The place where you were born acts as a natural environment for you. Everything was difficult in my personal life.

Andrey Teslya - Candidate of Philosophical Sciences, an expert in the field of Russian social thought. His research interests include: the history of Western European political and legal thought of the 17th-19th centuries. (primarily conservative and reactionary doctrines); Russian socio-philosophical and social thought of the 19th century; Russian civil law XIX - early. XX century.

I feel bad where there is no powerful river, sea or ocean

– You were born and worked for a long time in Khabarovsk, and you will soon move to Kaliningrad. You are one of the few people I know who intellectually unite Russia with their geography of life and work. You travel a lot, travel a lot, including abroad. Please tell us about yourself.

- I am a native Far East in the third generation. This is a rather rare phenomenon, because the city itself was founded in 1856 as a military post, and it officially became a city quite late, and in essence - even later. Therefore, the main urban population, as in many cities of this type, in Khabarovsk, of the oldest residents, are those whose local roots date back to the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, and the second and third waves are the 1930s and then the 1950s - 1960s. These are those who are usually called native Far Easterners, with a certain degree of conventionality, of course.

I myself, and my ancestors on the maternal side, and on both lines from the side of my wife, constantly lived in the Far East. It rarely happens that three generations of two families live in the same city in the Far East. Because usually there are always some trajectories of movement, at least within the Primorsky, Khabarovsk Territories or the Amur Region.

"On autopilot" I wanted to say that I love the Far East very much ... But then I thought about it and decided that, apparently, it would be more correct to say that I really love Khabarovsk and Vladivostok. My hometown is located on the banks of the Amur, and I can hardly imagine myself without a lot of water. I am used to living near a huge river, so I feel bad in those places where there is no powerful river, or sea, or ocean.

In this regard, when I managed to travel around Russia, I was always surprised if there was no big river in the city. I remember when my wife, already at a fairly mature age, first came to Moscow and was amazed. After all, they say all the time: “Moscow River”, “Moscow River”. And they call it a river?

Andrey Teslya with his wife.
Photo from personal archive

Then we traveled along all the famous European rivers - along the Vistula, Oder, Rhine ... Well, yes, the formal criteria are met, these are rivers, but in the Far East you get used to the fact that the river is called something completely different. You begin to understand that the word "river" has several meanings. It is difficult to explain to a person who has not seen our Amur open spaces how, in principle, this river can look like, how this space is arranged.

The landscape in which you grow up remains the main one for you. And it's not even about attachment to a small homeland. You may not like this landscape, but you evaluate everything else on its basis, it becomes a natural norm for you.

The place where you were born acts as a natural environment for you.

It is important to note that the Far Eastern cities are different, and the space, for example, in Khabarovsk, is arranged quite curiously. Khabarovsk has traditionally always functioned as a military-administrative center. It can be considered a city only with some reservations: on the one hand, it is the administrative capital, where the residence of the governor-general, now the presidential plenipotentiary, was located, where the representative offices of most of the central departments in the region are located, on the other hand, it is the headquarters of the Far Eastern Military District and endless military units in and around the city. It turns out that everything else that exists, it either exists in connection with this, or between this, in some crevices that have arisen.

What were your school days like?

- I am immensely grateful to the school, and in many respects precisely because I did not study there. At the school I was graduating from, there was a wonderful director, a close friend of our family, an excellent teacher of Russian literature. And thanks to him, his good will, I had the opportunity to pass a significant part of the subjects in the external study mode.

One of my fondest memories is very specific literature lessons. First, I wrote an essay on some classical text, and then for an hour we discussed the corresponding texts. In the 9th grade, we read and discussed "War and Peace", and the compositions turned into essays.

The novel "War and Peace" was my first great literary love, and it was a love for Tolstoy's philosophy, which usually schoolchildren do not like. And I still find this resistance to Tolstoy's position strange - the desire to skip these long discussions, quickly move on to military scenes or a family romance in a novel. I also liked the historical optics he chose, and how he builds it when he talks about time, when he talks about action in time.

But I discovered Dostoevsky very late. Of course, as part of the school curriculum, I happened to read "Crime and Punishment", it seems, even before him, by chance, "The Brothers Karamazov", his first novel was "The Village of Stepanchikovo ...", which somehow turned up under the arm, but Dostoevsky remained for a long time alien to me. Maybe it's for the best.

At one time it seemed to me that Dostoevsky is such a social fantasy that the people and situations described do not exist, that people do not speak and interact like that. And then, much later, another vision came, and another attitude towards Dostoevsky. I would say that the return to Dostoevsky was again predetermined by the lessons at school. The school here is a determining factor in the sense that I was very lucky that it was not a standard education, but an opportunity to study externally.

Photo: Andrey Teslya / Facebook

How did you choose the university? How was the area of scientific interest determined?

- After school, I had a fairly standard path. I went to study law at the Far Eastern State Transport University. It was jurisprudence, and jurisprudence in transport. And at first I was interested in just civil law - that is, I initially had and remained a civil law specialization, and then I became more and more interested in the history of Russian civil law.

Even before the university there was a great interest in history for children. Then, at the stage of growing up - everyone seems to experience this with very few exceptions - I developed an interest in philosophy. So, largely thanks to a wonderful mentor, the then head of our graduating department, Mikhail Alexandrovich Kovalchuk, a specialist in the history of railway law, it turned out to combine all these hobbies. He was sympathetic to my then, very disparate, hobbies and in every possible way encouraged an interest in the history of law and in the history of political doctrines - that is, that which allowed me to fruitfully combine the three main areas of my interests: history, philosophy and law.

In this sense, all my subsequent intellectual movements in the disciplinary plan were an attempt to unite, combine my three basic interests: interest in history, law, philosophy, and social thought in general.

Therefore, on the one hand, judging by the formal rubricator, there were changes in my scientific interests, but, by and large, there was no fundamental change. I always do the same thing, but with different accents, sometimes a little more in one direction, then a little more in the other.

I am interested in how intellectual communication works, how ideas function in the social environment, how they are discussed and interact with other ideas.

In this regard, I am still interested in what was stereotypically pompous in the 19th century in magazine jargon called “eternal thoughts”, “eternal ideas”: I have always been interested, on the contrary, not “eternal”, but temporary - as it seems, in the same words, in the same phrases put completely different content.

For example, when people talk about Western European medieval Christianity, one would like to ask what is meant by Christianity at this moment. What does it mean to be a Christian, for example, in the twelfth century? In the 18th century? What does it mean to be Orthodox, for example, for an eighteenth-century Russian landowner? For a 19th century peasant? Or for us now? These are completely different and sometimes divergent things, although it seems that we are talking about Christianity there, and there, and there. But it turns out they are all completely different.

– Can you give an example of how it was perceived before and how it is now?

- I would say that this is a topic for a huge separate conversation, it is insanely interesting. In particular, the one who does this phenomenologically is Konstantin Antonov and the circle that is associated with him, with the Orthodox St. Tikhon University, modern researchers in the philosophy of religion, the Russian nineteenth century. In my opinion, Konstantin Mikhailovich has a very beautiful idea, which can be cited precisely as an example of the difference. That during the first half of the 19th century we observe how the language of the Church, with which she addresses the audience, and the language of educated society diverge. And it's not about the fact that they talk about different things, it's about the fact that they, in principle, speak differently.

If you like, there is no change of language in the Church that occurs in secular society, in the language of magazines, in the language of an educated society. As a result, when people from theological academies speak, they speak, perhaps very accurately and very correctly, but in a language that others do not hear.

Accordingly, when those same Slavophiles (I am referring here to the thought of Konstantin Antonov) begin to talk about secular theology, when they strive to make their own, then their rejection of the Theological Academy is connected not only with the fact that they do not agree with something specific, how much with the fact that it seems to them that these are all words. The reaction of spiritual circles is similar in many respects - this reaction is largely due to the different cultural environment: there is a catastrophic misunderstanding between the two sides, they speak different languages.

Andrey Teslya.
Photo: Irina Fastovets

Faith becomes a subject of individual choice

- And when did this misunderstanding arise?

– If we look at the 18th century, we will see that this is one cultural space, people from the spiritual environment are active figures here, and there is no wall here yet. In the second half of the 19th century, in order to be in modern times, you must reject your past: you must leave the seminary, break with your past, or at least you must move away from it in many ways.

To break with my past - I, of course, exaggerated, because there is an absolutely wonderful work about priests, which traces what happened to them: this is the recently published very talented work of Lori Manchester, "Priests in the world" ... They themselves come from, fugitives from the clergy , subsequently evaluating their experience, told how they placed themselves in a different cultural context. And there we are talking about much more complex patterns of behavior.

Accordingly, for the 19th century, one of the important problems is the problem of the second Christianization, the problem of the transition to individual confession. At this time, the question “Why are we Christians” is replaced by “Why am I a Christian? How can I be a Christian?

That is, the problem arises as a mass problem of how to combine those principles and those ideas that a person theoretically accepts, but now he introjects them already as his own, personal - not as abstract principles that rest quietly in the realm of abstractions, but as something what should permeate all everyday life: how to reconcile these principles, theoretical beliefs - with accepted practices of behavior.

How can one be Orthodox in real life, being, for example, a Guards officer? This is a question that, for the previous type of religious consciousness, was raised only in very rare, individual cases. But in the 19th century, it is clear that this and similar questions became relevant, everything began to move. It can be said that in every era, not only and not so much the answers change, but the very lines of posing the question change, new oppositions appear. Therefore, there is such a mixing effect when at different times they seem to use the same words, but these words now express a completely different thing.

- It turns out that the modern church has become much more difficult, it has to work with people on an individual level, and not with the masses, as before.

