This year marks 110 years since the beginning of the first Russian revolution. At illegal meetings of workers (may days dedicated to May 1) and during the revolutionary events of 1905-06, the song “Workers’ Marseillaise” was popular among the rebellious workers of Moscow, St. Petersburg and other Russian cities, in which there were the following lines: “Let us renounce the old world, Let us shake off his ashes from our feet, Golden idols are hostile to us, the royal chamber is hated by us. Get up, get up working people! Go to the enemy, hungry people. Resound the cry of revenge of the people! Forward! Forward! Forward!" The author of this poetic work, performed to the tune of the French Marseillaise, written in 1875 and which became a kind of Russian revolutionary anthem, was Pyotr Lavrov, a scientist, philosopher and poet, a prominent ideologist of revolutionary populism.
Pyotr Lavrovich Lavrov was born in 1823 into a noble family of a colonel and a wealthy landowner, in the Pskov province. In 1842, after graduating from the Artillery School, he taught mathematics there. Later he became a professor at the St. Petersburg Artillery Academy, receiving the rank of colonel. In the 1950s, he appeared as a publicist in various magazines on various topics. His interests included philosophy, sociology, anthropology, politics, morality, history of literature, art and religion. Then he becomes close to Nikolai Chernyshevsky, participates in the populist organization "Land and Freedom". In 1866, Lavrov was exiled to the Vologda province for the publication of poems in the appendix "The Bells" by Alexander Herzen. Here he wrote the famous "Historical Letters", which, according to the philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev, became the moral catechism of the populist intelligentsia. In 1870, Lavrov emigrates and, having settled in Paris, participates in the activities of the Anthropological Society and becomes a member of the First International.
In 1871, Lavrov took an active part in the Paris Commune, acting as the author of one of the appeals "To the citizens of the Paris Commune." In order to organize assistance to the besieged Paris Commune, he traveled to London, where he met Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. After the bloody suppression of the Communards, in 1875 and 1879 Lavrov wrote two works devoted to the analysis of the reasons for the defeat of the Paris Commune. Being associated with many years of friendship with Marx and Engels and participating in the First International, he maintained contact with the revolutionaries in Russia, edited the most important populist publications, the journal and newspaper Vperyod (1873-76), and together with Plekhanov took an active part in the publication of the Social Revolutionary library” which published the Manifesto of the Communist Party and other works of Marx and Engels, the works of Chernyshevsky and Lassalle.
In 1879, the illegal populist "Land and Freedom" split into "People's Will" (A. Zhelyabov, S. Perovskaya, V. Figner, N. Morozov), who advocated revolutionary terror and a more moderate "Black Redistribution" (G. Plekhanov) . On March 1, 1881, Emperor Alexander II was killed with an explosive projectile on the Catherine Canal in St. Petersburg. The course of limited and inconsistent reforms was replaced by the policy of authoritarian counter-reforms of Emperor Alexander III.
Since 1881, together with Vera Zasulich, P. Lavrov became a foreign representative of the Red Cross of the "Narodnaya Volya", for which in February 1882 he was expelled from France by the French government. After moving to London, he edited together with Lev Tikhomirov at the suggestion of the Narodnaya Volya Executive Committee "Vestnik Narodnaya Volya" (1883 - 86). Lavrov was a member of the First Congress of the Second International in 1889. He collaborated with Georgy Plekhanov, but after his transition to a Marxist position, he diverged from the Emancipation of Labor group founded by him in 1883 in his views on the prospects and driving forces of the revolution in Russia.
Unlike Bakunin and Tkachev, he advocated a thorough preparation of the social revolution, both for the masses of the people and for conscious revolutionaries. He criticized Tkachev for the Blanquist concept of the revolution as a conspiracy and his "Jacobinism". Lavrov was the ideologist of the so-called "going to the people", which began in 1874, when young radicals, risking their lives, went to propagate revolutionary and socialist ideas in the Russian countryside. That is why his direction was called propaganda. In turn, Pyotr Tkachev, a supporter of the ideas of Auguste Blanqui, who had collaborated with the Vperyod magazine since 1873, disagreed with Lavrov on tactical issues, accusing him of liberalism and urging the revolutionary minority to make a revolution, and not prepare for it.
Nikolai Berdyaev wrote that in Russia “a peculiar type of “repentant nobleman” was created, who was aware of his social, and not personal sin, the sin of his social position and repented of it.
Vladimir Lenin singled out three characteristic features of populism: the recognition of capitalism in Russia as a decline, a regression; recognition of the originality of the Russian economic system in general and the peasant with his community, artel; ignoring the connection between the "intelligentsia" and the legal and political institutions of the country with the material interests of certain social classes.
Historians divide revolutionary populism into three main strands. Propaganda, which was headed by Pyotr Lavrov, conspiratorial or Blanquist, led by Pyotr Tkachev, and anarchist ideological leaders of which were Mikhail Bakunin and Pyotr Kropotkin.
At the same time, Nikolai Berdyaev, in The Origins and Meaning of Russian Communism, proposed a very broad interpretation of populism as a social phenomenon in the middle and second half of the 19th century in Russia. In his opinion, representatives of religious populism, to which he included the Slavophiles, “believed that religious truth was hidden in the people, and populism, non-religious and often anti-religious (Herzen, Bakunin and the populist socialists of the 70s) believed that social truth was hidden in it. truth".
P. Lavrov was an original philosopher. At first, he stood on the positions of "determinism in the form of theistic fatalism", considering poetry to play a reconciliatory role between religion and science. Then he moves to atheistic positions, writes the work Anthropological Point of View in Philosophy (1862), criticizing idealism and materialism, calls his position anthropological. Lavrov was influenced by the ideas of positivism and agnosticism, proclaiming a skeptical principle that denies knowledge of the essence of things, in which both "spiritual substance" and "material substance" were declared unknowable. In cognition of the objective material world, a person cannot go beyond the limits of the world of phenomena known by human experience. The theory of subjective sociology organically followed from his philosophical views, according to which critical individuals guided by progressive moral ideals play a decisive role in social progress.
According to Lavrov, the criterion of social progress is the growth of human solidarity, the ever more complete embodiment in the human community of the ideas of equality and justice, which acts as the moral ideal of a critically thinking person.
The thinker devoted to the problems of sociology and the development of the original concept of the social revolution "Essays on Practical Philosophy", "Who Owns the Future", "The Experience of the History of Modern Thought", "The Tasks of Socialism", "Experiences of the Prehistoric Period", "The Tasks of Understanding History". "Project for an Introduction to the Study of the Evolution of Human Thought".
Lavrov attached particular importance to the role of the moral principle in the revolution "Social Revolution and the Tasks of Morality" (1884). Criticizing the anarchism of Bakunin and his followers, Larov, in The State Element in the Future Society (1876), advocated the establishment of a revolutionary dictatorship after the socialist revolution had taken place. On the contrary, Lavrov argues, the state element can exist with the development of workers' socialism for a long historical period and at the same time it should be reduced to the possible minimum.
According to Lavrov the moral duty of a socialist is to fight against the social injustice of the modern world, to prepare and carry out a social revolution in the interests of the working people. Socialism, a social theory developed by the progressive minds of mankind, advocates such a restructuring of society that would once and for all put an end to all forms of oppression of man by man and organize society on the principles of voluntary cooperation and mutually beneficial cooperation.
Under the influence of the labor movement, the ideas of Marx and Engels, and the activities of the International, Lavrov assigned a decisive role in the social revolution in the West to the proletariat. In Russia, he placed his hopes on the peasant masses and the village community, with its absence of private landed property.
Declaring himself a supporter of "rational patriotism" in his "Historical Letters", reflecting on the role of the nation in historical progress, based on his subjective method, Lavrov assigns a decisive role to critically thinking individuals who, in his opinion, give the nation as a whole a progressive or reactionary character, acting as "rational patriots" or obscurants.
Lavrov assigned an important role in the preparation of the social revolution to the organized revolutionary party, in fact anticipating Lenin's ideas about a new type of party. “The one who demoralizes the party, introduces partisanship and separatism, factionalism, discord and decay into its ranks, is a traitor to socialist ideals,” Lavrov believed. He advocated the unification of both industrial and agricultural workers in the ranks of the Socialist Party. "The social revolution in Russia," Lavrov argued, "must be prepared by a secret organization of revolutionary forces operating through propaganda and agitation until they are large enough to produce a vast revolutionary explosion."
Pyotr Lavrovich Lavrov died in Paris on January 25, 1900. He was buried in the Montparnasse cemetery. After the victory of the February Revolution in Russia, the Provisional Government approved "La Marseillaise" as the national anthem on March 2, 1917, according to the old style - 5 days after the abdication of Nicholas II. At first, it was performed to the original French melody, but then the composer A.K. Glazunov modified the music to better fit the Russian text by Pyotr Lavrov.
Revolutionary populism as a whole had a huge impact on the further development of the democratic and socialist movement in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. His historical romanticism and revolutionary maximalism contributed to the radicalization of public sentiment in the country. It is no coincidence that the Soviet writer Yuri Trifonov called his historical novel, dedicated to the Russian revolutionaries of the People's Will - "Impatience".
Slides captions:
“You can not only be proud of your history, but you should” A.S. Pushkin
Series (continuation of the enumeration, define the element of the series, etc.)
1. Indicate an extra name among Russian diplomats: 1) P. P. Shafirov 2) P. A. Tolstoy 3) M. B. Barclay de Tolly 4) M. I. Kutuzov
2. Which of the listed series makes up the dates of the beginning of the wars waged by Russia? 1) 1556, 1648, 1812, 1884 2) 1558, 1632, 1700, 1768 3 ) 1499, 1590, 1812, 18934) 1558, 1812, 1876, 1890
3. By what principle are the rows formed (give a short answer)? Complete the row or fill in the gap in it. A) 1505, 1533, 1584, ________ g. I. Brezhnev, Yu. V. Andropov.
3. By what principle are the rows formed (give a short answer)? Complete the row or fill in the gap in it. A) 1505, 1533, 1584, 1598. The beginning of the reign of monarchs in the 16th century Stalin, N.S. Khrushchev, L. I. Brezhnev, Yu. V. Andropov. Leaders of the party, the Soviet state
Which of the listed series is made up only of the names of Russian composers? 1) M. I. Glinka, V. F. Odoevsky, M. P. Mussorgsky, N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov , M. I. Glinka, A. I. Kuprin3) D. B. Kabalevsky, L. N. Pakhmutova, M. I. Glinka, A. K. Glazunov4) Ts. A. Cui, P. I. Tchaikovsky, M P. Mussorgsky, N. N. Ge
Fill in the gap in the row.
1. "The Bell", A. I. Herzen; "Forward", P. L. Lavrov; ________________, V. I. Lenin, L. Martov.2. "The Tale of Igor's Campaign", a campaign against the Polovtsians in 1187; "The Song of the Click", _____________________________________________; "Zadonshchina", Battle of Kulikovo 1380
Answers
1. "The Bell", A. I. Herzen; "Forward", P. L. Lavrov; "Spark", V. I. Lenin, L. Martov.2. "The Tale of Igor's Campaign", a campaign against the Polovtsians in 1187; "Song of the Click", Horde's army of Cholkhan against Tver; "Zadonshchina", Battle of Kulikovo 1380
Fill in the gap in the row.
1) Operation "Bagration", the liberation of Belarus; ........., counteroffensive near Stalingrad; operation "Kutuzov", the offensive of the Red Army in the Oryol direction. 2) Orders, collegiums, ministries, ………, ministries.
Answers
1) Operation "Bagration", the liberation of Belarus; Operation "Uranus", the counteroffensive near Stalingrad; operation "Kutuzov", the offensive of the Red Army in the Oryol direction. 2) Orders, boards, ministries, people's commissariats, ministries.
On the literacy of writing historical terms
1. Chr…st…matia; 2. C ... l ... baht; 3. D ... lm ... us; 4. ... built in ... p ... tech; 5. M…m…r…al;
Answers
1) Reader - a textbook, a collection of selected texts; 2) Celibacy - mandatory celibacy of the Catholic clergy; 3) Dolmens - structures in the form of huge stone slabs and boulders; 4) Australopithecus - a fossil great ape. 5) Memorial - serving to perpetuate the memory of someone or about something.
Document with external and internal criticism
The “cross-kissing note”, in which a promise was made: “... You will not betray death without judging by the true judgment of your boyars”, is associated with the name of: 1) Boris Godunov 2) Mikhail Romanov 3) Vasily Shuisky 4) Ivan IV
……
“The history of Europe does not know of another revolution that would be so fruitless in its outcome and its consequences. For 10 years, this revolution shook the whole country, flooded it with torrents of blood and covered it with ruins, but it itself did not introduce a single new beginning into the life of the people, did not indicate a new path for its future development. It swept through in a destructive and fruitless hurricane. Having gone through many changes of dynasties and political and social orders, the Russia of autocratic tsars returned to its starting point through this long detour.
Peter I owns the confession: “... This sovereign is my predecessor and model; I have always imagined him as a model of my government in civil and military affairs, but I have not yet managed to get as far as he is.” Who are we talking about? Briefly justify your opinion.
Answer
Ivan IV. “... This sovereign is my predecessor and model; (what was done according to the “model”?) I always imagined him as a model of my government in civil and military affairs, but I didn’t manage to go as far as he did.”
What Russian monarchs is this about?
A) “He grew up with a generation that for the first time was forced by need to carefully and anxiously look at the heretical West in the hope of finding there means to get out of domestic difficulties, without renouncing the concepts, habits and beliefs of pious antiquity.” B) “.. He was modest in everyday life, thrifty, loved simple Russian dishes (shchi, porridge, jelly). In foreign policy ... he was guided by the peacekeeping idea, for he believed that "strong and lasting alliances cannot be established by force of war." He destroyed the poll tax, replaced by various fees that fell mainly on the rich strata of the population.
C) He "... set himself the task of not changing anything, not introducing anything new in the foundations, but only maintaining the existing order." “No one better than him was created for the role of an autocrat ... His impressive and majestic beauty, majestic posture, strict correctness of the Olympic profile, imperious look, everything breathed an unearthly deity, an omnipotent ruler ... This man never experienced a shadow of doubt in his power or in its legitimacy. D) “He was not averse to plucking the flowers of foreign culture, but did not want to dirty his hands in the dirty work of sowing it on Russian soil.”
Answer:
A) Alexei Mikhailovich B) Alexander IIIC) Nicholas IG) Alexei Mikhailovich
What prince is this about?
“... Taking with him his brother, Prince Vladimir Andreevich, and all the princes of Russia, he went to bow to his spiritual father, the reverend elder Sergius, who said to him: “Go, sir, to the filthy Polovtsy, calling on God ...”: 1) Ivan III2 ) Dmitry Donskoy3) Yaroslav the Wise4) Vladimir Monomakh
Read an excerpt from the work of V. O. Klyuchevsky and determine who it is about.
“At the beginning of the reign, under the influence of the December 14 movement, rumors spread among the peasant population about the imminent liberation. To stop them, the new emperor issued a manifesto in which he directly stated that no change would be made in the position of the serfs, but at the same time it was secretly instilled through the governors of the landowners that they observe "legal and Christian treatment" with the peasants. The idea of liberating the peasants occupied the emperor in the first years of his reign, and he carefully looked out for people who could accomplish this important deed ... "
Analyze the given passage and answer the questions.
From the notes of I. S. Konev“This was the third major counteroffensive during the Great Patriotic War. The transition of our troops to the counteroffensive was a complete surprise for Hitler, since the German command did not reveal our plan of deliberate defense. Moreover, the Germans, as already noted, had little success, only managing to penetrate our defenses in the Bryansk direction to a depth of 35 km. The offensive of the troops of the Western and Bryansk fronts, which began on July 12, violated the entire defense of the enemy on the Oryol bridgehead. By the end of July 13, the 11th Guards Army had penetrated 25 km into the enemy’s defenses, and a week after the start of the offensive, it advanced to a depth of 70 km, posing a threat to the main communications of the enemy’s Oryol grouping from the northwest. The troops of the Bryansk Front also achieved significant success. 1. Indicate the name and year of the battle of the Great Patriotic War referred to in the passage. 2. Using the text, indicate the features of this battle.
