What does the word homeland mean? Fatherland is native land

Lev Alexandrovich Tikhomirov

What is Fatherland?

The subject of my reasoning boils down, in essence, to the consideration of the question: does the Fatherland exist and what is it? At another time and in another country, such reasoning could have only an academic value, analogous, for example, to questions: Does love exist? does man even exist? In practical terms, a person who feels his existence does not have the slightest need for any proof of this. The one who loves can only smile at the evidence that love does not exist.

Just like an ordinary normal person in regular time can relate to the question of whether there is a Fatherland and what it is. He feels him with all his heart, he loves him: The Japanese poet Motoori perfectly expressed the state of the patriotic soul: “If anyone asks what the soul of Japan (“Yamato Damascus”) is, point him to a flower that is fragrant in the morning sun ...” There is no definition, there is a simple indication of self-arising and self-conscious life.

When this feeling of life is strong, it builds up in the heart by itself

This cup of the fatherland, friends!

The country where we first

Tasted the sweetness of life

Fields, native hills,

dear light of the native sky,

familiar streams,

Golden games of the first years

And the first years lessons

What will replace your beauty?

Oh holy motherland,

What heart does not tremble

Blessing you?

(V. A. Zhukovsky)

In Russia, we now see a completely different mood around us. All sorts of interests, all kinds of passions, all kinds of principles are put forward, but in their struggle one does not grasp either the feelings or the ideas of the Fatherland. The very word "patriot" is used rather in a mocking sense, and the reminder of the Fatherland has no effect on the heart. There were even doctrines denying the existence of the Fatherland. The call of the "proletarians of all countries" to unite against all fatherlands is heard from among the intelligentsia and resonates with the masses of the people. The warm feeling of the Fatherland is not visible in other strata of society either. It is not visible in the ruling spheres either.

I will not prove this fact, because everyone who has preserved a holy feeling of closeness and love for the Fatherland sees it with bitterness and horror. I will not go into the causes that gave rise to this phenomenon, but I consider it necessary to point out that it undoubtedly represents some manifestation of mental illness.

For a healthy person, there is no need to prove what is evidenced by direct sensation, direct perception. But the weakening of direct perception, as it were, a certain devastation of the soul, is the disease of the age, and especially of the Russian people. Psychiatry testifies to the increase in patients who doubt their own existence, that is, in other words, who feel it badly. Moreover, in such a state of mind, the feeling of socio-organic processes can decrease, from which comes the “unseeing” of the Fatherland, the weakness of feeling it. And in such a state of people, in order to cure the disease, it becomes the highest degree it is important to rely on the testimony of other spiritual faculties, in order to correct the indications of a weakened feeling by means of them. The argument about whether there is a Fatherland and what it consists of now acquires special significance. The help of the mind, supporting the remnants of a weakened feeling, gives it time to recover, to rise in its functions and begin to grow again in souls.

Protection, proof, clarification of the idea of ​​the Fatherland - the apology of the Fatherland - now becomes our greatest duty in the name of the resurrection in weakened souls of the greatest of social ideas - the idea of ​​​​the Fatherland.

In saying this, I am not exaggerating anything. Other all-encompassing ideas can be called in the abstract: universal human solidarity, brotherhood, truth, etc. But the strength of the Fatherland lies in the fact that here the idea is united with the fact, the human soul is united with society not in an abstract idea, but in actual existence. Solidarity, brotherhood, truth, appear in the Fatherland not in the form of abstract formulas and principles, but in living realization. That is why the Fatherland has always been so dear to people, and love for the Fatherland has exalted them so much.

If, forgetting the phenomena of sick modernity, we look at the thousand-year history of peoples, we will see for everyone and at all times that there is no such treasure that a person would not be ready to sacrifice for the benefit of the Fatherland. Dozens of volumes can be filled with examples of an all-consuming sense of patriotism.

All men, great and small, all forms of states alike give us these examples. The greatest of our kings, under the cannonballs and bullets of Poltava, left his confession to posterity: “And about Peter, know that life is not dear to him; Russia would live in honor and glory. The modest peasant Susanin, who only accidentally became known to history, also gives his life without hesitation for the Motherland. The greatest revolutionary Danton does not want to save his life by fleeing the Fatherland, exclaiming: “Will I take the Fatherland with me on my soles?” But what is there to talk about life when people give for the Fatherland and all that for which they value life - property, glory, love ... Mickiewicz could not express the power of love stronger than by comparison:

But there is one sweetest word in the world,

Except only the word "Fatherland", "love" is a word.

In addition to the word “Fatherland” ... Before the Fatherland, love is erased for him, and for the Fatherland, Alf leaves forever Aldona ...

But if it were necessary to indicate the boundlessness of the sacrifice that a person is capable of bringing to the Fatherland, I could not find anything stronger and more striking than the Apostle Paul, who did not hesitate to utter the almost terrible words: “I speak the truth in Christ, I do not lie, my conscience bears witness in the Holy Spirit, what a great sadness for me and unceasing torment to my heart: I would like to be excommunicated from Christ for my brothers, my kindred according to the flesh, that is, the Israelites ... ”(Rom. 9, 1-4). This word, this confession, escaped from the one who would like to be separated from the body, if only to live with Christ ...

But in this cry of all-consuming love for his native Israel, the Apostle Paul did not leave Christ, because the great feeling that spoke in him was sanctified by the Savior of the world Himself. He Himself wept, looking at Jerusalem and saying: “Oh, if only this day you knew what serves your peace” (Luke 19:42), “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which kills the prophets, how many times did I want to gather your children like a bird gathers her chicks under her wings, and you didn’t want to…” This sorrow did not leave the God-man even at the moment of His redemptive feat, and, bending under the weight of the cross, He said: “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not cry for Me, but for yourself and about his children, ”because before His eyes, at that time, the image of the disasters of the Fatherland, doomed to death according to the flesh, was presented.

Considering the fate of our homeland in past centuries, we find it difficult to decide who was its builder more: statesmen or saints? The ardent patriotism of the greatest ascetics and saints of Rus' seems, as it were, tempting to those of our contemporaries who are ill with a decline in immediate feelings or have succumbed to the influence of sick doctrines. But the image of the Redeemer of the world, who came to save people of all tribes and at the same time loves his Fatherland according to the flesh, testifies that the feeling of love for the Motherland is also a holy feeling, blessed by God, and justifies the ascetics of the Russian land, and not their current critics.

What is the Fatherland, if it is capable of attracting the hearts of people so limitlessly and love for it can live even in the heart of the God-man? How can something dreamy, not really existing, something that does not have high and beneficent properties, arouse the blessings of Heaven and earth? Of course not... And if we, having shaken off the fog of sick false sensations of our time, resort to exact knowledge ours in history, social sciences, human psychology, if we weigh all these data even with simple scientific objectivity, then we cannot fail to see that that sphere of our existence, which is called the Fatherland, is in fact higher realm reasonable and moral development human personality, the highest realm in which rational and moral relations between people.

Due to its beneficence for us, it cannot but arouse love in every healthy heart; due to the necessity for the moral development of a person, it cannot but receive the blessing of God.

The unity of the life of man and society, the unity of the life of successive generations - that close connection of people among themselves, which gives people moral unity and constitutes the sphere of development of our moral feeling - all this is really manifested and accomplished only in the Fatherland. Its existence as a completely objective fact manifests itself both internally, psychologically, and externally, in the form of a well-known historical process.