- Yes. I would say that here we are talking about the church in the social sense, the church with a small letter. Moreover, I would emphasize that individualization itself is also a kind of generalization. As we begin to look at the details, it becomes clear that the individualization of attitudes towards religion became relevant mainly for the educated strata in the 19th century, and in the 20th century it becomes relevant for everyone. Faith becomes a matter of individual choice. Even if I inherited it from my parents, in any case I must be aware of why I remain in it?

In this sense, for the same peasant of the 18th century, the question was not posed in this way. If it was staged for someone, then it was unique. But a person of the 20th century already needs to give an answer, and the answer is aimed not only at changing his faith, but also at preserving it. Even if I just stay in the same position, I have to articulate for myself why this is so? I must give this answer to myself, and most importantly, this answer must be not just rhetorically acceptable, but internally convincing.

- Where do you think this leads? From mass character to individuality, and then? What will happen in 100 years with religion, with individual faith?

- I do not know. It's very difficult for me to make predictions. I have no doubt that both religion and faith in God will be preserved. In this sense, there is no question. It's just that if we think about it within the framework of Christianity, then it's easy to see that over the course of two thousand years of history, this is a constantly changing answer, this is a constantly changing truth. And in such a perspective it is very difficult to speak, because 100 years is very close to us. We see a really long-term trend, and often what we think is important, conspicuous, is actually secondary or just an element of much more important things.

- What did the emergence of social networks, the Internet, give you as a thinking person?

- First of all, responses to my statements and books. They give a vision of diversity. This has been said many times, but I think it's a very important thing. In social networks, everyone builds their own politics and builds their own way of viewing. I understand well those who create a comfortable communication environment for themselves - they communicate with those who are deeply pleasant to them, with a small circle of friends and acquaintances, for whom this is such a space for discussion in their own circle.

For me, social media is often just the opposite: it's a way to hear the voices of people I probably wouldn't hear if I were in my "natural" social circle. Facebook provides an opportunity not only to hear the opinions of people from different parts of the country and the planet, but also to hear a lot of voices that are obviously absent in your social circle, if only because you won’t be able to personally communicate with these people for a long time.

– Do you ever block your readers in social networks, maybe for some radical positions?

- I, perhaps, block in exceptionally rare cases, and then you have to try very hard. I prefer to ban only when they are already directly insulting, and not me, but other friends. But I am very afraid to make this decision, I am very afraid to clear the tape of people who think differently. I am very afraid to create such a comfortable position when nothing will annoy me, when there will be only views that suit me, only positions that I share, when we will argue only about commas, or on a specific situational issue, because in general we agree on everything .

It is very important for me that there should be no such agreement in general. Again, these are very rare cases. If it's completely overkill. In this regard, even if two strong quarreled friends sort things out among themselves, then this is their right. As a last resort, let them mutually ban each other.

I thought that the peak of mutual aggressiveness and mutual irritation in 2014 is hard to beat, but the events of recent months surprise me.

It seems to me that the degree of irritation, the desire to go into conflict is now stronger than ever. Today, it is the readiness for conflict that prevails in social networks in the absence of a reason for it.

There are very unpleasant incidents that have to be observed many times when the parties use a random reason to break off relations with each other. When some completely random thesis, some random formulation, which, in principle, does not attract much attention, suddenly turns into a subject for showdown, for very deep quarrels and conflicts.

In this sense, the desire for conflict, the readiness for conflict is much greater than the existing reason - and the reason is only sought. Accordingly, a constant tension is felt, ready to come to the surface when there is a suitable excuse for everyone, when it will not have to be looked for.

Is there a cold civil war going on?

- I would not exaggerate, because if there really was a civil war, we could not fail to notice it. Now, thank God, we manage to notice it only thanks to Facebook.

In Facebook, with its speaking function, the interlocutor often finds himself in a situation where he cannot or does not consider it possible for himself not to notice the statement. Facebook has a feature - it promotes speeches "to the city and the world" addressed to everyone. Therefore, there are always those for whom these words are not intended.

Moreover, it simultaneously contributes to the appeal to the city and the world, while maintaining a certain individual intonation. There is such an unusual state of both public and private speech at the same time, and it is not clear where the border between them lies. I can say that this is my private space, I express only my own, not even just a private opinion, but a private feeling.

Photo: Maria Marey / Facebook

- Yes, but feelings, irony and humor are often not read through the Internet, and the statement is perceived as harsher and more categorical than the author might have wanted.

- Yes, and at the same time it turns out that it is still addressed to a circle of people, both personally familiar to you in a variety of contexts, and unfamiliar.

- I am saddened by statements on Facebook, when someone generalizes and says something on the topic “liberals are all like that”, and then some odious quote is given, although liberals are very different. Perhaps when you write something negative about liberals, then all this should be read in an ironic way, but it sounds like a kind of sentence.

– In recent years, I have tried not to use the term “liberals” itself, although, in my opinion, this is also a huge problem, because we are succeeding ... I will generalize again now, perhaps extremely unreasonably, but nonetheless. Speaking at the level of such conditional generalizations, it turns out that, on the one hand, there is some kind of community of people with fairly recognizable views. There is some kind of identification of “friend or foe” and “approximately ours”.

On the other hand, how to call this community? Well, for the "liberal" something else is read, it is clear that this does not work. Okay, how else? Moreover, because each side always uses exactly one trick.

The wonderful Evgeny Gubnitsky, translator, not so long ago had a vivid remark about the peculiarities of how we build the image of our group and how we perceive others. What do we always do in public debate if we are correct, careful, and so on and so forth? In relation to our own, we always understand that ours are different, ours are completely diverse. We understand that there are inveterate ones, but they do not characterize us. We always make allowances for the fact that even if, in principle, he is not inveterate, but there are some extreme statements, extreme positions, then even they are generally not characteristic of him, and so on.

Others we imagine as an aggregate in which we not only do not distinguish shades, but also prefer to pay attention to the extremes, to the bright, to the eye-catching. If we want to fight them, we tend to choose extremes, and so on.

As a result of small corrections, it turns out that we, through a series of such light and, I emphasize, completely unintentional movements, create a situation where the difference between the two positions at one moment becomes obvious at times. When it turns out that we are complex, we are diverse and, of course, we are guided by the reality principle, while our opponents are quite the opposite. Once again I emphasize that this is all done in good faith, even if we are not aiming for deliberate overexposure.

Photo: Andrey Teslya / Facebook

We strive to divide people into ours and not ours

– You studied in detail the history of Russian thought in the 19th century. When you read contemporary discussions between liberals and conservatives, between people of different persuasions, do you now see echoes of the disputes between Slavophiles and Westerners?

Yes and no, that's what I would say. Yes, there are echoes, only I would specify which ones. These are echoes of a common language. We still use the language of public speech, the language of discussion, which was created by Russian intellectuals in the 19th century. Another thing is that we often put other meanings into it. Since we were talking about echoes, yes, of course, they are. Another thing is that the illusion arises that we are not hearing echoes, but the same ever-repeating dispute.

- Developing in a spiral.

– Of course, we use the same words in many ways, but as soon as we start turning to history, we see that the meanings that we pack into these words are different. This was discussed at the very beginning of the conversation. In this case, the effect of false recognition occurs. When we turn to 19th-century texts on the knurl, what happens? We strive to divide people into ours and not ours, to understand who was there in the past, who can be placed in our line, who in another? Although in fact they fought in other wars, played other games, discussed other problems. The dead, of course, can be recruited into our army, but it is still important to understand that we do the recruiting. In this regard, we do not find like-minded people in the past, but create them.

– But have global issues changed? What to do? Who is guilty? Is Russia Europe or not Europe? To what extent is it Asia-Europe? Or did they think differently?

“In many ways, they thought differently. Moreover, if we look at the Slavophiles, then yes, they think in terms of “world epochs”, for them the Slavic world must come after the Germanic world. In this sense, this is such a European logic.

In other words, if we define the Slavophile position very briefly, then, in their opinion, if we want to be a historical people, then we can only be one as Russians. In this sense, Russians can be a historical people only as Russians, it just won't work out otherwise.

Accordingly, it will not work to become a European in the sense that there are no Europeans at all. There are Dutch, Belgians, French and so on. Therefore, the desire to turn from Russians into Europeans is a strange desire. In this sense, you can be a European only if you are not in Europe, and in this perspective, the desire to be a European is just a demonstration of a gap, a demonstration of innocence. Like, I want to be a representative of European culture in a non-European space, in a non-European environment.

If you think that you are in the global space (and for the Slavophiles, as well as for the people of the 19th century in general, it practically coincides with the European one), then it is somehow strange to define yourself as a European, you will still define yourself somehow more locally , in a more specific way. Accordingly, you will no longer relate to European culture as a whole, but you will argue with something much more specific.

Therefore, yes, the concept of the West is very important for the Slavophiles, but it is important to note that this is a religious West. In this sense, the border still more often passes not according to the logic of "West-East", but according to the logic of "Catholic Rome - Orthodoxy" with further distinctions. Let me remind you of such a classic Slavophile favorite motif - this is the idea that England is especially close to Russia.

In this sense, when it comes to the "West", then from the "West", for example, England is often excluded - it has its own special place, which requires reservations. When we begin to concretize what the West is that Herzen speaks of, it turns out that this West does not include Italy and Spain. It turns out that the West, which seems to be considered the Herzen West, is France, Germany and, to some extent, England.

- The United States did not play such a role back then either.

- Yes, the USA has a special status here - for example, for Kireevsky in the early 1830s there are two new peoples, Russians and Americans, who can act as carriers of new beginnings, but the advantage is given to the Russians, since the Americans are shackled by the one-sidedness of the Anglo-Saxon education. Therefore, we can say that we can see how the usual scheme arises - both the disputes between Westerners and Slavophiles, and subsequent discussions are connected with this rigid delimitation, but we will not find it in their usual form.

After all, we will not find it at all in any disputes of any people. We will find it already in the variant of non-substantive serious conversation, we will be able to find it only in extremely ideologized simplified concepts. Here, yes, it turns out that when we begin to simplify more and more, to schematize more and more, such schemes can coalesce in our output.

