Ruling circles of society. Their culture
The main feature of Russian life has always been considered the Russian community, and - communalism. A wide variety of publicists wrote about the Russian community in the 60s and 70s of the 19th century. V. G. Avseenko, for example, understood that the Russian community, this arch-national institution, owes its origin primarily to the weakness of personal, individual instincts in the Russian peasant: he needs this collective communal personality, because he is aware of the weakness and inactivity of his individual personality. The desire for community is understood here as a means of getting rid of fear, overcoming the meaninglessness of the life of an individual person. The anonymous author of “Domestic Notes” saw in the Russian community and gathering the ideal of social freedom developed by the Russian peasantry: “If the Russian peasant were not so deeply imbued with this basic condition of social freedom, if he had not sucked it in with his mother’s milk, then communal ownership would not could become so ubiquitous and last so long.” The brilliant Vladimir Solovyov realized that the institution of community is a direct expression of the idea of syncretism underlying the national spirit: “Indeed, the historical principle of the development of law, as directly expressing the general basis of the national spirit in its indivisible unity, directly corresponds to the beginning of community, and the opposite mechanical the principle that derives law from an external agreement between all the individual atoms of society is an obvious direct expression of the individualistic principle.” At the same time, community is understood by Solovyov as an internal coincidence between the strongest development of the individual and complete social unity, which would satisfy the main moral requirement: that everyone should be the goal of everyone. The Slavophile mythologist O.F. Miller also wrote about the same principle of community: “In a community, everyone has in mind the good of everyone, the good of the whole. ...morality comes down to the fact that, while defending one’s personality, not only not allowing it to develop to the detriment of others, but also consciously sacrificing oneself for V.G. Avseenko. Again about nationality and cultural types of a common cause.” A similar idea is expressed by Dostoevsky in the novel “The Brothers Karamazov” through the mouth of Elder Zosima. It also appears in other populist writers. The personality in such conditions is not destroyed, but, on the contrary, reaches the highest spiritual level of development, when a person consciously sacrifices himself for the sake of everyone. Community is a voluntary and supreme unity of pluralities. F. Shcherbina even tried to give a scientific definition of community: By “society” the people mean, first of all, a well-known union of the agricultural population, a union that binds its members together by a community of interests in relation to: 1) self-government in general, 2) religious, moral and intellectual needs, 3) to serve state and public duties and 4) to the right to own and use community land and property.” Community relations, as we see, permeated all spheres of Russian life.
Populist writers (and populism was the leading ideological movement of the 60s and 70s of the 19th century) derived communalism from patriarchal “primitive communism.” V. Solovyov wrote: “The simplicity and monosyllabus of the original way of life is expressed in the economic sphere, firstly, in the absence of personal property in the strict sense, a kind of communism, and, secondly, in the simplicity and monotony of labor itself and its products. The original communism, actually proven by the latest research into prehistoric culture, directly follows from the predominance of the gens over the individual.” Somewhat later, already at the beginning of the 20th century, the critic E. A. Solovyov gave the following assessment of populism: “In peasant Russia, they saw the existence of such foundations, based on which, in their opinion, it was possible to nurture the wildest hopes. These foundations were the artel, the community, the handicraft industry and other remnants of “primitive communism,” as Western sociologists call this phenomenon. This brought the populists closer to the Slavophiles.” But if “primitive communism” directly correlates with archaic, mythological culture, then communalism, therefore, also becomes the result of the activity of mythological consciousness.
This relationship between the community and primitive, patriarchal “communism” formed the basis of Dostoevsky’s story. He assumed that historical progress contains three stages. In the sketch “Socialism and Christianity” (1864-1865), he wrote: “Patriarchy was a primitive state. Civilization is average, transitional. Christianity is the third and final degree of man, but here development ends, the ideal is achieved...” In patriarchal communities, a person lives directly in the masses, but in the future, achieving the ideal will mean returning to spontaneity, to the masses, but freely and not even by will, not by reason, but simply by the feeling that this is very good and so necessary. This concept of Dostoevsky then formed the basis of his utopian story “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man.” Apparently, under the influence of Dostoevsky, V. Solovyov expressed the same idea: “Thus, in the historical development of law, as in any development, we notice three main stages: 1) initial unfree unity; 2) isolation of individual; 3) their free unity.” The populists, however, believed that it was possible in development to bypass the second stage (bourgeois civilization) and immediately, relying on the communal foundations of Russian life, reach a new, voluntary and free unity, a new social order. In fact, this meant a direct, albeit at a completely new level, return to mythological culture, a return to myth, since community (old, new or “future”) always corresponds to intuitive thinking and syncretic worldview, i.e. - myth. At this new level, mythology was to be expressed in the spirituality and transcendental aspiration of the Russian people.
This new level of community was then called “all-unity.” The philosopher of unity at this time (70s of the 19th century) was V. Solovyov. He said that man’s desire for the unconditional, that is, the desire to be all in unity or to be all-one, is an undoubted fact. The philosopher recognized that man or humanity is a being that contains within itself (in absolute order) the divine idea, that is, unity, or the unconditional fullness of being, and realizes this idea (in the natural order) through rational freedom in material nature.” Such unity (unity in plurality) is achieved when the principle is realized that “everything is immanent to everything” (Lossky), when everything is internally inherent in everything and does not exist in itself, but is in the closest connection with everything, exists for everyone. This worldview of a Russian person is completely opposite to that of a European. The religious philosopher R. Guardini saw this: “In contrast to the widespread “in the West” position, which boils down to the formula “you are not me, I am not you,” here it is assumed that in “you” there is also “I”, although their content is different." Russian people overcome oppositionality and binaryness and replace them with syncretism and unity. Moreover, the category of unity, as bearing an ideal, correlates not with fleeting time, but with the same ideal eternity. All-unity is therefore ontological and therefore mythological. The Russian idea is a thirst for the embodiment of unity, the unity of all people in the name of Christ and under the banner of the Orthodox Church.
Here a new aspect of the problem of Russian community and unity appears - the deep religiosity of Russians and conciliarity. In the Russian idea, knowledge merges with faith, and this reveals another aspect of syncretism. At the same time, myth and religion are close concepts, but not the same. They can intersect and interact, interpenetrate, but in principle they relate to completely different levels and areas of the human personality. Myth occupies the subconscious, where it is in an unidentified form, and religion belongs to the sphere of the superconscious and is always conscious. Of course, elements of myth are preserved in religion, since the superconscious interacts with consciousness, and consciousness is controlled by the subconscious. But there is no “cancellation” or “replacement” of myth with religion. We can only talk about the interaction or, in rare cases, the predominance in the soul of a nation, people, tribe or individual of the subconscious (myth) or superconscious (religion). Russian religiosity is directly related to mythology and becomes one of the features of the national character. N. Ya. Danilevsky noted in the book “Russia and Europe” that “religion constituted the most essential, dominant (almost exclusive) content of ancient Russian life, and at present it is the predominant spiritual interest of ordinary Russian people...” From here the philosopher derives “the Orthodox concept, which asserts that the church is the collection of all believers of all times and peoples under the headship of Jesus Christ and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and ascribes infallibility to the church thus understood.” Community, taken in a religious, church aspect, is the conciliarity on which our outstanding thinkers pinned their hopes.
