Russian character: the search for absolute good
Russian character is considered both contradictory, and complex, and difficult to explain. What is it just not. The heart of the Russian people consists, according to some, of kindness, which cannot be broken even by the most terrible of life, of talent, hard work, patience, loyalty, perseverance, courage, asceticism, hospitality, responsiveness, religiosity. According to other beliefs, the Russian people are cruel, deceitful, lazy and prone to self-destruction. This is a people without conscience, without honor; this is a nation completely devoid of artistic culture. And what she has is heartlessly licked by the West.
The philosopher N. O. Lossky laid outstanding kindness into the basis of the Russian character. Exactly - outstanding. Such a powerful epithet, he argued the "search for absolute good" Russian people. This quest both supports and strengthens kindness. Continuing in the book The Character of the Russian People, the conversation about kindness, Lossky, referring including to Dostoevsky, calls her special features: lack of vindictiveness, softening at the meeting even in case of strong hatred, sincere softness, reaching to self-conviction manifested weakness of character, finally, pitifulness.
“Dostoevsky likes to point out how Russian soldiers showed kindness in a war against an enemy. During the Sevastopol campaign, he writes, the wounded Frenchmen were “carried off for dressing before their Russians,” saying: “Everyone will raise a Russian, and a Frenchman is a stranger, you should regret it in advance.”
Lossky cites a case that took place during the Russian-Turkish war 1877-1878. A Russian soldier feeds a captive Turk: "Man, too, though not a Christian." At the same time there is a correspondent of the English newspaper, who writes in a notebook: "This is an army of gentlemen."
The philosopher writes that even the inhuman regime of the Soviet government did not eradicate kindness.
“This is evidenced by foreigners who observed life in the USSR. Austrian German Otto Berger, who was in captivity in Russia in 1944-1949, wrote the book "People who have forgotten how to smile." He says that, living near Mozhaisk, the prisoners understood, “what a particular Russian people. All workers, and especially women, treated us as unhappy, in need of help and protection. Sometimes women took our clothes, our underwear, and returned them all ironed, washed, and repaired. The most amazing thing was that the Russians themselves lived in terrible need, which would kill in them the desire to help us, their yesterday's enemies. ”
The kindness of a Russian person is not the same as sentimentality. She is alien to the pleasure and pretense or following some ethical social rules. There is nothing Pharisee about her. She, Lossky declares, "is the direct acceptance of another's being into your soul and the protection of it as yourself."
The love of the Russian people for all things extends from people to objects. From here is such an abundance, tact, the richness of diminutive suffixes expressing, according to Lossky, tenderness. House, house, head, head, hair, hair, boat, small suitcase. Or adjectives: darling, happy-radar.
If a Russian person is lying, then it often happens with kindness: he does not want to offend the interlocutor.
The kindness and love of a Russian woman reach for selflessness. Lossky cites the example of Princess Natalia Borisovna Dolgoruky (1714-1771), née Countess Sheremeteva, engaged to Prince Ivan Dolgoruky. When Anna Ivanovna prince fell into disgrace. No matter how persuaded his relatives to Natalia Borisovna, she did not leave her fiancé: she married him and followed him to Siberian exile. Later, Prince Ivan was transported from Siberia to Novgorod and executed there. Natalia Borisovna took monasticism in Kiev. In her notes, she recalled: “Enter into the argument, what a consolation this is for me, and whether this conscience is honest — when he was great, I was happy for him, and when he became unhappy, refuse him? I could not agree to such unscrupulous advice; and so laid down my intention, when, giving my heart, to live or die together, and the other no longer participates in my love ... "
A Russian woman, says the philosopher, having fallen in love with a person who is fascinated by her high life purpose, is not afraid to lose the comforts of the former life provided by her parents. She shows love of freedom and independence from prejudice.