– How would you describe the position of the Westerners?

- Firstly, Westerners were called Westerners by their opponents, there was such a cross-naming. Secondly, depending on whom to take as Westerners. In short, the Western camp is such figures as Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky, Timofei Nikolaevich Granovsky. Of the younger generation, of course, Konstantin Dmitrievich Kavelin. Here it is noteworthy that they conceive of Russia as part of that same West, according to the unity of world history.

If you like, here the gap in position lies in the fact that for the Slavophils we are talking about a new word, about a new principle, while for the Westerners we are talking about the possibility of a new modulation of already existing principles. A more significant political distinction lies in the fact that for the Slavophiles their optics is the optics of national construction, while for the Westerners it is the optics of the empire.

By the way, in our modern and very painful context, it is noteworthy here that, within the framework of their national project, the Slavophiles were much more, not just tolerant, but often provided direct support and assistance, for example, to the Ukrainophiles. In turn, for the Westerners of the 1840s, the Ukrainophile movement was completely unacceptable.

In this sense, the angry anti-Ukrainian philippicists in the 19th century originally came from the camp of the Westerners, and not the Slavophiles, but for the latter, these are quite recognizable and native things. Therefore, it is interesting to see how the historical confrontation is changing. Where we seem to be ready to see a familiar pattern from our current distinctions, we see that in the situation of the 1940s and 1950s everything happened almost exactly the opposite.

– Is it possible to say that after the revolution of 1917 these disputes did not end, but were only interrupted for 70 years, and you are now trying to clear these discussions of modern stereotypes?

- I wouldn't put the task so pathetically. Everything is much simpler and more specific here. First, every time brings many questions that we turn to the past. In this sense, the changed historical experience, the changed understanding of the 19th century does not provide answers that cancel the previous ones, but raises new questions and, accordingly, gives new answers to other questions. In the former formulations, one suddenly hears something that was not heard before, or maybe our experience makes us more sensitive to the former meanings? In the same plan, it turns out that we always speak from our time. Our experience and our situation determine the questions that are addressed to the past.

The most striking example here is from a completely different area - this is antiquity. New studies and new answers do not cancel previous studies, but they put before us another question - for example, for Rostovtsev after the world war and the revolution of 1917, it is a task to understand the society and economy of the Roman Empire as a very large-scale, pathos and powerfully working historical project.

In any historical work, as soon as it goes beyond the technical, this word always occurs - in worn out academic language it is called actuality. It is clear that, bound by academic canons, we all react nervously to the question of the relevance of the study, but if we talk about live content, this is exactly what prompts us here and now to ask these questions to the past.

The previous answers haven't gotten any worse, but they're starting to feel irrelevant to us. The questions may be good, and the answers are great, but these are questions that we are not particularly interested in right now. Maybe it's our problem that they have ceased to be of interest to us. It may be that things are very bad with us that now it has gone out of focus.

Andrey Teslya.
Photo: Irina Fastovets

Conservatism is an awareness of the fragility of the existing

– The area of your scientific interest is the conservative and reactionary doctrine of the XVIII-XIX centuries. What is the reason for such an interest in these doctrines - specifically conservative and reactionary? What are you looking for there? What answers do you find?

- I was initially interested in one thing among conservatives and reactionaries - this is what, it seemed to me and it seems now, they are simply not well studied. This is that part of Russian intellectual life, which, on the one hand, has been poorly studied, and secondly, without it it is impossible to understand the whole. In this regard, even if you are not specifically interested in conservatives, if we simply want to understand the intellectual space and discussions of the 19th century, then we need this, I say again, regardless of our preferences, in order to see exactly how the debate was conducted, how it was arranged talk. So even within the framework of interest in the Russian XIX century, in order to collect the whole, it is necessary to restore the entire context of the discussions of those years.

Now for a more personal answer. Russian conservatives are interesting to me because they try to forge their own path in many ways, they think in an original way. In this regard, Russian liberalism, again, I allow myself a value judgment, is overwhelmingly boring. It's boring, at least for me, because often it's just a repetition of existing positions. Russian liberals are the spokesmen for what other white people have said, this is such a true retelling of all that is good.

It is possible that in these reflections, in fact, everything is good and beautiful. Perhaps everything that is said is absolutely true. But I am interested in my own thought - most likely, incorrect, but my own. Let them go at random, but on their own. Here the Russian conservatives present a very original picture, they are almost all interesting people, they almost all live apart, they do not sing common songs. They are not all people of common thought. It turns out that even conservatives of the second plan are trying to invent some interesting construction (even if we think we know that they are trying to reinvent the wheel).

– Unusual train of thought! It turns out that you are not interested in the bike itself, whether it rides fast or how reliable it is, but are our Russian wheels on it? Sorry, I'm exaggerating a little.

- Yes, if you like. It seems to me that, from the point of view of intellectual history, it is not so interesting to listen to retellings of other people's judgments. If we are interested in these judgments themselves, then let's turn to the original source. This is first. In my opinion, this is a much more logical approach. Secondly, the main question that conservative thought asks is the question that - well, okay, let's say, with a general scheme, with ideals and aspirations, we have decided, we are for everything good. The question is, how will these schemes work here, on the spot?

In this regard, the most striking example of a discussion between conservatives and liberalism is Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev, who created the Moscow Collection, a text that is amazingly interesting in structure. For the most part, Pobedonostsev does not speak in his own voice, he collects other people's texts, and texts are often characters, regarding which it is difficult to expect Pobedonostsev to place them, and this is again significant for the compiler. He puts there not just other people's voices, but the voices of those who are important to his opponents. This is the same Herbert Spencer, these are authors who do not belong to the conservative circle.

The main message of the Moscow Collection is conservative. It is as follows. Traditionally, we compare Russia with the West. But Pobedonostsev says that let's compare the real Russia not with the imaginary West, but with the real West, let's see how it works there.

This is not about how we all should live, but the question is how it will look if we transfer the excellent principles from the West to Russia, because they will certainly work not like in a textbook, but taking into account our conditions. Accordingly, what will be their effect?

The conservative question is still largely connected with the recognition of the enormous value of the existing. You can talk about the disorders of the existing as much as you like, but it has one huge plus - it simply exists. We somehow exist in this situation, we succeed. The alternative to all this always has one huge disadvantage - this alternative does not yet exist. Accordingly, we always compare reality with the ideal. The big question is what will happen when we really try to implement this very alternative.

– The fact is that Russia was not given a chance to realize this prospect. We hardly had any normal elections, nor decades of normal economy, decades without war. Conservatives are arguing: let's leave everything as it is, in Russia everything is valuable. It would make sense to talk about this if we ever tried to live in a European way, and this project would already fail.

- Here it is worth concretizing the conservative position. Let's start with the fact that, firstly, conservatism, like liberalism, has existed for a couple of centuries. And there are a lot of different positions in it. Moreover, when it comes to the fact that there are conservative views of Valuev and conservative views of Pobedonostsev, and we say that Aksakov is also a conservative, the question arises: what do they agree on? If we pull up a few more conservatives from outside, then we will have almost a universe of meanings in front of us. We will find a variety of answers.

One version of the conservative interpretation is not that the existing is beautiful. You can talk as much as you want about the ugliness of the existing.

The point is that any change should be based on the principle of responsibility, on understanding that if we change something, the main thing is not to worsen it. This is the main conservative message, and not that the existing is good.

There is an old anecdote that I love to quote because it expresses the conservative position well. When a pessimist looks at the situation and says: "That's it, it won't get any worse." An optimist flies in and says: "It will, it will." In this anecdote, conservatives play the role of optimist. They are always sure that no matter how terrible the current situation is, there is always an option when it will be even worse. Therefore, to the proposal: "Let's change something, because it certainly won't get worse," the conservative will say: "Your imagination is bad."

Andrey Teslya.
Photo: Irina Fastovets

But how then to make changes?

- It follows from this that if we change something, then we must, if possible, create conditions when we can back up or compensate for losses, if necessary. Hence the traditional conservative logic that changes should be introduced slowly, they should be introduced first in some limited way. Conservatism is rather the assertion that what exists has value by virtue of the fact that it exists, and we always have something to lose. This does not mean that we have nothing to acquire, it means that we do not start from scratch and the existing is fragile.

We do not appreciate, we do not understand what exists precisely because it seems to us as natural as air. In this sense, conservatism is an awareness of fragility. Everything that exists, our entire social, cultural fabric is very thin. The view of the active transducer is that we can always change something, assuming that this fabric is preserved. In this sense, conservatism is much more alarming, it says that if there were certainty in this, it would be wonderful, but there is no certainty in this, and everything can fall apart, everything is very fragile.

We can say that the key commandment of conservatism is: "Do no harm, do not destroy what is."

Yes, we can say that the existing is bad and insufficient. You can try to improve it, but the main thing is to understand that all changes, if possible, should not injure, not destroy the existing environment, because it may not work to create it anew. The snow avalanche comes down very quickly.

Is it possible to say that reactionism is an extreme degree of conservatism?

- Not really. It can be both conservatism and what is called radicalism or a revolution on the contrary. Conservatism presupposes the preservation of the existing, while reaction presupposes the opposite. The reactionaries are in complete agreement with opponents on the other side that the existing state of affairs is no good. Only some argue that it is necessary to run in one direction, and others - in the opposite direction, but they agree on the thesis that there is no value in the cash order. Conservatives are just the opposite: they say that yes, no matter where we move, even if we try to rewind everything, even if we move forward, we always have something to save. This is the key position of conservatism.

- Are you a conservative?

- Yes. Conservatism comes from an understanding of the fragility of the existing. Our Russian social experience teaches us how thin the social and cultural fabric can be. Therefore, I am ready to agree with any critical reproaches against the existing one right away, I am much more interested in something else - when trying to improve, is the fact that something alive will be preserved enough taken into account?

