The real course of the development of the vast territories of the outskirts by the peasantry undoubtedly contributed to the popularity of stories about the extraordinary abundance of new lands and favorable social conditions on them.
The socio-utopian views of the peasants extended far beyond the borders of their community. They were expressed in the existence of various rumors about the promised lands; the formation of legends based on these rumors and the appearance of written texts; in the practice of resettlement in search of these lands, and even in the creation of peasant communities, whose life was an attempt to realize the peasant socio-utopian ideal. The existence of such communities, in turn, fueled stories and legends about lands and villages with ideal social arrangements, exceptional natural wealth, and economic prosperity.
The real course of the development of the vast territories of the outskirts by the peasantry undoubtedly contributed to the popularity of stories about the extraordinary abundance of new lands and favorable social conditions on them. Characteristic in this regard is what happened to modern ideas about the so-called Belovodye. At first it was considered legendary, and in the course of further research by historians, it turned into quite real peasant settlements of the 18th century in the valleys of the Bukhtarma, Uimon and other rivers in Altai, the history of which can be fully traced through written sources. But the existence of the real Belovodye did not exclude the independent later development of the legend according to the laws of the folklore genre. Bricklayers (as the local peasants called the fugitives who settled in the mountains, since Altai, like many other mountains, was popularly called “Stone”) of Bukhtarma and Uimon is at the same time a prototype folk legend about promised land and an actual attempt to realize the peasant socio-utopian ideal.
For about half a century - from the 40s to the early 90s of the 18th century, in the most impregnable mountain valleys of Altai, there were settlements of fugitives, who were ruled outside state power. In September 1791, Catherine II issued a decree, announced to the “masons” in July 1792, according to which they were accepted into Russian citizenship, having forgiven their “guilts”. For several decades, self-government operated in these communities, and peasant ideas about social justice were implemented. The population of the free communities of Bukhtarma and Uimon was formed from peasants (mostly splitters) and fugitive factory workers (also, as a rule, recent peasants). They were engaged in arable farming, crafts and secretly maintained relations, including economic ones, with the peasantry of the adjacent territories. S. I. Gulyaev, who collected information about Belovodye not only from “oral stories of some masons”, but also from documents from the archives of the Zmeinogorsk mining office and the Ust-Kamenogorsk commandant’s office, wrote about them: “Bound by the same participation, one way of life, alienated from society, the masons formed a kind of brotherhood, despite their different beliefs. They retained many good qualities of the Russian people: they were reliable comrades, made mutual benefits to each other, and especially helped all the poor with supplies, seeds for sowing, agricultural implements, clothing and other things.
To solve fundamentally important issues, a gathering of all free villages was going to be held. The decisive word remained with the "old men". “Another year ago,” testified the artisan Fyodor Sizikov, who was interrogated by the authorities in 1790, after eight years of living among the “masons”, “the fugitive people living in those villages at the meeting intended to choose from themselves ... one person who would, quietly having somehow made his way to Barnaul, he appeared to the head of the factories for a request for their forgiveness for the crimes and that they should not be taken out of those places, putting them in the proper payment of taxes. But in the end, the old people said, although they would forgive us, they would take us to our former places and assign us to positions, and therefore remained as before.
Meetings of individual villages or groups of villages were convened as needed. So, in particular, the court was carried out. “If someone is convicted of crimes, then from several villages the residents summoned by the plaintiff will gather in the village to his house, and, having sorted it out in proportion to the crime, they will impose a punishment” (from the protocol of interrogation of F. Sizikov). The highest punishment was forced expulsion from the community.
T. S. Mamsik, who studied the social life of the Bukhtarma villages in the 18th century according to the testimony of their inhabitants preserved in the archive, notes that “hiring among the“ masons ”was not of an entrepreneurial nature.” The new fugitives who arrived "into the stone" felt the support of the old-timers: they were accepted into someone's hut, where one of the newly arrived often lived "in comrades". The next summer, the stranger helped the owner of the house to sow bread and received seeds from him for self-sowing. On the fourth summer, the newly settled became an independent owner and, in turn, hired one of the new fugitives, supplying him with seeds, etc. There were “partnerships” in use - associations “on shares of two or more able-bodied people for agricultural or fishing activities. Sometimes the "comrades" jointly built a new hut. The community of "masons", which arose as a result of voluntary resettlements, included family-related communities, partnerships for running the economy or its individual branches, religious associations. The existence of this community was perceived by the peasantry itself as the realization of some social and religious and moral ideals.It was only a certain stage of socio-economic development territorial community in the conditions of the development of the outskirts, in temporary isolation from the feudal state, but the peasantry absolutized it as ideal. Despite its small scale, this phenomenon left a noticeable mark in public consciousness peasants and in the subsequent period formed the basis for the movement of a number of groups of settlers in search of the legendary country "Belovodye" - a peasant utopia (Chistov, 1967, 239-277; Pokrovsky, 1974, 323-337; Mamsik, 1975; Mamsik, 1978, 85-115 ; Mamsik, 1982).
A clearly expressed tendency to realize the peasant socio-utopian ideal on the basis of Christian ideology in its Old Believer version can be traced in the history of the Vygoretsky (Vygoleksinsky) community of living, which arose in late XVII century in the Olonets province. The Vyga organization, along with the usual monastic dispensation, adopted the traditions of the community of the state village and the "worldly" peasant monasteries. In the 18th century, their charters and conciliar resolutions on statutory issues were created - more than 60 documents in total. They attempt to combine democracy with the tasks of the division of labor in an economic-religious community.
In the personal property of the members of the hostel there was only a dress; as an exception, other things were left for some, but they were inherited by the community. The extensive economy of the Vygoretsky community and the sketes that gravitated towards it was based on the cooperative labor of its members. All business and administration was elective. The most important matters were subject to conciliar discussion. Initially, the ideology of the Old Believer peasant community on Vyga was based on eschatological motives (that is, the expectation of the imminent end of the world), but in the future these motives weaken, there is a departure from asceticism in everyday life, from monastic forms of cohabitation. Vygoleksinsky world, being included by the state in the system of taxation, is gradually entering the usual track of socio-economic relations of the entire region.
A similar path, but with certain differences, is followed by the peasantry in old believer sketes of two types: sketes-settlements, where families lived, and sketes on a communal charter with separate stay of men and women. The leaders and ideologists of the movement made the maximum demands on the ordinary Old Believer peasant (they are set out, in particular, in the “Announcement on the Deanery of the Desert”, 1737): a combination of hard agricultural labor with an ascetic lifestyle. The most enduring was that "part of the statutes, which did not infringe on the interests of the peasant family.
As a reaction to the secularization of the sketes, a new direction is born - a radical Philippian consent, reviving for some time the socio-utopian and religious ideals of the early Vyg. From the polemical messages exchanged between different sects of the Old Believers in the 18th century, it is clear that the principles of the community of estates and artel labor were not in doubt on either side.
