- Lyceum Charlemagne [d] ( )
Biography
Born into a poor family, which he himself called "peasant". His father moved to Paris and existed at the expense of income from the printing house he founded. While the press enjoyed relative freedom under the First Republic, the printing business flourished, but with the establishment of the Empire, the Michelet family had to experience grief and want; her plight reached the point that her grandfather, father, mother and 12-year-old Jules themselves had to do the printing work.
It is clear that under such conditions, the training of the young Michelet was fraught with difficulties; he had to take reading lessons early in the morning from an old bookseller, a former school teacher, an ardent revolutionary: from him Michelet inherited his admiration for the revolution. Faith in God and in immortality (he was not baptized as a child) was evoked in him by the book "On the Imitation of Christ". With the last funds, the parents placed Michelet in the collegium of Charlemagne. Ashamed of his poverty, not accustomed to the company of Jules, learning was difficult, but rare diligence helped him overcome the prejudice with which his teachers first treated him; they recognized in him a talent, especially a literary one.
The December coup deprived Michelet of the chair at the College de France, and for refusing the oath, he lost his place in the archive. He felt depressed and exhausted, but did not lose heart thanks to the support of his second wife (Adèle Malairet), who had a great influence on his life and the further direction of his studies. Continuing to work on his book on the great revolution, M. in collaboration with his wife gave a series of books on nature, rare in their charming originality.
Michelet had previously loved nature, but now he felt a close connection between man and nature; he saw in it the germ of moral freedom, a totality of thoughts and feelings similar to ours. His "L'oiseau" (1856), "L'insecte" (1857), "La mer" (1861) and "La montagne" (1868) both in natural phenomena and in the life of animals carry the same passionate sympathy for everything suffering, defenseless, which we see in his historical writings.
In 1858 Michelet published L'amour, in 1859 La Femme; his enthusiastic words about love and marriage, combined with great frankness in the treatment of these issues, provoked the derision of critics, but, nevertheless, both books achieved rare popularity. "L'amour" forms the preface to "Nos fils" (1869), where Michelet expounded in detail his view of education, summarized by him in the words: family, fatherland, nature. The sermon of the same ideas is devoted to the previously published "La bible de l'humanité" (1864) - a brief outline of moral teachings, starting from antiquity. Along with these Op. M. gave several small works on history: "Les femmes de la Révolution" (1854), "Les soldats de la Révolution", "Légendes démocratiques du Nord", a stunning historical and pathological study "La sorcière" (1862). In 1867 he completed his Histoire de France, bringing it to the threshold of the 1789 revolution.
Thanks to his studies in the natural sciences and psychology, Michelet felt rejuvenated; it seemed to him that in France, too, a revival of the former energy was beginning. The Franco-Prussian War brought him terrible disappointment. When the specter of this war began to threaten, Michelet almost alone dared to protest publicly against the infatuation with vainglorious and crude chauvinism; the common sense and clairvoyance of the historian did not allow him to doubt the outcome of the war. His voice, however, remained unnoticed. Poor health prevented him from enduring the siege of Paris; he retired to Italy, where the news of the surrender of Paris caused him the first fit of apoplexy. In the brochure "La France devant l'Europe" (Florence, 1871), he expresses his belief in the immortality of the people, who remained in his eyes the representative of the ideas of progress, justice and freedom.
Having barely recovered, the historian set to work on a huge new work, Histoire du XIX siècle, published 3.5 volumes in three years, but brought his presentation only to the battle of Waterloo. The triumph of reaction in 1873 took away from him the hope of a speedy revival of the fatherland. His strength weakened more and more, and on February 9, 1874, he died in Hyères (Var department); his funeral gave rise to a republican demonstration.
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Michelet, according to Taine, is not a historian, but one of the greatest poets of France, his story is "the lyrical epic of France." The feeling of compassion, pity, awakened in M. in childhood, when he was bitterly aware of his loneliness and poverty, remained in him in all phases of life and immediately broke out as soon as his imagination transferred him to an era alien to him. He suffered with the victim, whoever she was, and hated the persecutor. The brightest pages of French historiography are those on which M. depicted the torment and suffering of people who suffered from belief in witchcraft and from the cruel persecution of a terrible mental epidemic. His responsiveness to other people's suffering was too great for him to remain an impartial spectator of contemporary events. The annoyances of the day gripped his soul so strongly that he brought them into the study of the past; the present, especially in the works written from the mid-1940s, began to paint the past in its own color and enslave it to its needs and ideals. This extraordinary impressionability, these feelings of pity and love are the element that binds together his various works on history, natural science and psychology.
He expressed his thoughts about the people in the books "Le peuple" (1848) and "Le Banquet" (1854). Michelet is here a resolute opponent of socialism. The latter wants the destruction of private property, and the vital and moral ideal of a real people, that is, the peasantry, was determined, in the eyes of Michelet, precisely by the possession of private property, their piece of land, their field; he even demanded, in the interests of this private property, the destruction of the remnants of public property that had survived the revolution. The element of violence among the supporters of communism was also unsympathetic to him; he did not understand brotherhood without freedom, his humane nature indignantly rejected all terrorist measures to realize the ideal of love. But, rejecting socialist and communist dreams, Michelet felt sadly the depth of social discord (divorce social).
The only way to eliminate him was to bring the upper strata closer to the people - a closer relationship based on love, on the renunciation of egoism. At the same time, wishing to attract sympathy for the people, he strongly idealized them; he extolled the instinct of the people and gave it precedence over the bookish rationality of the educated classes, attributed to the people the ability for heroism and self-sacrifice, in contrast to the cold egoism of the wealthy classes. Such views fully justify the nickname "populist" given by one of our historians to Michelet. Michelet found the key to solving the social problem in the mental phenomenon that is genius: just as genius is harmonious and fruitful, when both elements contained in it - a man of instinct and a man of reflection - contribute to each other, so also creativity, manifested in the history of the people, it is fruitful when the lower and upper layers of it act in mutual understanding and harmony. First of all, preached M., it is necessary to heal the soul of people; the means for this should be the popular school, which would set itself the goal of arousing social love. In this general school, children of all classes, of all conditions, should stay for a year or two; it should serve to bring the classes together just as much as the present school contributes to the separation of them.
In the public school, according to Michelet's plan, the child had, first of all, to know his fatherland in order to learn to see in it a living deity (un Dieu vivant), in which he could believe; this faith would then support in him the consciousness of unity with the people, and at the same time, in the school itself, the fatherland would appear to him in reality in the form of a children's community, preceding the civil community. With the help of civic love learned from childhood, Michelet considered it possible to achieve an ideal state, based, however, not on equality, but on inequality, built from different people, but brought into harmony through love, more and more equalized by it. The establishment of an alliance between the various classes Michelet expects from the students of higher schools: they must be mediators, natural peacemakers of the civil community. This dream of Michelet, as V. I. Guerrier points out, finds its fulfillment in our time, but where Michelet least expected it - in a country that embodied pride and selfishness for him: in England.
