Reformatting of consciousness. Foundation Guardians
Nicholas Roerich was no longer such a zealous admirer of S. S. Uvarov and his "theory of official nationality", but he perfectly felt this very nationality and its origins, and ... being a talented artist, conveyed it in his painting. "Duel of Alexander Nevsky with Jarl Birger". State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Fly away on the wings of wind
You are our native land, our native song,
Where we sang to you freely,
Where we were so pleased with you.
There, under the sultry sky, the air is full of bliss,
There, under the voice of the sea, the mountains slumber in the clouds.
There the sun shines so brightly,
Native mountains flooding with light,
In the valleys, roses bloom profusely,
And the nightingales sing in the green forests;
And sweet grapes are growing.
There you are more free, song ...
You go there and fly away!
Song of the slaves from the opera "Prince Igor" by A. P. Borodin
You are our native land, our native song,
Where we sang to you freely,
Where we were so pleased with you.
There, under the sultry sky, the air is full of bliss,
There, under the voice of the sea, the mountains slumber in the clouds.
There the sun shines so brightly,
Native mountains flooding with light,
In the valleys, roses bloom profusely,
And the nightingales sing in the green forests;
And sweet grapes are growing.
There you are more free, song ...
You go there and fly away!
Song of the slaves from the opera "Prince Igor" by A. P. Borodin
Difficult story humanity. We got acquainted, albeit very superficially, with attempts to change the consciousness of many people for the better, even if “this side” belonged only to quite certain people. Be that as it may, both people like the Cathars and individuals like Thomas More or Tommaso Campanella wanted only one thing - to improve the lives of the people around them. Or at least show them what this "improved life" could be. But ... there were also those who did not want any "reformatting" at all. In their opinion, everything around them was good and should remain so in the future. These people played the role of "guardians of the foundations", and their influence was very great. Today we are going to talk about just such people. Moreover, these will be our compatriots of the beginning and middle of the XNUMXth century.
"Pagan temple". N. Roerich. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
What was that time? Yes, very interesting, I must say. After the assassination of Paul I and the accession of Alexander I, Russian society was waiting for the start of liberal reforms and welcomed the first, albeit very timid, steps of the new emperor and his “young friends” along this path. For the first time, many Russian peasants, dressed in soldier's greatcoats, visited the countries of the West and saw that people live there no worse than in Russia, only without landlords. Well, the officers - landlords or their children, for the most part, also saw a lot of things, and among many of them a real fermentation of minds began. But there were also those who, having seen abroad, still did not want any innovations. But they did not yet have a clear system of political views at that time.
"The city is being built." N. Roerich. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
True, even before the Patriotic War of 1812, the great Russian historian Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin, a man of pronounced conservative views, sent a note to Emperor Alexander "On Ancient and New Russia", in which he sharply criticized the liberal project of state reforms by M. M. Speransky, and argued that the autocracy in Russia must be preserved forever. Instead of reforms, Karamzin suggested ... to find 50 sensible governors and worthy clerics who would support morality among the people. It’s just that from Karamzin’s point of view, all the shortcomings in the Russian state were not connected with the vices of the system, but only with the negative qualities of individual people - governors, officials, etc. Appoint “good”, “honest” people, and things will work out, I thought he is downright childishly naive, but it is not for nothing that it is said that for every wise man there is enough simplicity. At the same time, he assigned a special role to the imperial power in Russia. Any attempt to limit it can lead to riots and anarchy.
And - as Karamzin looked into the water. Alexander I did not like what he saw in the West either. He saw this as a direct threat to his autocracy.
"Sinister". N. Roerich. State Museum of Arts of the Republic of Kazakhstan named after A. Kasteeva. Almaty
As a result, at the end of the reign of Alexander I, the reaction clearly triumphed. So, the Ministry of Public Education was renamed the Ministry of Spiritual Affairs and Public Education for a reason. Its main goal was the spread of religion, and by no means enlightenment.
But the true flowering of conservatism in Russia came in the era of Emperor Nicholas I. The same Decembrists got not only, so to speak, "physically", but also morally. The poet F.I. Tyutchev called them "victims of reckless thought". And A. I. Herzen in his memoirs “The Past and Thoughts” wrote:
“The tone of society was changing dramatically ... No one (except women) dared to show participation, to utter a warm word about relatives, about friends who had been shaken by the hand yesterday, but who were taken during the night. On the contrary, there were wild fanatics of slavery, some of meanness, while others are worse - disinterestedly.
But best of all, Nicholas I himself outlined the vector of the Russian mentality in his manifesto of July 13, 1826:
“This intent was not in the properties, not in the customs of the Russians. Compiled by a handful of monsters, it infected their nearest community, depraved hearts and bold dreaminess, but did not penetrate, could not penetrate further. The heart of Russia was and will be impregnable for him. Not from bold dreams, always destructive, but from above, domestic institutions are gradually improved, shortcomings are supplemented, abuses are corrected.
Like this! Over! And nothing else!
"Pechory. Monastery walls and towers. N. Roerich. State Museum of Oriental Art, Moscow
To combat "rebellious and disastrous spirit of the West"Already in July 1826, the III Department of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery was created, headed by General A. X. Benckendorff. That is, nothing but the secret police. At the same time, the III Branch paid special attention to the then journal periodicals and polemics in literature. Hardly any magazine mentioned the revolution or liberal ideas. Benckendorff immediately invited the guilty editor to his place and made him a "purely paternal suggestion", after which ... "much changed." But it did not change - the publication was closed. Denunciation was encouraged, personal letters were opened...
But the government acted not only through repression. On instructions from above, some writers and publicists were invited to take up the creation of such a political ideology that could justify the inviolability of the existing order or, in the words of A. S. Pushkin, “the need for autocracy and the charms of the whip».