It is known that Danilevsky’s book “Russia and Europe” formed the basis for the reasoning of the hero of Dostoevsky’s novel “Demons” Shatov, that V. Solovyov very highly valued this deepest study of the soul of the Russian people. True unity is possible only as conciliarity, that is, in Christ and through a single conciliar Orthodox Church. N. I. Aksakov wrote: “So, only in the church can the complete unity of the common be combined with the complete freedom of personal conviction, for this is actually the task of the church, as communication, so that in it the formation of the common tirelessly goes hand in hand with the complete freedom of each separate unit." Genuine community is possible in Orthodox culture only as conciliarity, as churchliness. O. Miller believed that “both on political and religious grounds, the starting point of Slavophilism is the concept of community - not as some kind of institution, but as a purely moral union between people. The longevity of the community is a predisposition to joining the church, as a community not only of “those who have been baptized, but also of those who have put on Christ.” These same reflections formed the basis of Leskov’s novel “Soborians” and his story “At the End of the World.”
Communal Russian culture has always been characterized by traditionalism. Traditionalism means the expression in certain stereotypes of the group experience of a people and their spatio-temporal transmission. It is tradition that becomes the common denominator on which individual tribes are formed into a nation. This tradition is always spiritual, always sacred and always reflects national identity. The role of the community here is fundamental. It was she who formed, preserved, changed and passed on traditions. Community, conciliarity, unity mean not only the unity of people in space, but also in time. Through tradition, ancestors became contemporaries, since a person repeated or resumed their behavior, which formed the basis of the tradition. The very preservation of the stability of society is impossible without people recognizing certain common values. Typically, these values are recognized due to their consecration by time, experience or mode of origin. These values form the basis of the tradition. Thus, tradition controls the form and even the place of life of the tribe, subjugates the needs of the tribe and its history. Therefore, traditionalism rejects linear time and replaces it with cyclical time, which means that it is mythologized.
Any traditional culture is mythological, since tradition is a mythological paradigm enshrined in experience and time-honored. It is generally correct to divide societies not into primitive (or primitive) and modern (or developed), but into traditional, static and revolutionary, developing. Each of these types corresponds to its own special form of consciousness. Traditional culture corresponds to mythological consciousness and a syncretic, undivided society. Revolutionary culture is characterized by anti-traditionalism, rationalism, and positivism. The Slavophiles and Pochvenniks in Russia were traditionalists; Westerners, revolutionary democrats and socialists - anti-traditionalists. Traditionalism is not just an appeal to the past, but, as we have already said, its sacralization. The rationalistic denial of traditions is one of the forms of the revolt of the profane against the sacred. The decline of tradition leads to the denial of collectivist, communal foundations, to the division of a single society into separate units (pluralism). On the other hand, the development of private property and private entrepreneurship weakened communal foundations in Russia and fundamentally undermined traditionalism.
E. Shatsky identifies the following features of traditionalism in agrarian society: 1) sacred-mythological or religious overtones (prescription is consecrated by the authority of supernatural forces); 2) syncretism; the world is presented as a single whole, where the natural, social, divine and spatiotemporal merge; 3) the established order is perceived as indestructible, unchanging, stable; 4) culture is perceived as something integral, and changes in each of its parts are considered dangerous for the existence of the culture as a whole; in general, culture and progress are possible only within the framework of tradition; 5) the lack of alternative to established traditions, the impossibility of choosing principles of behavior, the unambiguity of tradition; 6) unconsciousness, unawareness of following tradition; tradition is experienced but not realized; traditionalism inevitably turns out to be irrationalism. Traditionalism is thus based on the recognition, first of all, of the ritual-mythological, magical and religious essence of man. God, spirit, ancestor or cultural hero is the creator of both the cosmic and social order, and just as the cosmos is unchanged, so is society. Tradition, therefore, reveals mythological times to man and brings them into the present. It is not prescription, but holiness, the sacredness of revelation that is the basis of tradition. It sacralizes people’s lives and helps them survive in a profane environment. Tradition is also ontological, since it relates man to the primordial times, to the root causes of Existence. In general, tradition acts as a mediator between modernity and eternity, history and myth; it is a means of mythologizing life.
Tradition is close to myth in three more ways: in the presence of a paradigm, in connection with natural cycles, and in the cult of ancestors. “The past,” says Shatsky, “is a storehouse of precedents, examples, experiences, specific patterns of sensations, thinking and behavior. Remaining faithful to our predecessors, we must behave in the same way as they did, without asking “why” and “what for.” Tradition carries exemplary models and itself acts as a paradigm, as a norm of behavior, that is, it carries the same functions as myth. This can only mean one thing: tradition has a mythological consciousness at its core; it is, in principle, mythological. In order to maintain stability, a person has developed a complex of “the need for heritage as a paradigm,” and as a role model, tradition and myth become the goal of a person’s cultural activity and its basis, to which he completely subordinates his activities.
Like myth, the Russian community in its life and its traditions are directly dependent on natural cycles. The labor rhythm, sanctified by tradition, is determined by the cyclical change of seasons, which also underlies the mythological-ritual system. Among such ritual traditions, clearly mythological and even pagan ones have been preserved - an appeal to the first ancestors, nature spirits and pagan deities who were supposed to ensure a good harvest (Mother Earth, Yarilo, Kupala, Kostroma, Chur, brownie, field, etc.). Supernatural forces were addressed during common holidays (i.e., “by the whole society”), which were of agricultural origin. The tradition of “sacred days” also has the same deep mythological roots, when it was forbidden to work or perform certain types of work (for example, spinning on Fridays).
