about patriotism to return to the beacon of liberal thought, Count Leo Tolstoy. I'm keeping my promise.

I have always thought about one indisputable fact: ask any foreigner about a Russian writer he knows and he will almost certainly be called Tolstoy. So brilliant? So understandable to foreigners? So hyped? This is closer to the truth!

And who needed to unwind the graph? I'll put it under the cut full text his works on patriotism, small, read, I will not comment. I think that you can easily understand what forces raised him to the shield.

Lenin wrote the famous phrase: "The Decembrists awakened Herzen. Herzen launched a revolutionary agitation."
With the help of the count, they also woke up many, their children and grandchildren, and created perestroika with our country, but the process is on the rise! The process in the count's head also went on increasing. Hence his quite understandable antagonism with Orthodoxy, it is simply painful to read his religious articles.

Think tolerance is a new invention? No. And a hundred years ago they covered patriotism, blaming it for all the sins. The ideal was a person tolerant of any foreigner. Even if foreigners came to your house and make their own laws here.

Read.

Lev Tolstoy. PATRIOTISM OR PEACE?

... the blindness in which in our time there are peoples who praise patriotism, educate their young generations in the superstition of patriotism and, meanwhile, do not want the inevitable consequences of patriotism - war, has reached, it seems to me, to that final degree at which the very simple
asking for the language of every open-minded person, reasoning, for
in order for people to see the glaring contradiction in which they find themselves.

The Christian peoples answer us in the same way to the
question: what do they choose from two: patriotism or peace? They answer: and
patriotism and peace, although it is just as impossible to unite patriotism and peace as in
the same time to go skiing and stay at home.

Produces the same war desire
the exceptional good of his people, what is called patriotism. A
therefore, in order to destroy war, it is necessary to destroy patriotism. And to
to destroy patriotism, one must first of all be convinced that it is evil, and this is what
and hard to do.

If patriotism is not even restraining, then it
restorative - the patriotism of the conquered, oppressed peoples - the Armenians,
Poles, Czechs, Irish, etc. And this patriotism is perhaps the most
the worst, because the most embittered and demanding the most violence.
Patriotism can't be good. Why do people don't say selfishness
may be good, although it could rather be argued, because
egoism is a natural feeling with which a person is born, while patriotism
feeling unnatural, artificially instilled in him.

They will say: "Patriotism has bound people into states and maintains the unity of
states". But after all, people have already united in states, this is a matter
happened; why now maintain the exclusive devotion of people to
his state, when this devotion produces terrible disasters for
all states and peoples. After all, the very patriotism that produced
the unification of people into states is now destroying these same states.

I have already had to write several times about patriotism, about complete
its incompatibility with the teaching not only of Christ, in its ideal sense, but also
with the lowest moral standards of Christian society, and
every time my arguments were answered with either silence or arrogant
pointing out that the thoughts I express are utopian expressions
mysticism, anarchism and cosmopolitanism. Often my thoughts were repeated in a concise
form, and instead of objections to them, only the fact that it was not something was added
other than cosmopolitanism, as if the word "cosmopolitanism" is irrevocably
refuted all my arguments.

... patriotism is a relic of barbarian times, which is not only unnecessary
excite and educate, as we do now, but which must be
eradicate by all means: preaching, persuasion, contempt, ridicule.

We must rejoice when Poland separates from Russia,
Ostsee region, Finland, Armenia; and the Englishman rejoice in the same
relations with Ireland, Austria, India and other colonies and contribute to this,
because than more state, the angrier and crueler his patriotism, the
on more suffering rests his power.
... as it is considered stupid and ridiculous now to praise oneself, it would also be considered [stupid]
praise of his people, as it is now produced in various false
domestic stories, paintings, monuments, textbooks, articles, poems,
sermons and stupid folk hymns.

I'm only interested. Did the count expect that in just 16 years his fellow writers and poets would want to drown him?