The well-known sociologist Gustav Lebon perfectly characterizes the internal psychological unity of the life of the Fatherland, outlining what he calls the soul of the people. “We,” he says, “are both the children of our parents and our race. Not only feeling, but also physiology, heredity make the Fatherland a second mother for us. The influences to which a person is subjected and which guide his behavior are of three kinds. The first, and probably the most important, is the influence of ancestors. The second influence is immediate parents. The third, which is usually considered the most powerful and which, however, is the weakest, is the influence of the environment. Environmental influences begin to have a noticeable effect only when heredity has accumulated them in the same direction for a very long time.

Man - whatever he does - is always and above all a representative of his race. That stock of ideas and feelings, which all the personalities of one people bring with birth, forms the soul of the people. Invisible in its essence, this soul is very visible in its manifestations, so that in reality it governs the entire evolution of the people. The fatherland, or "race," as Le Bon puts it in his striving for physiological clarity, must be regarded as "a permanent being, not subject to the action of time. This permanent being consists not only of living personalities who form it in this moment, but also from the long line of the dead who were their ancestors. To understand the true meaning of race, it must be extended both into the past and into the future. Ancestors control that immeasurable area of ​​the unconscious (feelings, inclinations, instincts), that invisible area that holds under its hand all manifestations of the mind and character. The fate of the people is controlled to a much greater extent by the dead generations than by the living ones. They laid the foundation. Century after century, they created ideas and feelings, that is, motives for our behavior. The dead generations pass on to us not only their physical organization, but also inspire us with their thoughts. The dead are the masters of the living. We bear the weight of their mistakes, we are rewarded for their virtues.”

Perhaps, Le Bon, in his passion for argumentation, somewhat exaggerates the mental influence of the ancestors, reduces the importance of our independence, but at the core he points out an undoubted psychological and historical fact. It must also be added that the unity of generations, no matter how great the degree of psychological independence of each of them, is supplemented by the commonality of their historical cause, and willy-nilly transmitted successively. The environment in which they develop separate person and a whole generation, there is also a succession environment that accumulates influences from generation to generation.

The unity of the life of the Fatherland for centuries and millennia is created not only by psychology, but also by the conditions of external existence. Fatherland is not just a "race". It is an organized nation, consummating its organization in a state. The entire history of the world is the history of states, of these successively developing unions, of these social organisms that are born, live for hundreds or thousands of years and develop through various phases, from which each subsequent one follows from the previous one, is determined by it and, in turn, provides the basis for the development of the next phase. This fact is well known not only to science, but is directly known to the members of the national whole themselves, at least in relation to the next generations.

Russia, for example, has existed for a thousand years, during this time it has undergone many changes, there were moments when it even disappeared as an independent political entity, was fragmented into parts captured in the spheres of influence and possession of other states. But when, in what century did the Russians not realize that they constituted something of a single whole?

They knew this at the birth of the Russian state, and then they could already speak of the "motherland", of the "fatherland" in the sense of a common origin - even, perhaps, with greater clarity than we do, because they could call by their names those persons from whom they expired. relatedness. The first inhabitants, for example, of the future Great Russia knew that their ancestors came from White Rus', that they were the brothers Radim and Vyatko, and that it was from them that the Radimichi and Vyatichi came.

This community of "fatherland", "kinship" stood before their eyes in its most vivid form. They also knew that some Finnish tribes entered into their union, as adoptees are accepted into the family of origin. At the time of the founding of statehood, they saw that their living conditions had the same strengths and weaknesses, so for common life all clans and tribes require one common measure. “Our land is great and plentiful, but there is no order in it,” they said to the princes, according to legend, “come to own and reign over us.”

And from this first moment in our Fatherland, we can then see, century after century, the systematic development of one whole. Sometimes it goes on more consciously, sometimes less, sometimes it seems to be interrupted - as, for example, under the pressure of the southern nomads, Tatar invasion, the influence of Poland, the Livonian knights, etc. But each time the national whole, torn or destroyed in one place, begins to be restored in other places by the forces of the surviving regions. The crisis that undermined the whole nation in one generation, the next generation is trying to heal and eliminate, and everything is approximately the same plan. Looking over our destinies over a thousand years, we see the development of one and the same process, supported not only in place by all parts of the national organism, but in time by each of the generations, which comes into possession of the entire “homeland”, all the property left by fathers and grandfathers. , and uses it, and sometimes inherits a terrible situation and then tries to correct it, and then, in turn, leaves its property to the heirs - children and grandchildren. The life of each individual generation in this common, unified, successive process acquires meaning only in the existence of the whole Fatherland.

History and social science show us the objective fact that no one separate moment in the life of the state it does not have an isolated existence, but is always a link in some whole thousand-year process, the life of the whole Fatherland. Only in the course of centuries are the institutions of the state formed, only in the course of centuries does it reach its normal boundaries, predetermined by geographic, ethnographic, etc. conditions. In the course of centuries, the formation of economic relations of the whole organism takes place. Each generation is only one part of the whole process taking place in a number of them.

Not in the life of one generation, but in the life of a successive series, their society has its own purpose, fulfillment and completion.

This fact has as its consequence the important circumstance that for the development of society the life of the Fatherland is incomparably more important than the life of mankind.

The life of mankind provides only an idea that guides our abstract mind, and a theoretical direction of our moral feeling, but the real community of life in our world existence is much less than in the Fatherland.

Although, of course, in humanity as a whole there is a continuity of development and interaction of individual parts, but neither one nor the other achieves even approximately the same clarity and intensity as in the Fatherland. The ego does not depend on the existence of international enmity.

Internal struggle, fierce rivalry and even wars take place in the Fatherland no less than in humanity, just as the peaceful interaction of parts exists in humanity. But humanity does not have those powerful means for mutual understanding and rational arrangement in either of them. life together parts, as it happens in the Fatherland.

The consciousness of human community was born in the Fatherland at a time when various parts of humanity did not yet have even a spark of this feeling. Deliberate reasonable adaptation of the interests of individual parts to the interests of the whole does not exist in humanity even to this day, or if it exists, then on the smallest scale. In the Fatherland, on the contrary, this constitutes the entire content of his life. The human community, therefore, was born and develops in the Fatherland. It was and remains a school of social feelings. It was and remains an area in which people really pursue common goals, consciously setting them for oneself and systematically implementing them, not only because it is possible in one integral organism, but also because it cannot even be otherwise in it. In the Fatherland, the totality of external, internal and psychological conditions by itself compels people to come to the consciousness of their unity and act jointly, even if they initially did not want to. An opposite example is provided by socialism, which, having taken it into its head to place the public on the basis of all-humanity, in reality only undermines human public, introduces disunity, enmity and struggle into it.

The Fatherland provides the only real realization of human life in all the diversity of its parts, not left to the struggle, but reasonably and fairly coordinated. Man, as a member of the human race, is brought up and really lives only in the Fatherland.

The reasonable social existence of man is even impossible otherwise than in this succession of generations. Even his own interest, material or moral, cannot be connected with concern for only one day or only for those immediately close to him. Today will be replaced by tomorrow; badly arranging our life today, we may suffer from it in a year or twenty years. The person whom we see near us today will disappear tomorrow, and another one will approach us hostilely or friendly, from somewhere very far away. We have to think not about one day, but about an indefinitely long period, not only about those who are standing next to us this minute, but about all people. This concern for everyone passes on to children and grandchildren, and, arousing our moral content, becomes concern for man in general, makes us think about those human beings who will live hundreds of years after us.

