Woe from the mind of the face. The history of the comedy "Woe from Wit"

"... Cudgel people's war rose with all its formidable and majestic strength and, without asking anyone's tastes and rules, with stupid simplicity, but with expediency, without understanding anything, nailed the French until the entire invasion died.

L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace"

Today, on the eve of the 200th anniversary of the Borodino victory, a lot of interesting publications and responses to the events of two centuries ago have appeared in the domestic media. Interest in the war of 1812, oddly enough, never weakened among our compatriots. The memory of the Battle of Borodino, the fire of Moscow and the subsequent expulsion of the French is sacredly kept by the Russian people as an unshakable national shrine. This is evidence of the heroic deed of an entire people, which can be considered one of the main, even turning points in the history of Russia.

Throughout the 19th century, Russian historiography, based on the memoirs of direct participants in the events of 1812 - D. Davydov, P. Vyazemsky, the notorious soldier Bogdanchikov and hundreds of other military memoirists - diligently ensured the growth of national historical self-awareness in the circles of an educated society and achieved considerable success in this. Count L.N. Tolstoy is one of the greatest thinkers, later called the "mirror of the Russian revolution" - made an attempt to convey to his contemporaries the obvious idea that the Patriotic War of 1812 forever changed the Russian people, reshaping their self-consciousness. And the "club of the people's war", according to the later interpreters of the works of the universally recognized classic, showed the real driving force world history.

Even during the reign of the Marxist-Leninist ideology, when everything that had ever happened under the tsarist regime was subjected to criticism, the Patriotic War of 1812, called "people's" by L.N. Tolstoy himself, was the only bright and "inviolable" spot on everything space of the historical past of the USSR. Monuments were erected to the heroes of the war of 1812, the central streets of cities and towns were named after them. Teachers in Soviet schools never hesitated to talk about the exploits of Kutuzov, Bagration, Denis Davydov, because the memory of a just, liberation war is necessary for citizens great power. The Stalinist leadership quickly adopted this memory into service during the Great Patriotic War. Drawing historical parallels, Soviet ideologists managed to awaken national identity Russian people, largely undermined by communist slogans. The fidelity to the memory of the victory over Napoleon helped the Russian people survive the war against fascism, once again proving to the whole world that Russia, even dressed in red rags, was and remains a great country.

It must be admitted that in our forgetful, indifferent time, when even the most zealous "scribes" national history begin to get tired, surrendering their positions to jingoistic patriots and nationalists, public interest in the events of 1812 does not weaken. Serious historians are silent: it is almost impossible to add something new to the factual side of the long-studied achievements of two centuries ago. However, in obedience to the modern political fashion, well-known journalists, politicians, users of various Internet resources sometimes express directly opposite assessments of the “thunderstorm of 1812”. One of false patriotism, unnecessarily exaggerate the people's feat in this war, others, on the contrary, completely deny its significance, reducing the “nationality” of the war praised by L.N. Tolstoy to a historical and ideological myth.

Undoubtedly, the ideological myth about the "people" of the Patriotic War of 1812 existed long before the appearance of Leo Tolstoy's novel. It began to be created back in those days when Russian hussars and Cossacks turned Parisian restaurants into famous "bistros", and all of Europe applauded Alexander the Blessed - the savior of peoples from the ambitions of a presumptuous Corsican.

The journalistic campaign around the "feats of the people" in the war with Napoleon began long before the end of hostilities. The educated public in St. Petersburg listened with delight to the legends about how one peasant, out of patriotic motives, cut off his own hand, because the enemy had branded “Napoleon” on it, and also about how the Smolensk elder Vasilisa Kozhina dealt with a hundred with a scythe and a pitchfork French marauders. Emperor Alexander I gave very great importance"patriotic" myth-making: almost all famous names folk heroes- Vasilisa Kozhina, Gerasim Kurin, Major Emelyanov and others - are mentioned in the periodicals of that time. Two women who participated in the war of 1812 - the noblewoman Nadezhda Durova and the peasant woman Vasilisa Kozhina - were awarded awards during their lifetime. Meanwhile, in folk art, Vasilisa Kozhina became the heroine of various amusing sheets and popular prints "comics". People's rumor depicted her either on a horse and in a sundress armed with a scythe, or in a French overcoat with a saber. Documentary confirmation of her great feats by historians has not been found so far. Only a not entirely reliable story is known about how Kozhina stabbed a captured Frenchman with a scythe, allegedly wanting to avenge him for the death of her husband.

Modern "scribes" of Russian history, trying to radically reshape the historical self-consciousness of the Russian people, often try to present the invader-Napoleon in a progressive apologetic light: they say, that's who was the main guardian popular interests! He carried the serf peasant freedom from slavery, and he, out of ignorance, met him with a "club of the people's war." Nevertheless, these Davydovs, Dorokhovs, Figners, Volkonskys and other "army" partisans, in turn, sought to defend their selfish interest - to prevent the liberation of the peasantry, the revolution and the plunder of their own estates. The government, fearing popular riots, ordered not to arm the serfs in any case and not to allow them to participate in hostilities. Because it is not known in which direction the man wants to turn his weapon.

