Upcoming boor article. History in stories

Dmitry Sergeevich Merezhkovsky

THE COMING HAM

"Petishism will win and must win," Herzen writes in 1864 in his article Ends and Beginnings. "Yes, dear friend, it is time to come to a calm and humble consciousness that philistinism is the final form of Western civilization."

It is difficult to suspect Herzen of dislike for Europe. After all, this is precisely one of those Russian people who, in the words of Dostoevsky, "have two homelands: our Rus' and Europe." Perhaps he himself did not know whom he loved more - Russia or Europe. Like his friend Bakunin, he was convinced that the final emancipation was not the work of any one people, but of all peoples together, of all mankind, and that a people could finally be freed only by renouncing its national isolation and entering the circle of all human life. "All-humanity", which for Pushkin was an aesthetic contemplation, for Herzen, the first of the Russian people, becomes a life action, a feat. He sacrificed not abstractly, but really, his love for Europe, his love for Russia. For Europe he became an eternal exile, he lived for her and was ready to die for her. In moments of despondency and disappointment, he regretted that he did not take a gun, which one worker offered him during the revolution of 1848 in Paris, and did not die on the barricades.

If such a person has doubts about Europe, it is not because there is not enough, but because he believed in it too much. And when he pronounces his verdict "I see the inevitable death of old Europe and do not regret anything that exists", when he claims that at the doors of the old world - "not Catiline, but death", and on his forehead Ciceron's: "vixerunt", then one may not accept this verdict - I personally do not accept it - but one cannot but admit that in the mouth of Herzen it carries terrible weight.

In confirmation of his thoughts about the inevitable victory of philistinism in Europe, Herzen refers to one of the noblest representatives of European culture, to one of its "knights without fear and reproach," J. St. Mill.

Philistinism, says Herzen, is that autocratic mob of St. Mill’s conglomerated mediocrity, which owns everything—a mob without ignorance, but also without education... Mill sees that everything around him is vulgar, petty; with despair looks at the overwhelming masses of some kind of pressed caviar, squeezed from a myriad of philistine petty things ... He did not exaggerate at all when he spoke about the narrowing of the mind, energy, about the obliteration of personalities, about the constant reduction of life, about the constant exclusion of universal human interests from it, about on the interests of the trading office and philistine welfare. Mill directly says that along this path England will become China - we will add to this: and not only England.

"Maybe some crisis will save us from Chinese insanity. But where will it come from, how? I don't know that, and neither does Mill." "Where is that mighty thought, that passionate faith, that ardent hope that can harden the body, bring the soul to convulsive exasperation, which feels neither pain nor deprivation and goes with firm steps to the chopping block, to the fire? Look around - what is able to raise nations?

Christianity has become shallow and quiet in the calm and rocky harbor of the Reformation; the revolution in the calm and sandy harbor of liberalism has also become shallow... With such a condescending church, with such a manual revolution, the Western world began to defend itself, to balance itself.

"Wherever the human anthills and hives achieved relative satisfaction and balance, the forward movement became quieter, and quieter, until finally the last silence of China came."

Following in the footsteps of the "Asiatic peoples who emerged from history," all of Europe "with a quiet, unperturbed step" is moving towards this last silence of a prosperous anthill, towards "petty-bourgeois crystallization" - Sinicization.

Herzen agrees with Mill: "Unless some unexpected upheaval takes place in Europe, which will revive the human personality and give it the strength to defeat philistinism, then, despite its noble antecedents and its Christianity, Europe will become China."

“Think,” Herzen concludes the letter to an unknown Russian, “it seems to the entire Russian people, think, and your hair will stand on end.”

Neither Mill nor Herzen saw the ultimate cause of this spiritual philistinism. "We are not doctors at all! We are pain," Herzen warns. And indeed, in all these prophecies - not only for Mill, but partly for Herzen, prophecies against one's own head - there is no conclusion, no knowledge, but only a cry of unknown pain, unknown horror. The causes of philistinism Herzen and Mill could not see, just as a man cannot see his face without a mirror. What they suffer and what they fear in others is not only in others, but also in themselves, in the last impenetrable and even invisible to them limits of their own religious, or rather, anti-religious consciousness.

