What is Orthodox culture definition. What is Orthodox culture? Human creative activity

Report of Bishop of Stavropol and Vladikavkaz Feofan

Orthodoxy is the living past, present and future of the Russian people. It is represented in every cell of life, in the images of the best sons of our people: spiritual and statesmen, thinkers and creators, warriors and ordinary workers.

Orthodoxy is the living history and living truth of the Russian people, it is the culture and modern life, philosophy and worldview, ethics and aesthetics, upbringing and education. Therefore, to tear a Russian person away from Orthodoxy means to tear him away from his own history, his roots and soil, i.e. just kill him. Thus, the return to Orthodoxy is the main condition for the salvation of the Russian people. To do this, we must provide every opportunity for every person to convert to the faith, and above all, children. It is necessary that the connection between conviction and life be formed from infancy, so that the child learns to motivate his behavior with the Christian faith, which gives spiritual strength. Therefore, the duty of the Church is to make doctrinal truths alive in the eyes of people.

This task can be accomplished through public policy, strengthening the traditional family and education.

It is necessary to return Orthodoxy, if not as a state, then at least as a public ideology. Understanding it as a fundamental idea that will be understood and accepted by the majority of society. With its help, it will be possible to oust from the minds of Russians widespread ideologemes-myths: godless materialism, soulless consumerism with indifferent pluralism, and spiritually dangerous cosmism with pantheism.

Today, there are more and more insistent calls to search common idea, a deep reference point, a universally significant ideal. Everyone now understands that it is impossible to reorganize the life of the people, and even more so the education and upbringing of young people, without a spiritual core, without an idea that unites and inspires people. Some people think that such a national idea can be invented and instilled in the people. But the history of the 20th century has convincingly shown us that the invented national ideas most often turn out to be erroneous, false, and even taking possession of the people on a short time, always lead him to disaster.

Such an idea should ripen in the depths of the people's consciousness, reflect the deepest aspirations of millions. If its prerequisites are not formed in the bowels of society, then no efforts of state structures, theorists and ideologists will give a reliable result.

The roots of the modern civilizational collapse lie in the changed picture of the world that has developed in the era of modern times. With this understanding, God remains both in philosophy and pedagogy, but in a different capacity. He, in fact, is taken out of the brackets of this world, in which a person becomes the owner, now endowed with creative power.

We must fight the idea of ​​anthropocentrism in order to establish the principle of theocentrism in our lives, for the center of our being is not a man of dust, but the eternal God.

It is quite obvious that the most important task on this path is the education and upbringing of children and youth, those who should receive centuries-old values ​​from us. folk life.

If we do not cope with this problem, then no economic and political programs nothing will change for the better. They, just as before, will be perverted and strangled by immorality, selfish desire for profit by any means.

Orthodoxy understands true freedom as freedom from sin. This implies the voluntary self-restraint of a person, the bringing of a certain sacrifice, the imposition of certain spiritual and moral bonds on oneself in the name of salvation. The liberal standard, on the other hand, asserts the exact opposite: the removal from one's being of everything that limits, restricts, does not allow, because the idea of ​​freedom is for him an idol above any belief in God. The direction that they are now trying to give to the system of secular education from kindergarten to high school is focused on the formation and approval of precisely this liberal standard of human freedom.

That is why we need to clearly define the goal of education, identifying the fundamental reason that gives rise to all the consequences that are detrimental to our life and our salvation, testifying to the madness of the existence of a person outside of faith as a norm of human existence, to educate a person in our own, Orthodox standards. Religious education, rooted in the Orthodox Tradition, should be oriented towards the formation of these standards, which include the worldview attitudes of the individual.

Children can be taught in different ways. Unfortunately, often, all kinds of prohibitions become the most common method - on this or that clothes, these or those hobbies, interests. Of course, restrictive, protective methods should be present along with others in the process of personality formation. But experience shows that this path is the least productive and the most fraught with the response of childhood and adolescent negativism. Thoughtless prohibitions naturally provoke a stubborn desire to act contrary. Equally erroneous is the assertion in the mind of a person of a positive ideal by hammering in common truths, just as it was done in Soviet times. But life always rebels against the scheme and always wins.

The problem is that it is impossible in principle to program people's behavior through ready-made and externally imposed worldview clichés. A person simultaneously exists in diverse everyday situations that do not fit into any schemes, which, because of this, turn out to be useless for him. The way out of this situation lies in what we invest in the concept of a standard. For if a person is brought up in a certain system of values, then at the moment of any, and even more so, a fateful choice, by virtue of the upbringing received, he will be able to make the right decision.

Thus, the task of including elements of religious education in secular education is seen in the formation of a life standard, a certain system of values ​​that predetermine a person's behavior in various circumstances and make the Christian motivation of actions and decisions vital for him. Through religious education to the Orthodox way of life - this should be the strategy of modern Orthodox pedagogy.

Without faith in God there is no national life. Faith is the soul of the people.

But is there a place for it in the current legislation?

The Law on Education states that education in our country must have a “secular character”, that “At the request of parents or persons replacing them, with the consent of children studying in state and municipal educational institutions, the administration of these institutions, in agreement with the relevant local authorities provides a religious organization with the opportunity to teach religion to children outside the framework of the educational program: (Art. 5, p. 4). Our entire educational system, subject to the inertia of previous years, perceives this law as an affirmation of atheistic education in public schools.

"Secular" does not mean atheistic, and therefore not clerical. All confessional general education schools before the revolution in Russia, and now abroad, as well as modern Orthodox gymnasiums, provided and continue to provide a completely secular education.

The interpretation of the "secular nature" of education as atheistic is based not on the letter and not on the essence of the law, but on a complete misunderstanding that another completely legitimate approach to this problem is possible. It is necessary to use the regional 20% component presented at the discretion of the local authorities for the teaching of religiously oriented subjects, to teach the main humanities subjects in such a way that they give an objectively scientific, and not a tendentiously atheistic description of the place and significance of religion in history and culture.

Atheism, not even militantly aggressive, is not some kind of objectively supra-religious progressive knowledge. It is just one of the worldviews that expresses the views of not the majority of the Earth's population, and does not have any scientific justification.

In a country where more than half of the population declares themselves to be believers, there are no reasonable grounds for atheism to occupy a dominant position in education and upbringing.

Atheism, denying the ontological existence of good and evil, is not able to logically and consistently substantiate the necessity and obligatory nature of morality.

Today Orthodoxy is the main spiritual and moral support of a very large part of the Russian population of our country. Therefore, it would be fair to include religiously oriented disciplines in the grid of compulsory subjects on the principle of an equal alternative. Parents who want to raise their children as atheists can choose, for example, "Fundamentals of Morality" instead of "Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture."

The system of Orthodox upbringing and education in Russia is being formed today in accordance with the following principles and directions.

First of all, the development of the spiritual and moral potential of humanitarian knowledge began, with the inclusion in its content religious components. A system of spiritual and moral education is being created, based on both humanistic and religious traditions.

Today we can already say that it is possible to receive religious education in accordance with the beliefs and at the request of children and parents, as an additional, optional one. Software and scientific and methodological support for the teaching of spiritual and moral disciplines is being created. In this regard, the coordination of the activities of educational institutions and religious organizations on issues of mutual interest.

A big step forward is the inclusion of Theology in the number of educational areas allowed by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation in state universities.

Raising the authority of Christian science, and, consequently, of Christian education and upbringing, we can work on the return of our people to a moral life, the norms of Christian morality. In addition, these measures will help eliminate the egregious facts of anti-state educational activities sectarianism, which becomes a real state disaster.

To do this, it is necessary to unite all forces, to include in cooperation the most authoritative educational and scientific structures - the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Education, the Moscow State University, the Ministry of Education and Science, educational institutions of the Moscow Patriarchate, in order to carry out fruitful work, including to promote:

Exchange of information and transfer of experience in educational activities;

Mutual understanding in an objectively complete interpretation of legislative acts;

Conducting an analysis of existing experience and considering the issue of opening an educational direction and specialty Orthodox theology.