In the sphere of our thought about humanity, our personal connection with him and him with us has nothing burning, deeply affecting, impelling to action. In the sphere of thinking about the Fatherland, on the contrary, the smallest, most personal, even egoistic question of life immediately connects us with previous generations, with surrounding society and with the future. We see at every step that the good we use is due to the surrounding people or fathers. In the same way, we experience directly the consequences of their mistakes. We know that our own actions will surely resonate with those around us and our children and grandchildren. Here, in our every thought and in every step, we are thus immersed in social life, and, moreover, not abstract, but real, which, by its content, either gives us moral satisfaction, or arouses reproaches of conscience, or gives rise to fear for the fate of loved ones or those cases in which we have invested our efforts and our soul. Thus, only in this life - in the Fatherland - our social feeling powerfully arises and develops, and not in a life of universal human interests, which is almost always abstract, not visual, incapable of being expressed in facts, incapable of arousing business energy.

In exactly the same way, our social thought really arises, develops and reaches maturity only when it happens on the soil of the life of the Fatherland, and not of humanity. Of course, it happens that our actions can also affect the life of mankind, our plans can sometimes embrace the life of all mankind. But the lack of organized unity in humanity leads to the fact that the actual relationship between our thought and plan, on the one hand, and the life of mankind, on the other, can only appear by chance. And in these rare cases, we can only influence the life of mankind through our Fatherland. It mediates between our thought or deed and humanity, it provides modes of action. So, Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar carried with them an idea that was more universal, global, than national. But they, too, could influence human life only through the content of the life of Greece and Rome, through what they sensed in the life of their Fatherland and directed towards realization as an all-human idea.

In the life of the Fatherland, naturally, voluntarily and involuntarily, the social, state thought of each person, both small and great, develops, from the first moments of his civil age.

For a citizen, especially for statesman, there is no such task that, from the request of the day, would not be forced to move logically into some kind of account with the past, with the environment and with the future. Everything that we do for the welfare of the people or for mental development, for moral stability, for the improvement of the social system or state institutions, for any economic needs, etc. - all this cannot be arranged without thinking about the future, about what will happen when what we arrange matures and bears fruit. After a very short practice, we are personally convinced that only that which is calculated to be useful in the historical destinies of the Fatherland can be truly useful for the present day. Solidarity of people in one union and solidarity of generations in historical life Fatherland - this idea grows gradually with clarity and persuasiveness in everyone. And this consciousness is the basis of any society. It is developed in us not by an abstract armchair thought about all-human solidarity, but by real personal activity, specific experiences and examples of their fruitfulness or failure.

The development of public feeling and reason of people on the basis of the life of the Fatherland is carried out all the more powerfully, clearly, with irresistible persuasiveness for the consciousness that in the life of the Motherland we always receive from previous generations a number of tasks of paramount importance that were not begun by us and will end not by us, but for our own current life are of great importance, so that we are certainly forced to deal with them.

This happens because the nation, the state, the Fatherland is a really existing collective process, in the commission of which purely natural conditions operate, inevitable for us, whether they relate to the material or spiritual side of collective existence. The fulfillment of these conditions requires centuries, and it is necessary, because on this, as the people of every generation see, their interests really depend. Hence in the Fatherland is the continuity of historical tasks and, in accordance with this, the continuity of politics.

State science names to us a whole series of such historical tasks, for the fulfillment of which several generations work one after another.

Such, for example, is the territorial problem. Human society is able to live and develop only if it has the necessary material conditions and inner freedom to dispose of itself, independence in arranging itself. To do this, society must first of all determine and occupy its natural territory, the one without which it cannot have sufficient funds and independence. Such a territory is indicated by nature itself. The state does not arbitrarily choose for itself this or that border, but willy-nilly it strives to achieve the so-called natural borders. It is obligatory for him to reach them, and he almost cannot cross them without harm and inconvenience.

These natural frontiers, for example, in rich and mountainous countries, are usually less extensive. In Russia, for example, they, on the contrary, forcibly cover for us a vast expanse from the Baltic and the Carpathians to Pacific Ocean, from the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea, the Caucasus, Turkestan, Altai and Manchuria. In all this space it is impossible to live otherwise than in one state union; every nation, having begun life here, willy-nilly compelled to strive step by step to natural borders, covering a territory well demarcated from its neighbors, enabling world relations and naturally containing various resources for the existence of the nation. As is known, such a desire to spread over the entire indicated space characterizes our history both in the instinctive movement of the popular masses and in state policy. Our territorial policy has had the same trend for a thousand years. Much has changed in our country, but the tasks of territorial policy remained the same, which is why they created the same policy for all governments, no matter how different they were in the mind and energy of the rulers.

The same successively transmitted task is economic policy - the definition and implementation of ways for the material existence of the people. This task begins with distant ancestors and continues with their great-great-grandchildren, while remaining very similar in basic fundamentals. With us, for example, in Russia, it has long been reduced to cultivating as much land as possible and at the same time, as far as possible, to achieve internal processing of products. I do not dwell on a detailed description of this complex task, which has faced Russia in a monotonous way for centuries. My goal is only to point out the involuntary continuity of this age-old task, in the solution of which each generation was constantly forced to reckon with the past and think about the future.

The same long and necessary task of every nation is its own development, its self-creation, spiritual and external unity.

The ego is not a task of any "taste", but of necessity. An unfinished nation, which has not completed the unity of its psyche, language, spiritual unity, cannot harmoniously and conveniently build its outer life. Every generation feels it. It feels that its life, harmonious, harmonious, friendly, and therefore prosperous, suffers from every manifestation of the unfinished national unity. We are currently, as it sometimes seems, on the brink of death precisely because we have allowed the weakening of the elements of national unity and allowed non-national elements, included in one way or another into the composition of our Fatherland, but not yet merged, to rage. The policy of national unity in all states is a task that is successively transmitted and carried out throughout the life of the nation. And this task of national unity is very complex: it includes many constituent elements, each of which must be developed with the same continuity and systematicity, otherwise we will immediately feel the effect of decomposition, disrupting all the functions of common life. On this basis, the life and concerns of each generation, whether it wants it or not, constitute only one moment of the integral existence of the Fatherland.

The same long, slowly developing and successively transmitted task is the organization general management, the organization of the state.

States cannot be founded in one moment, not for one moment. A generation that sees itself without a state immediately feels that it is threatened with death in the most literal sense of the word if it does not create a state. But it is impossible to create a state except by adapting its plan to the tasks of the ages, and, however, it is impossible to completely predict the conditions of the future, and most importantly, it is impossible to immediately create those feelings and auxiliary institutions without which a well-functioning state is unthinkable. Thus, in achieving this task, the efforts of all generations, who began it according to a certain plan, and constantly complete the construction of the begun building, adapting it to the conditions of the time, and at the same time inevitably conforming to the influence of what was done earlier, by previous generations, must be united successively.

I will not multiply examples. What has been said is enough to remind us that in the Fatherland we live in the only real, even inevitable for us public organization and that it is only in the Fatherland that we develop our social feelings and reason. In the Fatherland we learn to understand society, we learn to appreciate and love it, we learn the laws of its existence, we learn the art of using these laws. In the Fatherland, we only get to know humanity and the feelings developed by the life of our country, we transfer by analogy to all of humanity.

So, in the Fatherland we have a certain collective whole that gave birth to us, educated us, prepared our means of life and at the same time significantly predetermined our activity for the future.

Fatherland fully justifies the meaning of the word by which we call it. In it, the community of each separate generation is eternally born from one common successive community. The ego is a historical and social fact.

But in sick times, the question arises in sick minds: is the interest and benefit of all really realized in this process? constituent parts whole? Isn't this just a succession system of exploitation of some classes by others, as modern socialism claims? This slander against the Fatherland constitutes a slander against the entire human community, which has never been carried out except in the form that the Fatherland represents.

