judgment of the universal doctrine over the particular reality is still preserved by Dante, who quite logically gave the Byzantine Caesar Justinian a glorious place at the beginning of the VIth song of his Paradise.

Whatever the theories, in fact, the territory of the Roman power was shrinking uncontrollably. In the end, it almost came down to the city of Constantinople - a head too huge for a dwarf body; and one had to be a Greek in order to continue to believe that the ratio of Constantinople to the rest of the universe is equal, as the Greek proverb assures, to the ratio of fifteen to a dozen ... And even in this ultimate humiliation, the geographical localization of Constantinople remained precisely “on the turn of Europe,” as Dante said in the passage already cited above. Constantinople does not line up; it is not a European city, but it cannot be called an Asian city either, at least not until the Turks took it over and turned it into Istanbul. This capital - you can't say otherwise - is Eurasian. Within the Mediterranean there is only one place where Europe and Asia come close to each other - this is the region of the Bosphorus, the Sea of ​​Marmara and the Dardanelles. There, at the walls of Troy, the mythical beginning of Hellenic history is localized, through Aeneas - Roman history, through the Romans - European, including Russian history, and in some combinations - the history of Asian peoples. Already Herodotus understood the Trojan War as a meeting of Europe and Asia. In the same place, Xerxes, king of the East, crossed in his time to Europe, and Alexander the Great, king of the West, crossed to Asia. This is a significant place. The city that occupies it is still, in a sense, a world to itself, just as the Roman Empire was its own world in its time.

In the Western European languages, as Christian languages, since the Middle Ages, an important concept has been lexically expressed, which is remarkably absent both in the Byzantine lexicon and in the traditional, pre-Intelligent Russian lexicon. It is denoted by the words: in medieval Latin - christianitas, in French - chretiente (already in the “Song of Roland”), in German - Christenheit, in English - Christendom, etc. In Russian, one could only use later bookish, sluggish phrase "Christian world", which, on the grounds of vitality and necessity, cannot be compared with these words. This refers to the totality of all Christian countries and peoples as a whole, in relation to which each Christian country and each Christian people is a subordinate part. This is how Western Europe called itself before it began to call itself the West, or Europe. No matter what enmity torn apart its lands, cities, kingdoms, and in modern times, its nations, no matter how far the self-assertion of each of its parts reached, in a self-evident objective order, the parts remained subordinate to the whole. It was the rivalry, the competition, the strong-willed mutual support of the parts that introduced each part into its natural boundaries, kept it in its status of a part. Above the parts as guarantors of their highest unity, the medieval consciousness placed two figures - the emperor and the pope. However, precisely because each of the active political forces could only be a part and so far proved incapable of representing the whole, the empire in the West failed.

Let us return, however, to the Western words just listed. As already mentioned, there is no logical correspondence for them in the traditional Russian language, but there is, perhaps, a functional correspondence. What is their function? It is to ground the theological concept of the universal Church, to introduce it into a more worldly and at the same time epic perspective, the perspective, so to speak, of historiosophy for the use of the laity. In Russian folk vocabulary, this function is transferred to the phrase "Holy Russia" (respectively, "Holy Russian land"). It is important to understand that what stands behind it is by no means, to put it in today's terms, a national idea, not a geographical or ethnic concept. Holy Russia is almost a cosmic category. At least, the Old Testament Eden and the Gospel Palestine fit within its limits (or its infinity). Expressive examples were collected by G. Fedotov in his study of Russian spiritual folklore:

... The beautiful sun In paradise illuminated the Holy Russian land ...

... Sends Herod, the king of messengers Throughout the land of Holy Russia ...

... The Virgin walked through Holy Russia, Searched for her Son ...

It would be unbearably flat to understand this as an expression of tribal megalomania; the fact of the matter is that, in essence, there is no question of exactly anything tribal here. But then what is it? The need to bring sacred characters and sacred events closer to you? Hardly. This desire is incomparably more characteristic of Western Christianity, at least since the late Middle Ages; on the contrary, a Russian person, as a rule, finds familiar brevity with sacred blasphemous and prefers strict pathos of distance. Not a single Russian saint would arrange a Christmas manger, as Francis of Assisi did in Greccio, creating for centuries the most common custom of all Catholic peoples. Here are some more examples for us to think about. Summarizing the experience of Protestant sectarian spirituality in a headstrong context of pre-Romanticism, William Blake expressed in verse the intention to build Jerusalem "on the green and sweet soil of England." However, the Catholic Middle Ages also knew Jerusalem - temples built on the model of the location of Jerusalem shrines (such, for example, the Bolognese abbey of Santo Stefano with its numerous chapels). But when Patriarch Nikon wanted to build a new Jerusalem in Russia, his detractors saw in this dishonor to the shrine: “Is it good that the name of the Holy City is so transferred, given to another place and disgraced?” A century after Blake, another English poet, the Catholic Francis Thompson, spoke of Christ "walking on the waters not of the Lake of Gennesaret - but of the Thames." Such a mention of the Thames suggests, by contrast, that although Holy Russia is repeatedly named as the place of action of Russian spiritual poems, it is absolutely impossible to mention any Russian river in them. There are no Russian rivers there, but there is the Jordan. (The same Patriarch Nikon renamed the river Istra into the Jordan; not to mention the fact that from the Russian point of view, as we have seen, this is dangerous audacity, even here there is no approach of the Jordan, but rather sacralization and thereby distance, alienation of Istra.)

It was necessary to live up to the 19th century, that is, to a culture that had completely different grounds, so that Tyutchev saw Holy Russia, the very one that the Heavenly King emanated in a slavish form, as a truly Russian landscape, as Russia, identified geographically, ethnographically: “These poor villages, this meager nature…” The landscape of Holy Russia of old spiritual poems is different; when a "Zion" (1) church is being built in this Russia, for the construction they take, however, birch and mountain ash, the trees are the most Russian, but first of all, in the first place - the southern, Mediterranean, Constantinople-Jerusalem-sky cypress, usually familiar to a Russian person not by its appearance like a tree, but by the smell of crosses brought by pilgrims. So - there are birches and mountain ash, but cypresses still prevail; the romantic imagination would search in vain for local color. Holy Russia has no local features. It has only two signs: the first is to be, in a certain sense, the whole world, containing even paradise; the second is to be a world under the sign of true faith. In the famous "Poem about the Pigeon Book" the only reason for the prerogatives of the White, that is, ours, king is that this is a Christian king; but since it turns out that there are no other Christian sovereigns in the whole world, his prerogatives grow unusually:

We have a White king over kings.

Why is the White king king over kings?

He accepted, king, the baptized faith,

Baptized, Orthodox.

He believes in one Trinity...

If you wish, you can, of course, see here the return of very ancient archetypal ideas that equated their land with the land of people in general (in the language of Scandinavian mythology - Midgard, as opposed to chaotic Utgard). But the trouble is that, since the archetypes belong to a sphere, firstly, more or less universal, that is, indifferent to the characteristic, and secondly, fundamentally prehistoric and even more fundamentally ahistorical, by appealing to them, it is impossible not only to explain, but even to describe the phenomenon of national psychology, even to approach this phenomenon, which is characteristic through and through, historical through and through.

It is important that Russian teachers in matters of faith were not Catholics, for whom the experience of the survival of church structures in the absence or inactivity of state structures was decisive, but Orthodox Byzantines, just for the sake of asserting their authority as teachers, insisted on the complete inseparability of the Church and the kingdom. In this regard, the admonition of Patriarch Anthony IV of Constantinople to the Grand Duke of Moscow Vasily I, who dared to declare that the Russians have a Church (common with the Byzantines), but do not have a king (that is, the Byzantine emperor, so far the only Orthodox king, is not a king for them) is characteristic. ). “It is impossible for Christians to have the Church and not have the Kingdom,” answered the patriarch. “For the Church and the Kingdom are in great union, and it is impossible for them to be separated.” It is historically eloquent, firstly, that these are the words of a spiritual head to a secular ruler; secondly, that these are the words of the Byzantine, whose kingdom then, in the 1390s, was measured out a little more than half a century, to the Grand Duke of Moscow, whose descendants soon after the end of the Roman kingdom will lay the foundation for the Russian kingdom. If the Patriarch of Constantinople so authoritatively explains to the Tsar of Moscow that the Orthodox Kingdom is a necessary correlate and, as it were, a complete realization of the Orthodox Church, is it possible not to take such a lesson to heart, and, moreover, for centuries?

It is important, further, that the rise of Moscow so exactly coincided chronologically with the fall of Constantinople. In 1453, the Turks entered the capital on the Bosphorus, in 1461 they captured Trebizond - the last fragment of the Roman power; but in 1478 Moscow annexes the lands of Veliky Novgorod, in 1480 it finally destroys the Tatar domination. Generally speaking, the idea of ​​a third, Slavic Rome as an alternative to Constantinople, known to all from the messages of the Pskov elder Philotheus (“... like two Romes fell down, and there are thirds, but there will be no fourth ...”), was not new, it developed earlier in the South Slavic journalism. The Byzantine chronicler, referring to the death of the Western Empire in 476, summarized: “So, all this happened to the oldest Rome - but our Rome blooms, grows, rules and grows younger”, however, in the Bulgarian translation made in the 14th century, these words are significantly replaced: “... and this happened to old Rome, but our new Tsarigrad is to be milked and raised, strengthened and rejuvenated.” New Tsaregrad is, apparently, Tarnovo, the capital of the Bulgarian kingdom; accordingly, instead of the address of the Byzantine chronicler to the Byzantine emperor, an appeal to the Bulgarian Tsar John Alexander, “the great lord and a fair victorious one,” was substituted. The logical structure is very stable. Rome has fallen, but we stand and we are Rome; on this point, everyone is completely united - both the Byzantine chronicler, and his Bulgarian translator, and our elder Philotheus.

But then the difference in historical fate begins. The South Slavic kingdoms rose when Constantinople was still standing, and they were forced to argue with him for the possession of a single and only Orthodox power, entering into an unseemly situation of dispute, and they fell under the rule of the Turks even a little earlier than the end of Byzantium, in the last decades of the XIV century. On the contrary, the Muscovite kingdom, as soon as it was born, immediately turned out, without any dispute, the only Orthodox state in the world and beyond the reach of the forces of Islam. The words of Philotheus were not original in themselves: "... the whole Christian kingdom came to the end and descended into the one kingdom of our sovereign." What was new was a combination of historical circumstances that made them faithful for centuries in the most literal sense (if, of course, together with the elder and his addressees, the word “Christian” is clearly understood as a synonym for the word “Orthodox”). New or still not quite new? The unique time of the power of Constantine seemed to be repeated: in the world there was again only one state incarnation for the true faith, which, unlike the Catholic states of the West, could not enter into any series, nor into any relations of subordination with the states of the same faith. When in one of the spiritual verses the people speak of the power of the White Tsar "over the whole earth, over the universe" - this is no longer politics, this is something else. It is not for nothing that the bookish word “universe” borrowed from church use is used - a literal translation of the Byzantine “ikoumeni”.

Along with the religious moment, the geographical moment is important. Kievan Rus, a territorially large state that fit within some self-evident limits, could still feel itself, although a border, but still an integrating part of the whole - European christianitas, the good and religious differences were not yet so painfully perceived as to interfere, for example, with dynastic marriages between the ruling houses of Russia and the West. But after the Tatar conquest, and especially after the liberation under John III and the victorious campaigns of John IV against the Tatars, after the conquest of the Kazan and Astrakhan khanates, Russia increasingly becomes a Eurasian area - in a different way, but no less than Byzantium. She is also her own world.

Here it is appropriate to recall what is called in the last phrase of Chaadaev's unfinished "Apology of a Madman" as a "geographical fact", the very one that "dominates over our historical movement." Competitive mutual resistance of forces striving for expansion and thus limiting each other, so characteristic of European history, is observed only on the western borders of Russia. There, it took many centuries to resolve the rivalry between Moscow and Lithuania alone, so that Petersburg already participated in the divisions of Poland, but the onslaught on Russia was never as irresistible as the Mongol onslaught; the picture can only change slowly. In other directions, Russia, as it were, had no natural borders at all. Under the same John IV, the Russian territory expanded eastward to the Irtysh and beyond; a Western European state could only expand in this way at the expense of overseas territories, but this is already completely different, both objectively and psychologically. In the Russian case, there is not just the appropriation of non-European lands for a European state, but the creation of a single Eurasian space - not for the Russian people, but for the Orthodox faith. Once again: Holy Russia is not an ethnic concept. The legend about “Peter, Prince of the Horde”, a noble Horde, who converted to Orthodoxy during the Tatar-Mongol rule, built a church in Rostov and touched the Russians with his “sweet answer” and “good custom”, is far from accidental. A comparable, although much less religiously penetrating image can be offered by the Byzantine epic about Digenis Akrita: such is the father of Digenis, a noble Arab emir, who was baptized and through this became a noble Roman, however, rather out of love for a Roman bride than for more spiritual reasons. Both Roman and Muscovite states are open to those who accept their faith. Back side such universalism is the weak development of the motive of the natural connection between the ethnos and its state; the grounds in both cases are not natural, but rather supernatural. And speaking of simple and even rude things - at the time of the same Ivan the Terrible, being a baptized Horde in Russia was much better than being a native Russian, say, of Novgorod origin. But the Byzantine Greeks also renounced their ethnic self-name, exchanging the name of the people for the name of the universal statehood taken from the wrong hands.

All these are features of a deep similarity between the religious understanding of statehood in Byzantium and in Russia. There is, however, an important difference to be noted.

The Byzantine monarchy was inherited from the Roman Empire. Two very significant circumstances followed from this.

First, the Roman Empire does not genetically go back to archaic patriarchy, but to a regime of personal power of successful generals like Sulla and Caesar, matured in a very civilized age, after centuries of republicanism. Short-lived dynasties may come and go, but the dynastic principle as a fact of moral consciousness is absent. The concept of the duty of personal loyalty to the person of the emperor is also very weak: both in Rome and in Byzantium, monarchs were easily overthrown, killed, sometimes publicly, with the participation of a mocking crowd. This does not mean that there was nothing sacred for the Byzantine; the most sacred thing on earth for him was the empire itself, combining, as we have seen, the self-sufficient fullness of political, legal, cultural and religious values. Therefore, by the way, in Byzantium such a character as Kurbsky was hardly possible: a defector, leaving for the barbarians, seemed to pass into oblivion, no one would listen to him and no one would object to him. Yes, the empire is very holy and the imperial rank is holy; but the most capable and most successful should be invested with this rank, and if this is a usurper, perhaps, his abilities and his luck are all the more obvious. (The success of a leader, a military leader, a politician was perceived not as a coincidence of circumstances external to him, but as an immanent property of his personality, worldly “charisma”. Such an idea was seriously discussed by Cicero.) The phenomenon of imposture, which is so characteristic of the history of the Russian , and then of the Russian autocracy, is uncharacteristic of the history of the Byzantine autocracy: why bother to accept someone else's name when success in itself is sufficient to justify any usurpation?

Whatever the situation with spiritual matters, requiring purely private repentance, the Byzantine believed that in politics God was for the winner (unless, of course, the winner is a heretic). The Byzantine is faithful to his state forever and ever, but to his sovereign - only as long as he is sure that the person of this sovereign pragmatically corresponds to the greatness of the state. The death of a sovereign at the hands of murderers, sometimes nationwide, is depicted again and again with dispassionate clarity on the pages of Byzantine historical writings; it is one of the trivial accidents necessarily assumed by the very existence of politics. Such an accident certainly does not burden the people's conscience. The Byzantine would not have understood the lamentations of Pushkin's Pimen, but he really captures the essential motive of traditional Russian psychology:

We have angered God, we have sinned:

Lord yourself a regicide

We named.