The last limit of all modern European culture is positivism, or, in Herzen's terminology, "scientific realism", as a method not only of particular scientific, but also of general philosophical and even religious thinking. Born in science and philosophy, positivism has grown from a scientific and philosophical consciousness into an unconscious religion that seeks to abolish and replace all former religions. Positivism, in this broad sense, is the affirmation of the world open to sensory experience as the only real one, and the denial of the supersensible world; the denial of the end and the beginning of the world in God and the affirmation of the endless and beginningless continuation of the world in phenomena, the endless and beginningless environment of phenomena, impenetrable to man, the middle, mediocrity, that absolute, completely dense, like the Wall of China, "solid mediocrity", conglomerated mediocrity, that absolute petty-bourgeoisness, which Mill and Herzen speak of, themselves not understanding the ultimate metaphysical depth of what they say.

In Europe, positivism is only being developed; in China, it has already become a religion. The spiritual foundation of China, the teachings of Lao Tzu and Confucius, is perfect positivism, a religion without God, "an earthly religion without heaven," as Herzen puts it about European scientific realism. No secrets, no deepenings and impulses to "other worlds". Everything is simple, everything is flat. Invincible common sense, invincible positivity. There is what is, and there is nothing more, nothing more is needed. The world here is everything, and there is no other world but this world. The earth is everything, and there is nothing but the earth. Heaven is not a beginning and an end, but a beginningless and endless continuation of the earth. Earth and heaven will not be one, as Christianity claims, but the essence is one. The greatest empire on earth is the Heavenly Empire, the earthly sky. The middle kingdom - the kingdom of the eternal middle, eternal mediocrity, absolute philistinism - "the kingdom is not of God, but of man," as Herzen again defines the social ideal of positivism. Chinese ancestor worship, a golden age in the past, corresponds to European worship of the descendants of a golden age in the future. If not we, then our descendants will see the earthly paradise, the earthly sky, - the religion of progress affirms. Both in worship of ancestors and in worship of descendants, a single human face, a person is equally sacrificed to an impersonal, countless family, people, humanity - “pressed caviar, squeezed from a myriad of philistine small fry”, to the coming universal polyp forest and anthill. Renouncing God, the absolute Divine Personality, man inevitably renounces his own human personality. Refusing, for the sake of a lentil soup of moderate satiety, from his divine hunger and divine birthright, a person inevitably falls into absolute philistinism.

This was the title of a largely prophetic article by Dmitry Merezhkovsky, published before the revolution. It seems to us that in many ways she predicted the great turmoil of 1917.

Many of today's readers will see the similarity of this work with the "Heart of a Dog" by Mikhail Bulgakov. Like, we are talking about a “rootless proletarian” who claims power in society and is ready to go to any meanness and crime for this. Something like this should be thought by an intellectual “Russian”, saturated with anti-Soviet propaganda of the late 20th century.

It may seem strange that this significant and fundamental article was not included in D. Merezhkovsky's Selected Works, compiled by A. Gorlo and published in 1989 in Chisinau. This happened, most likely, not by chance, because the compiler, who cursed the Soviet state, was familiar with the article and understood that it did not expose the proletariat at all, but the philistine bourgeoisie, concerned only with personal comfort and well-being.

It can be noted, by the way, that the notorious Sharikov from The Heart of a Dog is not so much a negative character as a character suffering and drugged by propaganda, while perhaps the only negative character in the story is Shvonder.

Merezhkovsky wrote about the triumph of the petty-bourgeois spirit, detrimental to culture, normal social relations, and the human person. According to Merezhkovsky's prophecy, the kingdom of the Coming boor is coming: "Fear one thing - slavery, and the worst of all slavery - philistinism, and the worst of all philistinism - rudeness, for the reigning slave is a boor ... - the coming Prince of this world."

This was said at the beginning of the 20th century in pre-revolutionary Russia and found its full embodiment in Russia in the second half of the 20th century, which ended in great turmoil. Merezhkovsky did not mean the traditional interpretation of philistinism in the sense - townspeople. He clarified: “Petishism is an autocratic crowd close-knit mediocrity»; "philistinism - ultimate form of western civilization».

Merezhkovsky was one of the first in Russia to talk about Western-style democracy as the power of the mob, an average petty and devoid of high ideals person who reduces life "to the interests of a trading office or petty-bourgeois welfare." He did not share the hopes of the Marxists for victory and the power of the proletariat, reasonably believing that such a victory would be temporary, because the urban proletariat "would be all philistinism."