To admit such an idea means to admit that the entire human community is nothing more than a system of exploitation of some classes by others. But we know very well that people are incapable of living except in society, that otherwise they perish, and therefore they, in the face of all classes, in all the millennia of the existence of thousands of human tribes, saw this so clearly that they certainly created society and recreated it. if it started to collapse somewhere. We must therefore deduce from this that there is exploitation necessary condition so that people do not die out, but can live in the world. But then one would have to admit that exploitation is the greatest human good! Such are the absurdities that civilly demoralized and historically ignorant point of view leads to, which slanders the attitude of the common Fatherland to the interests of its individual parts.

Where could this slander come from? It is based on the fact that, turning a blind eye to an essential feature of a phenomenon, it is determined on the basis of a secondary one. In this way of sophistry it is easy to expose any absurdity. Fire, for example, is necessary for all people, and it is impossible to live without using it. But people are burned on fire and fires sometimes occur from it. What can be said about reasoning if, in determining the meaning of fire for humanity, it declares: fire is a way of burning human dwellings and causing dangerous burns to people themselves? Such is the sophism by which socialism proves that the Fatherland has always been a system of exploitation of some classes by others.

Human society is maintained by the fact that people in it render services to one another, that is, that means that each person in it uses the existence of other people and himself serves for their use. Social justice requires that this exchange of favors be equal or proportional, that is, that a person should not take from others more than he himself gives them. Such an exchange of services has nothing to do with exploitation; on the contrary, it is a system of mutual benefit. The difference in the nature of people's services to each other, of course, does not in itself create exploitation, but, on the contrary, it makes the exchange of services especially valuable and necessary for everyone. Exploitation occurs only if, in the exchange of services, one party receives a disproportionate amount.

But this is no longer the law of the life of the Fatherland, but a violation of the law. Of course, the fact of exploitation is very common in human society, it is as certain as the fact that fire produces fires and burns. But it is absolutely not true that any society was ever built on this. In cases where exploitation develops strongly, society, on the contrary, begins to collapse as a result of this, because it is fundamentally maintained mainly by the voluntary submission of everyone to a given system and voluntary support for it on the part of everyone, and when the society’s system becomes exploitative, it ceases to be supported.

A certain amount of coercion, that is, violence, is inevitable in society. It itself creates power, which acquires the right and duty to act coercively. But coercion is only an aid to that voluntary maintenance of the given system, which is carried out by the entire mass of society. No power and no class can hold on to violence alone, even if it seizes power. Each class is held together by the fact that it provides some kind of service to other classes. Even in cases of pure conquest, such as, for example, England by the Normans, the conquerors strive to justify their dominion socially and take on some function necessary for society. In England, as is known, the conquerors created such an excellent society with such inner freedom as no other people had. The conquered themselves kept dissatisfaction in their souls more because of national pride, and in all other respects they could not but admit that the conquerors arranged their land better than they themselves knew how to do. Hence the remarkable circumstance that the English aristocracy - the descendants of the conquering Normans - enjoys deep respect of the people even to this day.

So, if violence and exploitation exist between people, if there is also exploitation of one class by another in society, then the essence of society lies not in this, but in the mutual services of classes and people. It is the system of these mutual services that constitutes society, and not exploitation, which is an incidental, abnormal, harmful, illegal element that can be destroyed as much as possible. The true law and basis is the common good of all members and classes of society, which, to the best of strength and understanding, has always been carried out in the Fatherland.

The task of the common good on the basis of the exchange of class services is precisely what creates society. So it was in history.

When, at the dawn of Russian history, Oleg says to the Radimichi: “Don’t give tribute to the Khazars, let’s better me,” this is nothing more than an offer of his services as a judge and a warrior, and the Radimichi agree - obviously, finding that it is more profitable for them to be with Oleg than under the Khazars. When Igor collected tribute from the Drevlyans for the first time, this was recognized as part of the exchange of services, but when he came another time, they killed him, saying that he acts like a wolf; his act was already recognized as exploitation. Olga avenged the death of her husband, but immediately set about establishing the correct “charters” and “lessons” among the Drevlyans. In the emerging relations between the classes of combatants and smerds, the main role was played not by violence, but by mutual necessity, the exchange of services.

And what would really happen to these smerds without vigilantes? Suffice it to recall the devastation of the Polovtsy in the south and various "good fellows", "ushkuynikov" of their own Russian production. The third emerging class - merchant - played the necessary role in the same way. social role, so that the very title of "guests" became especially honorable and popular in folk songs. Undoubtedly, exploitation was manifested both on the part of these “guests” and on the part of the retinue-boyar class, just as the smerds were not saints, if possible they did not refuse to profit at someone else’s expense. But the reasons for the existence of the Fatherland, the reasons why all classes stood for it, consisted in their mutual services, in the common good achieved.

Throughout Russian history, separate classes worked on a common task: the colonization of the boundless spaces of the territory that nature intended for the nation to inhabit. The peasant layer, with the weakening of the statehood that covered it, could not even enter the northern forest spaces, where without the systematic support of the Suzdal princes it could not spread and hold on. The movement of the peasantry to the fertile south went on for centuries also under the cover of sentry abuts, towns and service nobles with boyar children, who, from decade to decade, covered more and more new spaces for the people's colonization flow with their towns and acres. Our then "Ukraine" is all streaked with lines of notches and noble-Cossack guard posts all the way to Voronezh and beyond. If there were no state organization with all its ranks and estates, then there would be no Russian people in general, and in particular, that mighty peasantry that grew up under the guise of statehood and with the help of other classes, especially the Zemstvo service. As regards the “guests,” the merchant industrial stratum, it is enough to recall that Siberia is fixed in the use of the Russian people by the private efforts of the Stroganovs.

Of course, lovers of inflating human enmity can at any time and in any place find enough reasons for false generalizations. But it is enough to look at the general result of a thousand-year history in order to see that it is precisely that working mass of the people that has won most of all in it, about which it is said that it was constantly the only object of exploitation. Where is our princely aristocracy? She almost doesn't exist. Where is the nobility? After all, for the last two centuries until 1861, it actually held the entire state in its hands. If it served itself, and not the state, it could still rule the people. But it itself undermined that serfdom which was a goldmine for him.

Condemning the abuses of the nobility, it is unfair and unreasonable to forget its great cultural significance for the masses of the people, it is unfair to forget that the nobility destroyed itself as a class because of considerations of the highest truth and the common good. Meanwhile, the peasantry really took shape as a huge, powerful estate with the greatest class organization, with the possession of a large part of the Russian lands, mined in those times, most of all by the blood and agricultural labor of frontier service people.

IN total Taking the thousand-year life of a nation, we are not here, but anywhere in general, we always see the growth of the whole - the Fatherland, the individual parts of which, in the class sense, perform various functions necessary for the needs of the whole. At the same time, a class that finds itself in a favorable position for that may be tempted by exploitative aspirations, but this is not the meaning of its existence, but in the performance of some socially necessary function. The existence of classes expresses the national division of labor, the specialization of functions. This phenomenon in itself is absolutely necessary and inevitable. So far, no society has ever been observed in the world that could exist otherwise than with such a class, class division of national functions. The division of parts of the whole into specialties and their combination is the whole meaning of the organization, all its benefits. If it were possible to imagine the existence of working people without division, then there would be no need for organization, and there would be no need for coexistence.

This common law specialization of labor and its combination is expressed in the division of the nation into classes and in their general combination state power. What is meant and achieved is not exploitation, not the interests of any one part, but the interests of all of them together, in the aggregate.