I emphasize that in the practice of action, radicalism, to a large extent, as a rule, demonstrates power in our country.

Conservatism is not the support or justification of any existing power, it is the recognition that power is valuable in itself.

Again, one of the key conservative values is that any power, mind you, the key word here is “any”, any set of reproaches can be listed, but any power is already good, because there are always options for the absence of power.

- Here, as I understand it, this is a parallel with “all power is from God”, right? Is very similar.

- Of course.

- To this, the liberals will answer that we must first look at what this government is doing, how accountable it is to the people, and so on.

- I wouldn't say. Again, if we talk about the intellectual experience of both Western, and Central European, and Russian, then ... Before that, you asked me if I was a conservative? Yes, of course, but further it is necessary to introduce shades: am I a conservative liberal, or a liberal conservative, who acts as a leader? But in this sense, liberalism as the predominant ideology presupposes certain combinations with conservatism, in any case it does not exclude them.

The conservative position always tends to exaggerate the risks of social transformation. Just as the opposite side tends to underestimate them and say that in any case something needs to be changed, something will change for the better anyway. A conservative position always assumes that we expect bad things from such transformations in the first place. And then we can talk about shades.

Again, if we take the textbook image of the 19th century, then in order for there to be a normal discussion in society, it is necessary that there be both liberals and conservatives. In the end, if the conservative logic itself is ready to move on autopilot to the option that nothing needs to be changed, then, accordingly, the opposite one is ready to stimulate changes.

It is on this very confrontation, on this very controversy, that it is determined on which changes there is consensus, and which ones cause too much anxiety. In some ways, a conservative can be convinced by showing that some planned action, apparently, does not pose a danger, here the fears are not so great. As for others, no, this is too disturbing, a dangerous event for the preservation of the social fabric, and here a compromise is hardly possible.

Andrey Teslya.
Photo: Irina Fastovets

It is more interesting for me to understand the time than to act in it.

- If you imagine that there is a time machine, and you would move to the 19th century, which of the Russian thinkers do you see yourself as? Who could you be there: Herzen or Aksakov? Do you see yourself in the place of any of them?

– No, in no way. All these characters are actors. I still take the position of an observer. It is fundamentally different - they are interesting to me, but it is more interesting for me to understand that time than to act in it. For me personally, the feeling of the distance that exists between us is very important, so I don’t think of myself as one of them.

But Aksakov is perhaps the closest to me of all of them. I will explain in what way. Not in terms of specific provisions, which I wrote about in the book “The Last of the “Fathers”” and in articles. Ivan Aksakov seems to me a very likeable person, like most of the Slavophiles. What I like about the Slavophiles, among many other things, is that they are very good people.

- Compared with…

- No, why? Just by themselves. They were very good people and a very good environment, even if you don't agree with their views... After all, you don't have to agree with the political position of a virtuous person, he is good in itself.

- It means that they did not cheat on their wives, did not lie, did not deceive others?

- What's with the wives?

Was everything difficult in your personal life?

- As always. Everything is not so beautiful, they were still living people, made of flesh and blood - someone did not cheat, for example, on his wife, the other - alas, turned out to be the lover of a friend's wife, if we take the example of wives. Let's put it this way, they were hard-living people. They had strength.

They are not saints, of course, but where they committed offenses, where they sinned, they were capable of active repentance, in this they were strong. They really aspired to be virtuous people. They aspired not for someone, but for themselves. They, if you like, had practically no work for the public.

– How was the work on the book about Aksakov going? Have you worked in archives? Where did you get the materials from? Are there any unique materials that were not previously known?

I have been working on the book for a long time. Thanks to the presidential grants that made this work possible. Accordingly, a fairly significant part of the work was in the archives. First of all - in the archive of the Pushkin House of the Institute of Russian Literature, the book uses many previously unpublished materials, and in this case I tried to quote them abundantly.

It seemed to me that this is better than giving cutting and retelling in your own words. Finely crumbling quotes is possible, but, in my opinion, it is deadly. The texts of that time must keep their breath. Maybe I abused this somewhat in the book, but it was a completely conscious decision - to give the opportunity to hear Aksakov's voice as much as possible. In my opinion, the most interesting letters are published in the book - these are letters from Ivan Aksakov to Mikhail Koyalovich, a key figure in Western Russianism, and the correspondence spans more than 20 years.

Just speaking about the character of the Slavophiles, I tried to give them the opportunity to speak for themselves, because, it seems to me, this is how the peculiarity of the nature of these people is conveyed. For example, in the appendix to the book there is a rather small fragment - these are letters from Ivan Aksakov to his fiancee Anna Fedorovna Tyutcheva, the poet's daughter. He writes wonderful letters to Anna Feodorovna, where he explains his view of the future life together. To what a future wife should be, what a husband should be. These are very touching lyrics.

- Are there any answers?

- Unfortunately no. The letters are touching, because, on the one hand, he tries to talk about the proper position - he must, and on the other hand, there is a very careful and warm feeling behind all this, so he does not maintain his position as giving instructions, he suddenly switches to much warmer and more lyrical style. It seems to me that this is a very Aksakov trait: on the one hand, he has an idea of how he should say what he should do, and on the other hand, this human goodness affects.

Once again I want to emphasize that this is not an opposition of one to the other. The Slavophiles were a narrow circle, and they had a unique position - other people could not enter this circle, it was a very closely connected circle of friends.

The Westerners as a whole were a much more sparse environment, having a much less dense network of contacts among themselves, they were not so intertwined with each other. It is impossible to characterize all members of the editorial staff of the magazine, to say that they have shared a common lifestyle or something like that for decades. This is not only impossible, it is completely redundant, because the communication of people was carried out on some specific occasion, they converged at some specific point. In the case of the Slavophiles, it is completely different. It was in many ways a shared life in close fellowship.

- In the spring, a collection of articles by Alexander Herzen from the series "Crossroads of Russian Thought" was published. Can you tell us about this series and, in particular, about this first collection?

- Yes. This is a wonderful project. I hope he develops. This is a project of the RIPOL-Classic publishing house. Its goal is to present Russian social thought of the 19th century by addressing a fairly wide range of authors. Moreover, the texts are both well-known and not particularly familiar to non-specialists. It is clear that there will be no innovations for the scientific community, but for the general reader this may be of interest. The aim of the project is to show the versatility of Russian thought of the 19th century and the echoes of the intellectual movement.

At the suggestion of the publisher, I wrote introductory articles for these collections and determined the content of the books. Introductory articles are quite large in volume. In the first book, the article is a compact, review, subsequent texts will be more voluminous. The purpose of the introductory articles is to show the authors in the context of disputes, not in the context of the era, these are not biographical essays, but to show them in the context of the public discussion of their time.

Of the planned volumes, Herzen was chosen as the first author precisely because his figure is at the crossroads of both Westernism and Slavophilism. His mature views are an attempt to synthesize them, therefore the texts included in the collection just demonstrate his theoretical position in the evolution from the late 1840s to the last year of Herzen's life. It is quite predictable that Chaadaev's texts will soon be published.

Then much less predictable and, in my opinion, completely undeservedly underheard, underread Nikolai Polevoy. Further, the publicism of Nikolai Kostomarov. If the series lives on, then I hope that other authors will also be published ... The task here, on the one hand, is to present familiar figures from new angles, and on the other hand, characters that are not very familiar to a wide author, or not familiar from this side. If we take the figure of Nikolai Ivanovich Kostomarov, then we all read it. But Kostomarov as a publicist, Kostomarov as a participant in many years of political controversy in the Russian Empire - this is not his most famous incarnation. I think it's very interesting.

- Are you going to create a textbook of social thought of the 19th century in order to somehow present the views of different parties to people?

- Yes. There is a good saying: if you want to make God laugh, tell Him about your plans. I really hope that it will be, but it is better to talk about it when such a book appears.

We are afraid of the word "Russian" for no reason.

- On the one hand, I admire, on the other hand, it scares me that you are not afraid to use the word "Russian" in texts, books, and even on the cover. Now the word "Russian" is often replaced by the word "Russian". How do you distinguish situations when you need to write "Russian" and when "Russian"?

- The fact is that I learned about all the intensity of passions around these two words at a fairly mature age. It was quite funny when, at one of the cathedral seminars or at a small conference (either at the end of the university, or at the beginning of postgraduate study), during the discussion, disputes suddenly broke out over whether it is possible to say “history of Russian philosophy”, or “ history of Russian philosophy”, or “history of philosophy in Russia”. And I remember my astonishment when it turned out that this was a painful question, because until that time I perceived the words "Russian philosophy" as a completely neutral statement.

There is Russia, there is Germany. The book is called "History of French Literature" - of course, the history of French literature. "History of French Philosophy" - also understandable. So, how is it in Russia? "History of Russian Philosophy". Where is the subject of controversy? It didn't occur to me to see nationalistic or any other notions in this. It seems to me that anything can be read in any word, but if we are talking about Russia, if we are talking about Russian culture, then I don’t understand why jump away from this word, moreover, in its modern meaning?

Yes, we can say that in the 18th century the word “Russian” was actively used, but this is a high style.

Now it is clear that when we talk about Russian, we are talking about citizenship. We emphasize the legal status of people or organizations. But when we talk about culture, it is somehow strange to define cultural affiliation by registration.

It is somehow strange to include in this cultural space only those who were born within the current geographical boundaries, for example. Or, suppose we introduce some strange formal criterion, which refers, rather, to the wonderful title of a textbook on the history of the USSR. Remember, there was such a “History of the USSR from ancient times” for pedagogical universities? The map of the Soviet Union was projected over the entire thickness of millennia.

If we want to have fun further, then we can create a work called "Intellectual History within the Borders of the Russian Federation" and, along the contour of the map, all those who were brought here at any time, be attributed. But it is quite obvious that when we talk about the narrow intellectual space of the 19th century, we will not say that this is the intellectual space of the Russian Empire.

