Likhachev Russian culture summary. Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev

European culture - what are its main features? If you define the geographical boundaries of Europe, then this will not present any particular difficulties. This is, to a large extent, conditional. We can agree to consider Europe to the Urals or to the Volga ...

However, it is much more difficult to determine the features of the culture of Europe, its spiritual boundaries.

The culture of North America, for example, is undoubtedly European, although it lies outside the geographic boundaries of Europe. And at the same time, we must admit: if the geographical boundaries of Europe, for all their "materiality", are conditional, then the spiritual features of European culture are unconditional and definite.

These spiritual features of European culture can be perceived directly, and therefore their existence, from my point of view, does not require proof.

First of all, European culture is a personal culture (this is its universalism), then it is receptive to other personalities and cultures, and, finally, it is a culture based on the freedom of creative self-expression of the individual. These three features of European culture are based on Christianity, and where Christianity is lost in one form or another, European culture still has Christian roots. And in this sense, it is understandable that, by renouncing God, European culture loses these three extremely important features of its own.

Let's touch on susceptibility to other cultures. What Dostoevsky attributed in his famous speech at the Pushkin celebrations only to Russian people - "All-humanity", susceptibility to foreign cultures, is in fact the common basis of all European culture as a whole. The European is able to study, include in his orbit all cultural phenomena, all "stones", all graves. All of them are "family". He perceives everything valuable not only with the mind, but also with the heart.

European culture is a culture of universalism, and universalism of a personal nature.

The personal nature of European culture determines its special relationship to everything outside of this culture. This is not only tolerance, but to a certain extent, and attraction to the other. Hence the principle of freedom, inner freedom.

All three principles of European culture - its personal character, its universalism and its freedom - are inconceivable without each other. As soon as one is taken away, the other two are destroyed. It is worth taking away universalism and recognizing only one's own culture, as freedom perishes. And vice versa. This was proved by National Socialism and Stalinism.

The basis of personality is freedom of expression. Only freedom gives a person personal dignity. Personality grows only in the presence of feedback from other personalities.

A society is only then a society, and not a crowd, not a “population”, when it consists of individuals who are turned to each other, able to willingly understand each other, and thanks to this, give the other freedom - “for something” - for self-realization in the first place . Tolerance is necessary, otherwise the existence of a society without violence is impossible, and only a society without personalities can exist, a society of officials, slaves, whose behavior is regulated only by fear of punishment.

However, tolerance alone is not enough. Mutual understanding is needed. Not a refusal to interfere in the spiritual life of the individual (which can be guaranteed by the state), but an understanding of the spiritual life of another, the recognition of some truth behind it, even if it is incomplete.

So, the three foundations of European culture: personality, universalism and freedom. Without one of these foundations, the other two cannot exist, but the full realization of one of them requires the realization of the other two.

The basis of European culture is Christianity, which solved the problem of personality. The only religion in which God is a person.

The three foundations of European culture are obviously connected with its mission: to preserve in its depths, in its science and understanding, all the cultures of mankind - both existing and previously existing.

Each culture and each cultural people has its own mission in history, its own idea. But it is precisely this mission and this idea that are being targeted by evil and can turn into an "anti-mission."

Evil, in my opinion, is, first of all, the denial of good, its reflection with a minus sign.

Evil fulfills its negative mission by attacking the most characteristic features of culture associated with its mission, with its idea.

The stronger the good, the more dangerous its "counterweight" - evil, which carries the individual features of culture, but again with a minus sign. So, for example, if the people are generous and their generosity is the most important feature, then the evil inclination in it will be wastefulness, wastefulness. If the most noticeable feature of the people is accuracy, then the evil will be instability, brought to complete heartlessness and spiritual emptiness.

The illusory individuality of evil is generated by the creative individuality of good. Evil is devoid of independent creativity. Evil consists in uncreative denial and uncreative opposition to good.

From what I have said about the characteristic features of evil, it becomes clear why in European culture evil manifests itself, first of all, in the form of a struggle with the personal principle in culture, with tolerance, with freedom of creativity, expresses itself in anti-Christianity, in the denial of everything that consists of core values ​​of European culture. These are religious confrontations between the Middle Ages and the totalitarianism of the 20th century with its racism, the desire to suppress creativity, reducing it to one meager direction, the destruction of entire nations and estates.

Based on what has been said, let us turn to the features of good and evil in Russian culture, in the Russian people.

Russian culture has always been European in its type and carried all three distinctive features associated with Christianity: a personal beginning, susceptibility to other cultures (universals) and the desire for freedom.

The Slavophiles unanimously pointed to the main sign (feature) of Russian culture - its catholicity. And this is true, if we confine ourselves only to the positive side of Russian culture. Sobornost is one of the forms of those three principles of European culture that are so characteristic of it.

Sobornost is a manifestation of a Christian inclination towards a social and spiritual principle. In music, this is the choral principle. And it is, indeed, very characteristic of church music, of opera music (it is clearly expressed in Glinka and Mussorgsky). In economic life, it is a community (but only in its best manifestations).

This is accompanied by tolerance in national relations. Let us recall that the legendary beginning of Rus' was marked by the joint calling of the Varangian princes, in which both East Slavic and Finno-Ugric tribes took part, and later on the state of Rus' was always multinational. Universalism and a direct attraction to other national cultures were characteristic of both Ancient Rus' and Russia in the 18th-20th centuries.

Here again we recall Dostoevsky with his characterization of Russians in his famous speech at the Pushkin celebrations.

But this is extremely characteristic of Russian science as well. The Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences created a remarkable oriental studies. Great Sinologists, Arabists, Mongolists, Turkologists, Finno-Ugric scholars worked there. Petersburg and Moscow were the centers of Armenian and Georgian culture.

It is worth paying attention to the fact that the old capital of Russia, St. Petersburg, was the center of various European arts. Italians, Dutch, French, Scots, Germans built here. Germans, Swedes, French lived here - engineers, scientists, artists, musicians, decorators, gardeners...

For Ancient Rus' and Muscovite Russia until the 18th century, the establishment of state life on a voluntary basis was characteristic (my statement may seem paradoxical, but it is exactly so).

The prince in Ancient Rus' began his day with a meeting with a squad, which included the military and secular. Princely "snems" (congresses) were constantly convened. The people in Novgorod, Kyiv, Pskov and other cities converged on veche meetings, although their exact status is not sufficiently clear. Zemsky and church councils are of great importance in Muscovite Rus'.

Repeatedly used in documents of the XV1-XVII centuries. formulas - “the great sovereign spoke, but the boyars were sentenced” (i.e., they decided) or “the great sovereign said, but the boyars were not sentenced” testify to the relativity of the power of the Sovereign.

The desire of the people for freedom, for "freedom" was expressed in the constant movements of the population to the North. East and South. The peasants sought to escape from the power of the state to the Cossacks, beyond the Urals, into the dense forests of the North. At the same time, it should be noted that national enmity with local tribes was relatively insignificant. There is no doubt about the deep attachment of the people to antiquity, expressed in the traditional nature of the church routine and in the movement of the Old Believers.

The amplitude of fluctuations between good and evil in the Russian people is extremely high. The Russian people are a people of extremes and a quick and unexpected transition from one thing to another, and therefore a people of unpredictable history.