The Fatherland, this great, successive environment from generation to generation, which gave birth to us, educated us, created everything that now lives around us by the harmonious interaction of its classes and its organizations and prepared us with the same thousand years of harmonious labor everything that we can now live, would be beneficial for us even if it were an inanimate environment and would benefit us as well as the elements dead nature. Even in this case, among all of us, people of all classes, love could not but be born for him, as it is born for the common nurse-mother earth. But the Fatherland is not a dead environment of inanimate nature. This is the human environment, which did everything it did consciously and deliberately. The feeling of love for the Fatherland becomes even stronger at the thought that his concern for the welfare of all past and future generations and of us living today was deliberate and conscious.

The element of conscious concern for the whole as a whole, in all its present members and classes and in a whole series of generations, for eternity, is precisely what gives the Fatherland its sublime and "paternal" character.

In the whole of humanity, its separate parts and the changing peoples of history also turn out to be useful to the whole human race, but this happens unconsciously, without premeditation. In the Fatherland, on the contrary, we see in the most distant ancestor care for the same whole in which we now live. The thought of St. Vladimir or Monomakh about the Russian land extended in their feelings to us, unknown to them and not existing then in the world. As an individual, in his worries about the present day, tries to foresee the interests of his entire future life, so in the Fatherland, taking care of himself, a citizen and a worker takes care of future generations.

Thought and concern for the collective life of the Russian land has lived since the remotest times of its birth. The thought of the Russian land dominates the consciousness of all the best figures, spokesmen for what makes the Fatherland alive. The fathers acquired the Russian land, we and future generations must return it - this is a constant reminder of them to our contemporaries.

“Here I am moving away from the world,” the dying Yaroslav said to his children. - Love each other, because you are brothers... If you live in love with each other, then God will be with you... if you begin to hate each other, then you yourself will perish, and destroy the land of your fathers and grandfathers, which they obtained with great labor their own." To live for the Russian land, to die for it - this is the thought of all the best princes. Blind Vasilko expounds his dreams, destroyed by the atrocity: he recalls how he wanted to ask for troops to step on human land and avenge the Russian land (for the raids of Boleslav), how he later wanted to go to the Polovtsy and thought: “Either I will find glory for myself, or I will lay down my head for the Russian land. The motto of Vladimir Monomakh was: "I do not want dashing, but good for my brothers and the Russian land." He describes his ascetic labor life for the Russian land in order to instruct the children, and who does he care about, whom does he serve? “Most of all, do not forget the poor, justify the orphan and the widow yourself, do not let the strong destroy a person.”

He himself never "allowed the strong to offend either the thin smerd or the wretched widow." The Russian land was in his eyes one whole, for the good of which he sacrificed his personal feelings. Exhausted with grief on the occasion of the murder of his son, in the name of the good of the Russian land, he addresses the culprit of his grief Oleg with the words of reconciliation: “Come to Kiev so that we can settle order on the Russian land before the bishops, abbots and city people and defend the Russian land from the filthy ". Vyacheslav Vladimirovich, persuading the princes to stop strife, says: “Do not shed Christian blood, do not destroy the Russian land. Although they offended me, and did me both dishonor, and although I have regiments, and I have strength, I forget all this for the sake of the Russian land and Christians.

The thought of the good of the Russian land reigned over the mind and conscience of all its best sons. She lived in exactly the same way in the citizens. The embassy of Kiev citizens told the princes under Svyatopolk: “If you start to fight with each other, then the filthy ones will rejoice and take the Russian land, which your grandfathers and fathers acquired: with great difficulty and courage they fought across the Russian land, and they searched for other lands, and you you want to destroy yours." The thought of the Russian land fills the soul of the author of "The Tale of Igor's Campaign": he does not think about any interests of the princes or combatants, but about the good of the whole land, the poet reproaches the princes for the ruin of it, for the feat in its favor he sings of the glorious death of the soldiers who in a bloody feast "the matchmakers were drunk and they themselves went down for the Russian land" ...

The concern of the patriots for the Russian land, intact in all its members and estates, was the cause of the collapse of the specific system and the rule of the princely aristocracy. They were irrevocably condemned to destruction by the national consciousness for the defeat of Rus' by the Tatars. Is it necessary to remember that after this, all the national efforts of Rus' and the Grand Dukes of Moscow were absorbed in the thought of the future Fatherland?

Of course, they also saved themselves, but what gave them energy, gave them the strength to endure all humiliations and trials and fearlessly suppress many, in their then views, legitimate aspirations of local particularism - this was the thought of the future, of that distant future liberation and the glory of their native land, which they did not look forward to and could not see with their own eyes. The entire epoch of gathering and recreating Rus' was the conscious and systematic work of the ancestors for future generations, for the benefit of the integral future of the Fatherland.

It was with such care that the kingdom of Moscow was created, whose state philosophy was so excellently expounded by Ivan the Terrible in his correspondence with Prince Kurbsky, and this philosophy is all imbued with the idea of ​​the common good.

No matter how one evaluates the form in which the Muscovite epoch imagined state means of achieving the common good, there is no doubt, in any case, that the goal was the common good. No separate classes were allowed in it to predominate. The Tsar motivated and justified his entire struggle against the boyar aristocracy with the idea of ​​the common good, the protection of the people from exploitation. And he defined himself as God's servant in the defense of the common good.

But the idea of ​​the Fatherland, conscious work for the future in connection with the affairs of the ancestors was soon solemnly declared in an incomparably more significant national act on behalf of the entire Russian people, who came together in the person of their representatives to the Great Zemsky Sobor of 1613. The "approved charter" of this Council, which restored Russian statehood, destroyed by the terrible times of hard times, shows us the political consciousness of the nation, expressed by itself.

How does the Russian people in this unique historical act determine the meaning of their existence? The letter testifies that the people in the state have been a single whole for a thousand years, since the time of the most ancient princes, and that during all this time they have lived by one and the same state idea. The Council explains that this idea was shaken in the era of unrest by sins, selfish aspirations, disunity and crimes, and that now the Russian people are once again restoring the correct course of life. This is the meaning of literacy. Linking themselves with the whole past of Russia, the generation of 1613 also declared that they were establishing order for all time, for which they were compiling an “approved charter”. It is repeated three times in it that the building is erected for future times: “Let it continue to be strong and motionless and standing forever, as it is written in this approved charter.”

All the people of the reigning city of Moscow and all the Russian lands laid down all the ranks, so that "nothing could be otherwise, but be so in everything according to the way it is written in this approved charter." If anyone does not want to ever fulfill this decree of 1613, then he is subject to excommunication and the “revenge” of the civil law. In the very conclusion of the letter, it is again repeated that it was decided to store the letter in a safe place, “may it be firm and indestructible for future years, in childbirth and childbirth, and may not a single line pass, and not a single iota of everything written in it ".

If the people of some other nation would bring ingratitude and injustice to their ancestors to the point of denying in them concern for future generations, then we Russians certainly have no right to do so.

At the Council of the Whole Earth, our ancestors documented that they lived spiritually in union with the most ancient founders and builders of the Fatherland and accomplished the salvation of the Fatherland not only for themselves, but also for their most distant descendants, bequeathing to us that nothing from their great structure should be lost for " future" times, but remained the basis of the Russian Fatherland from generation to generation and forever.

If the Russians of our generation decide to destroy their Fatherland, then, in any case, they do not dare to say that they are destroying only an empty phrase, a legend or fiction. No - the letter of the Council of 1613 will remain an eternal denunciation against them: whoever destroys the Russian Fatherland, he will kill a living social body that consciously and reasonably arranged the life of his own and his descendants. The cathedral signatures of 1613 say that the Russian Fatherland was, lived wisely and consciously, in the care of the common good and forever.