The French historian Jules Michelet (1798-1874) created a series of articles on Russia in the early 1850s; The impetus for writing these articles was an acquaintance with Herzen's essay "On the Development of Revolutionary Ideas in Russia" published in French in 1851, which Michelet called "the heroic book of the great Russian patriot." For Michelet, who sympathizes with the Decembrists and the Poles, Russia is a real "evil empire." Hatred of the autocracy, coupled with the speculative ideas about "southern" and "northern" characters inherited from Montesquieu and Madame de Stael, sometimes make Michelet paint Russian life in a rather fantastic light. Here, for example, is how he sees the difference between the existence of a Russian landowner in the 18th century and under Nicholas I: “Once you, of course, were very dependent in relations with the tsar, but you could take comfort in the fact that these relations are extremely rare; as soon as winter made it impossible to move around the country, you got rid of tyranny. For eight months of the year you reigned supreme over your estates. In autumn, you locked the door with a padlock, and no one bothered you. Now, everywhere in your possessions you meet a terrible man with a cloudy look: this is the spy of the king, reporting to Petersburg about everything that you are doing. However, there are passages in Michelet that are not only quite accurate, but, unfortunately, are still relevant today: “What kind of army is this that suffers such huge losses in peacetime?<...>Three times more soldiers are being recruited into this army than it actually has. Where are the rest going?<...>In Russia, you will never find old disabled soldiers, so numerous in other parts of the world. Here everyone is recovering without exception; they are used by a doctor who cures any ailment; his name is Death." According to Michelet, the only thing that can save Russia is the overthrow of the despotic power of the emperor; addressing the Russian officers, he exclaims: “Many of you are trying to deceive yourselves. They claim to serve the glory of Russia. But, gentlemen, let's not confuse two different things. There are two Russias: an empire and a nation. So, the empire - I undertake to prove it - has not taken a single step that would not lead to the destruction of your national genius, to the killing of that Slavic spirit that lived in you. To define the monstrous government under whose rule you live, two words are enough: it is nothing but the death of Russia.
The sharpness of Michelet's judgments about the Russian people provoked a protest from Herzen, who, immediately after reading his first articles, in the autumn of 1851, published in Nice in French the pamphlet "The Russian People and Socialism (Letter to J. Michelet)", where he challenged the assertion "that Russia does not exist, that Russians are not people, that they are devoid of moral meaning, ”and called for distinguishing the Russian people from the“ Byzantine-German government ”, people’s Russia from official Russia. In the next work on the Russian theme, the series of articles “Martyrs of Russia”, Michelet speaks of the Russian people in a softer tone and calls suffering the main feature of the Russian soul, the main sign of a Russian person is “a broken heart”. In addition, the embodiment of the real Russian soul, not the one that is now in miserable insignificance, but the one that it will sooner or later become, Michelet in "Martyrs of Russia" calls "the genius of Pestel and the heart of Ryleev."
This publication includes two sections (sixth and seventh) from the work “Poland and Russia. The Legend of Kosciuszko", which was first published with a continuation in August-September 1851 in the newspaper "Event" (L "Evenement), and then included in the book" Democratic Legends of the North "(1854).
Until 1847, Europe did not know what Russia was. Communism reigns there.
What I am about to say may seem strange, but it is nevertheless a fact: before 1847, Russia, the real, popular Russia, was no more known in Europe than America was before Christopher Columbus.
I have read all the more or less significant writings on Russia published in Europe. They didn't do much for me. I vaguely foresaw that these writings, outwardly serious, but inwardly light-hearted, describe a dress, but not a person.
An astute and subtle observer, endowed with a feminine flair, M. de Custine depicted Russian high society, and in passing sketched several successful portraits of people from the people.
Mickiewicz drew a general outline of the life of the Slavs, and then, turning to the details, shed light on us with delightful clarity the true character of the Russian government. He would have gone further, but he was not allowed. The chair was taken away from him.
However, the lofty desire to justify Russia, to reconcile the rival brothers, Russians and Poles, by reminding them of their common origin, prevented Mickiewicz from highlighting the features of the Russians proper, which distinguish this nation from other Slavic peoples and put them below them, to show a miserable and vile state, to which brought down the Slavic spirit in the Russian Empire.
In 1843, the agronomist Mr. Gaksthausen visited Russia in order to study the methods of agriculture there. He wanted to see only the earth and the fruits of the earth; saw a man.
He discovered Russia. We have learned more from his meticulous research than from all previous books put together.
The testimony of this remarkable observer is all the more credible because it can be considered coming from Russia itself; it is her testimony against herself. Enlisting the recommendation of the emperor, Gaksthausen dealt with local officials and large landlords, who would certainly have tried to hide the truth from him, had he wished to study Russian forms of government, but did not prevent him from exploring Russian life in the localities, the customs of serfs and the arrangement of villages, in all details, methods of cultivating the land and the position of farmers.
Satisfied with the reception given to him, the German slowly examines one community after another, looks closely, observes, asks as much as he can, and, no matter how great his servility, his humble respect for the Russian government and for the landowners whose estates he visits, however, retains same, remarkable freedom of judgment.
To what conclusion did this study lead the German scientist, carried out under the auspices of interested parties? To the most unexpected and doing Herr Haxthausen a great honor.
This conclusion is not formulated directly anywhere, but every page of Mr. Haxthausen's book convinces the reader that in Russia both agriculture and farmers are in a deplorable state, that they produce very little, that the peasants, frivolous and improvident, are hardly capable of changing for the better. side.
We are assured that the population in Russia is growing very rapidly. But on the other hand, production is not growing; nobody does anything. An amazing contrast: there are more people, but life itself seems to be infected with weakness and death.
To explain such a miracle, one word is enough, and this word absorbs the whole of Russia.
Russian life is communism.
This is the only form, which knows almost no exceptions, which Russian society takes. The community, or commune, existing under the rule of the landowner, distributes the land among its members, sometimes for ten years, sometimes for six, sometimes for four or three, and in other places for only a year.
A family in which someone has died by the time of the division receives less land; the family where someone was born is more. The peasants are so much interested in their family not being reduced that if the old man, the head of the family, dies, the children take someone else's old man in his place.
The strength of Russia (similar in some respects to the United States of America) is this inherent agrarian law, in other words, the constant redistribution of land among all who live on it. Strangers rarely show a desire to exercise this right, for they fear falling into slavery. But Russian women, thanks to this state of affairs, give birth to children one after another without looking back and without stopping. This is truly the most effective way to encourage fertility: every child, as soon as he is born, receives an allotment from the community - a kind of reward for birth.
A monstrous vitality, a monstrous fertility, which would threaten the whole world with terrible dangers, if it were not balanced by another, no less monstrous force - death, which is served by two efficient assistants: a terrible climate and an even more terrible government.