Russian debates of the 19th century are not synonymous with debates in the Russian Empire, because the debates of the Russian Empire will certainly include Polish journalism. It's quite a working concept. When we try to remove the word “Russian”, talking about disputes in the Russian cultural space of the 19th century, it seems to me that, firstly, we are frightened of the word for no reason, and secondly, we lose some of the meanings, we lose these very lines of demarcation. Or we start inventing replacement words, because we still need to somehow describe the intellectual space, and we start using more streamlined formulations.

Perhaps I am wrong, but I emphasize once again that I do not see in this word what one should be afraid of. I can easily imagine the fears that are associated, for example, with the growth of nationalist movements - this is easy to understand. But at the moment when the word “Russian” begins to be tabooed, I experience an attack of hostility, not the best feelings wake up in me, which I had not felt until that moment ... Sometimes they say that I should avoid this word, precisely in order not to provoke conflict. But it is at this point that the conflict begins to unfold. It is here, it seems to me, that the boundaries between people of different nationalities grow.

Photo: Sergey Aloff / Facebook

– Is it necessary to distinguish between legal aspects and some essential ones?

- Of course. We easily understand that a person of Russian culture can easily be a citizen of any other state, these are different issues. In the same way that a person who does not identify himself with Russian culture can legally be a citizen of Russia, this in itself is not yet a problem.

– The excellent Japanese scholar Alexander Nikolaevich Meshcheryakov writes books about Japan. He has already published the books Staying Japanese and Being Japanese. He is currently writing the third book in the series. I asked him: “Would you like to write the books “Be Russian” or “Stay Russian”? He says: "I'm not that well-read and I don't own so many sources, although it would be interesting." Would you like to write a book "Stay Russian", "Be Russian" to show people what it means to be Russian in a good way?

- No, I'm afraid that the status of a professional Russian is a little different.

– My question is related to the fact that people sometimes write about you and define you as a Russophile. Do you consider yourself a Russophile?

- Yes, if you like. I know that this word annoys someone, although I do not really understand why. Not so long ago there was a conversation about this in Warsaw. The word “Russophile” irritated a part of the audience very much, and one of the participants in the discussion asked me this question as an option: “How can you use the name “Russophile” for your site? After all, you wouldn’t publish on the Polonophile website?”

I did not really understand the question, because for me personally there is not the slightest problem to publish on a site with that name. I would be much more interested in what it is filled with, what exactly is this very polonophilism. Perhaps, with one interpretation, I would not even come close to such a thing. Let's say, I don't understand what one can fear from the words "polonophilism" or "Russophilism" here.

Who am I? Naturally, I am a person of Russian culture. Naturally, I am a person of the Russian space. I am wholly here. Yes, in my opinion, this is one of the few great cultures that exist. There are not many such great cultures. Therefore, it is understandable that we have various mixed feelings about our culture, but it is strange not to have warm feelings for it, it is strange not to love our native.

I remember how Karamzin begins The History of the Russian State, where he says that the history of the Russian State may be of interest to others, but there are boring places in it. (“Foreigners may miss what is boring for them in our ancient History; but are good Russians not obliged to have more patience, following the rule of state morality, which makes respect for ancestors a virtue of an educated citizen? ..”)

- He did not write the "History of the Russian State."

- I was just talking about this, that the language of that time is high style in this case. “Russian” here is like a common expression, and if we want to lift it up, talk about high, we are talking about “Russian”. In modern times, this use is rare. By the way, this is what the conversation began with - how the meaning of words moves. It is clear that he has changed a lot.

Karamzin in The History of the Russian State said that for another reader there may be boring places, but the heart of the Russian reader, among other things, cannot be cold to the history of his Fatherland, because in any case he is attached to it. Therefore, the only reproach that is possible here is that Russophilism still presupposes a certain distance.

If we wish to find something that can be reproached here, it is this very distancing. In this sense, it can be said as a reproach that it is natural for a person of Russian culture to love Russian culture. Therefore, why say it separately here, doesn't it come by default? But considering that such articulation itself causes some tension, it seems that it makes sense, since it hurts so much. This means that this is some kind of significant question, because otherwise there was a calm and even reaction here.

The February Revolution is a complete disaster

– This year there is a lot of talk about 1917, about the centenary of two revolutions. In your opinion, what lessons do the Russian revolutions give us, what can we learn from this 100-year experience? What failed the February Revolution?

- The February Revolution, as you know, was a success: the sovereign signed the abdication, the Provisional Government came to power - everything was successful.

- Well, how? We wanted to build a democratic Russian Republic, but the Bolshevik Republic came ...

“I don't know who wanted to. Let's clarify.

- Recently we talked with the mathematician Alexei Sosinsky, and his grandfather, Social Revolutionary Viktor Chernov, the first and last chairman of the Constituent Assembly, wanted this.

The February Revolution is a complete disaster. In this sense, when we talk about February 1917, we are talking about the great catastrophe that happened to Russia when everything went haywire. Another thing is that everything went haywire, largely due to the previous long-term policy of the government. There was an old Soviet joke that in connection with the 50th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, the Order of the October Revolution was awarded posthumously to citizen N.A. Romanov for his outstanding contribution to the organization of the revolutionary situation.

Imagine the collapse of the supreme power in the situation of the most difficult world war - in this sense, it does not matter how you relate to the previous government and to anything else, it really was a catastrophe. This story could not end well. Another thing is that the previous one in time could not end in anything good either. Generally speaking, the general impression of the Russian Empire, especially since the 1980s, is that of a derailed train that is picking up speed. There is only one path ahead of him, there are no more shooters.

Where was the bifurcation point? Where else did Russia have a moment of choice?

- I dont know. But let me remind you what was the reaction of the extreme right when the Bolsheviks came to power. On the one hand, they believed that this was good, because the revolution would discredit itself. On the other hand, that it is at least some kind of power. We have already said that conservatives are characterized by the thesis that any power is better than no power. This is not to say that the Bolsheviks are good. It is about the fact that they have become at least some kind of power.

In a situation of a complete loss of control, a complete loss of power, the Bolsheviks are better, I emphasize once again - this is not to talk about the fact that the Bolsheviks are good. This is about something completely different, about the fact that, it turns out, they received some kind of support from the extreme right in this regard.

– Do you regret that Russia failed to become a bourgeois democracy?

– Yes, there is such regret, but in this sense it is certainly not February 1917, then Russia certainly could not have become a bourgeois democracy. In February 1917, Russia no longer had such a chance.

- Why - there were no leaders, no idea?

- Not. In those days, it was about what kind of social catastrophe would unfold in the coming months. As in the old obscene joke: well, yes, horror, but not horror-horror-horror. You can choose between horror options - absolutely terrible or just terrible. This is a question for a big discussion. The last chance to reach agreement could be seen in the first couple of years of the reign of Alexander III.

We can say that the first years of his reign are lost years for the Russian Empire. Another thing, it is also clear why they are missed. Why did representative bodies of power meet such resistance in the 60s and 70s of the 19th century? I emphasize that this is not only clinging to power, these are quite objective problems, these are problems of how, with a general imperial representation, it is possible to preserve the imperial whole. The resistance to the introduction of a representative body of power was not only situational, not only selfish, it was associated with serious problems.

But the whole epoch since 1883 is politically unambiguous, all significant political issues are driven under the skin of society. Further, everything only gets worse, the level of mutual rejection increases. The level of confrontation that exists by the beginning of the 20th century implies any impossibility for either side to act. Here, after all, there is also the problem that the so-called representatives of the public cannot compromise with the authorities for objective reasons.

Dmitry Nikolaevich Shipov, the leader of the Zemstvo movement, explains this wonderfully. When he is called to the government, he says: “It is useless. You don't call me specifically as Shipova. You need community support. If I accept your offer, I will lose support, at that moment I will become a concrete person, I will lose all my reputation, all my value, and you will not gain anything. It won't be helpful." The level of confrontation by this time was such that few people imagined how to get out of this impasse. As we know, they never came out of it. And 1917 was his consequence.

Andrey Teslya.
Photo: Irina Fastovets

I look with interest and concern at what is happening

– Is there a feeling that you are writing into the void? Are you getting the response to your books that you need to continue your research?

– Yes, definitely. I receive a wide variety of responses - books provide an opportunity to communicate with colleagues, the opportunity to express myself. And here it is not only books, in fact, this is how any scientific communication is arranged - various types of communications, various types of communication, running ideas. Moreover, any text is always written from the perspective of an imaginary reader or in a situation of either real or implied conversation. Therefore, if it were not for the social function of authorship, then on the cover it would be worth writing, in some cases, really familiar interlocutors, and in some cases, virtual ones.

- Does it help or hinder you that you live not in Moscow, not in St. Petersburg, but in Khabarovsk?

As usual, there are pros and cons here. First, this is my hometown. Secondly, there are my relatives, my friends, my acquaintances. This is a favorite place. This is an opportunity for quiet work. These are their books, their well-trodden library paths. On the other hand, yes, quite obvious problems are the territorial remoteness and the complexity of communication, including to the banal, to the difference in time and the cost of transport costs. So it's hard for me to say what the balance is here. At a certain point, when you need something, it gets in the way. In another situation, it turns out that the same becomes a plus.

- In a sense, your gaze is geographically directed to the west, and not to the east or south. Maybe in the near future you are planning to look to the east or to the south?

- I would say that, of course, to the west. I will give one example. Khabarovsk has tourism potential, and not only potential, but reality, because Khabarovsk turns out to be a regular place for Chinese tourists to visit. In what logic? Because Khabarovsk is the closest European city accessible to Chinese, partly Korean or Vietnamese tourists. In this sense, it is important to note that when we talk about the West or the East, about Europe and Asia, physical geography is one thing, mental geography is another.