One should not think that Lossky confined himself to a simple statement of the fact of Russian kindness and bringing only positive examples. Referring to the professor at the University of Bratislava, he spoke about how Soviet Army soldiers behaved during World War II - in the village where the parents of the said professor lived. They behaved like children: "... they will rob many hours, and then distribute them right and left." Nevertheless, this is kindness: special, unpredictable, generated by the realities of war.
In addition to the kindness that the philosopher considers the predominant heart component of the Russian people, other features of the national character are analyzed in Lossky's work. Cruelty must be singled out as the antipode of kindness.
He considers cruelty to be a product of poverty, oppression, injustice, and also an ingrained means of education. The grandfather spotted Gorky once before he lost consciousness, and then brought him, the convalescent patient, a present. Lossky is outraged by the fact that drunken men were able to beat their wives. Anton Chekhov could not forgive his father that he beat him in childhood. Lossky convincingly explains the gross merchant's tyranny with the expression of a primitive (egoistic) form of the love of freedom. From here comes the family despotism. However, the Russian and Soviet society has progressed significantly since the times of merchants.
The talent of the Russian people, according to Lossky's research, includes a lot of components: here there is creative creativeness, and ingenuity, and the ability for higher forms of experience, and a subtle perception of beauty, and artistry. By the way, Lossky names the search for absolute good by Russian people as a source of diversity of experience and exercises of various abilities. One of the proofs of the giftedness of the Russian people is the language developed by the artists of the word, but built on the creativity of the whole people. Russian literature is known for its elevation. Here and the search for good, and the exposure of evil, and the search for the meaning of life, and penetration into the recesses of the soul, and, finally, educational nature.
Another famous philosopher, Ivan Ilyin, in his choleric temperament and narrative character, was very different from Lossky, arguing in his speech “On Russia” that a soul without a feeling as passionate, subtle and mobile as a Russian is a stone. But on one feeling, the philosopher continued, the character of the people is not built.
“Rushing without a rudder and without winds, according to the will of the“ senses ”, our life takes on the appearance of caprice, tyranny, touchiness, underground, unbalance and bitterness. But combined with natural goodness and the dream of infinity, it creates wonderful images of virtue, civil valor and heroism. ”
In general, the famous thesis of Ilyin, in contrast to Lossky's conviction in his heartfelt naturalness, “the immanence of everything,” corresponds to a saying that the philosopher repeated several times in his writings: “Not nice enough, but nicely nice.” That is nice when good; not good - not nice. It is love by the rules, kindness by the rules. And for quite strict. Here I. Ilyin disagrees with Lossky dramatically: after all, the latter just objected to following Russian cordiality to ethical rules. Lossky has love: it extends to the convicted criminal, and to the military opponent — the present, the former, and the one who does not share faith with you (like a Turk). Such love of exceptions and rules does not know. Choleric, passionate Ilyin, with his Christian "opposition to evil by force", unlike not only Lossky, but for example, Leo Tolstoy, accepts these exceptions.
Nevertheless, he (let us return to his speech “About Russia”) emphasizes the ability of the Russian soul to be touched without risking sentimentality. A Russian person can forgive with all his heart, as well as “end a sinful, robbery life with asceticism”.
The philosopher singles out from the Russian people the will to perfection, simplicity and naturalness in heroism; loyalty and resilience in the face of torment and death. Here he sees a dream of completeness and fullness:
“... this is a nationwide Easter celebration; it is the gathering of all people, all classes and all the lands of the Russians under a single hand; this catholicity of faith; these youthful dreams of absolute justice; these naive dreams of a premature and unbearable brotherhood of all nations ... Here it is - this tendency of the Russian people to cultivate those social forms that rest in brotherhood or are based on sacrifice and love: parish, artel, fraternity; monasteries; human-loving institutions born of the victim; monarchical structure, unthinkable without a sacrificial love for the motherland and for the king ... "
Hence the spiritual culture of the Russian people. According to Ilyin, Russia is a country of ancient and original culture. Ilyin believes that Western scientists do not have the right to judge it by hearsay. Russia is expressed in its wondrous, mighty, singing language, says Ilyin.