Determining the name of a historical source
Determine the source from which this fragment is taken: “And if only the wife does not listen to the instruction, and does not heed and is not afraid, and does not do what her husband teaches, then whip with a whip, looking at the fault, and beat not in front of people, but in private : to teach and say and welcome and not be angry with either the wife at her husband or the husband at his wife ": 1) Sudebnik 1497 2) "Great Cheti - Menaia" 3) "Domostroy" 4) "Youth honest mirror"
The student accidentally got into the hands of an excerpt from the document:
“And which peasants ... for whom they are written in the census books of the past 154 and 155, and after those census books, because of those people for whom they are written in the census books, they fled, or will continue to be taught to run: and those fugitives peasants, and their brothers, and children, and nephews, and grandchildren, with wives and children, and with all their bellies, and with standing bread and milk milk, to give from the fugitives to those people because of whom they run out, according to census books without school years , and henceforth, no one else's peasants should be accepted, and they should not be kept behind him. ”He did not fully understand the meaning of what he had read. Help him by completing the tasks and answering the questions: 1) Write in the modern chronology of the year corresponding to the “154th and 155th years” indicated in the document. 2) What are the lesson years? student's hands.
Answer
1) 1646 and 1647. 2) The terms during which the landowners could return the fugitive peasants.
Correction of errors in the text
The student asked a classmate to check his work, underline all the mistakes made and number them. A classmate was not up to the mark. Instead of the three errors that were actually in the work, he found six. Your task: by writing “yes” (if this is a correct statement) or “no” (if it is erroneous) next to the corresponding number and correct those statements that you consider erroneous. In Ancient Russia there was a digital system that came from the Greeks (1). The use of zero (2) facilitated calculations, and letters (3) were used to denote other numbers. To distinguish an alphabetic entry from a digital one, a special icon (4) was placed above the letter, which was called “tax” (5), and to designate thousands, the corresponding letter was circled (6).
Answer
1) Yes. 2) No, there was no zero in the digital systems of Ancient Russia. 3) Yes. 4) Yes. 5) No, the icon was called "titlo".
From the proposed images, select three related ones. Write down their numbers in the table. Briefly justify your choice.
Check out the statistical table. Complete tasks. Bread production in 1909−1913
Social groups
Gross fees
marketable bread
Marketability percentage
million poods
%
million poods
%
Landowners Peasants Including: prosperous
60044001900
12,088,038,0
281,01019,0650,0
21,678,450,0
47,023,234,0
middle and poor
2500
50,0
369,0
28,4
14,7
total: total
5000
100,0
1300,0
100,0
26,0
. 1. Write down the names of social groups in the order that corresponds to their role in the production of bread. Start with the social group that produced the most bread.2. Write down the names of social groups in the order that corresponds to their role in the production of marketable bread. Start with the social group that produced the largest amount of marketable bread.3. Write down the names of social groups in the order that corresponds to the level of marketability of their farms. Start with the social group with the highest percentage of marketability4. Formulate the conclusions that follow from the comparison of these three lists. What do you think were the reasons for the low marketability of the middle and poor peasant farms?
Solve the crossword "The Great Patriotic War 1941 - 1945."
Composer whose Seventh Symphony was performed in besieged Leningrad. Participant in the storming of Berlin, together with M. Yegorov, hoisted the Red Banner over the Reichstag building. The name of the German plan for the invasion of the USSR. Soviet military leader, since June 1942. Headed the General Staff. City in East Prussia, liberated by the Red Army. Hero of the Soviet Union, commander of the 316 rifle division that defended Moscow in 1941. Name of the operation to liberate Belarus. City in Germany, near which the meeting of Soviet and American armies took place. Commander of a large partisan unit in Ukraine. Poet, creator of "Vasily Terkin". The selected vertical line should contain the name of the city, which is famous for one of the main battles of the war. Indicate the name of the process during the Great Patriotic War, which was initiated by this battle. Write a timeline for this battle. (26 points: 2 points for each correct answer)
Map task: What event is shown on the map? What historical figures is associated with?
9-11 grades. Second round. Part one.
A. S. Pushkin wrote: “It is not only possible, but also necessary, to be proud of one’s history.” Our Russia in its historical past has many bright, unforgettable pages that tell about victories in various spheres of life: military victories, in the field of diplomacy, economic and political victories, victories of the spirit of Russians, victories in the field of literature, art, science, sports ... Imagine imagine that the museum "Victory of Russia" is being created. You need to make an exposition of one of its halls. Dream up! Prepare this mini-project in a relatively short time (one and a half astronomical hours).
To complete the project, you must: 1) answer the question: what do you understand by the words "Victory of Russia" ?; 2) designate the theme of the exposition of the hall (give a chronological framework for the events and phenomena that will be discussed; name the aspects of the country's history that will be reflected in exposition; formulate the name of the exposition); 3) determine the goal that you are pursuing by offering this topic to visitors. What feelings, thoughts do you want to evoke in them?; 4) list the exhibits of the hall: - name them; - describe each of them; show how they work to reveal the theme of the exposition; - reveal the relationship of the exhibits; 5) in a short time you will not be able to tell about more than one hall of our museum, and what other halls would you like to open in it? Give their names so that it is clear what they are talking about.
The criteria for evaluating your assignment are:
1. The meaningfulness of understanding what is the victory of Russia.2. The personal nature of the task, the disclosure of one's own point of view in it.3. Historical accuracy and literacy in the choice and title of the theme of the exposition.4. The accuracy of formulating the purpose of exposure.5. Correspondence of the selection of exhibits to the theme of the exposition and its purpose.6. Scientific in the use of historical terms and facts of history in the description of exhibits.7. General composition of the hall.8. The quality of the proposed additional topics (names of additional museum halls).
Part Two - Essay
An essay is a subjective genre and therefore especially valuable, through this work one can see the personality of the author, the originality of his position, style of thinking, speech, attitude to the world, and, of course, determine the level of his historical preparation;
the essay-essay is characterized by a small volume; - an important feature of the essay-essay is free composition. An essay, by its nature, is arranged in such a way that it does not tolerate any formal framework; - an essay essay characterizes the ease of narration; - the starting point for reflections embodied in an essay is often an aphoristic, vivid statement or a paradoxical definition that literally collides at first glance indisputable, but mutually exclusive statements, characteristics, theses. Thus, the essay characterizes paradoxicality;
- for all the paradoxical nature of the essay, its indispensable characteristic is the internal semantic unity, i.e., the consistency of key theses and statements, the internal harmony of arguments and associations, the consistency of those judgments in which the author’s personal position is expressed; - the essay remains fundamentally incomplete - the author is not claims to be an exhaustive disclosure of the topic, a complete, complete analysis. This is such a feature of an essay as openness.
Essay classifications
- in terms of content, essays are philosophical, literary-critical, historical, artistic, artistic-journalistic, spiritual-religious, etc.;
- from the standpoint of compositional features, they are divided into: descriptive, narrative, reflective, critical, analytical, etc.; - according to the degree of representation of the author's personal position, a division is made into a personal, subjective essay, where the main element is the disclosure of one or another side of the author's personality, and an objective essay, where the personal beginning is subordinated to the subject of description or some idea.
When choosing a topic, it is important to answer yourself a number of questions:
- Is this topic interesting for me? - Do I understand the meaning of the topic? - Do I have the knowledge and skills to reveal it? - If not, what needs to be done to resolve the issue in a positive sense? - How do I feel about expressed in the topic (agree, disagree, partially agree)?
Criteria for evaluating an essay
WRITTEN WORK1. Knowledge of historical facts.2. Possession of theoretical material (concepts, terms, etc.).3. Argumentation of judgments and conclusions.4. Knowledge of the historiography of the problem, opinions of historians.5. Internal semantic unity, compliance with the theme.6. Originality of problem solving, argumentation.
PRESENTATION 1. The ability to briefly present the main provisions of the work, its goals.2. Answers to questions (argumentation, evidence, accuracy).3. Inclusion in the oral presentation of additional aspects of the topic.
REVIEW1. Independence of judgments.2. Correctness and conclusiveness of the assessment of the peer-reviewed work.3. Accuracy of questions, connection with the main theme.
Philosopher Pyotr Lavrov was the first in Russia to develop the theory of party building, witnessed the collapse of the idea of "going to the people" and predicted the future of the Bolsheviks. The discussion that took place in the International "Memorial" was dedicated to his personality. "Lenta.ru" cites excerpts from the report of one of the speakers - candidate of historical sciences Vasily Zverev.
Philosophy and revolution
After the arrest of Nikolai Chernyshevsky and after Alexander Herzen hit the Bell, Russia turned away from their ideas. What did they leave behind? An absolutely unformed ideal of socialist arrangement and no answer to the question of what to do next. A timeless period has begun. The interval from 1862 to 1863 was marked by an attempt by German Lopatin to create a "Ruble Society", there were Ishutins (a secret revolutionary society founded by the utopian socialist Nikolai Ishutin in Moscow), there was Sergey Nechaev. And of course, on March 4, 1866, there was an attempt on Alexander II.
But I believe that a new revolutionary upsurge began in 1869, and it is associated with the name of Pyotr Lavrov. This is a year of trial and error, the search for options for action. Three important events took place in 1869: the neutral, legal newspaper Nedelya began publishing Lavrov's historical letters; a long article by Nikolai Mikhailovsky "What is Progress" appears in Otechestvennye Zapiski; and, finally, the “non-chaev process” begins.
What is significant and indicative of Pyotr Lavrov? He is a practical man, but first and foremost he is a positivist philosopher. Lavrov's "historical letters" became the catechism of all the active forces of society. At the head of all the participants in the "going to the people" lay his book, they read it - Lavrov perfectly used the positivist approach. Reading it, I want to say: well, that's enough, I convinced, well, filled up with facts, forced me to an agreement.
In many views, he was close to Chernyshevsky, but if Chernyshevsky is not a revolutionary, then Lavrov is definitely. If we take the three apostles - Lavrov, Tkachev and Bakunin, then the first of them is the most moderate, but at the same time the most consistent and conclusive.
Lavrov's main merit is the development of the subjective method in sociology. The merit that he shares with Mikhailovsky is the substantiation of the role of the individual in history, the active position of activity. Lavrov pointed out who can be considered a critically thinking person: one who not only enriched his memory with all the achievements of civilization, but also lives in the interests of the people, because further the idea of an enlightened person should turn into the idea of an active person.
In Herzen, this topic is only indicated - he said that the people and the enlightened part of society are connected by a thin thread of a pontoon. Lavrov, on the other hand, believed that the intelligentsia should pay its debt to the people.
Then the philosopher marks the next stage, speaking of the period of the martyrs and those who will suffer for the idea. These loners should set an example, challenge the existing system. Yes, they will die, but many will learn from their experience. The next stage after this is the preliminary association of people interested in one problem. No, this is not yet an organization, not a party, but a circle of like-minded people.
When Lavrov lived in France, where he was actively involved in the work of the Vperyod magazine, he wrote a letter to Mikhailovsky in Vienna with an offer to come and collaborate on the publication. To this he received an answer: “Preparing a revolution and preparing people for a revolution are two different things. I want the younger generation to meet the revolution not with Moleschotte on their lips, but with the knowledge of real action, so I decline your offer. To each his own, I'm not a revolutionary."
This recognition is the fundamental difference between them, because by that time Lavrov had become a sincere and consistent revolutionary. He believed that the existing regime, except for a revolution, could not be overthrown by anything. Lavrov went through a stage of possible reformism, enthusiasm for the reform process of Alexander II, and until the end of his life he had no doubts - only a revolution.
Seer
An important point: it was Lavrov who became the developer of the first theory of party building in Russia. His approach was fundamentally different from the attempts of Nechaev and the attempts that were justified by Bakunin. Bakunin said: a revolutionary needs to go to the people, raise them to fight, for this 25-50 people are enough, not united by anything. Lavrov argued: no, the organization itself should be formed, but it should be formed on a democratic basis, where there will be no dictatorship, where everyone will completely trust each other, and at the same time it should be a fairly secret association of like-minded people. This will not happen immediately, the work must be done gradually. A long preparation is necessary, and only when the desire and mood of the people indicate the time and place of action, the revolution should take place.
At the same time, Lavrov in Historical Letters has such visionary words about the meaning of the ideology that the party should be guided by:
“[Without ideology] the party of fighters for truth and justice is no different from the routinists of the social system against which it fights. Their banner is inscribed with words that once stood for truth and justice, but now stand for nothing. And they will repeat these loud words a thousand times. And the youth will believe them, putting their understanding, their soul, their life into these words. And she will lose faith in her leaders and in her banners. And the renegades will drag yesterday's shrine through the mud. And the reactionaries will ridicule these banners, defiled by the very ones who carry them. And the great, immortal words of new people will be waiting, which will return their meaning to them, embody them in deeds. But the old party, which has sacrificed everything for victory, may not win, but, in any case, will petrify in its meaningless stagnation.
Failure of going to the people
Lavrov was criticized both from the left and from the right. The liberals did not accept these ideas at all, and on the left he was criticized by the harshest critic Pyotr Tkachev, who first collaborated with Lavrov, and then quarreled with him and created his own Nabat. They disagreed on the type of party. In the only memoirs of Lenin's personal secretary, Bonch-Bruevich, which were published in 1932 (later these lines were removed from all memoirs), he recalls that Lenin said: “Of all of them [referring to Bakunin, Lavrov and Tkachev] we [the Bolsheviks ] it was Tkachev who came up.”
By and large, it was Tkachev who spoke about the need to create a party of professional revolutionaries (well, or conspiratorial ones). He was not satisfied with the methods of struggle offered by Lavrov - to go out to the broad masses. Tkachev considered this idea a failure.
Its failure was brilliantly described by Kropotkin in Notes of a Revolutionary, where two hefty officers, Sergei Kravchinsky and Rogachev, are walking along the road trying to propagate. They meet some little guy who rides a cart, and they start promoting him. He, then, looked - and run, and they ran after him and propagandized.
Kropotkin writes that Kravchinsky knew the Gospel almost by heart and then began to promote socialism under the guise of Christian teaching. Everything has changed. Like prophets, they began to be taken from hut to hut, transferred from village to village, and finally someone reported this to the authorities, after which the officers were tied up. When they, overgrown, in Armenians, came to a safe house in St. Petersburg, they were not recognized and they were not allowed in, they said - “get out of here!” And they turn to sedentary propaganda. When it does not give results, and it fails to raise the people, then the idea of rebellion against the authorities comes to the fore.
Lavrov says: we must overthrow political power, and then the people themselves will build a system of labor and labor relations. But Tkachev argues: no, the overthrow of political power is only the first step of the revolution, this is the beginning, and then the intelligentsia itself must impose (he does not write directly), dictate (and here they also diverge) the form of the party, tactics towards the people and the future. On this issue, they disagreed, and in the most severe way.
Lavrov enjoyed unconditional authority with both Marx and Engels; after his death in 1900, Lenin writes: "A veteran of the Russian revolutionary tradition has died." Lavrov at that time personified everything that was happening in the liberation movement in Russia. His work was accepted and used. Of course, "going to the people" and propaganda did not give significant results. In this regard, Engels turned out to be right, who wrote: “If somewhere Tkachev’s utopia can be organized by a small group of revolutionaries and can be realized, then only in Russia.”