Here is their widely known manifesto:

Reading our New First Unexpected.
Only we are the face of our Time. The horn of time blows us in verbal art.
The past is tight. The Academy and Pushkin are more incomprehensible than hieroglyphs. Throw Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and so on. and so on. from the ship Modernity.
Whoever does not forget his first love will not recognize his last.
Who, gullible, will turn last love to the perfumery fornication of Balmont? Does it reflect the courageous soul of today? Who, cowardly, will be afraid to steal paper armor from the black tailcoat of Bryusov's warrior? Or are they the dawn of unknown beauties?
Wash your hands that have touched the filthy slime of books written by those innumerable Leonid Andreevs.
To all these Maxim Gorky, Kuprin, Blok, Sologub, Averchenko, Cherny, Kuzmin, Bunin and so on. and so on. - All you need is a dacha on the river. Such an award is given by fate to tailors.
From the height of skyscrapers we look at their insignificance!
1). To increase the vocabulary in ego about b e me with arbitrary and derivative words (Word-innovation).
3). With horror to remove from the proud brow of his bath brooms the Wreath of penny glory you made.
4). To stand on a block of the word "we" in the midst of a sea of ​​whistling and indignation.
And if, for the time being, the dirty brands of yours remain in our lines, common sense” and “good taste”, then for the first time the lightnings of the New Coming Beauty of the Self-valuable (self-sufficient) Word already tremble on them.
(“A slap in the face to public taste” - the first collection of poetic cube-futurists (Petersburg poetic group Gilea), published on December 18, 1912. He is best known for the accompanying manifesto of the same name.)

This place is especially good:

We command to honor the rights of poets:
2). To an irresistible hatred for the language that existed before them.

Now hatred from the Russian language is transferred to the Russian people.
Evolution, however!

Magazine "Tolstovsky Listok / Forbidden Tolstoy", third edition, publishing house "AVICO PRESS", Moscow, 1993.

Your Majesty,

You write to me to speak out on the occasion of the North American States with England "in the interests of Christian consistency and true peace", and express the hope "that the peoples will soon wake up to the only means of securing international peace."

I have the same hope. I nurture this hope because the blindness in which peoples in our time are praising patriotism, educating their young generations in the superstition of patriotism and, meanwhile, not desiring the inevitable consequences of patriotism - war, has, it seems to me, reached that last degree. , in which the simplest reasoning, asking for the language of every unprejudiced person, is enough for people to see the blatant contradiction in which they find themselves.

Often, when you ask children what they choose from two incompatible things, but which they both really want, they answer: both of them. What do you want: go skiing or play at home? And go for a ride and play at home.

The Christian peoples answer us in the same way to the question posed by their lives: what do they choose from the two: patriotism or peace? They answer: both patriotism and peace, although it is just as impossible to combine patriotism and peace as to go skiing and stay at home at the same time.

Recently, there was a clash between the North American States and England over the borders of Venezuela. Salisbury did not agree to something, Cleveland wrote a message to the Senate, patriotic, militant exclamations were heard from both sides, there was a panic on the stock exchange, people lost millions of pounds and dollars, Edison announced that he would invent such shells with which it would be possible to kill in an hour more people than Attila killed in all his wars, and both peoples began to energetically prepare for war. But is it because, simultaneously with these preparations for war, both in England and America, various writers, princes and statesmen began to exhort the governments of both peoples to refrain from war, that the subject of contention was not important enough to start war, especially between two kindred, speaking the same language, Anglo-Saxon peoples, who should not fight among themselves, but calmly rule over others. Either because all kinds of bishops and archdeacons and canons prayed about it and read sermons in their churches, or because both sides did not consider themselves ready yet, but it happened that there would be no war this time. And people calmed down.

But after all, one must have too little perspicacity (insight) in order not to see that the causes that have now led to the clash between England and America have remained the same, and that if the current clash is resolved without a war, then inevitably tomorrow, the day after tomorrow there will be other clashes between England and America, and England and Germany, and England and Russia, and England and Turkey in all possible movements, as they occur daily, and one of them will inevitably lead to war.