Attempts to proclaim and partially implement social ideals in the settlements of Old Believer peasants of various persuasions also took place in other regions of the country - in Yaroslavl, Pskov, Kostroma, Saratov and other provinces. Information about these phenomena was widely dispersed among the peasant non-Old Believers. Modern research confirms the idea of the well-known historian of the 19th century A.P. Shchapov about the manifestation in the movement of schismatics of many features characteristic of traditional peasant consciousness and life in general. A certain popularity of the social-utopian ideal of the Old Believers, its sounding in peasant legends and programs of peasant movements, was based on this similarity.
At the initial stages of their existence, some communities of sectarians were also associated with the socio-ethical ideals of the peasantry: Dukhobors, Molokans, Khlysts. However, false mysticism, fanaticism, alienation from the church and the rest of the masses of Orthodox peasants, as a rule, nullified the positive aspects in their ideology. (Abramov, 366-378; Lyubomirov; Kuandykov - 1983; Kuandykov - 1984; Melnikov, 210, 240-241; Klibanov, 180, 199-201; 212; 262-284; Pokrovsky - 1973, 393-406; Ryndzyunsky; Koretsky ; Shchapov, 77, 119, 120).
An organic part of the socio-utopian ideas of the peasantry was the ideal of such a just monarch, who can bring the order on earth in line with divine truth. If in social organization In their everyday life, in the lower, so to speak, instances, the peasants clearly preferred democratic forms - this is evidenced, as we have seen, by the widespread distribution of the community and the flexible diversity of its types, then in relation to the highest instance of governing the entire state, they remained monarchists. Just as the ideals of justice in the distribution of property and labor duties found expression in the existence of certain peasant communities that tried to remain outside the states for a limited time, so the ideas of good kings gave rise to imposture in real life.
This phenomenon was possible due to the widespread among the peasants of ideas related to the expectation of the arrival or return to power of the sovereign, unfairly, in their opinion, pushed aside in one way or another from the throne, possessing the ideal qualities of a ruler and intending to reckon with the interests of the people. The impostors, who appeared not only during the peasant wars, but also in private manifestations of social protest (in the 30-50s of the 18th century, for example, there were about a dozen and a half), met the gullible attitude of part of the peasantry.
In the 30-50s of the 18th century, the names of Peter II and Ivan Antonovich served among the peasants as a kind of symbols of a good sovereign. They are replaced by the image Peter III, who overshadowed his predecessors and found its highest expression in the peasant war of E. I. Pugacheva. The peasantry could not know anything about the identity of the real Peter III, who ruled for only six months. At the same time, there was a certain awareness of the laws, combined with their own, peasant interpretation of them. The Manifesto of February 18, 1762 on the freedom of the nobility was interpreted as the first part of the legislative act, which was to be followed by the liberation of the peasants from the landowners. They also knew the decree on allowing the Old Believers who fled to Poland or other foreign lands to return to Russia and settle in the places allocated to them. At the same time, the authorities were instructed not to obstruct them "in the administration of the law according to their custom and old printed books." Finally, the destruction of the Secret Chancellery could not but find sympathy among the peasantry. All this, as well as the unclear circumstances of the death of Peter III, served as the basis for the formation of his positive image in the views of the peasants (Sivkov, 88-135; Chistov - 1967, 91-236; Kurmacheva, 114, 193; Peasantry of Siberia, 444-452).
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Culture and social ideal
I would like to remind you that we are developing a philosophical understanding of culture. Any activity that resists the elements is cultural. After all, even culture can be destroyed in a barbaric way, but it can also be done culturally - systematically, in an organized manner, prudently. The Nazi Wehrmacht planned to destroy Slavic culture, but not culture in general. There was even an expression "cultural policy in the conquered eastern territories", which was to be carried out by Himmler's department.
Culture is not "good" or "bad". It cultivates some qualities in a person, but culture itself depends on a person: if he is “good”, then culture will be the same. The life of a culture is provided by a hierarchy of values (we talked about them in topic 3). But it depends on us whether we prefer this hierarchy or choose some other. All this is connected with the ideals that dominate society and which people share or renounce them. Next, we will consider the nature of the ideal and its role in culture.
Here it is worth highlighting the following questions:
- the defining role of the ideal in culture;
- the creative nature of the ideal;
- change of social ideals as a change of cultures,
In our official historical science For a long time, the view of history as a change of formations, classes dominated, in society they saw only a socio-economic structure. It was a history of events and names. But in parallel there was a different story, a different idea of it. It was not societies or classes that acted here, but people with their daily concerns, needs, goals and hopes. Many of the goals were not realized, hopes remained fruitless, but they continued to live and were reborn in other generations. This was also history, but, as it were, its internal plan, which official science did not want to notice,
Meanwhile, even Marx warned about the danger and unscientific nature of opposing society, as an abstraction, to the individual1. A look at history, where kings and leaders, estates and classes, where one type of production is replaced by another, is an incomplete look. It is also necessary, but history is not limited to events and names of heroes. Even the same events and names can be evaluated differently in historical science and in the opinion of ordinary people.
V. Soloukhin drew attention to the different attitudes of the people towards the leaders of the peasant wars - Razin and Pugachev. It is expressed in the fact that the name of Razin has been preserved in the people's memory to this day - you can hear it in a song, and you can only learn about Pugachev from books, but they seem to have done one thing. But Razin promised freedom, and although he never brought the will to the people, the promised freedom turned out to be more attractive than actual slavery,
Or another example, in any history textbook it is written that there was no slavery as such in Russia, but real life and its awareness by people testify otherwise. Take, for example, the woeful lines of Lermontov, in which an assessment of life is given:
... The country of slaves, the country of masters
And you, blue uniforms,
And you, a people devoted to them,
If people in Russia lived with consciousness and. feeling of their slavery, then no matter how much they deny slavery officially, it can be argued that it was a fact of life.
Thus, far from everything in history “lies on the surface”, much of it is hidden in the minds, psyches of people, in everyday habits, in judgments that determine people’s behavior and the development of society as a whole. This also follows from our understanding of culture, which is a kind of attire for people - according to it, if one can judge, then only, as they say, at first glance. And for a real insight into history, it is necessary to take into account own understanding people in their lives, the values and guidelines that guide them.
French, philosopher and social psychologist L. Levy-Bruhl introduced the concept of “meitality” into scientific circulation. It means a spiritual, personal cut of history, knowledge of which is necessary for a deeper understanding of it. History or society then appears from the side of spiritual culture, about the practical role which we have already spoken. At the same time, it is considered “primarily as that intellectual “equipment” that each individual person has at one time or another, and also as a structure of knowledge that he possesses as a member of a certain social group”1, that is, culture against the general background of history is a system of life orientation of people.
In all areas of society, we can observe constant changes, for example, changes in social structure, social relationships, culture, collective behavior. Social change may include population growth, wealth growth, educational attainment, and so on. If new constituent elements appear in a certain system or elements of previously existing relations disappear, then we say this system is undergoing changes.
Social change can also be defined as a change in the way society is organized. Change in social organization is a universal phenomenon, although it occurs at different rates. For example, modernization, which in each country has its own characteristics. Modernization here refers to a complex set of changes that occur in almost every part of society in the process of its industrialization. Modernization includes constant changes in the economy, politics, education, traditions and religious life of society. Some of these areas change earlier than others, but they are all subject to change in one way or another.