In this regard, I would like to emphasize that for the majority of Chinese colleagues, the movement to Khabarovsk is also a movement to the east, northeast, in fact, if according to the compass. Moving east, they find themselves in a European city, in a European space.

- Very interesting. And the last question. We are now conducting a conversation for the Orthodoxy and the World portal. Can you tell us about how the relationship between Orthodoxy and the world is changing, how it was in the 18th-19th centuries and what it is now?

– This is a very broad topic, and we need to think about it responsibly. In short, I do not understand, I do not really imagine what the future, in the new, clearly changing conditions, will be like for the political dimension of faith. On the one hand, to demand freedom from politics, or to demand that politics be free from faith, is a strange demand. We have to assume such an amazing autoanatomization of the subject, in which he must somehow be able to negate his faith from himself.

On the other hand, the underpinning of this requirement is quite transparent. I look with interest and concern at what is happening. As Baroness Jacobina von Munchausen said in the script by Grigory Gorin: "We'll wait and see." In this sense, the main thing is to be able to see some tangible new trends with your own eyes and evaluate them - preferably from a safe distance.

Video: Victor Aromshtam

Andrey Teslya- Candidate of Philosophical Sciences, an expert in the field of Russian social thought. His research interests include: the history of Western European political and legal thought of the 17th-19th centuries. (primarily conservative and reactionary doctrines); Russian socio-philosophical and social thought of the 19th century; Russian civil law XIX - early. XX century.

I feel bad where there is no powerful river, sea or ocean

Andrey Teslya with his wife. Photo from personal archive

The place where you were born acts as a natural environment for you.

What were your school days like?

How did you choose the university? How was the area of scientific interest determined?

I am interested in how intellectual communication works, how ideas function in the social environment, how they are discussed and interact with other ideas.

– Can you give an example of how it was perceived before and how it is now?

If you like, there is no change of language in the Church that occurs in secular society, in the language of magazines, in the language of an educated society. As a result, when people from theological academies speak, they speak, perhaps very accurately and very correctly, but in a language that others do not hear.

Faith becomes a subject of individual choice

- And when did this misunderstanding arise?

Accordingly, for the 19th century, one of the important problems is the problem of the second Christianization, the problem of the transition to individual confession. At this time, the question “Why are we Christians” is replaced by “Why am I a Christian? How can I be a Christian?

- It turns out that the modern church has become much more difficult, it has to work with people on an individual level, and not with the masses, as before.

- Where do you think this leads? From mass character to individuality, and then? What will happen in 100 years with religion, with individual faith?

In social networks, everyone is ready for conflict without a reason

- What did the emergence of social networks, the Internet, give you as a thinking person?

– Do you ever block your readers in social networks, maybe for some radical positions?

I thought that the peak of mutual aggressiveness and mutual irritation in 2014 is hard to beat, but the events of recent months surprise me.

It seems to me that the degree of irritation, the desire to go into conflict is now stronger than ever. Today, it is the readiness for conflict that prevails in social networks in the absence of a reason for it.

Is there a cold civil war going on?

- I would not exaggerate, because if there really was a civil war, we could not fail to notice it. Now, thank God, we manage to notice it only thanks to Facebook.

- Yes, but feelings, irony and humor are often not read through the Internet, and the statement is perceived as harsher and more categorical than the author might have wanted.

- Yes, and at the same time it turns out that it is still addressed to a circle of people, both personally familiar to you in a variety of contexts, and unfamiliar.

The wonderful Evgeny Gubnitsky, translator, not so long ago had a vivid remark about the peculiarities of how we build the image of our group and how we perceive others. What do we always do in public debate if we are correct, careful, and so on and so forth? In relation to our own, we always understand that ours are different, ours are completely diverse. We understand that there are inveterate ones, but they do not characterize us. We always make allowances for the fact that even if he, in principle, is not inveterate, but there are some extreme you

sayings, extreme positions, then even they are generally not characteristic of him, and so on.

We strive to divide people into ours and not ours

- Developing in a spiral.

– But have global issues changed? What to do? Who is guilty? Is Russia Europe or not Europe? To what extent is it Asia-Europe? Or did they think differently?

In other words, if we define the Slavophile position very briefly, then, in their opinion, if we want to be a historical people, then we can only be one as Russians. In this sense, Russians can be a historical people only as Russians, it just won't work out otherwise.

- The United States did not play such a role back then either.

– How would you describe the position of the Westerners?

If you like, here the gap in position lies in the fact that for the Slavophils we are talking about a new word, about a new principle, while for the Westerners we are talking about the possibility of a new modulation of already existing principles. A more significant political distinction is that for the Slavophiles, their optics is the optics of national construction, and for the Westerners, it is the imperial optics.

Andrey Teslya. Photo: Irina Fastovets

Conservatism is an awareness of the fragility of the existing

– The fact is that Russia was not given a chance to realize this prospect. We hardly had any normal elections, nor decades of normal economy, decades without war. Conservatives are arguing: let's leave everything as it is, in Russia everything is valuable. It would make sense to talk about this if we ever tried to live in a European way, and this project would already fail.

One version of the conservative interpretation is not that the existing is beautiful. You can talk as much as you want about the ugliness of the existing.

The point is that any change should be based on the principle of responsibility, on understanding that if we change something, the main thing is not to worsen it. This is the main conservative message, and not that the existing is good.

Andrey Teslya. Photo: Irina Fastovets

But how then to make changes?

We can say that the key commandment of conservatism is: "Do no harm, do not destroy what is."

Is it possible to say that reactionism is an extreme degree of conservatism?

- Are you a conservative?

I emphasize that in the practice of action, radicalism, to a large extent, as a rule, demonstrates power in our country.

Conservatism is not the support or justification of any existing power, it is the recognition that power is valuable in itself.

- Here, as I understand it, this is a parallel with “all power is from God”, right? Is very similar.

- Of course.

- To this, the liberals will answer that we must first look at what this government is doing, how accountable it is to the people, and so on.

Andrey Teslya. Photo: Irina Fastovets

It is more interesting for me to understand the time than to act in it.

- Compared with…

- It means that they did not cheat on their wives, did not lie, did not deceive others?

- What's with the wives?

Was everything difficult in your personal life?

– How was the work on the book about Aksakov going? Have you worked in archives? Where did you get the materials from? Are there any unique materials that were not previously known?

- Are there any answers?

- Are you going to create a textbook of social thought of the 19th century in order to somehow present the views of different parties to people?

- Yes. There is a good saying: if you want to make God laugh, tell Him about your plans. I really hope that it will be, but it is better to talk about it when such a book appears.

We are afraid of the word "Russian" for no reason.

Yes, we can say that in the 18th century the word “Russian” was actively used, but this is a high style.

Now it is clear that when we talk about Russian, we are talking about citizenship. We emphasize the legal status of people or organizations. But when we talk about culture, it is somehow strange to define cultural affiliation by registration.

– Is it necessary to distinguish between legal aspects and some essential ones?

- Excellent Japanese writes books about Japan. He has already published the books Staying Japanese and Being Japanese. He is currently writing the third book in the series. I asked him: “Would you like to write the books “Be Russian” or “Stay Russian”? He says: "I'm not that well-read and I don't own so many sources, although it would be interesting." Would you like to write a book "Stay Russian", "Be Russian" to show people what it means to be Russian in a good way?

- No, I'm afraid that the status of a professional Russian is a little different.

– My question is related to the fact that people sometimes write about you and define you as a Russophile. Do you consider yourself a Russophile?

Who am I? Naturally, I am a person of Russian culture. Naturally, I am a person of the Russian space. I am wholly here. Yes, in my opinion, this is one of the few great cultures that exist. There are not many such great cultures. Therefore, it is understandable that we have various mixed feelings about our culture, but it is strange not to have warm feelings for it, it is strange not to love our native.

- He did not write the "History of the Russian State."

The February Revolution is a complete disaster

- The February Revolution, as you know, was a success: the sovereign signed the abdication, the Provisional Government came to power - everything was successful.

- Well, how? We wanted to build a democratic Russian Republic, but the Bolshevik Republic came ...

“I don't know who wanted to. Let's clarify.

- Recently we talked with the mathematician Alexei Sosinsky, and his grandfather, Social Revolutionary Viktor Chernov, the first and last chairman of the Constituent Assembly, wanted this.

Where was the bifurcation point? Where else did Russia have a moment of choice?

– Do you regret that Russia failed to become a bourgeois democracy?

- Why - there were no leaders, no idea?

Andrey Teslya. Photo: Irina Fastovets

I look with interest and concern at what is happening

– Is there a feeling that you are writing into the void? Are you getting the response to your books that you need to continue your research?

- Does it help or hinder you that you live not in Moscow, not in St. Petersburg, but in Khabarovsk?

- In a sense, your gaze is geographically directed to the west, and not to the east or south. Maybe in the near future you are planning to look to the east or to the south?

Video: Victor Aromshtam

The 19th century was the century of historicism, which for us today often looks quite anachronistic, with an attempt to find the “source” of its history, the moment of beginning that would predetermine the future, and peering into which one can best understand modernity. The past here played a dual role - as something that defines us and at the same time what we can change, consciously or out of ignorance, from misunderstanding, insufficient awareness of our past. The awareness of history was thus supposed to return the conscious to himself - he had to know who he is, and thereby change.

In the sixth "Philosophical letter" (1829) Chaadaev wrote:

“You have probably already noticed, madam, that the modern direction of the human mind is clearly striving to clothe all knowledge in a historical form. Reflecting on the philosophical foundations of historical thought, one cannot fail to notice that it is called upon to rise in our day to an immeasurably greater height than the one on which it stood until now. At the present time, it can be said that reason alone finds satisfaction in history; he constantly turns to the past tense and, in search of new possibilities, derives them exclusively from memories, from a review of the path traveled, from studies of those forces that directed and determined its movement over the centuries.