And one of these “guardians of the foundations”, whose merit was the development of an official conservative ideology, was Sergey Semyonovich Uvarov (1786–1855), who died just during the Crimean War and, perhaps, still had time to see that ... "not everything is fine in the Kingdom of Denmark". However, even if he saw, he could not change anything!
He was brilliantly educated for his time. He worked as a diplomat in Paris and Vienna, was acquainted with Goethe, Humboldt and Madame de Stael.
"Foreign guests". N. Roerich. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Leaving the diplomatic service, in 1811 he became a trustee of the St. Petersburg educational district. After the victory over Napoleon, he began to write on political topics and, above all, condemned the revolution, or, as he himself wrote, “popular anarchy". He saw the reasons for Napoleon's failure in the fact that the Russian people, after the surrender of Moscow, led "national war", and only thanks to this"national warNapoleon's army was eventually defeated. So about "cudgel of the people's warTolstoy did not invent it himself. He took this from Uvarov.
"Count Sergei Uvarov". Hood. V. A. Golike (1833)
The unity of the tsar and the people is the ideal of the social structure of Russia according to Uvarov. At the same time, the people have only one right: to obey the “lawful” sovereign. Like Benckendorff, and the writers Bulgarin, Grech, and, finally, Nicholas I himself, Uvarov considered it necessary to fight the liberal "direction of minds", the eradication of hotbeds of dissent, the main of which he considered ... universities, which in Russia"were bad". But Uvarov also understood that the repressions of the Third Division alone would not help the cause. It is necessary to create a new idea of Russia and its place in the world, as well as a different view of the situation within the country itself.
Count's coat of arms of Uvarov
In 1833, Uvarov was appointed minister of public education. And the new minister took up the fact that he decided to find what exactly Russia differs from the West, where social cataclysms and revolutions are so frequent, and also spreads everywhere.folk anarchy". It was then that Uvarov made the "important" conclusion that
“Russia has retained a warm faith in salvific principles, without which it cannot prosper, grow stronger, and live.”
There were three of them, in his opinion, which he announced when he took office:
“Our common duty is to ensure that public education is carried out in the united spirit of autocracy, Orthodoxy and nationality.”
Portrait of Sergei Uvarov by Ya. K. Kanevsky (1844)
And it was not just a slogan. All of these concepts had a very specific meaning. In Russia, as Uvarov and his supporters believed, for a number of reasons, in particular, natural-geographical and historical, a quite definite method of government has developed: an unlimited monarchy, and since “it happened so”, then there could be no restrictions on autocracy, since it was in they are the cause of unrest and anarchy.
Uvarov considered the Orthodox faith the basis of "public and family happiness". Well, it’s clear that you can’t argue with religion. It is easiest to declare any dissident a heretic, accuse him of "unbelief", instead of arguing with him. Here everything was the same as in ... the West, where the bodies belonged to the monarchs, and the souls belonged to the Inquisition!
There were problems with the "nationality". It was not Uvarov who invented it, that's the trouble, but the famous German philosophers Kant, Fichte and Hegel, that is, foreigners, wrote about it. And the Russian liberals did not shy away from it at all. We got out of this unpleasant situation by saturating the concept of "nationality" with new content. Now its essence was in uncomplaining obedience to the authorities and the king. And these, they say, are qualities inherent in the Russian nation. Submission to the supreme power, which, as you know, is from God. Well, all manifestations of discontent among the people are the result of the "pernicious" influence of the West. From here came the opposition of Russia to the West, the desire to constantly prove that Russia is better, stronger, more powerful than all European countries put together. It got to the point that Prince P. A. Vyazemsky called such praises “leavened patriotism”, and this term turned out to be so successful that it has survived to our time.
The opera "Prince Igor", theater and painting, literature and sculpture of Russia are full of truly folk works, with official theories connected ... not too much, but not worse from this. Frame from the film "Sadko" (1952)
The funny thing is that, speaking out against the spread of everything Western in Russia, Uvarov, in complete contradiction to the postulates of his own ideology, literally raised the level of Russian education. Both gymnasiums and universities reach the European level under him, and Moscow University has become one of the leading educational institutions of this type in Europe. He scolded the West, but restored the practice of sending Russian scientists abroad, although ... after all, they could very well pick up “Voltairianism” there. Moreover, when in 1849, after the suppression of the uprising in Hungary, the authorities again began persecuting universities, it was he who wrote a pamphlet in their defense, which Nicholas I disliked so much that he wrote:
“You must obey, and keep your reasoning to yourself.”
And after that, Uvarov did not humiliate himself before the tsar, but resigned, leaving the post of minister.
In general, the figure of Uvarov is very ambivalent. He guarded the foundations, created the "theory of official nationality" that the autocrat liked, however, when it came to his own interests, simply (well, let's not write "spit on them"), but tolerantly, let's say - in a very noticeable way for society ignored them. So, blaming the West for moral decay, and putting Orthodox dogmas at the forefront of the behavior of the subjects of the empire, he adhered to an unconventional orientation. Moreover, he openly expressed his homosexual affections in the appointment of his lover Dondukov-Korsakov to the post of vice-president of the Academy of Sciences, which A. S. Pushkin caustically ridiculed in his famous epigram. And in general, the St. Petersburg society reproached him for many unseemly acts of a personal nature. But… it so happens very often that what we demand from everyone else, we do not always apply to ourselves! So S.S. Uvarov was one of those people. However, today it is not his homosexual inclinations that are important to us, but the theory he created, which had a huge impact on the formation of the consciousness of more than one generation of Russians.
To be continued ...
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