“In it the buzz of distant bells and the silver of nearby bells. It has gentle rustles and crunches. There are herbal rustles and sighs. In it is screaming, and the gray, and the whistle, and the chirping of the bird. In it the thunders of heaven and the roars of beasts; and the eddies are unsteady, and the splash is barely audible. In it is the whole singing Russian soul: the echo of the world, and the groan of man, and the mirror of divine visions ... ”
Other nations, the philosopher reminds the West, should understand and remember that they will only then be able to comprehend Russia when they know and “honor” the Russian language. Until then, Russia will be incomprehensible and inaccessible to them. And not only foreigners will not find a spiritual path to it, but also a political one.
Contemporary author Alexander Dudin in work "Traits of the Russian national character" the first “line”, following in the wake of I. Il'in, calls “monarchism”.
The main desire of the Russian people regarding power: the government controls him for him, not against him. Hence political life, the ideas of civil society, the values of personal freedom and freedom of speech in the XXI century are alien to many Russians. Self-government, self-reliance on business, the exception to the hopes of the authorities is beyond the aspirations of Russians. The intervention of higher authorities and today meets the psychological needs of Russians, the scientist writes. The “monarchical dominant” in the Russian mentality has been supplanted, but it has not left completely.
The temperament of the Russian people is harsh - due to surrounding circumstances. There is space in Russia, but there is wind, rain and snow. Nature demands immense endurance from the Russian people. For each step of being he pays heavy labor and hardships. Referring to Ilyin, the author finds here a craving for the achievement of a goal, a dream of the last and final, the desire to look into the boundless distance, the ability not to fear death. This is followed by the usual Russian longing for the harsh and mighty homeland.
Dudin devotes a separate chapter of his work to Russian humor with its complex gradations - from the subtle and poisonous wit of a diplomat to the desperate playfulness of the hanged man. Russian self-irony stands out: a mockery of oneself. Russian humor is an inescapable attraction and an inexhaustible source of art.
Further, the author singles out a special cordiality - the source of Russian virtue. In Russia, he sincerely despises one who is prudent and rational, vain and unprincipled and intends to make a career by any means. The one who declares his “service to the people” as his goal will be sung. Hence, the public sentiments, according to which exploitation is shameful, are still alive; capitalism — invariably enslavement; need to live in fraternity and full equality.
The Russian striving for perfection, the author writes further, is naive and childish, and in practice, helpless and idealized for failure. However, such maximalism cannot be crossed out from the Russian soul. The last alcoholic or professional gangster cannot forget his national-Christian dream of perfection. Here the author comes to the Russian contemplation, borrowed by him from the same Ilyin.
The gigantic size of the country gives rise to such a trait as inertia. Historical inertia in a sense is rock for Russia. The author gives an example of the August 1991 coup. Only a small part of citizens, mainly Muscovites and Petersburgers, followed liberal reformists. Most of the population passively watched the progress of the struggle on television. Power simply fell at the feet of the reformers. Here, probably, the author refers us back to the time of Kerensky, when the government "lay around" and was picked up by comrade Lenin.
Teacher and blogger A. V. Gurieva, who dedicated the Russian character a separate article, highlights the enormous power that is called the voice of conscience. It is she who, in her opinion, makes the Russian person fight for justice, to notice the “disorder” and imperfection of actions. Hence the author’s first distinctive feature of the Russian people is a heightened sense of justice.
“Take, for example, the same Nikita Mikhalkov. As people were up in arms against him: he became a master, and travels around Moscow with a flashing light, and he almost got himself a king now! About the director are passionate discussions on the Internet and the media. Is it conceivable anywhere in another country? To any director discussed the whole people? To make it anybody out there? Of course not".
