The Russian idea was born from the pain of empathy

Vasily Rozanov answered many questions in his article “Near the Russian Idea,” written in 1911. He believed that the Russian idea was born from the inability of the Russian patriot, who loves his fatherland, to agree that his state exists only to suppress its citizens with its omnipotence and torment them with traditional poverty. Rozanov wrote: “Something wild has happened and is now happening, unprecedented in any land, unheard of in anyone’s history: the slaughtering, slaughtering of a Russian person and a Russian gift in his own Russian fatherland. Neither the blacks, nor the Turks, nor the Chinese have this, it is only in Russia, only the Russians.”

Humanism created the Russian intelligentsia, and it was painful for them to see what even the patriot Pushkin called “cynical Russian contempt for human thought and dignity.” By the way, it was Vasily Rozanov who said that this Russian uprising against Russian misanthropic life was born both from Russian gymnasiums and Russian universities. “The Germans,” wrote Vasily Rozanov, “have our old Fritz,” and we, the Russians: “damned Russia.” Rozanov’s words that this Russian rejection of Russian savagery was generated by gymnasium education are important for understanding that behind it, behind this protest against Russian slavery, is the culture of the West. A Russian educated person was educated because he was immersed in the humanitarian culture of the West, the values ​​of freedom and human life. All concepts of good and evil in Russian culture are generated by European humanism, Christian “do not do to others what you do not wish for yourself.” And hence the main problem of the Russian intelligentsia. On the one hand, she cannot tear herself away from Russia. But, on the other hand, it cannot accept Russia, which exists only for the torment and suffering of the deep people, to satisfy the sovereign ambitions of state power. And how to justify this savagery of Russian life, which Alexander Pushkin spoke about? Only by the fact that God rewards, justifies, compensates for these torments of the Russian man with his special future. And Vasily Rozanov in his article “Near the Russian Idea” quotes one of Dostoevsky’s heroes: “The True Eternal God chose our wretched people, for their humility and patience, for their invisibility and lack of shine, into an alliance with Himself: and with this people He will conquer the whole world your truth.”

Well, Pyotr Chaadaev showed that our Russian misfortune consists and consisted not only in our Russian slavery, in our Russian belittling of the value of the human person, its dignity, but also in the fact that from century to century we carried with us material underdevelopment in our lives . Chaadaev said that “Western Christianity walked majestically along the path outlined by its divine founder; the world was being recreated, and we vegetated in our shacks of logs and clay.” Moreover, Pyotr Chaadaev drew attention to the fact that the praise of Russian courage, what Konstantin Bogomolov calls “Russian openness to heroism,” “Russian readiness to die,” everything that we today mean by our “we can repeat” is the reason for our civilizational underdevelopment. Chaadaev believed that the sacralization of Russian courage, Russian readiness to die actually “makes us at the same time incapable of deep thinking.” Well, Russian indifference to material things, to the blessings of life “makes us just as indifferent to everything good, to everything bad, to every truth, to every lie.”

Pyotr Chaadaev really was a prophet. He foresaw that the Russians would have to go through many troubles before they taught humanity their lesson. Let us quote the famous words of Chaadaev: “We belong to those nations that, as it were, are not part of humanity, but exist only to give the world some important lesson. The instruction we are called to impart will certainly not be lost; but who can say when we will find ourselves among humanity and how many troubles we are destined to experience before our destiny is fulfilled? And indeed, how many troubles and sufferings did the Russian people experience during their communist experiment in order to show humanity the original utopianism of this Marxist teaching?!

It is clear that the Russian idea as the idea of ​​Russian dreaminess, as a belief in the special civilizational destiny of the Russian person, disappeared from Russian social thought after the revolutions of 1905–1907 and 1917. As the authors of the collection “From the Depths” wrote already in 1918, during the revolution of 1917 “not just a beast, but an evil beast that lived in the people’s soul, rose to its full height.” And here it is important to know and remember that in fact, Russian social thought after the revolution said that nothing sublime and superhuman could be born on the basis of Russian poverty. Hence Semyon Frank, who argued that you will never respect spiritual wealth as long as the problems of material wealth exist for you. Semyon Frank directly said that Russian cultural backwardness, Russian spiritual underdevelopment are due to the fact that we did not have the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, there was no something that gave rise to the deep essence of European humanism.

But for us today, the lessons that the history of the emergence of the Russian idea and its various interpretations have left us are important. Undoubtedly, the Russian idea is characterized by the deep Westernism of the Russian intelligentsia, its passionate desire for everything that caused pain to disappear, namely Russian slavery and the hardships of Russian life. It is also important to take into account that the Russian idea had nothing to do with Eurasianism, which would appear after the 1917 revolution. Here it is important to take into account that there was not a single value in Russian culture that was not inherent in European culture, European humanism. It must be taken into account that for Russian culture the dominant role has always been played by the values ​​of freedom, human life, and civic feelings, which gave rise to European democracy. There is nothing more contrary to the truth of history than talk that supposedly the Slavophiles already had the idea of ​​​​alienating Russia from Europe, there was an idea that Russia was not the West. The paradox is that in fact, the father of Slavophilism A.S. Khomyakov, on the contrary, believed not only that the culture of Kievan Rus, its freedoms and individual rights were part of European culture, but also that, from his point of view, Pre-Mongol Rus’ in terms of individual rights and freedoms was superior to the wild West of those times.

And what of all that has been said is important to see and remember now? First and most importantly: the conviction that Russianness is incompatible with human happiness contradicts the essence of Russian culture, the essence of Russian religious humanism. This conviction that Russianness is incompatible with human happiness contradicts the essence of the main achievements of Russian social thought, the essence of Russian religious philosophy of the early twentieth century, which rebelled against Marxism and Bolshevism. Indirectly, the belief that Russianness is incompatible with the value of human life, with simple human happiness, is a rehabilitation of communism, Marxism, and even a rehabilitation of Stalin and his crimes. So, in fact, “Russia is not the West” is not only a denial of Russian social thought, but also a hidden rehabilitation of the era when the Russian people were told: “we will all die as one in the fight for this.”

And the current “we can repeat” is not a manifestation of patriotism, but a manifestation of our loss of the instinct of self-preservation, the loss of our future, the loss of the fact that we can, as Khomyakov dreamed, fully and completely embody the values ​​of Christian humanism in our Russian life. But if for the founder of Eurasianism, Konstantin Leontyev, the sacralization of suffering comes from ascetic Orthodoxy, from its special interpretation, which contradicts the essence of Christianity, then among current figures who, like Konstantin Bogomolov at the Valdai Forum, call on Russian people to forget about their personal happiness, this goes further from outright political cynicism, from some kind of disdainful attitude towards the ordinary Russian person.

And I cannot understand the politicians who organize the Valdai Forum and put K. Bogomolov on the podium, calling on the common man to forget about human happiness. Look at everything that is happening through the eyes of the deep Russian people, to whom you are telling that they are not worthy of simple human happiness, that they were born only for heroism, that they were born only to live to see the beauty of death in the world. He will eventually look at all of you, all those who, together with K. Bogomolov, tell him that “you are not worthy of happiness,” and a question will arise in his mind. And what kind of so-called elite is this – they themselves are immersed in their lives up to their necks in “simple human happiness”, they themselves sparkle with their dachas, yachts and villas in the Western world, and they call us to death? This thought may arise. And all those who admire Konstantin Bogomolov’s sermon at the Valdai Forum should remember this.