Russian intelligentsia against the "kingdom of darkness"
The intelligentsia in Russia, like the main part of the ruling elite and the educated part of the population, was liberal, pro-Western. She was raised on Western ideas. Some admired liberalism and democracy, others - socialism (Marxism). As a result, the mass of the intelligentsia (there were also traditionalists, “soil scientists”, late Slavophiles) played a destructive and at the same time, like other revolutionary troops, suicidal role.
The intelligentsia in Russia was also a kind of “separate people” who, on the one hand, hated tsarism, criticized its vices, on the other hand, “sang for the people” and dreamed of instilling European orders in Russia. It was a kind of social schizophrenia: the intelligentsia believed that it was protecting the interests of the common people and at the same time was terribly far from them. The device of the western countries was considered as an ideal, from there they took political programs, ideology, utopias. This explains why the Russian intelligentsia was present practically in the ranks of all the parties of forces that took part in the revolution. The intelligentsia was the basis of the liberal-bourgeois parties — the Cadets and Octobrists, and the radical revolutionary — the Social Revolutionaries, the Bolsheviks, the Mensheviks. Common to these forces was the rejection of the Russian socio-political system (tsarism, autocracy), which was expressed in common for all the slogan "Freedom!" Liberation! ”They wanted to eliminate all the historical“ restrictions ”. It is characteristic that appeared on the political scene at the turn of the XIX — XX centuries. the predecessor movements of both the Bolshevik and constitutional-democratic (Cadet) parties from the very beginning put this slogan at the forefront, calling themselves the "Alliance of the struggle for the liberation of the working class (headed by V.I. Lenin) and the" Union of Liberation "(I.I. Petrunkevich).
The liberals and revolutionaries in every way asserted about the hopeless "backwardness" of Russia, or even the dying of the country, which they explained as "unfit" for the economic, social, and - above all - the political system. Westerners shouted at the whole voice (and they controlled most of the press) that Russia, in comparison with the West, was “a desert and a kingdom of darkness”. True, after the 1917 disaster, some of them came to their senses, but it was too late. Among them, the well-known publicist, philosopher and cultural historian G. P. Fedotov (1886-1951), who joined the RSDLP in 1904, was arrested, was exiled, but then began to "rule". In the post-revolutionary period, he openly “repented”: “We did not want to bow to Russia ... Together with Vladimir Pecherin, we cursed Russia, with Marx hated her ... More recently, we believed that Russia was terribly poor in culture, some wild, virgin field. It was necessary for Tolstoy and Dostoevsky to become the teachers of humanity, for the pilgrims to stretch from the West to study Russian beauty, life, antiquity, music, and only then we looked around us. ”
True, even “having repented”, the former destroyers of “old Russia” believed that they would create “new Russia”. The same Fedotov declared: “We know, we remember. She was. Great Russia. And she will. But the people, in terrible and incomprehensible suffering, lost the memory of Russia - about themselves. Now she lives in us ... The birth of great Russia must be accomplished in us ... We demanded self-denial from Russia ... And Russia is dead. Redeeming sin ... we must reject disgust to the body, to the material state process. We will rebuild this body. ”
Thus, we see an amazing picture and a social disease of the Russian pro-Western intelligentsia. These same "we" (various fevralist-Westerners) destroyed the old Russia, and then after "killing" Russia with their help and support from the West, "looked around" and realized that they had lost a great country. And then they decided, already fleeing to the West, that only they had the knowledge to "resurrect Russia." Although the Russian communists managed without them, creating a new project and the Soviet civilization, which in the Stalin period absorbed all the best that was in imperial and Tsarist Russia. And from this rotten, pro-Western, liberal growth, the current Russian liberals and monarchists were born, such as State Duma deputy N. Poklonskaya, who glorify the orders of “old Russia”, curse the Soviet period and dream of “resurrecting Russia”, that is, “free” the remnants of Soviet heritage .
Only a small part of the intelligentsia belonged to the traditional conservatives, the “Black Hundreds”. True, among the right were the most far-sighted figures who warned the tsarist government about a deep crisis, and the dangers of participating in a big war in Europe and the inevitability of a social revolution with the current course. They are also the only ones to foresee the monstrous results of the revolutionary upheavals. However, the voice of the right was not heard, they remained on the sidelines of the political life of the capital, although in the years of the First Revolution 1905-1907. Black Hundreds had a massive social base. The government did not support the right and did not accept the reform program they had proposed. As a result, in 1917, the right were practically absent in the political field of Russia and could not resist the revolution.
In general, for almost all currents of the intelligentsia (except the traditionalists) was characterized by fascination with the West, its desire to force Russia into a part of the Western world. At the same time, the intelligentsia, even from the times of raznochintsy-populists, tried to "form" the people, instill in them the "right" ones, and eventually turn the Russians into the "right Europeans." Thus, the Russian intelligentsia for the most part was terribly far from the people, and even anti-people, because it wanted to recode the Russians into Europeans. Therefore, the Russian intelligentsia almost entirely supported the February revolution, rejoiced at the fall of the autocracy. Without even realizing that, as a result, the revolutionary chaos will destroy their former life, and a significant part of the intelligentsia will perish in the millstones of revolution or will have to flee the country. The intelligentsia was deeply convinced of its own and general prosperity in the coming new order, but miscalculated, showing its complete blindness.
International and Russian national bourgeoisie
Successful Russian businessmen, bankers and merchants believed that a radical change in the socio-political system would lead them to power, to unlimited possibilities, and financed anti-government parties (including the Bolsheviks).
The international (Petersburg) bourgeoisie, which included Russians, Germans, Jews, etc., like the ruling elite and intellectuals, was pro-Western in its essence. For the most part, it was part of the “elite” of the Russian Empire - financial and industrial, commercial, and also in the masonic lodges. Therefore, the bourgeoisie financed a coup aimed at directing Russia along the western path of development. They wanted to overthrow the king in order to gain real power and rule a new, bourgeois Russia. Following the example of France or the USA, where all real power resides with large owners, capitalists, bankers.
The Russian national bourgeoisie, which was formed on the basis of the Old Believers' world, had other motives. In Russia, the Romanovs, after the split, formed the world of the adherents of the old Russian Orthodoxy, and at the beginning of the 20th century they had a powerful social base - about 30 million people. The elite of the Old Believers were entrepreneurs who created capital not by financial speculation and ties with power, but by hard work, from generation to generation creating and accumulating wealth. The Morozovs, the Ryabushinskys, the Rakhmanovs, the Bakhrushins created their capital by stubborn and long labor, and controlled about half of the total industrial capital of Russia.
At the same time, the Old Believers hated the regime of the Romanovs. For them, they were persecutors of the holy faith, anti-christ, who split the church and the people, actively repressed the Old Believers for a long time, destroyed the patriarchate, made the church part of the state apparatus. Power planted the western abomination. Therefore, the world of Old Believers wanted to destroy the Romanovs Russia. The Old Believers and the Old Believers (the Russian national) bourgeoisie consistently opposed the authorities. Therefore, the Old Believers world supported the revolution. However, the revolution destroyed the huge Old Believers world, the whole parallel Russia.
To be continued ...
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