Preparation and harmonization of standards in Theology and other humanitarian disciplines, in their composition corresponding to traditional higher theological education, consistent with existing norms (presence of compulsory disciplines, total number of hours and timetable for subjects) organization and
the functioning of the Educational and Methodological Association for
polyconfessional direction and specialty Theology;

The study and implementation of traditional and modern experience of educational activities that imply religious
worldview and aimed at receiving a secular education;

Cooperation on a bilateral basis in the issues of publishing educational and educational literature, developing and implementing curricula and other materials, holding various events in the field of
education and expertise in relation to published books;

Involvement in the writing of programs and textbooks in the main humanitarian subjects of professional specialists from culture-forming faiths who are able to give an objective scientific description of the place and significance of religion in history and culture.

There are already significant shifts in the minds of the people, government officials, employees of ministries and departments.

In the Stavropol and Vladikavkaz Diocese, active work is being carried out in the field of Orthodox education and the spiritual and moral education of children and youth. This work includes the improvement of the average and higher education(introduction of the subject "Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture"), and a system of measures addressed to the family, children of preschool age; the introduction of spiritual and moral content in the field of additional education, culture, health care, social protection, the work of public associations with adolescents and youth, the activities of law enforcement agencies.

In the Diocese, measures are being taken to improve the qualifications of teachers, including not only the holding of scientific and practical educational conferences, seminars, round tables, but also the organization of teacher training courses on the "Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture".

After the conclusion of the Cooperation Agreement between the Stavropol and Vladikavkaz Diocese and the Ministry of Education of the Stavropol Territory dated May 16, 2002, it became possible in 150 educational institutions of the Diocese to introduce the subject "Fundamentals
Orthodox culture” (mostly optional). On the basis of this Agreement, more than 30 Cooperation Agreements have already been concluded and programs of joint actions of executive authorities, bodies of the Department of Education and commissions for religious education and catechesis in all deaneries of the Diocese have been developed.

But there are spiritual problems that are still impossible to cope with.

Evil influence environment infiltrates our schools and is often perceived as a coveted forbidden fruit;

We have a huge shortage of teachers. Our external successes are far ahead of internal - spiritual ones. Good, often religious people come to teach, but they themselves are neophytes: they do not have proper education, taste, do not understand their duties, do not know how to educate
children in the spiritual, church life, tk. they themselves do not know what the spiritual life is. They confuse spiritual freedom with democracy, spiritual leadership with zombies, and so on.

How to kindle the soul of a child with faith, so that it becomes not some kind of everyday condition, but so that the heart of the child catches fire? How to do it? The heart lights up from the heart like a candle from a candle. Usually this happens due to a meeting with some wonderful believer, an ascetic of faith. The beauty of achievement can captivate the soul of a child, it captivates him. If our teachers are such ascetics, then the children will be believers. If our teachers are ordinary Orthodox inhabitants, then our children will leave the Church, as happened, before the revolution. At that time, the Law of God was taught everywhere, but this did not prevent a huge part of our people from renouncing the faith as soon as the revolution took place.

Religious disciplines cannot be taught at school in the same way as other subjects, it must be remembered that the main goal is to instill in the soul of the child the desire to be an ascetic of faith, it is necessary to instill in him love for God, love for the Church.

At the same time, it must be well remembered that education is not just edification. Education is a long-term cohabitation with children.

Times are changing and secular education, experiencing the deepest crisis, is turning to spiritual, traditional foundations.

The use of faith necessary for the revival and prosperity of Russia is well known. It consists of a body of those primordial values ​​of morality and civic life, which are the same for both the Gospel and the constitution of the modern state.

And the first task of the modern period is to establish these moral and civic values ​​in an unadulterated form in our schools. Moreover, to put them at the center of education, since the future of the Fatherland primarily depends on the spiritual and moral potential of young people, on their kindness, honesty, justice and the desire for disinterested care for their neighbors and selfless love for their Motherland.

In the last period, moral imperatives more and more tangibly triumph over momentary needs, they increasingly become

guide to action by the government and the Ministry of Education and Science.

Reforms and innovations will be carried out on the basis of the currently being developed National Doctrine of Education and the Federal Program for its Development.

As a result, the leading role of spiritual and moral values ​​in the development of education will be restored, education will be returned to schools, which means that the humanistic mission will be strengthened at the very source. educational institutions.

At the suggestion of His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Rus', a secular-religious commission on education was created, which is called upon to release state educational standards, learning programs, textbooks and teaching aids from manifestations of militant atheism.

Most of tasks that determine the development of schools, universities and other educational institutions can only be solved with the active participation of the general public, representatives of religious and confessional, state-political and business circles.

Without public organization of the life of children, adolescents and young people outside of schools and other educational institutions, it is impossible to provide a full-fledged upbringing of the younger generation. It is very important for the Orthodox Church to find an opportunity to participate more actively in her own forms in the activities public organizations for children and youth.

Summing up all of the above, it should be noted that a certain part of our society is already on the path of reviving Russian national traditions and culture. Against the background of this process, the crystallization of the basic principles of Orthodox education takes place. This is, first of all, Christocentrism, the personal nature of education through the unity of the family, parish and school, teaching love, churching, asceticism, moral and rational moral education ahead of the rational and informative, instilling the skills of moral perception of cultural values, cultivating a sense of universal humanity and patriotism, deeply moral relation to the environment. On this basis, the national Russian culture was formed, the self-consciousness of our people, there is hope that the spiritual revival of Russia will begin with the establishment and dissemination of Orthodox education.

The urgency of the question of education today should be comprehended with particular acuteness as the urgency of the question of the future of our people. How do we want to see our future tomorrow, are we satisfied with what it is now?

Modern secular society does not burden itself with the search for Divine truth. It determines the hierarchy of values ​​by virtue of the prevailing God-fighting worldview. Having lost the right spiritual and life guidelines, society has plunged a person into a spiritual crisis that threatens moral decay. Today's reality testifies to the crisis state of the younger generation. Russian society is very concerned about the health of the nation. Statistics testify to the demographic crisis taking place in our state. No less tragic is the crisis of the individual, which gives rise to the crisis of the family. And the result is alarming: 4.5 million orphans with living parents. It is well known that our society is plagued by terrible diseases: AIDS (there are 17,000 HIV-infected people in the Samara Region), drug addiction, and crime.

But these negative phenomena can be overcome. You can verify this by visiting penal colonies. For example, in the fifth correctional colony, there are mostly only young people in prison, several thousand people. Naturally, in this young environment, asocial manifestations and internal disassembly are observed. The opening of the parish made it possible to gradually awaken the spiritual principle in the prisoners. As a result, ugliness has been reduced. Alone, a person thinks about his act, listens to the voice of his own conscience. And this needs to be supported. F.M. It was not by chance that Dostoevsky said: "If there is no God, then any crime can be justified." A person can rise to the Divine state and descend to the bestial. Priests working with drug addicts and alcoholics note that the main cause of this disease is the spiritual and ideological disorientation of people who are in a state of deep religious ignorance. Student youth, teenagers are lured into various sects, into illegal communities like skinheads, because they do not know our historical Orthodox spirituality. And what is most terrible - indifference to national roots, cosmopolitanism and various social diseases are generated. And this is the way the degeneration of the nation proceeds. In such a society, no one is protected, despite all the efforts of law enforcement agencies.

The time has come when the state and authorities need to unite and help those who have stumbled and fallen. There was an urgent need to assist the younger generation in the formation and preservation of spiritual values. These issues are resolved most fruitfully thanks to the symphony of authorities: church and state. The state is engaged in its own, worldly affairs, the Church heals spiritual wounds. Everyone has their own path, but we must not forget: the goal is a common one. Legal legislation is the prerogative of the state, and the Church is responsible for the moral health of society. In the most difficult times for Russia, it was the Church that helped and is helping the state, for example, in awakening a sense of patriotism. Priests have always urged to defend the Fatherland. He blessed the warriors for the Battle of Kulikovo Reverend Sergius Radonezhsky is a great ascetic of the spirit.