One of my friends Moscow landowner(like Alexander Nikolaevich), who often travels abroad, recently traveled to the Simbirsk and Tambov provinces (he, like Alexander Nikolaevich, has estates in different provinces), where he has not been for two years. He could not recover from the change that had taken place in the circle of the landlords - the 19th of February withered them and put them in a gloss. “I could hardly recognize my old friends, the same people, but the Basques burst; some drag their legs, some don't drink vodka, some are completely skewed, there is no fun, everyone is angry, bilious, emaciated; solon came to them a manifesto! Bursting Basques should go down in history with obedient day and desired hour.
Look... how terribly our brother is in the midst of this. peasant people - you will not understand him. - Chaotic Confusion Barbarianstva. - Yes, yes, absolutely fatal confusion. Tribe of troglodytes Gero dota (German).
Darwin, author of the famous book " On species ", should be linen: we open or, better,runs into new view bureaucratic stva. To Russian Germans and German Russians are addedRussian Alsatians, t. e. such Russian Germans who, having remainedwith moral German accent, indulged in French passion - drastic measures, center lization, enlightening violence, correcting iniquity, and all this while maintaining the heavy, German Plumpheit (clumsiness) and Russian impudence. - We'll take care of their fauna...
We remind our readers that Adriani printed in the 30s years an excellent story about his prison under the title: " M é moires p ’ un prisonnier d "Etal ". What a wonderful thing it would be to translate "Forsqueaks" by Adriani instead of the pale and, in any case, indifferent novels of minor English writers.
What this Tatar set is can be clearly seen from the excellent articles " Daily Telegraph".
Warning police skepticism and not wanting to compromise our friends, we swear on our honor and conscience that this letter was written to us by Russian officers from Poland. As for the letter to the editor, Ind e pendance ”, we only have a copy sent from Warsaw other officers. We fraternally thank them and others and press them to our breasts with all our hearts.
Publishers of The Bells.
By the way, behind the released Poles who left France, brothe official of the All-Russian III departments to keep track of what and how. What naughty - money - the chickens do not peck!
Not is fortunate in his subjects, for we believe a more patient andlong-suffering race does not exist. But his subjects are eminently unfortunate in their king. In his invasion of their rights we look in vain for the talent which gilds great offences ("The Times", January 17, 1863)
"Sev. bee” dated 11 (23) January, we don’t know for what reasons, published an amazing correspondence from Warsaw, it says among other things:
“I intend to talk about this recruitment in my next letter, because it must be considered in connection with other circumstances, both past and present, and with the whole policy of Count Velepolsky. Now it will suffice to tell you that in Warsaw itself, the recruitment should touch 2000 people suspicious and being noticed by the authorities. Some expect great troubles on this occasion. I can assure you in advance that nothing will happen and that the calm in Warsaw will not be disturbed, contrary to the assurances of the party of action, which, according to rumors, announced that it would rather dare to make an insurrection than to allow this recruitment to be carried out, which will deprive it of a whole legion her adherents and followers.
Good official prophets! But the most important thing here is the consciousness that the set touches specifically suspicious people - it would be better to let the police just beat them to death in the streets.
“I was guilty before him, dear Bertrand,” says Robert Maker, “but ... but I forgave him!”
Gene. Consul Mr. Berg sends greetings to Mr. Trubner and Co., and humbly asks them to do him a favor and provide the addresses of Mr. V. Kelsiev, Mr. Pavel Mashkulov, and Mr. Nikolai Zhukovsky, if their whereabouts are known to Messrs. Trubner and K 0 . The above-mentioned gentlemen, apparently, live in London. Mr. Kelsiev lived in No. 3 about two years ago, Britannia - terrace , Fulham road , S.W. (English). - Ed.
We know the details of the unfortunate killing of soldiers at the head ofnom uprising, we know them from an eyewitness. We will eventually tell this sad episode with names; the harm produced by this completely unprepared event was enormous; the Poles themselves condemned with desperationthe act of one of the individual chiefs. Since then we have been asking Moscow. led.", III department and main headquarters of Konstantin Nikolaevich, wherethere was something like that, where it happened again, what evidenceWhat was the plan here? It is vile for the strong to call for help, not only ssakov, but slander.
Author of "Visions of St. Kondratiy”, article “What is a state?” in 1 book. "Polar Star", etc.
That is, Interrupted Stories, Prison and Exile, From the Other Shore, Letters from France and Italy.
N. Trubner generally brought great benefit to Russian propaganda, and his name should not be forgotten in the "Collection of Russian Printing Houses." In addition to the second editions of the Polar Star and all our books, N. Trubner himself undertook a number of new publications in Russian: Poems by N. Ogarev, Ekaterina's Notes II , Notes of the book. Dashkova, Notes of Lopukhin, book. Shcherbatov and Radishchev, etc.
Elsewhere on our list, we write out from III branch of the Russkiy Vestnik, a few curses against the proclamation and a phrase from the manifesto of the government editorial board. Let the readers themselves measure the depth of the fall of the Moscow doctrinaires.
In 1835, during my exile in the Vyatka province, I found in the county town of Sarapul an excellently compiled library, in which all new books and magazines were received in Russian. Participants took these books home and had a reading room. All this was started, with incredible efforts, sacrifices and with great perseverance, by a district doctor who graduated from Moscow University. Surname it seems to be Chudnovsky.
Nous sommes une immense spontaneite... l "intelligence russe est i" intelligence impersonnelle par excellence.
Tchaadaieff. Lettres a Al. Tourgueneff.
"His departure has long been desired by the old Russian, or, what is the same, the German party in St. Petersburg" (English). - Ed.
By the way, to robbery and robbery - it is interesting to see with what invalid means the government will refute the disgusting story with the English merchant Finkenstein - details of it in The Times and other journals.
We are annoyed and ashamed that we so often commemorate “Moscow. led." , the more that the articles against us their publishers give it a personal character. The growing cynicism of this black newspaper makes silence impossible. We boldly said that there was nothing like it in Russian literature either in the time of F. Bulgarin, or in the time of Mr. Katkov's predecessor, K. Shalikov. There is a boundary before which literature that is usually sold stops, hypocritically or sincerely, in a ferocious demand for persecution, despotic measures, executions, etc. The heroic edition of Mosk. ved." does not know these thresholds that stop timid and weak souls. For example:
“Do we want to satisfy the current claims of Polish patriotism and sacrifice the existence of Russia to it? In this case, we need to withdraw the Polish army from the Kingdom, retreat further and further to the Ural Range and prepare for a peaceful death. If this is not what we want, if any thought of something like this seems absurd to us and drives us into indignation, then no one, not even the Poles themselves, would have the right to complain about the government if it considered it necessary to take more decisive measures to achieve this. in order to save Poland from fruitless and debilitating irritation, and Russia from unnecessary waste of blood and strength in a struggle that could turn into a European war. At the present time, any external pleasing to the national feeling in the Kingdom of Poland will be the death of both Poland and Russia. War, so war; martial law, so martial law. In the present course of affairs, the government has every reason to concentrate all the powers in the Kingdom of Poland in the hands of people who are inaccessible to the seductions of Polish patriotism and revolutionary intimidation. Until the uprising stops, until order in the Kingdom of Poland is restored, any concession to the national feeling will not reconcile us with the Poles and Europe, but, on the contrary, will only increase enmity, inflaming demands on the one hand, and on the other, forcing everyone to resort to more and more to violent measures to repel them. So, first of all, the Powers want an end to the troubles now taking place in Poland, and then, in the future, the elimination of the causes that give rise to them. This is exactly what Russia herself wants, and wants, of course, much more sincerely than any of the three powers complaining about the Polish troubles ”(“ Mosk. Ved. ”, April 19).
“It is Russia's responsibility to take away from them as soon as possible any reason to complain. The Polish uprising disturbs these powers - they must be satisfied, if it is terminated as soon as possible. Russia's military efforts alone are not yet sufficient for this; the act of supreme mercy did not disarm the rebels; in order to be able to at least partly satisfy the complaints of the great powers, it is necessary take administrative action which would deprive the revolutionary Polish committee of the opportunity to arm new gangs in place of the defeated, to levy taxes for this purpose, to frighten peaceful citizens with executions, or, rather, secret murders. The administrative means which have existed in the Kingdom since 1861 have hitherto proved insufficient for this purpose; if even after the expiration of the amnesty period the rebellion does not stop and the existing administrative means do not begin to operate with great success, then, obviously, it will be necessary to establish in the Kingdom, for the duration of the rebellion and war, a Russian military administration, which, hopefully soon put an end to the Polish uprising"(“Mosk. Ved.”, April 20).
What a P è re Duchesne III branch!
We do not know what to marvel more at - the soullessness of thought, courage admit it at any cost or playful irony the second passage, reminiscent of the irony of lieutenant Zherebyatnikov over the unfortunate prisoner who is being led to be punished. “Well, for the sake of your orphan tears, I love you. - Roll it, burn it, beat it, beat it, burn it, - even for him, stronger for the orphan, - ha, ha ... "
Do not forget that Lieutenant Zherebyatnikov did not preach English parliamentarism, freedom of the press, respect for the individual.
The address of Moscow University is written in the old seminar heavy style. It is remarkable that all other addresses are not only better written, but more humane. They talk about the liberation of the peasants, about the amnesty, about the transformations. There is nothing of the kind in the university address, its servility is not softened by a single word.
The Times and the Express were talking about some kind of secret proclamation with " Evening Star », about the first sheet magazine "Freedom", published by "Earth and Will". We have just received "Freedom" and will print it in the next sheet.
Foreign newspapers say that in the event of war, command over the Russian army will be offered to Muravyov-Karsky, a very able general; in the same newspapers it was said that they had sent for Amursky.
“Riots can be everywhere, but a riot is not yet a revolution. Therefore, her we have no means to arrange. To set a house on fire, to slaughter someone on the sly is a feasible business. Behind it sometimes you can't see it"("N<аше>AT<ремя>»).
What is the apology of an official and greatly anxious observer/
Why, how hard! "Sev. mail", " Journal de St.-Pétersbourg" and then "Nord "and others, refuting" Opinion nationale , say the Home Office did not send out model forms for addresses and pep talks. To this we reply to the venerable editors that we have intact the printed original of the circular we received from St. Petersburg and reprinted in Kolokol, fol. 164. We are ready to subject him to experts to determine font, paper, etc. Le jeu est faitl Mr. Le Ministre, please - with ?
In France and Austria, when weapons were taken away, they were not stolen, but tickets were issued. Among the weapons may be hunting rifles, antique, hereditary, etc., high prices.
About the second visit of the scientific correspondent III departments of own e. Chancellery, we notified the Poles and Russian friends of our English magazines in due time.
We took the names of the victims from Russian newspapers. For foreigners, they add several more killed by the Vilna villain - including Count Plater and the landowner Leshkovich.
That is, in the most unreasonable way to shoot like two years ago, an unfortunate Jew was shot in Odessa.
What are these special urges that our publishers carry? Did they go to war or donate half their fortune? Has the publisher of Mosk. known."? Did Pavlov lose at the bivouacs Our Time? In England we pay and income-tax (income tax) and other levies, no other drafts are required here. Of course, we are guests in Europe, but in France they treated me completely for their own, and they sent me out, and examined the papers, and did not let me in for ten years.
On this boat were mostly young people, most of the French and Italians; when there was no more salvation, they shouted loudly in their common language: “ Vivat Polonia !» <«Да здравствует Польша!»>and died.
There is something infinitely outrageous in the constant opposition of the Russian nobility to the Polish nobility, as if it were indeed more democratic than she. Is it not that which unites everything cotton before the King with everything gentry regarding clap? And how long ago were the Russian peasants taken away from the inhuman hands of the land clerks? Lies and constant lies! It’s not enough that they invented a whole Khlestakov story of the Petrine period for us, they invent the present for us and they will tell us to the point that someone will believe it.
Our imagination has become so accustomed to all the horrors thatNew images of torture and torment are the first to come to mind. One peacefulfeuilletonist who writes not at all about Muravyov and not about Poland, but about walk in Kronstadt, this is how he is expressed about the bad weather that overtook him: “It was not the storm about which Pushkin says:
Like a beast, she will howl
It will cry like a child.
Not! And it was such a roar that ripped apart the soul and nerves, as if they had put a battalion of soldiers next to them and mercilessly began to flog him with a batozh;then it would, it seems to me, it was somewhat similar! Take all the literature, from Saadi and Gafis to Dickens and Hugo, and you will not find similar leg comparison.
The Cologne Gazette, for example, talks about the confiscation of an estate, belonged to the surnameMosquito, for the fact that from their surname somea young man of 16 was taken among the rebels.
We took this sample as one of the most characteristic, although we confess that Muravyov's orders, proposals, instructions on this part should be reprinted under the title"Enchiridion Spoliation" - this is an exemplary code of taking away property from an entire estate over trifles. If the future Pugachev prefers such thieves and unclean meansfrank explanation , then he only has to translate Muravyov's instructions into his own language, and not a single Russian landowner will slip away, and not a single more than a shirt, or perhaps a pipe, will be carried away.
Vedrin shook with antiquity and after twenty years of silence, he also grabbed his address - I, they say, am also Valuev!
AT 1847 I still had time to see two or three excellent creations of Frederic Lemaitre, and I would willingly place him aside from the more or less talented crowd of Parisian theaters; but as he grew old and lost his real strength, Frederic Lemaitre replaced them with exaggeration and fell into such indelicate dotting on i that I looked at him as if he were a ruin, brightly painted with variegated colors, in the same way that our artistic government used to whitewash and smear monuments. In historical reproductions and in the extraordinary melodiousness of the game Th eâ tre Fran ç ais did a lot; he did not develop great artists, but he developed unusually intelligent artists and an excellent troupe playing bad plays. We mainly talk about men: the European scene is richer in women. In spite of all the German exclamations of the Russian price collectors, Rachel was a great artist, and the France of the Restoration, the France of Béranger, the last merry France, had its lively, merry, brilliant representative, Dejazet. Ed. napoletane 1863. Sympathy is mutual. When Ferdinand I trudged along with the Austrian convoy in order to take the throne of his forefathers after Murat, the Austrian general - the famous Pene told me - when crossing the Neapolitan border reported to the king that he should personally receive the authorities and enter Naples without a foreign army that would guard him at a noble distance ; Ferdinand did not want to "expose himself to such danger" under any circumstances. “Yes, what in. in. afraid, - said, finally, the general, exhausted from patience, - don't you know that the Neapolitans are terrible cowards? “I know,” replied the king, Anch'io sono ved.") a letter to the Polish government. Without having the brochure itself in front of our eyes, we write out from Mosk.led." place before us. "Mr.Herzen and Co. (whom he considers in this company, we do not know, the publishers of Kolokol do not form a whole company with the city ofHerzen, there are only two of them- Herzen and Ogarev) assured that they were at the head of a vast conspiracy embracing the whole of Russia, and extended their fanfare to the point that they offered Poland the assistance of some Russian revolutionary committee. Mr.Pitkiewicz relates that the Polish patriots demanded proof of their influence from these gentlemen. But, he continues, “instead of any evidence, the editors of Kolokol could only present boastful assurances of their revolutionary power; and therefore, without any ceremony and without sparing their vanity, they eliminated them as notorious liars." Mr.Pitkiewicz is very pleased that the Polish patriots have not lost their dignity by a formal alliance with the liars; but, he continues, “why weren’t the Polish patriots so astute as to make sure that not only the role of the recognized leaders of the Russian uprising, which was claimed by the London triumvirate, but also the very elements of the uprising, which, according to them, allegedly exist in Russia ,- pure fiction? Where are these students' sympathies for the Polish cause, secret societies formed by Russian officers, a decision supposedly taken by soldiers not to fight with brothers Poles, a strike of schismatics to overthrow the supreme power? All this existed only in the boastful columns of Kolokol, whose editors lied, and deliberately lied, only to give themselves the childish pleasure of being known as the leaders of a powerful revolutionary party...”