Add to this that communal communism itself, which promotes childbearing, also bears in itself a completely opposite principle: it leads to death, to unproductiveness, to idleness. A man who is not responsible for anything and relies on the community for everything, lives as if in a drowsiness, indulging in childish carelessness; with a light plow he lightly scratches the barren soil, carelessly singing a sweet-sounding but monotonous song; the land will bring a meager harvest - it's not scary: he will receive one more allotment for use; because next to him is his wife, who will soon give birth to his next child.
A very unexpected consequence follows from this: in Russia communal communism strengthens the family. A woman is dearly loved here; her life is easy. The prosperity of the family primarily depends on it; her fertile womb for a man is a source of wealth. The birth of a child is eagerly awaited. His birth is greeted with songs: it promises wealth. True, most often the child dies in infancy; however, a fertile mother will not be slow to give birth to the next child, so that the family will not lose the land allotment due to her.
Here is a completely natural life, in the lowest, deeply material sense of the word, which belittles a person and drags him to the bottom. Little work, no foresight, no concern for the future. Woman and community - these are the two forces that help a man live. The more fruitful the woman, the more generous the community. Physical love and vodka, the incessant birth of children who immediately die, after which the parents immediately conceive the next - this is the life of a serf.
The property of the peasants is disgusting. Those who have been made owners very quickly return to their former communal existence. They are afraid of failure, work, responsibility. The owner may go broke; a communist cannot go bankrupt - he has nothing to lose, since he did not possess anything. One of the peasants, to whom they wanted to give land as property, answered: “What if I drink my land?”
In truth, there is something strange in the fact that the same word "communism" denotes the most opposite things: the sluggish, drowsy communism of the Russian communities and the heroic communism of those who defend Europe from the barbarians and stand in the vanguard of the fighters for freedom. - Serbs and Montenegrins, living in close proximity to the vast Turkish empire, now and then enter into an unequal battle with it; the Turks can capture them every day, tie them to the tails of their horses and take them to a foreign land - however, the Slavs find the strength to resist these terrible circumstances; they derive their strength from a kind of communism. Together they harvest and cook food, they live and die like brothers. Such communism, as the battles in which these people take part, and the songs they compose, proves, does not relax either the hands or the mind.
How far from it is another communism - unconscious, innate, idle, in which all those who are accustomed to live in a flock, in whom the individual has not yet woken up, remain, as if in hibernation. This is how shellfish live at the bottom of the sea; so live many wild tribes on distant islands; let us rise a step higher, and we will see that the careless Russian peasant lives in exactly the same way. He sleeps in the bosom of the community, like a child in the womb. The community consoles him in the vicissitudes of a slave life, and, sad as such consolation is, it encourages apathy and prolongs it forever.
The only ray of light that illuminates the gloomy existence of a Russian serf, unable to change anything in his fate, the only source of his happiness is his family, wife and children. However, even here we find the most repulsive squalor... A child is born, he is loved, but he is hardly cared for at all. He dies, and his place is taken by another, who is just as much loved, but who, having lost him, is just as little regretted. This is how the river flows. Woman is the source from which whole generations are born, they appear in order to disappear into the bowels of the earth. The man doesn't care about that. Does the woman or child belong to him? The disgusting serf existence gives rise to that deplorable communism, about which we have not yet said everything. He who is not a master even of himself, is not a master of either his wife or his daughter - is he powerful over his offspring? So, in reality, the family does not exist in Russia.
Everything in Russia is an illusion and a deceit
Russian communism is not a social institution at all, it is a natural condition of existence, explained by the peculiarities of race and climate, man and nature.
Russians cannot be attributed to the number of northern people. They have neither northern furious power, nor northern unshakable seriousness. Russians are southern people; this is understood by anyone who is familiar with their briskness and agility, their endless mobility. Only the invasion of the Tatar hordes forced them to leave the south and settle in the middle of that huge swamp, which is called Northern Russia. This dark part of Russia is very densely populated. On the contrary, the rich and fertile southern part remains deserted.
For eight months of the year the country is drowned in mud, making any movement impossible; the rest of the time the land is covered with snow and ice, so that travel is possible, but - if not in a sleigh - difficult and dangerous. The dull monotony of such a climate, the involuntary loneliness resulting from the impossibility of moving from one place - all this gives the Russian man an extraordinary need for movement. If the iron hand of power had not chained the Russians to the ground, all of them, both nobles and peasants, would have fled wherever their eyes looked; they would start walking, driving, traveling. All Russians only think about it. They plow the land and serve in the army against their will; they were born to wander, to be pedlars, junk dealers, itinerant carpenters, and most importantly, coachmen; this is the craft that they master brilliantly.
Unable to obey the voice of this instinct that calls him into the distance, the farmer finds solace in the bustling movements, limited to the boundaries of his native village. The constant redistribution of land, the transfer of plots from one hand to another, make it possible for the entire community to make a kind of journey on the spot. Thanks to these frequent exchanges, the dull, immovable earth begins to appear diverse, set in motion.
To the Russians exactly what is said - perhaps with lesser justification - about the Slavs in general: “For them there is neither past nor future; they only know the real.
The changeable inhabitants of the ocean of northern mud, where nature tirelessly connects and separates, dissolves and decomposes into its component parts, the Russians seem to themselves consist of water. "False as water," said Shakespeare. - Their eyes, elongated, but never fully opened, are not the same as those of other people. The Greeks called Russians "people with lizard eyes"; Mickiewicz put it even better when he said that real Russians have "insect eyes" - they shine, but they look not human.
Looking at the Russians, you clearly understand that this tribe has not yet developed to the end. Russians are not yet fully human.
They lack the main property of a person - moral instinct, the ability to distinguish good from evil. The world stands on this instinct and this skill. A person deprived of them floats at the will of the waves and is in the grip of moral chaos, which is still waiting for the Creator to appear.
We do not deny that Russians have many excellent qualities. They are meek and compliant, they make true friends, tender parents, they are philanthropic and merciful. The only trouble is that they are completely devoid of straightforwardness and moral principles.
They lie without malice, they steal without malice, they lie and steal everywhere and all the time.
Strange affair! they have a highly developed capacity for admiration, and this gives them a receptivity to everything poetic, great, perhaps even sublime. However, truth and justice for them - an empty phrase. Talk to them about these topics, they will listen with a smile, but they will not answer a word and will not understand what you want from them.
Justice is not just a guarantee of the existence of any society, it is its reality, its foundation and essence. A society that does not know justice is an imaginary society, existing in words and not in deeds, false and empty.
In Russia, everyone, young and old, deceives and lies: this country is a phantasmagoria, a mirage, an empire of illusions.
Let's start from the very bottom, with that element of Russian life that seems to be the most durable, the most original and the most popular - the family.
In Russia, a family is not a family. Does the wife here belong to her husband? No, first of all it belongs to the landowner. She gives birth to a child - who knows from whom?