After all, if two armed people live side by side, who have been instilled from childhood that power, wealth and glory are the highest virtues and that therefore it is the most laudable deed to acquire power, wealth and glory with weapons to the detriment of other neighboring owners, and if at the same time these people are not there is no moral, religious, or state restriction, is it not obvious that such people will always fight, that there will be a war between them, and that if such people, having grappled, dispersed for a while, then they did it only in French proverb: poor mieux sauter, i.e. fled in order to better jump, with great frenzy to rush at each other.

The egoism of private people is terrible, but the egoists of private life are not armed, they do not consider it good either to cook or use weapons against their rivals; the selfishness of private individuals is under the control of both state power and public opinion. A private person who, with a weapon in his hands, takes away a cow or a tithe of crops from a neighbor, will immediately be taken by the police and put in jail. In addition, such a person will be condemned by public opinion, he will be called a thief and a robber. It is quite different with the states: they are all armed, there is no power over them, except for comical attempts to catch a bird by sprinkling salt on its tail, attempts to establish international congresses, which, obviously, will never be accepted by the powerful (and armed for that not obey anyone) by states, and the main thing is that public opinion, which punishes any violence of a private person, praises, elevates to the virtue of patriotism any appropriation of someone else's in order to increase the power of one's fatherland.

For whatever time you want, open the newspapers and always, every minute you will see a black dot, the reason for a possible war: it will be Korea, then the Pamirs, then the African lands, then Abyssinia, then Armenia, then Turkey, then Venezuela, then the Transvaal. Robbery work does not stop for a moment, and here and there a small war goes on without ceasing, like a skirmish in a chain, and a real, big war can and must begin at any moment.

If an American desires the greatness and prosperity of America, which is preferable to all other peoples, and an Englishman desires exactly the same, and a Russian, and a Turk, and a Dutchman, and an Abyssinian, and a citizen of Venezuela and the Transvaal, and an Armenian, and a Pole, and a Czech, desire the same, and they are all convinced that these desires not only should not be hidden and suppressed, but that one can be proud of these desires and should develop them in oneself and others, and if the greatness and prosperity of one country or people cannot be acquired except at the expense of another or sometimes many other countries and peoples, then how could there not be a war. And therefore, in order for there to be no war, one must not read sermons and pray to God that there be peace, not persuade English speaking nations (nations that speak English) to be in friendship with each other in order to rule over other peoples, not make double and triple alliances against each other, do not marry princes to princesses of other peoples, but it is necessary to destroy that which produces war. What produces war is the desire for the exclusive good of one's people, what is called patriotism. And therefore, in order to destroy the war, it is necessary to destroy patriotism. And in order to destroy patriotism, one must first of all be convinced that it is evil, and this is precisely what is difficult to do.

Tell people that war is bad, they will laugh: who does not know this? Say that patriotism is bad, and most people will agree to this, but with a small caveat. --Yes, bad patriotism is bad, but there is another patriotism, the one we hold on to. - But what is this good patriotism, no one explains. If good patriotism consists in not being aggressive, as many say, then after all, all patriotism, if it is not aggressive, is certainly retaining, that is, that people want to keep what was previously conquered, since there is no such country that It would not be founded by conquest, and what has been won cannot be retained by other means than by the same means by which something is won, that is, by violence, murder. If patriotism is not even restraining, then it is restorative - the patriotism of the conquered, oppressed peoples - Armenians, Poles, Czechs, Irish, etc. And this patriotism is perhaps the worst, because it is the most embittered and requiring the greatest violence.

Patriotism cannot be good. Why do people not say that egoism can be good, although this could rather be asserted, because egoism is a natural feeling with which a person is born, while patriotism is an unnatural feeling, artificially instilled in him.