No matter how disgusting it is for us to touch on some questions for the time being, and how disgusting it is to touch this extract, fertilized as it should be with the strongest and fattest katkovina, such a harmful lie, such a complete slander, cannot be tolerated. Let them point out at least one line of Kolokol, Pole Star, or whatever from our publications, in which we would give ourselves out as "leaders of a powerful revolutionary party," in which we would say that Russia was ready to revolt, incite the Poles and etc. But, printing one thing, we could write and say another. Therefore, we ask all Poles and non-Poles who have been in contact with us to bring at least one word, what we said in the sense of a quote. We allow all indiscretions, we untie all tongues. It goes without saying that when quoting The Bell, one needs the sheet number, and when quoting a person, one needs his last name.
On this occasion, we will not repeat our convictions, which we have repeated a hundred times. print documents and signed, not time. But the officials of the pamphlet department would oblige us sincerely, saying, who are these the Poles, who eliminated us, and eliminated us with such dexterity that, in the simplicity of our hearts, we did not notice it. Were they not those who wrote anonymous letters with fake the seal of the Polish people's government?
We highly recommend to our readers a pamphlet published a few months ago in Paris, entitled " La Pologne and Page 1333 is repeated twice in the Bells set. Last page L. 161 was also designated 1333rd.
Selected quotes from the works of Herzen
IAlexander Ivanovich Herzen was one of the greatest Russian writers of the 19th century.
Even Belinsky, in one of his early reviews of Herzen, about his Notes of a Young Man, wrote:
"The notes are full of intelligence, feeling, originality and wit."
Later, Nekrasov, reading "After the Thunderstorm" by Herzen, admitted:
"It's bloody soul-searching."
And Chernyshevsky said to Dobrolyubov:
"In Europe there is no publicist equal to Herzen."
In 1890, Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy told T. Rusanov:
“How many great writers do we have? Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Herzen, Dostoevsky, well... I (without personal modesty), some add Turgenev and Goncharov. OK it's all over Now".
And three years later, in March 1893, Tolstoy told P. Sergeenko: “
After all, if we express the importance of Russian writers as a percentage, in numbers, then Pushkin should have been given thirty percent. Gogol - fifteen, Turgenev - ten percent, Goncharov and everyone else - about twenty percent. Everything else belongs to Herzen. He is an amazing writer. It is deep, brilliant and insightful."
* * *“Herzen is already waiting for his readers to come. And far above the heads of the present crowd conveys his thoughts to those who will be able to understand them.
Alexander Ivanovich Herzen was born in 1812 in Moscow into a wealthy noble family. He was also brought up in Moscow. In 1825, Herzen met the future poet and publicist Nikolai Ogarev and became close friends with him. This friendship lasted all their lives. Herzen was thirteen years old when the Decembrist uprising took place in St. Petersburg. The uprising struck the imagination of the young Herzen, as well as his friend Ogarev. In 1827, both of them, standing on Sparrow Hills near Moscow, vowed to sacrifice their lives in the struggle for the freedom of the Russian people. Herzen later wrote:-
“The Decembrists are our great fathers. We inherited from the Decembrists an excited sense of human dignity, a desire for independence, hatred of slavery, respect for the revolution, faith in the possibility of a revolution in Russia, a passionate desire to participate in it.
In 1834 Herzen was arrested and sent into exile. In 1840 he returned to Moscow, but was soon exiled again.
In 1842, returning from exile, Herzen devoted himself to literary activity and in the coming years published a number of philosophical articles and fiction in the St. Petersburg radical journals Otechestvennye Zapiski and Sovremennik. In 1847 Herzen went abroad. For some time he lived in Paris, then traveled to Italy and Switzerland.
The revolution of 1848 was reflected in Herzen's views on the role of violent revolutions in the history of mankind.
It seemed to him that the sacrifices made by the people this year were fruitless. The victory went to the bourgeoisie, not to the people. The position of the working masses has not improved at all. Was it worth shedding people's blood for such sad results? This question involuntarily arose before Herzen, and he began to doubt the expediency of the revolution.
"There is no fatal need for every step forward for the people to be marked by heaps of corpses,"
He wrote, renouncing
"fierce faith", according to which any liberation must necessarily pass through a "baptism of blood."
This does not mean that Herzen finally abandoned revolutionary paths. He allowed them, but only "as a desperate remedy, the ultima ratio of peoples"; in his opinion, it is permissible to resort to this means only when there is no hope for a peaceful resolution of conflicts and clashes of opposing interests.
In 1849 Herzen wrote in his book From the Other Shore:
“Freedom of the individual is the greatest thing; on it, and only on it, can the real will of the people grow. In himself, a person must respect his freedom and honor it no less, both in his neighbor and in the whole people.
In the same book, From the Other Shore, Herzen wrote:
“In the worst times of European history, we meet some recognition of independence, some rights ceded to talent, genius. Despite all the vileness of the then German governments, Spinoza was not sent to the settlement, Lessing was not flogged and not given to the soldiers. In this respect not only for material strength, but also for moral strength, in this involuntary recognition of the individual, is one of the great human principles of European life.
In April 1851, the government senate deprived Herzen of all the rights of the state and forbade him to return to Russia. Herzen remained abroad for the rest of his life.
IIOn August 25, 1852, Herzen left for London for a few weeks, but spent thirty whole years there. In London, together with Ogarev, he founded the first Free Russian Printing House and in 1855 began publishing the Polar Star magazine, and then the Kolokol newspaper, which was published from 1857 to 1869. For more than ten years, the Bell has invariably remained the organ of Russian liberal and revolutionary democracy. The demand in Russia for Kolokol was so great that in 1860 the numbers published from 1857 to 1859 were again reprinted. The Bell was read not only by the entire Russian intelligentsia, but also by the highest royal dignitaries and even Alexander II himself .
Kolokol was the first Russian free rostrum, the first printed organ that vigorously fought for the liberation of the peasants, for the emancipation of the human person, for the establishment of a regime of freedom and people's rule in Russia. "Polar Star" and "The Bell" had a great influence on readers in Russia.
“Where the republic and democracy are consistent with the development of the people, where they are not only word, but also a business, as in the United States or Switzerland, there is without any doubt the greatest personal independence and the greatest freedom.
In the same article Herzen said:
“He who does not put truth - whatever it may be - above everything, that is not a free person ... Everything unreasonable relies on the power of the fist ... Neither force without law, nor law without force solve anything."
As much as Herzen loved the Russian people, so much did he hate the despotism that then reigned in Russia.
“We cannot get used,” he wrote, “to this terrible, bloody, ugly, inhuman, insolent language of Russia, to this literature of the fiscals, to these butchers in general epaulettes, to these block (policemen) in university departments ... hatred, disgust settles in this Russia. She burns with that corrupting, poisonous shame that a loving son feels when he meets his drunken mother, who is carousing in a brothel.
Herzen, Works, Volume 17, St. Petersburg edition 1917, p. 143).
(But Herzen did not for a moment forget that
“in Russia, above the tsar, there is a people, above the state, oppressive people, there are suffering, unhappy people, besides the Russia of the Winter Palace, there is serf Russia, Russia of the mines”
(Works, vol. 8, p. 143).
“All those who do not know how to separate the Russian government from the Russian people do not understand anything ... The deceptive similarity of government forms with Western ones completely hinders understanding ... There were people who began to guess that some unfamiliar face was peeping behind familiar forms. They began to guess that the uniforms were forcibly stuffed like stocks, but they did not begin to feel the character of the poor prisoner, but turned away from him, saying: "If he suffers, it is evident that it is not worth it."
Addressing the people of the West, Herzen wrote:
“Didn’t it really occur to you, looking at the Great Russian peasant, at his skill, cheeky appearance, at his courageous features, at his strong build, that some kind of another force than only long-suffering and unrequited endurance? Didn’t it occur to you that apart from official, governmental Russia, there is another one?
In another article he wrote:
“What a pitiful trick to portray us as enemies of Russia because we are attacking the modern regime… as if our existence was not continuous defense of Russia, Russian people from its internal and external enemies, from scoundrels, fools, fanatics, rulers, doctrinaires, lackeys, corrupt, madmen, from Katkovs and other brakes in the wheel of Russian progress” (Soch., Vol. 21, p. 208).
Long before the revolution, Lenin emphasized that “Herzen was the first to raise the great banner of struggle by addressing the masses with free Russian word ... "
“Herzen,” wrote Lenin, “created a free Russian press abroad—this is his great merit. "Polar Star" raised the traditions of the Decembrists. "Bell" stood up like a mountain for the liberation of the peasants. The servile silence was broken."
More than a hundred years ago, Herzen wrote that "socialism that wanted to get along without political freedom would certainly degenerate into autocratic communism," into a "new corvée."
In January 1859 Herzen wrote in Kolokol:
“The one who does not put the truth, whatever it may be, above everything, the one who is not in it and not in his conscience is looking for a norm of behavior, he is not a free man.
“The desire for geographical expansion belongs to the growth of peoples, and if it survives childishness, then this indicates the inability of such a people to come of age ... Everything unreasonable relies on the strength of the fist ... Neither strength without law, nor law without strength solve anything. Historical memories, archaeological documents are just as insufficient for the restoration of nationality as violence for its suppression.
And a month before that, in the same "Bell" he wrote:
III“If there were serious people in the Russian government, honest people ... with love for the people, they would take care of the simple heart of ordinary people out of inner religious piety, who succumbed to official deception and imagine that the fatherland is in danger, and give themselves up to a feeling of hatred for the unfortunate heroic neighbor who seeks his independence and wants nothing more. This deceived love, this simple delusion that can lead to rivers of blood, offends us endlessly.”
In 1855, in the article “Moscow Pan-Slavism and Russian Europeanism,” Herzen wrote:
“The future of Russia is very dangerous for Europe and full of misfortunes for itself, if liberating ferments are not penetrated into the rights of the individual ...”
“Is it possible to imagine that the abilities found in the Russian people are capable of developing in the presence of slavery, passive obedience, despotism? Long-term slavery is not an accidental thing: it certainly corresponds to some element of the national character. This element can be absorbed, defeated by other elements, but it can also win. If Russia can put up with the status quo, then it will not have the future we hope for.”
“Shouldn't you try by all means to call the Russian people to the consciousness of their pernicious position? ... And who should do this if not those who represent the country's intelligentsia? There may be many or few of them, but this does not change the essence of the matter ... The influence of the individual is not as insignificant as one is inclined to think: the individual is a living force, a powerful wanderer, the action of which does not always destroy respect for the individual, some recognition of independence - some rights ceded talent, genius.
“Our power is more self-confident, freer than in Turkey, than in Persia, nothing stops it, no past. She has renounced her own, she has nothing to do with Europe; she does not respect nationality, she does not know universal human education, she fights with the present. Before, at least, the government was ashamed of its neighbors, learned from them, now it considers itself called to serve as an example for all oppressors; now it teaches them.”
In the same article, Herzen wrote:
“The goal is infinitely distant - not a goal, but if you want, a trick. The goal should be closer, at least - wages or enjoyment in work ... The goal for each generation is itself. Nature not only never makes generations the means to achieve the future, but she does not care about the future at all.
“History teaches us that the most hated government can exist as long as it has something else to do, but every government comes to an end when it is no longer able to do anything or do only evil, when everything that is progress turns for it into danger when it is afraid of any movement. Movement is life; to be afraid of him is to be in agony. Such a government is absurd; it must die."
Herzen fought for the liberation not only of the Russian people, but also for an independent Poland and for the rights of all nationalities. Back in 1854 he wrote:
What does Poland want? Poland wants to be a free state, she is ready to be united with Russia, but also free with Russia ... In order to unite with her, she needs full will... Poland is long-suffering, but believing, wants and maybe to become independent let it be! Her independence will bring us closer. We will then talk to each other like brothers, forgetting past wounds and disasters and, looking forward, to find out whether we have the same path in the future or not.
“All Moscow and St. Petersburg literature, regardless of direction, extended a friendly hand to the Jews and stood up against the flat antics of some journalist. That Catholic feeling of hatred for Jews, which did not remain in the legislation, but remained in morals precisely in Poland, does not exist in Russia. The persecution of the Jews was the business of the government. The society did not speak, because it did not say anything, the hand of the quarterly (policeman) lay on his lips. As soon as he lifted one finger, it spoke out.
In April 1863, during the Polish uprising, Herzen wrote in Kolokol:
“We are with Poland because we are Russians. We want the independence of Poland because we want the freedom of Russia. We are with the Poles, because one chain binds us both. We are with them because we are firmly convinced that the absurdity of an empire stretching from Sweden to the Pacific Ocean, from the White Sea to China, cannot bring good to the peoples led by St. Petersburg. The world monarchies of Genghis Khans and Tamerlanes belong to the saddest and wildest periods of development - to those times when strength and vastness make up all the glory of the state.
They are only possible with hopeless slavery below and unlimited tyranny above... Yes, we are against the empire, because we are for the people!
“What should Russian officers who are in Poland do in the event of a Polish uprising? The general answer is simple - to go to trial, to prison companies ... but not to raise arms against the Poles, against people who are quite rightly seeking their independence. It is impossible for you to support by force of arms a government that is both Polish and our misfortune without deliberately committing a crime or stooping to the level of unconscious executioners. The time for blind obedience is over. Discipline is not required where it calls for villainy - do not believe this religion of slavery. The greatest calamities of the peoples are based on it... You cannot start the era of freedom in your homeland by tightening the rope around the neck of your neighbor. It is impossible to demand rights and push other people in the name of material strength and political fantasies.
“The strength of the people is in the earth. We no longer believe in upheavals: aristocratic, military and civil, that is, we do not believe in their durability. That is the only and durable thing that is plowed in the ground, that it will sprout fruitfully, that is sown in the field, that has grown in the fresh air of fields and forests. Not for the people is that which goes over the head of the peasant, which with a crash and dust passes by the village, like a courier, without stopping.
“Is it fair to say that the all-consuming dictatorship in Russia is the final form of her civil order, fully consistent with her genius? Isn't this dictatorship just guardianship ending with adulthood?
In the same article Herzen says:
IV“In the future, Russia has only one comrade, one fellow traveler - the North American States ... If Russia frees itself from the Petersburg tradition, it has one ally - the North American States ... Because Russia and America meet on the other side. Because between them there is a whole ocean of salt water, but there is no whole world of old prejudices, stopped concepts, envious parochialism of a stopped civilization.
Herzen was not only a remarkable writer and an outstanding political thinker - a democrat, but also one of the first democratic socialists.
The vague realization that not only in Russia, but also in other countries, social life is not built and developed as it should be, that there are many flagrantly unfair things in relations between people, is born early in Herzen. Acquaintance in the early 1930s with the writings of Saint-Simon, Fourier and other utopian socialists contributed to the formation of this consciousness.
“The new world,” Herzen later recalled, “was pushing at the door; our souls, our hearts were dissolved by him. Saint-Simonism formed the basis of our convictions and has always remained essential.
(Herzen. Works. Volume III).
Herzen valued the French utopian socialists for their criticism of the bourgeois system, for exposing "all the vileness of the modern social system." Together with the French utopian socialists, Herzen believed that "the world is waiting for renewal", that other foundations must be laid for the societies of Europe: more rights, more morality, more enlightenment.
“Without any doubt,” he wrote, “the greatest prophecies of the future have been expressed among the Saint-Simonists and Fourierists, but something is missing.”
And many years later, on April 1, 1863, he wrote in Kolokol: “Belinsky’s ideal, our ideal, our church, our parental home, in which our first thoughts and sympathies were brought up, was the Western world, with its science , with his revolution, with his respect for man, with his political freedom, with his artistic wealth and invincible hope.