Education and religion are the pillars of the morality of every nation, they form the historical image of culture. Our time puts forward the principles of the independence of public morality from the declared dogmas, but with all the desire, according to the words of His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II, "freedom of conscience does not justify the neglect of spiritual traditions that have developed over thousands of years. Every nation has its own face, a unique mental warehouse, unique character. And the Church knows: without Orthodoxy, Russia cannot fully revive its true dignity, its primordial greatness."

The program document of the Russian Orthodox Church "Fundamentals of the Social Concept", adopted by the Jubilee Bishops' Council in 2000, expresses the church's position on the issue of education: "From the Orthodox point of view, it is desirable that the entire education system be built on religious principles and based on Christian values. However, less the Church, following the centuries-old tradition, respects the secular school and is ready to build its relationship with it, based on the recognition of human freedom. At the same time, the Church considers it unacceptable to deliberately impose anti-religious and anti-Christian ideas on students, asserting a monopoly of the material view of the world." (Section 14. "Secular science, culture, education").

The Church sees the goal of education in the formation of a morally and intellectually integral personality. Orthodox pedagogy aims to educate a person who does not adapt to the realities of corrupt reality ("entertainment without consequences") for the purpose of maximum personal benefit, but is ready to make self-sacrifice for the sake of Christ's holy commandments.

The modern system of education, on the contrary, educates a person who walks the “broad path”, according to the Gospel, who is unable to lead to eternal life. We already feel the consequences of these truly atheist principles in full measure. But a society consisting of egoists cannot exist, a culture based on individualism cannot live and develop! Without the support of the Church, without the Orthodox clergy leading the rising generation to the patristic faith, today there is no complete, genuine education. After all, the original meaning of the word "education" is the restoration in the soul of the image of God.

Russian society turns its hopes to the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation. real school unable to protect youth from sectarians, aggression and corruption; she continues to instill in the child that man is descended from a monkey, with dubious contests, discos, liberates base instincts, brings up cold pragmatism. There is a real danger that classical culture, created on the foundation of Orthodoxy, distorted by the atheism of the Soviet period, will remain inaccessible to our children, and they will never know its unique splendor, they will not learn moral lessons from communicating with it.

Genuine culture is called upon to awaken God in a person, the will to exploit for the sake of love for the family, creativity, and the Fatherland.

What is culture? These are not dead monuments, but living experience passed down by people from generation to generation: the experience of life, the experience of work, the experience of the Faith. For Russia and Russians, this is a religious experience. The Russian Orthodox Church is the custodian of this experience for many peoples and people. Without this spiritual rebirth is impossible. The road to such an experience is hard. But years of terrible repressions could not destroy him. And this is our hope.

Realizing the paradoxical nature of the current situation, the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation decides on the introduction of subject"Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture" as a regional, school component or optional course of the basic curriculum. A cautious step taken at the level of government towards the restoration of the historical, spiritual, moral, cultural foundations of education, caused a stream of negative reactions from representatives of various administrative structures, the media and other religious denominations.

Among the opponents of introducing the foundations of Orthodox culture into the educational process, there is often an argument about the violation of individual freedom. The fallacy of this assertion is obvious. One of the pillars of the moral teaching of the Church about man is the provision on free will: a person is able to independently make a choice between good and evil. Fatalism is not a Christian idea, man is an active and not a passive element of being. Early Christian theology gave world philosophy an understanding of personality as a freely thinking, feeling and acting subject of being. Man himself is free to make a choice between faith and unbelief. However, as the third-century Christian writer Tertullian said, "the soul is by nature a Christian."

Throughout his life, a person experiences certain earthly, natural joys: the joy of youth, the joy of achieving a certain success, the joy of creative forces, the joy of old age from wise experience, filled with a sense of the Divine presence. The earthly path of a person can and must be passed with dignity, which means that a person must lead a moral life, perform worthy deeds, have worthy thoughts and motivations. In many ways, it depends on the state and society in which a person lives. The state, requiring a person to fulfill certain obligations, must itself take care of him, his home and family. There must be tough but fair laws that must be strictly followed. If you look at the living conditions of a modern person, progress is obvious, but not everything is measured by material well-being and technical innovations in everyday life. Often progress turns into regression or marking time. There remains pain and anxiety for those who are deceived. Certain media by more semi-literate, or even completely illiterate in matters of faith, spiritual life, morality, ethics; they choose either non-Russian ideals, or they are guided by the lowest standards of mass culture. Even more terrible and destructive is the impact of the clever, but alien to Russia, press and audiovisual means. As a result, an aggressive manifestation of racism and fascism, the cult of sex and drugs, the cult of alcohol and tobacco, as well as a mass of pseudo-religions and pseudo-teachings, which is a conscious impact on the psyche and mental health Russians. As a rule, smart anti-Russian propaganda operates with the concepts of "human rights", "civil society and its interests", "international pacts and obligations", but no one ever remembers that lies and disinformation under the guise of information, naming Russians of norms alien to them and stereotyping are a form of spiritual abuse.

For a thousand years, the Russian Orthodox Church has been a reliable support for many generations of our compatriots, a precious well from which they drew living water. true faith and true spirituality. She gives an exclusive role to the family as a school of piety. A sense of living continuity of generations is formed in the family.

The Church, always realizing the greatness of the ministry of fatherhood and motherhood, strives with all its might to help the family, strengthen it and protect it from destructive influences, for it is in it, as in the primary and main social institution, that the personality of the child is formed. St. John Chrysostom called the family the “Small Church,” since here a person must become a person, having accepted from his parents everything that makes him such. The family, being the guardian of faith, piety and tradition, and also having the strongest means of education - parental love, is the first and main school of life. The beneficial educational activity of the school is possible only in cooperation with parents, based on family values ​​and traditions. A society that does not support family ideals is doomed to self-destruction. The Church, following the commandment of Christ, seeks to transform the world on the foundations of purity and holiness. The Lord gave her all the strength necessary to recreate both the individual and the whole society as a whole. Only by realizing the fallacy of rejecting by us and our ancestors what the state has lived for almost a thousand years, namely the foundations of the life of Rus' - Orthodoxy, we can prevent the degradation and death of our people.

Among the counterarguments Orthodox education most often - "The Church is pushing modern society to the Middle Ages, denying science." The Church not only does not deny science, but confirms that the discoveries of the 20th century in genetics, physics, chemistry, computer science are impressive. Yes, thanks to science, a person can reveal his potential more fully, get to know the world of God more deeply, get perfect equipment and technologies.

However, in search of the perfect good, scientific and technological progress has created such a tragic situation when what was intended to be light turns out to be darkness for a person and leads to a terrible end for everyone. One of the most serious mistakes committed in recent centuries in our civilized world is the opposition of scientific and philosophical knowledge to religious knowledge. According to M. V. Lomonosov, sowing enmity between them has a consequence - a complete loss of mutual understanding and agreement between the most important spheres of a person’s spiritual and intellectual life in understanding the fundamental principles of his activity. True science, in alliance with Orthodoxy, helps a person become better, kinder, stronger, actively resist evil and violence. And it is no coincidence that scientists in the field of natural science, as a rule, were believers.

The process of formation of spiritual education has begun and continues: young people and the intelligentsia are becoming interested in church history. Unfortunately, the history of our state has been largely distorted in favor of atheistic ideology. Now everything is gradually being restored, but with certain difficulties.

Orthodoxy in its teaching does not offer anything that would contradict precisely established scientific conclusions in the field of knowledge of this world or that could negatively affect the moral state of the individual and society, the development of thought, science, and culture as a whole. Orthodoxy satisfies the most important needs of a person: it gives a specific, exhaustive answer to the question of the meaning and purpose of his life: the eternal existence of a person in union with God. And only the satisfaction of this need will fill Russian society with creative energy and provide it with a decent life and the meaning of creativity.