In Russia, the community is not a community either. At first glance, it may seem that this is a small patriarchal republic in which freedom reigns. But take a closer look, and you will understand that before you is just miserable slaves who are only free to share the hardships of slave labor among themselves. As soon as the landowner sells these peasants or buys new ones, the republic will come to an end. Neither the community as a whole nor its individual members know what fate will befall them tomorrow.
Let us rise higher, consider the existence of landlords. Here the contrast between the ideal and the real becomes even more striking, the lie even more noticeable. Apparently, the landowner in Russia is a father to his peasants: together with the headman, the village elder, he sorts out in a fatherly way who is right and who is wrong. In fact, this father is a cruel lord, a king, who rules his village more despotically than the emperor from St. Petersburg rules the whole country. He is free to beat a peasant, take his daughter away from him or give him himself as a soldier, send him to the Siberian mines, sell them to the owners of new factories - working for them is no different from hard labor, and the peasants, separated from their families, die there one by one.
Life is even harder for free peasants, so no one aspires to freedom. A Russian friend of mine tried in vain to convince his serfs of the advantages of freedom. They prefer to remain slaves and rely on chance: it's like a lottery; it happens that the master turns out to be kind. However, the so-called free peasants, who belong to the state, cannot count on such an opportunity. The government is worse than any master.
This government consists of the most deceitful people that can be found in the empire of lies. It calls itself Russian, but essentially remains German; out of every six officials, five are Germans, natives of Courland and Livonia, impudent and pedantic, making a striking contrast with the Russian people, who do not know Russian life at all, are alien to Russian customs and the Russian spirit, do everything contrary to common sense, always ready to outrage the meek and frivolous Russian people, to pervert its original laudable properties.
It is impossible without disgust to think that in this country of officials and the Church is only called the Church, in fact it is part of the state machine. The people receive neither spiritual edification nor consolation from the priests. Religious preaching is strictly prohibited. Those who tried to preach were exiled to Siberia. The priest is none other than an official, which means he has military ranks. The Metropolitan of Moscow rose to the rank of general-in-chief, the metropolitan of Kazan to the rank of lieutenant general. Here is a church in which everything is of matter and nothing is of the spirit.
The role of the pope in Russia is played by an assembly of clergymen who are responsible for church affairs; however, all these clerics take an oath to the king. So in reality, the real dad is none other than the king.
Tolstoy, a Russian writer who knows a lot about these matters, says bluntly: "The Emperor is by nature the head of the church."
As for the emperor, he is the most deceitful of all the deceitful Russians, the supreme liar who reigns over all other liars.
Providence embodied, dear father, protector of the peasants!.. Later we will have another opportunity to explain what a diabolical meaning all these words acquire in Russia.
Here it will suffice to show how false this power is, false even in what, it would seem, belongs to the number of its indisputable properties, namely, in its strength, in its power; it will suffice to show that this power, so inflexible, so severe, and apparently so strong, is in fact very weak.
Two completely natural circumstances have given rise to the reign of a completely unnatural, true monster. The painful uncertainty about the future, to which the raids of the Tatar cavalry doomed the Russians, forced them to seek peace and constancy under the rule of a single ruler. However, the mobility inherent in the Russian nation from time immemorial, its endless changeability made peace unattainable. Flowing like water, this nation could be stopped in its movement only by the means that nature uses to keep the water flow in place - a sharp, hard, violent compression, similar to that which, on the first winter nights, turns water into ice, liquid into crystals as hard as iron.
With the help of a similar violent operation, the Russian state was created. This is its ideal, this is how it wants to be - a source of severe peace, a powerful immobility achieved at the expense of the best manifestations of life.
However, he fails to do so. If we continue the comparison, then this state will have to be likened to thin ice, melting under itself not completely frozen water: here every minute you run the risk of falling into a hole. The strength of this ice is very doubtful, its hardness cannot be relied upon.
As we have already said, in the Russian soul, even if it is the soul of a slave, there is nothing on which a firm order could be based. The Russian soul is a more natural element than a human one. Getting it to freeze is almost impossible; she is fluid, evasive. And who can deal with it? officials? - but these officials are no more moral than the people they intend to govern. They have no more consistency, seriousness, fidelity, a sense of honor, and without all this the actions of the government cannot succeed. Officials, like all other inhabitants of the empire, are frivolous, rogue, greedy. Where all subjects are thieves, judges are easy to buy. Where the nobleman and the serf are corrupt, the official is no less corrupt. The emperor knows perfectly well that they forget about him for the sake of profits, that he is robbed, that the most faithful of his courtiers will sell him for a hundred rubles.
The emperor is endowed with enormous, awesome power, but his orders can only be carried out by the hands of subordinates; what happens to absolute power? It is traded at every rung of the official ladder, so the result of any undertaking is completely unpredictable.
If the emperor had always been deceived, if all his orders had been disregarded, he would have taken his measures and tried to change this state of affairs. However, there is no permanence even in deceit. The greatest defect of this mechanism lies in its uncertainty, in its capriciousness. Sometimes the most indisputable orders of the autocrat remain unfulfilled. Sometimes, however, a phrase accidentally escaped from him has enormous consequences, and, moreover, the most disastrous.
Example: Catherine, having exiled to Siberia several Frenchmen captured in Poland, strongly recommended that they be treated with care (because she wanted to be known as merciful in the eyes of society). She repeated her order several times, she became angry, threatened the disobedient. But her orders were not carried out.
The reverse example: Nicholas once told the peasants from the banks of the Volga that in the future all peasants should receive freedom. These words were like a spark; a riot immediately broke out, the peasants began to kill the landowners; to suppress the rebellion, it was necessary to bring in troops and shed a sea of blood.
This is how this fickle power lives. Sometimes the emperor is listened too attentively and hastened to obey him against his will; sometimes his opinion is not taken into account at all. For example, in front of his eyes, under his very nose, they plunder and sell in pieces all the equipment of a battleship, right down to copper cannons. He sees it, knows about it, threatens, sometimes punishes. But he cannot change the course of events. Every day the emperor becomes convinced that his enormous power is nothing more than an illusion, that his power is nothing but impotence; life reminds him of this mercilessly and almost mockingly. Every day he becomes more and more indignant, gets angry, fusses, makes new attempts - and again fails ... A humiliating contrast! The earthly god is being deceived, robbed, ridiculed and insulted! There is something to go crazy!
Let's summarize. Russia is a kingdom of lies. The lie is in the community, which should be called an imaginary community. Lies - in the landowner, the priest and the king. A crescendo of deceptions, imaginaries, illusions!
What is the Russian people? A community of people or an unorganized natural element? Perhaps it is sand, flying dust, similar to the one that, having shot up into the air, hovers over Russian land for three months a year? Or is it still water, similar to that which in all other months turns this bleak region into a vast dirty swamp or an icy plain?
No. Sand is much more reliable than the Russian people, and water is far from being so deceptive.
Herzen A.I. Sobr. cit.: V 30 t. M., 1956. V. 7. S. 307 (authorized translation by Herzen, first published! in London in 1858).