Meanwhile, already on July 6, 1812, Alexander I issued a manifesto and an appeal to the inhabitants of the “Eternal Throne Capital of our Moscow” with a call to act as the initiators of the “people's armament” - i.e. militia. It was followed by a manifesto of July 18 (30) "On the formation of a temporary internal militia" by 16 central provinces adjacent to the established theater of military operations. According to this document, each landowner was obliged to submit to the militia a certain number of equipped and armed warriors from his serfs within the prescribed time. The unauthorized entry of serfs into the militia was a crime, i.e. escape. The selection of warriors was carried out by the landowner or peasant communities by lot. Noble estates that put up warriors in the militia were exempted from recruitment sets until it was dissolved. Other categories of peasants - state, economic, appanage, as well as philistines, artisans and children of clergy, who did not yet have a clergyman, were subject to recruitment in the usual manner.

But the realities of wartime and the rapid advance of the enemy deep into the country imposed their own adjustments on government plans. Not all landlords were able to organize resistance. Many, leaving their estates and peasants, fled to the capitals even before the release of the manifesto. The peasants of the western provinces, often left to themselves, simply went into the forests or organized their own self-defense units.

It is known that partisan peasants often attacked detachments of "army" partisans - the hussar and lancer uniforms are similar to the French ones ("gentlemen" dressed in the same fashion), and many Russian officers, brought up by French tutors, could hardly speak their native language.

Fair. The abyss between the European-educated nobility and the Russian muzhik, cut off from their roots, was huge. But let us remember that the same Denis Davydov and other, slightly less well-known noblemen-leaders of the partisan movement in the Moscow region and in the Smolensk region, under their own responsibility, attracted not only their own, but also other people's serfs into defense detachments. So, in the Smolensk province, the family of retired Major General D.E. Leslie formed from his yard and serfs the “equestrian hundred of Leslie brothers of the Smolensk militia”, which, with the permission of the military command, became part of the army. The noble militias and "army" partisans sought to work together with the people's partisan associations, to find with their leaders mutual language: they grew beards, dressed in Russian clothes, learned to use understandable, simple expressions in everyday speech.

L.N. Tolstoy turned out to be right: the war of 1812 was truly a turning point, not so much in political history Russia, how many in the history of relations the supreme political power And intellectual elite, the monarchy and the enlightened nobility, and most importantly - in the history of relations between the master and the peasant, who since the time of Peter I seemed to have lived on different planets.

Coming out of the completely Frenchized St. Petersburg salons, all domestic chers amis - Sergis, Georges, Pierres and Michels - finally saw their people in this war. These were soldiers selflessly saving the lives of their commanders on the battlefield; serfs and peasant women, who, armed with clubs and pitchforks, attacked French carts, resisted robbery and violence, drove the invaders from their native land.

Thanks to, perhaps, the only tragic moment in the history of post-Petrine Russia, when the interests of all strata of society coincided in the fight against external enemy, in 1812 it becomes obvious that the war, which engulfed a significant part of the country's territory, can only be a people's war. The “war by the rules”, which Napoleon wanted, who conquered half of Europe, simply did not take place: the Russian peasants, not knowing these rules, played everything according to their scenario ...

And the great "contact" with their own people was not in vain for the European educated people. The birth of the myth of a great people that, with a club in their hands, defeated the best army in the world, led to an unprecedented growth of historical self-awareness. It is no coincidence that already in 1816-1818 the first eight volumes of N.M. Karamzin’s “History of the Russian State” were published. Huge for that time, the three-thousand circulation diverges faster than a month. A second edition was immediately required, which sold out just as quickly. In the same years, as we know, the "golden age" of Russian poetry also falls: Pushkin appears as the creator of the Russian literary language. Experiments with folk art and introduction to literary language folk words, expressions, folklore elements P. Vyazemsky, one of the most prominent poets of the “Pushkin galaxy”, a veteran of the war of 1812, is actively involved.

Only thirteen years pass, and in December 1825 the color of the Russian nobility - yesterday's partisans and participants foreign campaign against Napoleonic France- with weapons in their hands, they demand the release of the monarch Russian people from slavery.

Was it necessary then for the peasant himself? Did he consider himself unfairly deprived, offended or humiliated by the supreme power? Hardly. The serf traditionally dreamed of a "good master", and not of civil liberties. But Russian nobility already managed to cherish in their minds a complex of "historical guilt" in front of the heroic, wise people, which they could not get rid of over the next century.

Gradually, step by step, the image of the suffering people, created through the efforts of the noble intelligentsia, ascends to the pedestal of the only "sower and keeper" of the Russian land. Not so much by historians as by "rulers of thoughts" - writers and journalistic brethren - new legends are actively breeding.