Archbishop of Samara and Syzran Sergius

Russian cultural tradition and education.

Culture is the basis of human life. In culture, he lives, develops, improves, creates. Values creative way a person can remain in culture for other people even after his life. Every nation has its own national culture. The most valuable of it is included in the treasury world culture. It is the people who are the guardians of their culture. They pass it on to their children, that is, to the next generations. To know, love, appreciate and understand one's culture means to be worthy of one's ancestors, to understand one's history in the past, present and future. It means to be educated.

Our native world Russian culture- is huge and unique. its fundamental part is Orthodox culture. Without knowing it, it is impossible to understand Russian literature, Russian painting and architecture, Russian music, and the historical events of Russia.

The content of modern Russian education and the system of state, municipal and non-state public education must be identical cultural tradition Russia and be a mechanism for the creation and continuation of this tradition. A child, regardless of his national or confessional affiliation, worldview, has the right to be involved in the cultural and social space of his homeland - Russia, as well as in the culture of his region. Multinationality and multi-confessionalism are reflected in Russian culture, and this is the same indisputable fact as the fact that Russia is a traditionally Orthodox country.

It is also undeniable that Orthodox culture had a decisive influence on the formation and character of the entire Russian culture, Russian national and cultural identity, the specifics of Russian culture in the world cultural and historical space during the entire thousand-year period of its existence. Having accepted Baptism, Rus' destroyed the pagan temples, radically changed family traditions. Orthodoxy became for our ancestors a soul, a family, a community, a home.

A new architecture appeared, aspiring to the heavenly heights, faces-images that struck the Slavs with their amazing eyes. The image of the Mother of God, who was considered the patroness of Rus', was especially close to the Russians; her eyes are full of love, tenderness for her baby and pain, she knows his purpose, but not for a moment doubting the divine will, humbly goes with him into the world. So the Russian woman knew the destiny of her sons, who often gave their lives for their Fatherland.

Orthodox culture is also a rich Church Slavonic language. This is the only language in the world in which only soulful books have been written from the day of its creation to this day. Each word of his is the sum of meanings. The thought expressed with the help of it is short, but very capacious in content. This language did not allow verbiage. Together with the Cyrillic alphabet came literacy, which was facilitated by church schools.

Spiritual choral singing is distinguished by its unusual sound, the manner of sound production of which is strict, covered (singing "in the dome"). Initially, only men and boys participated in the performance (36).

The traditions of Orthodox culture, being deeply rooted in the history of the Russian people, help the younger generation to acquire a spiritual and moral ideal, which for many centuries has been the main criterion for the moral and ethical behavior of a person on our earth, and which can now become a starting point in the education of youth .

The study of the foundations of Orthodox culture is primarily an extension of general historical and social science education, as well as philological and art history education in terms of knowledge about the traditional religion of one's land as a sphere of public life. The study of the foundations of Orthodox culture cannot replace other educational areas. On the other hand, the historical, social science, philological, art criticism and other educational aspects of knowledge cannot replace Orthodox cultural education.

People brought up on the traditions of Orthodoxy, who took part in the Church Sacraments and attended divine services in churches, were gradually saturated with the very spirit of Christianity. A person who was baptized in infancy and brought up on Orthodox rituals and customs felt himself Orthodox from birth. Through the Holy Tradition, seeds penetrated deeply into the souls of people. Christian faith. accustomed in society to certain moral norms and moral values The people were gentle, kind, honest and helpful. Brought up on Christian values, a person differently felt the world around him and perceived people.

People of the 19th century knew about many sins theoretically, or did not guess. Many things and actions that are easily performed at the present time could not have occurred to a person of the 20th century. However, one cannot idealize the 19th century. In the history of Russia and at that time there were crimes, rudeness and evil. But, the mentality of Russian society, in general, was different than it is now.

Orthodox by birth, education and upbringing, subjects of the Russian Empire, and not only of this state, developed and created a culture that is Orthodox in its essence, spirit and inner content. It included a whole system of views on the state, social structure, the universe and the place of man in it.

Orthodox culture has developed a special attitude towards man, as well as a god-like being, a person. It determined public opinion, literature, music, painting, philosophy and many other branches of human knowledge.

From the bowels of the church comes the state idea of ​​Russia as an Orthodox Christian state. In 1524, the abbot of the Belozersky Pskov Monastery, Elder Philotheus, in one of his letters to a private person, formed the state idea of ​​Russia: “Two ubo Romes fell, the third stands, and the fourth will not happen.” The third Rome was Moscow, the capital of the Russian state. Historical events by the 16th century, developed in such a way that the only major Orthodox kingdom was Moscow. Rome, the capital of a great empire, fell under the blows of the barbarians, and later fell into "Latinism", as Catholicism was called in the East. Constantinople, or New Rome, was taken by the Crusaders, and the Byzantine Empire fell and disappeared from the political map. The Russian tsar became the sovereign of all Orthodox Christians, "the king of all the Romans", and the regalia of imperial power and the coat of arms of the Byzantine (Roman, as they called themselves) emperors were transferred to Moscow. Grand Duke Moscow became "the king of Moscow and all Rus'", and a small specific principality grew to the size of a huge empire. The coat of arms of Byzantium became Russian, and the metropolitan, the head of the Russian Church, became a patriarch.

From the first decades of the existence of the Russian state, the idea of ​​"Moscow - the Third Rome" has become decisive for Russia. When, in the 17th century, St. Petersburg became the new capital of the state, the state continued to develop according to the original principles. The socio-political idea of ​​the Third Rome continued to live and exist in the Russian emigration. It was studied by famous scientists and philosophers (Soloviev, Berdyaev), embodied in artistic images poets and writers. This religious idea continues to develop in our time, during the restoration of Russian statehood.

There were many deeply believing Orthodox people in Russian science, art, literature, and philosophy. They were bearers of Orthodox culture and Christian faith. It suffices to name just a few names of great people who left a deep mark on Russian thought.

The founder of Russian science, Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov, a graduate of the Holy Greek-Latin Theological Academy, was a deeply religious person. He was the first to speak out against the "Norman theory" of the creation of the Russian state, according to which the priority in the creation of public education Kievan Rus belongs to the Varangians invited from across the sea, Rurik and the Normans who arrived with him. Later historical research has proved the inconsistency of this theory. Mikhail Vasilyevich laid the foundations of Russian literature, defining Russian as a literary language and wrote the work Letters on the Rules of Russian Poetry, where he outlined the foundations of Russian poetry. Compiled the first scientific grammar of the Russian language.

Lomonosov laid the foundations of "corpuscular theory", theoretical physics and chemistry. Developed the basic provisions of ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy. He was an outstanding artist.

In addition to scientific works, Mikhail Vasilyevich wrote several philosophical and theological treatises. Having determined the development of Russian science, Lomonosov always remained an Orthodox person.

Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev is perhaps the most famous Russian chemist, the founder of modern theoretical chemistry. He formulated periodic law, on the basis of which the Periodic System was created chemical elements, was also a deeply religious person. He left his religious reflections in diary entries and separate articles.

The famous Russian philosopher, Alexander Fedorovich Losev, a world-class expert in ancient aesthetics, was a monk of the Russian Orthodox Church. He wrote a number of major philosophical works on antiquity, history, ethics. His systematic works in the field of antiquity are recognized by the scientific world as classics and have been translated into all European languages. Alexander Fedorovich wrote many theological works that are little known to a wide range of readers.

Most of the famous Russian artists decorated Orthodox churches, painted icons for churches, decorated iconostases. Many icons by Vasnetsov are still known. Many painters devoted almost entirely their work to religious topics. This is Alexander Ivanov, and Surikov, famous marine painter Aivazovsky.