The denial of the Fatherland as the same for all the sons of his close, dear and dear is made from two points of view.

One - broadly cosmopolitan - opposes it to all of humanity. The other one, the narrow-class one (created by socialism), asserts that the unity of people exists only within classes, and in the totality of them that makes up the nation, it does not exist at all - since the nation allegedly consists of an exploiting class, holding the exploited class in its subordination. There is supposedly no solidarity between these classes, and therefore there is no Fatherland common to all.

The broad-cosmopolitan idea comes to the denial of the Fatherland, in essence, only through a misunderstanding. There is no opposition between humanity and the Fatherland. On the contrary, the Fatherland only realizes the idea of ​​humanity, provides a real organized solidarity of people, which in fact did not exist and cannot exist in humanity until it has merged into one state entity. Whether it will ever happen or not, but in the course of history, the nation and the state have so far constituted the only actually achievable unification of people into one whole, which, by the brotherhood of its members, forms for them a single Fatherland.

Thus, a cosmopolitan in the noble sense of the word, by the very love of humanity, cannot but love the Fatherland as an organized part of humanity and as an organ of its development.

As for the class denial of the Fatherland, it constitutes a gross mistake in social and historical respects, while in moral terms it brings with it the idea of ​​human demoralization, the denial of universal human solidarity, brotherhood and love.

The unity that arises between persons of the same class is qualitatively different from the unity created by universal human solidarity.

In the closeness that exists between members of the same class, the connecting factor is the community of external interest, and not at all solidarity in the spiritual unity and closeness of human beings. Meanwhile, only this latter is based on a moral sense and develops a moral sense. An association based on interest can also arise between people who hate each other and are the most immoral, because here a person loves his own interest, and not at all any person.

In itself, unity on the basis of interests is natural according to practical calculations and does not contain anything bad in itself. But when it begins to deny purely human unity, when it begins to suggest to us that it is not man, not his lofty and noble qualities, that should be close and dear to us, but only the benefit that he brings to us, then this turns into a doctrine of immorality, into preaching the grossest egoism.

The idea of ​​the Fatherland and the fact of its existence create, on the contrary, such unity, such solidarity, which equally avoid both the incorporeal cosmopolitanism, which easily turns into a simple phrase, and that crude egoism, to which the class idea can lead. The unity of people in the Fatherland remains sensitive to the interests of these people, and at the same time contains elements of universal human solidarity, closeness and kinship of people as people - people of different classes and interests, but in all classes and among all private interests remaining close to each other and related in their human nature.

That is why I have above called the idea of ​​the Fatherland the greatest of the ideas of the public, since it actually constitutes the natural basis of the public and its best school for people.

Already in its very concept, the Fatherland gives the idea of ​​a common origin, that is, the commonality and similarity of the nature of people. The word "Fatherland" comes from the word "father". It is equivalent to the word "motherland" - from the word "to give birth." It expresses where we come from, how we are generated, expresses the concepts of connection, love, mutual care. What does it mean to act like a father? It means to act with love, attention and authority. "Fatherland" means the name of the father. "Fatherland" is a legacy from the father, something successive, passing from father to son, from great-grandfathers to great-grandchildren. The word "domestic" means "one's own", "natural", "innate". "Rodina" means "native land", which gave birth to us. Everything “native”, “related” means its own, similar and close in spirit and feeling. Our folk proverbs they explain this by saying that “the sea is for the fish, the air is for the birds, and the Fatherland is the universe circle for a man”, therefore “they lay their belly for the fatherland” and “the bones cry for the homeland”, if they are stacked in a foreign land ...

In such a unity of their nature, their feelings, interests and all life, nations appeared, and their social and state ties developed, which created the fact of the Fatherland. Our feelings and concepts only reflected and expressed the content of the actual socio-historical fact.

The fatherland arose in the world precisely from such a human community and solidarity, higher than any private ties generated by a community of occupations or interests. There is unity in the classroom, in the trading company, and similar areas of private interests. But only the Fatherland has a universal interest, and, moreover, not limited to the present people of the moment. It is an eternal union that creates a dwelling on earth not only for those living today, but also for future great-great-grandchildren, with whom living people are connected by a common eternal union, where people change from generation to generation, but the idea of ​​their solidarity in the unity of a human being remains immortal. , the unity of social tasks, carried by each government through its life and passed on from generation to generation for all eternity.

The life of the Fatherland, therefore, reflects the life of mankind in organized unity at every given moment and over millennia. Ego is the highest actual manifestation of the unity and solidarity of people, and therefore the highest school of the noblest feelings of man.

That is why the feeling of love for the Fatherland is so great and fruitful. That is why it could live even in the heart of the God-man and in His face receive a blessing from above. Apart from our life with God, what more rightfully can receive the blessing of Heaven? Where can our blessings go with more reason?

If the impoverished soul of a person or his undermined mind no longer finds blessing even for the Fatherland, then this means that such a person is not capable of loving anything with ardent, self-sacrificing love.

Perhaps he is capable of hating and cursing, perhaps he is also capable of self-denial of vengeance and destruction. But the selflessness of love, the selflessness of creativity, which is given only by love, can no longer be in a person who has lost the holy feeling of love for the Fatherland, that is, for the totality of millions of surrounding people with hundreds of millions of ancestors, with hundreds of millions of future generations, jointly doing one thing.

With the loss of love for the Fatherland, we cannot have the means for any kind of social creativity, and without such creativity, without life for people, there is no moral life at the person himself.

We are going through a difficult, painful time when the feeling of love for the Fatherland is undermined by many demoralizing influences. This is a painful time of endless disasters that have engulfed us ... But we can say that nothing is lost among people if they preserve the feeling of love for the Fatherland. Everything can be corrected and resurrected if we retain love for the Fatherland. But everything is lost if we allow it to collapse in our hearts.

Let us protect this feeling with all the means that people have: countering false feelings, arguments of reason, remembering the innumerable benefits we received from our ancestors, remembering the covenant that they repeated to each other:

“Fathers and grandfathers acquired our land with great labor, great suffering, great feat. Do not destroy it with your base egoistic aspirations and strife, personal or class. Support the Motherland in its total integrity, otherwise you will prepare graves on its ruins even for your own selfish interests.

FATHERLAND, -a, cf. (high). The country where the person was born and to the citizens to which he belongs. Love for the fatherland. Protecting your fatherland.

Watch value FATHERLAND in other dictionaries

Fatherland Wed.— 1. The country where someone was born. and to whose citizens he belongs; homeland. 2. trans. unfold The place where something originated.
Dictionary Efremova

Fatherland- fatherland, pl. no, cf. the country where the person was born and to the citizens to which he belongs. We do not defend secret treaties, we defend socialism, we defend the socialist........
Explanatory Dictionary of Ushakov

Fatherland- -A; cf. High [capitalized]. The country where the person was born and of which he is a citizen; homeland. Love your own O. Serve the Fatherland. Protection of the native Fatherland.
Explanatory Dictionary of Kuznetsov

Fatherland— Educated in Old Russian from otts - "father" according to the method of tracing paper from the Greek patria.
Etymological Dictionary of Krylov

Fatherland- (Eph 3.15) - the words "every fatherland" in the original means: "His whole family", "His all". (See people)
Historical dictionary

Socialist Fatherland In Danger!- Decree-appeal of the Council of Nar. Komissarov, adopted on 21 Feb. 1918. Publ. Feb 22 1918 at a time when Germany, taking advantage of the disruption of peace negotiations in Brest (see Brest ........
Soviet historical encyclopedia