In the middle of the civilized 19th century in Russia, a legend arose about the elder Fyodor Kuzmich - it was impossible to come to terms with the idea that Alexander I, touched by the murder of his royal father, died the emperor. The Byzantine would not have understood another thing: how can one count Saints Boris and Gleb (and later Tsarevich Demetrius) as saints? After all, they did not die for their faith, they are nothing more than victims of the everyday order of things - it is known that the world lies in evil, and you never know the innocent victims in the world! Meanwhile, their significance in the Russian tradition of religious responsiveness is unexpectedly great. There are among the Russian saints martyrs for the faith; but try to ask even a very well-read and very devout believer about them.

No one will remember either the Ryazan prince Roman Olgovich, cut into pieces in the Horde for blaspheming Tatar paganism, or Kuksha, the enlightener of the Vyatichi; not without difficulty, our interlocutor will remember only Mikhail Chernigovsky. But Boris and Gleb, but the boy who was slaughtered in Uglich, were remembered by everyone for centuries. It turns out that it is in the “passion-bearer”, the embodiment of pure suffering, who does not commit any act, even a martyr’s “witness” to the faith, but only “receives” his bitter cup, the holiness of the sovereign dignity is only truly embodied. Only their suffering justifies the existence of a state. And why so - you need to think about it in detail and slowly.

For now, let's note a simple historical fact: it was important that the Russian grand dukes were a single family, and the throne of Constantinople was open to any adventurer who came from nowhere. It was important that the monarchy in Russia did not take shape as a pragmatic way out of the situation, but grew out of patriarchal relations. And finally, there is such a thing as the contrast between Byzantine rationality and the Russian mentality.

Secondly, the fact that Christian Byzantium received its political system from pagan Rome (moreover, the final form of this system was given by the last “persecutor” of Christianity, Diocletian), did not allow the Christian consciousness of the Romans to survive autocracy as a problem. It wasn't a problem, it was a given. Everything turned out differently for us.

But this is the topic of the next article.

Let's try to talk about something very important and very difficult: about the types of religious attitude to power and the practice of violence associated with it.

Let's start, however, from afar: not with sovereigns and sovereign servants, but with people who are supposed to have a completely different kind of power - from saints. The ideal of Christian holiness in any religious and cultural-national version inevitably includes two polar aspects - severity and mercy. The evangelical Jesus himself, “meek and humble of heart”, forgiving the sinner, generally admitting to himself and accepting into his love those whom respected members of society do not consider to be people, is by no means a “feminine ghost”, as he was called for some reason Blok and how the softened imagination of so many painters and writers represented him. He also doesn’t have the habit of saying “good man” to everyone indiscriminately, like Bulgakov’s Yeshua, and he sees through the evil (compare, for example, the Gospel of John, 2, 24: “Jesus Himself did not entrust Himself to them, because knew everyone). Nietzsche claimed in his Antichrist, a late book written on the line of insanity, that Jesus is a psychological casus, characterized by the inability to say no to anyone; it is strange to what extent, even in the minds of this offspring of a pastoral family, the gospel image was completely supplanted by Renan's. The fury with which Jesus drives the merchants out of the temple, the truly withering words with which he addresses the Pharisees - wow "feminine ghost"! We must admit the truth: not only the face of Rublev's Savior, full of goodness, but also the stern, testing, fiery faces of earlier Byzantine and Russian images of Christ - the name "Savior the Fiery Eye" is worth something! - equally inspired by gospel texts. Both are, in their own way, legitimate "displays of the prototype," as it is called in the language of the Byzantine tradition.

The same, in general, with the saints. For example, John the Theologian in his younger years does not look very much like a girlish-sentimental dreamer, as he was too often represented by modern European art: Christ, not without reason giving him, along with his brother Jacob, the nickname Sons of Thunder, had to restrain and admonish them when, stung by insult, inflicted on the Teacher, they decided, according to the Old Testament example, to send down from heaven a devouring fire from heaven on a sinful village (Gospel of Luke, 9, 54-55). But it was he, John, who later taught about “perfect love,” which “casts out fear,” and at the last limit of decrepitude, already losing the ability to speak, he only repeated, according to ancient tradition: “children, love one another.” Another Saint John - a Greek preacher of the 4th-5th centuries, nicknamed Chrysostom for his eloquence - put active mercy above miracles, being at the same time the most adamant accuser of accusers, for which, in fact, he had to die in exile ...

Takovo general rule, and there is no need to say more about it. If you think about it a little, it does not cause any confusion. But the individual case cannot be reduced to general rule. It is quite natural that some representatives of Christian holiness, both as real persons and as characters of the narrative tradition - for the needs of our reasoning, the difference between the one and the other is not important - embody one pole of the antinomy more strongly, while others, respectively, the other. Quite simply, humanly speaking, one can see how in one case severity prevails, in the other - affectionateness. It’s scary to approach some saints, it’s not scary to others.

For Western Europe, we can state with all the necessary reservations that the softening of the image of holiness goes hand in hand with the decline of barbarism and the increase of civilization. It goes without saying that in the era of the migration of peoples, the most philanthropic saint like Severin of Noric (5th century), precisely for the sake of his philanthropic goals, needed to instill fear in the barbarian leaders and for this to resemble a magician, only more effective, more formidable than the pagan priests and sorcerers. But progress social life goes on as usual: a knight is more civilized than his barbarian ancestor, and a man of late medieval culture, no longer only of a castle, but also of a city, is even more civilized. Only at this third stage is the figure of Francis of Assisi possible, signifying a change of a very profound nature in the emotional climate of Western spirituality. No matter how liberal historiography at the end of the last century exaggerated this change, it did not invent it. In the XIII century, the word "agiornamento" did not yet exist, but the phenomenon of agiornamento very clearly revealed its features, since then the history of the Catholic Church has been marked by the periodicity of completely conscious and centrally implemented acts of assimilation of new forms of civilization. The crusades are still going on, but Francis, without saying a word against them, sets an example of a missionary trip to Egypt for the future, not yet close times - it is better to talk with the sultan than to fight. According to the legend, he also spoke with the wolf, more successfully than with the Sultan. But the behavior of Francis, no matter how much it appears before us in a romantic haze of foolish impracticality, is not simply the fruit of his purely personal kindness, but is in harmony with the movement of civilization; in fact, it was much more practical than the crusades. The future was not for the crusaders, but for the missionaries. Filippo Neri (1515-1595) was active in Rome during the next wave of aggiornamento; his attempts to turn to the benefit of the church the ineradicable tendency of the Italians to pick up their favorite melody on the fly gave the form and name to the musical genre - oratorio; the Roman common people called him "good-natured Peppo", and he received praise from Goethe, who did not like Catholic clerics, but had a taste for Italian life. Of course, not all Western saints of the following centuries were "good-natured" in the style of Neri - whatever; but everything harsh in the most inexorable zealots of the counter-reformation was not exactly softened - from the Russian point of view (clearly expressed in Dostoevsky), this can be perceived quite the opposite! - but "tempered" by civilization. “Gentle in manner of action, firm in essence of action” (leniter in modo, fortiter in actu) is one of the maxims of the Jesuit Order. Whoever wants to, can, of course, translate it into Russian in mockery - they lay it softly, but sleep hard; but this is not the only Russian association that comes to mind here. When the well-known Vladimir Pecherin, a Russian émigré of the Herzenian generation, took it into his head to go as a novice to the Redemptorists, that is, to a congregation akin to the Jesuits, he was extremely struck by the courtesy of the elders to the younger, of the superiors to the subordinates, elevated to the principle.

It's worth thinking about here. Why, in fact, was Redemptorist politeness so unexpected for him? Presumably, in contrast to what he knew about Russian monastic customs. His knowledge, no doubt, was very superficial; on the other hand, the monasteries that gave rise to such ideas could be simply bad. But neither the first nor the second affects the essence of the matter. Behind the accusatory "image" of a long-haired and long-bearded, probably untidy - not comme il faut - Orthodox monk, who says "you" to the novice and mercilessly pushes him around, there is too much. The Eastern type of ascetic education, widely known in Orthodoxy, but also outside of Christianity, such as in Sufism or Zen Buddhism, uses bewildering insults and oppression not only as a way to test the newcomer, but also as a kind of shock therapy. Simeon the New Theologian, one of the most subtle mystics of Byzantium, forced his beloved disciple to eat deliberately fast food in front of strangers, after which he reproached him in front of the same witnesses for gluttony; it's not just a trivial exercise of humility, but something akin to Zen koans - unsolvable riddles that baffle the old consciousness and help the new to be born. But the point is not only that a bad monk can be rude, and a great ascetic can be severe and even resort to methods of deep psychological probing that are painful for the patient. And where there is nothing of the kind, but, on the contrary, pouring out on everyone indiscriminately, “on the righteous and the unrighteous,” as it is said about the rain of heaven in the Sermon on the Mount, the warmth of caress - like that of the Monk Seraphim, addressing everyone with a greeting: “ My joy!" - also there is not the slightest opportunity to talk about politeness. To describe such warmth, the word "politeness" is too cold. You can’t imagine the word of this at all in any Russian spiritual treatise - while even Francis of Assisi recommended to his students a slightly courtly colored courtesy (and, as you know, he practiced it even with God’s dumb creatures), while Francis of Sales, who was named after him, (1567-1622) devoted a whole lengthy chapter to questions of politeness and courtesy in his classic "Introduction to the Spiritual Life", which gave rise to a great tradition in Catholic pastoral literature. The foregoing does not mean that Catholic spirituality is necessarily associated with delicate manners and outward brilliance (quite recently, in the middle of our century, the Italian priest Padre Pio, who had a strong reputation among the people as a miracle worker and seer, reminded of the opposite, - he already told everyone who came "you" and kept without regard to secular decency); but it is fundamentally important that the question of the relationship between holiness and civilized sociality was raised, and not along the way, but as a problem of moral theology, at a theoretical level.

The contrast we trace is not the contrast between culture and its absence, just as it is not the contrast between complete secularization and spirituality. This is a contrast between two cultures and, accordingly, two types of spirituality. Politeness, which is no longer an archaic courtesy, which has a specific meaning, clarified by Western culture from era to era, is a measured distance between individuals in the space of an impersonal law. That is, of course, for a believing Western Christian, the source of the law is a personal God, but the law itself is impersonal, neutral in relation to individuals, whom it encompasses as a Newtonian space neutral in relation to bodies. Here, an analogy to the spatial constructions of a direct linear perspective is permissible. Individuals are "fallen", sinful, and therefore they must be protected from each other; around each should be a zone of distance created by politeness, and their relationship is regulated by the contract. When you read Catholic books on moral theology, you are amazed at how detailed the boundaries of the neighbor’s right to their personal secrets, which are not subject to disclosure under pain of sin, and similar fences around the territories of individual existence, are stipulated there, and how often one of the most important, familiar to us, is used there. the word “agreement” is by no means in sacred contexts, in Latin - “contract”.

After all, even the idea of ​​a “social contract” as a source of powers of power, which played a memorable role for everyone in Rousseau and in the ideology of the Great French Revolution, goes back, as you know, to the treatises of the Jesuit fathers of the 16th-17th centuries - opponents of the doctrine of the divine right of kings. It is far from accidental that Dostoevsky hated the very spirit of the morality of the contract, in which he guessed the essence of the Western worldview, considered it hopelessly incompatible with Christian brotherly love, and even commemorated in connection with it the scales in the hand of the third apocalyptic horseman - the image of a stingy measure that measures exactly as much and no more. (Already outside of Orthodoxy, one can recall Tsvetaeva’s typical Russian mockery of the West-Hammeln: “a measure and a centimeter ...”, “just can’t convey ...”). But since the time of the scholastics of the mature Middle Ages, Catholic theology has steadily taught that the "law of justice", also known as the "natural law", described by Aristotle and the Stoics, is the lower floor, necessary under the conditions of the sinful world, for the upper floor of the "law of love": as without a contract without a contract sanctioned in God, to protect the fallen individual from someone else's and one's own sinfulness?1 Such is the property of Catholicism that has been repeatedly mentioned in Russian polemical literature, which is usually called its legal spirit. The legal spirit here, as everywhere, requires that, for the sake of protecting one personal being from another, the subjects of the will (which for it, first of all, are personalities) are, like physical bodies, divorced in the “Newtonian” moral space, where their relations are regulated by a dual norm. courtesy and contract, allowing neither excesses of severity, nor excesses of tenderness. Of course, this is only one level, the surface level. And in Western spirituality - otherwise it would not be spirituality at all - there is another level, deeper and more essential: the level on which the subject of the will renounces his will, on which the holder of rights voluntarily sacrifices them, on which the relationship between the teacher of asceticism and his pupil are so serious that the presence or absence of courtesy on the part of the teacher ceases to have any meaning. If we take this level in isolation, abstracting from everything else, Western and Eastern spirituality will represent the most similarities. But in the West, the deep level has been appearing since the time of Thomas Aquinas, and even more so since the time of Francis de Sales, in a systematically carried out and theoretically legitimized mediation by the surface level of courtesy and contract. In the East, mediation is incomparably less, and when it exists, it is neither systematic nor legitimized. The theory does not recognize him and does not make concessions to him; in practice, this is seen as a manifestation of human weakness.

After this protracted but necessary digression, let us return to our “childish” question about terrible saints and gentle saints. In the face of the Byzantine tradition, he is indeed too "childish"; Byzantine saints cannot be classified according to emotional criteria. The atmosphere of Byzantine spirituality is determined, firstly, by the pan-Orthodox and very strictly implemented imperative of "sobriety", and secondly, by some emotional dryness, which is inherent in a civilization that has matured long ago. Even in John Chrysostom, mentioned at the beginning of our article, there is no such dryness; it appears in later church ordinances. It is not in the early stories about the words and deeds of the Egyptian and Palestinian ascetics, collected in the Fatherland, Lavsaik, Spiritual Meadow; but she triumphs in the hagiographic schemes of Simeon Metaphrastus drawn as if by compasses. The Byzantines could not but be very smart and intellectual even when they resolutely renounced intellectualism. The dryness that we are talking about in no way excluded the very fiery burning of the spirit, say, in late Byzantine mysticism - only the hymns of Simeon the New Theologian are worth something; but if you unwind the thread of metaphor, you can say that dry wood burns hotter.

It is embarrassing to speak about such things as severity and tenderness, which are thought of as more or less unconscious and naive, when applied to Byzantine saints. This pair of opposites is answered there by another, extremely characteristic of the vocabulary of Orthodox Greece: acrivia - economia. The word acrivia literally means precision; This refers to the unswervingly, inexorably, inexorably applied to oneself and to others the requirement to observe the commandments of God and the statutes of the Church to the full extent, as they say, of the severity of the law. This is not an emotional outburst of angry enthusiasm - this is a maximalist principle evenly and dispassionately carried out. Another key word - "economia" - literally means housekeeping (in the traditional Church Slavonic translation - housebuilding); in the broadest sense, this expedient system actions aimed at the implementation of the plan, in particular, the plan of God to save people through the incarnation and death of the Son on the Cross (“economy of salvation”); in vocabulary relating to religious behavior, this is the readiness to give up acrivia in time, if it is expedient in terms of saving one's neighbor or the interests of the right faith. And here - not an impulse to forgive, but a well-thought-out intent, tactics and politics, ingenious "art". Recall that the Greeks also called asceticism "art" ("techni" - the same root as our "technique"). The Byzantine approach is "technical". Acrivia and economia are distinguished as two tactics - offensive and defensive.