Orthodox commanders - Suvorov and Kutuzov began military maneuvers with a prayer, asking God's blessing for the battle with the enemy. Fedor Fedorovich Ushakov, admiral who did not know defeat, was canonized as a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church. The Great Commander of the Second World War, Zhukov, was a believer, and Marshal Vasilevsky was a graduate of the Kazan Theological Seminary.

Alexander Andreevich Ivanov, a world-famous artist, devoted most of his work to Christian stories. He wrote a cycle of compositions, united by the common name "Biblical Sketches". The most famous painting, "The Appearance of Christ to the People", was written by him for twenty years and is a masterpiece of a group portrait. In his later works - "Biblical sketches", Alexander Andreevich, while maintaining a connection with the traditions of classical monumentalism, reached an extraordinary depth philosophical generalization and interpretation of the theme of the work.

Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov, a muralist, in 1895 finished painting the Vladimir Cathedral in Kyiv, creating frescoes of extraordinary beauty and artistic style. They combined the traditions of Orthodox icon painting and the features of ancient Russian painting.

A member of the Russian Orthodox Church, Archbishop Luka Voyno-Yasenetsky, our contemporary, was a hierarch of the Church and had a secular medical education. During the Great Patriotic War, he volunteered for the front, where he worked as a surgeon in one of the hospitals. Archbishop Luke proposed a new method of wound healing that saved the lives of many Red Army soldiers. For the work "Experience of purulent surgery" he was awarded the Stalin Prize.

In the public life of the middle of the 19th century, a special direction of religious and philosophical thought developed, known as Slavophilism. It was a fairly large public association, which included famous artists, writers, philosophers, art critics. The narrow circle of the founders of Slavophilism included I. S. and K. S. Aksakov, I. V. Kirievsky, A. I. Koshelev, Yu. F. Samarin, A. S. Khomyakov, V. A. Cherkassky and others. This form of social thought was close to V.I. Dal, A.I. Ostrovsky, A.A. Grigoriev, F.I. Tyutchev. The Slavophiles argued, in opposition to the revolutionary-minded circles of Russian society, that there was no class struggle among the Russian people. They opposed the Westerners, who spoke about the European path of Russia. The Slavophiles believed that the Russian people and the Russian state had their own special, own path. historical development. They advocated the abolition of serfdom, arguing that the only form of organization of peasant life in Russia was the community. The Slavophils were in favor of the monarchical structure of the Russian state, believing that this system was the most perfect. The unifying force of the state and society, in their opinion, is the Orthodox Church. They put forward the well-known formula: "Autocracy, nationality, Orthodoxy."

One of the founders of Slavophilism, A. S. Khomyakov, was a significant religious philosopher of his time. According to Yuri Samarin, Khomyakov became the first secular theologian in Russia, in a new way, with philosophical point vision, interpreting the Orthodox dogma. One of the students of A. S. Khomyakov said about his teacher: “We treat the Church out of duty, out of a sense of duty, like those elderly relatives to whom we ran two or three times a year ... Khomyakov did not belong to the Church at all, precisely because he simply lived in it, and not at times, not in fits and starts, but always and constantly.

Khomyakov could not print his works in Russia - spiritual censorship did not allow this. Khomyakov's theological activity seemed suspicious. He approached the essence of the church from within, not from without. Alexey Stepanovich spoke about the Church as a person living in a true Christian society, as an interlocutor of the saints, as a beholder of God. He formulated the doctrine of the Christian Church from practical positions, and not from the point of view of official scholasticism. In 19th-century theology, the Church was traditionally understood as "the union of the presbyters of an area with their bishop, which serves as the main means of uniting all the believers of the area into one holy family." Khomyakov, on the other hand, believed that the purity of rituals and the immutability of dogmas were entrusted not to one church hierarchy, but to the entire church people, which is the Body of Christ.

Khomyakov did not divide the Church into earthly and heavenly, as was the tradition of the theological schools of the Russian Empire. He saw the Church in unity, and considered this kind of division as conditional. All peoples belong to the Church, Alexei Stepanovich argued, when Christianity spreads throughout the world, when local divisions of the one Church disappear. He wrote about the unity of the Church, believing that it comes from the unity of God. The Church is not a multitude of persons separately, but the unity of God's love living in a multitude of rational creatures. Under the words "intelligent creatures", A.S. Khomyakov understood everyone, and people, and angels, and those who lived, and are living, and even people who will live on earth, since God sees the entire Church as a whole, being unlimited in time. He develops his thought in this way: “The Church is one, despite its visible division for a person still living on earth. Living on earth, who have made the earthly journey, not created for earthly path– all are united in one Church, since the not yet revealed creation is obvious to God, and He hears the prayers and knows the faith of the one who has not yet been called by Him from non-existence to existence. Khomyakov pushed the boundaries of time and space in his works.

Contrary to outdated theological doctrines, Alexei Stepanovich believed that a person who is not baptized, but who believes in Christ, can achieve the salvation of his soul. “Confessing one baptism for the remission of sins, as a sacrament prescribed by Christ Himself for entry into the New Testament Church, the Church does not judge those who did not become partakers of it through baptism,” Khomyakov wrote. These words cannot be regarded as a denial of the Sacrament of Baptism, because he supplements his words “Baptism is obligatory, for it is the door to the New Testament Church, and in baptism alone a person expresses his consent to the redemptive action of grace.”

It was A. S. Khomyakov who formulated one of the main postulates of Slavophilism. He wrote that the main principle of the Church is not obedience to external authorities, but catholicity. According to N. O. Lossky, Khomyakov’s catholicity was expressed as follows: “Catholicity is the free unity of the foundations of the Church in action in the matter of joint understanding and truth, or their joint search for the path to divine righteousness.” Aleksey Stepanovich laid the theoretical foundations for one of the branches of social thought in the middle of the 19th century. Yu. Samarin, the closest student of A. S. Khomyakov, said this about his teacher: “In old days Those who served Orthodoxy such a service as Khomyakov served it, who were given a logical understanding of this or that side of Church teaching to win a decisive victory for the Church over this or that error, they were called teachers of the Church.

Loyalty to church duty amazed contemporaries of Alexei Stepanovich. The commander of the regiment in which he served, Count Osten-Saken, after 73 years, recalled his subordinate: “Khomyakov possessed willpower not as a young man, but as a husband tempted by experience. At that time there were already a considerable number of freethinkers, deists, and many scoffed at the fulfillment of the statutes of the Church, claiming that they were established for the mob. But Khomyakov inspired such love and such respect for himself that no one allowed himself to touch his beliefs.

The ideas of the Slavophiles were developed in the culture, science and art of the 19th - early 20th centuries. They gave rise to the "silver age" of Russian literature, gave impetus to philosophy, revived interest in many problems of the religious worldview of the Russian people. The activities of the society gave rise to many thinkers among the Russian society.

One of them, Vladimir Sergeevich Solovyov (1853–1900), was the most remarkable person in his life. secular society. At the age of 21, he defended his master's thesis and was elected an assistant professor at Moscow University. He quickly became a popular lecturer, liberal publicist and writer. Thanks to his original views and judgments, he almost immediately earned both a lot of approval and praise, and a lot of censure from his many listeners, readers and interlocutors, but he did not leave any of them indifferent to his work - be it special philosophical works, journalism or poetry. He was an unusually prolific and creatively gifted author. His rich creative heritage is striking not only by its voluminousness ( complete collection works of Solovyov in the modern edition is 12 volumes), but also by the breadth of the views expressed and the topics raised, many of which have not lost their relevance to this day.

The freedom of thought and views of V. Solovyov was never limited to any one separate direction, any one philosophical school exclusively. He was no less familiar with the works of the holy fathers than with the philosophy of modern times. Solovyov was never content in his work with just one cultural-historical ideological layer, be it the classical philosophy of antiquity, medieval scholasticism, or German idealism. These and many other areas of religious and philosophical thought, taken separately from each other, did not suit him much, the wide creative nature of Vladimir Solovyov was cramped within the narrow confines of one closed system.