Herzen resolutely opposed terror as a means of combating the autocracy. Regarding Dmitry Karakozov's attempt on the life of Alexander II, Herzen wrote on May 15, 1866 in The Bell:
“The shot on April 4 is growing by leaps and bounds in some generaltrouble and threatens to grow into even more terrible and even more undeserved disasters for Russia ... The shot is insane, but what is the moral state of the state when its fate can change from accidents that cannot be foreseen or removed, precisely because they are insane.
In his Letters to a Traveler, which were published in several issues of Kolokol in 1865, Herzen wrote:
“Socialism was no less delayed in development by internal reasons, as well as by external ones. The feeling of pain from the public untruth was very clear, the desire to get out of the consciously bad situation is very just, but this is far from being cured. Passionately carried away by socialism, with a desire for punishment and revenge, it threw down its gauntlet to the old world before it recognized its strength and determined its thought. The gray-haired fighter lifted her - and not Goliath, but David fell. Since then he had had much leisure to reflect in the bitter school of exile and exile. Did he think of not throwing down the gloves without strength, not knowing what would happen after the battle, except for the execution of the enemy? - I do not know".
“People are dissatisfied with the economic conditions of labor, the reinforced inequality of forces, their loss, the slavery of work, the abuse of wealth, but they do not want to move to workers' barracks, they do not want the government to drive them to corvée, they do not want to destroy families and homes, they do not want to give up private property, that is, they want to preserve, as far as possible, their usual life during renewal, during rebirth, harmonizing it with new conditions.
In August 1864, in his "Letters to an old friend", Bakunin, he wrote:
“Religions and politics are spread by violence and terror, autocratic empires and indivisible republics are established. Violence can clear a place - no more. With Petrograndism, the social upheaval will not go beyond the hard labor slavery of Gracchus Babeuf and the communist corvée of Cabet.
In the same Letters to an Old Friend, Herzen wrote in 1869:
“People cannot be liberated in the outer life more than they are liberated inside. Strange as it may seem, experience shows that it is easier for peoples to endure the forced burden of slavery than the gift of excessive freedom.
"Woe to the poor in spirit and meager in artistic sense, the coup, which from all the past and acquired will make a boring workshop, which will benefit from one subsistence and only subsistence."
“But this will not happen. Mankind at all times, the worst, has shown that it has more need and more strength than is necessary for one conquest of life, development cannot drown them out. There are treasures for people that they will not give up, and which one despotic violence can snatch from their hands, and then for moments of fever and cataclysm.
According to Herzen's views, the personality of one person has the same infinite value as the personality of many people. Each person should have the opportunity to develop all the features of his personality in all their originality and versatility. The supreme goal of human community is to achieve the greatest inner wealth of the spiritual content of man. Herzen was an unconditional socialist, but at the same time he was most afraid of the domination of the crowd, the suppression of individuality. He expressed this domination of the crowd by the term "petty bourgeoisie" and the triumph of petty bourgeoisie seemed to him a danger to human culture. Long before the revolution, the well-known Russian scientist, economist, former Marxist, Professor Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky, wrote about Herzen that
“He foresaw the possibility of petty-bourgeois socialism, but socialism, in his view, could also be realized in another form, completely alien to the depersonalization of man, and he fought for such socialism with all his might.”
Herzen wrote a lot in the French and English press and did a lot to acquaint Europeans with Russia, Russian literature and the Russian liberation movement. His book "The Past and Thoughts", translated into many foreign languages, occupies an outstanding place in world memoir literature. At the beginning of 1870, Herzen caught a cold in Paris at one of the rallies, and on January 21 he died of pneumonia. His ashes were later taken to Nice and buried there, next to his wife. In 1912, on the centenary of his birth, a bronze monument was erected on the grave.
VOn April 4, 1912, G. V. Plekhanov, in his speech on the centenary of Herzen's birthday at his grave in Nice, said:
“Herzen ardently cherished the interests of the Russian people. He did not lie when he wrote about himself that from childhood he loved our villages and villages endlessly. And he was Russian to the end of his nails. But love for the motherland did not remain with him at the level of a zoological instinct, as you know, capable of manifesting itself sometimes in a brutal way; it has been raised to the level of meaningful human attachment. And to the very extent that she rose to this level with him, he became world citizen. “We are not slaves of our love for the motherland,” he wrote, “just as we are not slaves in anything. A free man cannot recognize such dependence on his region, which would force him to participate in a cause contrary to his conscience. That's what he said. These are truly golden words.
Plekhanov said.
Each of us should remember them as often as possible now, whether it comes to cruel and shameful Jewish pogroms, or violation of the Finnish constitution, or the prohibition of Ukrainian children to learn in Little Russian, or in general about any kind of oppression of any kind. was a tribe that is part of the population of our state.
In conclusion, Plekhanov said:
“Herzen was not destined to return to his homeland. And if he lived to this day, then perhaps he would now have to wander in exile. It is not easy to correct the matter of the ages... If Herzen lived now, he, of course, would not be disappointed in Western Europe. He suffered much from his disappointment in her. But even after this disappointment, he did not lose faith in Russia. This day will also revive our faith in a better future for our long-suffering country.”
N. G. CHERNYSHEVSKY (1829-1889)
IOctober 29, 1969 marks eighty years since the death of the famous Russian scientist economist, publicist and literary critic Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky. Karl Marx, who was not generous with praise, called Chernyshevsky in print "a great Russian scientist and critic." And to the famous Russian populist revolutionary Herman Lopatin, Marx more than once said that "of all modern economists, Chernyshevsky represents the only original thinker, while the rest are mere compilers."
Chernyshevsky was born on June 24, 1828 in Saratov, where his father was a priest. He studied first at the local theological seminary, then entered St. Petersburg University, from which he graduated in 1850.
Chernyshevsky was from early youth to the end of his life a revolutionary and a socialist. As a young man, in 1848, he wrote in his Diary:
“In essence, I will not value my life at all for the triumph of my convictions, for the triumph of freedom, equality, fraternity, the abolition of begging and vice, if I am only convinced that my convictions are just and will triumph, and if I am sure that they will triumph, not even I will regret that I will not see the day of their triumph.”
Then he wrote in his Diary:
"The historical significance of every Russian great man is measured by his merits to his homeland, his human dignity - by the strength of his patriotism."
“Is our calling really limited to the fact that we have one million five hundred thousand troops and can, like the Huns, like the Mongols, conquer Europe if we want?… Is this our mission? To be omnipotent politically and militarily and insignificant in other higher elements of people's life? In this case, it is better not to be born at all than to be born a Hun, Attila, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, or one of their warriors and subjects.
Chernyshevsky was a staunch opponent of both racial and national oppression. As a young man, he wrote about the suppression of the Hungarian uprising by the Russian troops of Nicholas I in his “Diary” on July 17, 1848: -
“I am a friend of the Hungarians, I want the defeat of the Russians there and for this I would be ready to sacrifice myself.”
In 1850, after graduating from the university, he returned to Saratov, where he was a teacher at the gymnasium. In 1853 he moved to St. Petersburg. At first he was engaged in pedagogical activity there, but soon devoted himself entirely to literary work. At first he wrote in the journal Domestic Notes, and then he began to write exclusively for Nekrasov's journal Sovremennik. Thanks to him and Dobrolyubov, attracted by him, Sovremennik soon gained enormous influence. Sovremennik was the most popular magazine in the Russian educated society of that time. In 1861, its circulation reached 7,125 copies, which was the largest circulation for that era. Each copy of Sovremennik was read collectively, thus the actual number of readers of the magazine many times exceeded its circulation.
Chernyshevsky was one of the most educated people in Russia. He knew 16 foreign languages. Of the 225 youthful manuscripts of Chernyshevsky, 12 were written in German, 4 in French, 62 in Latin, 12 in Greek, 3 in Arabic, 5 in Persian, 10 in Tatar, and 3 in Hebrew. Some of these manuscripts have been translated into Russian. . Over a relatively short period (1855-1862) from his pen came out over 250 works on domestic and international politics, philosophy, history, political economy, theory and history of literature.
Chernyshevsky, like Herzen, recognized the human person as the supreme value of the world; perhaps the complete freedom of the development of the human individuality was, in their eyes, the ultimate goal of the social union; if they were socialists, it was precisely because only socialism could, in their eyes, secure freedom for mankind.
II
Chernyshevsky was convinced of the inevitability of a peasant revolution in Russia, and in this he disagreed not only with the then liberals, but also with Herzen. In the 1950s, Herzen believed in the possibility of a peaceful resolution of the question of the abolition of serfdom. Herzen, in his London magazine Kolokol, took the Russian liberals under his protection against the criticism of Sovremennik and spoke insultingly about Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov. At the insistence of Nekrasov, Chernyshevsky went to London to have an explanation with Herzen. During a meeting with Herzen on June 25, 1859, Chernyshevsky talked about fundamental fundamental questions related to the practical preparations for the peasant revolution. The memoirs of contemporaries preserved the reviews of Herzen and Chernyshevsky about each other, caused by their meeting.
“What a smart girl, what a smart girl ... and how lagged behind”
Chernyshevsky said about Herzen.
“After all, he still thinks that he continues to be witty in Moscow salons and bicker with Khomyakov. And time is now passing with terrible speed: one month is worth the previous ten years.
Take a closer look - he still has a Moscow gentleman in his gut.
“An amazingly intelligent man,” Herzen remarked in turn, “and even more so with such an intelligence, his conceit is indicative. After all, he is sure that Sovremennik is the navel of Russia. They completely buried us sinners. Well, only, it seems, they are in a hurry with our waste - we will still live.
When in 1861-1862. peasant uprisings began, Chernyshevsky got carried away and wrote a proclamation "To the lordly peasants", but before it was printed, the provocateur who saw it betrayed Chernyshevsky. The government, which hated him, and was afraid of his revolutionary influence on the youth, took advantage of the denunciation, arrested him, and after he spent two years in the Peter and Paul Fortress, he was sentenced to seven years in hard labor and after this period - to eternal settlement in Siberia.
On May 19, 1864, an announcement was published in Petersburg Vedomosti about the execution of the sentence against Chernyshevsky. On this day, on Mytinskaya Square in St. Petersburg, a rite of civil execution was performed on Chernyshevsky. The gendarmerie colonel Durnovo, in a report dated May 19, 1864, informed the chief of the gendarmes Dolgorukov:
“By order of your excellency this number at 6 1 /2 In the morning I arrived at Mytinskaya Square, where at 8 o'clock the public verdict on the state criminal Chernyshevsky was to be announced. In the square, I found, despite the early time and inclement weather, about 200 people, by the time the verdict was announced, from 2 to 2 had gathered. 1 /2 thousands of people.
Among those present were writers and employees of magazines, many students of the Medico-Surgical Academy, three students of the School of Law, up to 20 students of the Communications Corps, several officers of the infantry guards regiments and officers of army and rifle battalions. Before the arrival of Chernyshevsky, who was among the spectators, Mr. Yakushkin expressed a desire to say goodbye to the criminal, and when the police chief, Colonel Vannash, approached him and asked if he wanted to say goodbye,
Mr. Yakushkin said that "it is not he alone who wishes, but everyone wishes."
(M. H. Chernyshevskaya. Chronicle of the life and work of H. G. Chernyshevsky. Moscow, p. 331).
The next day, on May 20, 1864, at 10 o'clock in the morning, Chernyshevsky, chained in chains, was sent from the casemate of the Peter and Paul Fortress to Siberia for penal servitude.
For almost 21 years, Chernyshevsky languished in a fortress, in hard labor and in Siberian exile, but nothing could break his iron will. While still sitting in the Peter and Paul Fortress and knowing that the most difficult trials awaited him ahead, he wrote to his wife:
III“I will tell you one thing - our life belongs to history; hundreds of years will pass, and our names will still be dear to people and will remember us with gratitude, when they will already forget almost everyone who lived at the same time with us. So it is necessary for us not to lower ourselves from the side of cheerfulness of character in front of people who will study our life.
The tragic fate of Chernyshevsky did not cease to excite Herzen. He cursed the executioners Chernyshevsky, whom he called "a great fighter for the freedom of the Russian people and one of the most remarkable Russian publicists."
In his Letters to the Enemy, Herzen wrote in Kolokol at the end of 1864:
“What, Chernyshevsky renounced his convictions? No, he went to hard labor with holy impenitence.
And two years later, at the end of 1866, Herzen in the article "Order triumphs" wrote in "The Bell":
“The first representatives of social ideas in St. Petersburg were the Petrashevites. They were even judged as "Fourierists". Behind them is the strong personality of Chernyshevsky. He did not belong exclusively to any social doctrine, but had a deep social meaning and a deep criticism of the modern existing order. Standing alone, above everyone else, in the midst of the St. Petersburg ferment of questions and forces, in the midst of long-standing vices and beginning remorse, in the midst of a young desire to live differently, to escape from the usual dirt and untruth, Chernyshevsky decided to grab the steering wheel, trying to tell those who were thirsty and striving what to do. . His milieu was urban, university, among developed grief, conscious discontent and indignation; it consisted exclusively of workers of the intellectual movement, of the proletariat of the intelligentsia, of "capabilities." Chernyshevsky, Mikhailov and their friends, the first in Russia, called not only the worker eaten by capital, but also the worker eaten by the family, to another life. They called for a woman to be freed by work from eternal guardianship, from humiliating minority, from life on the payroll - and this is one of their greatest merits.
Chernyshevsky's propaganda was a response to real suffering, a word of consolation and hope to those who perished in the harsh grip of life. She showed them the way out. She set the tone for literature and drew a line between a really young Russia - and a Russia that pretended to be such a Russia, a little liberal, a little bureaucratic and a little feudal. Her ideals were in cumulative labor, in the organization of the workshop, and not in a skinny chamber in which the Sobakevichi and Nozdryovs would play “nobles in the bourgeoisie” - and landlords in opposition.
The enormous success of social teachings among the younger generation, the school they called forth, which found not only literary echoes and organs, but the beginnings of practical application and execution, are of historical significance.
Chernyshevsky was not only a remarkable publicist, but also an outstanding literary critic. He was the first to declare the world significance of Russian literature. “Whatever the dignity of the works of Pushkin, Griboedov, Lermontov and contemporary writers, he wrote back in the early 50s, but they are even sweeter for us, as a guarantee of the future triumphs of our people in the field of art, education and humanity” . (Collected works, vol. 1, p. 3191).
Chernyshevsky highly valued talent Turgenev. He was the first to reveal in the work of Leo Tolstoy his "deep realism, the ability to reflect the fullness of human experiences." It was Chernyshevsky who first predicted a brilliant literary future for Tolstoy.
One of the comrades of childhood and adolescence of Alexander II - the famous writer A. K. Tolstoy - in the winter of 1864-1865, while hunting, standing next to the tsar, decided to take the opportunity and put in a good word for the convicted Chernyshevsky, whom he knew personally. To the question of Alexander II, what is being done in literature and whether he, Tolstoy, wrote anything new, the writer replied:
“Russian literature has put on mourning over unfair Chernyshevsky's condemnation"...
Alexander II did not let him finish the sentence:
"I beg you, Tolstoy, never don't remind me of Chernyshevsky"
He spoke displeasedly and then, turning away, signaled that the conversation was over.
On December 2, 1871, the authorities of the hard labor prison in which Chernyshevsky was kept received the following order:
“The importance of the crimes committed by Chernyshevsky, and the importance that he enjoys among his sympathetic admirers, call for special measures on the part of the government to prevent him from escaping and deflecting his harmful influence on society. In these types, for the settlement of Chernyshevsky, on the occasion of the end of the period of hard labor determined for him, a remote and secluded place in the Yakutsk region, namely the city of Vilyuysk, is assigned, in which Chernyshevsky should be placed in the same building where important criminals were previously placed.