For Russian thought, disputes about the past and about the place of Russia in world history were directly addressed to the present - to place oneself in history meant for the 19th century, as in many ways for us today, to determine the position in the world, to justify some hopes and discard others, to indulge in despair. or be inspired by the enormity of the prospect. Determined by the present moment, the interpretation of the past in a return way gives us an understanding of the present, and on the basis of it we act, i.e., we perform actions directed to the future, and, therefore, no matter how true or not our understanding of the past was, it turns out to be real in its consequences.

Interest in past disputes in the history of Russian thought is determined not so much by their seeming “enduring relevance”, but by the fact that to this day we speak largely through an intellectual vocabulary, what arises in that era, we use the oppositions that were determined then, and, meeting with them in the past, we experience the “joy of recognition”, which often turns out to be only a consequence of a false identification.

The seeming relevance of the polemics of the past is due to the fact that over and over again we remove the texts of the past from their context - for example, “Westerners” and “Slavophiles” begin to meet far beyond the disputes in Moscow living rooms and on the pages of Otechestvennye Zapiski and Moskvityanin, being timeless concepts; equally applicable to the 1840s; and by the 1890s; and to the Soviet disputes of the 1960s; "Asiatic despotism" or "Oriental customs" with the same success begin to meet at least in the 20th century. BC; even in the 20th century. from R.H. The temptation to endow history with the function of clarifying the meanings of modernity leads to the fact that historical references themselves turn out to be timeless - history in this case takes on the role of philosophy; as a result, being untenable as a story; not like philosophy.

Against; if we talk about the relevance of the genuine; then it consists primarily in the restoration of the intellectual genealogy - ideas; images; symbols; which are presented as a first approximation "for granted"; almost "eternal"; disclosed at the time of their occurrence; when they are still only sketches, attempts to mark out the as yet undescribed "desert of reality". About the deservedly famous book by Fr. George Florovsky "Ways of Russian Theology" (1938) Nikolai Berdyaev responded; that it would be more accurate to call it “The Debauchery of Russian Thought” - historical analysis all led to the fact that they thought wrong; not about that; in the wrong order, or not at all. But even if we suddenly agree with such a sad assessment; and in this case the appeal to history will not be fruitless; after all business not only in a verdict; but also in understanding the logic of the disputes of the past: "there is a system in his madness." However; we ourselves do not think so - disappointment is usually the result of a previous charm; excessive hopes; waiting to find answers to the "last questions". But; as Karamzin wrote (1815); “any History; even unskillfully written; is pleasant; as Pliny says; especially domestic. […] Let the Greeks and Romans captivate the imagination: they belong to the family of the human race, and are not strangers to us in their virtues and weaknesses, glory and disasters; but the Russian name has a special charm for us […]”.

In the series "Crossroads of Russian Thought" it is planned to publish selected texts by Russian and Russian philosophers, historians and publicists, which are of decisive importance for the development of language, the definition of concepts and the formation of images that exist to this day, through which we comprehend and imagine Russia / the Russian Empire and its place in the world. Among the authors whose texts will be included in the series will be well-known figures such as V. G. Belinsky, A. I. Herzen, H. M. Karamzin, M. P. Katkov, A. S. Khomyakov, P. Ya Chaadaev, and less well-known now, but without acquaintance with whom the history of Russian social thought of the 19th century is clearly incomplete - MP Drahomanov, S. N. Syromyatnikov, B. N. Chicherin and others. The purpose of this series is to present the main milestones in the history of the debate about the Russian past and present of the 19th century - the golden age of Russian culture - without ideological straightening and reading into the texts of the past the momentary problems of modernity. It is our deep conviction that getting acquainted with the history of Russian public debates of the century before last without striving to transfer them directly to the present is a much more urgent task than trying to use these texts of the past as a ready-made ideological arsenal.

Alexander Herzen: the first experience of synthesis of Westernism and Slavophilism

On Herzen, as on a gifted sincere person, the evolution of an advanced person is visible. He went to the West, thinking that he would find better forms there. There, revolutions passed before his eyes, and he became disillusioned with the Western system and had a special love and hope for the Russian people.

For decades, Soviet intellectuals A.I. Herzen (1812–1870) was one of the few officially permitted "vents" - with all the fluctuations in the course regarding the interpretation of specific figures, with the constant revision of the pantheon, the promotion of some and the exclusion of others, his place was secured thanks to a largely accidental article by V.I. Lenin, written on the centenary of his birth, in 1912. He was one who was included in the genealogy of the forefathers of the Russian revolution, along with the Decembrists, among the "noble, landlord revolutionaries of the first half of the last century." And, like the Decembrists, for the Soviet world it was a legalized exit to another world - the world of noble life, other, far from "revolutionary ethics", ideas about what should be, other ways to live with oneself and with others.

Andrey Teslya:"New Imperial History of Northern Eurasia" was originally published in the journal Ab Imperio, and now published as a separate edition in two volumes. This, regardless of the attitude to the content, is a great event in Russian historiography, since the authors, as I see it, claim to create a new large narrative - to replace Karamzin, the logic proposed by him is seen as prevailing with all modifications to this day. This is both a summing up (of all the previous activities of a team of historians who at different stages gathered on the pages of the journal), and the beginning of a new stage - a claim to go beyond the "workshop", into a large space. It is significant that on the very first pages of this work they polemically mention Boris Akunin's "History ...", which clearly does not mean the professional community. At the same time, declaratively, the authors claim that they have no claims to a new grand narrative - their goal is more specific: the deconstruction of the existing, that which genealogically goes back to Karamzin. In your opinion, to what extent can you agree with the declared limited objectives of the course? After all, if we are talking about deconstruction, then isn’t fragmentary writing more logical? The logic of the demonstration of gaps - and not the construction of a coherent course, which in any case sets some monological frame of description?

Ivan Kurilla: It seems to me that the authors are cunning when they claim that their goal is the deconstruction of the narrative; they are quite good at designing something new. This new narrative is very interesting, sometimes controversial - but it is precisely the coherent presentation of the history of the region, which they prefer to call "Northern Eurasia".

Tesla: And how would you then characterize this narrative - especially in a comparative perspective? After all, you recently published a book about the concept of “history” that won the most favorable reviews: in this optics, how can you evaluate / describe this undertaking, if you take a large historiographic frame?

Kurilla: Thank you for your feedback - and yes, in the book you mentioned, I wrote about the request for new narratives, about the fact that the fragmentation of historical science into more and more detailed topics and chronological segments, understandable, based on the goal of a deeper analysis of specific problems, is increasingly alienating historians from potential readers of their writings outside their own shop. From this point of view, I cannot but welcome the attempt to propose such a new narrative, which, I am sure, many educated people who have an interest in history, but not such as to read specialized monographs, can read. The authors at the very beginning of their text mention a parallel attempt by Boris Akunin, which was a response to the same request from readers for a holistic story about the history of our part of the world. But there is also a trap here - the authors (unlike Akunin) are professional historians, but for that same non-professional reader they compete primarily with Akunin. We see that the authors have moved further away from the traditional structure of Russian history - but in the eyes of this general reader, these differences are not so obvious. If you look at the narrative through the eyes of historians (not being a historian of Russia, I, alas, cannot fully appreciate how much the authors took into account modern studies of Russian history), then a generalizing narrative is good if it encourages you to put some questions in a new way; based on a wider chronological or geographical framework, to see the opportunity to look at the sources from a different angle. It seems to me that in some plots the proposed narrative stimulates such turns.

Ab Empire, 2017

Tesla: In connection with the "New Imperial History ..." a number of critics from the historical community recalled the course of M.N. Pokrovsky, etc. - accusing the authors of ideological predestination and other sins. Without touching on this kind of topics for now, I want to ask you: how successful do you think the resulting project is - and what effects does it produce, in your opinion, according to its rhetorical model? After all, rhetoric, in the case of an appeal to a general reader, is one of the most important parts, and the course is deliberately presented as a “generalized voice”, without indicating the authorship of individual sections, without references, even with minimal ritual thanks that have come into modern use - that is, the course presented as a collective statement, in which separate voices should not be heard, they should sound like a single chorus.

Kurilla: The biggest difficulty that I experienced when reading the text is precisely this conscious “isolation” from the field of historical science: the authors do not formulate questions, do not indicate different assessments and interpretations, do not show the possibilities of different readings of sources, instead offering a coherent narrative. If I am not a specialist in the field that the authors write about (and I am not a specialist in Russian history in general and feel more or less confident only in the second third of the 19th century), then I want to understand where the authors repeat generally accepted ideas, where they argue with them, and where they simply write something new “from scratch”, without looking back at the existing historiography. You will remind that this laboratory is of interest only to historians, and the authors, as I myself said a little earlier, wrote for the general reader, but here I disagree. It seems to me that the most important goal of the historical course offered to the general reader should be to understand the possibility of various narratives, the existence of disputes both about sources and about estimates. This is not in the book, and this is its major drawback.

At the same time, the authors themselves write (at the beginning of the text) that their goal was “to create an internally logical and consistent narrative that overcomes the monologism and teleologism of standard review courses”; I doubt that a “coordinated narrative” is even possible, except from the point of view of the authors, but it seems to me that they rather strengthened the monologism (at least in my understanding of the word).

Tesla: Since for the authors of the course its ideological sound is a conscious attitude, then - if we digress a little and again turn to broader historical discussions - can an ideology not be "monologue" in essence? And, on the other hand, to what extent can a story addressed to a general reader not be ideologically loaded - even if it is a “diversity ideology”? If you consider it your goal to get away from “ideological”, then what do you see as possible strategies for this movement?