A close friend of the philosopher, Prince Evgeny Trubetskoy, wrote about this: “He did not reject the values ​​inherited from the past, on the contrary, he carefully collected them: they all fit in his soul and in his philosophy, but he did not find final satisfaction in them. He saw in them particular manifestations of the one and all truth, various refractions of that light that shines on everyone, but has not yet been revealed in its fullness in any human teaching. To the undoubted merit of Vladimir Solovyov, his researchers attribute the fact that he, perhaps, like no one else, managed to combine in his extensive work the richest philosophical heritage previous eras. Contemporaries wrote about him that in the history of philosophy it is difficult to find a broader, more comprehensive synthesis of the great and valuable that human thought has produced.

The most authoritative researcher of Solovyov's life and work, A.F. Losev, notes that this philosopher “was a believer from the bottom of his heart. But, he was, in addition, also an intellectual systematizer of faith. According to V. Ivanov, Solovyov was "an artist of the internal forms of Christian consciousness." In the thinking of this man, philosophy and theology are closely connected; for him, philosophy played a preaching role in relation to theology. Sometimes Vladimir Solovyov was directly called a theologian, bearing in mind a certain specific orientation of some of his writings, containing views that closely echoed the themes traditional for the Christian worldview and dogma.

In his writings Solovyov, indeed, sometimes touched upon questions that had been repeatedly raised in patristic literature. These questions concern the most various areas Christian religion and church life, they have been repeatedly discussed by many thinkers at different times. At times he almost completely ignored all Orthodox dogma, and at other times he acted as a principled supporter of the purest canonical Orthodoxy.

famous Russian philosopher and religious thinker, N. O. Lossky, thus, defines one of the great merits of his outstanding predecessor: “The main business of Solovyov’s life was the creation of Christian Orthodox philosophy, revealing the richness and inner strength of the basic tenets of Christianity, which in the minds of many people turned into a dead letter, divorced from life and philosophy. Vladimir Solovyov himself wrote that “my task is not to restore traditional theology in its exclusive meaning, but, on the contrary, to free it from abstract dogmatism, to introduce religious truth in the form of free rational thinking and to realize it in the data of experimental science and, thus organizing the whole realm of true knowledge into a complete system of free and scientific philosophy.”

Solovyov's philosophical system was created in the atmosphere of Schelling's ideas, but his Christian worldview is directly opposite in spirit to naturalistic pantheism. The similarity between Schelling and Solovyov turns out to be superficial. Neither natural philosophy nor Schelling's philosophy of revelation could influence Solovyov's worldview. He draws from the theology of the Church Fathers (especially Maximus the Confessor, Gregory of Nyssa, Dionysius the Areopagite, partly Origen and Blessed Augustine), whom Schelling also studied in the last period of his life. Most of the coincidence in the works of Schelling and Solovyov is explained by this general dependence.

Father Georgy Florovsky, apparently, in a more early period of his work, spoke enthusiastically about the philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov: "The spirit of Solovyov's philosophy is the spirit of true Greek-Eastern Orthodoxy, and the ideas of his philosophy - the idea of ​​God-manhood, the idea of ​​the Church, the idea of ​​integral knowledge, free all-unity - are inspired by patristic thought."

Vladimir Solovyov, the greatest Russian philosopher and religious thinker, was not entirely immune from delusions. The main reason for his mistakes was that his deeply cheerful soul was filled with a living, immediate feeling of the transfiguration and Resurrection that had taken place and was to come. But he was far from sufficiently feeling and penetrating with his mental gaze the abyss between God and the unenlightened, the local man, that mortal sorrow, which is conquered only by death on the cross. He lacked that feeling of the abyss of sin. Precisely because it was given to him in contemplation to come so close to the Divine, he did not sufficiently feel how far it was from our reality. And here is the source of his most important, basic delusions.

Vladimir Solovyov was not only socialite and the finest thinker. He was a romantic and a poet, therefore he did not feel enough the whole abyss between the human world and that world, he seemed to him divine. This always made him too free-thinking for Orthodoxy.

The largest modern researcher of Solovyov’s work writes about him: “For all the deepest originality and even for many of his extravagant philosophical, primarily Gnostic, overexposures, Solovyov is a traditional Christian thinker, as if accidentally lost in the age of positivism, Nietzscheism and Marxism. A thinker who has not lost his original Christian identity, but who has accepted the immutable problems of his time onto himself and into himself. One can argue endlessly about the extent to which he resolved these issues in his philosophical and sociopolitical discussion, but the very importance of the talent and integrity of Solovyov's perception is hardly in doubt.

Vladimir Sergeevich Solovyov was an outstanding figure at a time of a turbulent era for Russia, unprecedented successes in science and technology, the Narodnaya Volya movement in Russia, the beginning and imminent collapse of liberal government reforms. The turning point in the history of Russia was a time of great hopes, accomplishments and disappointments. She gave birth to many great personalities, they were philosophers and writers, scientists and politicians, military leaders and ascetics.

In religious philosophy, these are Nikolai Berdyaev, Lossky, Father Georgy Florensky, Losev, Solovyov, Alexander Men, Archbishop Cyprian Kern, A. Schmemann and others, personalities thanks to whose work religious philosophy has become a generally accessible and comprehensible discipline. These people have the honor to adequately represent Russian philosophical thought in the modern world.

The ideas of Christianity have deeply penetrated into Russian literature, which is considered the most Christ-centered in the world literary heritage. Many Russian authors became famous thanks to the inner, deeply Christian content of their works. Almost all Russian 19th writers mid-twentieth century, carried the ideas of Orthodoxy. Western world often learned about the ancient Christian faith from literary works Russians. The works of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, Nikolai Semenovich Leskov, Garin-Mikhailovsky, Shmelev and many other writers carry all the most important Christian dogma and moral truths.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, with the help of a high literary gift, penetrated deeply into the soul of a believer, being able to show in it everything high and light, vile and low, sinful and holy.

His life, literary and family fate is unusual. Fedor Mikhailovich was born into the family of a doctor at the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor in St. Petersburg. The writer's father came from a noble family of the Pinsk district in southern Belarus. The Dostoevo family estate gave the name to the author of Crime and Punishment. The ancestors of Fyodor Mikhailovich were famous aristocrats, participated in the creation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In 1501, one of the famous writer's ancestors was publicly executed for the murder of her husband and the attempt on the life of her stepson. Dying on the scaffold, the progenitor of the Dostoevsky family cursed the whole family. And indeed, the Dostoevsky family was persecuted bad rock: some of the family ended their lives under unclear circumstances, some committed suicide, and some members of the family went crazy. Based on the current situation, the Dostoevsky family began to ask God for forgiveness for the sins of their ancestors - many members of the family became clergymen, monks, and one of the writer's ancestors Lavrenty Dostoevsky became a bishop of the Orthodox Church.

Father Fyodor Mikhailovich was destined for a spiritual career, with the blessing of his parents, he was to become a clergyman. But Mikhail Dostoevsky refused his destiny, for which he received an inheritance and left to seek his fortune in St. Petersburg. Having received medical education, the writer's father served as a simple doctor in a hospital for the poor. The future great writer of Russia was born in a small house near the Mariinsky Hospital. Fyodor Mikhailovich, as was the custom of that time, received an engineering education and was enlisted in the engineering department. However, the spiritual need to write and those Christian skills that Fyodor Mikhailovich was instilled in childhood gave such a moral impetus that he left the public service and devoted himself to writing.

The first novel by Fyodor Mikhailovich "Poor people" put him in the ranks of recognized writers natural school. In this novel, the author's attention was drawn to " little man» with its special little world and spiritual needs, worries and anxieties. Later, "White Nights" and "Netochka Nezvanova" appeared, in which an in-depth psychologism was manifested, which distinguishes Dostoevsky from other writers. Fyodor Mikhailovich actively visited the circle of revolutionaries - Petrashevists, was fond of the ideas of the French utopian socialists. Carried away by the criticism of monarchical power, fashionable among the intelligentsia of the second half of the 19th century, the writer was drawn into a revolutionary terrorist circle. The activities of the terrorists were exposed, and Dostoevsky was sentenced to death. Pardoned at the last moment, Fyodor Mikhailovich reviewed his entire life and spiritual values, knowing the joy of salvation through Jesus Christ.