They will say: "Patriotism has bound people into states and maintains the unity of states." But after all, people have already united in states, this thing has been accomplished; why now support the exclusive devotion of people to their state, when this devotion produces terrible disasters for all states and peoples. After all, the same patriotism that brought about the unification of people into states is now destroying these same states. After all, if there were only one patriotism: the patriotism of the English alone, then one could consider it unifying or beneficent, but when, as now, there is patriotism: American, English, German, French, Russian, all opposed to one another, then patriotism is no longer connects and separates. To say that if patriotism was beneficent, uniting people into states, as it was during its heyday in Greece and Rome, then because of this, patriotism is just as beneficent now, after 1800 years of Christian life, is like saying that it is so. just as plowing was beneficial and beneficial to the field before sowing, it will also be beneficial now that the crops have already sprouted.

After all, it would be nice to keep patriotism in memory of the benefit that it once brought to people, how people keep and keep ancient monuments of temples, tombs, etc. But the temples stand, without bringing people any harm, while patriotism does not cease to produce innumerable disasters.

Why are the Armenians and Turks now suffering and being slaughtered and going berserk? Why are England and Russia, each concerned about their share of the inheritance after Turkey, waiting and not stopping the Armenian massacres? Why are the Abyssinians and Italians slaughtered? Why did a terrible war almost break out over Venezuela, and now over the Transvaal? And the Sino-Japanese war, and the Turkish, and the German, French? And the bitterness of the conquered peoples: Armenians, Poles, Irish! What about the preparations for the war of all peoples? All these are the fruits of patriotism. Seas of blood have been shed because of this feeling, and more will be shed because of it if people are not freed from this obsolete remnant of antiquity.

Several times I have already had to write about patriotism, about its complete incompatibility with the teachings not only of Christ, in its ideal sense, but also with the lowest requirements of the morality of Christian society, and each time my arguments were answered with either silence or an arrogant indication that that the thoughts I express are utopian expressions of mysticism, anarchism and cosmopolitanism. Often my thoughts were repeated in a condensed form, and instead of objections to them, only the fact that this was nothing but cosmopolitanism was added, as if this word "cosmopolitanism" irrevocably refuted all my arguments.

Serious, old, intelligent, kind people and, most importantly, standing like a city on top of a mountain, people who involuntarily lead the masses by their example, pretend that the legitimacy and beneficence of patriotism is so obvious and undoubted that it is not worth responding to frivolous and insane attacks on this sacred feeling, and the majority of people, deceived and infected with patriotism from childhood, take this arrogant silence as the most convincing argument and continue to stagnate in their ignorance.

And therefore, those people who, by their position, can save the masses from their misfortunes and do not do this, are committing a great sin.

The most terrible evil in the world is hypocrisy. Not without reason did Christ become angry only once, and that was against the hypocrisy of the Pharisees.

But what was the hypocrisy of the Pharisees in comparison with the hypocrisy of our time. In comparison with our hypocrites, the Pharisees were the most truthful people, and their art of hypocrisy, in comparison with the art of ours, is a child's toy. And it cannot be otherwise. Our whole life with the confession of Christianity, the teachings of humility and love, combined with the life of an armed band of robbers, cannot be anything but sheer, terrible hypocrisy. It is very convenient to profess such a doctrine in which: at one end is Christian holiness and therefore infallibility, and at the other is a pagan sword and gallows, so that when it is possible to impress and deceive with holiness, holiness is launched, when deception fails. , the sword and the gallows are launched. Such a teaching is very convenient, but the time comes when this web of lies spreads and it is no longer possible to continue to cling to one or the other, and it is necessary to adhere to one or the other. This same thing is now taking place in relation to the doctrine of patriotism.

Whether people want it or not, the question clearly confronts humanity: how can that patriotism, from which incalculable both physical and moral sufferings of people come, be necessary and be a virtue? And this question needs to be answered. It is necessary either to show that patriotism is such a great good that it redeems all those terrible disasters that it produces in humanity, or to recognize that patriotism is an evil that not only does not need to be inculcated and instilled in people, but from which one must try with all one's strength. get rid of.