In fact, there is an exaggeration. The sense of justice is characteristic of many nations, and it is simply naive to attribute it to one Russian. Actor, restaurateur and winemaker Depardieu in connection with the relocation not to Belgium, or to Russia, away from Monsieur Holland’s draconian taxes, are discussed not only in France, but throughout Western Europe. Many are affected by the fact that he “changed” his homeland - along with other actors or businessmen who also gathered to move away from Paris to a new permanent residence.
The philosopher N. O. Lossky laid outstanding kindness into the basis of the Russian character. Exactly - outstanding. Such a powerful epithet, he argued the "search for absolute good" Russian people. This quest both supports and strengthens kindness. Continuing in the book The Character of the Russian People, the conversation about kindness, Lossky, referring including to Dostoevsky, calls her special features: lack of vindictiveness, softening at the meeting even in case of strong hatred, sincere softness, reaching to self-conviction manifested weakness of character, finally, pitifulness.
“Dostoevsky likes to point out how Russian soldiers showed kindness in a war against an enemy. During the Sevastopol campaign, he writes, the wounded Frenchmen were “carried off for dressing before their Russians,” saying: “Everyone will raise a Russian, and a Frenchman is a stranger, you should regret it in advance.”
Lossky cites a case that took place during the Russian-Turkish war 1877-1878. A Russian soldier feeds a captive Turk: "Man, too, though not a Christian." At the same time there is a correspondent of the English newspaper, who writes in a notebook: "This is an army of gentlemen."
The philosopher writes that even the inhuman regime of the Soviet government did not eradicate kindness.
“This is evidenced by foreigners who observed life in the USSR. Austrian German Otto Berger, who was in captivity in Russia in 1944-1949, wrote the book "People who have forgotten how to smile." He says that, living near Mozhaisk, the prisoners understood, “what a particular Russian people. All workers, and especially women, treated us as unhappy, in need of help and protection. Sometimes women took our clothes, our underwear, and returned them all ironed, washed, and repaired. The most amazing thing was that the Russians themselves lived in terrible need, which would kill in them the desire to help us, their yesterday's enemies. ”
The kindness of a Russian person is not the same as sentimentality. She is alien to the pleasure and pretense or following some ethical social rules. There is nothing Pharisee about her. She, Lossky declares, "is the direct acceptance of another's being into your soul and the protection of it as yourself."
The love of the Russian people for all things extends from people to objects. From here is such an abundance, tact, the richness of diminutive suffixes expressing, according to Lossky, tenderness. House, house, head, head, hair, hair, boat, small suitcase. Or adjectives: darling, happy-radar.
If a Russian person is lying, then it often happens with kindness: he does not want to offend the interlocutor.
The kindness and love of a Russian woman reach for selflessness. Lossky cites the example of Princess Natalia Borisovna Dolgoruky (1714-1771), née Countess Sheremeteva, engaged to Prince Ivan Dolgoruky. When Anna Ivanovna prince fell into disgrace. No matter how persuaded his relatives to Natalia Borisovna, she did not leave her fiancé: she married him and followed him to Siberian exile. Later, Prince Ivan was transported from Siberia to Novgorod and executed there. Natalia Borisovna took monasticism in Kiev. In her notes, she recalled: “Enter into the argument, what a consolation this is for me, and whether this conscience is honest — when he was great, I was happy for him, and when he became unhappy, refuse him? I could not agree to such unscrupulous advice; and so laid down my intention, when, giving my heart, to live or die together, and the other no longer participates in my love ... "
A Russian woman, says the philosopher, having fallen in love with a person who is fascinated by her high life purpose, is not afraid to lose the comforts of the former life provided by her parents. She shows love of freedom and independence from prejudice.
One should not think that Lossky confined himself to a simple statement of the fact of Russian kindness and bringing only positive examples. Referring to the professor at the University of Bratislava, he spoke about how Soviet Army soldiers behaved during World War II - in the village where the parents of the said professor lived. They behaved like children: "... they will rob many hours, and then distribute them right and left." Nevertheless, this is kindness: special, unpredictable, generated by the realities of war.