Dostoevsky devoted the rest of his life to the spiritual struggle against evil. Returning from hard labor to St. Petersburg, he publishes a number of mournful stories and novels: "Uncle's Dream", "The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants", "Humiliated and Insulted", "Notes from dead house". The writer renounced revolutionary terrorism, socialism and utopianism. He became an ardent supporter of the ideas of the Slavophiles, defending with them the idea of ​​a special historical path for Russia. He developed the theory of pochvennism, according to which the writer of the national idea is the peasantry. Fyodor Mikhailovich foresaw the spiritual catastrophe of the intelligentsia and the upper class of Russia, which led to a revolutionary situation in the country.

Looking at the surrounding reality from the position of a religious person, Dostoevsky considered the revolutionary situation in the state to be a manifestation of an evil force of demonic origin. In the novels "Demons", "The Brothers Karamazov", he holds the idea that revolutionaries are people possessed by demons, because such actions committed by them cannot be actions normal people. Fyodor Mikhailovich believed that Russia should move along a different path of historical development than Western Europe and avoid the evil generated by revolutions. He opposed the all-conquering power of money, which manifested itself in Europe and was brewing in Russia, arguing that the goal human life is spiritual self-improvement.

In the "Diary of a Writer", published in the 80s, the writer placed personal experiences, spiritual searches and reasoning. Mastering the art psychological analysis, Fedor Mikhailovich in his works showed that the suppression of human dignity and the enslavement of the soul by sin splits his consciousness and suppresses his will. A feeling of his own insignificance appears in a person, and as a result of spiritual emptiness, the need for protest ripens. Personalities striving for self-affirmation and for the achievement of this goal, who have renounced God, come to crime. The revolutionaries, according to the writer, were criminals in the full sense of the word, perjurers and apostates.

The spiritual evil advancing on Russian society at the end of the 19th century, the writer in his works opposed the ideal beginning. This idea led Dostoevsky to the image of Christ, in which, according to the writer, the highest moral criteria were concentrated. In the novel The Brothers Karamazov, in The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor, Fyodor Mikhailovich considers the situation that could arise in the world if Jesus Christ comes. The writer refutes the idea of ​​a "happy society" promised by revolutionary-minded reformers by demonstrating the high personal value of each person. The forced “happiness” promised by the socialists and communists will lead, according to the writer, to the destruction of freedom, the main gift of God to people.

To the heroes of works endowed with an atheistic, god-fighting mind and destructive powers of the soul, the writer opposes other people endowed with subtle spiritual intuition, kindness of heart, believing and sympathetic soul. This is Sonya Marmeladova in Crime and Punishment, Lev Myshkin in the novel The Idiot, Alyosha Karamazov in The Brothers Karamazov. These people brought good to the world, fought against moral vice and sin. Truth and moral strength remained behind them. The final chapter of The Brothers Karamazov, At Tikhon's, ends in a monastic cell.

In the "Diary of a Writer" Dostoevsky stated: "Evil languishes in every person deeper than the healer - socialists suggest, in no structure of society can you avoid evil." He was deeply convinced that people can be beautiful and happy without losing the ability to live on earth. Dostoevsky said: "I do not want and cannot believe that evil is the normal state of people." He combined the strength of a brilliant psychologist, the intellectual depth of a thinker, the passion of a publicist and the strength of the faith of an Orthodox Christian.

Dostoevsky was the creator of the ideological novel, in which the development of the plot is determined by the struggle of ideas, the clash of worldviews. The author, within the genre framework of a detective story, posed the socio-philosophical problems of his time. Dostoevsky's novels are polyphonic. “The multiplicity of independent and unmerged voices and consciousnesses, the genuine polyphony of full-fledged voices is indeed a feature of Dostoevsky’s novels,” writes M.M. Bakhtin, who was the first to study the polyphonism of the writer's work. Polyphony artistic thinking was a reflection of the polyphony of social reality itself, which Dostoevsky brilliantly discovered, reached extreme tension at the beginning of the 20th century.

The writer had a special spiritual sensitivity and exceptional writing talent. Many contemporaries: V.V. Rozanov, D.S. Merezhkovsky, N.A. Berdyaev considered Dostoevsky a Christian teacher. This explains the powerful influence of Fyodor Mikhailovich not only on artistic culture, but also on the philosophical and aesthetic thought of the 20th century. The ideas expressed by the great writer and a convinced Orthodox Christian had a huge impact on Russian and world literature.

The second, no less significant figure in Russian literature is Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, one of the greatest Russian writers, a world-class personality, the creator of the grotesque style, a man who made a huge contribution to the artistic culture of Russia. He created truly innumerable works, deigning, according to critics, to become "the head of literature, the head of poets." Literary fame was brought to the writer by "Evenings on a farm near Dikanka", the collection "Arabesques", "Mirgorod". In these works, Nikolai Vasilievich created a special atmosphere, extraordinary world, inhabited by collective images personifying the Russian characters of the first half of the 19th century. The pinnacle of Gogol's work as a playwright was the play The Inspector General, which caused an emotional outburst in Russian society. The staging of The Inspector General at the St. Petersburg theater went differently than the author intended, and reduced the comedy, which reveals the negative features of bureaucratic society, to the level of vaudeville. This caused a deep depression in Gogol, as a result of which he left Russia.

In Rome, Nikolai Vasilievich met Alexander Ivanov, a famous Russian artist. There he conceived and created a brilliant, in its depth, work "Dead Souls". This work was perceived and interpreted in different ways, evaluated by different critics, and read by millions of people. Theories of its perception and understanding were put forward. The poem "Dead Souls" - deeply Christian work, under this name are human personalities who died spiritually for God and eternal life with Christ. The writer singled out the most severe spiritual ailments that Russian society of his time suffered from. Spiritual ulcers, opened by the writer, received the appearance of living people. The heroes of "Dead Souls" are unrealistically existing people, these are spiritual passions, sins that, having enslaved a person, turn him into an obedient slave. The holy fathers of the Orthodox Church, engaged in ascetic studies of the human soul, discovered in it an accumulation of sinful passions, which, like poisonous snakes, entwine the heart of the highest creation of God. To discern all the spiritual rottenness of human nature is possible only spiritually strong man, ascetic or monk.

Gogol, like the Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church, pulled out all the abomination from human souls and presented in his work in the form of people from whom the main character Chichikov bought peasants who were listed in revision tales. In them, many readers caught themselves, their acquaintances, bosses and subordinates. The world of passions, revived in the guise of Nozdrev, Manilov, Plyushkin, Korobochka and others, appeared in a veiled form. Nikolai Vasilyevich exposed modern vices, tried to draw the attention of society to the spiritual death that was spreading among the Russian people.

Having shown the gravity of the moral state of Russian society in the poem "Dead Souls", Gogol creates another work - the book "Selected Places of Correspondence with Friends", where, in the form of instructions, he sought to indicate the path to moral renewal. "Selected Places" contains a little-known work: "Meditation on the Divine Liturgy." In it, Gogol turns to reflection on the great Mystery of the Orthodox Church - Communion.

Having laid bare before the human gaze the abyss of sin and spiritual imperfection, Nikolai Vasilyevich offered the only way to save the soul - Christ. Spiritual passions, having enslaved people, have become omnipotent over the human person. Gogol shows the impotence of human efforts in the eradication of moral evil. Gogol demonstrates the only possibility of changing a sinful human being in Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ. Only Jesus, who bore the sins and vices of all mankind and redeemed all the living and the unborn, can extend a saving hand to perishing people, as happened with the drowning Apostle Peter.