WITH light hand landowner N. Nekrasov, satirist M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, revolutionary democrats Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, at the forefront in the work of the "populist" intellectuals of the 1860s is almost the deification of the Russian peasantry. Wise, kind, hardworking and at the same time forgiving, humble men, suffering from the oppression of unjust rulers - typical heroes Russian literature, which was created by the noble landowners of the XIX century. On the pages of the works of I.S. Turgenev, N.N. Nekrasov, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, S.T. Aksakov we will not find a single negative character from the peasants: as if all drunkards, convinced villains, thieves and immoral types that only exist in the world automatically migrated to other classes.

Further more! Tolstoy and Dostoevsky introduce the fashion of worshiping the peasant, in fact, putting an equal sign between the concepts of "peasantry" and "Christianity": the suffering people, the God-bearing people become the idol of the entire educated society of Russia. Totally agree popular ideal theoretically recognized the right to the present future. We must learn from him, we must worship him, because the people are the bearers of a certain “higher truth”, which is inaccessible to thinking intellectuals.

Yes, in 1812 the country had not yet survived the execution of the Decembrists, had not heard Herzen's bloody dissident tocsin, had not lost Crimean War, did not taste the fruits of the tragic divergence between power and society, did not plunge into the bacchanalia of revolutionary terrorism, did not survive the great national catastrophe.

The year 1812 became, as we see, a kind of “moment of truth”, that very small pebble, which, perhaps, entailed an avalanche of more grandiose changes. Saving the country from the invasion of Napoleon, the Russian people accomplished a truly historic, grandiose feat. And it is impossible to deny its significance even after two centuries.

But the second of the ten commandments of the Lord says: “Do not make for yourself an idol and any likeness, a fir tree in heaven, a mountain, and a fir tree on the earth below, and a fir tree in the waters under the earth: do not bow down to them, nor serve them”.

Only the Russian intelligentsia, as well as the ruling circles, having once created a legend for themselves about their own people, began to worship him like an idol. After more than a hundred years, the zealous idolaters who are in power in a state that occupies one sixth of the land simply laid down all responsibility for the fate of the country: after all, there is real truth among the people, they themselves know what to do ...

It is symbolic that, as a result of this tragic delusion, the former horse thief Grigory Rasputin arose in the royal chambers, and the vogue for “muzhikovstvuyuschie” - village poets, various kinds of “prophets” as carriers Christian culture from the people - in the 1910s it overwhelmed the entire metropolitan beau monde.

"Rasputinism" finally discredited the monarchy in the eyes of society. But also the best representatives the progressive public, once in power, eventually stepped on the same rake. Prophesing about the coming of the "Coming Ham" in 1905-1907, D.S. Merezhkovsky could not even imagine that the wise, infallible, deified Russian peasant, in whom for a century the democratic intelligentsia saw their moral ideal and salvation. Many beautiful-hearted liberals, out of habit, for some time continued to justify the "people's wrath" with their historical guilt before the Russian peasantry, recognizing only their right to the revenge suffered for centuries:

However, a handful of political adventurers, throwing loud populist slogans in front of them, overnight managed to turn the entire Russian people into a controlled herd of bloodthirsty scoundrels:

None of the newly-minted leaders confessed their love for Russia, no one believed in the purity and high morality of its “sower and keeper”. Despising the stillborn myth of the great and wise people, the Bolsheviks relied only on their ability to control the masses, to play on the darkest instincts, age-old hatred, the desire to "share everything." And they didn't fail.

The idol was overthrown. But the "epiphany", alas, came too late:

Faced with bloody reality for the first time civil war, the Russian intelligentsia was ready, like Bulgakov’s captain Myshlaevsky, to furiously ruffle the shirt-front of that same “God-bearing peasant” who fled “to Petlyura”, joined the ranks of the Red Army, stood in the service of the Soviets and the Cheka.

On the other hand, she had much more reason to curse herself for creating a myth about the Russian people, which since the war of 1812 she did not know, did not understand and did not even try to see and accept it as it really is.

Cudgel of the People's War

Cudgel of the People's War
From the novel "War and Peace" (vol. IV, part 3, ch. 1) by L. N. Tolstoy (1828-1910): "Let's imagine two people who went out with swords to a duel according to all the rules of fencing art ... suddenly one of the opponents, feeling wounded, realizing that this was not a joke ... dropped his sword and, taking the first club that came across, began to turn it around ...
the lumberjack, who demanded a fight according to all the rules of art, were the French; his opponent, who dropped his sword and raised his club, were Russians... Despite all the complaints of the French about the failure to comply with the rules... the club of the people's war rose with all its formidable and majestic strength and, without asking anyone's tastes and rules, rose, fell and nailed French until the whole invasion is dead.
Allegorically: about the great possibilities of a people's war.

encyclopedic Dictionary winged words and expressions. - M.: "Lokid-Press". Vadim Serov. 2003 .

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