The pinnacles of good coexist with the deepest gorges of evil. And Russian culture was constantly overcome by "balances" to goodness in its culture: mutual enmity, tyranny, nationalism, intolerance. I will again draw attention to the fact that evil seeks to destroy the most valuable thing in culture. Evil acts purposefully, and this indicates that "evil" has a "consciousness". If the conscious principle did not exist in evil, it would have to break through only in weak areas, while in the national character, in national cultures, as I have already said, it attacks the heights.

It is striking that in Russian culture all its European, Christian values ​​were attacked by evil: catholicity, national tolerance, public freedom. Evil acted especially intensively in the era of Grozny (it was not characteristic of Russian history), in the reign of Peter, when Europeanization was combined with the enslavement of the people and the strengthening of state tyranny. The attacks of evil in Russia reached their apogee in the era of Stalin and "Stalinism".

One detail is typical. The Russian people have always been distinguished by their industriousness and, more precisely, "agricultural industriousness", a well-organized agricultural life of the peasantry. Agricultural labor was sacred. And it was precisely the peasantry and the religiosity of the Russian people that were strenuously destroyed. Russia from the "breadbasket of Europe", as it was constantly called, has become a "consumer of foreign bread." Evil has acquired materialized forms.

Let me draw your attention to one striking feature of evil in our time.

As you know, the simplest and most powerful unit of society, its unity, subject to freedom, is the family. And in our time, when Russian culture has the opportunity to extricate itself from the nets of evil - intolerance, tyranny, despotism, the shackles of nationalism, and so on - it is the family that, as it were, "for no reason", but in fact, most likely, purposefully, becomes the main target of evil. We must all, especially in our homeland, be aware of this danger.

Evil is attacking!

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D. S. Likhachev

RUSSIAN CULTURE IN THE MODERN WORLD 1

Not a single country in the world is surrounded by such contradictory myths about its history as Russia, and not one people in the world is evaluated so differently as Russian.

N. Berdyaev constantly noted the polarization of the Russian character, in which completely opposite features are strangely combined: kindness with cruelty, spiritual subtlety with rudeness, extreme love of freedom with despotism, altruism with egoism, self-abasement with national pride and chauvinism. Yes, and much more. Another reason is that various "theories", ideology, tendentious coverage of the present and the past have played a huge role in Russian history. I will give one of the obvious examples: the Peter the Great reform. For its implementation, completely distorted ideas about previous Russian history were required. If more rapprochement with Europe was necessary, then it was necessary to assert that Russia was completely fenced off from Europe. Since it was necessary to move forward faster, it means that it was necessary to create a myth about Russia, inert, inactive, etc. Since a new culture was needed, it means that the old one was no good. As often happened in Russian life, moving forward required a solid blow to everything old. And this was done with such energy that the entire seven-century Russian history was rejected and slandered. The creator of the myth about the history of Russia was Peter the Great. He can also be considered the creator of the myth about himself. Meanwhile, Peter was a typical pupil of the 17th century, a baroque man, the embodiment of the precepts of the pedagogical poetry of Simeon of Polotsk, the court poet of his father, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich.

In myth there was not yet a myth about the people and its history as stable as the one created by Peter. We also know about the stability of state myths in our time. One of such myths "necessary" for our state is the myth of the cultural backwardness of Russia before the revolution. “Russia has gone from an illiterate country to an advanced one...” and so on. This is how many bragging speeches of the last seventy years began. Meanwhile, studies by Academician Sobolevsky on signatures on various official documents even before the revolution showed a high percentage of literacy in the 15th-17th centuries, which is also confirmed by the abundance of birch bark letters found in Novgorod, where the soil was most conducive to their preservation. In the 19th and 20th centuries, all Old Believers were recorded as "illiterate", as they refused to read newly printed books. Another thing is that in Russia until the 17th century there was no higher education, but the explanation for this should be sought in a special type of culture to which Ancient Rus' belonged.

There is a firm conviction both in the West and in the East that there was no experience of parliamentarism in Russia. Indeed, before the State Duma of the beginning of the 20th century, we did not have parliaments, and the experience of the State Duma was very small. However, the traditions of deliberative institutions were deep before Peter. I'm not talking about the evening. In pre-Mongol Rus', the prince, starting his day, sat down to “think about the thought” with his retinue and boyars. Meetings with "city people", "abbots and priests" and "all people" were constant and laid a solid foundation for zemstvo councils with a certain order of their convocation, representation of different estates. Zemsky Sobors of the 16th-17th centuries had written reports and resolutions. Of course, Ivan the Terrible cruelly "played with people", but he did not dare to officially cancel the old custom of conferring "with all the earth", pretending at least that he was ruling the country "in the old way." Only Peter, carrying out his reforms, put an end to the old Russian conferences of a wide composition and representative meetings of "all people." It was only in the second half of the 19th century that social-state life had to be resumed, but after all, this social, “parliamentary” life was resumed all the same; has not been forgotten!

I will not talk about other prejudices that exist about Russia and in Russia itself. It is no coincidence that I dwell on those notions that depict Russian history in an unattractive light.

When we want to build the history of any national art or the history of literature, even when we are compiling a guidebook or description of a city, even just a museum catalogue, we look for reference points in the best works, stop at brilliant authors, artists and their best creations, and not the worst. This principle is extremely important and absolutely indisputable. We cannot build the history of Russian culture without Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Tolstoy, but we can do without Markevich, Leikin, Artsybashev, Potapenko. Therefore, do not take it as national bragging, for nationalism, if I talk about the most valuable thing that Russian culture gives, omitting that which has no price or has a negative value. After all, each culture takes its place among the cultures of the world only because of the highest that it possesses. And although it is very difficult to deal with myths and legends about Russian history, we will stop at one circle of questions. This question is: is Russia the East or the West?

Now in the West it is very customary to attribute Russia and its culture to the East. But what is East and West? We partly have an idea about the West and Western culture, but what the East is and what the Eastern type of culture is is not at all clear. Are there boundaries between East and West on a geographical map? Is there a difference between Russians living in St. Petersburg and those who live in Vladivostok, although Vladivostok's belonging to the East is reflected in the very name of this city? It is equally unclear: are the cultures of Armenia and Georgia of the Eastern type or Western? I think that answers to these questions will not be required if we pay attention to one extremely important feature of Rus', Russia.

Russia is located on a vast expanse that unites various peoples of both types. From the very beginning, in the history of the three peoples who had a common origin - Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians - their neighbors played a huge role. That is why the first large historical work, The Tale of Bygone Years of the 11th century, begins its story about Rus' with a description of who Rus' neighbors with, which rivers flow where, with which peoples they connect. In the north, these are the Scandinavian peoples - the Varangians (a whole conglomerate of peoples to which the future Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, "Angles" belonged). In the south of Rus', the main neighbors are the Greeks, who lived not only in Greece proper, but also in the immediate vicinity of Russia - along the northern shores of the Black Sea. Then a separate conglomerate of peoples - the Khazars, among whom were Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans.

A significant role in the assimilation of Christian written culture was played by the Bulgarians and their writing.