Russian holiness, being Orthodox, has premises that are common to it with Byzantine holiness. But its emotional coloring is different: it corresponds to the impressionability of the young people, to the much more patriarchal foundations of life, it includes specific tones of Slavic sensitivity. And let's hasten to return to our topic: the contrasts of the "meek" and "terrible" types of holiness here are not mediated by civilization, as was increasingly happening in the West, and not transposed into a "mental" tonality, as in Byzantium - they come out with such a stunning nudity and spontaneity, as, perhaps, nowhere else. If a saint is formidable, he is so formidable that the believing soul can only be childishly shy and spread out in trembling. If he is meek, his meekness is such an abyss that it may be even more terrible from it. Moreover, these types cannot be included in the scheme of historical sequence - at first, they say, one is more characteristic, then the other prevails; you cannot attach them to one period or another. Indeed, they could not replace each other, oust each other, because they cannot do without each other. These are two poles of a single antinomy that lies at the very foundations of "Holy Russia". Behind them is a very serious, perplexed, unresolved question. This question determines a lot in Russian consciousness, in Russian history. Its hidden influence does not stop even when the Orthodox tradition is not remembered.

At one pole - an attempt to accept the words of Christ about love for enemies, about non-resistance to evil, about the need to turn the other cheek absolutely literally, without reservations, without reinterpretation. Not only the cheek is substituted under the blow, but also the head; the rapist does not receive not only a rebuff, but also reproach, moreover, the victim addresses him with an affectionate, especially affectionate word. “My dear and beloved brethren,” this is how Boris calls his killers, and Gleb, when his hour comes, speaks to them in the same tone. Actually, the New Testament examples - Christ himself and then Stefan the First Martyr - teach to pray for executioners; they do not oblige to such caress; but it is she who brings in a note of incomparable lyricism, which distinguishes the ancient Russian legends about Boris and Gleb from all similar literature. Let the religious reverence for the shed royal blood, alien, as we noted in the previous article, to Byzantium, was not alien to the North of Europe; however, the resemblance of the canonized slain kings of Scandinavia and Britain to the four sons of St. Vladimir is very limited. Saints Olaf of Norway, Eric of Sweden were killed in the battle with weapons in their hands, as befits the Vikings; if baptism had not opened Christian Paradise to them, they would have fully deserved Valhalla. Saint Edmund, king of the East Angles, was killed, having been captured by the enemy after a lost battle, continuing to defend the territorial integrity of his kingdom in captivity (in this case, the heroic refusal to cede Christian land to the pagan Danes was considered martyrdom). In all these cases, the motive of non-resistance, voluntary doom, ecstatic tearful delight in the very abyss of horror, which is extremely important for the stories about Boris and Gleb, is missing. Closer, of course, is the Slavic parallel - the image of the holy Czech prince Vyacheslav (Wenceslas), who also perishes from the machinations of his brother, could also give an armed rebuff and refuses to do so (“but I don’t want to”); experts have long been discussing the question of the relationship between the "Wenceslas legend" and the "Borisogleb legend" - the genetic connection is doubtful, but the typological one is absolutely undoubted. And yet the stories about St. Vyacheslav do not give such an emphasis on the idea of ​​sacrifice; the Czech prince appears as a religious and political figure, and at the hour of his death, refusing to defend himself at the head of the squad, he still puts up some resistance. Boris and Gleb from the very beginning - not in an active, but in a passive role. Suffering is their business, consciously taken upon themselves and performed with the impeccable "beauty" of the rite, which is expressed at least in behavior in front of the killers. "Purified of moral practical applications, even of the idea of ​​a manly performance of duty<…>, the idea of ​​sacrifice, which is different from heroic martyrdom, comes out with special force ”(G.P. Fedotov).

We have returned to where the previous article ended: to the phenomenon of Russian “passion-bearers”, who cannot be called martyrs for the faith in the usual sense, but who are described by tradition as martyrs of non-resistance to evil and, moreover, as innocent victims for a sinful world. They require a special kind of unresponsiveness, even helplessness, which is not at all necessary for a martyr, who confesses and preaches his faith with strength. The “passion-bearer” behaves like a child, and the more this childishness, the purer the manifestation of the victim. Here, the Russian tradition continues the Old Testament theme of “ana-vim” - “the poor of the Lord”, “quiet people of the earth”: “my soul was in me like a child weaned” (psalm CXXX, 2). The strength of the "passion-bearer" is only in complete impotence, in the combination of childish innocence with childish guilt. As the lyrical hero of Psalm XXXVII, he has no denunciation in his mouth. We have already seen that Boris and Gleb cannot and do not want to reproach their murderers; it would seem, why? Stephen the First Martyr prayed for the executioners, but before that he denounced them. Reproof itself can be a manifestation of love - but not the childlike love to which the victim is called.

The Russian tradition is very characteristic of the veneration of tortured, offended, children in trouble - from Tsarevich Dimitri to the boy "in people" Vasily Mangazeya. Sometimes death comes not from people, but from the elements, as in the case of Artemy Verkolsky, but it is still a sign of sacrificial election. Lightning knows who to hit - either the most guilty or the innocent of the innocent.

Meekness is so meekness: quieter than water, lower than grass. When Sergius of Radonezh, who has long been hegumen, hears the rebuke of his brother by blood and monasticism, he silently, silently leaves the monastery, without even entering his cell. “Nothing is nothing,” Epiphanius the Wise emphasizes. The Monk Seraphim, having met with the robbers, lays an ax on the ground and with a bow exposes himself to blows that, although they will not kill him, like Boris and Gleb, will mutilate him for life; and if for this act in itself, generally speaking, there are parallels both in Greek patericons and in Western hagiography, then when elucidating Russian specifics, it is necessary to take into account how much the feature of non-resistance and sacrifice is emphasized and strengthened in the specific appearance of Seraphim by all his childish, slightly holy fool affectionate, "favorable voice" of his words, sounding like babble. "My joy! .." - this is his appeal to friends and strangers, we quoted above. Russian literature of the last century did not pass by this type of holiness; Let's remember the "without anger" of the elder Pamva from "The Sealed Angel" by Nikolai Leskov.

This is one pole; and here is another. Terrible holiness is mainly expected from "priests" - bishops endowed with ecclesiastical authority, which is difficult to separate from political. Power must inspire fear. About the imperious archbishop of Novgorod of the 15th century, Saint Euthymius, the famous hagiographer Pakhomiy Logofet notes that his God is “terrible to the recalcitrant display.” A contemporary of Euthymius was St. Jonah - the first Moscow metropolitan, recognized as legal without approval by Constantinople; when another Russian saint, abbot Pafnutiy Borovsky, allowed himself (generally speaking, with sufficient reason) to doubt the canonicity of such a practice, Jonah subjected him to beatings and threw him into prison. The saint remained stern, formidable, unforgiving in the memory of the Russian people; the miracles that his life tells about, more and more punishing miracles - a person dies, who did not believe in his power to create a miracle, another dies, who saw him in a vision after death, but did not tell about it, did not fulfill the order.

There is a Russian word denoting a specifically Russian version of rigidity, and therefore untranslatable, like all the best words in any language - "cool". The West has its own rigidity of the zealots of the faith: it is possible that Bernard of Clairvaux, herald of the crusades and persecutor of Abelard, was more furious than the harsh saints of Russian history; there is no doubt that Master Konrad, the confessor of Elizabeth of Hungary, who brought the ward to perfection with very ruthless methods, was more sophisticated. But St. Jonah - he was precisely in Russian cool, as cool was the Monk Joseph Volotsky, in his own way no less characteristic representative of Russian spirituality than the unrequited passion-bearers and kind to all merciful. His argument in favor of the fact that "it is fitting not only to condemn a heretic and an apostate, but also to curse, as a king, and a prince, and a judge, it is appropriate to send them to prison, and betray them with fierce execution," strikes with its frightening depth and sometimes unexpected resourcefulness. Do you like pious stories in which a miracle of God by itself punishes the guilty and stops the deception of false teachers? So don’t you see that death through the prayer of a saint is much more terrible and bitter than death “by a weapon”, from ordinary human violence? Joseph is imbued with the mood of the Old Testament traditions - for example, about how the prophet unexpectedly ordered to beat himself, and the one who refuses to do this is devoured by a lion that came out onto the road (III Kings, 20): obey exactly." In a letter to Princess Golenina, the monk explains to a widow who has lost her children that if they died in their youth, it means that God foresaw that they would live "an evil and evil life" - they themselves are to blame, although they have not yet managed to do anything; and from this topic he moves on to a purely businesslike conversation about paying for requiems - “a priest does not serve a single mass or ponafida for nothing.”

Everything is by no means simple: we must be very careful not to see, instead of the real Joseph Volotsky, a caricature of him, to which our, as they say, “intelligent” consciousness is naturally inclined. The same St. Joseph, whose rigidity we are ready to be horrified, in hard times was, like the Old Testament Joseph, a caring breadwinner for hundreds of starving people, a guardian of children abandoned by their parents; he ordered - let the monastery get into debt, "so that no one leaves the monastery without eating." If he were a “non-possessor” in the spirit of the Monks Nil of Sorsky and Maxim the Greek, and not a tough owner, without the slightest hint of sensitivity, turning the grief of the unfortunate princess for the benefit of the finances of the monastery, he would have nothing to carry out such a wide charity. The social moment is present in the minds of Joseph Volotsky much more strongly than in the minds of the “non-possessors”: here he persuades the boyar to treat dependent people humanely, and does not hit on pity, but rests on the benefit for the boyar himself both in this world and on the Last Judgment; there he orders the prince to forbid the increase in the price of bread ... And this people’s sad man is the same person who demands the death penalty not only for heresy, but for failure to report heresy: they will give the judges the final torment gyud-imut. It is important to understand that there is no contradiction here: Joseph's worldview is very integral.

It is also important to understand something else - the elders of the Kirillov Monastery, who argued with the message of Joseph Volotsky about the condemnation of heretics, were not liberals. Before us are not the ideologists of tolerance, but the prophets of God's love, incomprehensible to reason; they do not teach "tolerance", but patience - patience towards evil, for they do not doubt at all that heresy is a real evil. Let heretics be no better than robbers; but Christ forgave even the thief. They are not closer to rationalism, but farther from it than the Josephites. Against the Old Testament logic of Joseph, they appeal to the paradoxes of the New Testament. Their argument is the transcendent readiness of the Apostle Paul to take the curse himself, if only to ask for forgiveness for the unbelieving Jews (Romans 9, 3): he told them that their fire would burn, or the earth would be vented, but they could priati from God.

It seems that the controversy between the Josephites and the “non-possessors” about the possibility of responding to heresy with executions is a unique phenomenon. First, it is very important that both disputing parties remain not only within the limits of orthodoxy, but also on the platform of the medieval worldview. This was not the case in the West; of course, there are people there even in the Middle Ages, including both hierarchs and saints of the Catholic Church, who are disgusted by the practice of repression, but only heretics dispute it theoretically; and when it finally comes to systematic objections, these objections rush into the mainstream of the rising New European ideology of liberalism. Secondly, it is important that the dispute about violence and non-violence is intertwined with the dispute about “acquisitiveness” and “non-acquisitiveness”. This did not happen in the West either: just the mendicant orders, whose “non-possessive” life was set as a model for Orthodox Russian monks by Maxim the Greek, supply figures for the Inquisition.

Once again: the opponents of Josephism did not defend the right to dissent, but the radically understood evangelical prohibition to judge and condemn. This is a different topic than freedom of thought. On what basis is the life of people to be based - on a "thunderstorm", on a strong constructive will that knows no boundaries, or on long-suffering that also knows no boundaries? “But I say to you: resist not evil” (Gospel of Matthew, 5, 39) - these are the words of Christ, and for those for whom they do not mean exactly as much as they mean, they do not make sense at all. Nothing can be taken from them. In order to realize them, one must voluntarily make oneself an unrequited victim - like Boris and Gleb, like the Monk Seraphim, like the Leskian elder Pamva and Prince Myshkin of Dostoevsky. But after all, the words about the “leader”, who “carries the sword not in vain”, since there is “God's servant, the avenger in punishment of the one who does evil” (Epistle to the Romans, 13, 4), these are also New Testament words, spoken, however, about a pagan , not bound by obligations to the Sermon on the Mount; a Christian in the days of the apostle Paul had no chance of being a "boss." How to combine, how to “fit” all this?

This is, generally speaking, a dilemma common to Christianity as a whole. How can a Christian touch power over people? So in the West, Pope Celestine V resigned his dignity and went into the desert; the Catholic Church canonized him as a saint, but Dante sent him to Hell - when a good person renounces power, he incurs responsibility for the evil ones taking it. But all the same, the West made it easier for itself to deal with the sore point, even made it "almost" - only "almost" - solvable; let the reader remember what was said above about the mediation of spirituality by the ethics of courtesy and contract. Having parted with pure Augustinism at the time of Aquinas, the Catholic worldview divides being not into two (“light” and “darkness”), but into three: between the mountainous region of the supernatural, blessed, and the underworld region of the unnatural, for the time being, lives according to its own laws, although under by the power of God, the realm of the natural. State power belongs precisely to this area; only a heretic is able to see in her the dispensation of the devil, but attempts to immoderately sacralize her were also steadily condemned. If the coexistence of the natural, as yet not grace-filled, with grace is legitimate, it is the business of theology to regulate relations between one and the other area, to clarify their boundaries. This means that the qualitative difference between violence and non-violence has been reduced to a quantitative problem of measure, to an arithmetical problem that one can always try to solve. Interestingly, there is a word in Latin that plays an important role in Catholic moral theology, but is completely untranslatable into Russian. This word is dementia; it cannot be translated, as is usually done, with the word “mercy,” if only because “mercy” is an exact copy of another Latin word, misericordia. Clementia is precisely not mercy or pity, not a movement of the heart, but something else; not without reason Thomas Aquinas absolutely thoroughly sees in it a particular kind of virtue of "moderation". This refers to the case when the bearer of power of some kind, by exercising this power, in other words, by practicing violence, limits this violence to the limits of the absolutely necessary, sparing everyone whom he can spare without damage to his power, protecting himself from unrestraint, from what Augustine called the lust of power. This is more endurance, self-respect, a sense of proportion than kindness. Of course, the word clementia, according to the Catholic system, characterizes the realm of "natural", which lies between the hell of cruelty and the grace of Christian love. Love has no measure, the measure of love is immensity, as Bernard of Clairvaux said; but the very essence of "clementia" - in a calculable way.

It is more than clear that in Russian there is no such concept. Russian spirituality divides the world not into three, but into two - the lot of light and the lot of darkness; and in nothing is this felt more sharply than in the question of power. God's and Antichrist's come close to each other, without any buffer territory between them; everything that seems to be earth and earthly is in fact either Paradise or Hell; and the bearer of power stands exactly on the border of both kingdoms. That is, it does not just mean that he bears a special responsibility before God - such a trivial truth is known to everyone. No, power in itself, at least autocratic power, is something that is either above the human world or below it, but in any case, as it were, not included in it. The blessing here is very difficult to separate from the curse.