FATHERLAND, fatherland, pl. no, cf. the country where the person was born and to whose citizens he belongs. "We are not defending secret treaties, we are defending socialism, we are defending the socialist fatherland." Lenin (1918). || the country with which ... ... Explanatory Dictionary of Ushakov

Cm … Synonym dictionary

FATHERLAND, a, cf. (high). The country where the person was born and to the citizens to which he belongs. Love for the fatherland. Defense of your fatherland. Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova. 1949 1992 ... Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov

See Patriotism (Source: "Aphorisms from around the world. Encyclopedia of Wisdom." www.foxdesign.ru) ... Consolidated encyclopedia of aphorisms

Fatherland- the political, social and cultural environment in which people live and work. This is a complex social phenomenon, covering a set of diverse aspects of the life and activities of society: social relations, a system of political relations and ... ... Scientific Communism: Dictionary

fatherland- , a, cf. ** Socialist Fatherland. Soviet Russia. Soviet Union. Ilyenko, Maksimova, 283. ◘ The party strengthened the sacred feeling of love Soviet people to the socialist fatherland. IKPSS, 547. ** I glorify the Fatherland, which is, ... ... Explanatory Dictionary of the Language of Soviet Deputies

fatherland- With. (only singular) fatherland, baldiokhan boa, na; our Fatherland of the USSR bue Fatherland of the USSR ... Russian-Nanai dictionary

Fatherland (Eph. 3:15) The words “every fatherland” in the original means: “His whole family”, “His all”. (see people) ... Bible. Old and New Testaments. Synodal translation. Bible encyclopedia arch. Nicephorus.

Ex., s., use. comp. often Morphology: (no) what? fatherland, why? fatherland, (see) what? fatherland than? fatherland, about what? About the Fatherland Your fatherland is the country where you were born and live. Defend the fatherland. | He has big... Dictionary of Dmitriev

Fatherland- (other Russian - father) - the place of birth of a person, the place of his historical, spiritual and cultural roots. This is the land where a person grew up, where the house of his parents is located, where the people to which he belongs live, this is the faith and language of this people, its history ... Fundamentals of spiritual culture ( encyclopedic Dictionary teacher)

Books

• Fatherland, V. Peskov. From the author's preface: "Everything in this book seems to me a great journey. In fact, everything is so. For fifteen years I have been working in " Komsomolskaya Pravda", Fifteen years…
• Fatherland, comp. Sushkov Yu.M.. The Sverdlovsk Railway publishes the works of veteran writers collected in one book in honor of the 55th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War ...

The subtext of this concept is so emotional that it is not easy to identify it. When a person only explains that the Fatherland or Fatherland is the land of ancestors, that is, fathers, wanting to clarify precisely the semantic component given word, a hot wave of feeling is born in his soul. None of the morally healthy people is alien to patriotism.

War as a factor in history

And the defender of the Fatherland is basically a warrior. It so happened that the war in any state is the most important factor in the history of the Fatherland, and, for example, the Russians practically did not have absolutely peacetime. At all times, either the defense of their lands was required, or the elimination of the interests of the country beyond its borders. These are the conditions for the existence of Russia - it needs both geopolitical integrity and cultural-historical integrity. Therefore, here a military man always uses special treatment: they trust him, respect him, they are afraid of him. It is his memory that is immortalized most often. It is thanks to him that the country, located on the sixth part of the earth, is alive. The phrase itself usually refers to soldiers, officers, sailors and military people of all specialties, because defending the Fatherland is their job. But even here words have a much larger and broader meaning.

Background

A military threat to our country - therefore, all centuries-old history Fatherland is a war, endless and bloody to varying degrees. Thus, behind the gray veil of incredibly distant time, it was formed, as it were, with a mobilization type of development. Suffice it to recall the Stalinist modernization in the thirties of the last century, when the entire society, all the resources of the country worked to solve military and political problems. The creation of an army and navy in the first case and a powerful military-industrial complex in the second. And these are not the only examples.

Memory of generations

In the sixteenth century, Russia fought for forty-three years, in the seventeenth - forty-eight, in the eighteenth - sixty-one years, in the nineteenth - already sixty-seven. Twentieth century - The Soviet Union survived two world wars. World War II - the main tragedy world history. With an unprecedented number of victims. The armed forces of Russia and other republics of the Soviet Union defeated Hitler's fascism, when the entire civilization was threatened with destruction. It is all the more strange and even regrettable to hear how some people who are not close to history discuss such a topic that is now burning. The history of the Fatherland is the memory of generations, their spiritual state and healthy self-consciousness, therefore it is necessary to protect our past from falsifications. Without protection, the thread of historical events that binds the people for many centuries is lost. If we forget how to respect our own army, we will have to respect someone else's on our own land.

Vladimir Lenin and the defense of the fatherland

This is the whole history of Russia, its exceptional position both in terms of geography and in terms of the foreign policy situation require the presence of powerful armed forces. The rest of the world knows about the colossal natural reserves, and will certainly begin to build relations with Russia - only from a position of strength. War is war - discord. Vladimir Ilyich notes that the defense of the Fatherland is also not always true. Thus, he shares the lies of the imperialist wars, which for the period of hostilities replace all rights and all democracy with violence, in fact fighting only for the replenishment of profits by the elite of the exploiters. Civil and Patriotic wars are carried out exclusively in the interests of the people, not by the force of money, but by common forces and public consent. Not the redistribution and robbery of colonies and not the division of spheres of influence, but the mass movement of the people overthrowing national oppression is a just war. Isn't it easy to bridge the century from the research of V.I. Lenin to modern events? Today's wars are characterized precisely by lies: you have an oil field, but there is absolutely no democracy, we are coming to you. Lenin also wrote about the modern information war, when even such a phrase had not yet been born. Philosopher of genius in perspicacity. He turned out to be right in the fact that the Fatherland is we, all the people. Therefore, the defense of the motherland is entirely our task.

Vladimir Dal about the Fatherland

In the first words, the great lexicographer says the same thing as everyone else: the Fatherland is the native land where our ancestors lived and died, and where we would like to live and die. He asks: who does not love the earth?! Vast and strong, our homeland gives everyone pride in the fact that he was born a warrior-warrior, and the whole history of the Fatherland is a continuation of the glory of the father in grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He remembers the year 1812, when both the old and the young girded themselves with sabers: the Orthodox Kingdom did not perish! You need to defend your homeland at any time, - a Dane by blood, but a Russian by the breadth of his soul, tells us, - because the homeland is both your house and your coffin, a cradle and a domina, your daily bread and life-giving water. The Fatherland is our shelter and protection. It is impossible to renounce the Russian land, because the Lord will renounce such a villain.

Actions to protect the Fatherland are a function of the state

The most important direction in the work of the state is to ensure independence and integrity. The primary reason for this is national interests in the form of military, economic and political doctrines, concepts and programs. The forms and means of protecting the security of the Fatherland are those that are most effective in achieving the goals set by the state, but created on the principles of universal humanism. Here, first of all, the defense of the country, the protection of sovereignty, the guarantee of military security, as well as the integrity and territorial integrity are important. All this is provided by specially created state organizations - Armed forces and other military formations.

So, in the Fatherland we have a certain collective whole that gave birth to us, educated us, prepared our means of life and at the same time significantly predetermined our activity for the future.

Fatherland fully justifies the meaning of the word by which we call it. In it, the community of each separate generation is eternally born from one common successive community. This is a historical and social fact.

But in a sick time of sick minds, the question arises: is the interest and benefit of all the constituent parts of the whole really realized in this process? Isn't this just a succession system of exploitation of some classes by others, as modern socialism claims? This slander against the Fatherland constitutes a slander against the entire human community, which has never been carried out except in the form that the Fatherland represents.