Rus' had the closest relations in vast territories with the Finno-Ugric peoples and Lithuanian tribes (Lithuania, Zhmud, Prussians, Yatvingians and others). Many were part of Rus', lived a common political and cultural life, called, according to the annals, princes, went together to Tsar-grad. Peaceful relations were with the Chud, Merya, All, Emyu, Izhora, Mordovians, Cheremis, Komi-Zyryans, etc. The state of Rus' from the very beginning was multinational. The environment of Rus' was also multinational.

The following is characteristic: the desire of Russians to establish their capitals as close as possible to the borders of their state. Kyiv and Novgorod arise on the most important European trade route in the 9th-11th centuries, connecting the north and south of Europe - on the way "from the Varangians to the Greeks." Polotsk, Chernigov, Smolensk, and Vladimir are based on commercial rivers.

SPECIAL ISSUE
dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Academician D.S. Likhachev

(Publishing house "Art", M., 2000, 440 p.)

Summary of content and quotes from the book

The 100th anniversary of the birth of Academician Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev (1906-1999) - an outstanding modern scientist, philologist, historian, philosopher of culture, patriot - is the best occasion to re-read his once read works, as well as to get acquainted with those his works, which had not previously been read or which were not published during his lifetime.

Scientific and literary heritage of D.S. Likhachev is great. Most of his writings were published during his lifetime. But there are books and collections of his articles that were published after his death († September 30, 1999), and these publications contain new articles by the scientist and works that were previously published in abbreviated form.

One of these books is a collection "Russian culture", which included 26 articles by Academician D.S. Likhachev and an interview with him dated February 12, 1999 about the work of A.S. Pushkin. The book "Russian Culture" is supplied with notes to individual works, a name index and more than 150 illustrations. Most of the illustrations reflect the Orthodox culture of Russia - these are Russian icons, cathedrals, temples, monasteries. According to the publishers, the works of D.S. Likhachev reveal "the nature of the national identity of Russia, manifested in the canons of primordially Russian aesthetics, in Orthodox religious practice."

This book is designed to help "each reader to acquire the consciousness of belonging to the great Russian culture and responsibility for it." “The book of D.S. Likhachev's "Russian Culture" - in the opinion of its publishers - is the result of the ascetic path of a scientist who gave his life to the study of Russia. "This is Academician Likhachev's farewell gift to all the people of Russia."

Unfortunately, the book "Russian Culture" was published in a very small circulation for Russia - only 5 thousand copies. Therefore, in the vast majority of school, district, city libraries of the country it is not. Considering the growing interest of the Russian school in the spiritual, scientific and pedagogical heritage of Academician D.S. Likhachev, we offer a brief overview of some of his works contained in the book "Russian Culture".

Book of articles opens "Culture and conscience". This work occupies only one page and is typed in italics. Given this, it can be considered a lengthy epigraph to the entire book "Russian Culture". Here are three excerpts from that article.

“If a person believes that he is free, does this mean that he can do whatever he wants, No, of course. And not because someone from outside erects prohibitions on him, but because a person's actions are often dictated by selfish motives. The latter are incompatible with free decision-making.”

“The guardian of man's freedom is his conscience. Conscience frees a person from selfish motives. Greed and selfishness are external to man. Conscience and selflessness within the human spirit. Therefore, an act done according to conscience is a free act.

“The environment of action of conscience is not only everyday, narrowly human, but also the environment of scientific research, artistic creativity, the area of ​​faith, the relationship of man with nature and cultural heritage. Culture and conscience are necessary for each other. Culture expands and enriches the “space of conscience.”

The next article in the book in question is titled " Culture as an integral environment”. It begins with the words: “Culture is what, to a large extent, justifies the existence of a people and a nation before God.”

“Culture is a huge holistic phenomenon that makes people inhabiting a certain space, from just a population, into a people, a nation. The concept of culture should and always has included religion, science, education, moral and moral standards of behavior of people and the state.

"Culture is the shrines of the people, the shrines of the nation."

The next article is called "Two Channels of Russian Culture". Here the scientist writes about "two directions of Russian culture throughout its existence - intense and constant reflections on the fate of Russia, on its destiny, the constant opposition of the spiritual decisions of this issue to the state."

“The forerunner of the spiritual fate of Russia and the Russian people, from which to a large extent all other ideas of the spiritual destiny of Russia came, appeared in the first half of the 11th century. Metropolitan Hilarion of Kyiv In his speech "Sermon on the Law of Grace" he tried to point out the role of Russia in world history. "There is no doubt that the spiritual direction in the development of Russian culture has received significant advantages over the state."

The next article is called "Three Foundations of European Culture and Russian Historical Experience". Here the scientist continues his historiosophical observations on Russian and European history. Considering the positive aspects of the cultural development of the peoples of Europe and Russia, he at the same time notices negative trends: “Evil, in my opinion, is primarily the denial of good, its reflection with a minus sign. Evil fulfills its negative mission by attacking the most characteristic features of culture associated with its mission, with its idea.

“One detail is typical. The Russian people have always been distinguished by their industriousness, and more precisely, "agricultural industriousness", well-organized agricultural life of the peasantry. Agricultural labor was sacred.

And it was precisely the peasantry and the religiosity of the Russian people that were strenuously destroyed. Russia from the “breadbasket of Europe”, as it was constantly called, has become a “consumer of foreign bread”. Evil has acquired materialized forms.

The next work, placed in the book "Russian Culture" - "The role of the baptism of Rus' in the history of the culture of the Fatherland."

“I think,” writes D.S. Likhachev, - that with the baptism of Rus', in general, one can begin the history of Russian culture. As well as Ukrainian and Belarusian. Because the characteristic features of Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian culture - the East Slavic culture of Ancient Rus' - date back to the time when Christianity replaced paganism.

“Sergius of Radonezh was a conductor of certain goals and traditions: the unity of Rus' was associated with the Church. Andrey Rublev writes the Trinity "in praise of the Monk Father Sergius" and - as Epiphanius says - "so that the fear of strife of this world is destroyed by looking at the Holy Trinity."

“Having lived a long life from the very beginning of the century to its approaching end, I have not bookish, but the most direct impressions of Russian history: impressions “on my own skin”. For me, for example, I remember Nicholas II, Alexandra Fedorovna, the Tsetsarevich heir, the Grand Duchesses, the old pre-revolutionary Petersburg - its artisans, ballerinas. The revolution and machine-gun bursts near the walls of the Peter and Paul Fortress from the side of the Artillery Museum, and then shots from revolvers at the Solovki cemetery, visions of peasant women hiding in the cold in Leningrad in 1932 with children, studies of scientists crying from shame and impotence within the walls of the university and Pushkin at home, the horrors of the blockade - all this is in my visual and auditory memory.

“My studies in history, Russian culture merged into a single picture of the Russian millennium, strongly colored by feelings - martyrdom and heroism, quests and falls ...”.

Next article - "Thoughts about Russia"- begins with these words: “Russia will be alive as long as the meaning of its existence in the present, past or future remains a mystery and people puzzle over: why did God create Russia?

For more than sixty years I have been studying the history of Russian culture. This gives me the right to devote at least a few pages to those of her features that I consider the most characteristic.

“Now, right now, the foundations of the future of Russia are being laid. What will she be? What needs to be taken care of first? How to preserve the best of the old heritage? "You can't be indifferent to your future."
Next comes the article "Ecology of Culture". The term came into wide use after the publication of D.S. Likhachev on this subject in the Moscow magazine (1979, No. 7).