The preservation of tradition is combined with the cult of ancestors. Tradition is associated with continuity, i.e. with the desire of the tribe to maintain ties with their ancestors and establish them with their descendants. A nation is a union of people not only in space, but also in time. No new generation is free from the values and ideals developed in the past. Traditionalism includes the ideas of heritage, continuity and return to a lost ideal, the bearers or creators of which were the first ancestors. The traditionalism of the tribe lies in the fact that a person (thanks to ritual) strives to achieve identification with his ancestors, with previous generations. In traditional rituals (weddings, funerals, agricultural holidays), the deceased directly took part in the affairs of the living. So, the idea of continuity of generations, respect for previous generations, the authority of ancestors directly goes back to the mythological cult of ancestors. Hence the worship of Rod, Chur, the brownie, mermaids, etc. N. Fedorov’s teaching about the “common cause” - the physical resurrection of dead ancestors by the forces of science - is the apogee of philosophical speculation about the cult of mythological ancestors. Finally, the question of the means of transmitting traditions also becomes very important. There are two levels of preservation and transmission of traditions in a community - family and professional. The family, as a community unit, bears the main burden of transmitting traditions; it is the family, and not the school, not the place of work, not the army or other structures that contribute to the socialization of a person. The opinion of the family and relatives acted as a regulator and incentive for behavior. Afanasyev noted the enormous importance of the family for understanding the worldview of the Slavs: “Due to the natural, physiological conditions that determined the initial development of infant tribes, the Slav was primarily a kind and homely family man. In the circle of his family or clan (which was the same family, only expanded) his whole life passed, with all its everyday life and related celebrations; it concentrated his most vital interests and kept his most cherished traditions and beliefs.” Hence the cult of fire, hearth, home and home patron spirits. The family was generally considered one of the main shrines among the Slavs; in the family “thoughts and feelings about the people, duty, loyalty, spiritual strength and purity of personal human thoughts merge.” Family life was viewed as a spiritual, religious, righteous feat, and family is considered one of the most important features of Russian national identity associated with community.
The number of professional, specific keepers and transmitters of traditions and testaments of ancestors included rural righteous men and healers, craftsmen, storytellers of epics and fairy tales, and permanent stewards of ritual games. All these persons trace their origins back to mythological antiquity, when they merged into the priestly caste.
But there was also a national level of preserving traditions. Here the main role was played by two classes - clergy and aristocrats. Priests have always been the guardians of not only religion, but also the spiritual traditions of the people in all cultures. Leskov spoke about this role of the priesthood in the novel “Soborians”. As for the aristocracy, at the state level it becomes the only group of persons united not by mode of action, but by right of birth (in Russia, this situation existed before the reforms of Peter I). Aristocracy is the support of the traditions of the state and the collective memory of the people. The main purpose of the existence of the aristocracy is to preserve traditions. Dostoevsky’s Prince Myshkin (“The Idiot”) and Versilov (“The Teenager”) become such traditionalist aristocrats. Genetically closed groups of bearers of traditions (aristocracy) go back to the secret societies of mythological cultures, the main function of which is the preservation of secret sacred cults and customs.
Tradition is associated with myth, and traditional culture cannot but be mythological. The task of myth is to justify and strengthen tradition, and any tradition rests on myth - the sacred tradition of the tribe. National spirits and national history, implicated in a traditionalist approach, are always mythologized. Political ideology also grows from myth, especially when it, such as conservatism, is directly related to the idea of tradition. Such conservatism is not something negative, but becomes the key to natural evolutionary progress: “The basis of even the most noble and progressive struggle for personality is, obviously, conservatism of form, as the very word self-preservation shows. Conservatism is the basis and source of progress, no matter how strange it may seem at first.” The political ideology of conservatism comes out of mythological traditionalism and is built as a new mythology. But if a person or group of people (party) chooses something specific from the past as an ideal, then they are guided by the fact that some elements of it are quite acceptable today. Such a well-founded tradition, chosen consciously and becoming an ideology, inevitably ceases to be “reactionary” and turns into a conservative utopia. The future grows naturally out of the past, rather than replacing it through negation. If traditionalism has a religious and mythological overtones, evaluates the world as a single sensory-material cosmos, and the world order as unchanging, stable, then it becomes the basis for unity, conciliarity and theocracy.
The communalism and traditionalism of Russians corresponds to the agricultural, soil nature of the culture. “The people,” wrote R. Guardini about the Russians, “stand at the origins of existence. He has merged into a single whole with the earth - the earth on which he walks, on which he works and thanks to which he lives. It is organically included in the general context of nature, in the biological cycles of light and growth. And he feels, perhaps subconsciously, the unity of the Universe.” , soil, nature and its cycles, non-distinction with them, non-selection and unity with the Universe and especially with the native land - this is one of the components of the Russian soul. Hence the pochvenism of the Dostoevsky brothers, A. Grigoriev and N. Strakhov, who expected the merger of all classes of the Russian people on the basis of a single religion, in the vastness of a single land. Dostoevsky dreamed of returning the educated classes of Russian society to their native soil.
Community and femininity gave rise to the following character traits among Russians by the end of the 19th century: tolerance, traditionalism, non-violence and non-resistance, gentleness, humility and respect for elders, respect and love for the younger, the desire for brotherhood and justice, collectivism, familyism, kindness and forgiveness, humility and dreaminess, pan-humanity, pity for the humiliated and insulted, love that stands above justice, self-sacrifice as a moral law, the thirst for happiness and the search for the meaning of life, suffering for the sake of finding an ideal and compassion for the sake of saving one’s neighbor, responsiveness, deep spirituality, transcendence and deep religiosity , the priority of the spiritual over the material and an appeal to the higher, ideal, divine world. All these character traits make up the mythology of the Russian nation and directly influence its entire history. The mysticism of the earth in Russian self-consciousness has also given rise to a number of basic mythologies in its culture. And above all, this is, of course, the type of wanderer. Wandering is a feature of Russian self-awareness. Russian telluric (soil) culture is characterized by a feeling of limitless space. From him comes the desire to master these limits, which occurs through movement on the earth. This is very close to the type of mythological cultural hero who, as he moves through space, brings order to it, destroying the remnants of chaos and mastering space. The Russian wanderer does not have his own home on earth, because he is looking for the Kingdom of God. The mythological cultural hero also sees as his goal the achievement of the kingdom of the gods, or the discovery of a certain sacred place - the energy center of the world. Such a wanderer is directly opposite to the Russian wanderer. Wanderers appear on the pages of Dostoevsky’s novels (Makar Dolgoruky in “The Teenager” and Elder Zosima in “The Brothers Karamazov”), in Leskov (Ivan Flyagin in “The Enchanted Wanderer”), in Nekrasov’s poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'?” and in a number of works by L. N. Tolstoy (“Father Sergius”, “Posthumous Notes of Elder Fyodor Kuzmich”, etc.).