Kurilla: I may have missed something, but I do not see the authors' conscious attitude towards the "ideological sounding of the course." However, I agree that narratives, as a rule, are ideological to one degree or another. That is, in my view, the dependence is reversed: the point is not that ideology is monological, but that any monologue is ideological in its essence. That is why I do not have enough spoken questions to the past in the text - in the monologue-narrative, we see only answers to questions hidden from us. The open wording of the questions exposes what you called ideology, and this disarms it. A strategy for avoiding ideology could be an attempt to formulate several questions to the same material, asked from different (social, political, ideological) positions - but this probably still sounds utopian.

Tesla: Already the title of the text refers to the Eurasian (of course, strongly rethought and modified) concept of “local development”. Instead of political borders and political subjects of the present projected into the past, here we have the experience of relying on the geographical - as relatively stable: within this geographical framework, various things happen, but the spatial borders themselves remain stable - especially in conditions when the borders of the relatively recent past have largely disappeared. and the new frontiers were clearly called into question. How successful and, most importantly, productive do you think - capable of becoming a broad framework for subsequent work - such an approach within the designated boundaries?

Kurilla: I quite agree that projecting modern boundaries into the past when writing history is a bad practice. However, the authors proceed from the fact that in the first millennium a region was formed, the history of which they write. It seems to me that this region (and especially its borders) has been constantly redefined in the following millennium. When the authors describe the Mongol invasion, for example, they include in the history of the countries south of the region they described at the beginning - both China and the territories south of the Caspian. Then what is the value of the descriptive definition given at the beginning?

Nevertheless, the very attempt to write a text that is not tied to the decline and rise of Moscow, but describes the turn of events in other state (and proto-state) formations of the region, seems fruitful to me.

Tesla: Turning to your area of interest - what fruitful, original versions of the "big story" from modern times would you name? Where do you see the most productive and at the same time interesting for a wide audience options for historical writing?

Kurilla: I'm afraid to look ignorant, but I hardly know any modern examples of "big history". There are works related, rather, to the genre of historical sociology, there is a book by B.N. Mironov about the social history of Russia in the period of the empire - but I have doubts that it is easily read by a wide audience. Having tensed a little, I remembered an example that is no longer quite modern: in 1991, a work was published in several volumes under the general title “History of the Fatherland. People, ideas, decisions" - if my memory serves me, its authors made an attempt to tell about each of the controversial issues of national history as a live dispute between historians: from the book it was possible to obtain knowledge both about the events of the past and about what the modern interest in these events, what are the main differences in approaches to them. This is, in my opinion, the most productive approach to historical writing for the general public.

Tesla: The directly declared goal of the project is the development of a "new language" of description. Tell me how successful this attempt seems to you and to what extent there really is a need to develop a “new language” - after all, many of the description models used by the authors have a very respectable history and are already quite rooted, including thanks to the efforts of the authors of the “New Imperial History ...” , into local soil?

Kurilla: It is difficult for me to appreciate all the novelty of the language of description in this text. I see in some chapters the influence of constructivism close to me (in others it is not) - and if this is a new language, then very well. There is probably a need to develop a new language. But it seems to me that this new language should have integrated social and political history, but this text retains the state-centric character of the classics, with which the authors seem to argue.

Tesla: It seems to me that any attempt at a coherent long story, according to the very laws of the genre, should have a certain center, something that will become the subject of description - as, for example, in a novel of education it will be the story of a girl / boy on the path of growing up, “loss” or “ finding" oneself. Who or what can for us, in relation to our experience, become such a "subject" in the long run? How can you try to describe yourself from the past - and how, in your opinion, can you productively think about this "us", who this story is about?

Kurilla: For the authors, the declared “subject” is a certain space on which human collectives are self-determined. Actually, they did everything to prevent the reader from identifying himself with the inhabitants of R OU this land (as it was once described by Tamara Eidelman in the article “How we defeated the Khazar Khaganate”). It seems to me interesting (although not controversial) the proposal to present oneself as the heirs not of a specific (“ethnic”? state?) tradition, but of all the peoples who previously lived in Northern Eurasia, so that a resident, for example, between the Volga and Don rivers would represent himself as the successor only the Moscow archers sent there in the 16th century, or the peasants who fled to the Cossacks from enslavement - but also the inhabitants of the Golden Horde, and the Pechenegs, and even the Sarmatians, who previously mastered this space in their own way. This notion enriches our own past.

Tesla: Both in the title of the course and in the text, not only clearly, but even persistently, the claim to “novelty” is stated - how justified is it, in your opinion? How much is here from the declaration - and how much from the real break with the previous schemes? And if the latter, then what seems to you the most productive, and what, rather, is in doubt?

Kurilla: And again, it is difficult for me to answer: I repeat, I am not a specialist in Russian history, and my assessment of novelty will not be fair - for this you need to be much more familiar with existing historiography. I liked the attempt to go beyond the history of Kievan-Moscow Rus, considering these state formations among others, neighboring ones.

Tesla: Since the course is addressed to a wide educated reader, how successful do you think the idea of a consistent chronological "enlargement" of what is depicted - from a cursory digression into the distant past up to almost five hundred pages devoted to the last century and a little of the existence of the empire? Thus, does it not turn out that the closer the past is to us, the greater its significance for us - and thus history is focused on the "genealogy of modernity", affirming the projection of modernity into the past? Is not too much given in this case to the understanding of modernity, not only not explicitly mentioned anywhere, but also, by definition, not being the subject of special, professional knowledge of the authors - that is, do they not risk reading the past from the angle of just a common understanding of modernity? It seems to me that in this case, a specific text allows us to reach a much more fundamental problem - the dependence of historical knowledge not only on modernity, but also on the fact that the historian, by definition, refers to modernity as a layman.

Kurilla: Yes, I also drew attention to the disproportionate ratio of individual chapters - as if the authors wrote about different periods in volumes proportional to the volume of sources available for them (and this is another hypothesis that does not connect the problem with the "modern genealogy"). Here, however, the authors are a little betrayed by the reservation at the beginning of the text - that they "managed to create the first modern historical narrative that does not meet with fundamental objections from local communities of historians in post-Soviet societies, which is a unique scientific and political achievement." "Political Achievement" unequivocally puts the text in the context of modern battles for history (I can't say that I condemn this, but perhaps it would be worthwhile to write it outright then).

Tesla: History, I will allow myself a somewhat naive statement, is always a place of "battles" or "battles", but in relation to us - where, in your opinion, are the most significant "front lines" for the historical community itself now and how do you assess the immediate prospects for the development of events in terms of these confrontations?

Kurilla: Today, only the external “front” seems to be quite obvious - the defense of the historical community from the onslaught of presentist approaches that sacrifice history for the sake of convenient myths - political, ideological or sociocultural. There are many splits within the community, but it seems to me that there are no “fronts” here: historians do not fight with each other, despite different methodologies, agendas, or even ideological biases. Nevertheless, rivalry exists: for example, between a history, say, more traditional for Russia, close to positivism in its distrust of theory and emphasis on careful work with sources, on the one hand, and a more internationalized history that poses unusual questions to the past (sometimes, according to the supporters of the first approach, to the detriment of thoroughness in the processing of sources), on the other. The authors of the "New Imperial History of Northern Eurasia" represent, of course, the second group - and it seems to me that it has a chance to shake the dominance of the first in the period of generational change in Russian historical science. However, I understand that this is a very simplified scheme - even in Soviet times, there were people among Russian historians who were able to change the research agenda (I will remember A.Ya. Gurevich for example), and among those who today bring new questions, there are many people who have spent many years in the archives and understand the meaning and meaning of such work. Therefore, I still do not see a "front" and conflict here - rather, we are moving towards a new synthesis.

Teslya A.A. Russian conversations: Persons and situations. - M.: RIPOL-Classic, 2017. - 512 p.

The book is now available for purchase at the 19th Non/Fiction Book Fair. And from the end of next week it will appear in the main bookstores, and within the next 2 weeks - in online stores.

The Russian 19th century is significant for us today, at least in that it was precisely at that time - in disputes and conversations, in mutual understanding or misunderstanding - that social language and that system of images and ideas were developed, with which we, voluntarily or involuntarily, fortunately or to our detriment, we continue to use to this day. The series of essays and notes presented in this book reveals some of the key plots of the Russian intellectual history of that time, connected with the question of the place and purpose of Russia - that is, its possible future, conceivable through the past. The first book in the series focuses on such figures as Pyotr Chaadaev, Nikolai Polevoy, Ivan Aksakov, Yuri Samarin, Konstantin Pobedonostsev, Afanasy Shchapov, and Dmitry Shipov. People of different philosophical and political views, different origins and status, different fates - all of them, directly or in absentia, were and remain participants in the ongoing Russian conversation. The author of the collection is a leading specialist in Russian social thought of the 19th century, a senior researcher at the Academia Kantiana of the Institute for the Humanities of the IKBFU. Kant (Kaliningrad), Candidate of Philosophical Sciences Andrey Alexandrovich Teslya.

Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
instead of an introduction. About memory, history and interest. . . eight

Part 1. NOBLE DISPUTES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . fifteen
1. Immutability of Chaadaev. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2. Russia and "others" in the views of Russian conservatives. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
3. Retarded person. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
4. "The myth of the Jesuits" in the absence of the Jesuits. . . . . 171
5. Yuri Fedorovich Samarin and his correspondence
with Baroness Edita Fedorovna Raden. . . . . . . . . 221
6. Positively beautiful Russian people. . . . . . 254
7. "Ladies' circle" of Slavophilism: letters of I.S. Aksakov to gr. M.F. Sollogub, 1862-1878 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268

Part 2. ACTION AND REACTION. . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
8. Russian fate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337
9. Russian conservative: about the system of political views of K.P. Pobedonostsev 1870-1890s . . . 366
10. "Starozemets" D.N. Shipov. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
11. Conservatives in search of the future. . . . . . . . . . . 469
12. Publicist of failed Russian fascism. . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 494
List of abbreviations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505
Information about the articles included in the present edition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506
Thanks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 508

Portal for the student. Self-training

I feel bad where there is no powerful river, sea or ocean