"Meditation on the Divine Liturgy" is based on the works of the Holy Fathers and Doctors of the Church, who explained the doctrinal and moral truths of Christianity. Nikolai Vasilievich repeatedly quotes the works of Christian theologians of the early and late Middle Ages, he makes available to readers a layer of the Christian worldview and spiritual values. Having penetrated into the depths of a human being, the brilliant writer, horrified by spiritual evil, burns the second volume of the Dead Souls manuscripts. Bringing the intended task of renewing human souls becomes an overwhelming task for Gogol.

He creates a cycle of works known as Petersburg Tales. They sound the theme of hierarchical fragmentation of society and terrible human loneliness. Gogol contrasted this way of life with the ideal of human will, brotherhood and high spiritual values. IN " old-world landowners” shows selfless devotion to each other, genuine Christian love of two elderly people. Serving as a Christian ideal becomes life purpose writer. “It is impossible to direct society otherwise,” Gogol believed, “to the beautiful, until you show the full depth of its real abomination.” In the eradication of vices, sins and passions, Nikolai Vasilyevich moved along the path of hermits - ascetics, monks, who claimed that the true salvation of the human soul from the slavery of sin begins in the case of knowing the latter in oneself.

Likening characters to animals or inanimate objects is the main technique of Gogol's grotesque. He captured the moral image of modern society in images of such colossal psychological capacity that they outlived their era. Pointing the way to the beautiful was the central problem in the creation of the second volume of Dead Souls. The writer chose the path to the renewal of society by the moral abstinence of an individual, its constituent. This is the pastoral path of Christ Himself and main feature activities of the Orthodox Church in the world around her. Gogol believed that it was in Russia, first of all, that the principle of Christian brotherhood. He searched in the people's soul for those high Christian qualities that would serve as a guarantee of moral and moral rebirth. He considered the nation to be a single living organism, and the vices that befell him were a spiritual disease. The writer interpreted the Russian people as Orthodox, considering Christianity an integral part of it. This explains the increase in the last years of his life, the religiosity of the writer.

He was sure that the monarchical structure of the Russian state was the only correct one and considered the foundations of Russian social life unshakable. The internal complexity of Gogol's work, which received world fame, led to the acute debatability of his assessments in criticism. Various schools in Russian and foreign literary criticism gave numerous interpretations of his work. However, fragmentary judgments cannot give an exhaustive picture of the interpretation Gogol's works. The activity of the writer cannot be considered without an analysis of his inner spiritual life. Diary entries from Selected Places give a snapshot of the emotional nature of Nikolai Vasilyevich, who all his life was a believer, an Orthodox Christian. His literary creations should be considered from the Orthodox Christian standpoint, this is an ascetic sermon of a contemporary to subsequent generations. Gogol tried to influence Russian society with a literary word, seeing it as one living organism, which is obsessed with a spiritual illness. The healing of vices and passions, according to the writer, could be achieved only in the Orthodox Church, and through it - in Christ. Nikolai Vasilyevich was and remains a Christian writer, a successor to the traditions of ancient Russian spiritual literature. His contribution to Russian and Myrrh literature is enormous, and his works are of lasting value.

Often spiritual meaning the works of two famous writers of Russian literature, Gogol and Dostoevsky, are compared together. The continuity of the ideas of these authors is obvious. Works that give a slice of social life Russian state the middle and the end of the 19th century, the central canvases of the work of both writers - "Dead Souls" and "Demons" are consistent in the description of spiritual reality. The Russian people experienced several states of apostasy - from the necrosis of human souls to the obvious demonic. These spiritual diseases of society led to a spiritual crisis, expressed in bloody revolution and fratricidal war. The new, anti-Christian government tried to destroy and eradicate all the seeds of the sprouts of goodness and Christian love in the souls of people.

A worthy successor of Christian traditions in Russian literature is V.V. Nabokov, a Russian writer, a forced emigrant who left Russia during the bloodshed of the civil war. Born into the family of a Russian aristocrat and politician, Vladimir Nabokov continued Gogol's literary tradition. Just as Nikolai Vasilyevich created in his works illusory world passions and vices, dressed in human faces - masks, Vladimir Vladimirovich synthesized the world of ideas, endowing them with life. Nabokov is a world-famous writer, an author who masterfully mastered the language and figurative symbolic style. He created a unique literary style, an inimitable play of passions. The creator of the novel "Mashenka", Nabokov opened a different page in world literature.

The story "Protection of Luzhin" concentrated in itself the life position of the author. Main character, the famous chess player Luzhin, is so immersed in the world of the game that surrounding reality seems to him unreal and unsteady. People are seen by him in the form of chess pieces, and their actions are in the form of steps. Nabokov claims that the world is nothing more than an illusion. Life is a drama, comedy or tragedy, a theatrical play performed by an unknown author. In his work, the writer, masterfully using the word, separates and enlivens individual concepts, properties of things and ideas. They start living with him. independent life. Earthly life is illusory, its manifestations and goals are illusory. Nabokov believes that the desire for material values ​​is stupid, because they are transient and relative. Having achieved a certain goal, having achieved a result, Nabokov's hero stumbles upon a void that does not bring complete moral satisfaction.

The world always rejects a person who does not correspond to him, Nabokov believes. Any extraordinary personality causes aggression, anger and envy in others. An outstanding person is doomed to misunderstanding and loneliness. Like Cinnzinat C, the hero of the work "Invitation to the Execution", talented person defenseless before the crowd, kindness and love and decency are punished in the world very cruelly - suffering and death. Cincinath C is a literary image of Jesus Christ, who is different from the scribes and Pharisees. His righteousness was above their legality. Nabokov analyzes the causes of human malice and finds their root in envy - an ancient passion that has befallen mankind. It was envy that pushed the zealots of Jewish legalism to demand the death of Christ. Everyone understood perfectly well that Christ is the Messiah, the promised Jewish people, it is He who has been so long awaited. But even a complete understanding of the severity of their act made the Jews shout "Crucify him!". This idea was expressed by Vladimir Vladimirovich in the "Invitation to the Execution". People as spectators calmly expect the murder of an innocent person, they are invited to be executed. But Cintzinat Z understands that everything that is done is an illusion, and an illusion can be overcome and defeated. He overcomes the impact of the mirage of life, He conquers lies and gains immortality.

In the comprehension of the personality of Cincinnatus C lies an attempt to illuminate the events of the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in a new way. The timeless events of two thousand years ago are reviewed again by the great writer. Nabokov continues the creative line of Dostoevsky and Gogol. In the novel Despair, he describes the state of mind of an atheist, a person who not only does not believe in God, but also does not want to know and listen to him. The state of mind of "Dead Souls", "Demons", is replaced by the last human feeling - "Despair", followed by death, achieved by suicide.

According to the Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church, this is how the individual is swallowed up by the sin of a person. The dead soul is deprived of God, it is simply not able to keep the Being in itself. According to the Gospel, demons inhabit such an empty soul. Having found a human soul not filled with grace, the demon moves into it, bringing with him several more demons, stronger than himself. The last step of a person who despairs in life is suicide, the most terrible sin that a person can commit, because in this case he completely and forever renounces God and the redeemer of the sins of all mankind - Jesus Christ.

Vladimir Vladimirovich is accused of literary snobbery and reminiscences. However, his works have a different goal - to demonstrate to the world the thirst for the divine love of the human soul and the search for the only worthy goal of human life - Jesus Christ. His deeply individual style is not clear to everyone, just as it was not clear to Gogol's contemporaries. However, most of his works are Christocentric, imbued with the spirit of Christianity in Russian literature. Three apostles of Russian literature - Gogol, Dostoevsky and Nabokov - saw the goal of their work in the spiritual awakening of mankind. They lived and wrote at different times, for different people and in different spiritual atmospheres, but all together they expressed the natural desire of the human soul to find rest in God. All human good purposes are concentrated in Christ. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” the Lord said to his followers.