C "est a prendre ou a laisser, [if you want to get rid of it, if you don't want to get rid of it] as the French say. If patriotism is good, then Christianity, which gives peace, is an empty dream, and the sooner this teaching is eradicated, the better. If Christianity really gives peace and we really want peace, then patriotism is a relic of the barbarian time, which not only does not need to be aroused and educated, as we do now, but which must be eradicated by all means: preaching, persuasion, contempt, ridicule. If we want to live in peace, then not only is it impossible to sympathize with the might of our fatherland, but we must rejoice at its weakening and contribute to it.We must rejoice when Poland, the Ostsee region, Finland, Armenia are separated from Russia; India and other colonies and contribute to this, because the larger the state, the more vicious and cruel its patriotism, the more suffering its power is based. And therefore, if we really want to be what we profess, we not only must not, as now, desire an increase in our state, but desire a decrease, weaken it, and contribute to this with all our might. And this is how to educate the younger generations. We must educate the younger generations in such a way that, as it is now a shame for a young person to show his gross egoism, for example, by eating everything without leaving others, pushing the weakest out of the way in order to pass himself, taking by force what another needs - just as it would be a shame to desire an increase in the power of one's fatherland; and just as it is now considered stupid and ridiculous to praise oneself, so it would be considered [stupid] to praise one's own people, as it is now produced in various false domestic histories, pictures, monuments, textbooks, articles, poems, sermons and stupid folk hymns. But we must understand that as long as we praise patriotism and educate it in the younger generations, we will have weapons that destroy both the physical and spiritual life of peoples, there will be wars, terrible, terrible wars, like those for which we are preparing and among whom we are now introducing, corrupting them with our patriotism, the new terrible fighters of the Far East.

Emperor Wilhelm, one of the most comical faces of our time, an orator, poet, musician, playwright and painter, and, most importantly, a patriot, recently painted a picture depicting all the peoples of Europe with swords, standing on the seashore and, at the direction of the Archangel Michael, looking at those sitting in the distance figures of Buddha in Confucius. According to Wilhelm's intention, this should mean that the peoples of Europe should unite in order to resist the danger that is approaching from there. And he is absolutely right with his pagan, rude, patriotic point of view, which is 1800 years behind.

The European peoples, having forgotten Christ in the name of their patriotism, have more and more irritated and taught these peaceful peoples about patriotism and war, and now they have irritated them in such a way that, indeed, if only Japan and China completely forget the teachings of Buddha and Confucius, as we have forgotten the teachings of Christ, they will soon learn the art of killing people (this is soon learned, as Japan showed) and, being fearless, dexterous, strong and numerous, will inevitably very soon be made from the countries of Europe, unless Europe is able to oppose something stronger than weapons and inventions of Edison, what the countries of Europe make from Africa. "A student is not higher than his teacher, but even having perfected, everyone will be like his teacher" (Luke, VI, 40).

To the question of one king: how much and how to add troops in order to defeat one southern people who did not submit to him, Confucius answered: “destroy all your army, use what you are now spending on the army, on enlightening your people and improving agriculture, and the people of the south will drive out their king and submit to your rule without war."

So taught Confucius, whom we are advised to fear. But we, having forgotten the teaching of Christ, having renounced it, want to subdue the peoples by force, and in this way we only prepare for ourselves new and stronger enemies than our neighbors.

One of my friends, seeing the picture of Wilhelm, said: “The picture is beautiful. Only it means not at all what is signed. It means that the Archangel Michael indicates to all the governments of Europe, depicted in the form of robbers hung with weapons, that which will destroy and destroy them namely, the meekness of the Buddha and the intelligence of Confucius." He could add: "And the humility of Lao-Tze." And indeed, we, thanks to our hypocrisy, have forgotten Christ to such an extent, we have eradicated everything Christian from our lives, that the teachings of Buddha and Confucius are without comparison superior to the brutal patriotism that guides our pseudo-Christian peoples.

And therefore, the salvation of Europe and the Christian world in general does not lie in rushing to kill their brothers across the sea like robbers, hung with swords, as Wilhelm portrayed them, but, on the contrary, in from him, take off your weapons and show the Eastern peoples not an example of wild patriotism and atrocities, but an example of fraternal life, which we have been taught by Christ.