“Ecology is a view of the world as a home. Nature is the house in which man lives. But culture is also a house for man, and a house created by man himself. This includes a wide variety of phenomena - materially embodied in the form of ideas and various kinds of spiritual values.

Ecology is a moral problem.

“A man is left alone in the forest, in the field. He can do trouble, and the only thing that holds him back (if he does!) is his moral consciousness, his sense of responsibility, his conscience.”

"Russian intelligentsia"- this is the name of the next article of the book "Russian Culture", this is one of the important topics for Academician D.S. Likhachev.

“So, what is intelligence? How do I see and understand it? This concept is purely Russian, and its content is predominantly associative-emotional.

“I have experienced many historical events, I have seen too much amazing and therefore I can talk about the Russian intelligentsia without giving it an exact definition, but only reflecting on those of its best representatives who, from my point of view, can be classified as intellectuals.”

The scientist saw the basic principle of intelligence in intellectual freedom - "freedom as a moral category." Because he was just such an intellectual. This work ends with a reflection on the aggressive "lack of spirituality" of our time.

An excellent example of research on the philosophy of Russian culture is presented by the article Province and great "small" cities.

“One forgotten truth should be remembered: the “population” lives mainly in the capitals, while the people live in the country, in the country of many cities and villages. The most important thing to do in reviving culture is to bring cultural life back to our small towns.”

“In general: how important it is to return to the “structure of the small”. Because of the passion for "the biggest", "the most powerful", "the most productive", etc. We have become extremely inflexible. We thought that we were creating the most profitable and most advanced, but in fact we were trying to create technical and clumsy monsters in the modern world, dinosaurs - just as clumsy, just as non-livable and just as quickly and hopelessly outdated structures that can no longer be modernized.

Meanwhile, small towns, small villages, small theaters, small educational institutions of the city respond more easily to all new trends of life, are much more willing to rebuild, are less conservative, do not threaten people with grandiose catastrophes and in every sense are easier to “adjust” to a person and to his needs. .

Next work - Local history as a science and as an activity.

Local history is one of the most favorite topics of D.S. Likhachev. His love for local history stemmed from love for the Motherland, for his native city, for his family, for his native culture as a shrine.

In local history, as in science, according to the scientist, “there are no ‘two levels’. One level - for scientific specialists and the other - for the "general public". Local history itself is popular.” "It teaches people not only to love their places, but also to love the knowledge of their (and not only "their") places."

Article "Cultural Values".“Cultural values ​​do not age. Art knows no aging. Truly beautiful remains beautiful forever. Pushkin does not cancel Derzhavin. Dostoevsky does not cancel Lermontov's prose. Rembrandt is also modern for us, like any brilliant artist of a later time (I'm afraid to name any name...)”.

"Teaching history, literature, arts, singing is designed to expand people's opportunities for perceiving the world of culture, to make them happy for life."

“In order to perceive cultural values ​​in their entirety, it is necessary to know their origin, the process of their creation and historical change, the cultural memory embedded in them. In order to perceive a work of art accurately and accurately, one must know by whom, how and under what circumstances it was created. In the same way, we will truly understand literature as a whole when we know how literature was created, formed, how it participated in the life of the people.

The most extensive work of D.S. Likhachev in the book "Russian Culture" is an article "Miscellaneous about literature".

“Literature suddenly rose like a huge protective dome over the entire Russian land, engulfed it all - from sea to sea, from the Baltic to the Black, and from the Carpathians to the Volga.

I mean the appearance of such works as Metropolitan Hilarion's "Sermon on Law and Grace", as "The Primary Chronicle" with a different range of works included in it, such as "Teachings of Theodosius of the Caves", "Teachings of Prince Vladimir Monomakh", "The Life of Boris and Gleb”, “The Life of Theodosius of the Caves”, etc.

This whole range of works is marked by a high historical, political and national self-consciousness, a consciousness of the unity of the people, especially valuable at a time when the fragmentation of Rus' into principalities was already beginning in political life, when Rus' began to be torn apart by internecine wars of princes.
"In no country in the world from the very beginning of its inception did literature play such a huge state and social role as that of the Eastern Slavs."

“We must not lose anything from our great heritage.

“Book reading” and “reverence for books” must preserve for us and for future generations their high purpose, their high place in our lives, in shaping our life positions, in choosing ethical and aesthetic values, in preventing our consciousness from being littered various kinds of "pulp" and meaningless, purely entertaining bad taste.

In the article "Unprofessional about art" the scientist wrote: “Art strives to become a cross, dissolving, dispersing, pushing the world apart. The cross is a symbol of the fight against death (in Christianity it is a symbol of resurrection).

“Works of art exist outside of time. But in order to feel their timelessness, it is necessary to understand them historically. The historical approach makes works of art eternal, takes them beyond the limits of their era, makes them understandable and effective in our time. This is on the brink of a paradox."

"William Blake called the Bible 'The Great Code of Art': without the Bible one cannot understand most of the subjects of art."

D.S. Likhachev was not trifles. Therefore, in the article "Trifles of Behavior" he wrote first of all that a person should not be carried away by any fad of fashion.

The Apostle Paul says: “Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, into a hedgehog to tempt<испытывать>you...” This suggests that one should not blindly imitate what “this age” inspires, but have other much more active relations with the “this age” - on the basis of transforming oneself by “renewing the mind”, that is, on the basis of a sound discernment of what is good and what is bad in this "age".

There is the music of the time and there is the noise of the time. The noise often drowns out the music. For the noise can be immensely great, and the music sounds according to the standards set for it by the composer. Evil knows this and therefore it is always very noisy.

“Care is what unites people, strengthens the memory of the past, and is directed entirely towards the future. This is not a feeling itself - it is a concrete manifestation of a feeling of love, friendship, patriotism. The person must be caring. An uncaring or carefree person is most likely a person who is unkind and does not love anyone.

Article "On science and non-science". “Scientific work is the growth of a plant: at first it is closer to the soil (to the material, to the sources), then it rises to generalizations. So with each work separately, and so with the general path of a scientist: he has the right to rise to broad (“broad-leaved”) generalizations only in his mature and advanced years.

We must not forget that behind the broad foliage lies a strong trunk of springs, work on springs.”

“Blessed Augustine: “I know what it is, only as long as they don’t ask me what it is!”

“Faith in God is a gift.

Marxism is a boring philosophy (and primitive).

Atheism is a boring religion (the most primitive)."

“Our intolerance, perhaps, from the oblivion of the gospel:“ Forbid not, for whoever is not against you is for you! ”(Gospel of Luke, ch. 9, article 50).

Article "From the past and about the past."“A person lives closely only in the present. Moral life requires the memory of the past and the preservation of memory for the future - expansion to and fro.

And children need to know that they will remember their childhood, and grandchildren will pester: "Tell me, grandfather, how you were little." Children love stories like this. Children in general are the keepers of traditions.

"To feel like an heir to the past means to be aware of one's responsibility to the future."

In the article "On the language of oral and written, old and new" D.S. Likhachev writes: “The greatest value of the people is the language, the language in which they write, speak, think. Thinks! This must be understood thoroughly, in all the ambiguity and significance of this fact. After all, this means that the entire conscious life of a person passes through his native language. Emotions, sensations - only color what we think, or push the thought in some way, but our thoughts are all formulated by language.