Social development in sociology refers to changes that lead to differentiation and enrichment. constituent elements systems. Here we mean empirically proven facts of changes that cause constant enrichment and differentiation of the structure of the organization of relations between people, constant enrichment of cultural systems, enrichment of science, technology, institutions, expansion of opportunities to meet personal and social needs.
If the development taking place in a certain system brings it closer to a certain ideal, which is evaluated positively, then we say that development is progress. If the changes taking place in a system lead to the disappearance and impoverishment of its constituent elements or the relations existing between them, then the system undergoes regression. In modern sociology, instead of the term progress, the concept of "change" is increasingly used. As many scientists believe, the term "progress" expresses a value opinion. Progress means a change in the desired direction. But in whose values can this desirability be measured? For example, the construction of nuclear power plants, which changes represent progress or regression?
It should be noted that in sociology there is a view that development and progress are one and the same. This view is derived from the evolutionary theories of the 19th century, which asserted that any social development is, by nature, at the same time progress, because it is improvement, because an enriched system, being more differentiated, is at the same time a more perfect system. However, according to J. Schepansky, speaking of improvement, we mean, first of all, an increase in ethical value. The development of groups and communities has several aspects: the enrichment of the number of elements - when we talk about the quantitative development of the group, the differentiation of relations - what we call the development of the organization; improving the efficiency of actions - what we call the development of functions; increasing the satisfaction of members of the organization with participation in public life, an aspect of the feeling of "happiness" that is difficult to measure.
The moral development of groups can be measured by the degree to which their social life conforms to the moral standards recognized in them, but can also be measured by the degree of "happiness" achieved by their members.
In any case, they prefer to talk about development separately and adopt a definition that does not include any assessment, but allows the level of development to be measured by objective criteria and quantitative measures.
The term "progress" proposes to leave to determine the degree of achievement of the accepted ideal.
The social ideal is a model of the perfect state of society, an idea of perfect social relations. The ideal sets the ultimate goals of activity, determines the immediate goals and means of their implementation. Being a value guideline, it thus performs a regulatory function, which consists in streamlining and maintaining the relative stability and dynamism of social relations, in accordance with the image of the desired and perfect reality as the highest goal.
Most often, during a relatively stable development of society, the ideal regulates the activities of people and social relations not directly, but indirectly, through a system of existing norms, acting as a systemic principle of their hierarchy.
The ideal, as a value orientation and criterion for evaluating reality, as a regulator of social relations, is an educative force. Along with principles and beliefs, it acts as a component of the worldview, influences the formation of a person's life position, the meaning of his life.
The social ideal inspires people to change the social system, becomes an important component of social movements.
Sociology considers the social ideal as a reflection of the tendencies of social development, as an active force organizing the activities of people.
Ideals that gravitate towards the sphere of social consciousness stimulate social activity. Ideals are turned to the future, when referring to them, the contradictions of actual relations are removed, ideally the ultimate goal of social activity is expressed, social processes are presented here in the form of a desired state, the means of achieving which may not yet be fully determined.
In its full scope - with substantiation and in all the richness of its content - the social ideal can be assimilated only with the help of theoretical activity. Both the development of the ideal and the assimilation of it presuppose a certain level of theoretical thinking.
The sociological approach to the ideal involves making clear distinctions between what is desired, what is real, and what is possible. The stronger the desire to achieve the ideal, the more realistic the thinking of a statesman and politician should be, the more attention should be paid to the study of the practice of economic and social relations, the real possibilities of society, the real state of the mass consciousness of social groups and the motives for their activities and behavior.
Orientation only to the ideal often leads to a certain distortion of reality; seeing the present through the prism of the future often leads to the fact that the actual development of relations is adjusted to a given ideal, because there is a constant desire to bring this ideal closer, real contradictions, negative phenomena, undesirable consequences of the actions taken are often ignored.
Another extreme of practical thinking is the rejection or underestimation of the ideal, the vision of only momentary interests, the ability to grasp the interests of currently functioning institutions, institutions, social groups without analyzing and evaluating the prospects for their development, given in the ideal. Both extremes lead to the same result - voluntarism and subjectivism in practice, to the rejection of third-party analysis of objective trends in the development of the interests and needs of society as a whole, its individual groups.
Ideals run into resistance from reality, so they are not fully embodied. Some of this ideal is put into practice, something is modified, something is eliminated as an element of utopia, something is put aside for a more distant future.
This clash of the ideal with reality reveals an important feature of human existence: a person cannot live without an ideal, a goal; critical attitude towards the present. But man cannot live by ideals alone. His deeds and deeds are motivated by real interests, he must constantly adjust his actions to the available means of putting the ideal into practice.
The social ideal in all the multiplicity and complexity of its essence and form can be traced throughout the development of mankind. Moreover, the social ideal can be analyzed not only as an abstract theoretical doctrine. We consider the social ideal most interestingly on the basis of specific historical material (for example, the ancient ideal of the "golden age", the early Christian ideal, the ideal of enlightenment, the communist ideal).
The traditional view that has developed in our social science was that there was only one genuine communist ideal, based on a rigorous theory of scientific development. All other ideals were considered utopian.
Many were impressed by a certain ideal of future equality and abundance. Moreover, in the minds of each person, this ideal acquired individual features. Social practice proves that the social ideal can change depending on many circumstances. It may not necessarily be reduced to a society of equality. Lots of people watching in practice negative consequences egalitarians, want to live in a society of extreme stability and a relatively just hierarchy.
At present, according to sociological research, Russian society does not have any dominant idea of the desired path of social development. Having lost faith in socialism, the overwhelming majority of people did not accept any other social ideal.
At the same time, the West is constantly searching for a social ideal capable of mobilizing human energy.
Neoconservatives, social democrats present their vision of the social ideal. According to the "new right" (1), representing the first direction, in a market society, where the entire system of values is oriented towards economic growth and the continuous satisfaction of ever-increasing material needs, a market mentality has formed. A person has turned into a selfish and irresponsible subject, who can only put forward new socio-economic requirements, unable to control himself and manage the situation. "Man lacks stimuli to live, nor ideals to die for." The "new rightists" see the way out of the social crisis in the restructuring of public consciousness, in the purposeful self-education of the individual on the basis of the renewal of ethical forms. The "new right" proposes to recreate an ideal capable of ensuring the spiritual renewal of the West on the basis of conservatism, understood as a return to the origins of European culture. The conservative position consists in the desire, relying on all the best that was in the past, to create a new situation. It is about establishing a harmonious order, which is possible on a strict social hierarchy. An organized society is necessarily organic; it maintains a harmonious balance of all social forces, taking into account their diversity. The "aristocracy of spirit and character" is entrusted with the task of creating a new, "strict" ethics capable of giving the lost meaning to existence. We are talking about the restoration of the hierarchy, the creation of favorable conditions for the emergence of a "spiritual type of personality", embodying aristocratic principles. The non-conservative social ideal is called "scientific society".