Didn't that happen in the USSR? Just do not forget that the Coming boor is not a proletarian and a revolutionary, but precisely a “muzzle of a philistine,” in the words of Mayakovsky, whose plays “The Bedbug” and “The Bathhouse” confirmed the accuracy of the fears of Merezhkovsky, who did not at all reject the revolution. He argued that freedom cannot be obtained by order of superiors; it can only be won by proving that you are worthy of freedom: “No, the people who are liberated and who have not liberated themselves are not free. Freedom is not a mercy, but a right.”

I recall from Goethe's Faust: "Only he is worthy of happiness and freedom, Who every day goes to fight for them!"

For those who consciously lived in Russia at the end of the 20th century, the words of Merezhkovsky will seem relevant: “What a smug vulgarity and flatness in facial expressions! You look and “marvel at the great surprise,” as the Apocalypse says: where did these crowned lackeys Smerdyakovs come from, these triumphant boors?

The writer noticed the features of vulgarization, first of all, of Western civilization, which already then, a century ago, reached the longed-for well-fed paradise, the “Middle Kingdom” (according to Merezhkovsky) of self-satisfied philistinism. What else do you want in such a state, except for an additional share of benefits, except for the maximum satisfaction of your ever-growing material needs? A Russian restless person has evil thoughts: "Socialism without revolution, a lion without claws, socialism digested in the ostrich stomach of the bourgeoisie ... in the earthly paradise of the bourgeoisie."

At the same time, the writer asks a reasonable question: “Is there not a righteous, wise, kind, saint philistinism? And I want to answer: of course - there is. Philistines are different, and if they make up a certain middle part of society, then is it possible to do without such a middle at all, even if it is mediocre, not distinguished by either talents or a rebellious spirit, so necessary for creativity.

This means that the whole point is in the triumphant, aggressive, claiming power, propagating their ideals petty bourgeoisie - militant, not humble. Merezhkovsky spoke out against such an active and self-satisfied, power-hungry bourgeois, the Coming boor. Then it was the Coming One, and now it has become Manifested and truly triumphant in Russia, having seized its wealth and sold it for next to nothing for its own benefit.

The pre-revolutionary spiritual turmoil that struck Russian society was determined, as it seems to us, by the spread of the ideology of the base bourgeoisie, the Coming boor: not so much by the clash of ideas, but by the triumph of lack of ideas, unbelief (and not atheism), removal from high social ideals.

At the present time, when the White movement is constantly being whitewashed and the Red movement is being blackened, who clashed in the Civil War, it may seem strange that the victory turned out to be on the side of the "plebeians" and not the "noble". But the fact of the matter is that the ideals that the Bolsheviks proclaimed (although not always, of course, realized) were clear, relevant and tempting: “Power to the workers, land to the peasants (actually the slogan of the Socialist-Revolutionaries), bread - hungry, peace to the peoples. At the same time, a distant, completely utopian idea of ​​a bright and just communist society was proclaimed.

What opposed this White Guard movement? Not even a return to the monarchy, but the social ideal of Western democracy, a well-fed earthly paradise, focused on material values.

Heroes make sacrifices and die in the name of lofty ideals that exceed the value of personal life. It is absurd to give your life so that you live more satisfying and comfortable.

By the way, V.I. Vernadsky, who visited the rear of Denikin's army, where he met and talked with P.I. Novgorodtsev, noted in his diary signs of the moral degradation of the White Guards and foresaw their defeat. This was forced to admit and fought against the Reds V.V. Shulgin is first a monarchist who accepted the abdication of Nicholas II, then the ideologist of the White movement. He wrote in 1920: "The White movement was started almost by saints, and almost finished by robbers." Much later, having been in the camps and released under an amnesty in 1953, he clarified: "The Reds, having started almost as robbers, have been striving for holiness for some time." But immediately, having enumerated some of the crimes of the Bolsheviks, he was nevertheless forced to admit that even being robbers, the Reds aspired to lofty ideals. And he quoted the words of A. Blok from the poem "The Twelve":

So they go with a sovereign step -

Behind is a hungry dog.

Ahead - with a bloody flag,

and behind the blizzard is invisible,

and unharmed by a bullet,

with a gentle step over the wind,

snowy scattering of pearls,

in a white corolla of roses -

ahead is Jesus Christ.

Why did Blok overshadow the revolutionary semi-bandits with the image of Jesus Christ? Partly because the poet to the depths of his soul hated the self-satisfied vulgarity of well-fed militant bourgeois, spreading ideological infection around. In his diary, he wrote about such bourgeois as the fiends of the devil, greedy universal demons.