The surest way to know a person - his mental development, his moral character, his character - is to listen to how he speaks.

“What an important task is to compile dictionaries of the language of Russian writers from ancient times!”

And here are extracts from the scientist's notes "About Life and Death".“Religion either occupies a central place in a person's life, or he does not have it at all. You can’t believe in God “in passing”, “by the way”, recognize God as a postulate and remember him only when asked.”
“Life would be incomplete if there were no sadness and grief in it at all. It's cruel to think so, but it's true."

“What is the most important thing in Orthodoxy for me personally? Orthodox (as opposed to Catholic) doctrine of the trinity of God. Christian understanding of God-manhood and the Passion of Christ (otherwise there would be no justification of God) (by the way, the salvation of mankind by Christ was laid down in the transtemporal essence of mankind). In Orthodoxy, the very antiquity of the ritual side of the church is important for me, traditionalism, which is gradually being abolished even in Catholicism. Ecumenism carries the danger of indifference to faith.”

“We rarely and too little think about death. That we are all finite, that we are all here - for a very short time. This forgetfulness helps meanness, cowardice, imprudence flourish... In human relations, the most important thing is to be careful: not to offend, not to put another in an awkward position, not to forget to caress, smile... "

Based on the publication "Russian culture in the modern world" the report read by D.S. Likhachev at the VII Congress of the International Association of Teachers of Russian Language and Literature (MAPRYAL, 1990).
"The most characteristic feature of Russian culture, passing through its entire thousand-year history, starting from Rus' of the X-XII centuries, the common foremother of the three East Slavic peoples - Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian, is its universality, universalism."

“Speaking of the enormous values ​​that the Russian people own, I do not want to say that other peoples do not have such values, but the values ​​of Russian culture are unique in the sense that their artistic power lies in its close connection with moral values.”

"The significance of Russian culture was determined by its moral position in the national question, in its ideological quest, in its dissatisfaction with the present, in the burning torments of conscience and in the search for a happy future, albeit sometimes false, hypocritical, justifying any means, but still not tolerating complacency."

In the article "About Russian and foreign" D.S. Likhachev wrote: “The peculiar and individual face of culture is created not by self-restraint and preservation of isolation, but by constant and demanding knowledge of all the riches accumulated by other cultures and cultures of the past. In this life process, the knowledge and understanding of one's own antiquity is of particular importance.

“As a result of the discoveries and research of the 20th century, Ancient Rus' appeared not as an unchanging and self-limiting seven-century unity, but as a diverse and constantly changing phenomenon.”

“Every nation has its advantages and disadvantages. It is necessary to pay more attention to one's own than to others. It would seem the simplest truth.
I have been writing this book all my life...

The proposed review of the articles contained in the book "Russian Culture" is an invitation to get acquainted with the full content of the remarkable works of Academician D.S. Likhachev. You could choose many other beautiful places from his works. But it is obvious that all the mentioned articles are united by the deepest and sincere love for the native land and Russian culture.

Review prepared by Archpriest Boris Pivovarov

The first one, called "Treasured", was published by the publishing, educational and cultural center "Childhood. Adolescence. Youth" of the Russian Children's Fund. Its editor-compiler is a well-known writer, chairman of the RDF, academician of the Russian Academy of Education Albert Likhanov. This beautifully illustrated publication is a collection of short essays, philosophical poems in prose, reflections and individual notes by Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev about the vectors of spiritual quest, about moral values ​​that every young person should strive for. The texts are accompanied by educational and methodological recommendations for teachers, taking into account the age of the children and will help the teacher to fully conduct "Likhachev's Lesson".

The second book - "Selected Works on Russian and World Culture" - was published by the St. Petersburg Humanitarian University of Trade Unions, the first honorary academician of which was Dmitry Sergeevich. This is a scientific publication of summarizing articles by Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev, where he reflects on the nature of art, the meaning of culture, the Russian language and the problem of the intelligentsia. The book includes one of the last "cherished" works of Likhachev "Declaration of the Rights of Culture". Its final version was developed by a team of scientists from St. Petersburg State Unitary Enterprise under the scientific supervision of Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev.

We bring to the attention of readers the most relevant thoughts of Dmitry Likhachev:

"Primitive people drew the buffalo with such extraordinary skill, as if there was no progress in art! Yes, the skill is amazing. But only a bison, only a wild bull, a cave bear. In order to portray the purpose of the hunt? But then why are there no ducks, geese, quails? After all, they were also hunted? Why is there no millet, turnips, and yet they were sown?

And so it seems to me that what was depicted in the caves was, first of all, what they feared, what could cause mortal harm. The man drew what scared him. He neutralized the world around him in what was dangerous to him.

This is where art was born...

They will ask: how - art is designed to "calm down"? No, of course... Art is called upon to fight chaos, often by discovering, exposing this chaos, demonstrating it. Any discovery of chaos is to some extent the introduction of order into it. To discover chaos already means to introduce elements of the system into chaos.

“Nature has its own culture. Chaos is not at all a natural state of nature. On the contrary, chaos (if it exists at all) is an unnatural state of nature.

What is the culture of nature? Let's talk about wildlife. First of all, she lives in society, community. There are "plant associations": trees do not live mixed up, and known species are combined with others, but not with all. Pine trees, for example, have certain lichens, mosses, mushrooms, bushes, etc. as neighbors. Every mushroom picker knows this... Pine grows under the cover of alder. The pine grows, and then the alder, which has done its job, dies ...

Nature is "social" in its own way. Its “sociality” also lies in the fact that it can live next to a person, coexist with him, if he, in turn, is social and intellectual himself, protects her, does not cause irreparable damage to her, does not cut down forests to the root, does not litter rivers. .."

"The Earth, the Universe has its own grief, its own grief. But the Earth does not cry with tears - drunkards, freaks, underdeveloped children, neglected, abandoned old people, cripples, sick ... water reservoirs, flooded lands, meadows that have ceased to nurture herds on themselves and serve as hayfields for people, asphalt yards with stinking tanks between which children play.

"... the richness of a language is determined not only by the richness of the "vocabulary" and grammatical possibilities, but also by the richness of the conceptual world, the conceptual sphere, the carriers of which are the language of a person and his nation...

The language of a nation is in itself a condensed, if you will, algebraic expression of the whole culture of a nation."

"True patriotism is the first step to effective internationalism. When I want to imagine true internationalism, I imagine myself looking at our Earth from world space. The tiny planet on which we all live, infinitely dear to us and so lonely among galaxies separated by each other from each other by millions of light years!.."

"Man is a morally settled being, even the one who was a nomad, for him, too, there was a "settledness" in the expanses of his free nomads. Only an immoral person does not have a settled way of life and is able to kill the settled way of life in others ...

A truly new value arises in the old cultural milieu. The new is new only in relation to the old, like a child in relation to its parents. The new in itself as a self-sufficing phenomenon does not exist.

"Culture, in the final analysis, is a goal, not a means, not a condition, not a favorable environment. Nature has been improving itself for billions of years and finally created a person. A person was created with enormous creative possibilities that were not fully used. What is all this for? it is obvious that a person does not stop this development with himself, does not close on himself what nature has been striving for billions of years, but continues this development. Of course, continuation is not the creation of an even more perfect organism, but the use of those possibilities that already exist in man to create works of the highest culture".