In 1847, the first two volumes of the Prussian economist August von Haxthausen's (1792-1866) Study of the Internal Relations of the People's Life and Especially the Rural Institutions of Russia (Russian translation, 1869) were published in Hannover (simultaneously in German and French) , which Michelet discusses in detail below. It was precisely Haxthausen's book, along with the above-mentioned essay by Herzen "On the Development of Revolutionary Ideas in Russia", that was Michelet's main source of information about the Russian peasant community.
In the reference to the "feminine instinct" one can hear a hint of the homosexual inclinations of the Marquis Astolphe de Custine, who visited Russia in the summer of 1839; As for Custine's book "Russia in 1839" (1843), Michelet, who speaks of it contemptuously and condescendingly, nevertheless borrowed many details from it, from trifles to the general characterization of the country as an empire of lies (Custine's "empire of facades" ), and significantly coarsened Kyustin's observations and tightened the estimates.
The Polish poet, former Russian citizen Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855), after the Polish uprising of 1830-1831, who lived in France as a political emigrant, in 1840 began to read a course of lectures on Slavic literatures at the Slavic department specially opened for him at the College de France ; in May 1844, at the direction of the French government, dissatisfied with the preaching of Slavic messianism in Mickiewicz's lectures, the course was suspended.
Based on Haxthausen, Michelet here describes - in a greatly simplified form - the Russian system of land use, in which land was assigned to an allotment not by a household, but by a community, and then an allotment was allocated to each household in accordance with the number of revision souls, or according to "taxes".
This quotation from the tragedy "Othello" (d. 5, yavl. 2) was the first to be applied to the Russians by Custine ("Russia in 1839", letter 29), from whom Michelet borrows it.
Another borrowing from Custin (letter 32), based in addition on an incorrect etymological interpretation; Custine mistakenly raised the word "Sarmatians" or "Sauromatians" to the Greek "savro" - a lizard.
In this passage, information about the Russian system of ranks was bizarrely reflected, which Michelet could draw, in particular, from Custine's book; of course, the rank of general was carried not by clergy, but by secular administrators of the church - for example, the chief prosecutor of the Synod, Count N. A. Protasov, who rose to the rank of lieutenant general.
We are talking about the pamphlet of Count Ya. N. Tolstoy “A Look at Russian Legislation”, which was published in French in Paris in early 1840 and contrasted the Russian state system (a guarantee of order and tranquility) with European parliamentarism, a source of chaos and instability. Michelet quotes Tolstoy's pamphlet on Custine's book (letter 21st). In the Code of Laws of 1832, the Russian emperor was called "the head of the Church" only in a footnote to the article calling him the defender of the dominant faith, so this article did not have the force of a direct law; nevertheless, Western publicists were inclined to accuse the Russian emperors of usurping spiritual power.
Konstantin Leontiev resorted to a similar image 30 years later, writing about the need to "freeze Russia so that it does not rot."
- Lyceum Charlemagne [d] ( )
Biography
Born into a poor family, which he himself called "peasant". His father moved to Paris and existed at the expense of income from the printing house he founded. While the press enjoyed relative freedom under the First Republic, the printing business flourished, but with the establishment of the Empire, the Michelet family had to experience grief and want; her plight reached the point that her grandfather, father, mother and 12-year-old Jules themselves had to do the printing work.
It is clear that under such conditions, the training of the young Michelet was fraught with difficulties; he had to take reading lessons early in the morning from an old bookseller, a former school teacher, an ardent revolutionary: from him Michelet inherited his admiration for the revolution. Faith in God and in immortality (he was not baptized as a child) was evoked in him by the book “On the Imitation of Christ”. With the last funds, the parents placed Michelet in the collegium of Charlemagne. Ashamed of his poverty, not accustomed to the company of Jules, learning was difficult, but rare diligence helped him overcome the prejudice with which his teachers first treated him; they recognized in him a talent, especially a literary one.
The December coup deprived Michelet of the chair at the College de France, and for refusing the oath, he lost his place in the archive. He felt depressed and exhausted, but did not lose heart thanks to the support of his second wife (Adèle Malairet), who had a great influence on his life and the further direction of his studies. Continuing to work on his book on the great revolution, M. in collaboration with his wife gave a series of books on nature, rare in their charming originality.
Michelet had previously loved nature, but now he felt a close connection between man and nature; he saw in it the germ of moral freedom, a totality of thoughts and feelings similar to ours. His "L'oiseau" (1856), "L'insecte" (1857), "La mer" (1861) and "La montagne" (1868) both in natural phenomena and in the life of animals carry the same passionate sympathy for everything suffering, defenseless, which we see in his historical writings.
In 1858 Michelet published L'amour, in 1859 La Femme; his enthusiastic words about love and marriage, combined with great frankness in the treatment of these issues, provoked the derision of critics, but, nevertheless, both books achieved rare popularity. "L'amour" forms the preface to "Nos fils" (1869), where Michelet expounded in detail his view of education, summarized by him in the words: family, fatherland, nature. The sermon of the same ideas is devoted to the previously published "La bible de l'humanité" (1864) - a brief outline of moral teachings, starting from antiquity. Along with these Op. M. gave several small works on history: "Les femmes de la Révolution" (1854), "Les soldats de la Révolution", "Légendes démocratiques du Nord", a stunning historical and pathological study "La sorcière" (1862). In 1867 he completed his Histoire de France, bringing it to the threshold of the 1789 revolution.
Thanks to his studies in the natural sciences and psychology, Michelet felt rejuvenated; it seemed to him that in France, too, a revival of the former energy was beginning. The Franco-Prussian war brought him a terrible disappointment. When the specter of this war began to threaten, Michelet almost alone dared to protest publicly against the infatuation with vainglorious and crude chauvinism; the common sense and clairvoyance of the historian did not allow him to doubt the outcome of the war. His voice, however, remained unnoticed. Poor health prevented him from enduring the siege of Paris; he retired to Italy, where the news of the surrender of Paris caused him the first fit of apoplexy. In the brochure "La France devant l'Europe" (Florence, 1871), he expresses his belief in the immortality of the people, who remained in his eyes the representative of the ideas of progress, justice and freedom.
Having barely recovered, the historian set to work on a new enormous work, Histoire du XIX siècle, published 3.5 volumes in three years, but brought his presentation only to the Battle of Waterloo. The triumph of reaction in 1873 took away from him the hope of a speedy revival of the fatherland. His strength weakened more and more, and on February 9, 1874, he died in Hyères (Var department); his funeral gave rise to a republican demonstration.
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Michelet, according to Taine, is not a historian, but one of the greatest poets of France, his story is "the lyrical epic of France." The feeling of compassion, pity, awakened in M. in childhood, when he was bitterly aware of his loneliness and poverty, remained in him in all phases of life and immediately broke out as soon as his imagination transferred him to an era alien to him. He suffered with the victim, whoever she was, and hated the persecutor. The brightest pages of French historiography are those on which M. depicted the torment and suffering of people who suffered from belief in witchcraft and from the cruel persecution of a terrible mental epidemic. His responsiveness to other people's suffering was too great for him to remain an impartial spectator of contemporary events. The annoyances of the day gripped his soul so strongly that he brought them into the study of the past; the present, especially in the works written from the mid-1940s, began to paint the past in its own color and enslave it to its needs and ideals. This extraordinary impressionability, these feelings of pity and love are the element that binds together his various works on history, natural science and psychology.