The Social Democrats, substantiating from various points of view the need to put forward a social ideal in modern conditions, associate it with the concept of "democratic socialism". Democratic socialism is usually understood as a continuous process of reformist social transformations, as a result of which modern capitalist society acquires a new quality. At the same time, the Social Democrats never tire of emphasizing that such a society cannot be created in one country or several countries, but arises only as mass phenomenon as a new, higher moral stage in the development of human civilization. Democracy acts as a universal means of realizing the social democratic social ideal.
As a social ideal in modern conditions, a new type of civilization appears, designed to save humanity; ensure harmony with nature, social justice, equality in all spheres of human life.
Thus, world social practice shows that society cannot develop successfully without defining the basic principles social structure.
In modern conditions, an urgent task is to provide an opportunity for Russia to independently and freely determine for itself the conditions, forms and directions of development, taking into account its historical, economic, geopolitical, social and mental characteristics.
Before directly analyzing the problem of the social ideal in Russia, let us remind the reader that the concept of "civilization", in our opinion, fixes a certain stage of historical development associated with the emergence of cities, writing, the state, social classes, etc.
differences between civilizations are differences in characteristics that determine the ways of state consolidation of society based on the unification of initially dissimilar cultures and state ordering Everyday life this society. These methods represent various combinations of the basic state-forming elements - strength, faith (in the sense of interpreting the basic socio-cultural universals), law and the institutions corresponding to them. Their (that is, elements and institutions) long-term viable concrete combinations and hierarchies in a society or a group of societies, in a country or a group of countries, we consider it possible to call civilizations. It doesn't matter what languages the peoples of a given social association speak, it doesn't matter what religions they profess. The determining factor in this case is what has recently been called the mentality, that is, a system of views on a person, society, economy, property, power, on such correlations of basic sociocultural universals as "collective" and "personality", "man" and "state", "productive labor" and " life goals”, “freedom” and “power”, etc.
In this case, the terms Orthodox civilization” and “Russian (Russian) civilization”, widely used by modern social scientists, are not entirely correct. We do not think that the mentality of the Orthodox Byzantine Empire so similar to the system of views on the world of the Russians of the New and modern times. In the form of a religious and philosophical understanding of the world and society, Orthodoxy came to Rus' in the 13th century. as the teaching of an almost intrafamilial sect of hesychasts of the Byzantine royal family of Palaiologos. Until that time, Orthodoxy in Rus' existed only in the form of a rite designed to unite disparate East Slavic tribes. Hesychasm, developed in the ideas of the Orthodox patriarchs of the time of Ivan the Terrible and proclaiming the emanation of the divine essence from God to the sovereign and further to the state and community, formed the basis of the Russian understanding of the world, the basis of Russian statehood.
turmoil early XVII V. revealed the historical exhaustion of the civilizational synthesis of supra-legal power and the Orthodox faith, on which the Moscow statehood of the Rurikovich was based. The lack of strength, which was revealed even during the lost by Ivan the Terrible Livonian War, became obvious - the state did not have enough resources not only for waging wars, but also for streamlining internal life. And, as it became clear to Boris Godunov, it was impossible to eliminate this deficit without borrowing European knowledge and technology.
All the more indisputable was the need for such borrowings for the Romanovs who reigned after the Time of Troubles. It was they who had to carry out the correction of the civilizational choice of the country through its westernization, which they carried out consistently, deepening throughout their three-hundred-year reign. Therefore, we consider the entire period of their reign as something integral and one-vector. There are enough grounds to separate Peter I from the first Romanovs. But from a civilizational point of view, they were not so much followers of the Ruriks as forerunners of Peter.
Strengthening by borrowing and mastering a foreign culture threatened, however, serious conflict with faith. Such conflict was not only undesirable, it was unacceptable. And because it prevented the acquisition of a new dynasty - elective, and not "natural" - the sacredness of the former dynasty. And because faith during the Time of Troubles turned out to be one of the main sources of people's strength, which helped restore the collapsed statehood. Hence the novelty of the civilizational strategy of the first Romanovs and its multidirectionality.
To make up for the lack of strength, they had to open the way to the country not only for European knowledge and technology, but also for a new interpretation of the principle of legality for Rus', placing power under its protection in the Cathedral Code of Alexei Mikhailovich.
On the other hand, in order to achieve the same goal, they had to seek support in the faith and raise the status of the church: the elevation of its leaders to the rank of second sovereigns, which took place under the first two Romanovs, was unthinkable in Muscovy of the Rurikids. Borrowing the culturally alien while erecting additional bastions to protect against it, including the administrative imposition of Orthodox piety - such was this new civilizational strategy, in which the main role was assigned to faith. It was she who was called upon to neutralize the consequences of the onset of Westernization, which threatened the national-state identity of Rus'.
However, faith, even when united with the law, could not return to the restored autocracy its former strength and, accordingly, the fullness of power over its subjects, because its former fullness was also conditioned by the fact that Rus', having freed itself from the Mongols under the Rurikovich, acquired in the eyes of the elite and the population religiously a consecrated universal status that corresponded to the idea of the truth of the Moscow Orthodox faith as opposed to the falsity of other faiths. The idea of the “Third Rome” as the only earthly kingdom destined for salvation is the idea of the universal, embodied in the local space of Muscovite Rus'. It was this circumstance that largely explained the strength of its princes and kings, whose power could not be shaken even by the horrors and devastating consequences of the oprichnina and the Livonian War. But the very involvement of Ivan the Terrible in this war, as well as the campaigns against Kazan and Astrakhan that preceded it, testified that the claim to religious universality and chosenness required confirmation by military victories over the Gentiles, and the unlimited power of the sovereign within the country - additional legitimation his success in the foreign arena.
It is clear that the new dynasty needed such confirmation even more. And not only because its strength was not initially in any comparison with the strength of the Rurikovich. The main difficulty in building a civilizational strategy lay precisely in the fact that the Romanovs, unlike the Rurikids, had to undermine its spiritual foundations with foreign cultural innovations to strengthen the material foundations of the "Third Rome". The latter called into question both the civilizational self-sufficiency of Rus', and its God-chosenness, and hence its claims to a universal status.
The path along which the Romanovs moved is a path fundamentally different from before, the universalization of faith by expanding the local Moscow civilizational space to the pan-Orthodox one with the center not in Moscow, but in Constantinople. Such a reorientation required bringing worship and church books in line with the original Greek canon, which was perceived by many as apostasy and ultimately led to a religious schism.
Starting Westernization, Moscow did not feel the ability to resist the spiritual influence of Catholic and Protestant Europe on its own. To resist, knowledge was needed, which was not in Rus'; its theological culture was in its infancy. This lag became especially noticeable after the annexation of Ukraine: in matters of faith, Moscow not only could not claim leadership in relation to Kyiv, but was also forced to become an apprentice to him.