There is nothing stranger than the journalism of the early days of Russian absolutism. Who does Ivan Peresvetov set as an example for the autocrat? The Turkish Sultan Mohamed II, not only a "non-Christian", but also a deliberate destroyer of the Orthodox Byzantine state, whom the story of Nestor-Iskander about the capture of Constantinople did not otherwise call as "cursed" and "lawless." Another, even more shocking prototype of the autocrat is the Wallachian governor Dracula. The legend about him recommends him with the following words: “the Greek faith is a Christian governor named Dracula in the Vlach language, and ours is the devil,” - it seems that nowhere else in all ancient Russian literature do the words “Christian” and “devil” find themselves in such scandalous proximity. Who is he really, this punisher who sends to execution everyone he meets and crosses? It seems that the author (or transcriber) of the story had double thoughts. In one place it is said: “And so much hating evil in his land, as if someone would do some evil, tatba or robbery or some kind of lie or untruth, he will not live in any way.” So, still a defender of the truth? But in another place: “No one can steal away the ocean made by him, only the devil named after him”! In the same row is the legend that the regalia of the Orthodox kingdom do not come from anywhere, but from Babylon, the biblical symbol of all filth ... Whatever you want about it, then think about it. And next to this are the solemn words of Ivan the Terrible at the beginning of the message to Kurbsky: “Father and Son and Holy Spirit, below the beginning, below the end, we live and move about Him, By whom the king is magnified and the mighty write the truth.”

So the question of power has not been raised since the time of the Old Testament. As you know, in the I Book of Kings, Israel's intention to choose a king for themselves is regarded as apostasy - Yahweh himself should have reigned over the sacred people. “And all the elders of Israel gathered together, and came to Samuel at Ramah, and said to him:<…>put a king over us to judge us like other peoples.<…>And Samuel prayed to the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel, Listen to the voices of the people in all that they say to you; for it was not you that they rejected; but they rejected Me, so that I would not reign over them. As they did from the day I brought them out of Egypt until this day, they left me and served other gods: so they do to you” (8, 4-8). This is on the one hand; and on the other, the promises of the Davidic dynasty in the "royal" psalms. There was also an unanswerable question. It was resolved only on a different level - in the gospel image of the King, who is really the King, but the King is "not of this world."

For Russians, the antinomies contained in power over people, in the very phenomenon of power, have remained from century to century - almost since Vladimir doubted his right to execute - not so much a task for reason as a torment for conscience. This is how a cultural type developed, with inevitable approximation and yet, as it seems, quite correctly described by Voloshin:

We are negligent, we are unclean.

Ignorant and hurt...

On the other hand, we have a wandering spirit - conscience And our great penitential gift, Which melted Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, And Ivan the Terrible. We do not have the Dignity of a simple citizen. But everyone who has boiled over in the cauldron of Russian statehood is next to any of the Europeans - a person.

Our danger lies in the age-old habit of shifting the alien burden of power onto another, retreating from him, retreating into the false innocence of irresponsibility. Our hope lies in the very unresolved nature of our questions, as we perceive them. Unresolved compels, under pain of moral and mental death, to look for some other, higher, hitherto unknown level (as in Akhmatova: “No one, known to no one, but desired by us from time immemorial”). Unresolved questions look to the future...

This article is accompanied by a translation of the Old Testament psalms selected by the Orthodox liturgical tradition into the so-called Six Psalms. The aim of the translator was to create a symbol of continuity between the Hebrew, Hellenistic and Russian cultures. Therefore, this translation (unlike my other biblical translations) deliberately sticks to the Greek text, although with an eye to the Hebrew original, and strives to keep musical rhythm Church Slavonic cadences.

Lord, how those who oppress me have multiplied! Many rise up against me, many say to my soul: "There is no salvation for him in God."

But You, Lord, are my protection.

You are my glory. You lift up my head.

I cried out to the Lord with my voice,

and He heard me from His holy mountain.

I fell asleep, and slept, and rose,

for the Lord protects me.

I will not be afraid of multitudes of people,

all around me.

Arise, Lord! Save me, my God! You strike all my adversaries, crush the teeth of sinners.

From the Lord is salvation

and on your people - your blessing.

I fell asleep, and slept, and rose,

for the Lord protects me.

God! do not rebuke me in your wrath,

and do not punish me in your anger;

for your arrows have entered me,

and your hand is heavy on me.

There is no whole place in my flesh

because of your wrath,

no peace in my bones

because of my sins;

for my iniquities exceeded my head,

like a heavy burden, they oppress me;

my wounds stink and fester

because of my folly.

I am bent and immeasurably drooping,

all day, complaining, I walk,

for my loins are full of sickness,

and there is no whole place in my flesh.

I am exhausted and very crushed,

I cry out from the anguish of my heart.

God! before you all my desire,

and my sighing is not hidden from you.

My heart is trembling, my strength has left me,

the light of my eyes - and that is not with me.

My friends, my companions

departed from my misfortune,

and my neighbors stood at a distance.

But those who seek my soul set up nets,

those who wish me harm speak words of murder,

cook kovy all day long.

I'm deaf, I can't hear

like a mute, I do not open my mouth;

yes, I was like one who does not hear,

and has no rebuke in his mouth.

For in Thee, O Lord, I trust;

You will hear. Oh my God!

And I said, Let not my enemies rejoice over me,

let them not boast before me,

when my foot stumbles!

For I am ready for the wounds

and my sorrow is always before me,

I proclaim my iniquity

and mourn for my sin.

Meanwhile, my enemies live in great power,

and those who hate me without cause have multiplied,

repaying me evil for good,

warring against me for seeking good.

Don't leave me, Lord, my God!

Don't back away from me!

Hurry to help me

Lord of my salvation!

Don't leave me, Lord, my God,

don't leave me

hurry to help me

Lord of my salvation!

Oh God, You are my God

I seek you from the early dawn.

My soul longed for you

my flesh yearns for you

in the desert land, and dry, and waterless.

Oh, when in the sanctuary to see You,

see Your power and Your glory!

For your mercy is better than life,

and my mouth will praise you.

I will bless you as long as my life lasts,

in your name I will lift up my hands:

like fat and oil, my soul shall be satisfied,

and my mouth will praise you with a voice of joy,

when I remember You on my bed,

in the morning I will think of you:

for you are my helper,

My soul clings to you,

and your right hand holds me.

And those who trap my soul

descend into the underworld of the earth,

they will be given to the power of the sword,

will fall prey to the jackals.

The king will rejoice in God,

whoever swears by Him will be glorified,

for the mouth is stopped

telling lies.

In the morning I will think of You,

for you are my helper,

and under the shadow of your wings I will rejoice.

My soul clings to you,

and your right hand holds me.

Lord God of my salvation!

Day and night I cry before You.

incline your ear to my supplication:

for my soul has been filled with troubles,

and my life came to hell.

I am numbered among those who go down to the grave,

I became like an exhausted person,

left among the dead,

like those killed in the tomb,

which you will no longer remember,

and whom your hand has cast aside.

You brought me down to the pit of hell

into darkness and into the shadow of death;

Your wrath has weighed on me,

and all Your waves You have brought upon me.

You removed my neighbors from me,

made me an abomination to them,

imprisoned me, I can not go free.

My eyes are weary of sorrow;

I called to You, Lord, all day long,

stretched out my hands to you.

Or do you work wonders on the dead?

Or will the dead rise and glorify You?

Or in the tomb your mercy will be proclaimed,

and your faithfulness in a place of decay?

Or in darkness they will know your wonders,

and your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?

But I call on You, Lord.

and in the morning my prayer is before you.

Why, O Lord, do you reject my soul,

turn your face away from me?

I am poor, and in sorrows from my youth,

I bear the burden of Thy terrors and I am exhausted.

Your fury passed over me,

Your fears have troubled me,

every day they surround me like water,

surround me all together.

You removed my friend and companion from me,

and my neighbors are not visible, as in darkness.

Lord, God of my salvation,

day and night I cry before you.

Let my prayer come before you,

incline your ear to my supplication.

Bless the Lord, my soul,

and all that is in me is His holy name,

bless the Lord, my soul,

and do not forget all His gifts.

He forgives all your iniquities,

heals all your ailments,

redeems your life from destruction,

crowns you with grace and bounty,

satisfies your desire with blessings;

like an eagle, your youth will be renewed.

The Lord does mercy

protects the rights of all the oppressed.

He opened His ways to Moses,

to the children of Israel, their deeds.

Generous and merciful Lord,

long-suffering and merciful,

not completely angry

and never be at enmity;

He did not deal with us according to our iniquities,

and repay us not according to our sins.

How high are the heavens above the earth,

strong is his mercy towards those who fear him;

how far is the east from the west,

He removed our iniquity from us.

How a father has mercy on his sons,

the Lord has mercy on those who fear him.

For He knows our composition,

remembers that we are dust.

Man - his days are like grass,

like the flower of the field, they fade;

blows over him, and he is gone,

and does not know his place.

The mercy of the Lord from age to age

to those who fear him,

and His righteousness is upon the sons of sons,

who keep his covenant,

who remember His commandments to do them.

The Lord has set up His throne in heaven,

and His kingdom embraces all.

Bless the Lord, all His angels,

mighty in strength, doing his word,

heed the voice of his word.

Bless the Lord, all His armies,

His servants do His will.

Bless the Lord, all His works!

In every place of His dominion

bless the Lord, my soul!

Lord, hear my prayer

listen to my supplication in your truth,

hear me in your truth,

and do not enter into judgment with your servant,

for it will not be justified before you

none of the living.

For the enemy oppresses my soul,

trampled my life into the ground,

plunged me into darkness

like the dead of old.

And my spirit is despondent in me,

my heart is troubled in me.

I remember the days of old

I meditate on all your deeds,

I discuss the works of your hand,

I stretch out my hands to You;

my soul is a dry land and thirsts for you.

Hear me soon, Lord!

my spirit fails.

Do not turn Your face away from me,

let me not be like those who go down to the grave

Reveal thy mercy to me in the morning,

for I trust in you;

show me the way to go,

for to you I lift up my soul.

Deliver me from my enemies, Lord!

I run to you.

Teach me to do Your will

for You are my God.

May your good spirit guide me

to the land of truth.

For Your name's sake, Lord,

revive me;

for your righteousness

bring my soul out of sorrow;

and by your grace

destroy my enemies

and destroy all who oppress my soul,

for I am your servant.

Hear me, Lord, in Your righteousness,

and do not enter into judgment with your servant.

May your good spirit guide me

to the land of truth.

Notes:

Oikumenikos didaskalos - designation of the head of the patriarchal school.

Wed D. S. Likhachev’s subtle remarks about “literary etiquette” (D. S. Likhachev. Poetics of Old Russian Literature. A .: Nauka, 1967. P. 84–108).

On the connection between the philosophical synthesis of Neoplatonism and the state synthesis of the Roman Empire, see: Losev A.F. History of ancient aesthetics (early classics). M., 1963. S. 123-127. Porphyry emphasizes the synchronicity of Plotinus's philosophical initiative with such a political event as the beginning of the reign of Gallienus (Porphyr. De vita Plotini, §§ 4, 12).

This motif of Vladimir's Sunday feasts is retained, as you know, by the poetry of Russian epics:

... And Prince Vladimir came out of God's church, From that from Christ's luncheon. He sat down at the oak tables, Eating sugar noodles, Drinking honey drinkers...

That is, of course, all three nations that emerged from the single bosom of Kievan Rus have equal rights on this holiday: Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. Things that are self-evident are somehow strange to stipulate, but, probably, it is necessary.

Thus, the architecture of the Palace Chapel in Aachen significantly repeats the forms of Roman-Byzantine art in Ravenna, which have become a symbol of imperial grandeur as such.

Strictly speaking, Armenia became a Christian state years earlier than the Mediolan edict of Constantine. But this is a private reservation, shading the overall picture.

Byzantium is just not the Byzantine, not the medieval, but the ancient name of the city on the Bosphorus, which at the dawn of the Byzantine era ceased to be Byzantium and became Constantinople, or New Rome.

The self-name of the Greeks from antiquity to the present day is Hellenes. However, in Christian usage, this word has acquired an odious meaning, as a designation of pagans as opposed to Christians.

Through the late antique novels about Troy (Diktis of Crete in the Latin version), Trojan stories entered the repertoire of chivalric literature of the Western Middle Ages. In Russia, no later than the beginning of the 16th century, a legend about the origin of the Russian grand dukes through Prus from Augustus is spreading (the message of Spiridon-Sava, "The Tale of the Princes of Vladimir"). “And the Roman press is not wild for us either: we are related to Augustus Caesar,” Ivan the Terrible wrote to the Swedish king in 1573.

Accustoming themselves to the thought of Ottoman rule, the publicists of late Byzantium produced Turks from the Trojans (Tevkrov).

Wed the title of the historiosophical work of the German romanticist Novalis, where these words are connected by the equating union "or": "Die Christenheit oder Europe" (1799).

In this regard, the cult of the relatives of Jesus Christ is indicative, especially Anna and her husband Joachim, but also others, the desire to see in the apostles and myrrh-bearers persons connected with the Virgin Mary by ties of kinship, in general, the whole iconography and the very idea of ​​\u200b\u200bwhat is called in German Heilige Sippe, - The Holy Family, expanded at the expense of relatives and in-laws. Through this, the God-man was introduced into the cozy and understandable world of human homeliness and nepotism, where everyone from birth has grandmothers, aunts, cousins ​​and second cousins, etc. To visit as a pilgrim one of the many holy places in the West of the righteous Anna, mother of the Virgin Mary, it's like paying a courtesy call to an important person: the grandmother of a king over kings. As a modern English historian of Christianity notes, “in order to show the reality of the human nature of Christ in the 15th century, there was no need to appeal to biology, but it was not enough to point to Mary and Joseph; it was necessary to know that he had relatives.” This is completely alien to Russian piety.

Gumilyov has a parallel to these lines: “The heart will be burning with flame until the day when the walls of the new Jerusalem will rise, clear, on the fields of my native country.”

Note that it agrees well with a motif that occurs repeatedly in Christian Sacred History; David's election is shaded by the rejection of the previously reigning Saul, the Christian election is the rejection of the previously chosen people of the Old Testament. The first place was not given to the one who was the first in time. (In favor of the Russians, “workers of the eleventh hour,” this motif was used already in the 11th century by Metropolitan Hilarion - in the “Sermon on Law and Grace.”) But just this logic suggests that the first place is not some other, but that the very one that was originally intended for the one who ruined his birthright. Christians are the new Israel; therefore, Constantinople is the new Rome, and Tarnovo or Moscow is the new Constantinople. At the same time, let us recall one more motive, well known from fairy tales, but not only found in fairy tales: an attempt must be repeated up to three times - and then either two failures are followed by luck, or luck successively increases and on the third attempt reaches perfection. Let us point out the variants of this motif in the history of the Roman idea. In the perspective of Virgil's Aeneid, Rome is the heir to the lost Troy and Alba Longa, raised only for a time, so to speak, the third Troy. For the early Byzantines, who believed that Constantine wanted to return the capital of the empire from Rome to Troy, but was taught by an oracle to transfer it to the Bosphorus, the third Troy turns out to be Constantinople.

And each of these stages corresponded to an increasingly conscious alienation of Russia from the Catholic West (in the 13th century - the refusal of Alexander Nevsky to the pope's envoy, in the 15th century - the deposition of the Latinophile Metropolitan Isidore of Moscow by Grand Duke Vasily II, under John IV - the failure of the mission of Antonio Possevino). Now the Russians do not just follow their Greek mentors, but, on the contrary, see the reason for the rejection of Byzantium and their election in the compromise of the Greeks with Latinism.

It is far from accidental, however, that even so, at first, the kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula expand, having just thrown off the yoke of the East and become infected with its immensity, like Russia.

Term pores of the Second Vatican Council (1962); the adaptation of the outward forms of the Catholic religion to the needs of the present day.