I) ARTICLE DOWNLOAD LINKS:

1. "Patriotism or peace?"

(text in PDF file)

https://yadi.sk/d/JjwEgTVirVdSe

(audio recording in my reading, MP3)

2. "Patriotism and government"

(TEXT IN PDF FILE)

(AUDIOBOOK)

II) COMMENTS ON THE ARTICLES:

1) PATRIOTISM OR PEACE? (1895)

But do not pass - make a choice ...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

2) "PATRIOTISM AND GOVERNMENT" (1900)

Much more could be said, but I will only add that Tolstoy's article "Patriotism and Government" turned out to be so truthful and obscene that, being persecuted in tsarist Russia, in the USSR was almost excluded from Complete collection Tolstoy's writings (like the above-described article "Patriotism or peace?", shamefully pushed into the "Appendix" in the last, 90th volume) and, like a number of other ideologically "uncomfortable" articles of his, is not even mentioned in the modern one (2009. ) encyclopedia "Leo Tolstoy".
The article continues to be just as obscene - and therefore just as relevant! -- and in modern Putin's Russia!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

3) CHRISTIANITY AND PATRIOTISM (1893 - 1894)

" R "working" title, which this article received from L.N. Tolstoy - "Toulon". October 1893 the Russian squadron under the command of Vice Admiral Avelan to Toulon.
From the official newspapers one could get information about the food eaten at the festival and the speeches made. With sarcasm notes L.N. Tolstoy, that the menu was clearly more diverse than speeches about love for the world, the tsar, the president and the squadron leader at the same time - and all this to the music of the anthems of two states, one of which, Russian, glorifies the tsar, and the other, French, “curses all tsars and promises them a quick death."
The lies of the government bastard, in which she apparently believed herself, the chauvinistic dope, the mass nature of the "psychopathic epidemic" that swept hundreds of thousands of ordinary participants in celebrations and demonstrations - all this could not but resent Tolstoy. The worst thing, the writer emphasized, is that among the insane there are people who have money and power to spread their insanity around the world. Meanwhile, military preparations are going on, money is being spent on armaments by the billions, and millions of people are already under arms both in Russia and in France. That is why, according to Tolstoy's deep conviction, this whole game of peace and love will inevitably end sooner or later with a new government call to war.
Further, Tolstoy, again resorting to the combination of artistic and journalistic principles, sketches a truly terrible (but also prophetic!) picture:
“The bells will ring, long-haired people will dress in golden bags and start praying for the murder<…>. Newspapermen will fuss, inciting people under the guise of patriotism, to hatred and murder, rejoicing at the fact that they will receive a double income. Breeders, merchants, suppliers of military supplies will fuss joyfully, expecting double profits. All sorts of officials will fuss, foreseeing the possibility of stealing more than they usually steal, military authorities will fuss, receiving double salaries and rations, and hoping to get trinkets highly valued by them for the murder of people - ribbons, crosses, galloons, stars. Idle gentlemen and ladies will fuss, signing up for the Red Cross ahead, preparing to bandage those who will be killed by their own husbands and brothers.
Millions, each against his own reasonable will, will be drawn en masse into a new slaughter. And the result is the same: “... Again, people will run wild, become furious, and love in the world will decrease, and the Christianization of humanity that has already begun will be pushed back by tens, hundreds of years. And again, those people who benefit from this will confidently say that if there was a war, then this means that it is necessary, and again they will begin to prepare future generations for this, corrupting them from childhood.
Aggressive symbolism of state emblems with their grinning, clawed predators acquires an ominously symbolic meaning in Tolstoy's understanding. Acting in the interests of the influential financial "top", those in power arouse a number of injustices enmity among other peoples in relation to "their own", and then use this enmity to incite enmity in "their" people. And now, until recently, reasonable, independent, good people obediently stand "against each other with claws extended and teeth bared and waiting only for someone to fall into misfortune and weaken, so that they can attack and tear it with the least danger."