Orthodox Ukraine, which was part of the Commonwealth, had to enter into fierce competition with Catholicism in order to preserve its religious identity. On its territory, the Jesuit order operated, building schools with free education, arranging disputes in which its representatives demonstrated their superiority in knowledge, argumentation, and polemical sophistication. Ukrainian Orthodox Church responded with the development of its own academic education, and by the time it joined Muscovite Rus', it had managed to form a highly educated spiritual elite. The invitation of its representatives to Moscow as teachers played the role of a cultural bridge between Russia and Byzantium.
Such an indirect connection with the Greeks through the Ukrainian spiritual elite could not stop the movement towards a religious and ecclesiastical schism: Ukrainians, like the Greeks, were suspected in Muscovy of being subject to Catholic influence. But this did not force us to abandon the chosen civilizational vector oriented towards Byzantium - they continued to move in this direction even after the split became a fact. Accordingly, faith remained the main link in the civilizational strategy throughout the 17th century.
This strategy is in various forms and with temporary deviations from it - will accompany the entire three-hundred-year rule of the Romanov dynasty. She started with her, she will finish her historical age without being able to implement it. The Romanovs will not be able to refuse it, which testifies to the civilizational lack of self-sufficiency of Russia, the deficit of its own symbolic capital. But they will not be able to implement this strategy either - there will not be enough power resources to implement it. Even after Peter I, shifting the emphasis from faith to strength, makes a radical breakthrough in this respect, Russia will be destined to remain a country of unrealized civilizational projects.
Peter abandoned the Byzantine or, what is the same, the anti-Turkish orientation of his predecessors, although not immediately. He began with the Azov campaigns - historical and cultural inertia made itself felt. But the country did not yet have the opportunity to fight Turkey alone, and Peter failed to acquire allies in Europe. At the same time, a long trip abroad convinced the tsar of the futility of the civilizational strategy of his predecessor Sophia, the essence of which was Europeanization through Ukraine and Poland, borrowing from the former ways of resisting Catholic influence, and from the latter, her secular culture. Under the conditions of a religious schism and with the church weakened by it, such an orientation did not lead either to the restoration of spiritual consolidation or to the legitimization of cultural and technological borrowings. In other words, it did not contribute to the build-up of state power and military competitiveness, which was main goal predecessors of Peter, who ruled the country after the turmoil. This predetermined the radical revision of the civilizational choice carried out by him.
Peter made the main bet on the Protestant north of Europe. Not in the sense of spiritual submission to him, and not even in the sense of looking for a place in it for Russia, but for the sake of forced transfer to Russian soil and military use of his achievements. This was motivated by the fact that by that time the Protestant world had become the leader of modernization, and Protestantism did not cause such rejection and rejection in Rus' as Catholic "Latinism". But religious motivation was not decisive in the choice of the king. In Petrine Russia, power separated from faith and began to build up in addition to it and even in spite of it, which found its institutional embodiment in the liquidation of the post of patriarch and the transformation of the church into one of the state departments.
Following Western models, Peter transformed religious state into the secular, shifting the functions of ordering in it from faith to law. This corresponded to the movement that began in Europe from the first axial time to the second and the civilizational shifts that accompanied such a movement. It was the law that became in the hands of the reformer the instrument with which he carried out Westernization. way of life elite, forcing it to master European knowledge and European culture. Peter tried to give this instrument a universal meaning, declaring the obligatory obedience to the law for everyone, including himself; under him, even the power of the autocratic tsar for the first time began to be legitimized not in the name of God, but in the name of the law. However, in reality, it remained a supra-legal force, the legitimacy of which was ensured mainly by the military victories of Peter. The latter became possible thanks to the total militarization of the country and the creation of the institutions necessary for this: a standing army, a guard, and a secret police service. From this, in turn, it follows that Peter, strictly speaking, did not leave behind any new civilizational quality: he created a state adapted for war, while civilizational originality reveals itself only in conditions of peaceful everyday life.
The principle of legality, introduced by the reformer into Russian public life, did not integrate Russia into the European civilizational space, also because, in the interpretation of Peter, this principle not only excluded the idea of civil rights, but also assumed legalized universal lack of rights. Peter's successors quickly realized that a long-term stable statehood could not exist on such a militaristic foundation, and they began to demilitarize it. From a civilizational point of view, this meant that through the “window” cut through by the reformer, they moved to Europe - not so much for the sake of new conquests, but for the sake of mastering and transferring to Russia the basic foundations of its life order. Such a movement in the Russia of the Romanovs continued - taking into account the changes taking place in Europe itself - throughout the entire post-Petrine period. Not without temporary setbacks, but it continued.
Europeanization of domestic statehood was carried out in two main directions.
On the one hand, the universality of the principle of legality from a declarative one gradually - and also not without digressions and historical zigzags - turned into a real one, extending, among other things, to the autocrat himself. The legislative monopoly he retained did not negate the fact that significant changes took place within its borders.
On the other hand, the Europeanization of Russian statehood was manifested in the movement from total lack of rights to the legalization of rights: first on a local estate, noble, and starting from 1861 on a national scale. The gradual giving them the status of universality, along with the universalization of legality, allows us to say that post-Petrine Russia, following Europe, mastered the civilizational principles of the second axial time. However, it never became a part of European civilization, just as it did not become a special and self-sufficient civilization. A culturally divided country, constantly deepening the split with new borrowings from other cultures, cannot acquire its own civilizational identity. She is doomed to seek this identity outside. And Russia continued to look for it until the Bolshevik coup. The main direction of the search remained the same as in the time of Alexei Mikhailovich. The direction remained Byzantine. Without the liberation of Constantinople from the Turks and the establishment of control over it, the special civilizational status of Russia was not perceived as either achieved or secured.
Peter's sharp turn towards the Protestant West and the successful development of his achievements, which turned the country into a strong and influential military power, did not in themselves predetermine the place Orthodox Russia in the Catholic-Protestant European civilizational space, because the transformation of religious statehood into a secular one does not eliminate the religious component of civilizational identity. It is all the more interesting that religiously neutral projects were put forward in Russia. They are interesting not because they were not realized and could not be realized, but because they appeared and were put into practice during the reign of Catherine II, marked by the most purposeful search for Russia's place within the European civilizational space.
The first project, carried out at the beginning of Catherine's reign and called the "northern system", assumed that Russia would gain a place in European civilization while abstracting from its Orthodox identity, but taking into account religious differences in Europe. This was a continuation of the foreign policy of Peter I: the idea of the "northern system" was to create an alliance with the Protestant countries (England and Prussia with the inclusion of Denmark), opposing the European Catholic world (France, Austria and Spain). However, this strategy did not and did not lead to the acquisition of a civilizational identity: Russia failed to find its place in Europe.
The Europeans could not but reckon with its sovereign power; in disputes and conflicts among themselves, they were ready to seek and sought its support. But sufficient cultural background to build a single civilizational strategy with Russia, neither the Catholic nor the Protestant states had. In this state of affairs, political pragmatics acquired decisive importance, which at that time forced St. Petersburg to move closer not to London and Berlin, but to Vienna: Austria bordered on Poland and Turkey - Russia's closest neighbors, relations and conflicts with which to a large extent determined the direction of its foreign policy. Therefore, the “northern system” collapsed without having time to take shape. The civilizational project, which continued the line of Peter, turned out to be untenable.