The sacred center in a myth can be a beautiful Garden of Eden - a sacred space closed to ordinary people. Usually this place is cursed or sanctified by God himself and is opposed to the external, profane world. We encounter such a cursed space in the story
Leskova “Hare harness”. Dostoevsky, in “The Diary of a Writer,” argued that the idea of the Garden is capable of saving everyone: “Humanity will be renewed in the Garden and straightened out by the Garden - that’s the formula. Now they are waiting for the third phase: the bourgeoisie will end and Renewed Humanity will come. It will divide the land into communities and begin to live in the Garden.” Such a utopian Garden also appears in Dostoevsky’s story “The Dream of a Funny Man” as a beautiful, but quite achievable ideal. As you can see, the Garden’s mythology is directly connected with the soilness and community of Russian culture, and with mythological ideas about sacred space. The Garden's mythology becomes the prototype of the biblical Garden of Eden and the apocalyptic New Jerusalem. The mythology of the plowman is very important for Russian telluric culture. The farmer, the plowman, is the main figure of agricultural crops. In Slavic mythology, he is always a cultural hero, liberating the earth from demonic forces (remnants of chaos) and bringing order to space. This is Nikita Kozhemyaka, who drowned the snake and made the Universe strictly structured (by drawing a line on the earth with a plow). Among the Slavs, the farmer is always confronted by a giant or a sorcerer, whom he nevertheless overcomes. The image of Mikula Selyaninovich, the hero of epics and a mighty plowman, is very important here. He wanders across the Russian land (the motive of wandering) and carries earthly cravings in his bag. It is said that the Cheese Earth Mother loves him, so he becomes invincible. Mikula Selyaninovich turns out to be stronger and smarter than the cunning sorcerer and hunter Volkh Vseslavich and more powerful than the giant and hero Svyatogor. Mikula's victory over these heroes reflected the transition from a hunting culture to an agricultural one among the Slavs, since Svyatogor is a fragment of the image of the supreme god of the sky among the Slavic hunters (Svyatovit, Svarog). Nikita Kozhemyaka and Mikula Selyaninovich are the thunder god Perun, transformed into fairy-tale and epic images, who, writes Afanasyev, “as a generous giver of rain... was revered as the creator of harvests, the establisher of agriculture, the patron of peasant ploughmen, and even himself, according to folk legends , went out in the guise of a simple peasant to cultivate the fields with his golden plow.” The plowman also becomes a cosmic hero, since the constellation Orion in the myths of the peoples of the world is a heavenly plow, a prototype of the earthly, human. Thus, the image of the farmer in Russian culture goes back to deep pagan antiquity and is mythologized.
Agriculture, as we have seen, in mythology is associated with the cosmic order, with the sacred world of seeds, buds, shoots, spring, flowers, fruits. The cyclism of the agricultural calendar underlay the stability of the world. Throwing grain into the ground (his funeral) and subsequent germination (resurrection) is the basis of pagan cults of the dying and resurrecting god (Osiris, Dionysus, Yarila, Kostroma). But Christianity with its idea of the risen Christ also corresponds to agricultural culture. Fallen and resurrected grain, seed is one of the persistent mythologies of Russian culture. It is therefore not surprising that it appears in Dostoevsky’s novels (the idea of a fallen and reborn hero) and especially in The Brothers Karamazov, where the biblical image of fallen grain is used as an epigraph. This image is expanded by Dostoevsky to the universal level. First of all, the seed can be understood as the soul. The human body is a prison for the soul, the grave of the soul. Then the seed (soul) will not be resurrected to a new life unless it dies (passes through the stage of life in the body). The writer also correlates the image of a seed with the concept of an idea. F. A. Stepun clarifies: “An idea is the seed of the other world; the emergence of this seed in earthly gardens is the secret of every human soul and every human destiny.” God throws an idea-seed onto the earth that must sprout in our world. The idea-seed is the divine prototype, which receives concrete bodily embodiment in us. This idea-seed-prototype falls into the soul of Dostoevsky’s hero in order to emerge there as a complete system of views and completely subjugate the hero’s will to himself, making him a “monomaniac”, a sufferer of the idea (such are Raskolnikov and Arkady Dolgoruky, Shatov and Kirillov, Ivan Karamazov). Here the “idea” completely takes possession of a person and becomes his personal myth, the mythological paradigm of the hero. The horse occupies a special place in agricultural culture. In Russian literature, he is transformed into the image of a downtrodden nag. This mythology was creatively used by N.A. Nekrasov (the poem “Before Twilight”), Dostoevsky (“Crime and Punishment”, “The Brothers Karamazov”), Saltykov-Shchedrin (the fairy tale “The Horse”). In all cases, the image of a downtrodden nag is correlated with the theme of the downtrodden Russian people, their fate. Downtroddenness, meekness, irresponsibility and backbreaking, killing labor - this is what brings the image of a horse to the level of national mythology. But the horse is also directly a mythological image. Directly connected with the earth (where all living things go after death), the horse is a psychopom animal, a soul-bearer in the kingdom of the dead; he is also the image of death itself. The theme of the horse-death in myth and the theme of the slaughtered nag in Russian culture constantly intersect (in Shchedrin’s “The Horse”). But in the guise of a horse, the self also appears - the eternal worker on the heavenly field in agricultural mythology. The motive for the constant, exhausting and killing labor of a downtrodden nag can also be explained mythologically. Continuity of action as punishment is one of the constant motifs in the mythology of the underworld (the myth of Sisyphus). So we see that national images and motifs directly grow out of ancient mythological models and, in turn, are again mythologized.
The problem of the culture of the ruling circles cannot be ignored simply because their representatives constitute the top of society and, in some way, act as an indicator characterizing the state of the entire society. First you need to figure out who is in this group.
The ruling circles of society - who are they?
Let's turn to dictionaries and textbooks. The ruling circles of society in the modern world can be represented in the form of several groups depending on their spheres of influence. Among them are: economic, cultural, political and others. Each group forms its own circles. In the economic sphere - top managers, in the cultural sphere - media owners, in the political sphere - representatives occupying the highest positions in the state, as well as a number of figures who are “behind the scenes”.
The ruling circles of society unite diverse interests. They provide the necessary connections between the owners of the media, banking institutions, and businesses to manage society. This group organizes and supports the activities of the state machine, forming political parties and a number of other organizations. Creates a layer of leaders who are called upon to govern the country. The formed government guarantees a privileged position to the ruling circles. It strengthens its position with the help of an appropriate ideology that justifies its dominance.
Cultural portrait of those in power
This characteristic forms the political image of the national elite and practically does not depend on criteria such as state rule. However, it acts as a tuning fork for the entire country. Many years of experience of those in power shows that nothing can so strongly influence government decisions as values and internal attitudes, as well as ideas about what is possible and unacceptable in politics.
All this forms a culture, which is a kind of indicator and best characterizes the ruling circles of a particular state.
As a matter of fact, it is precisely this that can be considered the real engine of social transformation. A hidden system of standards and priorities, which gradually manifests itself in the everyday activities of the ruling elite, and ultimately forms into a special management style unique to it. It has its own national characteristics and as an example we can consider one of the most interesting.
American establishment
In various sources, a brief summary of the essence of this concept does not go beyond the scope of our object. It constitutes nothing more than the ruling circles of society. Establishment is literally translated using words such as "establishment", "establishment", "foundation".
The ruling circles of the United States ensure the stability of the social situation that has developed there, regardless of who comes to power. The latter, according to political scientists, is “structural” and is always firmly held in the hands of that “anonymous force” that shapes the internal and foreign policy strategy of the state, subordinating its interests to its own.
The problem of the culture of the ruling circles today remains relevant for any country in the world, since it is this characteristic that reflects their ability and willingness to serve society and its interests, putting them above their own.