There are roots in the scholastic tradition of the attempts of modern Western theologians to lay a theological foundation for egalitarian-democratic principles, arguing not from the innocence of a person, like Rousseau, but, on the contrary, from his sinfulness. In its essence, they say, life is hierarchical, but this naked essence, like the nakedness of the flesh after the fall of the forefathers, needs the principle of equality as an analogue of the cover of modesty. In all deep interpersonal relationships - true discipleship, true love - as long as the heavenly moment lasts, no one asks about equality of rights; however, the latter is necessary, because in a fallen world, the authentic immediately threatens to degenerate into the inauthentic. Therefore, a person cannot be given unlimited power over a person; out of Christian love for the bearer of power, it is not necessary to lead him into temptation. None of the people is not pure enough to be feared for.

This is not the place to discuss the differences in attitudes between Eastern and Western asceticism. These differences are very sharply accentuated in the "Ascetic Experiences" by Ignatius Brianchaninov. If, however, there were no essential commonalities, the Athos monk, the compiler of the "Philokalia" Nikodim Svyatogorets, would not have been able, with the help of very few changes, to adapt for the Orthodox reader the ascetic manual of the Catholic Skupoli, the 16th-century Theatine monk, "Invisible Scolding" (the book was translated into Russian from Greek and received wide circulation among monks and laity striving for spiritual life). In general, the relationship between Orthodox and Catholic mysticism is a zone of heated debate. It is characteristic that the most influential in Catholicism "Imitation of Christ" (XV century) caused diametrically opposite assessments from two Russian spiritual authorities - Dimitri of Rostov and the same Ignatius Brianchaninov.

MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE AND FOOD OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

DEPARTMENT OF PERSONNEL POLICY AND EDUCATION

KRASNOYARSK STATE AGRARIAN UNIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT OF CULTUROLOGY

Byzantium and Russia

Completed: student gr. Yu-12

Aminjanov A.A.

Checked by: Associate Professor Stebletsova T.B.

KRASNOYARSK - 2003

Introduction. 3

1. Russia and Christianity. 4

2. Byzantium, crusaders and barbarians. 5

3. Relations between Russia and Byzantium. 7

4. Byzantium and the West. nine

5. Russia is a Eurasian state. 17

Conclusion. 23

List of used literature. 24

Introduction.

Understanding and value perception of the Byzantine Empire in the Russian self-consciousness of the pre-Petrine time and, on the other hand, in the ideology of the XIX-XX centuries. - very significantly, even fundamentally diverge. Briefly and simply, until the 18th century, Byzantium was perceived in Russia - by and large - in the most positive spirit, and in the subsequent time, the most influential ideologists were characterized by a negative attitude towards it. True, in the late XIX - early XX centuries. the opposite trend also begins to take shape (especially pronounced during Eurasianism), but it, in turn, encounters strong resistance, and it can be said without exaggeration that even today a more or less "negative" assessment of the role of the Byzantine Empire in the history of Russia is very widespread.

Here I will almost certainly be objected that this is not quite the case, for the positive significance of the acceptance of Christianity by Russia from the Byzantine Church is generally recognized. However, considering the problem in all its versatility, we will see that it is much more complex and contradictory.

1. Russia and Christianity.

First, there is also recent times there is a growing desire to overestimate the appeal to Christianity itself, which suppressed the East Slavic pagan beliefs, which, according to the supporters of this view, embodied the truly original beginnings of Russia.

On the other hand, many historians - and this is no coincidence - have tried and are trying to prove that the Russians actually adopted Christianity not from Byzantium, but either from Bulgaria (see, for example, the works of M. D. Priselkov, an influential historian in his time), either from Moravia (N. K. Nikolsky), or from the Norman-Varangians (E. E. Golubinsky); Recently, a special version has been put forward about the Irish origin of Russian Christianity (our contemporary A. G. Kuzmin).

Finally, very many of those historians and ideologists who recognize the Byzantine origins of Christian Russia, at the same time, have striven and are striving to affirm the idea that the Old Russian Church - like Ancient Russia as a whole - from the very beginning was allegedly in a state of stubborn struggle with Byzantium for its independence, which, they say, was constantly threatened by Constantinople.

Thus, the great figure of the Russian church and culture of the 11th century, Metropolitan Hilarion of Kyiv, is presented as a kind of implacable fighter against the Byzantine church, and from the 19th century to our time they try to interpret the ingenious "Sermon on Law and Grace" created by Hilarion as supposedly anti-Byzantine in its main purpose and meaning of the speech.

Meanwhile, such an interpretation is truly absurd; to be convinced of this, it is enough to impartially ponder at least the following judgment of Metropolitan Hilarion - his words about "the good faith of the land of Grechsk, love Christ and strongly by Faith, how they honor and bow to the one God in the Trinity, how powers and miracles and signs work in them, how the church people stand before and all the gods stand ... " Or the words about Vladimir Svyatoslavich, who "brought the cross (cross) from New Jerusalem - Constantine's city." The outstanding historian M.N. Tikhomirov, not without irony, noted in his time: "In such words it was impossible to speak against Byzantium." But even to this day, Hilarion is being portrayed as a certain principled enemy of Byzantium and its Church...

All this could not but have a significant reason. And the point here, as I will strive to prove, is that, starting from the time of Peter I, Russia quite realistically, practically rushed to the West, and in its self-consciousness experienced the most powerful influence of Western ideology. And the West has long—one might even say forever—irreconcilably opposed Byzantium.

2. Byzantium, crusaders and barbarians.

In the 5th century, the "barbarian" tribes, who subsequently created the modern Western European civilization and culture, mercilessly defeated the weakened Rome. As if foreseeing this fate of the great city, the Roman emperor Constantine I the Great, back in the 20s of the previous, IV century, moved the center of the Empire 1300 km to the East, to the ancient Greek Byzantium, which later received the names "New Rome" and "City of Constantine" (Constantinople ). This city, unlike Rome, managed to defend itself in the fight against the "barbarians", and Byzantium was the only straight the heiress of the ancient world and lived its rich and complex history, which lasted more than a thousand and a hundred years.

True, in 1204 - eight centuries after the defeat of Rome - the "New Rome" was invaded by the distant descendants of those same barbarians - the crusaders. Based on many years of research, the book by M. A. Zaborov "Crusaders in the East" (1980) reports, in particular:

"The devastating orgies perished ... the wonderful works of ancient artists and sculptors, kept for hundreds of years in Constantinople. The barbarian crusaders knew nothing about art. They knew how to appreciate only metal. Marble, wood, bone, from which architectural and sculptural In order to make it easier to determine the cost of production, the Crusaders turned into ingots a mass of artistic metal products they plundered. Such a fate befell, for example, a magnificent bronze statue of the goddess Hera of Samos ... A giant bronze Hercules, the creation of the brilliant Lysippos (the court painter of Alexander the Great) was thrown off the pedestal and broken ... Western vandals were not stopped by either the statue of the she-wolf that nursed Romulus and Remus ... or even the statue of the Virgin Mary, located in the center of the city ... In 1204, Western barbarians ... destroyed not only monuments of art a. The richest book depositories of Constantinople were turned into ashes ... works of ancient philosophers and writers, religious texts, illuminated gospels ... They burned them easily, like everything else ... The Byzantine capital was never able to recover from the consequences of the invasion of the Latin crusaders ".

The picture is impressive, but it must be realized that the words "barbarians" and "vandals" used in this text are hardly at all appropriate; by the 13th century Western European medieval culture was already quite highly developed - after all, this is the time of the "Proto-Renaissance"; architecture, church painting and sculpture, applied arts, and writing in Western Europe experienced a flourishing period - as shown, for example, in the classic work of OA Dobiash-Rozhdestvenskaya "Western Medieval Art" (1929).

In a word, the behavior of the crusaders was dictated not by their alienation to culture in general, but by their alienation and, moreover, hostility towards specifically Byzantium and its culture - that's why they behaved in much the same way as their really still "barbarian" ancestors, who captured Rome in the distant 5th century ...

To recognize the validity of this statement, it is enough, I believe, to get acquainted with the "position" of the founder of the Renaissance culture of the West - Francesco Petrarch. A century and a half after the capture of Constantinople by the crusaders, in 1352, Byzantium was once again inflicted with severe damage by the Genoese pirate merchants (the Genoese and Venetians generally played a major role in the collapse of Byzantium; the Turks in 1453 captured Constantinople, which was almost powerless by that time). And Petrarch (who cannot be suspected of a lack of culture!) wrote in his message to the "Doge and the Council of Genoa" that he was "very pleased" with the defeat of the "sly cowardly buckwheat" and wants "that their shameful empire and nest of errors be uprooted by yours (then there are Genoese.- VK.) hands, if only Christ chooses you as avengers for His reproach and entrusts you with retribution, not drawn out for good (even so? - VK.) by all the Catholic people" (F. Petrarch. The Book of Everyday Affairs. XIV, 5. - Translation by V. V. Bibikhin).

But let us return once again to the "crusading" defeat of Constantinople in 1204. When thinking about it, an extremely expressive juxtaposition naturally suggests itself. In 988 or 989, that is, more than two centuries before the invasion of the crusaders, the Russian prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich took possession of the main Byzantine city in the Crimea - Chersonese (in Russian - Korsun). Like Constantinople, Chersonesus was created in the ancient Greek era and was a similar cumulative embodiment of ancient and Byzantine culture itself. Until recently, historiography was dominated by the opinion that the Russian army, having entered Chersonesus, allegedly treated the city in the same way as the Crusaders did with Constantinople - destroyed and burned everything to the ground and to the ground. However, in the latest research it is quite convincingly proved that Chersonesos did not suffer any damage at that time (see "Byzantine Vremennik" for 1989 and 1990, that is, volumes 50 and 51), which, by the way, is evidenced by the Russian chronicle story about the capture of Korsun. True, Vladimir Svyatoslavich took valuable trophies to Kyiv; as it is said in the chronicle, "I took the id, 2 temples of copper and 4 horses of copper, even now to stand behind the Holy Mother of God, as if ignorantly I think the marbles are" ("I took with me, leaving, two bronze idols and four bronze horses, which and now they stand behind the church of the Holy Mother of God, and which the ignorant consider to be marble"). The very detail of the story convinces us that at the beginning of the 12th century (when The Tale of Bygone Years was being created) bronze figures of people and horses were still adorned in the center of Kyiv. And this attitude of Russians (back in the 10th century!) to the values ​​of the culture of Byzantium speaks volumes. True, they may remind me that the actual leader of the crusader campaign in 1204, the Venetian doge Enrico Dandolo, saved four bronze horses sculpted by the same Lysippus from destruction, and she was brought from Constantinople to Venice. But it was all the same exception against the background of the total destruction of Byzantine cultural treasures... And since, as already noted, there is absolutely no reliable information about the "barbaric" behavior of the Russians in Chersonese, we have to conclude that the version of the imaginary ruin of this Byzantine city in 988 (or 989) constructed by historians of the 19th century "on the model" of the devastation of Constantinople in 1204... In fact, the attitude of the West and Russia towards Byzantium was fundamentally different.

3. Relations between Russia and Byzantium.

Here it is impossible to characterize the entire centuries-old history of relations between Russia and Byzantium, starting with the visit to Constantinople of the first (ruled at the turn of the 8th-9th centuries) Kievan prince Kiy, who, according to the chronicle, "received great honor" from the Byzantine emperor. Let's just focus on the first one. military clash between Russians and Byzantines. On June 18, 860, the Russian army laid siege to Constantinople (information about earlier similar attacks is unreliable). The latest research has shown that this campaign was carried out under the dictates of the Khazar Khaganate. This is undeniably clear, in particular, from the fact that in the same year 860 Byzantium sent an embassy headed by Saints Cyril and Methodius not in Kyiv and to the then capital of the Khazar Khaganate - Semender in the North Caucasus (there are, however, serious reasons to believe that this embassy also visited Kyiv on the way back). I also note that in one of the later Byzantine writings, the leader of the campaign against Constantinople (it was, obviously, the Kyiv prince Askold) is precisely defined as " governor of the kagan"(that is, the ruler of Khazaria).

Of particular, even exceptional significance for us are the stories of a direct witness and direct participant in the events - one of the most prominent figures in Byzantium in its entire history, Patriarch of Constantinople St. Photius (by the way, he calls the Russians a “slave” people, meaning, as they believe, the then subordination of Russia to the Khazar Khaganate; it was on his initiative that an embassy of his great disciples St. Cyril and Methodius was sent to the Khazars).

St. Photius testified that in June 860 Constantinople “was almost raised on a spear”, that it was “easy for the Russians to take it, and it was impossible for the inhabitants to defend it”, that “the salvation of the city was in the hands of the enemies and its preservation depended on their generosity. .. the city was not taken by their grace," etc. Photius was even stung, as he noted, by "the infamy from this generosity." But one way or another, on June 23, the inhabitants of Constantinople unexpectedly "saw the enemies ... retreating, and the city, which was threatened with plunder, got rid of ruin."

Subsequently, in the 11th century, the Byzantine chroniclers, not wanting, in all likelihood, to recognize this Russian "generosity", invented that a storm, by divine will, scattered the attacking fleet (this fiction was also accepted by our chronicle). Meanwhile eyewitness Photius unequivocally reports that during the Russian invasion "the sea quietly and serenely spread its backbone, giving them a pleasant and longed-for voyage."

Later, Patriarch Photius wrote that the "Russians" accepted "the pure and genuine Christian Faith, lovingly placing themselves in the rank of subjects and friends, instead of robbing us and the great insolence against us that they had not long before."

True, this conversion of Russians to Christianity, which took place in the 860s, was not wide and lasting; the real Baptism of Russia took place only after more than a century. But now we are talking about something else - about what can be called an "archetype", the original prototype of the relationship of Russia to Byzantium. It is not easy or even impossible to give a completely definite answer to the question why in 860 the Russians, having almost captured Constantinople, voluntarily lifted the siege and soon - albeit in the person of a few - turned to the religion of the Byzantines. But in any case, it is clear that in the 9th century the Russians behaved in relation to the Second Rome in a completely different way than the Western peoples in the 5th century in relation to the First and in the 13th century to the Second Rome.

It may be recalled that after 860, Russia repeatedly entered into military conflicts with Byzantium (the campaigns of Oleg and Igor, then Svyatoslav, and, finally, in 1043, Vladimir, son of Yaroslav the Wise); however, the latest research has shown that each time the situation was much more complicated than it seemed until recently (for example, both Svyatoslav and Vladimir Yaroslavich went on their campaigns at the invitation of certain forces of Byzantium itself). In what follows, we will deal with these diverse historical situations and their true significance.

4. Byzantium and the West.

Let's return to the topic "Byzantium and the West". The most significant is the fact that the West perceived and still perceives other - even the most highly developed - civilizations of the planet only as "objects" of application of its forces that do not have their own unconditional value. This is inherent in the worldview of both the "average" person in the West and its greatest thinkers. So, in the 1820s, Hegel, in his Philosophy of History, argued that, supposedly, “Providence itself” precisely and only the West “has been entrusted with the task ... to freely create in the world, based on subjective self-consciousness,” and something in those cases when "the Western world rushed to other countries in the Crusades, during the discovery and conquest of America ... it did not come into contact with the world-historical people that preceded it" (that is, peoples that have "intrinsic" significance in the history of the world) ~ and therefore he had every right to "create" everything in his own way in all "other countries" - in particular, in Byzantium (Hegel immediately stated without any evidence that "the history of the highly educated Eastern Roman Empire ... presents us with a thousand-year series of of incessant crimes, weaknesses, baseness and manifestations of spinelessness, the most terrible and therefore the least interesting picture "; naturally, the robbery of the crusaders is fully justified in this ...).