The Russian revolution was not only a product of turmoil, but also an uprising against turmoil in the minds, against trivialized social ideals, in the name of higher values ​​... However, everything happened and revolutionaries were everyone.

"Petishism will win and must win," Herzen writes in 1864 in his article Ends and Beginnings. "Yes, dear friend, it is time to come to a calm and humble consciousness that philistinism is the final form of Western civilization."

It is difficult to suspect Herzen of dislike for Europe. After all, this is precisely one of those Russian people who, in the words of Dostoevsky, "have two homelands: our Rus' and Europe." Perhaps he himself did not know whom he loved more - Russia or Europe. Like his friend Bakunin, he was convinced that the final emancipation was not the work of any one people, but of all peoples together, of all mankind, and that a people could finally be freed only by renouncing its national isolation and entering the circle of all human life. "All-humanity", which for Pushkin was an aesthetic contemplation, for Herzen, the first of the Russian people, becomes a life action, a feat. He sacrificed not abstractly, but really, his love for Europe, his love for Russia. For Europe he became an eternal exile, he lived for her and was ready to die for her. In moments of despondency and disappointment, he regretted that he did not take a gun, which one worker offered him during the revolution of 1848 in Paris, and did not die on the barricades.

If such a person has doubts about Europe, it is not because there is not enough, but because he believed in it too much. And when he pronounces his verdict "I see the inevitable death of old Europe and do not regret anything that exists", when he claims that at the doors of the old world - "not Catiline, but death", and on his forehead Ciceron's: "vixerunt", then one may not accept this verdict - I personally do not accept it - but one cannot but admit that in the mouth of Herzen it carries terrible weight.

In confirmation of his thoughts about the inevitable victory of philistinism in Europe, Herzen refers to one of the noblest representatives of European culture, to one of its "knights without fear and reproach," J. St. Mill.

Philistinism, says Herzen, is that autocratic mob of St. Mill’s conglomerated mediocrity, which owns everything—a mob without ignorance, but also without education... Mill sees that everything around him is vulgar, petty; with despair looks at the overwhelming masses of some kind of pressed caviar, squeezed from a myriad of philistine petty things ... He did not exaggerate at all when he spoke about the narrowing of the mind, energy, about the obliteration of personalities, about the constant reduction of life, about the constant exclusion of universal human interests from it, about on the interests of the trading office and philistine welfare. Mill directly says that along this path England will become China - we will add to this: and not only England.

"Maybe some crisis will save us from Chinese insanity. But where will it come from, how? I don't know that, and neither does Mill." "Where is that mighty thought, that passionate faith, that ardent hope that can harden the body, bring the soul to convulsive exasperation, which feels neither pain nor deprivation and goes with firm steps to the chopping block, to the fire? Look around - what is able to raise nations?

Christianity has become shallow and quiet in the calm and rocky harbor of the Reformation; the revolution in the calm and sandy harbor of liberalism has also become shallow... With such a condescending church, with such a manual revolution, the Western world began to defend itself, to balance itself.

"Wherever the human anthills and hives achieved relative satisfaction and balance, the forward movement became quieter, and quieter, until finally the last silence of China came."

Following in the footsteps of the "Asiatic peoples who emerged from history," all of Europe "with a quiet, unperturbed step" is moving towards this last silence of a prosperous anthill, towards "petty-bourgeois crystallization" - Sinicization.

Herzen agrees with Mill: "Unless some unexpected upheaval takes place in Europe, which will revive the human personality and give it the strength to defeat philistinism, then, despite its noble antecedents and its Christianity, Europe will become China."

“Think,” Herzen concludes the letter to an unknown Russian, “it seems to the entire Russian people, think, and your hair will stand on end.”

Neither Mill nor Herzen saw the ultimate cause of this spiritual philistinism. "We are not doctors at all! We are pain," Herzen warns. And indeed, in all these prophecies - not only for Mill, but partly for Herzen, prophecies against one's own head - there is no conclusion, no knowledge, but only a cry of unknown pain, unknown horror. The causes of philistinism Herzen and Mill could not see, just as a man cannot see his face without a mirror. What they suffer and what they fear in others is not only in others, but also in themselves, in the last impenetrable and even invisible to them limits of their own religious, or rather, anti-religious consciousness.