Everything came true, and more than once, in the 20th century, leaving us, the descendants, unforgettable evidence of the correctness of L.N. Tolstoy is a thinker, but as usual, he taught no one anything. And today, as more than a hundred years ago, Tolstoy would have to say, as if about something new, that “the feeling falsely called patriotism and expressed in the preference of one’s state or people over any other state or people is not at all lofty, but, on the contrary, very stupid and very immoral. And to this day, it is customary to recognize the opinion of the great writer, publicist and fighter for peace that nations and peoples, like individual people, in their relations with each other, should be guided not by considerations of the benefit of persons dominant in the social hierarchy, but by a known moral law: "Do not do to another and others what we would not like to be done to us."
But utopia is the opposite: to believe that one can live as it is now, celebrating the military holidays of "great victories", the supposedly "male" military army holiday on February 23, and at the same time hope for a peaceful life, for survival on our planet of nature and humanity...
So is it not time to stop holding on to utopias, and to take up the mind and the books of Tolstoy, containing his Christian teaching, recognizing them not as dogmas, but as guidelines for new thinking in a new life that has already come and presented its challenges to humanity of the 3rd millennium? ?

Your Majesty,

You write to me to speak out on the occasion of the North American States with England "in the interests of Christian consistency and true peace" and express the hope "that the peoples will soon wake up to the only means of securing international peace."

I have the same hope. I nurture this hope because the blindness in which peoples in our time are praising patriotism, educating their young generations in the superstition of patriotism and, meanwhile, not wanting the inevitable consequences of patriotism - war, has reached, it seems to me, to that last degree, in which the simplest reasoning, which asks for the language of every unprejudiced person, is enough for people to see the glaring contradiction in which they find themselves.

Often, when you ask children what they choose from two incompatible things, but which they both really want, they answer: both of them. What do you want: go skiing or play at home? And go for a ride and play at home.

The Christian peoples answer us in the same way to the question posed to them by life: what do they choose from the two: patriotism or peace? They answer: both patriotism and peace, although it is just as impossible to combine patriotism and peace as to go skiing and stay at home at the same time.

The other day between the North American States and England there was a clash over the borders of Venezuela. Salisbury did not agree to something, Cleveland wrote a message to the Senate, patriotic, militant exclamations were heard on both sides, there was a panic on the stock exchange, people lost millions of pounds and dollars, Edison announced that he would invent such shells with which it would be possible to kill in an hour more people than Attila killed in all his wars, and both peoples began to energetically prepare for war. But is it because, simultaneously with these preparations for war, both in England and America, various writers, princes and statesmen began to exhort the governments of both peoples to refrain from war, that the subject of contention was not important enough to start war, especially between two kindred, speaking the same language, Anglo-Saxon peoples, who should not fight among themselves, but calmly rule over others. Either because all kinds of bishops and archdeacons and canons prayed about it and read sermons in their churches, or because both sides did not consider themselves ready yet, but it happened that there would be no war this time. And people calmed down.

But after all, one must have too little perspicacity (insight) in order not to see that the causes that have now led to the clash between England and America have remained the same, and that if the current clash is resolved without a war, then inevitably tomorrow, the day after tomorrow there will be other clashes between England and America, and England and Germany, and England and Russia, and England and Turkey in all possible movements, as they occur daily, and one of them will inevitably lead to war.

After all, if two armed people live side by side, who have been instilled from childhood that power, wealth and glory are the highest virtues and that therefore it is the most laudable deed to acquire power, wealth and glory with weapons to the detriment of other neighboring possessors, and if at the same time these people are not there is no moral, religious, or state restriction, then isn’t it obvious that such people will always fight, that their normal relationship with each other will be war, and that if such people, having grappled, dispersed for a while, then they did it only for French proverb: roor mieux sauter, i.e. fled in order to better jump, with great frenzy to rush at each other.