At the same time, there is no doubt that it was only thanks to this geopolitical "egocentrism" and "egoism" that the West was able to play a grandiose role on the planet. And it would be obviously wrong to perceive its role in world history only critically, only "negatively." In itself, the desire to "create freely in the world, based on subjective self-awareness," thus taking full responsibility upon oneself, reveals the truly heroic essence of the West. From this point of view, the West really has no equal, and its consistent mastery of the entire planet - to the most distant continents and even islands lost in the oceans - is one of the clearest expressions of human heroism generally. It is only necessary to realize that the concept of "heroic", which unconditionally conquers the souls of young men, does not at all boil down to a "positive" content and does not at all coincide with the criteria of morality. For the "objects" of a heroic deed, it may well appear as something extremely negative.

It is even more important to understand that, while admiring the heroism of the West, one should in no case share its perception and assessment of the rest of the world, other civilizations and cultures. It is extremely regrettable that in Russian self-consciousness the West has too often and firmly appeared and still appears as an indisputable, even the only "measure of things."

Western non-recognition of the world-historical value of everything "other", "other" than itself, comes out with particular clarity in relation to the Byzantine Empire. Even such a seemingly broad and tolerant (in comparison, for example, with the French enlighteners who spoke about Byzantium in the genre of rough abuse) Western ideologist like Herder wrote in his fundamental treatise Ideas for the Philosophy of the History of Mankind (1782-1788) that Byzantium appears as a "two-headed monster, which was called spiritual and secular power, teased and suppressed other peoples and ... can hardly be calmly aware of why people need religion and why the government ... Hence send all the vices, all the cruelties of the disgusting (even so! -AT. TO.) Byzantine history...

It may be objected to me that such a denial of almost the very right to existence of Byzantium took place two centuries ago, and now the West understands the matter differently, because in its ideology in the 20th century the idea of ​​equality or even equivalence of various civilizations and cultures began to assert itself. This seems to be true: firstly, in recent times a lot of more or less objective studies of the history of Byzantium (and other "non-Western" states) have been created in the West, and secondly, Western historiosophy, represented by Spengler and Toynbee, one way or another proclaimed equality of civilizations (here it is worth recalling that in Russia this was realized as early as the 19th century - in the historiosophy of N. Ya. Danilevsky and K. N. Leontiev).

Yes, it would seem that Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975), the greatest representative of English historiosophy, atoned for the sin of Western ideology already in the 1920s-1930s by affirming the idea of ​​dozens of completely "sovereign" and equally noteworthy civilizations that existed and still exist on Earth, and including Orthodox - Byzantine, and then Russian. However, when referring to Toynbee's specific discourses on Byzantium, we are confronted with truly striking contradictions. On the one hand, the British thinker argues that "initially Orthodoxy had more promising prospects than the West" and that Byzantium in general "outstripped Western Christianity by seven or eight centuries, for no state in the West could compare with the Eastern Roman Empire until until the 15th-16th centuries. (this is, in essence, a simple statement of facts studied by Western historians of Byzantium during the 19th - early 20th centuries).

Nevertheless, judgments so "flattering" for Byzantium are immediately, in fact, completely refuted. After the first of the quoted phrases, Toynbee declares that "the Byzantine emperors tirelessly distorted and mutilated their true heritage", and in connection with the second phrase he expresses strong dissatisfaction with the fact that already in the 8th century the Byzantine emperor Leo III "could turn the Orthodox Christian history on a completely non-Western path.

Here it is important to note that, speaking about a number of other civilizations, Toynbee does not reproach them for their clearly "non-Western" path. But about Byzantium, he unexpectedly (after all, it was he who, more consistently than any other representative of Western historiosophy, proclaimed the equality of all independent civilizations!) begins to speak in exactly the same way as those ideologists for whom the West is, in essence, as if the only one having unconditional right to exist civilization. And in conclusion of the paragraph "Eastern Roman Empire..." Toynbee bluntly stigmatizes, in his words, the "perverted and sinful nature" of this empire.

All this is explained quite simply. Byzantium was the only direct rival West. This was clearly reflected in the fact that in the 10th century (precisely - in 962) the "Holy Roman Empire" (that is, like a different "New Rome") was proclaimed in the West, which for a long time became the basis of the entire Western structure. And subsequently, the West (as we shall see later) sought to take away from its eastern rival even the very name "Roman" ...

At the same time, the rivalry was at first clearly not in favor of the West. Toynbee in the above statement recalled that "up to the XV-XVI centuries." Byzantium was "ahead" of the West... It is important to note that Toynbee, who somehow renounces the straightforward concept of "progress" in general theoretical terms, was unable in this case to overcome the Western temptation; after all, in a deep sense, Byzantium did not “outstrip” anyone, but deployed its own independent, original cultural creativity, measuring which on the scale of “progress” is, frankly, a primitive occupation (here is an expressive example: Francesco Petrarch and St. Sergius of Radonezh were contemporaries, but to decide which of them was "ahead" of them is not only a thankless task, but also simply ridiculous - although a comparison of these two personalities can clarify a lot).

However, Toynbee also speaks of the originality of Byzantium, although he immediately interprets it in essence as "ugliness." He compares the West and Byzantium in the following reasoning: "The history of relations between church and state indicates the largest and most serious divergence between the Catholic West and the Orthodox East"; in the West, these relations have developed in the form of "a system of subordination of many local states to a single universal church" (resident in Rome). Between the theme of Byzantium, there was a fusion of church and state, a fusion that Toynbee hardly adequately defined as "the subordination of the church to the state," for the history of Byzantium is no less characteristic of the opposite - the subordination of the state to the church.

Toynbee seeks to present the empire, in which the unconditional "subordination of the church to the state" was established, as deliberately despotic, entirely based on naked violence. In his discussions about Byzantium, he constantly speaks of "strict control", "merciless suppression", "state repressions", even "ferocity", etc. However, since by the time of the creation of his historiosophy, Western researchers more or less history of Byzantium, Toynbee, clearly contradicting his own general assessments, says, for example, that in Byzantium "the use of political power for religious purposes was, it should be noted, very tactful compared with the bloody religious wars waged by Charlemagne in a similar situation." Unlike Byzantium, Toynbee also states, "Western Christianity ... took over ... all European lands ... up to the Elbe." In addition, he writes, “in the West, it was unconditionally believed that Latin was the only and universal language of the liturgy ... A striking contrast to this Latin tyranny is the amazing liberalism of the Orthodox. They did not make a single attempt to give the Greek language the status of a monopoly” (in connection with it is worth remembering that in the 9th century, St. Cyril and Methodius created Slavic writing, and in the 14th century - as if continuing their work - the Russian St. Stephen of Perm created Zyryanskaya, i.e. Komi).

So, there are two completely different "ideas" about Byzantium, one of which is an entirely tendentious Western ideologeme, a gloomy and often even sinister myth about Byzantium, and the other is the reality of Byzantine history that somehow shines through this myth.

Based on the facts, Toynbee writes, for example, that "Eastern Roman government has traditionally been characterized by moderation." But he, while sharply criticizing Byzantine monasticism for insufficient "activity", opposes Western European monasticism as a kind of ideal: "Francis and Dominic brought monks from rural monasteries into the wide world ... In vain we will look for any parallel to this movement in Orthodoxy."

But after all, this "bringing" of Western monasticism into the "wide world" was expressed "brightest" of all in the creation by the Dominicans (and, in part, by the Franciscans) of the "Holy Inquisition", which sent hundreds of thousands of "heretics" to torture and execution! And in the history of Byzantium there really was no "any parallel" to this phenomenon.

No less characteristic is the fate of the Jews in the West and, on the other hand, in Byzantium. In Western European countries in the XII-XVI centuries, according to the "Jewish Encyclopedia", about 400 thousand adherents of Judaism were destroyed - that is, 40 percent of the then world Judaism ... And many of the survivors found refuge in Byzantium, where - despite all the conflicts of Christians and the Jews - nothing like the Western European "genocide" still happened.

This, of course, is not at all about the fact that Byzantium was a perfection. But it is certainly necessary to overcome the idea of ​​the Byzantine Empire imposed by Western ideology as a kind of "ugliness". After all, even Toynbee, who has a reputation as an apologist for the equivalence of civilizations, Toynbee constantly uses in relation to Byzantium such "terms" as "mutilation", "distortion", "disharmony", "perversion", etc. It is clear that as an allegedly impartial "criterion" the civilization and culture of the West is taken here.

Indeed, Toynbee, with a kind of even naive frankness, claims that the only "salvation" for Byzantium would be to turn it into a direct likeness of the West. He writes, for example, that in Byzantium "in the 7th century there appeared some signs ... of a return to the path chosen for the West by Pope Gregory the Great (590-604)". However, "the development of the ecumenical patriarch in the spirit of the papacy" still did not come to pass, and as a result, they say, "Orthodox Christianity looked painfully disharmonious, which was the price for choosing the wrong path." It is quite clear that no really valuable results could be achieved on the "wrong path".

In 1984-1991, a fundamental (about 180 author's sheets) three-volume work "Culture of Byzantium" was published in Moscow, created by first-class contemporary Russian specialists. With all evidence, the richest, extremely diverse and deeply original cultural creativity, which took place in the course of more than a millennium in Byzantium, is revealed here. But few have studied this work, and in the minds of the majority of those who in one way or another deal with the problem of the "Byzantine inheritance", a deliberately false and inherently negative "opinion" about this inheritance still dominates - an opinion that ultimately ascends. to the ideologists of the West. It is very characteristic that in Russia - under the influence of Western European ideas - it is customary to attribute Byzantium to the "East", although Constantinople is located west of Kyiv and, moreover, Moscow ...

I repeat once again that it is impossible, and there is no need to "idealize" Byzantium (although such a tendency - albeit a very narrow one - took place in Russian thought) and to see in its history - in contrast to the ideologists of the West - "superiority" over Western civilization and culture. We can and should only talk about originality that has the full right to exist.

If in the West from ancient times the center of the church existed (as Toynbee, in particular, speaks of) in itself, "separately", - as a specific theocratic state (Stato Pontifico, - that is, the State of the High Priest, in the Papal States, which arose back in in the VIII century), then in Byzantium one way or another there was a unity of church and state. The Byzantine Empire is quite appropriate, therefore, to define it as ideocratic(meaning the power of Orthodox ideas) the state; meanwhile, the West has something that should be defined by the term nomocracy- the power of the law (from the Greek. nomos - law); from this point of view, it is appropriate to define Asian societies by the term "etocracy"- from Greek. etos - custom.

And it was about this that Herder wrote with hostility and sarcasm. In Byzantium, according to its rather apt characterizations, the Christian idea "bewildered the human mind ("mind", of course, is understood in a purely Western sense.- VK.)- instead of living on earth, people learned to walk on air... people's duty to the state was confused with people's pure relationship to God, and, without knowing it themselves, they laid the basis of the Byzantine Christian Empire... the religion of monks, - like could not the true correlations be lost... between duties and rights, and finally, even between the estates of the state?.. Here, of course, divinely inspired men, patriarchs, bishops, priests, delivered speeches, but to whom did they address their speeches, what did they talk about? .. Before the insane, corrupted, unrestrained crowd, they had to explain the Kingdom of God ... Oh, how I pity you, Chrysostom, Chrysostom! ..

All this, I repeat, is apt in its own way and even - I'm not afraid to say - true. And the Western states, whose goal ultimately came down to establishing strictly ordered correlations "between rights and duties" and "between estates", to a clear statement of "the duty of people in relation to the state", etc., appear, in comparison with Byzantium , indeed, as something fundamentally more "rational", entirely aimed at arranging real, earthly human life.

And it is impossible not to see that the majority of Russian ideologists (and Russian people in general). The 19th-20th centuries treated the "well-being" of Western civilization with deep respect or even admiration and, moreover, acute envy. It is true that in Russia voices were not so rarely heard denouncing the "lack of spirituality" of this civilization, but it can be asserted with all validity that such attacks most often gave rise to a desire to resist the unconditional reverence for the West that prevails in Russia.

Meanwhile, in Western ideology, not only a fundamentally negative perception of Byzantium (and - what else will be discussed - its successor Russia) reigned, but, as we have seen, its very right to exist was essentially denied. And the absorption of Byzantium in the 15th century by the Ottoman Empire was perceived by the West as a completely natural outcome. Herder even spoke of the “surprise” caused by the fact that “the empire, so arranged, did not fall much earlier” (Toynbee defended the same point of view a hundred and fifty years later, arguing that Byzantium was “a seriously ill society ... long before the Turks appeared in historical Siena" - that is, long before the 11th century!).

As already mentioned, the actual, real history of Byzantium sometimes nevertheless forced Herder and other Western ideologists to fall into direct contradiction with the myth they affirmed about it. So, for example, Herder, who knew Byzantine history well for his time, admitted that the main role in the fall of Constantinople was played by extremely dynamic and powerful western forces- Venetian (by the way, it caused the greatest damage to Byzantium during the Crusades) and the Republic of Genoa; their attacks and plunder (Herder even called it "shameful") continued for several centuries, and (I quote Herder) "the empire was eventually so weakened that Constantinople easily fell to the Turkish hordes" (recall that even Petrarch a century earlier called on the Genoese and in general, the West will quickly "uproot" Byzantium ...).

In short, the Byzantine Empire ceased to exist not because of some internal, immanent failure; it was crushed between the merciless millstones of the West and the East: such bilateral pressure could hardly have been resisted by any state at all...

The kind of justification I have undertaken for the Byzantine Empire is dictated by the desire to "oppose" not the civilization and culture of the West, which have their own great intrinsic value, but the tendentious discrediting of Byzantium imposed by Western ideologists - a discrediting explained by the fact that this one, which played an enormous role in history, is including in the history of Western Europe itself! - Civilization followed a fundamentally "non-Western" path.

By the way, the fact that Byzantium played a grandiose and necessary role in the development the West itself, cannot completely ignore any of its critics. So, according to the same Herder, "it was a boon for the whole educated world that the Greek language and literature were preserved for so long in the Byzantine Empire until Western Europe was ripe to accept them from the hands of the refugees of Constantinople", and even "Venetians and the Genoese learned in Constantinople to conduct a larger trade ... and from there transferred many useful things to Europe.

However, while recognizing the "merits" of Byzantium in the development of the West and the world as a whole (these merits, of course, cannot be reduced to the facts indicated by Herder), Western ideologists, nevertheless, have always been ready to declare its thousand-year history as a whole "ugly" and unpromising.

And this Western rejection of Byzantium was based not only on the fact that it was an ideocratic state; The West was repulsed and Eurasian essence of the Byzantine Empire. For even the most "humanist" ideologists were not free from a kind of "Western racism". Here is an expressive example. In 1362-1368, Petrarch lived in Venice, where merchant pirates then brought many slaves from the Black Sea region; they were, as we know, people belonging to various peoples of the Caucasus, Polovtsy and - to a lesser extent - Russians. Many of these people (which is also well known) were Christians. But Petrarch, whose humanism extended only to the peoples of the West (after all, he called the Greeks themselves "cowardly buckwheat"), wrote about these people as some kind of half-animals: "A strange-looking crowd of men and women flooded a beautiful city with Scythian muzzles ..." (Venice ). And he expressed his urgent wish that "the vile people would not fill the narrow streets ... but in their Scythia ... to this day they would tear the meager herbs with their nails and teeth."

In Byzantium, no one saw in people belonging to the peoples of Asia and Eastern Europe "subhuman", and, in particular, any person professing Christianity could take any post in the Empire and achieve the highest recognition: for example, Emperor Leo III the Great ( VIII century) was a Syrian, Roman I Lekapenos (X century) was an Armenian, and Patriarch Philotheos of Constantinople (XIV century) was a Jew.