He expressed his thoughts about the people in the books "Le peuple" (1848) and "Le Banquet" (1854). Michelet is here a resolute opponent of socialism. The latter wants the destruction of private property, and the vital and moral ideal of a real people, that is, the peasantry, was determined, in the eyes of Michelet, precisely by the possession of private property, their piece of land, their field; he even demanded, in the interests of this private property, the destruction of the remnants of public property that had survived the revolution. The element of violence among the supporters of communism was also unsympathetic to him; he did not understand brotherhood without freedom, his humane nature indignantly rejected all terrorist measures to realize the ideal of love. But, rejecting socialist and communist dreams, Michelet felt sadly the depth of social discord (divorce social).
The only way to eliminate him was to bring the upper strata closer to the people - a closer relationship based on love, on the renunciation of egoism. At the same time, wishing to attract sympathy for the people, he strongly idealized them; he extolled the instinct of the people and gave it precedence over the bookish rationality of the educated classes, attributed to the people the ability for heroism and self-sacrifice, in contrast to the cold egoism of the wealthy classes. Such views fully justify the nickname "populist" given by one of our historians to Michelet. Michelet found the key to solving the social problem in the mental phenomenon that is genius: just as genius is harmonious and fruitful, when both elements contained in it - a man of instinct and a man of reflection - contribute to each other, so also creativity, manifested in the history of the people, it is fruitful when the lower and upper layers of it act in mutual understanding and harmony. First of all, preached M., it is necessary to heal the soul of people; the means for this should be the popular school, which would set itself the goal of arousing social love. In this general school, children of all classes, of all conditions, should stay for a year or two; it should serve to bring the classes together just as much as the present school contributes to the separation of them.
In the public school, according to Michelet's plan, the child had, first of all, to know his fatherland in order to learn to see in it a living deity (un Dieu vivant), in which he could believe; this faith would then support in him the consciousness of unity with the people, and at the same time, in the school itself, the fatherland would appear to him in reality in the form of a children's community, preceding the civil community. With the help of civic love learned from childhood, Michelet considered it possible to achieve an ideal state, based, however, not on equality, but on inequality, built from different people, but brought into harmony through love, more and more equalized by it. The establishment of an alliance between the various classes Michelet expects from the students of higher schools: they must be mediators, natural peacemakers of the civil community. This Michelet's dream, as indicated
MICHELE JULES - French is-to-ric, li-te-ra-tor, member of the Aka-de-mia of moral and political sciences (1838).
From the family of ra-zo-riv-she-go-sya vla-del-tsa ti-po-gra-fi. From the age of 12, mo-gal ro-di-te-lyam, ra-bo-taya under-mas-ter-eat. He received an ob-ra-zo-va-nie in the Parisian lyceum Kar-la Ve-li-ko-go (1808-1819), where he ob-ra-til on himself pay attention to the blah-go-yes-rya you-give-shim-xia-s-prop-no-ty.
Since 1821, pre-po-da-va-tel collegue Sainte-Barbe, since 1827 - the Highest Nor-mal-noy school in Paris. Used a strong influence of V. Ku-ze-na, I. G. Ger-de-ra, J. Vi-ko. You-full-n-ny M. re-work of J. Vi-ko “Os-no-va-niya new-science” [published under the title “Os-no-you fi-lo -so-fi is-to-rii "(Prin-ci-pes de la philosophie de l'histoire"), 1827] "opened" for Europe the creation-che-st-in- of the Italian cape-li-te-la and had a great influence on the next-blowing-co-le-niya fi-lo-so-fov, so-cio-lo-gov, is-to-ri-kov.
Since 1838, professor at the College de France and Sor-bon-ny. Lectures by J. Michelet -was shi-ro-coy in-pu-lyar-no-stu with students.
J. Michelet himself, in a cha-lu, was a adherent of the constitutional monarchy, but later he became a convinced re-public-can- cement. For the race-pro-country-non-de-mo-cratic ideas among students-den-tov, they were subjected to go-no-no-pits by the Minister of National Education the zo-va-nia of F. Gui-zo and the Catholic Church, to-biv-shih-sya for-banning his lecture courses. Pri-vet-st-in-shaft Re-in-lu-tion of 1848 in France in de-zh-de, that she will -nyu on the practice of his political ideals.
In connection with the further development of the events in France, having completed the state transfer (December 1851 ) and pa-de-ni-em Second re-pub-li-ki, re-lived a big time-ocha-ro-va-nie. For refusing to swear Louis Na-po-le-o-nu Bo-na-par-tu (see Na-po-le-he III) was deprived of the department and must news of the head of the historical section of the National Ar-khi-va, for some reason since the beginning of the 1830s.
In the years of the Second im-pe-rii, he-ho-dil-sya in the op-po-zi-tion of the pra-vya-sche-mu re-zhi-mu. The Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871 and the pas-de-nie of Paris-Ms. J. Michelet took it as a personal tragedy, plexic blow, from someone-ro-go not op-ra-vil-sya.
For the historical views of J. Michelet, ec-lectism was ha-rak-ter-ren, most clearly manifested in his works “Essay on howling history” (“Précis de l'histoire moderne”, 1828) and “Introduction to the world history” (“Introduction а̀ l'histoire uni-ver- selle", 1831).
Ut-ver-waited that man-lo-ve-che-st-vo on the way to svo-bo-de passed three main stages-pa - hri-sti-an-st-vo, re-for -ma-tion and re-in-lu-tion. J. Michelet considered the people to be a true hero of the historical process, someone did not de-lil into classes and so-chi-al- nye groups. Great people, in the way of J. Michelet, are no more than “symbols”, conducting a different time of ideas and attitudes.
The main works of J. Michelet 17-volume "Histoire de France" ("Histoire de France", 1833-1867), until 1789, and the 7th volume -naya “Histoire de la révolution française”, 1847-1853) on-pi-sa-ny with attraction -eat shi-ro-tea-she-go circle-ha first-is-toch-no-kov (including not saved-niv-shih-sya until the present time -me-no, among them - pro-to-ko-ly of the Parisian sections, burnt down in 1871), as well as given lin-gwis-ti-ki , li-te-ra-tu-ro-ve-de-nya, is-kus-st-vo-ve-de-nya, geo-graphics, psi-ho-lo-gyi, nu-miz-ma -ty-ki.