In a state-owned wagon, under the escort of two gendarmes and an officer, Chernyshevsky was sent to Vilyuisk in the Siberian severe frost, which reached 50 degrees. He had previously traveled more than 1,000 versts to Irkutsk and then 710 versts from Irkutsk to Vilyuisk. The path lay along frozen Siberian roads covered with snowdrifts. At stops at the impoverished Yakut population, it was impossible to get even crusts of bread. Chernyshevsky arrived in Vilyuisk in January 1872 and was placed in the best building in the city - in prison. The prison was empty at that time - not a single soul came out to meet him. He himself wrote in letters to his relatives: “What is Vilyuysk? This is a city in name only. In reality, this is not even a village, not even a village - it is something so deserted and shallow that there is nothing like it in Russia.
In this desert, Vilyuisk, according to Chernyshevsky, seemed like a real oasis. This "oasis" was completely cut off from the entire cultural world. The mail came there once every two months. The nearest market, Yakutsk, was 710 versts away, and goods were brought in only once a year. It was impossible to get a glass or a plate or a bar of soap. The food conditions were the most difficult. Meat was stocked there once a year. In order not to get sick, Chernyshevsky completely refused such "fresh" meat and ate exclusively bread, porridge and tea. The closest doctor could only be found in Yakutsk. The climate in these places is tolerable only in the most severe frosts. The rest of the time, the air is saturated with marsh fumes, disastrous for unaccustomed people.
Having settled in the "best house" of Vilyuisk, Chernyshevsky stopped waiting for a mitigation of his fate. He came to the conclusion that the government had decided to bury him alive, cut him off from the entire cultural world. He concentrated all his energy of thought and willpower on one goal: to preserve his spiritual "I" and not let him die in the remote Siberian taiga. Maybe someday his voice will sound again, and therefore it is necessary at all costs to save yourself for that time. He buried himself in books and continued to write all night long. In the morning he tore everything written into small pieces, for he was always afraid of a search and did not want some gendarme to rummage through his papers. He could not hope that what was written would ever see the light of day. Censorship strictly forbade the Russian press from even mentioning his name. Day and night two guards guarded his house.
In the summer of 1874, the government tried to persuade Chernyshevsky to submit a request for pardon to the tsar. The Governor-General of Eastern Siberia sent his adjutant, Colonel Vinnikov, to Vilyuisk (the place of Chernyshevsky's exile) for negotiations with Chernyshevsky. Vinnikov came to Chernyshevsky in prison, greeted him, handed him a proposal to submit a petition to the tsar for clemency. Chernyshevsky said:
“What should I ask for pardon for? ... It seems to me that I was exiled only because my head and the head of the chief of gendarmes Shuvalov are arranged in a different manner, but is it possible to ask for pardon about this?”
Only in 1883, Tsar Alexander III allowed Chernyshevsky to return from Siberia and settle under strict police supervision, first in Astrakhan, and then in his native Saratov.
IV
Chernyshevsky's influence on his contemporaries was enormous.
“The name of Chernyshevsky,” wrote the famous historian N. I. Kostomarov, “continued to serve as a banner of revolutionary propaganda that was developing in Russia.
No one in Russia had such a huge influence in the field of revolutionary ideas on the youth as Chernyshevsky.
Communist historians have declared Chernyshevsky "the forerunner of Lenin and the Russian Bolsheviks", but this is clearly not true. Chernyshevsky, indeed, treated the liberals with contempt. This contempt was evoked in him by the fact that the then liberals did not understand or did not want to understand that everything in the world requires strength for its implementation. “Evil and good,” he wrote, are equally insignificant when powerless. He scoffed at the Prussian liberals, who naively expected that the constitutional guarantees they desired would fall from the sky. But the liberals of the 1950s were not like the Russian liberals of the 20th century, members of the Union of Liberation and the Constitutional Democratic Party, against whom Lenin fought.
Chernyshevsky said of himself that he was not one of those people who were ready to sacrifice the present interests of the people for the sake of their future interests. “Above the human personality,” wrote Chernyshevsky, “we do not accept anything on earth.” In his article "Capital and Labor" Chernyshevsky outlined the plan of the famous French socialist Louis Blanc, and the main feature of this plan was, in Chernyshevsky's presentation, that its implementation would not restrict anyone's freedom. “Who wants what he does”, “live where you want, live how you want”. In the article "Capital and Labour" Chernyshevsky calls Louis Blanc's plan his own plan.
Chernyshevsky was a resolute supporter of complete democracy and the emancipation of all oppressed nationalities and their national self-government. Chernyshevsky was an opponent of national narrow-mindedness. He did not separate the interests of Russia from the universal interests and was a resolute enemy of all chauvinism. He wrote:
“Nationality develops in proportion to universal humanity: only education gives individuality content and space. Barbarians are all alike, each of the highly educated nations differs from the others in a sharply outlined individuality. Therefore, taking care of the development of universal principles, we at the same time contribute to the development of our own qualities, even if we do not care about it at all.
(N. G. Chernyshevsky. Collected works. Volume 1, p. 180).
In another article he wrote:-
“I do not like those gentlemen who say freedom, freedom, and limit this freedom by saying this word, but writing it in laws and not putting it into practice, that they destroy laws that speak of inequality, and do not destroy the order in which nine tenths of the people are slaves and proletarians.
(Ibid., p. 110).
Chernyshevsky was a resolute enemy of the whip and coercion in the economic field. He preached the formation of productive partnerships on a voluntary basis."Without the voluntary consent of a man," he wrote, "nothing really useful can be done for him." In one of his novels, one of his favorite characters says: "Without freedom, happiness is impossible." And in one of his articles, written by him in 1879, Chernyshevsky wrote:
“It was always sickening for me to read arguments about the “vileness of the bourgeoisie” and about everything like that; sickening, because these arguments, although inspired by "love for the people," harm the people, arousing the enmity of their friends against the estate, whose interests, although they can often collide with the interests of it (as very often the interests of each group of the common people themselves collide with the interests of the whole the rest of the mass of commoners), but in essence they are identical with those conditions of national life that are necessary for the good of the people, therefore, in essence, they are identical with the interests of the people.
(One-volume book by N. G. Chernyshevsky: Selected Articles. Moscow, 1950, p. 787).
It is known that Chernyshevsky wrote novels that, although they do not shine with special artistic merit, are none other than Leo Tolstoy in a letter dated September 26, 1903 about Chernyshevsky's novel What Is To Be Done? wrote:
“This book is a manifestation of the strength and greatness of the soul, a bold experience in which feeling and true art are harmoniously combined. I can't express to you the admiration that this book evokes in me."
(Collection "Literary Heritage" No. 31-32. Moscow, 1937, p. 1011).
The outstanding Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev, in his book The Russian Idea, writes about Chernyshevsky's novel What Is to Be Done?:
“Chernyshevsky's novel is remarkable and was of great importance. This meaning was mainly moral. It was the preaching of a new morality. The novel was slandered by representatives of the right camp, those who were least suited to it began to shout about its immorality. In fact, the moral is "What to do?" very high."
Bukharev, one of the most remarkable Russian theologians, admitted "What is to be done?" a Christian book. First of all, this is an ascetic book, it contains that ascetic element with which the Russian revolutionary intelligentsia was imbued.
The hero of the novel, Rakhmetov, sleeps on nails in order to prepare himself for enduring torture, he is ready to deny himself everything. Moral: What to do? must be considered very pure. The preaching of the freedom of love is the preaching of the sincerity of the feeling and the value of love, as the only justification for the relationship between a man and a woman. Chernyshevsky rebels against any social violence against human feelings, he is moved by love for freedom, respect for freedom and sincerity of feeling. ... Chernyshevsky had the most miserable philosophy, which filled the surface of his consciousness. But the depth of his moral nature inspired him with very true and pure life assessments. There was great humanity in him, he fought for the liberation of man. He fought for the individual against the power of society over human feelings."
In September 1884, a few months after Chernyshevsky traveled from Vilyuisk to Russia, the then young writer Vladimir Korolenko had to spend several hours on the empty island of Lena. He had to talk with local coachmen. These people, who, like all people, are always waiting for something and hoping for something, were carrying Chernyshevsky when he was sent to Vilyuisk. They noticed then that this prisoner was seen off with special attention, and for a long time in the yurts these peasants talked about the "important general" who had fallen into disgrace. Then after 12 years he was taken back and again with extraordinary precautions. And now, telling Korolenko about his life, one of the drivers said thoughtfully:
Isn't Chernyshevsky going to give us something?
What? From which Chernyshevsky? Korolenko was surprised.
And the coachman told Korolenko the following:
“Chernyshevsky was with the late Tsar (Alexander II) an important general and the most important senator. One day the sovereign called all the senators together and said:
“I hear - it’s bad in my state: people complain painfully. What do you think, how to do better? Well, senators - one is one thing, the other is another ... It is already known, as is always the case. And Chernyshevsky is silent. Now, when everyone has said their own, the king says:
- “Why are you silent, my senator Chernyshevsky? You speak too."
Your senators say everything is fine, Chernyshevsky answers, and cunningly, but everything is not right. And the thing is, father-sir, it’s simple. Look at us: how much gold and silver are hung on us, but how much do we work? Yes, perhaps the least! And those who work for you the most in the state - those at all, read it, without shirts. And everything goes upside down.
But this is how it should be: we would have a little less wealth, but more work, and less burdens for the rest of the people. - The senators heard this and got angry. The oldest of them says: “It is to know the last times that the wolf wants to eat the wolf.” Yes, one by one they left. And the tsar and Chernyshevsky sit at the table alone. So the tsar says: “Well, brother, Chernyshevsky, I love you, but there’s nothing to do, I need to exile you to distant lands, because I can’t manage things with you alone.” He cried and sent Chernyshevsky to the most disastrous place, to Vilyuy. And in St. Petersburg, Chernyshevsky left 7 sons, and they all grew up, studied and all became generals.
And so they came to the new king and said: “Command, sovereign, to return our parent, because your father loved him too. Yes, now he will not be alone - we are all seven generals with him. The tsar returned him to Russia, now, tea, he will ask how people live in Siberia, in remote places? He will tell. I brought him in a boat to the bench, but as soon as the gendarmes went ashore, I bowed to his waist and said:
“Nikolai Gavrilovich, have you seen our life?”
I saw it, he says.
- "Well, I saw it, and glory to those Lord." Thus ended the coachman's story, fully convinced that Chernyshevsky's answer contained the guarantee of a better future for them. Of course, Chernyshevsky was not a senator and he had no sons of generals. But he told the Russian reader and the government exactly what is given in the legend. We need to work more for the benefit of the people, and the people need relief. With a firm hand, he destroyed the floodgates, through which a stream of liberating ideas poured into Russian society.
When, a few years later, Korolenko told this legend to Chernyshevsky, he shook his head with good-natured irony and said:
“Ah. It looks like the truth, it looks like it! Smart guys, these coachmen!
Chernyshevsky died in Saratov on October 29, 1889. The name of N. G. Chernyshevsky is forever listed among those who devoted their entire lives to the struggle for the rights and happiness of the people and brought world fame to the great Russian culture.
“The means for the dissemination of truth cannot be a lie: neither exploitation nor the authoritarian domination of the individual can be a means for the realization of justice ... People who claim that the end justifies the means should always be aware: except for those means that undermine the very end.”
These are the words of the famous Russian socialist thinker Pyotr Lavrovich Lavrov, who was born on June 14, 1823 in the village of Melekhovo, Pskov province. His father was a Russian nobleman, a retired colonel, his mother was the daughter of a Russified Swede. Pyotr Lavrovich developed very early. By the age of fourteen, when his father assigned him to an artillery school, he already knew three European languages, read the works of the best representatives of world literature in the original. At the same time, he diligently studied history and mathematics and wrote poetry.
While still at the artillery school, Lavrov became enthusiastic about the ideas of freedom and progress, and as a young officer he got acquainted with the works of the great French and English socialists of the first half of the 19th century. After graduating from school in 1842, he was invited as a teacher of higher mathematics, which he later taught at other higher military schools. In the mid-fifties, his scientific and literary activity began. Colonel of artillery, professor of mathematics, historian of culture, striving for scientific work all his life, became, "inscrutable fate of the Russian intellectual" one of the most prominent revolutionaries, one of the theorists of "Russian socialism", in other words, Russian populism. In 1862, he joined the secret revolutionary society "Land and Freedom", with which Chernyshevsky was closely associated. After Dmitry Karakozov's assassination attempt on Alexander II, Lavrov was arrested and exiled to the Vologda province for his "harmful ideas".
In exile, Pyotr Lavrovich was intensively engaged in literary activities. There he wrote his famous "Historical letters", which were published in the magazine "Nedelya", and then came out as a separate book. The articles and the book were a huge success.
In Historical Letters, Lavrov bases his ideal on the all-round development of the human personality. This is the goal. Social solidarity is only a means for the development of the individual. He's writing:
“The development of the individual in the physical, mental and moral sense, embodied in the social forms of truth and justice, is a short formula that, it seems to me, embraces everything that can be considered progress.”
Developing this position and studying the relationship of the individual to society, Lavrov comes to the conclusion that neither the individual can be subordinated to society, nor the society of the individual. Therefore, he denies extreme individualism and extreme publicity:
“Both the one and the other is a ghost... Society outside of individuals does not contain anything real (real). The clearly understood interests of the individual require that she strive for the realization of common interests; social goals can only be achieved in individuals. Therefore, a true social theory requires not the subordination of the social element to the personal and not the absorption of the individual by society, but the fusion of public and private interests. The individual must develop in himself an understanding of the public interest, which is also his interest; it must direct its activity towards the introduction of truth and justice into social forms, because this is not some abstract striving, but its closest egoistic interest. Individualism at this stage becomes the realization of the common good with the help of personal strivings, but the common good cannot be realized otherwise. The public becomes realized (implementation) of personal goals in public life, but they cannot be realized in any other environment.
The famous "movement to the people" in 1871 began under the most direct influence of the Historical Letters. Their appearance in 1870 as a separate edition was an event for Russian youth, and marked a new era in the life of the Russian intelligentsia.
“One had to live in the 70s, in the era of movement to the people,” writes N. S. Rusanov, “in order to see around you and feel on yourself the amazing influence produced by the Historical Letters! Many of us, young men at that time, and others just boys, did not part with a small, tattered, unread, worn out book at the end. She lay under our headboard. And while reading at night, our hot tears of ideological enthusiasm fell on her, seizing us with an immense thirst to live for noble ideas and die for them ... To hell with “reasonable egoism”, and “thinking realism”, and to hell with all these frogs and other subjects of science that made us forget about the people! From now on, our life must belong entirely to the masses.
(N. Rusanov - “Socialists of the West and Russia”, St. Petersburg, 1909, pp. 227 and 228).
At the beginning of 1870, Lavrov fled from exile and in March 1870 found himself in Paris. The famous revolutionary Herman Alexandrovich Lopatin "took" him out of exile and safely brought him to St. Petersburg. Lavrov arrived in Paris at the invitation of Herzen, but did not find him alive (Herzen died on January 21, 1870).
According to Lopatin, who later was very close to Lavrov and for a number of years visited him in Paris almost daily, Lavrov quickly became acquainted with famous French scientists and leaders of the workers' and socialist movement. At first, Lavrov hoped that better times would soon come to Russia and that he would be able to return to his homeland. Therefore, he hoped to "serve the cause of progress in the sphere most characteristic of it, through literary propaganda in the legal Russian press of the most progressive ideas from the field of philosophy, religion, science, art and political doctrines." He considered practical participation in politics to be an unusual thing for himself and in every possible way moved away from it. And only when he was convinced that his hopes of returning to Russia were futile, and when the sudden death of his second wife, A.P. Chaplitskaya, devastated his personal life, did he decide to engage in anti-government propaganda abroad and for this he entered into relations with a circle of young Russian revolutionaries who are closest to him in their views. He also became a member of the International.