Meanwhile, the same illustrious Western humanist Petrarch denied higher "nobility" even to the Greeks themselves, arguing, in particular, that "no most impudent and shameless Greek would dare to say anything like that", and "if anyone says this, let him say at the same time that it is nobler to be a slave than a master" ...

Herder, who lived four centuries after Petrarch, was not inclined to such overt "racism", but, speaking of the "disgusting Byzantine history", he nevertheless considered it necessary to say that this story was based on "that unfortunate confusion that threw into one boiling cauldron ... both barbarians and Romans" (the Byzantine Greeks called themselves "Romans", that is, Romans). Thus, even for the Western ideologist of the 18th century, multi-tribal Eurasian"cauldron" of Byzantium ...

Russia - the only one of the states - in essence inherited the Eurasian nature of Byzantium. Characteristic in this regard is the "winged" word attributed to two completely different (this is important to note, because, therefore, we are dealing with the Western mentality in general) Europeans - Napoleon and his implacable opponent, Count Joseph de Maistre: "Scrape the Russian and you will find a Tatar" . From here it is not so far to the Nazi concept of "non-Aryan" Russians.

In this regard, I cannot but say that I am in no way, absolutely not concerned about the problem of the racial and ethnic "purity" of the Russian people, because the thesis about the special value of this very purity has no real justification; this is just one of the typical Western myths. It is hardly appropriate, for example, to doubt the highest human perfection of Pushkin, but meanwhile, if we turn to the third (great-grandfather) generation of his ancestors, then five of his eight great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers may have been "purely Russian" - or, more broadly, Slavic - origin (although they do not exclude the "admixture" of Turkic or Finnish "blood" so characteristic of Russia): Alexander Petrovich Pushkin (grandfather of the poet's father), his nephew - Alexei Fedorovich Pushkin (grandfather of the poet's mother, Nadezhda Osipovna Gannibal), Evdokia Ivanovna Golovina, Lukerya Vasilievna Priklonskaya and Sarra Yurievna Rzhevskaya. However, the rest of Pushkin's ancestors in this generation were the Ethiopian Abram Gannibal, the German Christina-Regina von Sheberg, and Vasily Ivanovich Chicherin, who is of Turkic (according to a much less reliable version, Italian) origin.

By the way, there is every reason to assert that in distant - "prehistoric" - times, the population of Western Europe itself was precisely a "boiling cauldron", in which the most diverse ethnic groups and races were welded together; the originality of Byzantium (and, later, Russia) consisted only in the fact that they were such "cauldrons" in the already historical time, before the eyes of the already formed civilization of the West, which disapprovingly or simply with contempt looked at this Eurasian "confusion" (in the words of Herder).

Summing up the consideration of the problem of "The West and Byzantium", I will draw attention to a seemingly "formal", but, if you think about it, extremely significant phenomenon: the very name "Byzantium" was (which few people know about now) was assigned by the West to the state that called itself "The Empire of the Romans" (that is, the Romans), as an essentially degrading nicknames(coming from ancient name Constantinople). S. S. Averintsev writes about it this way: "About a hundred years after it (the empire of the Romans.- VK) the death of Western European scholars, who did not favor her, called her Byzantine; scientific nickname ... came into use, from time to time regaining its status swear word(for example, in the liberal journalism of the last century)" .

It makes no sense to call for the abandonment of a name that has long and firmly established itself, but it is truly necessary to free it from the negative charge that has been embedded in this name - and especially in the terms "Byzantism" (or "Byzantinism") and "Byzantineism" derived from it - Western, and following their example, Russian liberal ideologists. As early as 1875, K. N. Leontiev wrote in his treatise "Byzantism and Slavism": (let's just say, as they sometimes say in verbal conversations) dry, boring, priestly, and not only boring, but even something pitiful and vile. Meanwhile, Leontiev went on to say, even a small, but valid acquaintance with the heritage of the empire "is enough to make sure how much sincerity, warmth, heroism and poetry were in Byzantium" .

Just when Leontiev wrote these lines, the outstanding creators of Russian Byzantine studies reached their scientific maturity - academicians V. G. Vasilevsky (1838-1899), F. I. Uspensky (1845-1928) and N. P. Kondakov (1844- 1923), whose works confirmed Leontiev's complete correctness. But few Russian ideologists have studied or even had the desire to study these works. And the words "Byzantism" and "Byzantineism" still had in their mouths, in fact, an "abusive" meaning ...

But here is another fact. On April 12, 1918, a poem by Anna Akhmatova was published in the Petrograd Socialist-Revolutionary newspaper Volya Naroda, speaking of the tragic collapse of the former Russia in the following words:

When in anguish of suicide

The people of the German guests were waiting,

And a harsh spirit Byzantium

He flew away from the Russian Church,

When the Neva capital,

Forgetting your greatness

Like a drunken whore

Didn't know who was taking it...etc.

This sounded like a clear dissonance in relation to the "generally accepted" in intellectual circles (by the way, after 1918 these lines were again published in Russia only in 1990); it can be assumed that the poetess received respect for the "spirit of Byzantium" from her father A. A. Gorenko (1848-1915), a full member of the Russian Assembly - an Orthodox-monarchical (in abusive word usage - "Black-Hundred") organization that existed from 1901 to February 1917.

However, in our time, readers can "learn" from the journal Voprosy Philosophii that Akhmatova and others were pressured by "Stalin's Byzantism" (1989, No. 9, p. 78). It is unlikely that a Russian poetess would agree with such a use of this term, although she spoke about the "severity" of the Byzantine spirit. The fact is that the really harsh sermons of St. John of Kronstadt and, say, Bukharin's "Evil Notes" on Yesenin or the pages of Zhdanov's report that "denounced" Akhmatova - these are things not just different, but incompatible ...

It cannot be ruled out that St. John of Kronstadt could condemn certain motives of Akhmatov's poetry (as he once condemned - in poetic form - Pushkin's "Gift in vain, gift random ..." Metropolitan of Moscow Filaret); but this would not be a court in the name of the interests of the authorities, but a completely different one, similar to the court, the legitimacy of which Akhmatova herself clearly recognized in her poem of 1913:

And judgmental eyes

Calm tanned women.

5. Russia is a Eurasian state.

Russia, like Byzantium, took shape and how Eurasian And How ideocratic state. The Eurasianism of Russia-Russia is often seen as a consequence of a short stay in the Mongol Empire. However, in reality, this time was the consolidation and deepening of a quality that had long been inherent in Russia.

862 (in fact, the event, apparently, happened a little earlier), the news of the creation of statehood Russia, and in this act, according to the chronicle, along with the Slavs, the "Ural" (Finno-Ugric) tribes participate equally in rights ("Resha .. - the chronicle reports, - chud, Slovenian, and Krivichi, and all..."). In the 10th century, both Scandinavian Europeans and Pecheneg Asians took part in the campaigns of Prince Igor, and among the highest officials of the Russian state of the 11th century, the same Scandinavians, and people from various Turkic and Finno-Ugric tribes, etc.

Yes, long before the Mongol invasion, the "Asian component" of Russian history exists and is constantly growing. This, in particular, was clearly expressed in dynastic marriages, which had a direct and immediate state meaning. If the sons of Yaroslav the Wise. are engaged to brides from the dynasties of the West (France, Germany, Denmark, Norway, etc.), as well as Byzantium, then at least three of the nine sons of Yaroslav's grandson (and, at the same time, the grandson of the Byzantine emperor Constantine VIII) Vladimir Monomakh intermarried (at the beginning of the 12th century) with the eastern dynasties - the Polovtsian and the Yassian (Ossetian), and since then it has become a strong tradition in Russia.

True, the deep meaning lies not in such marriage unions in themselves; they are only one of the obvious manifestations of Russian "Eurasianism". Primitive and ultimately simply false is the notion that this Eurasianism is interpreted primarily and mainly as interaction Russian and, say, Turkic peoples. Speaking about the essence of the matter with all certainty, the Russians - these heirs of the Byzantine Greeks - were, as it were, initially, by their very definition, a Eurasian people capable of entering into organic relationships with both European and Asian ethnic groups, which - if they really were included in the magnetic the field of Russia-Russia - and they themselves acquired Eurasian features. Meanwhile, in the case of exit out of this field they were again to eventually become "purely" European or "purely" Asiatic peoples; Russians cannot but be a Eurasian people.

The Eurasian essence of Russia was clearly reflected in the chronicle story about how Vladimir Svyatoslavich, without prejudging the outcome in advance, elected one faith out of four - Western and Byzantine Christianity and, on the other hand, Asian Islam and Judaism (the choice - which was quite natural - fell on the religion of "Eurasian" Byzantium). Moreover, in this case it is not so important whether we are dealing with legend or with a message about really the choice made; it is really significant that the chronicler, who in one way or another embodied in his story the ideas of the Russian people of the 11th - early 12th centuries, did not see anything unnatural in such an act, which clearly implies that Western and Eastern religions equal(although the choice of the Byzantine faith was, I repeat, a logical outcome). And if we do not forget about the supreme and comprehensive significance of religion in the existence of the societies of that time, it will become clear that this perception of the beliefs of Europe and Asia as equally worthy of attention has an extremely significant meaning: the "Eurasian" nature of the Russian spirit appears here with the greatest certainty.

But another thing is no less important and characteristic: being accepted, Christianity becomes the defining and all-penetrating core of being in Russia. After all, it is impossible, for example, to overestimate the fact that no later than the XIV century, the main part of the population of Russia acquired the name - and self-name - peasants(variant of the word "Christian"). Moreover, already from the monument of the beginning of the 12th century it is clear that the word "Christian" ("khrstyanin"), in addition to denoting belonging to a particular religion, had the meaning "inhabitant of the Russian land" (see: I. I. Sreznevsky. "Materials for the Dictionary Old Russian language", vol. III, p. 1410).

Naturally, the state system of Russia itself, like the Byzantine one, appeared as ideocratic. Herder's ironic words about Byzantium were cited above, where "instead of living on earth, people learned to walk in the air," etc.

This “criticism” should be fully, unconditionally recognized: both in Byzantium and, subsequently, in Russia, people did not really create, and could not have created such a perfect earthly device, as in the West. And Russian ideologists, as already noted, were acutely, sometimes even painfully aware of Russia's "inconvenience" (in the broadest sense - from the establishment of the state to domestic life). It was this realization that gave rise to Chaadaev's extremely harsh "Philosophical Letter" published in 1836, which played a huge role. Having deeply studied Western existence (he traveled for three years - in 1823-1826 - the entire West from England to Italy), Chaadaev undertook a sharp comparison of the two civilizations, which aroused the indignation of people of a "patriotic" warehouse and the admiration of those who were called a little later " Westerners." But both reactions to Chaadaev's article were, in essence, wholly false.

Objecting to the "patriots", Chaadaev wrote the following year, 1837, that the article that had appeared a year earlier, "an article that so strangely offended our national vanity, was supposed to serve as an introduction" - an introduction to a great work, "which remained unfinished ... Without a doubt, there was impatience in her (articles.- VK.) expressions, sharpness in thoughts, but the feeling that permeates the entire passage is not in the least hostile to the Fatherland.

However, this "explanation" was published only in 1913 (however, even then almost no one thought about it), and "the introduction was in fact the only source of generally accepted ideas about Chaadaev's historiosophy of Russia... As a result, many "patriots" cursed and still curse this brilliant philosophical associate of Pushkin, and "anti-patriots", from the point of view of which the only possible way for Russia is the transformation of its country of the Western type (even even "second-class"), consider Chaadaev their most glorious predecessor.

Meanwhile, back in 1835 (that is, even before the publication of the "ill-fated" - this is the definition of the thinker himself - an "introductory" article), Chaadaev wrote with complete certainty (these words, alas, were published in Russia again only in 1913 and also remain meaningless): "...We are not the West... Russia... has no attachments, passions, ideas and interests of Europe... And don't say that we are young, that we are behind other peoples, that we will catch up with them (It is precisely this idea that underlies the obviously utopian Russian Westernism! -AT. TO.). No, we represent the 16th or 15th century of Europe as little as we do the 19th century. Take any epoch in the history of the Western peoples, compare it with what we represent in 1835 A.D., and you will see that we have a different beginning of civilization than these peoples ... Therefore, we have no need to run after others; we should honestly evaluate ourselves, understand what we are, get out of lies and establish ourselves in the truth. Then we will go forward..." (vol. 2, pp. 96, 98).

Later, in 1846, Chaadaev again turned to this historiosophical theme. And - no matter how unexpected it is for everyone who believed in the "Westernism" of the thinker! - said in a letter to the French publicist Adolphe de Sircourt about the dominance of "foreign ideas" as a serious obstacle that must be overcome for the fruitful development of Russia. He stated:

“This susceptibility to other people’s suggestions, this readiness to obey ideas imposed from outside ... is ... an essential feature of our character,” and he immediately called: “this should not be ashamed or denied: we must try to understand this property of ours. ..by an unprejudiced and sincere understanding of our history." And then a completely paradoxical line of reasoning from the point of view of the "Westerners". It is generally accepted that the "traditional" lack of freedom of speech in Russia made it difficult, above all, to perceive the "progressive" ideas of the West. Chaadaev, who himself experienced the heavy pressure of Russian "despotism", wrote about just the opposite, regrettable result: "Can it be expected that with such ... social development, where from the very beginning everything is directed towards the enslavement of personality and thought, the people's mind has managed to overthrow your yoke (I remind you: Chaadaev refers to the European Sirkur.- VK.) culture, your enlightenment and authority? This is unthinkable. The hour of our liberation, therefore, is still far off ... We will be truly free from the influence of foreign ideas only from the day when we fully understand the path we have traveled ... "(vol. 2, pp. 188,191, 192).

Chaadaev was deeply aware that Russia, unlike the countries of the West, was a power ideocratic(“a great people,” wrote Chaadaev, “wholly formed under the influence of the religion of Christ”; as for nomocracy, that is, law enforcement, Chaadaev unequivocally stated: “The idea of ​​legality, the idea of ​​law for the Russian people - nonsense"- moreover, the last word is highlighted by him) and Eurasian (Chadaev’s thought is as follows: “the elements Asian and European reworked into the original Russian civilization").

However, the historiosophical content of Chaadaev's writings is very rich and complex; its analysis requires a separate discussion. Here I pursued only one goal: to show how false the prevailing ideas about this founder of the latest (XIX-XX centuries) Russian philosophical culture.

It is impossible, however, not to say that Chaadaev, unlike both the Westernizers and the Slavophiles, sought to understand Russia not as something, simply speaking, "worse" or, on the contrary, "better" in comparison with the West, but precisely as an independent civilization, which has its own evil and its own good, its own lie and its own truth. He in no way closed his eyes to the most unfortunate "consequences" of both Russian ideocracy and Russian Eurasianism, but he wrote in 1837: "... I have a deep conviction that we are called ... to complete most of the ideas that have arisen in old societies, to answer the most important questions that occupy humanity. I have often said and repeat willingly: we, so to speak, by the very nature of things are destined to be a real conscientious court in many litigations that are being conducted before the great tribunals of the human spirit and human society " (vol. 1, p. 534).

Just half a century later, the most astute Western observers, in fact, assessed the great achievements of Russian literature (inextricably linked with the most profound searches of Russian thought) in precisely this way. And here, quite naturally, the question arises: if the ideocratic and Eurasian Russia was so imperfect in comparison with the countries of the West, how could it create spiritual values ​​of global significance? Indeed, it has long been recognized that greatest epochs in the history of culture are classical Greece, the Western European Renaissance and the Russian 19th century.