In addition to the kindness that the philosopher considers the predominant heart component of the Russian people, other features of the national character are analyzed in Lossky's work. Cruelty must be singled out as the antipode of kindness.
He considers cruelty to be a product of poverty, oppression, injustice, and also an ingrained means of education. The grandfather spotted Gorky once before he lost consciousness, and then brought him, the convalescent patient, a present. Lossky is outraged by the fact that drunken men were able to beat their wives. Anton Chekhov could not forgive his father that he beat him in childhood. Lossky convincingly explains the gross merchant's tyranny with the expression of a primitive (egoistic) form of the love of freedom. From here comes the family despotism. However, the Russian and Soviet society has progressed significantly since the times of merchants.
The talent of the Russian people, according to Lossky's research, includes a lot of components: here there is creative creativeness, and ingenuity, and the ability for higher forms of experience, and a subtle perception of beauty, and artistry. By the way, Lossky names the search for absolute good by Russian people as a source of diversity of experience and exercises of various abilities. One of the proofs of the giftedness of the Russian people is the language developed by the artists of the word, but built on the creativity of the whole people. Russian literature is known for its elevation. Here and the search for good, and the exposure of evil, and the search for the meaning of life, and penetration into the recesses of the soul, and, finally, educational nature.
Another famous philosopher, Ivan Ilyin, in his choleric temperament and narrative character, was very different from Lossky, arguing in his speech “On Russia” that a soul without a feeling as passionate, subtle and mobile as a Russian is a stone. But on one feeling, the philosopher continued, the character of the people is not built.
“Rushing without a rudder and without winds, according to the will of the“ senses ”, our life takes on the appearance of caprice, tyranny, touchiness, underground, unbalance and bitterness. But combined with natural goodness and the dream of infinity, it creates wonderful images of virtue, civil valor and heroism. ”
In general, the famous thesis of Ilyin, in contrast to Lossky's conviction in his heartfelt naturalness, “the immanence of everything,” corresponds to a saying that the philosopher repeated several times in his writings: “Not nice enough, but nicely nice.” That is nice when good; not good - not nice. It is love by the rules, kindness by the rules. And for quite strict. Here I. Ilyin disagrees with Lossky dramatically: after all, the latter just objected to following Russian cordiality to ethical rules. Lossky has love: it extends to the convicted criminal, and to the military opponent — the present, the former, and the one who does not share faith with you (like a Turk). Such love of exceptions and rules does not know. Choleric, passionate Ilyin, with his Christian "opposition to evil by force", unlike not only Lossky, but for example, Leo Tolstoy, accepts these exceptions.
Nevertheless, he (let us return to his speech “About Russia”) emphasizes the ability of the Russian soul to be touched without risking sentimentality. A Russian person can forgive with all his heart, as well as “end a sinful, robbery life with asceticism”.
The philosopher singles out from the Russian people the will to perfection, simplicity and naturalness in heroism; loyalty and resilience in the face of torment and death. Here he sees a dream of completeness and fullness:
“... this is a nationwide Easter celebration; it is the gathering of all people, all classes and all the lands of the Russians under a single hand; this catholicity of faith; these youthful dreams of absolute justice; these naive dreams of a premature and unbearable brotherhood of all nations ... Here it is - this tendency of the Russian people to cultivate those social forms that rest in brotherhood or are based on sacrifice and love: parish, artel, fraternity; monasteries; human-loving institutions born of the victim; monarchical structure, unthinkable without a sacrificial love for the motherland and for the king ... "
Hence the spiritual culture of the Russian people. According to Ilyin, Russia is a country of ancient and original culture. Ilyin believes that Western scientists do not have the right to judge it by hearsay. Russia is expressed in its wondrous, mighty, singing language, says Ilyin.