“We still do not have a concept of culture and cultural development in our country. Most people (including “statesmen”) understand culture as a very limited range of phenomena: theater, museums, stage, music, literature, sometimes not even including in the concept of culture - science, technology, education ... So it often turns out that phenomena that relate to culture are considered in isolation from each other: the theater has its own problems, writers' organizations have their own, the philharmonic society and museums have their own, etc. d.

Meanwhile, culture is a huge holistic phenomenon that makes people inhabiting a certain space, from just a population, into a people, a nation. The concept of culture should and always has included religion, science, education, moral and moral norms of behavior of people and the state.

Culture is what largely justifies before God the existence of a people and a nation."

"The mission of Russia is determined by its position among other peoples by the fact that up to three hundred peoples have united in its composition - large, great and small, requiring protection. The culture of Russia has developed in the conditions of this multinationality. Russia has served as a giant bridge between peoples. A bridge, primarily cultural. And we need to realize this, because this bridge, facilitating communication, at the same time facilitates hostility, abuses of state power.

“A person should have the right to change his beliefs for serious moral reasons. If he changes his beliefs for reasons of profitability, this is the highest immorality. If an intelligent person, on reflection, comes to other thoughts, feeling that he is wrong, especially in matters related to morality, this is can't drop it...

Conscience is not only a guardian angel of human honor - it is the helmsman of his freedom, she makes sure that freedom does not turn into arbitrariness, but shows a person his real path in the confused circumstances of life, especially modern life.

“Education cannot be confused with intelligence. Education lives on the old content, intelligence lives on the creation of the new and the awareness of the old as new. values, love of acquiring knowledge, interest in history, taste in art, respect for the culture of the past, the skills of a well-mannered person, responsibility in solving moral questions and the richness and accuracy of one's language - spoken and written - this will be intelligence.

Is everything so gloomy, Dmitry Sergeevich?

Dmitry Likhachev is not only the cultural and scientific pinnacle of his era, but also the person we used to refer to as the last indisputable civil authority for people of various positions and points of view. Sociologists state a shortage of authoritative figures in modern Russian society. This is our conversation.

Lev Anninsky,

literary critic and publicist:

Once, speaking, it seems, in Ostankino, Dmitry Likhachev asked: "Is it possible to pretend to be a knowledgeable person?" And he himself answered his own question: "Yes, you can. You just need to remember a certain number of facts." "Is it possible to pretend to be a smart person?" he asked further. And, after thinking, he answered: "Yes, you can, remembering a certain number of connections between facts." Finally, the third question was raised: "Is it possible to pretend to be an intelligent person?" The answer to myself and to all of us was: "No." Likhachev was authoritative both as a citizen, and as a person, and as a great scientist. He was one that cannot be pretended to be.

There is always a shortage of authoritative people, moreover, it should be. The main task of such people is not to succumb to the dope that hangs in the air. We want everyone to think we are smart, so from time to time, from the desire for praise and popularity, we fall into this nonsense.

In addition, we have some lackey attitude to power. And power is just people doing their job. The janitor is also power, but in the yard, and the traffic controller is at the crossroads. Each person has a little bit of power, and you just need to know your area of ​​power, and not look at the Kremlin every now and then and scold. I do not recognize the authority earned on such scolding. Authority is an influential person, the ruler of thoughts. At one time I considered Solzhenitsyn to be such, to some extent he remains so. Of those who used to be - Tolstoy, Dostoevsky.

Maxim Sokolov,

publicist:

The authority of Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev was based on an impeccable biography, on the fact that he suffered under Stalin, on the fact that he did not do bad deeds, but, on the contrary, did a lot of good things for Russian culture both as a scientist and as a public figure. There are such unique coincidences of factors. Today we do not see such authorities. This is due to many circumstances. In addition to the fact that Dmitry Sergeevich was a truly worthy person, respect for the role of a learned man, an academician, also played a significant role. But in the years that have passed since then, the authority of science has fallen to a very low level, and it is difficult to expect that even a completely worthy scientist could become a publicly recognized authority.

If we talk about the spheres of art and creativity, then literature is also in a rather miserable state and its social role is significantly less than in Soviet times. The principle "a poet in Russia is more than a poet" is no longer valid. As for some other areas where authorities can appear, there are, in general, not so many of them. The authority, perhaps, could be some military leader, preferably one who saved the Motherland. But lately, on the one hand, there have been no such serious wars that one could talk about the general who saved the Motherland. On the other hand, many orders in our Armed Forces do not contribute to the emergence of such an authoritative general. It is also difficult to talk about an authoritative businessman, here the word "authority" will rather be associated with something completely different.

Dmitry Bykov,

journalist:

In today's media society through and through, the concept of authority has faded. Equally authoritative is the one who has spent half his life studying the problem, and the one who is invited to talk shows: authority has been replaced by the degree of promotion. In our society, not only is there a shortage of authorities as such, but first of all, there is a terrible shortage of people who are deservedly authoritative, that is, who have proven their right to broadcast and advise with real merits and spiritual exploits.

I would also like this authority to be backed up by intellect, and not just by heroic deeds: in our society there are very few smart people who would be listened to. Usually a spiritual authority opens its mouth - and from there, at best, a stream of platitudes rushes, and at worst - such that at least take out the saints. Meanwhile, authority is very interested in uttering mostly banalities: otherwise it will be quickly debunked. The authorities absolutely do not need an authoritative politician, thinker or writer who says objectively important and truthful things. As for Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev, I do not think that a detailed and thoughtful analysis of his personality is appropriate on the days of the jubilee, since the jubilee occasion itself excludes any objectivity. It seems to me that in the last 20 years of his life, Dmitry Sergeevich was a state model of an intellectual, a status and symbolic figure. No one cared about the real academician and his scientific merits, and the texts that he published, excluding the spontaneously spoken preface to the first publication of Ulysses, did not contain anything new, varied the same set of indisputable truths. I'm afraid that Dmitry Sergeevich embodied the type of intellectual that the authorities need: a modest, dignified man who cares primarily about the survival of culture, overshadowing and ennobling the authorities with his authority (without, however, much hope of success). Our culture, as it seems to me, needs now, first of all, a clear, sharp and meaningful conversation about its real state. A similar mission is carried out by the poets Kushner, Gorbanevskaya; prose writers - Makanin, Ivanov, Strugatsky, Uspensky, Pelevin; critics and publicists Razlogov, Moskvin, Stishov, Dondurey, Arkus, Plakhov. They are the spiritual authorities of today. At least because I write: a) honestly and b) debatably.

Georgy Khazagerov,

Doctor of Philology:

First of all, in Dmitry Likhachev I like his scientific pathos - the pathos of personality. His entire course of ancient Russian literature is built as a gradual awakening and affirmation of the personal principle. And thanks to this, in our cultural consciousness we can connect ancient Russian literature with Russian classics and from there throw a bridge to the present. Ancient Rus' is often remembered speculatively: in order to defend their concept, they turn to this period with the expectation that it is poorly known and remembered, and therefore any theory will pass here. And for Likhachev it was a full-blooded and full-fledged period, he knew him very well.