The last limit of all modern European culture is positivism, or, in Herzen's terminology, "scientific realism", as a method not only of particular scientific, but also of general philosophical and even religious thinking. Born in science and philosophy, positivism has grown from a scientific and philosophical consciousness into an unconscious religion that seeks to abolish and replace all former religions. Positivism, in this broad sense, is the affirmation of the world open to sensory experience as the only real one, and the denial of the supersensible world; the denial of the end and the beginning of the world in God and the affirmation of the endless and beginningless continuation of the world in phenomena, the endless and beginningless environment of phenomena, impenetrable to man, the middle, mediocrity, that absolute, completely dense, like the Wall of China, "solid mediocrity", conglomerated mediocrity, that absolute petty-bourgeoisness, which Mill and Herzen speak of, themselves not understanding the ultimate metaphysical depth of what they say.

In Europe, positivism is only being developed; in China, it has already become a religion. The spiritual foundation of China, the teachings of Lao Tzu and Confucius, is perfect positivism, a religion without God, "an earthly religion without heaven," as Herzen puts it about European scientific realism. No secrets, no deepenings and impulses to "other worlds". Everything is simple, everything is flat. Invincible common sense, invincible positivity. There is what is, and there is nothing more, nothing more is needed. The world here is everything, and there is no other world but this world. The earth is everything, and there is nothing but the earth. Heaven is not a beginning and an end, but a beginningless and endless continuation of the earth. Earth and heaven will not be one, as Christianity claims, but the essence is one. The greatest empire on earth is the Heavenly Empire, the earthly sky. The middle kingdom - the kingdom of the eternal middle, eternal mediocrity, absolute philistinism - "the kingdom is not of God, but of man," as Herzen again defines the social ideal of positivism. Chinese ancestor worship, a golden age in the past, corresponds to European worship of the descendants of a golden age in the future. If not we, then our descendants will see the earthly paradise, the earthly sky, - the religion of progress affirms. Both in worship of ancestors and in worship of descendants, a single human face, a person is equally sacrificed to an impersonal, countless family, people, humanity - “pressed caviar, squeezed from a myriad of philistine small fry”, to the coming universal polyp forest and anthill. Renouncing God, the absolute Divine Personality, man inevitably renounces his own human personality. Refusing, for the sake of a lentil soup of moderate satiety, from his divine hunger and divine birthright, a person inevitably falls into absolute philistinism.

The Chinese are perfect yellow-faced positivists; Europeans are still imperfect white-faced Chinese. In this sense, Americans are more perfect than Europeans. Here the extreme West converges with the extreme East.

"The coming boor" - an article by Dmitry Sergeevich Merezhkovsky, a Russian writer, poet, critic, translator, historian, religious philosopher, public figure. Warning society against "underestimating the powerful forces that impede religious and social liberation", the writer believed that the intelligentsia, embodying the "living spirit of Russia", is opposed by the forces of "spiritual slavery and rudeness, fed by the elements of philistinism, impersonality, mediocrity and vulgarity." At the same time, “rudeness” in his terminology was not a social characteristic, but a synonym for lack of spirituality (materialism, positivism, philistinism, atheism, etc.). If there is no religious renewal, the whole world, including Russia, is waiting for the "Coming boor," the writer argued.

According to Merezhkovsky, "rudeness" in Russia has three "faces": past, present and future. In the past, the face of rudeness is the face of the church, which renders the Caesar of God, it is the "Orthodox treasury", serving the autocratic treasury. The real face of rudeness was associated by Merezhkovsky with the Russian autocracy, with the huge bureaucratic machine of the state. But the most terrible face of rudeness is the future, it is "the face of rudeness coming from below - hooliganism, hooliganism, black hundred." I think that the article not only has not lost its relevance, but has acquired it in a new shape.

Herzen agrees with Mill: “Unless some unexpected upheaval takes place in Europe, which will revive the human personality and give it the strength to defeat philistinism, then, despite its noble antecedents and its Christianity, Europe will become China.”

In Europe, positivism is only being developed; in China, it has already become a religion. The spiritual foundation of China, the teachings of Lao Tzu and Confucius, is perfect positivism, a religion without God, "an earthly religion without heaven," as Herzen puts it about European scientific realism. No secrets, no deepenings and impulses to "other worlds". Everything is simple, everything is flat. Invincible common sense, invincible positivity. There is what is, and there is nothing more, nothing more is needed. The world here is everything, and there is no other world but this world.