However, the search for civilizational identity not only did not end there, but became even more energetic and purposeful. Failures in the north brought the Russian political elite back to the south, to pre-Petrine plans for Byzantium. True, with the essential difference that now these plans have lost their religious coloring: Catherine tried to build a civilizational strategy for a secular state created by Peter.
This strategy, which went down in history under the name of the "Greek project", took shape under the influence of military victory Russia over the Turks, and the ensuing annexation of the Crimea became the actual beginning of its implementation. Without going into the details of this project and the ideological subtleties of its justification, we only note that it did not already imply the annexation of Constantinople to Russia, and even more so, the transfer of its capital there. It was about the fact that the imperial throne in Greece liberated from the Ottomans was to be occupied, becoming the ancestor of the ruling dynasty, by the grandson of the Empress, Prince Constantine, who was given the name taking into account his future mission. Thus, it was supposed not just to ensure the union of Greece and Russia with the supremacy of the latter. It was assumed that Russia, being the heir of Orthodox Byzantium, would also become the heiress of its predecessor, that is, Ancient Greece and its civilization. It will become, in other words, the successor not only of Constantinople, but also of Athens - it is not without reason that the latter were also considered as contenders for the role of the capital of the revived Greece.
In the implementation of the "Greek project" the question of Russia's place in Europe was removed by itself: in this case, she got the opportunity to firmly establish herself not only in the European space, but also in European time. Moreover, the state, which was in succession with ancient Athens, turned out to be more deeply rooted in this time than the states of Western Europe, because they were considered and considered themselves the successors of the later - in relation to Athens - Rome.
Political pragmatics correlated much better with the "Greek project" than with the "northern system". If Catherine assigned the role of the successor to Athens to Russia, then the successor to Rome in her strategy was Austria, whose rulers retained the title of emperors of the Holy Roman Empire. At the same time, religious differences between countries were relegated to the background: in the era of the establishment of secular states, the truth of faith was no longer perceived as a defining criterion, on the basis of which one could judge the justification of their international ambitions.
The alliance concluded with Austria and its readiness to participate in the division Ottoman Empire did not mean, however, that the "Greek project" had a chance of being implemented. Its implementation would lead to a sharp change in the balance of power in Europe, which could not receive support from other powers, which Russia and Austria were not able to resist. Catherine's "Greek project" is an impressive utopia, almost immediately and forever forgotten after the death of the Empress, and left behind only the Greek names of the Crimean cities, given to them instead of the former Tatar ones. But it is precisely his notorious utopianism, not noticed by Ekaterina, who is alien to projecting, that makes it possible to better understand how acute and relevant the issue of civilizational identity was perceived in Russia after it gained sovereign status. Therefore, the development of new civilizational strategies continued in post-Stekaterin times.
The essence of these strategies, for all their differences, however, came down to the same thing, namely, the return of faith, pushed aside by Peter I to the periphery. public life, while maintaining and strengthening the Petrine synthesis of force and legality. These were responses to the challenges coming from revolutionary Europe and forcing a correction of domestic and foreign policy and its ideological justifications.
Russia had sufficient power to claim the restoration of monarchical legitimacy in Europe, shaken French Revolution and Napoleon's subsequent expansion into neighboring (and not only neighboring) countries. The sovereign power inherited from Peter I and his successors made it possible, it seemed, to leave behind the post-Petrine search for one's place in European civilization and act as its savior, thereby ensuring dominance in it. The only thing that was missing for this was the spiritual and cultural component, without which any civilizational projects involving consolidation different countries are obviously untenable.
Orthodoxy could not lay claim to such a consolidating role - it was impossible to impose it on Catholic-Protestant Europe. Therefore, under Emperor Paul, a new civilizational strategy began to take shape, which took shape under Alexander I in the Holy Alliance established on his initiative. We have already talked about this. It suffices here to repeat that it was a question of returning to state ideology religious faith, in which the confessional originality of Orthodoxy was relegated to the background for the sake of establishing a common Christian civilizational community, with Russia playing the main role in it.
The vulnerability of the new strategy lay in the fact that it was based on superiority in force, and therefore the Austrians and Prussia involved in its implementation were perceived not as a voluntary strategic choice, but as a forced temporary necessity. Its vulnerability also lay in the fact that it did not have deep cultural roots in Russia itself. Relying on sovereign identity, updated by the war with Napoleon and the victory over him, this strategy did not correlate with the Orthodox identity and, accordingly, with the majority of the country's population.
Meanwhile, the defeat of Napoleon, his expulsion from France and the restoration of the monarchy there did not draw a historical line under the revolutionary era: revolutions broke out in different parts of Europe again and again. Russia, to which they have not yet reached, began to look for ways to prevent them. This led to another correction of its civilizational strategy.
Given that Europe was shaken by the mass movements of the grassroots escaping from government control, the new strategy was focused specifically on the people and their identity. The trans-confessional Christian universalism of the Holy Union was not compatible with it. The return to the secular statehood of Peter, which synthesized force and law while marginalizing faith, did not correlate with this identity. The response to the challenges coming from Europe was the partial resuscitation of the ideological foundations of pre-Petrine statehood, that is, religious-Orthodox. The formula of Count Uvarov: “Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality”, which dressed St. Petersburg Russia in the ideological dress of Muscovite Rus', revived the state status of faith and its leading role in ensuring the spiritual unity of the authorities and the people. But at the same time, this formula was also an application for a new civilizational project, an alternative to European civilization, which, at the time of the revolutionary upheavals that fell upon it, began to seem to many in Russia without a future. It was an original project Russian civilization designed and capable of preventing revolutions.
The unconscious paradox of such a strategy lay in the fact that the civilization building was supposed to be erected on the foundation of a culture that was not affected by civilization. It was supposed to be erected on the basis of the archaic culture of the peasant majority, preserved in a pre-state state. The “freezing” of the redistribution-communal way of life blocked the universalization of the principle of legality, and thereby the rooting of the majority in the civilization of the first axial time, not to mention the second. The Slavophil apologia for conscience as an instance higher than the law actually represented a romanticization of the local and unformalized customary law, according to which the Russian village continued to live. If we take into account that in the non-peasant strata of the population since the time of Peter I, the principle of legality has gradually taken root and even brought to the legalization of class rights, then the essence of the next civilizational project of the Romanovs will become obvious.
It was a project of maintaining the status quo, translating a cultural split into a civilizational split. But a divided civilization cannot be considered a civilization by definition.
The revolution, for the sake of preventing which this project was put forward and carried out, could not be prevented with its help. Therefore, it had to be declared invalid. But there was nothing to replace him. The forced universalization of the principle of legality, its extension to the previously inviolable autocracy, which after 1905 was for the first time legally limited, was tantamount to ascertaining the civilizational lack of self-sufficiency of the Romanovs' Russia: the restriction of autocracy deprived it of its only subject of original civilizational design. This lack of self-sufficiency was also evidenced by the equally forced legislative expansion of civil rights, brought to the right of free exit from the community. That was a movement towards another, European, civilization, which was part of the second axial time. But in conditions when the popular majority had not yet firmly settled in the first, the Europeanization of the country ran into obstacles that turned out to be insurmountable.