J. Michelet was the first among is-to-ri-kov of the French revolution of the 18th century to turn to archiv-ny do-ku-men-there. According to J. Michelet, dvi-ga-te-lem re-vo-lu-tion would not be ma-te-ri-al-nye in-te-re-sy, but the ideas of brother-st-va , freedom and right. He considered her highest achievement to be the pro-evocation of the res-pub-li-ki in France. Historical assessments by J. Michelet in a significant degree of subject-ek-tiv-na, os-no-va-na on in-tui-tion, pi-sa-tel-sky in -about-ra-same-nii, sim-pa-tii or an-ti-pa-tii to the image-bra-zhae-my people and yav-le-ni-yam. At the same time, J. Michelet’s co-chi-non-nia from-li-cha-yut-x-artistic co-lo-ri-tom, attracting chi-ta-te-lei .
In is-to-rio-graphics by J. Michelet, os-ta-et-sya is one of the brightest pre-hundred-vi-te-lei of ro-man-tic on-right-le- niya. The author of the mo-ra-listic treatises “About love” (“L'amour”, 1858), “Women-schi-na” (“La femme”, 1859), Poland -zo-vav-shih-sya in a popular way throughout Europe, including in Russia; lyrical essays “Bird” (“L'oiseau”, 1856), “King-st-in-it-to-my” (“L'insecte”, 1859), pro-ni -knu-tyh mo-ty-vom pan-the-is-tic unity of man-lo-ve-ka with nature, books on prob-le-moms of resurrection " Na-shi sy-no-vya” (“Nos fils”, 1869).
Compositions:
Ob-vision of new-vei-she is-to-rii. St. Petersburg, 1838;
Brief history of France to the French re-in-lu-tion. St. Petersburg, 1838;
History of the XIX century. SPb., 1883-1884. T. 1-3;
Œuvres completes. P., 1893-1903. T. 1-47;
Joan of Arc. P., 1920; Witch. Woman. M., 2007.
All of Russia from top to bottom is saturated with slavery, only the German management elite escaped this, but they hate the country. Russians by nature are southern, nimble people who climbed into the swamps of the North against their will, and therefore, give them freedom, they will immediately run away from the landowner and the tsar. Alienation from work has made Russians lazy and fatalists. This was the sight of Russia and Russians in the middle of the 19th century by the French historian Michelet.
The French historian Jules Michelet (1798-1874) created a series of articles on Russia in the early 1850s. He was best known in Russian studies for his book Democratic Legends of the North (1854). We publish excerpts from it, which describe the principles of the structure of power in Russia.
“Russian life is communism. This is the only form, which knows almost no exceptions, which Russian society takes. The community, or commune, existing under the rule of the landowner, distributes the land among its members, sometimes for ten years, sometimes for six, sometimes for four or three, and in other places for only a year.
(Jules Michelet)
A family in which someone has died by the time of the division receives less land; the family where someone was born is more. The peasants are so much interested in their family not being reduced that if the old man, the head of the family, dies, the children take someone else's old man in his place.
The strength of Russia is this agrarian law inherent in it - the constant redistribution of land among all who live on it. Russian women, thanks to this state of affairs, give birth to children one after another without stopping. This is truly the most effective way to encourage fertility: every child, as soon as he is born, receives an allotment from the community - a kind of reward for birth.
Monstrous vitality, monstrous fertility, which would threaten the whole world with terrible dangers, if it were not balanced by another force - death, which is served by two efficient assistants: a terrible climate and an even more terrible Russian government.
Communal communism itself, which promotes childbearing, also bears in itself a completely opposite principle: it leads to death, to unproductiveness, to idleness. A man who is not responsible for anything and relies on the community for everything, lives as if in a drowsiness, indulging in childish carelessness; with a light plow he lightly scratches the barren soil, carelessly singing a sweet-sounding but monotonous song; the land will bring a meager harvest - it's not scary: he will receive one more allotment for use; because next to him is his wife, who will soon give birth to his next child.
A very unexpected consequence follows from this: in Russia communal communism strengthens the family. A woman is dearly loved here; her life is easy. First of all, the prosperity of the family depends on it; her fertile womb for a man is a source of wealth. The birth of a child is eagerly awaited. His birth is greeted with songs: it promises wealth. True, most often the child dies in infancy; however, a fertile mother will not be slow to give birth to the next child.
Here is a completely natural life, in the lowest, deeply material sense of the word, which belittles a person and drags him to the bottom. Little work, no foresight, no concern for the future. Woman and community - these are the two forces that help a man live. The more fruitful the woman, the more generous the community. Physical love and vodka, the incessant birth of children who immediately die, after which the parents immediately conceive the next - this is the life of a serf.
The property of the peasants is disgusting. Those who have been made owners very quickly return to their former communal existence. They are afraid of failure, work, responsibility. The owner may go broke; a communist cannot go bankrupt - he has nothing to lose, since he did not possess anything. One of the peasants, to whom they wanted to give land as property, answered: “What if I drink my land?”
In truth, there is something strange in the fact that the same word "communism" denotes the most opposite things: the sluggish, drowsy communism of the Russian communities and the heroic communism of those who defend Europe from the barbarians and stand in the vanguard of the fighters for freedom: Serbs and the Montenegrins, who live in close proximity to the vast Turkish empire, now and then enter into an unequal battle with it; the Turks can capture them every day, tie them to the tails of their horses and take them to a foreign land - however, the Slavs find the strength to resist these terrible circumstances; they derive their strength from a kind of communism. Such communism does not relax either the hands or the mind.
This is how shellfish live at the bottom of the sea; so live many wild tribes on distant islands; the carefree Russian peasant lives in exactly the same way. He sleeps in the bosom of the community, like a child in the womb. The community consoles him in the vicissitudes of a slave life, and, sad as such consolation is, it encourages apathy and prolongs it forever.
The only ray of light that illuminates the gloomy existence of a Russian serf, unable to change anything in his fate, the only source of his happiness is his family, wife and children. However, even here we find the squalor most repulsive. A child is born, he is loved, but he is hardly taken care of. He dies, and his place is taken by another, who is just as much loved, but who, having lost him, is just as little regretted. This is how the river flows. The man doesn't care about that. Does the woman or child belong to him?
The disgusting serf existence gives birth to that deplorable communism. He who is not a master even of himself, is not a master of either his wife or his daughter - is he powerful over his offspring? In reality, the family does not exist in Russia.
Everything in Russia is an illusion and a deceit.
Russian communism is not a social institution at all, it is a natural condition of existence, explained by the peculiarities of race and climate, man and nature.
Russians cannot be attributed to the number of northern people. They have neither northern furious power, nor northern unshakable seriousness. Russians are southern people; this is understood by anyone who is familiar with their briskness and agility, their endless mobility. Only the invasion of the Tatar hordes forced them to leave the south and settle in the middle of that huge swamp, which is called Northern Russia. This dark part of Russia is very densely populated. On the contrary, the rich and fertile southern part remains deserted.