In early May 1871, on behalf of the leaders of the Paris Commune, Lavrov went to London, where he met Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and then became friends with them. From 1873 to 1876, Lavrov published first in Zurich and then in London the revolutionary socialist magazine Vperyod. In the article "Our Program", published in the first issue of the magazine, Lavrov wrote:
“The restructuring of Russian society must be carried out not only for the benefit of the people, not only for the people, but also through the people. The modern Russian figure must leave behind the outdated opinion that revolutionary ideas developed by a small group of a more developed minority can be imposed on the people, that socialist revolutionaries, having overthrown the central government with a successful impulse, can take its place and introduce ... a new system, benefiting them from an unprepared mass. We do not want violent power, whatever the source of the new power."
Like Herzen, Lavrov was an ardent opponent of any dictatorship. In 1874 he wrote in the Forward magazine:
“History has proved and psychology convinces us that any unlimited power, any dictatorship of the party, of the best people, and that even people of genius, thinking to benefit the peoples by decrees, could not do this. Every dictatorship must surround itself with coercive force, blindly obedient tools. Any dictatorship had to forcefully crush not only reactionaries, but also people who simply disagreed with its methods of action. Any captured dictatorship had to spend more time, effort, energy on the struggle for power with its rivals than on the implementation of its program with the help of this power.
On the other hand, one can dream of the abolition of a dictatorship seized by some party, that is, that the dictatorship will serve only as the "starting point of the revolution", one can dream only before the seizure. In the Party's struggle for power, in the excitement of overt and covert intrigues, every minute makes it necessary to retain power, makes it impossible to leave it again. Dictatorship is wrested from the hands of dictators only by a new revolution... Has history proved little of the impotence of decrees, measures, orders for the benefit of the masses?... The truth and solidarity of the new social system cannot be based on lies and hypocrisy, on the exploitation of some people by others, on should form the basis of a new system, on the sheepish subordination of circles to several leaders.
“The few dictators who are accidentally placed at the end of the state lever, imposing by mechanical force their personal fantasies on the unsympathetic, uncomprehending and inert majority, are disgusting representatives of coercive statehood and can do evil, no matter how, however, their intentions are directed to the common good.”
The Vperyod magazine had a great influence on broad circles of the Russian intelligentsia, especially on young students.
Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev wrote to Lavrov:
“I have read your program twice with all due attention; I agree with all the main points.
(A. Ostrovsky. Turgenev in Notes of Contemporaries. Writers' Publishing House in Leningrad, 1929, p. 266).
Turgenev subsidized this magazine. At first he gave a thousand francs a year, and then five hundred. According to German Lopatin, who met Turgenev in Paris, Turgenev was far from sharing the Forward program. But he said:
"This is hitting the government and I'm ready to help in any way I can"
Lavrov in the article "I. S. Turgenev" wrote:
“Ivan Sergeevich was never a socialist or a revolutionary. He never believed that the revolutionaries could raise the people against the government, just as he did not believe that the people could fulfill their "dreams" about the new "priest Stepan Timofeevich" (Stenka Razin); but history has taught him that no "reforms from above" are given without pressure and energetic pressure - from below on the authorities; he was looking for forces that would be able to produce this pressure "
(Ibid., p. 267).
Due to disagreements that arose between the so-called "Vperyodists" and the editor, Lavrov left the editorial office in 1876. His work “The State Element in the Future Society”, which appeared in the same year, was the first and only issue of the fourth periodical collection “Forward”. After Lavrov left the editorial board, another fifth volume came out, in which he did not participate, and on which the activities of the Vperyodists in Russia and abroad ceased.
In May 1877, Lavrov again moved to Paris. In the early years of this new period of his life, he had, in his own words, very little contact with Russian revolutionary groups. He was associated with the French socialists, who in 1877 created the organ "Egalite" and took part in this organ. From the same year, he began to lecture in his apartment, and then in the hall on Rue Pascal, for Russian youth living in Paris, lectures on various issues of theoretical socialism and the history of thought.
In 1881, the Red Cross Society of Narodnaya Volya was established in Russia. Wishing to establish a department abroad, it elected Vera Ivanovna Zasulich and Lavrov as authorized representatives for this. Publications in foreign journals, inviting donations to the newly founded society, served as a pretext for Lavrov's expulsion from France.
This was announced to him on January 10, 1882. On February 13 he left for London. Shortly thereafter, a report appeared in the newspapers that some Russian lady, in Geneva, shot at a German, whom she mistook for Lavrov. She was tried and found to be insane.
In London, Lavrov received an invitation from the Executive Committee of Narodnaya Volya from Russia to join, together with Sergei Stepnyak-Kravchinsky, on the editorial board of the party organ, which was to be published abroad, under the name "Vestnik Narodnaya Volya". Three months after Lavrov's arrival in London, he was given the opportunity to return to Paris. The matter of publishing the Bulletin of Narodnaya Volya dragged on for more than a year, until the arrival in Paris of Lev Tikhomirov, one of the surviving leaders of Narodnaya Volya. He was appointed editor, instead of Stepnyak-Kravchinsky, who refused; in November 1883, the first volume of Vestnik was published, edited by Lavrov and Tikhomirov. The last, fifth volume, was published in December 1886. In this journal, Lavrov, under his signature, placed many articles on socio-political issues, as well as memories of Turgenev and criticism of the teachings of Leo Tolstoy, under the title "Old Questions".
After the publication of the Bulletin of Narodnaya Volya was discontinued, Lavrov continued to live without a break in Paris. He often read essays in the "Workers' Society", in meetings organized by the fund of Russian students in Paris, in the "Society of Russian Youth", in meetings of Polish socialists. Many of these abstracts were later published as separate pamphlets. In 1886 Lavrov decided to carry out his plan of work on the history of thought. He began to write this work, not knowing where to get the funds for its publication. However, there was a man who promised to give money for the first volume - with these funds, from December 1887, in Geneva, they began to appear, in separate editions, "Experiences in the History of Thought of Modern Times", in which the author summarized all his previous works. In 1889, the fifth issue of "Experiments" appeared.
In the same year, eight socialist Russian and Armenian groups (of which one was from St. Petersburg) sent Lavrov as a delegate to the International Socialist Congress, which was held in Paris on July 14-21 and on which the Second International was founded. At this congress, Lavrov was elected to the bureau and delivered an essay before the congress on the situation of the socialist movement in Russia.
In the essays that Lavrov read in Paris in 1877-82, he, in his own words, many times returned to pointing out the dangers that anarchist principles and terrorist methods pose for the success of a revolutionary party.
“He saw with joy that in Russia itself the anarchist principles were gradually disappearing, but he could not help but notice that, next to the weakening of anarchism in Russia, all groups, except for the so-called “terrorists”, lose their importance in the movement and the success of the revolutionary business in Russia is increasingly identified with the success of "terrorists". Therefore, he resolutely rejected the invitation to become the head of the publication that declared war on Narodnaya Volya.
He considered the war against this party directly harmful to the cause in Russia, if the history of the Russian revolutionary movement put forward this party in the first place, which set itself the immediate task of shaking the autocracy, and then destroying it. Nevertheless, Lavrov only entered into an alliance with this party when he was convinced that it remained socialist ...
In continuation of his participation in the Bulletin of Narodnaya Volya, he looked at his activities in this publication as a theoretical understanding of those socialist principles that remained the basis of the activity of this revolutionary party in Russia, in an era when it was alone, at the end of the 70s and the beginning of the 80s, she was able to develop something similar to a social force ”(“ P. L. Lavrov about himself ”, Vestnik Evropy, Petersburg, 1911, No. 19). Lavrov then said to German Lopatin:
“I consider it my duty to help the party of action that is present at the present moment, even though I by no means agree with it in everything. As for the fact that I could not share the naive belief of the "Vperyodists" in the possibility of a speedy and complete social revolution? As for the fact that I cannot believe, together with the "Narodnaya Volya" in the feasibility of a sudden, radical, political reorganization of Russia through a conspiracy and the so-called "terror"? But their ultimate ideals and goals are also mine. Surely their means of action do not contradict my moral principles, even if they sometimes seem to me impractical and inexpedient? After all, I knew and know that, striving for the unrealizable in the near future, they nevertheless contribute to the incidental achievement of at least more modest, but still progressive, tasks of more moderate parties, according to the well-known, ironic law of history: “Sic - vos, sed - non vobis? So what do I care about their illusions or our purely tactical differences, which I tried and try to avoid? I repeat; I have always been and will be with those who act, fight, and not with those who sit by the sea and wait for the weather.
(G. Lopatin about P. L. Lavrov, "Past Years", Moscow, 1916).
According to Lopatin, Lavrov worked together with extreme utopian revolutionaries, although - "in his own views, he was perhaps closer to some of the current left-wing Cadets - as I imagine them, that is, people who in theory recognize the socialist system as the final , the inevitable end of the development of modern societies, but who believe that now it is necessary to concentrate all forces on the struggle for a series of more modest, but more feasible, political, economic and social changes in the social order.
Lopatin wrote this in 1916, in the same article about Lavrov:
“From my close, long-term affinity with Lavrov, I made a concept of him as a man of iron will, a firm, unbending character, stubborn to the point of stubbornness in his views, steady in his plans, amiable and compliant only in appearance, in small things, but not who for a moment did not forget his main goal and persistently made his way to it through all obstacles, secretive with strangers and not selflessly frank even with friends, slowly, deliberately making his decisions and then not stepping back from them a single step, and at the same time - a tireless worker who knew how to force himself to work with success even in an area unusual for him. "Soft" in this man was only his secular appearance, well-bred manners and old-fashioned "courtesy" ...
Lavrov for many years was the intellectual and moral center for all Russian youth who were abroad.
S. Ansky, who was Lavrov's secretary in the last years of his life, writes:
“They resorted to him both for advice and for help, both on public and personal matters; to him the young soul brought its first impulses, its hesitations and doubts; people came to him to solve difficult problems of theory and practice of life; they sought relief from his personal grief "
(“Russian Wealth”, “In Memory of Lavrov”, St. Petersburg, 1905, No. 8).
Lavrov died on February 6, 1900 in Paris. His funeral took place on 11 February. More than eight thousand people took part in the funeral procession. There were a lot of wreaths from various emigrant organizations, from all the socialist parties in Europe, as well as from many student groups in different cities of Russia.
Particular attention was drawn to the severe wreath of thorns "From political exiles and convicts" from Russia, a huge wreath of laurel leaves from the People's Will, from a group of Russian writers in Russia with the inscription "To the Apostle of Freedom and Truth to Peter Lavrov", and from numerous friends of the deceased. Of these, one inscription was especially remarkable: “To Peter Lavrov from Herman Lopatin,” who was then sitting in the Shlisselburg fortress.
Outstanding leaders of French socialism, representatives of almost all Russian, Polish, Jewish, Latvian, Lithuanian and Armenian socialist groups and trends spoke at the cemetery. Many telegrams and addresses were also received from Russia, including a telegram from the "Union of Russian Writers" from St. Petersburg, with the following content: "Petersburg, February 8. The Committee of the Union of Russian Writers, having learned the heavy news of the death of Pyotr Lavrov, expresses its deep sadness on the occasion of the loss of the great writer, who so worthily served the cause of mankind and progress. Not only all the socialist and radical newspapers throughout the world, but also many Russian newspapers in Russia itself, published sympathetic obituaries and honored the memory of Lavrov.
In 1916, on the fifteenth anniversary of Lavrov's death, his former close friend Lopatin wrote in the Moscow magazine Past Years:
“Lavrov stood like a mighty, thick-set oak, like a lamp lit at the top of a mountain, surrounded until his death by the reverence and sympathy of Russian and foreign socialists who came to him for participation, advice and all possible help and never met with refusal from this indestructible a man of duty and ideal."
Petersburg "Monthly Journal" in the second issue of 1916 wrote:
“Both populism and the narodnaya volya movement passed under the direct influence of Lavrov ... He, more than any of our outstanding writers, was a teacher of the youth of Russia for several decades ... Lavrov's teaching on the role of the individual in history was of great importance in our society. Before all of us, Lavrov put forward the active struggle of the individual for the right of his comprehensive and integral development on the basis of social justice ... With his literary activity, Lavrov greatly contributed to the development of philosophy, ethics and history in Russia ... "
On the twentieth anniversary of Lavrov's death, the historian and sociologist, Professor H. N. Kareev wrote about him:
“Encyclopedically educated in the humanities and social sciences, he himself was not a specialist, producing “research for a comprehensive exhaustion of the subject.”
Even cultural and social evolution was pushed by him into the broader framework of world evolution with its cosmic, geological and biological processes. And here he himself was not a natural scientist, just as he was not a specialist either in psychology, or in history, or in ethnography, or in state studies, or in political economy, or in jurisprudence, but he was not an amateur either. Great erudition and independent thinking made him a scientist... In Russia, he was the first sociologist. In the general development of sociology, Lavrov also has an honorable place... What constitutes the objective essence of his sociology was the result of a synthesis of everything that was done by the scientific and philosophical thought of the West in understanding both the tasks of sociology and the nature of human society.
(Collection "In Memory of P. L. Lavrov", St. Petersburg, 1922, ed. "Kolos", pp. 246-248).
The Monthly Magazine wrote:
“In Paris, in the cemetery of Montparnasse, there is a grave covered with a modest monument on a wild rock. Beneath it lies the one whose huge heart was slowly burning in the crucible of love for people, whose broad mind tirelessly searched for ways to the coming solidarity of mankind ... "
NIKOLAI MIKHAILOVSKY
INikolai Konstantinovich Mikhailovsky, an outstanding Russian literary critic, publicist and sociologist, was born in Meshchovsk, Tambov province, into a poor noble family. He studied in the mining corps, which he did not graduate from, at the age of 18 Mikhailovsky entered the literary field, became a journalist, and collaborated in various magazines. Since 1869, he became a permanent contributor to Nekrasov's journal Otechestvennye Zapiski, and after Nekrasov's death, one of the three editors of the journal (the other two editors were Saltykov-Shchedrin and G. Eliseev). Otechestvennye zapiski of 1869-1884 contained his most important sociological and literary-critical articles. Mikhailovsky remained in his “glorious post” until the end of his life, developing his early developed teaching, but not changing it. Mikhailovsky himself wrote about this:
“I was happy that since I became a somewhat definite writer, and, as readers will remember me, I have never experienced a breaking of my core beliefs.”
Mikhailovsky was a committed socialist, but also an ardent supporter of political freedom and an opponent of rebellion. He was one of the first to speak out against Bakunin. In the early 70s, he was even against revolutionary activity. In 1873, when Pyotr Lavrov published his revolutionary magazine Vperyod abroad, he invited Mikhailovsky to emigrate. In response, Mikhailovsky wrote to him:
“In a bitter moment, which, however, lasted for more than one minute, I decided to emigrate and settle down with you completely and irrevocably. I abandoned this thought for many reasons ... I'm not a revolutionary - to each his own. The struggle with the old gods does not interest me, because their song is sung and their fall is a matter of time. The new gods are much more dangerous and, in this sense, worse.
Looking at things this way, I can, to a certain extent, be on friendly terms with the old gods and, consequently, write in Russia.
“Tell me your imperative mood, not in the theoretical field, but in the practical one. In anticipation, I will tell you my own: sit still and get ready ... Japan, Turkey have a constitution, our turn must also come. However, I don’t know in what form the moment of action will come, but I know that now it doesn’t exist and that the youth should meet it not with Moloschott on their lips and not with toy communes, but with real knowledge of the Russian people and with full ability to discern good and evil of European civilization. Frankly speaking, I am not so afraid of reaction as of revolution. It is difficult to prepare people for a revolution in Russia; it is possible and, therefore, it is necessary to prepare people to meet the revolution as they should.”
Mikhailovsky was the last "ruler of thoughts" of the Russian intelligentsia. His motto was the ideal of twofold truth: truth-truth and truth-justice. He put the human person at the forefront.