As long as Europe pitted its best against the bad Chinese guns, it was winning, and this victory seemed like a triumph of culture over barbarism. But when the guns equalized, then the cultures equalized. It turned out that Europe had nothing but guns, with which she could show her cultural superiority over the barbarians.

Who is true to his physiology, he is consistent, who is consistent, he is strong, and who is strong, he wins. Japan defeated Russia. China will defeat Europe, unless a great spiritual upheaval takes place in itself, which will overthrow the last metaphysical foundations of its culture and make it possible to oppose the guns of the positive East not only the guns of the positive West, but something real, more true.

“God exists, so man is a slave. Man is free, therefore there is no God. I affirm that no one will leave this circle, and now we will choose.”

“If there is a God, then man is a slave,” says Bakunin. Why? Because "freedom is the negation of all power, and God is power." Bakunin considers this position an axiom. Indeed, this would be an axiom if there were no Christ.

The religion of modern Europe is not Christianity, but philistinism. There is only one step from prudent, well-fed philistinism to insane, hungry atrocities. Not only man to man, but people to people - a wolf. Only mutual fear keeps from mutual devouring, the bridle is too weak for the furious animals. If not today, then tomorrow they will rush at each other and an unprecedented massacre will begin.

It is in this terrible freedom of the spirit, in this ability to suddenly break away from the soil, from everyday life, history, to burn all one's ships, to break all one's past in the name of an unknown future - in this arbitrary groundlessness lies one of the deepest features of the Russian spirit. We are very difficult to move; but once we have moved, we reach in everything, in good and evil, in truth and falsehood, in wisdom and folly, to the extreme.

Be afraid of one thing - slavery and the worst of all slavery - philistinism and the worst of all philistinism - rudeness, for the reigning slave is the boor, and the reigning boor is the devil - no longer the old, fantastic, but the new, real devil, really terrible, more terrible, what they paint him with - the coming Prince of this world, the Coming Ham.

Quotations from other books can be found in

Secrets of troubled epochs Mironov Sergey

"THE COMING HAM"

"THE COMING HAM"

This was the title of a largely prophetic article by Dmitry Merezhkovsky, published before the revolution. It seems to us that in many ways she predicted the great turmoil of 1917.

Many of today's readers will see the similarity of this work with the "Heart of a Dog" by Mikhail Bulgakov. Like, we are talking about a “rootless proletarian” who claims power in society and is ready to go to any meanness and crime for this. Something like this should be thought by an intellectual “Russian”, saturated with anti-Soviet propaganda of the late 20th century.

It may seem strange that this significant and fundamental article was not included in D. Merezhkovsky's Selected Works, compiled by A. Gorlo and published in 1989 in Chisinau. This happened, most likely, not by chance, because the compiler, who cursed the Soviet state, was familiar with the article and understood that it did not expose the proletariat at all, but the philistine bourgeoisie, concerned only with personal comfort and well-being.

It can be noted, by the way, that the notorious Sharikov from The Heart of a Dog is not so much a negative character as a character suffering and drugged by propaganda, while perhaps the only negative character in the story is Shvonder.

Merezhkovsky wrote about the triumph of the petty-bourgeois spirit, detrimental to culture, normal social relations, and the human person. According to Merezhkovsky's prophecy, the kingdom of the Coming boor is coming: "Fear one thing - slavery, and the worst of all slavery - philistinism, and the worst of all philistinism - rudeness, for the reigning slave is a boor ... - the coming Prince of this world."

This was said at the beginning of the 20th century in pre-revolutionary Russia and found its full embodiment in Russia in the second half of the 20th century, which ended in great turmoil. Merezhkovsky did not mean the traditional interpretation of philistinism in the sense - townspeople. He clarified: “Petishism is an autocratic crowd close-knit mediocrity»; "philistinism - ultimate form of western civilization».

Merezhkovsky was one of the first in Russia to talk about Western-style democracy as the power of the mob, an average petty and devoid of high ideals person who reduces life "to the interests of a trading office or petty-bourgeois welfare." He did not share the hopes of the Marxists for victory and the power of the proletariat, reasonably believing that such a victory would be temporary, because the urban proletariat "would be all philistinism."

Didn't that happen in the USSR? Just do not forget that the Coming boor is not a proletarian and a revolutionary, but precisely a “muzzle of a philistine,” in the words of Mayakovsky, whose plays “The Bedbug” and “The Bathhouse” confirmed the accuracy of the fears of Merezhkovsky, who did not at all reject the revolution. He argued that freedom cannot be obtained by order of superiors; it can only be won by proving that you are worthy of freedom: “No, the people who are liberated and who have not liberated themselves are not free. Freedom is not a mercy, but a right.”