Literature test
Grade 10
Option 2
A1.Wrote the article “Dark Kingdom”
A) N. Chernyshevsky
B) V. Belinsky
B) I. Goncharov
D) N. Dobrolyubov
A2. In which circles of Russian society does he place his hopes? E. Bazarov?
A) peasantry
B) intelligentsia
B) Russian patriarchal nobility
D) noble aristocracy
A3. “The Muse cut with a whip” is an image of whose poetry?
A) A.S. Pushkin
B) M.Yu. Lermontova
B) F.I. Tyutcheva
D) N.A. Nekrasova
A4 The first period of N. Ostrovsky’s creativity is associated with his work in a literary magazine
A) "Contemporary"
B) "Mosvityanin"
B) “Domestic Notes”
D) “Son of the Fatherland”
A5. Hometown of A.P. Chekhov
a) Taganrog
b) Krasnoyarsk
in Sochi
d) Ryazan
A6 To which of the heroes of Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov” the words belong:“For me, love is the same as...life, and life is a duty, therefore love is also a duty”?
A) Oblomov
B) Stoltz
B) Tarantiev
D) Volkov
A7. The result of L. Tolstoy’s participation in the Crimean War are:
A) “Sevastopol Stories”
B) diaries
B) autobiographical stories
D) "War and Peace"
A8. Which of the heroes of the novel “Fathers and Sons” stands up for the peasants, but “when talking to them, he frowns and sniffs cologne”?
A) Bazarov
B) Nikolai Petrovich Kirsanov
B) Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov
D) Arkady
A9. Among the numerous “military” heroes of the novel “War and Peace,” Pierre Bezukhov stands out sharply for his “civilianism.” In what episode is it revealed that he doesn't know how to use a gun?
A) in the episode of the duel with Dolokhov
B) on the Raevsky battery
B) in captivity
A10. What famous painting by a Russian artist is reminiscent of Nekrasov’s poem “On the Volga”?
A) I.E.Repin “Barge Haulers on the Volga”
B) I.I. Levitan “Evening on the Volga”
B) I.S. Petrov-Vodkin “Girls on the Volga”
IN 1. Here is the front entrance. On special days,
Possessed by a servile illness,
A whole city with some kind of fear
Drives up to the treasured doors.
Here is an excerpt from a famous poem by a Russian poet of the 19th century.
Name:
b) size
AT 2. Which Russian writer was sentenced to civil execution by a court?
AT 3. Paradoxically, the philosophical-utopian novel of a state criminal, a prisoner of the Peter and Paul Fortress, went through two strict censorships and received the green light for publication. Name this work and its author.
AT 4. This classic of Russian literature was deprived of the right to bear his father’s Russian surname and lost all the privileges associated with the title of nobleman. In order to regain his noble title, he enters the service. However, the military rank that gave this right increased in rank each time they were promoted. Only at the end of his days did this poet manage to regain his noble title and his father’s lost surname. Name this author.
AT 5. By what principle are the images of Oblomov and Stolz introduced into the novel?
AT 6. N.A. Dobrolyubov called one of the heroes of A.N. Ostrovsky’s play “A Ray of Light in the Dark Kingdom”? Who is this?
AT 7. Match the titles of the works and their genre:
A) “After the ball”
B) "Childhood"
B) "War and Peace"
D) "Anna Karenina"
D) “The Power of Darkness”
E) "Confession"
1) Story
3) Religious treatise
5) Epic novel
6) Story
AT 8. A distinctive feature of Tolstoy’s portrait “painting” is assigning some characteristic feature of the external appearance to the character and then repeating it many times. So Pierre is remembered for his massive figure, clumsiness and “friendly eyes.” Try to guess the character in the novel using 1-2 “portrait touches” and correlate these traits with his name.
A) bare, white, full shoulders
B) black eyes, big mouth
B) dry face
D) radiant eyes, heavy gait
D) bald head, flat face
1) Natasha Rostova
2) Prince Vasily Kuragin
3) Helen Kuragina
4) Andrey Bolkonsky
5) Maria Bolkonskaya
Read the poem below and complete the tasks
Evening
Sounded over the clear river,
It rang in a darkened meadow,
Rolled over the silent grove,
It lit up on the other side.
Far away, in the twilight, with bows
The river runs to the west.
Having burned with golden borders,
The clouds scattered like smoke.
On the hill it is either damp or hot,
The sighs of the day are in the breath of the night, -
But the lightning is already glowing brightly
Blue and green fire.
A.A.Fet
AT 9. What term refers to a sketch of nature, similar to the one created in Fet’s poem?
AT 10 O'CLOCK. What means of allegory, based on the transfer of human traits to inanimate phenomena, is used in the line “The river runs to the west”?
AT 11. In the second stanza, the fading edges of the clouds are conveyed allegorically, using metaphor. Write down a phrase (in the nominative case) that metaphorically replaces the image of the luminous outlines of a cloud.
AT 12. In the line "Run away A no on z A river fall A“All three stresses fall on the vowel “a”. What is this sound recording technique called?
B13. Determine the poetic meter in which “Evening” is written.
Give a detailed answer in 5-10 sentences
C1. For what artistic purpose are exclusively impersonal sentences used in the first stanza?
C2. What poems by Russian poets are devoted to the description of evening nature? What are their similarities and differences with A. Fet’s poem?
People's views are so random and varied that seeking general, unconditional agreement on any truth would be a fool's errand. The simplest truth - that the earth is round and compressed at the poles - would have met decisive resistance from several million Old Believers, making up almost the most developed part of the Russian common people who believe that the earth is a flat circle, in the middle of which stands Jerusalem; many of our Russian people would have put forward, in a different order of thoughts, situations even more peculiar than the centrality of Jerusalem.
Nevertheless, we are convinced that if it were possible to get the real Russian opinion at the current time - the opinion not of newspapers, not of bureaucrats, not of universities, but opinions of Russian people of cultural background living in some connection with the soil - about what Russia needs most, the majority would answer without hesitation, although, of course, each in his own words: concentration. We have accumulated sufficiently developed mental forces to form them into a political class; but they are not at all enough to leaven Russian all-classism on the American model, as was, it seems, meant at the beginning of the reforms.
By dissolving our cultural capital, acquired with such difficulty, into a mass of eighty million, we became like an owner pouring a barrel of wine into a pond in the hope of improving the taste of the water: at the same time, both the wine disappeared and the water remained the same. But what also happened is that in this solution there were the most harmful reptiles that had not existed before, preachers of all sorts of absurdities, people who set themselves the task not to develop, but to disturb the national system, which was left unattended, and local leaders, which is clear from the political processes that began repeat almost every year.
As always happens with a sudden confusion of social positions, some, from above, either abandoned everything, or began to popularize in the most false tone; others, from below, have found the opportunity to acquire influence on empty soil, for which they are not yet at all ready, and to use it for purposes, sometimes very harmful. Our all-class system has not developed and will never develop in this way, but educated society has crumbled.