The egoism of private people is terrible, but the egoists of private life are not armed, they do not consider it good either to cook or use weapons against their rivals; the selfishness of private individuals is under the control of both state power and public opinion. A private person who, with a weapon in his hands, takes away a cow or a tithe of crops from a neighbor, will immediately be taken by the police and put in jail. In addition, such a person will be condemned by public opinion, he will be called a thief and a robber. It is quite different with the states: they are all armed, there is no power over them, except for comical attempts to catch a bird by sprinkling salt on its tail, attempts to establish international congresses, which, obviously, will never be accepted by the powerful (and armed for that not obey anyone) by states, and the main thing is that public opinion, which punishes any violence of a private person, praises, elevates to the virtue of patriotism any appropriation of someone else's in order to increase the power of one's fatherland.

For whatever time you want, open the newspapers and always, every minute you will see a black dot, the reason for a possible war: it will be Korea, then the Pamirs, then the African lands, then Abyssinia, then Armenia, then Turkey, then Venezuela, then the Transvaal. Robbery work does not stop for a moment, and here and there a small war goes on without ceasing, like a skirmish in a chain, and a real, big war can and must begin at any moment.

If an American desires the greatness and prosperity of America, which is preferable to all other peoples, and an Englishman desires exactly the same, and a Russian, and a Turk, and a Dutchman, and an Abyssinian, and a citizen of Venezuela and the Transvaal, and an Armenian, and a Pole, and a Czech, desire the same, and they are all convinced that these desires not only should not be hidden and suppressed, but that one can be proud of these desires and should develop them in oneself and others, and if the greatness and prosperity of one country or people cannot be acquired except at the expense of another or sometimes many other countries and peoples, then how could there not be a war. And therefore, in order to avoid war, one must not read sermons and pray to God that there be peace, not to persuade English speaking nations (nations that speak English) to be in friendship with each other in order to rule over other peoples, not make double and triple alliances against each other, do not marry princes to princesses of other peoples, but it is necessary to destroy that which produces war. What produces war is the desire for the exclusive good of one's people, what is called patriotism. And therefore, in order to destroy the war, it is necessary to destroy patriotism. And in order to destroy patriotism, one must first of all be convinced that it is evil, and this is precisely what is difficult to do.

Tell people that war is bad, they will laugh: who does not know this? Say that patriotism is bad, and most people will agree to this, but with a small caveat. - Yes, bad patriotism is bad, but there is another patriotism, the one we hold on to. - But what is this good patriotism, no one explains. If good patriotism consists in not being aggressive, as many say, then after all, all patriotism, if it is not aggressive, is certainly retaining, that is, that people want to keep what was previously conquered, since there is no such country that It would not be founded by conquest, and what was won cannot be maintained by other means than by the same means by which something is won, that is, by violence, murder. If patriotism is not even restraining, then it is restorative - the patriotism of the conquered, oppressed peoples - Armenians, Poles, Czechs, Irish, etc. And this patriotism is perhaps the worst, because it is the most embittered and requiring the greatest violence.

Patriotism cannot be good. Why do people not say that egoism can be good, although this could rather be asserted, because egoism is a natural feeling with which a person is born, while patriotism is an unnatural feeling, artificially instilled in him.

They will say: "Patriotism has bound people into states and maintains the unity of states." But after all, people have already united in states, this thing has been accomplished; why now support the exclusive devotion of people to their state, when this devotion produces terrible disasters for all states and peoples. After all, the same patriotism that brought about the unification of people into states is now destroying these same states. After all, if there were only one patriotism: the patriotism of the English alone, then one could consider it unifying or beneficent, but when, as now, there is patriotism: American, English, German, French, Russian, all opposed to one another, then patriotism is no longer connects and separates. To say that if patriotism was beneficent, uniting people into states, as it was during its heyday in Greece and Rome, then because of this, patriotism is just as beneficent now, after 1800 years of Christian life, is like saying that it is so. just as plowing was beneficial and beneficial to the field before sowing, it will also be beneficial now that the crops have already sprouted.