“In it the buzz of distant bells and the silver of nearby bells. It has gentle rustles and crunches. There are herbal rustles and sighs. In it is screaming, and the gray, and the whistle, and the chirping of the bird. In it the thunders of heaven and the roars of beasts; and the eddies are unsteady, and the splash is barely audible. In it is the whole singing Russian soul: the echo of the world, and the groan of man, and the mirror of divine visions ... ”
Other nations, the philosopher reminds the West, should understand and remember that they will only then be able to comprehend Russia when they know and “honor” the Russian language. Until then, Russia will be incomprehensible and inaccessible to them. And not only foreigners will not find a spiritual path to it, but also a political one.
Contemporary author Alexander Dudin in work "Traits of the Russian national character" the first “line”, following in the wake of I. Il'in, calls “monarchism”.
The main desire of the Russian people regarding power: the government controls him for him, not against him. Hence political life, the ideas of civil society, the values of personal freedom and freedom of speech in the XXI century are alien to many Russians. Self-government, self-reliance on business, the exception to the hopes of the authorities is beyond the aspirations of Russians. The intervention of higher authorities and today meets the psychological needs of Russians, the scientist writes. The “monarchical dominant” in the Russian mentality has been supplanted, but it has not left completely.
The temperament of the Russian people is harsh - due to surrounding circumstances. There is space in Russia, but there is wind, rain and snow. Nature demands immense endurance from the Russian people. For each step of being he pays heavy labor and hardships. Referring to Ilyin, the author finds here a craving for the achievement of a goal, a dream of the last and final, the desire to look into the boundless distance, the ability not to fear death. This is followed by the usual Russian longing for the harsh and mighty homeland.
Dudin devotes a separate chapter of his work to Russian humor with its complex gradations - from the subtle and poisonous wit of a diplomat to the desperate playfulness of the hanged man. Russian self-irony stands out: a mockery of oneself. Russian humor is an inescapable attraction and an inexhaustible source of art.
Further, the author singles out a special cordiality - the source of Russian virtue. In Russia, he sincerely despises one who is prudent and rational, vain and unprincipled and intends to make a career by any means. The one who declares his “service to the people” as his goal will be sung. Hence, the public sentiments, according to which exploitation is shameful, are still alive; capitalism — invariably enslavement; need to live in fraternity and full equality.
The Russian striving for perfection, the author writes further, is naive and childish, and in practice, helpless and idealized for failure. However, such maximalism cannot be crossed out from the Russian soul. The last alcoholic or professional gangster cannot forget his national-Christian dream of perfection. Here the author comes to the Russian contemplation, borrowed by him from the same Ilyin.
The gigantic size of the country gives rise to such a trait as inertia. Historical inertia in a sense is rock for Russia. The author gives an example of the August 1991 coup. Only a small part of citizens, mainly Muscovites and Petersburgers, followed liberal reformists. Most of the population passively watched the progress of the struggle on television. Power simply fell at the feet of the reformers. Here, probably, the author refers us back to the time of Kerensky, when the government "lay around" and was picked up by comrade Lenin.
Teacher and blogger A. V. Gurieva, who dedicated the Russian character a separate article, highlights the enormous power that is called the voice of conscience. It is she who, in her opinion, makes the Russian person fight for justice, to notice the “disorder” and imperfection of actions. Hence the author’s first distinctive feature of the Russian people is a heightened sense of justice.
“Take, for example, the same Nikita Mikhalkov. As people were up in arms against him: he became a master, and travels around Moscow with a flashing light, and he almost got himself a king now! About the director are passionate discussions on the Internet and the media. Is it conceivable anywhere in another country? To any director discussed the whole people? To make it anybody out there? Of course not".
In fact, there is an exaggeration. The sense of justice is characteristic of many nations, and it is simply naive to attribute it to one Russian. Actor, restaurateur and winemaker Depardieu in connection with the relocation not to Belgium, or to Russia, away from Monsieur Holland’s draconian taxes, are discussed not only in France, but throughout Western Europe. Many are affected by the fact that he “changed” his homeland - along with other actors or businessmen who also gathered to move away from Paris to a new permanent residence.
To be continued
Information