The legend about the bundle of arrows of the Scythian king can serve as a motto for our modern question. To concentrate educated society into a coherent class, to close it around a solid core - this is the Russian task of the current time, without the implementation of which we have nothing to count on for the future.
The core is obviously the nobility, we have nothing else. The range of his activities, his place in the national and popular system is clearly outlined, of course, not in detail and not in direct application to practice, which requires a preliminary and serious discussion of issues between the authorities and the zemstvo people themselves.
We consider it possible to discuss in print only what should be desired, and not the methods by which the desired can be achieved apart from the people directly involved in the matter: otherwise we would be guilty of the same word disputes before our readers that plague our current press, or, more correctly, , our current social system, reflected in the press. We consider the essence of the task itself to be beyond doubt.
According to our concept, the Russian nobility cannot be recognized, in view of the near future, by the entire mental power of Russia, capable of enjoying political rights; but it must undoubtedly become the legitimate focus and foundation of all this power. In other words, outside of the nobility we currently have people, partly grouped among themselves, partly scattered, capable of political life and having influence in their midst, without whom the zemstvo system will not be a true reflection of reality, and will again deviate from the all-Russian truth; but these groups and these disconnected individuals are far from being sufficiently independent to represent anything on their own behalf and rank; they can only be granted the right to personally use the zemstvo rights of the nobility, to enter into the circle of its zemstvo activities, under certain conditions, as long as they satisfy them.
All these groups and individuals do not express themselves Russian mature historical layer, forming the hereditary power of the state, but only his own person or his accidental, often transient economic position; therefore, their participation in public (of course, not rural) self-government can only be personal, stemming either from a high price, or from the trust of the local nobility in them, which opens them up to join their ranks. Then we also have special areas in which the predominant influence, according to law and common sense, belongs not to the nobility, but to the owners of capital, houses and shops - the cities. It is obvious that these localities with their leaders should have a rightful voice in zemstvo affairs, regardless of anyone’s discretion. One might think that it would be much more convenient to separate all significant cities from the district into a special zemstvo unit.
The only group of people outside the nobility that has independent significance in our country, and therefore has an undoubted right to vote in general affairs, is the merchant class. Of all social groups, our merchants are the most coherent, the most capable of defending their collective benefits, as they have constantly proven. With all that the Russian merchant class cannot be called a class in the Western sense: until now it could not develop into a strong class, since our merchants, unwittingly submitting to the historical structure of Russian society, either gradually passed into the nobility, or went bankrupt and again drowned among the people. If the merchants have not yet developed a class, then they never will; now there is no longer a need for it.
The caste-based Western nobility needed the laws of Louis XIV, which, in addition, turned out to be powerless due to the contradiction of morals, on allowing a nobleman to engage in trade without losing his dignity. In our people's nobility this is understood as a matter of course. Nothing prevents a rich Russian merchant and his descendants from perpetuating their company by becoming nobles. On the contrary, this is the only way a truly strong merchant class will emerge in Russia. The English and Dutch merchants of the big houses have long been considered part of the local aristocracy. The same was true in Italy, where, for example, the famous banking house of Torlonia bore the ducal title without ceasing to hold the bank.
In Europe the commercial aristocracy exists without privilege, by virtue of its hereditary wealth; but we have other conditions rooted in us: The Russian privileged stratum, which constitutes a purely social institution, must open itself to any social force that strengthens itself hereditarily. Therefore, in Russia it would be necessary to make it as easy as possible for large merchants who remain merchants to become nobility. In our opinion, it would be completely consistent with modern needs to give them the right to ask for elevation to the nobility of children provided with significant real estate; honorary citizens who own capital of a certain amount are equal to nobles in all rights.
Thus, the rich hereditary merchants will pass entirely into the privileged stratum of society, as follows from the spirit of this institution; Outside the Russian upper class, only the small merchants will remain, and now no different from the people, and people who have personally made a fortune for themselves. Therefore, the current Russian merchants should be spoken of as individuals, and not as a class. These faces are like members of public self-government, rule and must rule in trading cities according to natural law; there is their main strength, from there they can declare to the zemstvo assemblies about their collective needs and goals.
The merchants scattered in the districts are few in number, in terms of education they are ultimately much lower than the nobles and enjoy importance only when they have a large fortune; such a fortune - for example, a valuable factory - should, of course, give them personal access to the zemstvo noble self-government. In general, bare capital, as a purely material force, should be valued in the social sense only from the material side, in accordance with its size. In this regard, in order to distribute our merchants into social classes, it is necessary first of all to determine the amount of their capital by income tax.
An entry in the guild, as everyone knows, does not express anything. No one doubts the best Russian spirit of our merchants, its practicality, its close acquaintance with the people; but we still have few hereditary merchants, and in the future it is much more profitable for them to move to the higher class, remaining merchants, than to impose a new one; the level of education of the rest is very low, and therefore there is no way to recognize their social significance other than by actual strength - by wealth, that is, by a penny, many times higher than that of the nobility.
Of the other social ranks, only people of intellectual labor, such as scientists, writers, etc., born outside the nobility, can, depending on the degree of their merits, enjoy the right and ability to participate in public self-government. The number of such persons will gradually increase with the development of society. Although the Russian nobility, by its very institution, opens its ranks for the forces rising from below, access to it must still be subject to serious conditions: otherwise it will soon cease to be nobility even in the Russian sense.
Outside it and under it, in our growing society, especially over time, there will be many educated and worthy people, who in no case should be pushed into the ranks of the dissatisfied, at the same time deprived of their services. On the other hand, statistics prove that classes that enjoy wealth hereditarily reproduce slowly and after a certain period of time, without renewal, even decrease in number. Growing and renewing in both directions, our privileged cultural class will be consistently replenished by influxes of cultural subsoil, growing little by little from the people and serving the upper class as a nursery.
It is therefore impossible not to pay attention to this subsoil: insignificant for now, it will grow over time. It is necessary to reconcile the seriousness of the conditions required for entry into the hereditary nobility with the need to open the necessary scope for mature individuals from the lower strata who have not yet achieved this rank, which often depends on luck than on personal qualities. According to the spirit of its institution, the Russian nobility should be open to educated families, successively educated generations, and not to every educated person personally: even the doors of the valuable European bourgeoisie are not opened for such a person if he does not satisfy other conditions.
But for people of average wealth who deserve attention, there may be, in our opinion, another right granted by the government to a person not hereditarily - the right of personal nobility, not in its current meaning, but with full equality to all political and other noble rights for life. This mercy can be granted upon the recommendation of the relevant authorities or zemstvo administrations, of course, under certain conditions. It will become, for example, a worthy crowning of good service upon retirement and will introduce many experienced and capable business people into the zemstvo, most of whom, undoubtedly, are in our administration; it will also open access to the political class to people who have gained fame outside the service.
Nothing prevents it from being decreed by law that two or three generations of such personal nobility give the title of hereditary nobility. With the developing equalization of civil (non-political) rights in our country, personal nobility, according to the law currently in force, can be completely abolished.