I recall from Goethe's Faust: "Only he is worthy of happiness and freedom, Who every day goes to fight for them!"

For those who consciously lived in Russia at the end of the 20th century, the words of Merezhkovsky will seem relevant: “What a smug vulgarity and flatness in facial expressions! You look and “marvel at the great surprise,” as the Apocalypse says: where did these crowned lackeys Smerdyakovs come from, these triumphant boors?

The writer noticed the features of vulgarization, first of all, of Western civilization, which already then, a century ago, reached the longed-for well-fed paradise, the “Middle Kingdom” (according to Merezhkovsky) of self-satisfied philistinism. What else do you want in such a state, except for an additional share of benefits, except for the maximum satisfaction of your ever-growing material needs? A Russian restless person has evil thoughts: "Socialism without revolution, a lion without claws, socialism digested in the ostrich stomach of the bourgeoisie ... in the earthly paradise of the bourgeoisie."

At the same time, the writer asks a reasonable question: “Is there not a righteous, wise, kind, saint philistinism? And I want to answer: of course - there is. Philistines are different, and if they make up a certain middle part of society, then is it possible to do without such a middle at all, even if it is mediocre, not distinguished by either talents or a rebellious spirit, so necessary for creativity.

This means that the whole point is in the triumphant, aggressive, claiming power, propagating their ideals petty bourgeoisie - militant, not humble. Merezhkovsky spoke out against such an active and self-satisfied, power-hungry bourgeois, the Coming boor. Then it was the Coming One, and now it has become Manifested and truly triumphant in Russia, having seized its wealth and sold it for next to nothing for its own benefit.

The pre-revolutionary spiritual turmoil that struck Russian society was determined, as it seems to us, by the spread of the ideology of the base bourgeoisie, the Coming boor: not so much by the clash of ideas, but by the triumph of lack of ideas, unbelief (and not atheism), removal from high social ideals.

At the present time, when the White movement is constantly being whitewashed and the Red movement is being blackened, who clashed in the Civil War, it may seem strange that the victory turned out to be on the side of the "plebeians" and not the "noble". But the fact of the matter is that the ideals that the Bolsheviks proclaimed (although not always, of course, realized) were clear, relevant and tempting: “Power to the workers, land to the peasants (actually the slogan of the Socialist-Revolutionaries), bread - hungry, peace to the peoples. At the same time, a distant, completely utopian idea of ​​a bright and just communist society was proclaimed.

What opposed this White Guard movement? Not even a return to the monarchy, but the social ideal of Western democracy, a well-fed earthly paradise, focused on material values.

Heroes make sacrifices and die in the name of lofty ideals that exceed the value of personal life. It is absurd to give your life so that you live more satisfying and comfortable.

By the way, V.I. Vernadsky, who visited the rear of Denikin's army, where he met and talked with P.I. Novgorodtsev, noted in his diary signs of the moral degradation of the White Guards and foresaw their defeat. This was forced to admit and fought against the Reds V.V. Shulgin is first a monarchist who accepted the abdication of Nicholas II, then the ideologist of the White movement. He wrote in 1920: "The White movement was started almost by saints, and almost finished by robbers." Much later, having been in the camps and released under an amnesty in 1953, he clarified: "The Reds, having started almost as robbers, have been striving for holiness for some time." But immediately, having enumerated some of the crimes of the Bolsheviks, he was nevertheless forced to admit that even being robbers, the Reds aspired to lofty ideals. And he quoted the words of A. Blok from the poem "The Twelve":

So they go with a sovereign step -

Behind is a hungry dog.

Ahead - with a bloody flag,

and behind the blizzard is invisible,

and unharmed by a bullet,

with a gentle step over the wind,

snowy scattering of pearls,

in a white corolla of roses -

ahead is Jesus Christ.

Why did Blok overshadow the revolutionary semi-bandits with the image of Jesus Christ? Partly because the poet to the depths of his soul hated the self-satisfied vulgarity of well-fed militant bourgeois, spreading ideological infection around. In his diary, he wrote about such bourgeois as the fiends of the devil, greedy universal demons.

The Russian revolution was not only a product of turmoil, but also an uprising against turmoil in the minds, against trivialized social ideals, in the name of higher values ​​... However, everything happened and revolutionaries were everyone.