For eight months of the year the country is drowned in mud, making any movement impossible; the rest of the time the land is covered with snow and ice, so that travel is possible, but - if not in a sleigh - difficult and dangerous. The dull monotony of such a climate, the involuntary loneliness resulting from the impossibility of moving from one place - all this gives the Russian man an extraordinary need for movement. If the iron hand of power had not chained the Russians to the ground, all of them, both nobles and peasants, would have fled wherever their eyes looked; they would start walking, driving, traveling. All Russians only think about it. They plow the land and serve in the army against their will; they were born to wander, to be pedlars, junk dealers, itinerant carpenters, and most importantly, coachmen; this is the craft that they master brilliantly.
Unable to obey the voice of this instinct that calls him into the distance, the farmer finds solace in the bustling movements, limited to the boundaries of his native village. The constant redistribution of land, the transfer of plots from one hand to another, make it possible for the entire community to make a kind of journey on the spot. Thanks to these frequent exchanges, the dull, immovable earth begins to appear diverse, set in motion.
It applies exactly to the Russians: “For them there is neither past nor future; they only know the real. Looking at the Russians, you clearly understand that this tribe has not yet developed to the end. Russians are not quite people yet. They lack the main property of a person - moral instinct, the ability to distinguish good from evil. The world stands on this instinct and this skill. A person, deprived of them, swims at the will of the waves and is in the grip of moral chaos, which is still waiting for the appearance of the Creator.
We do not deny that Russians have many excellent qualities. They are meek and compliant, they make true friends, tender parents, they are philanthropic and merciful. The only trouble is that they are completely devoid of straightforwardness and moral principles. They lie without malice, they steal without malice, they lie and steal everywhere and all the time.
Strange affair! they have a highly developed capacity for admiration, and this gives them a receptivity to everything poetic, great, perhaps even sublime. However, truth and justice for them - an empty phrase. Talk to them about these topics, they will listen with a smile, but they will not answer a word and will not understand what you want from them.
Justice is not just a guarantee of the existence of any society, it is its reality, its foundation and essence. A society that does not know justice is an imaginary society, existing in words and not in deeds, false and empty.
In Russia, everyone, young and old, deceives and lies: this country is a phantasmagoria, a mirage, an empire of illusions.
Let's start from the very bottom, with that element of Russian life that seems to be the most durable, the most original and the most popular - the family.
In Russia, a family is not a family. Does the wife here belong to her husband? No, first of all it belongs to the landowner. She gives birth to a child - who knows from whom?
In Russia, the community is not a community either. At first glance, it may seem that this is a small patriarchal republic in which freedom reigns. But take a closer look, and you will understand that before you is just miserable slaves who are only free to share the hardships of slave labor among themselves. Should the landowner sell these peasants or buy new ones, the end of the republic will come. Neither the community as a whole nor its individual members know what fate will befall them tomorrow.
Let us rise higher, consider the existence of landlords. Here the contrast between the ideal and the real becomes even more striking, the lie even more noticeable. Apparently, the landowner in Russia is a father to his peasants: together with the headman, the village elder, he sorts out in a fatherly way who is right and who is wrong. In fact, this father is a cruel lord, a king, who rules his village more arbitrarily than the emperor from St. Petersburg rules the whole country. He is free to beat the peasant, is free to take his daughter away from him or give him himself as a soldier, exile him to the Siberian mines, sell them to the owners of new factories - working for them is no different from hard labor, and the peasants, separated from their families, die there one by one.
Life is even harder for free peasants, so no one aspires to freedom. A Russian friend of mine tried in vain to convince his serfs of the advantages of freedom. They prefer to remain slaves and rely on chance: it's like a lottery; it happens that the master turns out to be kind. However, the so-called free peasants, who belong to the state, cannot count on such an opportunity. The government is worse than any master.
This government consists of the most deceitful people that can be found in the empire of lies. It calls itself Russian, but essentially remains German; out of every six officials, five are Germans, natives of Courland and Livonia, insolent and pedantic, who make up a striking contrast with Russian people, who do not know Russian life at all, are alien to Russian customs and the Russian spirit, do everything contrary to common sense, always ready to outrage the meek and frivolous Russian people, to pervert its original laudable properties.
It is impossible without disgust to think that in this country of officials and the Church is only called the Church, in fact it is part of the state machine. The people receive neither spiritual edification nor consolation from the priests. Religious preaching is strictly prohibited. Those who tried to preach were exiled to Siberia. The priest is none other than an official, which means he has military ranks. The Metropolitan of Moscow rose to the rank of General-in-Chief, the Metropolitan of Kazan - to Lieutenant-General.
As for the emperor, he is the most deceitful of all the deceitful Russians, the supreme liar who reigns over all other liars.
Here it will suffice to show how false this power is, false even in what, it would seem, belongs to the number of its indisputable properties, namely, in its strength, in its power; it will suffice to show that this power, so inflexible, so severe, and apparently so strong, is in fact very weak.
Two completely natural circumstances have given rise to the reign of a completely unnatural, true monster. The painful uncertainty about the future, to which the raids of the Tatar cavalry doomed the Russians, forced them to seek peace and constancy under the rule of a single ruler. However, the mobility inherent in the Russian nation from time immemorial, its endless changeability made peace unattainable. Flowing like water, this nation could be stopped in its movement only by the means that nature uses to keep the water flow in place - ice.
With the help of a similar violent operation, the Russian state was created. This is its ideal, this is how it wants to be - a source of severe peace, a powerful immobility achieved at the expense of the best manifestations of life.
However, he fails to do so. If we continue the comparison, then this state will have to be likened to thin ice, melting under itself not completely frozen water. The strength of this ice is very doubtful, its hardness cannot be relied upon.
In the Russian soul, even if it is the soul of a slave, there is nothing on which a firm order could be based. The Russian soul is a more natural element than a human one. Getting it to freeze is almost impossible; she is fluid, evasive. And who can deal with it? officials? - but these officials are no more moral than the people they intend to govern. They have no more consistency, seriousness, fidelity, a sense of honor, and without all this, government actions cannot succeed. Officials, like all other inhabitants of the empire, are frivolous, rogue, greedy. Where all subjects are thieves, judges are easy to buy. Where the nobleman and the serf are corrupt, the official is no less corrupt. The emperor knows perfectly well that they forget about him for the sake of profits, that he is robbed, that the most faithful of his courtiers will sell him for a hundred rubles.
The emperor is endowed with enormous, intimidating power, but his orders can only be carried out by the hands of subordinates; what happens to absolute power? It is traded at every rung of the official ladder, so the result of any undertaking is completely unpredictable.
Let's summarize. Russia is a kingdom of lies. The lie is in the community, which should be called an imaginary community. Lies - in the landowner, the priest and the king.
What is the Russian people? A community of people or an unorganized natural element? Perhaps it is sand, flying dust, similar to the one that, having shot up into the air, hovers over Russian land for three months a year? Or is it still water, similar to that which in all other months turns this bleak land into a vast dirty swamp or an icy plain?
No. Sand is much more reliable than the Russian people.”
Even in the Interpreter's Blog there are notes of foreigners about Russia.