In addition, it would be reasonable and fair to allow the local nobility of each county to admit into their midst, also personally, people of unprivileged rank, whom they recognize as useful public figures. We will consider this issue further, but for now we have mentioned it only for completeness. In the same way, we consider it necessary to make a reservation immediately, allowing ourselves to enter into the details of the subject below, that we would consider as lawlessness (we hope, together with the vast majority of readers) the arbitrary taxation by the upper class of the lower - with money or work for zemstvo needs - without the consent of the taxed: in this in the last respect everyone is equal.
With the above reservations about the merchant class, about the personal nobility and about the right of taxation, we consider the first modern need to concentrate all zemstvo self-government in the hands of the nobility, denying any idea of \u200b\u200ball classes in modern Russia as a blatant, concocted and dangerous lie against Russian reality.
In an amateur society, access to a full-fledged hereditary class cannot, obviously, be limited to the same conditions that were established for a society whose entire activity was absorbed by public service. Our privileged stratum will then only fully justify the meaning of its institution when it expresses the undoubted social truth, when it binds together, without exception, all the living, influential, strengthened forces of the Russian land.
Such truth cannot be achieved in relation to individuals, but it is easily achievable in relation to social situations. But first of all, it is necessary to establish correctly, in accordance with the morals and concepts of the present time, that level of public service that gives a person access to the hereditary nobility; this is necessary because service law will remain with us for a long time as a general standard to which the assessment of all other provisions will be adjusted; a not entirely correct view of the meaning of service degrees will lead to incorrectness in other respects.
We think that such a definition should not be arbitrary. The law of Peter the Great, which granted the right of nobility to all commissioners promoted to the first officer rank, and to all clerks who had achieved collegiate assessorship, corresponded, perhaps, to the needs of the time when Russia was adopting only the external methods of civilization; now he obviously would not correspond to the general noble level. The law of the past reign, which is still in force today, connecting the rights of the nobility with the rank of colonel and the IV class of civil service, is obviously too demanding.
At the end of the educational period, the state thought on which Peter the Great founded the establishment of the new nobility began to be lost; too many began to look at the Russian noble class with Western eyes and thought to benefit it by tightly closing it from below. In theory, it is not difficult to determine the exact line that separates people who have grown up in the public service to the rights of inheritance, from the layer of social teenagers who have not yet emerged. These are people who have reached a level that provides their children and grandchildren with a social position and the likelihood of a higher education, barring any unforeseen accidents - people who have, to a certain extent, strengthened the position of not only themselves, but their offspring.
Given the current need for education, it is difficult to think that the children of a judge, a prosecutor, a chamber adviser, or a department head would fall back into the stratum of commoners. As a result, in relation to the civil service, we can say that ensuring the position begins with the transition from purely clerical work to positions with voting rights, with personal significance in one’s environment. Military service is a completely different matter. This is a question of such importance that its incorrect formulation, given the current situation in Europe, can immediately turn into nothing - not only everything accomplished in our time, but even everything accomplished by Peter the Great and Alexei Mikhailovich. You can't joke about war anymore.
Even the great Republican Washington said that an army in which the corps of officers does not consist of gentlemen is no good. It is desirable that in the Russian army there should be as little talk as possible about the rank conferring rights of nobility, so that our officers do not need this rank. We will devote a special chapter to the relationship of the nobility to the army. But as there are personal merits and as in our society there is now a small number of fairly educated teenagers not from the nobility, whom all-class conscription will put in the ranks of the army, we note in this regard that in the pre-revolutionary French army the rank of captain was given by the nobility; our cultural class cannot be more demanding than the caste nobility descended from the tattooed Sycambres.
With the establishment of precise relations between the civil service and the rights of the hereditary nobility that correspond to social reality, the correct assessment of the provisions in other branches of activity will be facilitated. Without taking upon ourselves to discuss the extent of the conditions that open the doors of the privileged class, we believe that the evidence itself points to two types of such conditions: large real estate and prominent public service.
A cultural class endowed with political full rights that leaves the power of wealth outside itself will be untrue and will never be strengthened. But we must also not lose sight of the fact that the privileged hereditary stratum is not a sum of individuals, but a sum of clans, and that entry into it should be secured by right only to one consolidated, and not an accidental position: otherwise, every player who got rich on Tuesday and went broke on Thursday , would become a nobleman. Only a hereditary state can be called a strengthened state.
In addition, property that invests its owner with new rights must certainly be significant, although not huge, in any case above the average level of noble fortunes. There is a huge difference between ancestral rights and acquired rights - the difference between the cultural development of several successive generations, assumed by the former, and the chance that sometimes brings wealth to an underdeveloped person; they cannot be measured with one yardstick.
Therefore, it seems fair to us that significant real estate should provide access to the hereditary nobility - not to the person who acquired this property, but to his direct heir; in this case, the appropriate education of the new nobleman will be much more ensured. Of course, elevation to the nobility, emanating from the supreme power, cannot in any case be the right of any kind of wealth; but we think that inherited wealth should give us the right to ask to be included in the privileged class.
A reward with the title of nobility outside of public service, for obvious services to society, can only be a favor of the supreme power. We dare to think, however, that where only the privileged class is endowed with political rights, it is appropriate for such a reward to appear not in the form of an accidental and rare exception, as was the award of Minin by the Duma nobility in the 17th century. In a developed society there will always be a certain number of people who are not those who achieved, did not even seek official honors and wealth, but who earned fame and general respect for their labors, worthy of joining the highest class of their Fatherland.
Adding to these two ways of joining the hereditary nobility outside the public service the third one mentioned above - acquired by two or three generations of personal nobility, we no longer see any living social force that could not achieve its recognition. The present nobility, educated historically, consistently replenished and refreshed by such influxes, which, in addition, personally attracts worthy people from the lower classes into their midst by their own choice or as a result of their government granting them the title of personal nobles, will exactly represent the real moral strength of the Russian land, constituting at that At the same time, it is a protective class, closely connected with the throne and with each other.
Self-government will become a positive matter in Russia, capable of real development, only when it passes into the hands of the nobility and large merchants on the above conditions. But our nobility is numerous and, in the spirit of the institution, should be numerous as a service class, satisfying all the needs of public service, military and civil; petty nobility devoting themselves to military affairs, as in Prussia, is absolutely necessary for the army. Therefore, the duties of our nobility are far from being limited to zemstvo service alone, despite its importance.
In addition, the entire district nobility cannot conduct zemstvo affairs; his meetings would become similar to the sejmiks of the Polish gentry. For this reason, we long ago introduced a noble price, which represented suffrage. As is known, this price was equal to the possession of one hundred revision souls; Now you can put it in 1000 rubles. income. Landowners with smaller holdings have almost no opportunity to properly cultivate their land under present conditions without becoming personal laborers. With the establishment of strong credit for peasant agriculture, they will, to their own benefit, gradually be supplanted by the latter and will begin to live on capital, service or mental labor.