The famous Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev, far from being a populist, wrote about Mikhailovsky: “Under the sign of the dual truth, Mikhailovsky had a profound influence on several generations for more than forty years. The spiritual strength and quality of his ideals are higher than some of the formulas in which he clothed them.
Back in the 60s of the last century, Mikhailovsky wrote in the St. Petersburg magazine Nedelya:
“All mental, all political processes take place in the personality and only in it; only she feels, thinks, suffers, enjoys. This is an elementary truth ... All public unions, no matter how loud or prejudiced-cute names for us, they have only relative price. They should be expensive insofar as they contribute to the development of the individual.
In another article, Mikhailovsky again emphasized the importance of personality:
“In the endless stream of individuals of various degrees striving for greater and greater complexity and independence, eternally fighting among themselves, there is one wave, the fate of which a person cannot help but follow with a certain anxiety. This is a person, a human person, for only her life can he experience, only she can sympathize, sympathize and rejoice. It is the struggle for individuality that he must set as the goal of his life, on its victory to build his ideal of truth.
Mikhailovsky also wrote:
“If I love my fatherland, then do I love and should I love everything that lives, flies and crawls in it? If I love my fatherland, then can't I at the same time love some things that are not domestic, it is true, but also not in direct conflict with the idea of the fatherland; those international things about which, using the words of Scripture, it should be said that in relation to them "there are no Greeks, nor Jews"? There are undoubtedly such things, they are called - truth, justice, freedom, labor, conscience and so on ...
To love them is not only permissible, but even obligatory for a true son of the fatherland. Moreover, perhaps the whole task of a true patriot is exhausted by the feasible establishment of these beautiful things in his own fatherland. Is it full? In my opinion, these are not dreams, and if dreams, then at least patriotic ones.
As early as 1872 Mikhailovsky warned:
“First of all, be afraid of such a social system that will separate property from labor. He will deprive the people of personal initiative, independence and freedom.”
Mikhailovsky in those years was the most prominent theoretician of populism. In the late 70s and early 80s, he supported the Narodnaya Volya and edited their publications, wrote in their illegal magazine Narodnaya Volya. Meetings of the editors of Narodnaya Volya often took place in Mikhailovsky's office. Mikhailovsky took an active part in compiling the famous "Open Letter to Alexander III" of the Executive Committee of Narodnaya Volya, and he finally edited it. This letter stated that “circumstances, the general discontent of the people, the desire for new social forms create revolutionaries. It is impossible to exterminate the whole people, it is also impossible to destroy their discontent through repression, displeasure, on the contrary, grows from this.
“The total number of dissatisfied people in the country will continue to increase; confidence in the government among the people must fall more and more, the idea of a revolution, of its possibility and inevitability, will develop more and more firmly in Russia. A terrible explosion, a bloody reshuffling, a convulsive revolutionary upheaval throughout Russia will complete this process of destruction of the old order.
The conditions that are necessary in order to prevent a bloody revolution and to replace the revolutionary movement with peaceful work are two: 1) a general amnesty for all political crimes of the past, since these were not crimes, but the fulfillment of civic duty, and 2) the convocation of representatives from of the entire Russian people in order to review the existing forms of state and public life and remake them in accordance with the people's desires ... Elections should be universal, there should be no restrictions for either voters or deputies. The electoral campaign and the elections themselves must be carried out completely freely with complete freedom of the press, complete freedom of speech, complete freedom of gatherings, complete freedom of election programs ... This is the only way to return Russia to the path of correct and peaceful development.
Now it is clear that if the voice of Mikhailovsky and his friends and like-minded people had been heard in time by the tsarist authorities, all the terrible disasters and enormous misfortunes that befell Russia and the peoples inhabiting it would have been prevented.
IIIn 1892, Mikhailovsky became the editor of the St. Petersburg monthly magazine Russkoye Bogatstvo.
Soon he attracted Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko to participate in it, with whom he had previously collaborated together in the St. Petersburg magazine Severny Vestnik. Mikhailovsky called him, for the purpose of immediate cooperation, to move from Nizhny Novgorod to St. Petersburg. This move took place at the beginning of 1896, and from that time Korolenko became the co-editor and official publisher of Russkoye Bogatstvo. In 1896, Korolenko was forced to leave St. Petersburg and settle in Poltava, but he continued to participate in editing the magazine and often came to St. Petersburg, sometimes staying there for a long time to participate in editorial affairs.
Lenin, in his article "Narodniks about Mikhailovsky", written by him in 1914, recognized as a great merit of Mikhailovsky that he ardently sympathized with the oppressed position of the Russian peasantry and energetically fought against all and any manifestations of serf oppression. But Lenin reproached Mikhailovsky for having vacillated towards bourgeois liberalism and that, from the 1990s until his death, he carried on a fierce polemic with the Marxists.
That Mikhailovsky waged a fierce struggle against Marxism is an undoubted fact, but he did this not because he was allegedly a "bourgeois" democrat and the interests and aspirations of the working people were alien to him, as communist writers claim, but quite the opposite: precisely because that the interests of the working masses and the entire people were extremely dear to him. He lived and acted for more than a dozen years. And in his literary activity there were moments when his influence on society reached very large proportions. As were such moments when, due to certain historical circumstances, it flowed along a narrower channel.
In 1896, in the preface to the first volume of his works, Mikhailovsky wrote:
“Whenever the word “truth” comes to my mind, I cannot help but admire its striking beauty. There is no such word, it seems, in any European language. It seems that only in Russian truth and justice are called by the same word and, as it were, merge into one great whole.
Truth, in this vast sense of the word, has always been the goal of my searches. The truth-truth, separated from the truth-justice, the truth of the theoretical heaven, cut off from the truth of the practical earth, always offended me, and not only did not satisfy me. And vice versa, noble worldly practice, the highest moral and social ideals always seemed to me insultingly powerless if they turned away from truth, from science. I have never been able to believe, and now I do not believe, that it is impossible to find such a point of view from which truth-truth and truth-justice would appear hand in hand, one after the other replenishing. In any case, the development of such a point of view is the highest task that can be presented to the human mind, and there is no effort that it would be a pity to spend on it. Fearlessly look into the eyes of reality and its reflection - truth-truth, objective truth, and at the same time protect truth-justice, subjective truth - such is the task of my whole life. This is not an easy task.
Too often, wise serpents lack dove purity, and pure doves lack serpentine wisdom. Too often people, believing to save a moral or social ideal, turn away from an unpleasant truth, and, conversely, other people, people of objective knowledge, too strive to raise a bare fact to the level of an unshakable principle.
Back in 1894, Mikhailovsky wrote about the emergence of Marxists in Russia:
“They condescendingly or contemptuously look ... at us, the profane, who are looking for answers to the questions of life in their flesh and blood dressed form, in the ideal setting of their burning and complex reality: because of what, they say, these ignorant and incomprehensible people fight when the truth has long been discovered and is in our pocket. And they pull out of their pockets Marx's scheme, carefully rewritten from the writings of Marx himself or Engels, or perhaps from some social-democratic pamphlet... Clearly, simply, logically, in a quarter of an hour one can assimilate a whole philosophy of history with guaranteed scientificity.
In another article, sympathetically quoting a German philosopher, Mikhailovsky wrote to the Russian Marxists:
“The old desire of every new party to create its own chronology, a new calendar with new saints, again appears before us. How absurd the new appraisal seems to the believers of the old system, just as credible does it appear to its own believers; only one thing they do not want to believe: namely, that that on which their view of things rests is faith, not knowledge. After all, we, they say, see quite clearly that history is moving in the direction of our goal. But what has brought you to this point is not science, but love and hate, desire and aversion - not reason, but will. Whoever does not share your love and your hatred, your hopes and ideals, you will not be able to prove the truth of your view. You can only refer to the future, and the fact of the matter is that the future is open only faith, but not knowledge."
To this Mikhailovsky adds:
“The scientific forecast of economic materialism is in fact a matter not of knowledge, but of faith… If a Marxist says:
I know, that the expedient natural course of things leads to such and such a good result, then even the savage thinks: I know that the god of thunder strikes people who transgress his orders.
Mikhailovsky goes on to say: “Marxist ideology is not a worldview, not a worldview or a worldview. This is only a cramped cage, which could have its own merits, as a well-known corner of the worldview, but in which there is nothing to look for answers to all the questions that excite the soul of modern man.
Thus Mikhailovsky revealed the unscientific nature of Marxism. He showed that the Marxists, as it were, created an idol for themselves, which they worship. Mikhailovsky wrote:
“Our opponents, the Marxists, bowed before the only saving idol of the “economic factor”, they mocked the right of moral judgment over the phenomena of social life, they threw the multi-million mass of the peasantry overboard in history for the sake of its “village idiocy”, they treated the intelligentsia as insignificant or worthy. on content” value… and so on. At the same time, proud of their "new word", they did not find strong enough words to depict the stupidity, ignorance and "reactionary aspirations" of their predecessors.
Mikhailovsky recognized the fact of the existence of class contradictions in modern society, but, in contrast to the Marxists, he did not see this as an “engine of progress”, and called the idea of class struggle the “school of brutality”. Mikhailovsky wrote:
It has long been pointed out in our and European literature that side by side with the class struggle, and often completely distorting it, there is a struggle between races, tribes, and nations. If, for example, Californian workers drive out working-class Chinese immigrant workers in every possible way, or if French workers are unhappy with the competition of cheaper Italian workers and the like, then this is certainly not a class struggle. Further, according to the Marxists themselves, there was a time when society was not divided into classes, and there will be a time when this division will disappear. And, however, history has not stopped and will not stop its flow, but it was not and will not be a class struggle in their absence ... One Italian writer, Benedetto Croce, wittily remarks that history is undoubtedly a class struggle when, firstly, , classes exist, secondly, when their interests are hostile, and, thirdly, when they are conscious of their antagonism. And this,” he adds, “leads us in the end to the humorous conclusion that history is a struggle of classes ... when there is a struggle of classes.”
Mikhailovsky engaged in bitter polemics with the Marxists, but he was a passionate defender of freedom of speech for all his ideological opponents. This is evidenced by such a case. At the end of 1897, the government closed the first legal Marxist magazine, Novoye Slovo. At this time, a Paris correspondent for the magazine Russkoye Bogatstvo, of which Mikhailovsky was the editor, sent Mikhailovsky a critical article on Marxism. Since the Marxists did not have their own journal and would have nowhere to reply to this article, Mikhailovsky sent Pyotr Struve, the former editor of Novoye Slovo, the manuscript of his Paris correspondent's article with a proposal to reply to it in the pages of Russkoye Bogatstvo. The well-known populist writer Nikolai Rusanov was the Paris correspondent of Russkoye Bogatstvo. Rusanov later wrote about this episode:
III“I mentioned this episode from the history of our ideological struggle because he portrays Mikhailovsky as a consistent defender of the freedom of the press, who not only in words but in deeds believes in the great importance of a frank struggle of opinions and, despite the integrity of his worldview, agrees in certain cases make a free platform out of your body, so long as the enemy’s thought is not strangled by brute force.
Vladimir Korolenko writes in his memoirs about Mikhailovsky:
“It was not for nothing that Mikhailovsky wrote not only about conscience, but also about honor, which he considered an indispensable attribute of a person. He himself was the personification of personal dignity, and his apparent coldness was a kind of armor that served him as protection from different sides ...
His office with a bust of Belinsky and his books was his temple. In this temple, a stern man, who did not recognize any class idols, bowed only to a living thought that sought the truth, that is, the knowledge of truth and the implementation of justice in human relations.
And Mikhailovsky himself in one of his last articles wrote:
“If we really are on the eve of a new era, then first of all we need light, and light is unconditional freedom of speech, and unconditional freedom of thought and speech is impossible without personal inviolability, and personal inviolability requires guarantees. It is only necessary to remember that the new era will soon become dilapidated if the people are neither warm nor cold from it.
Korolenko also notes the fact that “Mikhailovsky's ardent and versatile mind was much higher and wider than the arena in which the fights between him and the Marxists took place. It was also taller and broader than what was called "populism" at the time. Mikhailovsky, writes Korolenko, “did not create an idol for himself either from the village or from the mystical features of the Russian folk spirit.” In one place, citing the enemy's opinion that if we are destined to hear a real word, then only the people of the village and no one else will say it, Mikhailovsky says:
“If you want to wait for what the people of the village will tell you, just wait, and here I remain a “layman” ... I have a bust of Belinsky on my table, which is very dear to me, here is a bookcase with books for which I spent many nights. If “Russian life with all its everyday features” breaks into my room and smashes the bust of Belinsky and burns my books, I will not submit to the people of the village. I will fight, unless my hands are tied, of course. And even if the spirit of the greatest beauty and self-sacrifice had dawned on me, I would still say at least: forgive them, God of truth and justice, they do not know what they are doing! Still, I would have protested. I myself will be able to smash the bust of Belinsky and burn my books, if I ever come to the conclusion that they should be beaten and burned. And not only will I not give up, but I will put my whole soul into making what is dear to me become dear to others, despite, if it happens, their “everyday features”.
In 1897 Mikhailovsky wrote:
“If I am a Narodnik “in the sense of Mr. Struve”, then one of the pillars of Narodism, the late Yuzov, claimed that I was “one of the most harmful Marxists.” And this throwing me from one hostile camp to another, while I obviously do not have the honor of belonging to either one or the other, seems to me very interesting, as a special case of the aforementioned tendency to simplify reality.
(“Russian Wealth”, 1897, book 11, p. 119).
In November 1900, the fortieth anniversary of Mikhailovsky's literary activity was celebrated. The Minister of the Interior, Sipyagin, forbade newspapers to report on the upcoming anniversary, the police intercepted and detained greeting addresses, and yet the celebration of Mikhailovsky assumed unprecedented proportions. In a letter dated November 14, 1900, Korolenko wrote to his wife in Poltava from St. Petersburg:
“Tomorrow is a celebration in honor of Mikhailovsky ... There are countless telegrams, letters, addresses, the most diverse from the most diverse circles, individuals and institutions. From the most remote places - Siberia, the Caucasus, from the most remote corners, groups and individuals send letters, prose, poems. It was hard to wait for such a huge wave of public attention. And mainly - the province! There will be something tomorrow."
“Mikhailovsky's jubilee took on the dimensions of just a whole event - and it seems that one can say that no other literary jubilee has captured readers so widely. The Writers' Union was jam-packed and many had to be turned away for lack of space... Not all addresses were read, but only those with which deputations or representatives arrived... There was no way to even read a whole mass of telegrams, and only the places from which they had been received were listed, and part of the family name. Some of the addresses were very good... Among the addresses there were quite a few Marxist ones, in which disagreements were declared, but also deep respect for all Mikhailovsky's activities. In the same sense, Struve said very well - cleverly and sincerely. There are many addresses from young people... The next day, a lot of telegrams still came, mostly from abroad. In general, everyone agrees that nothing of this size has ever happened in the field of literary anniversaries.”
Mikhailovsky lived after that only four years. He died on February 26, 1904, on the threshold of a new tragic era in the history of Russia, the day before the start of the Russo-Japanese War.
Mikhailovsky called the idea of class struggle the "school of bestiality." This definition turned out to be prophetic. Mikhailovsky believed that only by fighting for the political and social freedom of each individual, the country can achieve freedom for the whole people and prosperity of the country.
“Personality,” Mikhailovsky wrote, “should not be sacrificed - it is holy and inviolable, and all the efforts of our mind should be directed to carefully follow its fate and take the side where it can triumph” .
(Mikhailovsky. Works. Volume 4, p. 451).
His words are still topical today. That is why the Kremlin dictatorship, even under Lenin, withdrew Mikhailovsky's works from Soviet libraries. His scientific and journalistic articles are no longer republished by Gosizdat. But no censorship can suppress what has forever gone down in the history of Russian culture.