When today they talk about "a unique Russian civilization", I want to understand what exactly they are talking about. After all, in search of a civilizational identity, Russia throughout its history used various combinations of force, faith and law, none of which became final and each of which significantly revised, sometimes radically, the previous combination.
Is it possible, for example, to consider that the Orthodox-Byzantine strategy of Alexei Mikhailovich and the religiously neutral “Greek project” of Catherine II lie on the same civilizational plane? What do they have in common - besides, of course, that both of them were nominated by the autocratic authorities?
Is it possible, further, to assert that the originality of Russian civilization includes that combination of force and legalized general lack of rights that was characteristic of Peter's militaristic statehood, or that combination of force, legalized rights and emergency laws that protected the state from the society that developed after the reforms? Alexander II?
Finally, do the legal restrictions on autocracy that marked the last decade of the Romanovs and the laws that dismantled the rural community have anything to do with the uniqueness of Russian civilization? Is this a confirmation of uniqueness or a departure from it (if so, in what direction)?
And the last thing: how to evaluate the fact that it was precisely the insistence on civilizational singularity and exclusivity that turned out to be the catastrophe of 1917 for Russia?
The domestic elite continued to adhere to an original civilizational strategy throughout all the post-reform decades, trying to synthesize its Orthodox component with the pan-Slavic one. The tops of Russian society could not reconcile themselves to the fact that Russian statehood, starting from the Crimean War, showed a decline in its former strength - not only in relations with other countries, but also within its own country. The elite hoped, as in the days of Alexei Mikhailovich, to make up for this lack of strength by strengthening faith. The expulsion of the Turks from it opened, as it seemed, the historical road to the unification of the Orthodox Slavic world under the auspices of Russia, and thus the road to an alternative civilization in relation to Europe.
end result such an orientation turned out to be, as you know, drawing Russia into the First world war, defeat in which will make the final verdict of the Orthodox-Pan-Slavist civilizational strategy. It was an inertial attempt to prolong the religious universalism of the first axial time in conditions when Russia itself had already made great progress in mastering the principles of the second, thereby confirming the validity of the claims of these principles for universality, alternative to religious. So what does it mean when one speaks of a “unique Russian civilization”? Life reality or unrealized projects?
However, what the Romanovs, and then the Provisional Government, which inherited the dream of Constantinople, did not succeed in, three decades after the abdication of their last representative of Russia, will still be able to partially implement. True, she will never get Constantinople, but almost all Slavic world will be under her control. This will be done during the implementation of another civilizational project, which went down in history under the name of the communist one. However, his life will turn out to be very short by historical standards, and the question of a civilizational choice remains open for post-communist Russia as well.
The Romanov dynasty, which took over the country after the Troubles, had to restore and strengthen the shaken statehood, ensure internal stability and military-technological competitiveness in the foreign arena. Solving these problems, the Romanovs from the very beginning had to carry out transformations that set the vector for Russia's development for centuries to come, predetermining both its subsequent achievements and the difficulties that it will face and which will ultimately prove insurmountable.
The Romanovs carried this idea through their entire three-century reign. It took shape in various civilizational projects - religious and secular, none of which could be implemented. The same fate eventually befell the "non-Constantinople" project of the Holy Alliance, put forward by Alexander I and involving the formation of a common Christian civilizational community under the auspices of Russia. But the very fact of such a permanent design testified to the civilizational lack of self-sufficiency of Russia. To acquire a civilizational identity, neither high-profile military victories, nor a huge and constantly growing territory are enough. For this, it is necessary to have a fixed place not only in world space, but also in world time, for which, in turn, an appropriate symbolic capital is also needed.
Russia, which adopted the faith from the Greeks, who were subsequently defeated and subjugated by the Turks of other faiths, did not have such capital. He had to look outside. In other words, in order to find one's place in world historical time, it was necessary to acquire that part of world space, the mastery of which would symbolize rootedness in world time. Byzantium was such a part. But Russia failed to capture it. Her claims to Constantinople ended in being drawn into a world war and the collapse of statehood.
The question of acquiring a civilizational identity arose before the Romanovs' Russia the more acutely, the further they moved - voluntarily or involuntarily - along the path of Europeanization, moving from borrowing scientific knowledge and technology to borrowing the principles of European life order, because these principles did not correlate well with fundamental principles autocracy - the main and only political instrument that held together a divided society. While civilizational projects were various combinations of strength and faith, and the law was only an auxiliary means of protecting power from powerless subjects, who were under the control of the autocrat, they did not affect the foundation of statehood. But cracks appeared in it when, under Catherine II, laws appeared that were not subject to repeal and were not subject to the sovereign's will. foreign body autocratic statehood also had civil rights protected by law. They were foreign already when they were granted as estate privileges, and even more so they became such as they spread to the entire population and brought to political rights.
The post-Petrine civilizational projects of the Romanovs were designed to ideologically integrate European civilizational principles of the Second Axial Age into Russian statehood, which gave universal significance to law and individual rights. But the universality of law and law came into irresolvable conflict with the universality of the autocracy. Hybrid political ideals that combined the autocratic-authoritarian principle with the liberal and democratic principle cast doubt on this universality.
Their implementation, while Europeanizing Russia, did not introduce it into European civilization. And not only because the overwhelming majority of the country's population by the beginning of the 20th century had not settled in the first axial time, had not mastered the written culture and was guided in their daily life by custom, and not by law. European civilization moved from the primacy of the state to the priority of the individual, whose rights were legalized as natural, given to a person from birth. The Romanovs, on the other hand, tried to combine the rights of the individual with the supremacy of the state in the person of autocratic power. Therefore, these rights were considered not natural, but bestowed. And for this reason, the autocracy, having legally limited itself at the end of its historical period and removed the word "unlimited" from the legislation, retained the status of autocracy. But these were palliatives, testifying to the fact that the country, borrowing the civilizational principles of the European way of life, tried to preserve its own civilizational identity, which, however, it was not able to acquire.
After the secular projects of Catherine II proved to be untenable and the strategic unreliability of the all-Christian Holy Alliance began to be realized, the Romanovs had the only resource left for civilizational design - the Orthodox faith. Therefore, they sought to revive its former state role, dressing the secular statehood of Peter I in old Moscow religious clothes. But faith could provide Russia with a special civilizational status, that is, root it in world historical time, only if all Orthodox peoples were united under its patronage and the symbolic capital of Byzantium, which was under the rule of the Ottomans, was mastered. This meant betting on a war that Russia was not destined to win. Failures in the war led to the collapse of the last civilizational project of the Romanovs and revealed the exhaustion of the historical resources that the domestic autocratic-monarchist state had at its disposal.