To admit such an idea means to admit that the entire human community is nothing more than a system of exploitation of some classes by others. But we know very well that people are incapable of living except in society, that otherwise they will perish, and therefore they, in the person of all classes, in all the millennia of the existence of thousands of human tribes, have seen this so clearly that they have certainly created society and recreated her, if she began to collapse somewhere. We must therefore deduce from this that exploitation is a necessary condition for people not to die out, but to be able to live in the world! But then one would have to admit that exploitation is the greatest human good! Such are the absurdities that civilly demoralized and historically ignorant point of view leads to, which slanders the attitude of the common Fatherland to the interests of its individual parts.

Where could this slander come from? It is based on the fact that - turning a blind eye to essential sign of the phenomenon, it is determined on the basis of side. In this way of sophistry it is easy to expose any absurdity. Fire, for example, is necessary for all people, and it is impossible to live without using it. But people burn themselves on fire, and fires sometimes start from it. What can be said about reasoning if, in determining the meaning of fire for humanity, it declares: fire is a way of burning human dwellings and causing dangerous burns to people themselves? Such is the sophism by which socialism proves that the Fatherland has always been a system of exploitation of some classes by others.

Human society is maintained by the fact that people in it render services to one another, that is, that means that each person in it uses the existence of other people and himself serves for their use. Social justice requires that this exchange of services be equal or proportional, that is, that a person should not take from others more than he himself gives them. Such an exchange of services has nothing to do with exploitation: on the contrary, it is a system of mutual beneficence. The difference in the nature of people's services to each other, of course, does not in itself create exploitation, but, on the contrary, it makes the exchange of services especially valuable and necessary for everyone. Exploitation occurs only if, in the exchange of services, one party receives a disproportionate amount.

But this is no longer the law of the life of the Fatherland, but a violation of the law. Of course, the fact of exploitation is very common in human society, it is as certain as the fact that fire produces fires and burns. But it is absolutely not true that any society was ever built on this. In those cases when exploitation develops strongly, society, on the contrary, as a result of this, begins to collapse, because it is fundamentally maintained mainly by the voluntary submission of everyone to a given system and the voluntary support of everyone on the part of everyone, and when the system of society becomes exploitative, it is no longer supported. .

A certain amount of coercion, that is, violence, is inevitable in society. It itself creates power, which acquires the right and duty to act coercively. But coercion is only an aid to that voluntary maintenance of the given system, which is carried out by the entire mass of society. No power and no class can hold on to violence alone, even if it seizes power. Each class is held together by the fact that it provides some kind of service to other classes. Even in cases of pure conquest, as, for example, in England by the Normans, the conquerors strive to justify their dominion socially and take on some function necessary for society. In England, as is known, the conquerors created such an excellent society, with such inner freedom as no other people had. The conquered themselves kept dissatisfaction in their souls more because of national pride, and in all other respects they could not but admit that the conquerors arranged their land better than they themselves knew how to do. Hence the remarkable circumstance that the English aristocracy - the descendants of the Norman conquerors - enjoy deep respect of the people even to this day.

So - if violence and exploitation exist between people, if in society there is also exploitation of one class by another, then this is not the essence of society, but in the mutual services of classes and people. It is the system of these mutual services that constitutes society, and not exploitation, which is an incidental, abnormal, harmful, illegal element that can be destroyed as much as possible. The true law and basis is the common good of all members and classes of society, which, to the best of their ability and understanding, has always been carried out in the Fatherland.

The task of the common good on the basis of the exchange of class services is precisely what creates society. So it was in history.

When, at the dawn of Russian history, Oleg says to the Radimichi: “Don’t give tribute to the Khazars, let’s better me,” this is nothing more than an offer of his services as a judge and a warrior, and the Radimichi agree, obviously finding that it is more profitable for them to be with Oleg than at Khazars. When Igor collected tribute from the Drevlyans for the first time, this was recognized as part of the exchange of services, but when he came another time, they killed him, saying that he acts like a wolf; his act was already recognized as exploitation. Olga avenged the death of her husband, but immediately set about establishing the correct “charters” and “lessons” among the Drevlyans. In the emerging relations between the classes of warriors and smerds, the main role was played not by violence, but by mutual necessity, the exchange of services.

And what would really happen to these smerds without vigilantes? Suffice it to recall the devastation of the Polovtsy in the South, and various " good fellows”, “ushkuinikov” of their own Russian production. The third emerging class - the trading class - also played the necessary social role, so that the very title of "guests" became especially honorable and popular in folk songs. Undoubtedly, exploitation was manifested both on the part of these “guests” and on the part of the retinue-boyar class, just as the smerds were not saints, if possible they did not refuse to profit at someone else’s expense. But the reasons for the existence of the Fatherland, the reasons why all classes stood for it, consisted in their mutual services, in the common good achieved.

Throughout Russian history, separate classes worked on a common task: the colonization of the boundless spaces of the territory that nature intended for the nation to inhabit. The peasant stratum, with the weakening of the statehood that covered it, could not even enter the northern forest spaces, where without the systematic support of the Suzdal princes it could not spread and hold on. The movement of the peasantry to the fertile South went on for centuries also under the cover of sentry abuts, towns and service nobles with boyar children, who, from decade to decade, covered more and more new spaces for the people's colonization flow with their towns and acres. Our then "Ukraine" is all streaked with lines of notches and noble-Cossack guard posts all the way to Voronezh and beyond. If there were no state organization, with all its ranks and estates, then there would be no Russian people in general, and in particular, that mighty peasantry that grew up under the guise of statehood and with the help of other classes, especially the zemstvo service. As regards the “guests,” the merchant industrial stratum, it is enough to recall that Siberia is fixed in the use of the Russian people by the private efforts of the Stroganovs.

Of course, lovers of inflating human enmity can at any time and in any place find enough reasons for false generalizations. But it is enough to look at the general result of a thousand-year history in order to see that it is precisely that working mass of the people that has won most of all in it, about which it is said that it was constantly the only object of exploitation. Where is our princely aristocracy? She almost doesn't exist. Where is the nobility? After all, for the last two centuries until 1861, it actually held the entire state in its hands. If it served yourself and not the state, it could still rule the people. But it itself undermined that serfdom, which was for him a gold mine.

Condemning the abuses of the nobility, it is unfair and unreasonable to forget its enormous cultural significance for the masses of the people, it is unfair to forget that the nobility destroyed itself as a class because of considerations of the highest truth and the common good. Meanwhile, the peasantry really took shape in a huge powerful estate, with the greatest estate organization, with the possession of a large part of the Russian lands, mined in those times most of all by the blood and agricultural labor of frontier service people.

In total, taking the thousand-year life of a nation, we - not only here, but in general anywhere - always see the growth of the whole Fatherland, the individual parts of which, in the class sense, perform various functions necessary for the needs of the whole. At the same time, a class that finds itself in a favorable position for that may be tempted by exploitative aspirations, but this is not the meaning of its existence, but the fulfillment of some socially necessary function. The existence of classes expresses the national division of labor, the specialization of functions. This phenomenon in itself is absolutely necessary and inevitable. So far, no society has ever been observed in the world that could exist otherwise than with such a class, estate, division of national functions. The division of parts of the whole according to specialties and their combination is the whole meaning of the organization, all its benefits. If it were possible to imagine the existence of people without division of labor, then there would be no need for organization, and there would be no need for coexistence.

This general law of the specialization of labor and its combination is expressed in the division of the nation into classes and in their general combination by state power. What is meant and achieved is not exploitation, not the interests of any one part, but the interests of all of them together, in the aggregate.