Although Likhachev himself spoke very critically about his language and about himself as a stylist, his language can be regarded as a model not only for scientific prose, but in general as a model for us in a situation where language, unfortunately, becomes anti-humanitarian and inhumane, filled with technicalisms. and technologies.

We do not have many scientists (and among philologists there is a shortage in general) who have taken place as individuals. And Dmitry Sergeevich made up for this deficit. While he was alive, there was always a hope that he would get up and correct. He survived all the features of the Soviet era and lived up to the post-Soviet era, behind him was a huge experience, undistorted, meaningful. In controversial cases, it was important to know what Likhachev had to say about it. What would I like to ask him today: "Is everything so gloomy, Dmitry Sergeevich, today in a culture that, as it seems to us, is falling apart, and after it the social fabric is also falling apart? Will we defend the real, unprofaned Russian culture and the Russian language "And what should we do now to, in the medical sense of the word, "rehabilitate" her? What guidelines should we follow in educational policy - the German model, the American one, or our own unused from the deep rear?"

Jewelry box for great-grandchildren

The Kultura TV channel, one of the initiators of which was Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev, on November 28-30 shows a series of films "Dmitry Likhachev's Steep Roads". Three parts of this tape tell about the stay on Solovki, relationships with the authorities and how Dmitry Sergeevich was in the family circle. Word to those for whom Academician Likhachev was just dad and grandfather.

Vera Zilitinkevich,

granddaughter, professor at the University of Manchester:

Dmitry Sergeevich's social activities began during Khrushchev's campaign to close churches. He was never an outspoken dissident, but very often he did bold things that no one else dared to do. This is important, given that he was arrested at the age of 21 and spent almost 5 years in prison. If we look at the usual biography of a person who ends up in a camp from a fairly prosperous family, we will see that such people very often broke down. And the courage of Dmitry Sergeyevich against this background seems especially surprising ...

On my grandfather's birthday, his mother made hot chocolate. And my first memory of him is connected with my birthdays - my grandmother, Zinaida Aleksandrovna, always made chocolate. And always, just like on the birthday of Dmitry Sergeevich, pies were baked.

My mother always told me that he was less strict with me than with her and Vera, her sister, when they were little. They were born in 1937. Then - the war. We spent almost the entire blockade in Leningrad. Then - the post-war years, and from the end of the 40s, terrifying studies begin again. But if you were arrested once, your chances of being arrested again increased terribly. I have a feeling that the severity with which he raised his daughters was due to the fact that he felt the outside world as scary. And you have to be prepared for life in this world - otherwise you won't survive as a normal person.

Sergei Mikhailovich Likhachev,

nephew, retired colonel engineer:

Dmitry Sergeevich was pleased with his personal life. He ran the family, of course. For example, it was necessary to come home no later than 11 pm - of course, this applied to girls. And if this rule was not followed, he reacted rather violently.

Zinaida Kurbatova,

granddaughter, journalist, artist:

Grandparents lived for 63 years. And of course, grandfather would not have succeeded if he had not had such a wife, such a true friend, comrade-in-arms, a person who always inspired him, always inspired him that he was the best, the most beautiful, the most talented. That all enemies will retreat, everything will work out, everything will happen as he planned. Grandmother admired him to the last. When he left for work, his grandmother always looked at him and said, for example: "How a blue suit fits blue eyes!" I even sang a song: "A girl escorted a fighter to the position." And under this singing, grandfather went to the Pushkin House ...

We have always had a very clear regimen. Breakfast at a certain time, at one o'clock - lunch, at four - tea, at seven - dinner. And if grandfather sometimes sat down at the table five minutes before dinner, and we set the table, then we said: "Grandfather, why did you sit down before five!"...

After his death, I discovered the box. When I opened it, I saw an inscription made by my grandfather (he liked to inscribe everything): "to the family museum." There were personal letters, notes, a purse, on which grandfather wrote "this is a purse that my parents gave me in the DPZ in the fall of 1928", an English dictionary - "the book stayed with me all the time in SLON", a fragment of a shell - "a fragment hit Institute of Russian Literature in 1941".

Ludmila Likhacheva,

daughter:

Why did he do so much? Because he did not waste himself - he had one wife, one family. Mom was behind him like a stone wall. With us, with his mother, he could not appreciate a single woman. He could not even tell: she has a beautiful figure. I can't even imagine it.

Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev. Quotes.

Vladimir Putin about D.S. Likhachev

The ideas of this greatest thinker and humanist are now more relevant than ever. Today, when the world is really threatened by the ideology of extremism and terror, the values ​​of humanism remain one of the principal means of counteracting this evil. In his research, Academician Likhachev formulated the very mission of culture, which is to make a nation out of “just a population”.

Academician Dmitry Sergeyevich LIKHACHEV:

Russia had no special mission and no!
The people of Russia will be saved by culture and art!
No need to look for any national idea for Russia - it's a mirage.
Culture and art are the basis of all our achievements and successes.
Life with a national idea will inevitably lead first to restrictions, and then there will be intolerance towards another race, another people and another religion.
Intolerance will inevitably lead to terror.
It is impossible to achieve the return of Russia to any single ideology, because a single ideology will sooner or later lead Russia to fascism.

Memory resists the destructive power of time... D.S. Likhachev

+ ABOUT "THE VELVET BOOK OF MANKIND"+

I am convinced that such works as are vital. The history of conscience must also be the history of mistakes - individual states, politicians, and the history of conscientious people and conscientious statesmen. should be created under the sign of the struggle against all kinds of nationalism - the terrible danger of our days. It is time to think in terms of the macrosociety. Everyone must educate themselves as a Citizen of the world - regardless of which hemisphere and country they live in, what color their skin is and what religion they are.

+ ABOUT THE NATIONAL IDEA +

Russia has no special mission and never had one! The people will be saved by culture, there is no need to look for any national idea, it is a mirage. Culture is the basis of all our movements and successes. Life on the basis of the national idea will inevitably lead first to restrictions, and then there is intolerance towards another race, another people, another religion. Intolerance will inevitably lead to terror. It is impossible to seek the return of any single ideology again, because a single ideology will sooner or later lead to fascism.

+ ABOUT RUSSIA AS UNDOUBTED EUROPE IN RELIGION AND CULTURE +

Now the idea of ​​so-called Eurasianism has come into fashion. A part of Russian thinkers and emigrants, hurt in their national feeling, was seduced by an easy solution to the complex and tragic issues of Russian history, proclaiming Russia a special organism, a special territory, oriented mainly to the East, to Asia, and not to the West. From this, the conclusion was drawn that European laws were not written for Russia, and Western norms and values ​​are not at all suitable for it. In fact, Russia is not Eurasia at all. Russia is undoubtedly Europe in religion and culture.

+ ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PATRIOTISM AND NATIONALISM +

Nationalism is a terrible scourge of our time. Despite all the lessons of the 20th century, we have not really learned to distinguish between patriotism and nationalism. Evil masquerades as good. You have to be a patriot, not a nationalist. There is no need to hate every other family, because you love your own. There is no need to hate other nations because you are a patriot. There is a profound difference between patriotism and nationalism. In the first - love for one's country, in the second - hatred for all others. Nationalism, fencing itself off with a wall from other cultures, destroys its own culture, dries it up. Nationalism is a manifestation of a nation's weakness, not its strength. Nationalism is the worst of the misfortunes of the human race. Like any evil, it hides, lives in darkness and only pretends to be generated by love for one's country. And it was actually generated by malice, hatred towards other peoples and towards that part of their own people that does not share nationalist views. The peoples in which patriotism is not replaced by national "acquisitiveness", greed and misanthropy of nationalism, live in friendship and in peace with all peoples. We should never, under any circumstances, be nationalists. We Russians do not need this chauvinism.

+ ABOUT DEFENDING YOUR CIVIL POSITION +

Even in dead-end cases, when everything is deaf, when you are not heard, please be so kind as to express your opinion. Don't hesitate, speak up. I will force myself to speak so that at least one voice can be heard. Let people know that someone is protesting, that not everyone is resigned. Each person must state their position. You cannot publicly, at least to friends, at least to family.

+ ABOUT STALIN'S REPRESSIONS AND THE TRIAL OF THE CPSU +

We have suffered from Stalin huge, millions of victims. The time will come when all the shadows of the victims of Stalin's repressions will stand before us like a wall, and we will no longer be able to pass through them. All so-called socialism was built on violence. Nothing can be built on violence, neither good nor even bad, everything will fall apart, as it has fallen apart in our country. We had to judge the communist party. Not people, but the crazy ideas themselves, which justified monstrous crimes, unprecedented in history.

+ ABOUT LOVE FOR THE HOMELAND +

Many are convinced that to love the Motherland is to be proud of it. No! I was brought up on a different love - love-pity. Our love for the Motherland was least of all like pride in the Motherland, its victories and conquests. Now it is difficult for many to understand. We didn't sing patriotic songs, we cried and prayed.

+ ON THE EVENTS OF AUGUST 1991 +

In August 1991, the people of Russia won a great social victory, which is comparable to the deeds of our ancestors from the time of Peter the Great or Alexander II the Liberator. By the will of a united nation, the yoke of spiritual and bodily slavery, which had fettered the natural development of the country for almost a century, was finally thrown off. Liberated Russia rapidly began to pick up the speed of movement towards the highest goals of modern human existence.

+ ABOUT INTELLIGENCE +

To the intelligentsia, in my life experience, belong only people who are free in their convictions, not dependent on economic, party, state coercion, not subject to ideological obligations. The basic principle of intelligence is intellectual freedom, freedom as a moral category. An intelligent person is not free only from his conscience and from his thoughts. I am personally embarrassed by the widespread expression "creative intelligentsia" - as if some part of the intelligentsia in general can be "uncreative". All intellectuals “create” to some extent, but on the other hand, a person who writes, teaches, creates works of art, but does it on order, on assignment in the spirit of the requirements of the party, state or some customer with an “ideological bias”, from my point of view, not an intellectual, but a mercenary.

+ ON ATTITUDE TO THE DEATH PENALTY +

I cannot but be against the death penalty, for I belong to the Russian culture. The death penalty corrupts those who carry it out. Instead of one murderer, a second appears, the one who carries out the sentence. And therefore, no matter how crime grows, the death penalty should not be used. We cannot be for the death penalty if we consider ourselves people belonging to Russian culture.

“Culture is what justifies to a large extent before God the existence of a people and a nation” [p.9].

“Culture is the shrines of the people, the shrines of the nation” [p.9].

“The mortal sin of the people is the sale of national cultural values, their transfer on bail (usury has always been considered the lowest deed among the peoples of European civilization). Cultural values ​​cannot be disposed of not only by the government, parliament, but also by the living generation in general, because cultural values ​​do not belong to one generation, they also belong to future generations” [p.10].

“One of the main manifestations of culture is language. Language is not just a means of communication, but above all creator, creator. Not only culture, but the whole world originates in the Word” [p.14].

"The misfortune of the Russians lies in their gullibility" [p.29].

“We are free – and that is why we are responsible. The worst thing is to blame everything on fate, at random and I suppose, to hope for a “curve”. The curve will not take us out!” [p.30].

“The way and traditions are more important than laws and decrees. “Invisible state” is a sign of the culture of the people” [p. 84].

“Morality is what transforms the “population” into an orderly society, pacifies national enmity, makes the “big” nations take into account and respect the interests of the “small” (or rather, small). Morality in the country is the most powerful unifying principle. A science of the morality of modern man is needed!” [p.94].

"A nation that does not value intelligence is doomed to perish" [p.103].

“Many people think that once acquired intelligence then remains for life. Delusion! The spark of intelligence must be maintained. To read, and to read with choice: reading is the main, although not the only, educator of intelligence and its main “fuel”. "Do not quench the spirit!" [p.118].

“First of all, it is necessary to save the culture of the provinces ... Most of the talents and geniuses in our country were born and received their initial education not in St. Petersburg or Moscow. These cities only collected all the best, but it was the province that gave birth to geniuses.
One forgotten truth should be remembered: in the capitals the “population” lives mainly, while the people live in the country, in the country of many hundreds of cities and villages” [p.127].

"Local history is not only a science, but also an activity!" [p.173].

“The history of peoples is not the history of territories, but the history of culture” [p.197].

“Culture is defenseless. It must be protected by the whole human race” [p.209].

“There is the music of the time and there is the noise of the time. The noise often drowns out the music. For the noise can be immensely great, but the music sounds in the norms set for it by the composer. Evil knows this and therefore is always very noisy” [p.291].

“It costs nothing to be kind to one person, but it is incredibly difficult for humanity to become kind. You can't fix humanity, but it's easy to fix yourself. ... That's why you need to start with yourself” [p.292].

“The lack of morality brings chaos to social life. Without morality, economic laws no longer operate in society and no diplomatic agreements are possible” [p. 299].

“Man does not possess the truth, but tirelessly seeks it.
Truth by no means simplifies the world, but complicates it, interests in further searches for truth. Truth does not complete, it opens the way” [p.325].

“Where there are no arguments, there are opinions” [p.328].

"Force methods arise from incompetence" [p.332].

“Morally, you need to live as if you were to die today, and work as if you were immortal” [p.371].

“The era affects a person, even if he does not accept it. You cannot “jump out” of your time” [p.413].

“You should be offended only when they want to offend you, but if they say something impolite out of bad manners, out of awkwardness, they are simply mistaken, you cannot be offended” [p. 418].

“If we preserve our culture and everything that contributes to its development - libraries, museums, archives, schools, universities, periodicals (especially the “thick” magazines typical of Russia) - if we keep our richest language, literature, musical education unspoiled, scientific institutes, then we will certainly occupy a leading position in the North of Europe and Asia” [p.31].

The merit of D.S. Likhachev is not only that he drew attention to the vital problems of the cultural environment of a person, he saw ways to solve them, but also that he was able to speak about the complex phenomena of our life not in an academic, but in a simple and accessible, impeccably literate, Russian language.

This selection contains excerpts from only one book by D. S. Likhachev "Russian Culture" (M., 2000). This is the work of his whole life, which is the testament of an outstanding scientist to the entire Russian people.

It is impossible to form a general idea of ​​the book from individual quotes, but if the individual thoughts of its author are close and understandable to you, you will certainly come to the library to read the book in full and this “choice” will be correct.