SOCIAL IDEAL
The most important part of the Marxist ideology is the doctrine of an ideal social order, which was opposed to the then existing social order (the latter was considered capitalist) as a means of getting rid of its evils and the struggle for which was declared through the evolution of mankind to a society of universal prosperity and well-being - the doctrine of the communist social order . Marxists called it the expression "scientific communism". In reality, there was no such system when Marxism arose. It was invented in the same way as pre-Marxist communist ideals were invented - as a society in which there would be no ulcers of the social reality of those years. These ideals were considered utopian, in the sense of being unrealizable in reality. In contrast to them, the Marxist ideal was considered scientifically substantiated and practically realizable. Not everyone, of course, considered him so. But for consistent Marxists, this was a dogma.
With the advent Soviet Union and other communist countries, the situation regarding the communist social ideal has changed. On the one hand, the communist ideal seems to have been realized, which means it has ceased to play the role of an ideal. But in reality, a lot of things turned out that were not foreseen in the ideal, and much of what appeared in the ideal did not work out in practice. The Marxists in the majority found a way out of the difficulty by declaring what had turned out to be only the first stage of communism, and relegating “full” communism to some future. What did not correspond to the ideal was considered the remnants of capitalism. The elimination of them was attributed in the same way to the future "full" communism, which retained the functions of the ideal in the old (pre-revolutionary) sense. Many adherents of “real” communism declared that the social system in the Soviet Union (and other countries) cannot be considered communism, that it was allegedly built incorrectly (“wrong communism”), not in a Marxist way. And the Marxian ideal was treated as if many decades had not passed real history which radically changed the position of nineteenth-century ideology.
A few words about the very concept of the social ideal. There is a pre-scientific (philistine) understanding of the ideal as a kind of conceivable sample, which, in principle, cannot exist in reality (there is a utopia in the sense mentioned above). This ideal can be aspired to, but never attained. From point of view scientific approach to the objects under study, the ideal is an abstract image of these objects. It reflects only some of the features of these objects. If these objects exist (are realized), they also have other features that are not fixed ideally. This does not mean that the ideal is a utopia. If such objects do not exist when the ideal is created, it may contain fictitious features that are not realized in the event of the appearance of these objects or are not realized in the form that was thought in the ideal. But this still does not give grounds to assert that the ideal has not been realized. Ideally, it is necessary to distinguish the features of objects according to the degree of importance. And evaluate the ideal in terms of the degree of realizability. It can be argued that the ideal was not realized if the most important features of conceivable objects were not realized. But it can be argued that the ideal was realized to some extent if the most important features of these objects were realized, and neglect those that were not realized.
The communist ideal arose historically in conditions when the social reality was not at all communist. It arose as a denial of the phenomena of this reality, which were perceived by the creators of the ideal as evil and as the source of this evil. The ideal was created as an image of a social structure in which this evil does not exist and there is no source that generates it. The communist ideal as a component of ideology played a certain role in how the real Soviet human list took shape. But he wasn't the only one who played a role. Many other factors also played their part, including the objective social laws and conditions of Russia, which were mentioned above. In a real Soviet human case, one could see the signs that appeared in the ideal. But one could also see signs that were not in the ideal, and even those that were opposite to those that figured in the ideal. In a word, Soviet reality it is a mistake to regard it as an exact and complete realization of the ideal. But if we single out in the Soviet human life its social system (in the sense as it is described above, and not in Marxist and other writings) and if we consider the elimination of private ownership of the means of production and private enterprise, the socialization of the means of production and natural resources as the main features of the communist ideal , the elimination of classes of private owners and a number of other signs (they are well known), then the communist ideal was actually realized in this sense. And no matter what the adherents of some “real”, “correct”, “complete”, etc. communism, worldwide the vast majority normal people believed and still considers the Soviet social system the realization of the communist ideal. However, both communists and anti-communists, ignoring the rules of logic, did not distinguish between the abstract social organization of the Soviet human village (and other human villages of the same type) and the features of a concrete human village that had developed and lived in specific historical conditions. The anti-communists declared that the source of all the evils observed in the Soviet Union and other countries with the same social organization was the realization of the communist ideal. In fact, this delusion was shared by the apologists of communism, promising in the future "full" communism to realize all its beautiful ideals and eliminate all real defects. Soviet image life.
The realization of the communist ideal, whatever it may be, could not but affect the fate of the ideal itself. Other claims were made against him than in the pre-revolutionary years. People expected from communism what the ideologists and rulers promised. In reality, they were faced not only with what had been promised (and the most important thing!), but also with what had not been realized and what had appeared contrary to the promises. The previously seductive ideal has turned in the minds of the masses of people into a purely formal (imposed by the authorities and ideologists) dummy and an object for ridicule. The real essence of the new social system remained misunderstood at the scientific level. The ideology has become stagnant in its former obsolete form. The communist ideal has lost the role of an ideal in the former sense.
This situation could have persisted for as long as desired without any catastrophic consequences for the country, if the Soviet social order had not been destroyed. And then the problem of a new ideology would not have arisen. But the Soviet system is destroyed. Naturally, in the minds of many people who are not satisfied with Westernism and post-Sovietism, the problem of an alternative social organization arises, i.e. problem of the social ideal. objective Scientific research discovers that such an ideal is possible only as a communist one. But its fundamental difference from Marxist and pre-Marxist communism lies in the fact that it should not be a product of the imagination and subjective desires of the oppressed masses of people, but only the result of a scientific study of a colossal practical experience real communist countries (the Soviet Union in the first place) for decades. Orientation to this experience radically changes itself social type ideal, its specific textual content, the scope of its distribution (propaganda), the mechanism of its impact and, in general, the whole complex of phenomena, one way or another connected with social processes of an evolutionary scale.
I repeat and emphasize, the creation of such a social ideal on the basis of scientific study the actual experience of the Soviet Union and other communist (often called socialist) countries should by no means be an idealization (embellishment) Soviet period our history. The task here is to single out in the individual (unique) historical flow of events what is enduring, universal, natural. In other words, to mold the very type of social organization, the laws of which are the same for all times and peoples, where the corresponding objects and conditions for their existence appear. In addition, the study of the Soviet experience can become only one of the intellectual sources of a new (alternative) ideology, but not the only one. Another source should be a scientific study of Westernism itself, in which, due to objective social laws, anti-Western tendencies develop, just as communist tendencies originated and developed within the framework of Western European civilization.
When creating a new ideal, one must take into account the current factual social structure population. It cannot be guided by any clearly defined classes or strata, as was the case with Marxism, because such classes and strata that could be consolidated by at least some kind of ideology simply do not exist in the structure of modern human communities, including Western countries and post-Soviet Russia. Moreover, an ideological doctrine itself cannot acquire credibility if it is simplified below a certain critical level. It will simply be incomprehensible and unseductive for most bad people. educated people at the lower levels of the social hierarchy. It must count on a socially indefinite multitude of people who are not satisfied with Westernism in its modern form and who at least lose little (or lose nothing and gain something) from limiting or even destroying it and from creating an alternative social organization. This kind of people are most of all among young students, intellectuals, civil servants, scientists etc.