In this regard, the treatise of the modern representative of Jewish-Jewish historiosophy, the American rabbi Max Diamond, "Jews, God and History" (1960), is very indicative. Russia is depicted here in general, I must say frankly, in an extremely negative light. At least one characteristic ironic thesis: “Five Romanovs ruled Russia in the 19th century. They managed to stop the development of enlightenment in Russia and safely return the country to the bosom of feudal despotism,” etc. That is why, Diamond summarizes, “when five white armies invaded Soviet Russia in order to restore the power of the tsar (this was hardly the goal of the white armies.- VK), Jews joined the Red Army created by Leon Trotsky.

However, in the same treatise we read: “In the five thousand years of its existence, world literature has known only four great literary eras. The first was the era of the books of the prophets in biblical days (this is quite understandable, and then the two eras named above- VK.) ... Finally, the fourth was the era of the Russian psychological (hardly an appropriate "limitation" - VK.) novel of the 19th century. In just fifty years, Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy created one of the greatest literatures of the world" (and this despite the suspension of the "development of enlightenment" and "feudal despotism"...).

It is only necessary to clarify that for a person who has really studied the history of Russia and its culture, there is no doubt that Russian literature of the 19th century is the natural fruit of millennial development, and the trunk on which the crown that amazed the whole world splendidly grew in the last century already existed. in the X-XI centuries, when the Russian heroic epic was created, "The Word of Law and Grace" by Metropolitan Hilarion, "The Tale of Saints Boris and Gleb." These creations already clearly embodied those basic spiritual principles that were of decisive importance for the work of Pushkin and Gogol, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy (and also, of course, for the philosophical work of Chaadaev, Konstantin Leontiev and others).

So, the fundamentally "non-Western" path of Russia did not deprive her of the opportunity to erect one of the three (or four) highest peaks of literature. However, pragmatically minded people may object that literature is still "only" a word, and the state should be measured by deeds, or, speaking more solemnly, by deeds.

It is strange, but many are inclined - especially in recent years - to forget or, rather, not to remember that in the 1200 years of the existence of Russia-Russia there were three attempts by three peoples - the Mongols, the French and the Germans - to conquer and subjugate the rest of the world, and - this, however, cannot be disputed in any way - all three of the most powerful armadas of the conquerors were stopped precisely in Russia ...

In the West - and in our country (especially today) - there are, however, hunters to dispute these facts: the Mongols themselves, they say, suddenly decided not to go further than Russia, the French were killed by unusual northern frosts (although the erratic flight of the Napoleonic army began immediately after its defeat near Maloyaroslavets, on October 14/26, when, as is known for sure, the temperature did not fall below 5 degrees Celsius, and, even later, on November 1, Napoleon remarked: "Autumn in Russia is the same as in Fontainebleau"), and the Germans de lost the war because of Anglo-American air raids on their cities... But all this, of course, is not serious, although at the same time one cannot but say that the outcome of the tragic epics of the 13th, early 19th and mid-20th centuries. not so easy to understand, and every now and then the irrational "Russian miracle" comes up. In his last poem, Pushkin said this about 1812:

Russia embraced the arrogant enemy, And the ready-made snow lit up His regiments with the glow of Moscow.

This seemingly inappropriate "embraced" is even more suitable, perhaps, for characterizing Russia's relations with the hordes of Batu and his successors. All three unparalleled armadas, striving to conquer the world (there were no others in this millennium), lost their power precisely in the "Russian embrace" ... It is natural to recall the lines of Alexander Blok:

Your skeleton crunches

In our heavy, tender paws...

So, the paramount role of Russia in world-historical being and consciousness, which can be compared with anything, is revealed with complete irrefutability at two very different "poles" - from the grandiose deed of the Russian people's body - of course, not soulless - to the highest spiritual creativity in the Russian word (many fruits of this creativity have long found their otherness in all languages ​​of the world), although the world significance of Russia, of course, is not limited to these two aspects.

Therefore, any sharpest "criticism" (of course, having its own validity) of the ideocratic and Eurasian nature of Russia-Russia can in no way shake the highest (comparable, I repeat, with anything in the world) significance of its civilization and culture.

True, the "criticism" of Russia does indeed have weighty grounds; this is evident, for example, in a kind of unique, unprecedented vulnerabilities Russian state. Yes, in early XVII and at the beginning of the 20th century it collapsed like a house of cards, which was due, as is clear from indisputable facts, precisely to its ideocracy, as well as its multi-ethnic Eurasianism.

V.V. Rozanov stated in 1917 with his characteristic “daring” (it was about the February Revolution): “Rus faded away in two days. October.- VK.) it was impossible to close it as soon as Russia was closed ... There was no Kingdom left, no Church left, no army left ... What was left, then? Strangely, literally nothing."

And then Rozanov asked: “How did we overlook all of Russia and ruined all of Russia, doing exactly the same thing with her that the Poles did with her once in the Time of Troubles, in 1613!. .."

Vasily Vasilyevich was not entirely accurate when speaking about the Time of Troubles; Poles came to a country with an already collapsed state. But he is entirely right in his merciless diagnosis: Russian statehood in all its aspects and facets ceased to exist in 1917 almost instantly, because for its collapse it was enough to decisively discredit the ruling idea (the same "Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality" ... ).

At the beginning of the 17th century, the ruling idea, as it were, disappeared, because, due to the successive death of all three sons of Ivan the Terrible, who died in 1584, the Rurik dynasty that embodied it in itself (for that time it was a kind of necessity) was stopped. It may be said that the suppression of the dynasty "superimposed" on the deep social crisis that had taken place in the country. However, such crises happened in other times (both earlier and later), but the presence of the person embodying (literally - in his "royal flesh") the idea of ​​God's anointed one prevented the complete collapse of the state.

To understand the ideocratic essence of Russia, a comparison of the fate of the Bolsheviks and their opponents, who led the White Army, gives a lot. The latter - with all possible reservations - set themselves the task of creating a nomocratic state of the Western type in Russia (the most characteristic feature of the program of the White Army was the so-called "non-predecision", implying not any state idea, but a "legitimate" decision of a "legally" elected Constituent Assembly) . And this doomed the enemies of Bolshevism to defeat in advance, for which, on the contrary, power - in full accordance with the thousand-year fate of Russia (although the Bolsheviks clearly did not even think about such a correspondence) - was the power of an idea (albeit completely different than before), ideocracy. And it is highly natural that the discrediting of this new idea by 1991 again led to an instant collapse ...

In short, an ideocratic state is a deliberately "risky" thing. And this one way or another comes to light not only during periods of acute crises. Everyone remembers and often repeats Tyutchev's line:

In Russia you can only believe.

This line is often perceived as a kind of purely "original" statement of the question. But, by the way, in the West, almost at the same time as the appearance of Tyutchev's poem, the following significant reasoning was published:

Conclusion.

Russia "is the only example in history of a huge empire, the very power of which, even after achieving world success, has always been more likely to be accepted on faith(emphasis mine.- VK.), than accepted as fact. From the beginning of the 18th century to the present day (written in 1857.- VK.) none of the authors, whether he was going to extol or blaspheme Russia, did not consider it possible to do without first proving her very existence.

This reasoning belongs to Karl Marx, but it should be borne in mind that in his attitude towards Russia, he most often appears, in essence, not as a Marxist, but as a Western ideologist in general, very insightful, but characteristically tendentious (Marx, for example, says there on the other hand, that "the charms emanating from Russia are accompanied by a skeptical attitude towards her, which ... mocks her very greatness as a theatrical pose adopted to amaze and deceive the audience"; even before Marx, the well-known Marquis de Custine).

The assertion that Russia is not a "fact" but only an object of "faith" may seem like a purely rhetorical trick (after all, we have before us, after all, a sixth of the planet, millions of people, etc.!). And yet, there is a deep truth in this, because with the collapse of an idea, all the power and all the wealth of a vast country instantly seem to turn into nothing and, among other things, its Eurasian multi-ethnicity breaks up into pieces ... And the feeling that Russia is based on idea gives rise to her experience, which is captured by Tyutchev's famous line.

One can hardly doubt that it was the ideocratic and Eurasian essence of Russia that determined its unprecedented collapses and falls; however, there is no doubt that it was precisely this essence that was expressed in its great victories and upsurges, in its, in the words of Marx, who did not favor Russia at all, "world successes."

Marx, by the way, most of all attacked Russia, even directly cursed her for her relations with the Mongols - relations which, according to his - in general, correct - thought precisely determined her next "rise" in the 15th century. It is to this topic that we now turn.

Averintsev S.S. Byzantium and Russia: two types of spirituality. / "New World", 1988, No. 7, p. 214.

Leontiev Konstantin. Notes of a hermit.-M., 1992, pp. 29,32, 33.

Chaadaev P.Ya. Complete Works and Selected Letters. -- M., 1991, v. 1, p. 533 (hereinafter referred to as the same edition).

Diamond M. Jews, God and history. - M., 1994, p. 392, 398, 443.

Caulaincourt Armand de. Napoleon's campaign in Russia. - M., 1943, p. 220.

Rozanov V.V. About myself and my life. - M., 1990, p. 579.

There is nothing more difficult than national characteristics. They are easily given to strangers and always evoke vulgarity for "one's own", who has at least a vague experience of the depth and complexity of national life.

G. Fedotov

Starting this article, I painfully feel the truth of the words of the Russian thinker, taken out in the epigraph. Before me are very serious difficulties, both intellectual and moral. I don't know if I can handle them.

Byzantium is a whole millennium: from the period of formation in the 4th-6th centuries to the violent death of the Constantinople statehood from the sword of the Ottoman Turks on May 29, 1453. The Russian Christian tradition is also a millennium, the calendar completion of which we are just experiencing. A millennium is next to a millennium. “The abyss calls upon the abyss…” And here are the intellectual difficulties: they are inseparable from any attempt to take the millennium, as they say, synchronously, as a single subject of consideration, compared with another subject of the same scale and order, taken again as a whole. It is in the eyes of God, according to the biblical text, a thousand years as one day; when a person (well, at least Oswald Spengler) claims the same thing, he almost sins with the desire to “be like the gods”, which is spoken of by another, even more famous biblical text of the Book of Genesis. Human optics, and in particular the optics of a specialist in cultural history, are necessarily different. The historian focuses his professional attention on how the entire composition of culture is transformed from the surface to the very depths, how the sign of the simplest words and the real volume of the simplest concepts change from epoch to epoch, even from generation to generation - let alone a thousand years! Just when our distant ancestors suddenly seem very close to us, we must beware of optical illusion. Just when a centuries-old quotation fits too well into our historiosophical reasoning, it is prudent to ask ourselves again: what if we imperceptibly changed its meaning?

But let's look at the matter from the other side: substitution is not the only incident that can happen to meaning. It was not for nothing that Bakhtin said that “semantic phenomena can exist in a latent form, potentially and be revealed only in the semantic cultural contexts of subsequent epochs favorable for this disclosure”; and he also introduced the concept of "big time". In the "big time" meaning sprouts like a grain, outgrows itself, it changes without being replaced, it departs from itself, like a river departs from its source, remaining the same river. “Big time” is not a fantasy, but a reality, however, one that makes it especially difficult to describe one's mind from fantasies. It is even more real than an isolated historical moment; the latter is essentially our mental construction, because historical time is a duration that is not divided into any moments, like water, which, according to the well-known expression of the poet, is difficult to cut with scissors. But it is quite clear why demonstrative knowledge cannot do without this construction; only within a historical moment does a fact in its original context have such a meaning, the scope of which lends itself to fixation. Now, outside the historical moment, it finds itself in a new context of new facts, intertwines with them into a single fabric, becomes a component of a pattern that appears on this fabric and becomes more complex before our eyes, and then its meaning is no longer so much the boundaries of volume, but the supporting dynamic lines, leading somewhere and pointing somewhere.

Here is one example worth thinking about in more detail. We read that when the Greek bishops advised the establishment of punitive justice in newly baptized Russia according to the Roman-Byzantine model - “it is worthy of you, prince, to execute robbers,” Prince Vladimir reacted to their advice with doubt and displeasure. Georgy Fedotov spoke on this occasion about the "reflection of the gospel light" in the "holy doubts" of the prince; Does a sober history give grounds for this? Within a historical moment, this collision looks, in general, rather prosaic. Barbarian law, among our ancestors, as well as among other peoples at the same stage of development, punished crimes with monetary fines - virs. It was a custom of their fathers and grandfathers, to which they were accustomed, which simple self-respect impelled them to defend against strangers, even if they were teachers in the faith; but besides, this custom was advantageous. The chronicle speaks about the material side of the matter without hesitation: with the funds delivered by the traditional way of action, you can buy weapons and horses, and this is so necessary in endless wars ... Everything would be discouragingly simple if the ancient narrator did not mention another motive for princely doubts - the fear of sin . Calling this a pious stylization, explained by the narrator's belonging to the monastic class, is not a solution, at least in a conversation about "great time". The question immediately arises: why is there nothing remotely similar to such a stylization, if, say, Gregory of Tours in his story about Clovis, who baptized the Franks in exactly the same way as Vladimir Svyatoslavich baptized Russia half a millennium later, although Gregory of Tours is a very pious and Is Clovis the chosen one of God for him? And it's not just not, it's even impossible to imagine. (“History of the Franks” by Gregory of Tours has just been published in Russian translation, so that the reader will be able to appreciate the striking contrast for himself.) Of course, Clovis (like many other barbarian leaders who converted to Christianity) did not occur to anyone to canonize, and Vladimir was canonized saints, but this also has its reasons. It's not just that our ancestors were kinder than the Franks, but then what? And why didn’t the pious stylization go the other way, say, by introducing conditional ascetic features that are remarkably absent in the traditional appearance of Vladimir, who entered the tradition as the founder of feasts, a Christian poverty-loving, but above all, generous to his squad? “Behold the same worker with his people, for the whole week (every Sunday) set up a feast in the yard in the Gridnitsa and come as a boyar, and Grid, and Sotsky, and Ten, and a deliberate husband with princes and without a prince; your abundance was from meat, from cattle and from beasts, by abundance from everything. And most importantly: if the expression of fear of the possible sinfulness of punitive justice in the mouth of Vladimir is not a historical fact (which, in fact, no one has proven, although no one, of course, has refuted), in its place in the text of the annals this is a fact - a fact of ancient Russian consciousness . We will not exaggerate the significance of this fact, but the movement of historical time immediately adds others to it, for example, The Tale of Boris and Gleb. And here, too, the meaning in the "great time" grows out of the topical meaning and outgrows it. The topic of the day explains the propaganda of seniority in the grand ducal succession. But she does not explain why the Tale was so unusually read and rewritten, why it was so loved. The poignant image of doomed meekness, refusing to defend itself and voluntarily betraying itself to murderers, entered the “great time”, and in it it is combined with the version of St. Vladimir’s doubt whether it is “worthy” to execute the enemies of statehood, into a single drawing, which is the prototype for many things, which came much later...

So, we have to talk about the "big time". This task not only allows, but forcibly requires a certain measure of what is otherwise called superficiality, and nothing can be done about it. If a cartographer has marked a city on a map with a circle, it is not customary to get angry with him on the grounds that this city does not really have such a consistent geometric shape. Something else is required of the map - that the scale be maintained. And yet, how easy it is to make the constants of the psychology of the people the subject of rhetoric, whether patriotic or serving, so to speak, national self-flagellation, and how difficult it is to talk about them, demanding from oneself an answer for one's words. There is no and, apparently, there cannot be a prefabricated methodology for distinguishing the guessed potential being of meanings revealed later, about which Bakhtin spoke, from the most trivial modernization. But the moral difficulties.