For the caste nobility, landlessness is almost equal to destruction: the Russian privileged title, which goes to hereditary education, coexists satisfactorily with it. Thus, zemstvo self-government, that is, suffrage, will be in the hands of the price nobility, which should also rightfully include, regardless of price, well-known titles that declare the quality of a person: a significant rank and a high academic degree, if the scientist is a nobleman, hereditary or personal. With the transfer of the right to vote into reliable hands, there will be no need to worry about the quality of those elected, to bring the latter to a specified standard. Good voters vouch for good elected officials. When zemstvo administration becomes a matter for us, when cultural Russian forces are once united on this basis, then everything will gradually turn into action for us - public opinion, the press, and even joint-stock companies.
A clearly defined situation in the social order leads to clear consequences that necessarily flow from the given formulation of the matter. The question of transferring self-government into the hands of the cultural class, that is, of recognizing Russian reality for what it is, contains, in its main features, a definition of the activity of this self-government, if it were to take place. As a result, without assuming the right to give advice to the authorities, we consider it possible to clarify now these main features.
The first thing is, obviously, to recognize a properly organized zemstvo as a direct link of state power, its local instrument, with the delimitation of zemstvo activities from purely administrative ones not in essence, but only in degree, in the sequence of instances. We raised this question first not only because it is truly fundamental, but also because recently we have more than once expressed opinions, from experienced and intelligent people, about improving the current local government by balancing these two forces - through not dividing, but on the contrary, a mixture of purely government and zemstvo activities.
We believe (we admit, we don’t even understand how one can believe otherwise) that sincerity and decisiveness of zemstvo self-government are possible only with undoubted clarity of rights, with complete delimitation of the range of actions from the crown administration, which would retain the significance of the highest authority and supervision over the legality of its actions. Which level of administration and to what extent to vest the right of observation and judgment is a matter for the government; the establishment of administrative courts subordinate to the Governing Senate seems to be the best means of achieving this; but the very task of the two types of power, state and zemstvo, is fundamentally different, and therefore they must be strictly delimited throughout the entire space of the state.
By abandoning local management and handing it over to the zemstvos, the government recognized the latter as wealthier in this regard than their personal officials. But not in one household, but in general in all departments of county life, good and educated local leaders are not only more familiar with the needs of the governed and more attentive to them, but even in purely governmental forms they are much more trustworthy than the petty officials who make up the current county government, It is either a carefully selected investigative senior person, or a congress of the nobility, and not a vice-uniform tailcoat that dresses anyone else, who can deserve the full trust of the government.
Therefore, when self-government falls into the hands of completely reliable, connected and educated people, people whom the government has the right to consider as their own, then, most likely, it will not be difficult for them to expand the range of their activities, to transfer complete district administration to their management - since the small land division, called a district, is devoid of any political significance.
Zemstvo people, placed in the proper position, can better look after the local police, the prison, unreliable (even politically) people, and the collection of taxes, than officials recruited from the lowest administrative staff; but they cannot be official advisers to the provincial government, at the request of some, since it is an instrument of the supreme power, pursuing the national benefit, which cannot be left for discussion by local zemstvos. This would mean subordinating the highest goals, common to the entire empire, to the views of the people of each region separately. The Moscow tsars consulted with the Zemsky Sobor, which expressed the all-Russian opinion that it was a completely different matter - unity was observed on both sides.
This is not the case in the local zemstvo. There is a significant difference between local authorities - government and zemstvo - that the first serves state needs that dominate local ones; it takes the latter into account only to the extent possible, while for the second there are only these local needs. Both of them can and should act in accordance, but almost always with the subordination of the views of the second to the views of the first, and therefore they are incommensurable with each other.
No government, even a constitutional one, can give up the right to hold state power in the regions, no matter how broad the rights of the zemstvo, exclusively in its own hands, without a counterweight and zemstvo advisers with voting rights; it cannot refuse the obligation to observe the actions of the zemstvo from above, without becoming on the same level with it; it should not be directly involved in zemstvo orders in order to maintain the freedom to cancel each of them that contradicts the general principles of the state. Therefore, government bodies should stand completely separate and superior.
On the other hand, there is no benefit for the zemstvo to combine with the official local authorities into something common, as if in between: such a combination would open up access to the administration’s intervention in all zemstvo affairs, without exception, as a reward for the weak interference of the zemstvo in administrative affairs. The coexistence of a clay pot with an iron one is dangerous, of course, not for the latter. It is much more profitable for both state and zemstvo authorities to act within their own limited circle; then everyone is responsible for themselves and independently exercises their rights.
The most natural way to distinguish between these two powers is to localize the second, to transfer the entire district administration to the zemstvo, with the exception of special parts that the government deems necessary to retain for itself, such as the treasury. Then zemstvo and administrative activities will be differentiated from each other quite clearly by authorities. With the formation of a completely reliable zemstvo, the intervention of the administration in its affairs should be limited to four methods of action: supervision of the exact execution of government orders, the approval or appointment of officials from local residents, prosecution of those responsible by the court and the suspension of measures that disagree with government plans until the decision of the administrative court or higher authority, as may be determined.
To monitor the actions of the zemstvo, if this is considered necessary, it is enough to keep one crown official in the district with the right to protest against every illegal order; then there is no need to subject all other, unprotested orders to any preliminary consideration.
If the center of zemstvo self-government becomes the tsens nobility, then the government will treat them, without the slightest doubt, with the same complete confidence with which it treats its own officials. The Russian nobility is and should be, first of all, a service class. A change in this order, not only in principle, but also in practice, is not at all desirable; we will not gain much if a significant number of nobles from early youth devote themselves to the zemstvo business, without first going through public service - not in the form of compulsory service, but of their own free will, following the example of their fathers.
A nobleman, who has served for some time and returns to his estate between thirty and forty years of age, comes home as an experienced man, with an incomparably more developed mind and character than his neighbor, who has forever settled in the outback or left him only for his own entertainment; in two or three years, the former will understand even the zemstvo business better, will bring more strength and life into it than a person who has sat on it all his life without any other practice. With the preservation of universal service, as a fundamental noble custom, the violation of which would be contrary to morals (which is entirely in the will of the government), members of the price nobility, serving and retired, will remain in the eyes of the supreme power the same officers and officials as others, but moreover, they will still be local noble voters, which means doubly their own people for power.
A more prominent position of the nobility than now will gather those who have dispersed and give the entire class other, more coherent habits; the class will become powerful over its members. It is desirable that a universal custom be established in Russia (the creation of which also entirely depends on the government) so that all valuable nobles, wherever they may be, return temporarily to their homeland and, for this purpose, are legally dismissed from service in time for three-year elections; so that every state dignitary, every minister appears at these elections and sits on the bench of voters in his district along with others. The whole future of Russia lies in the serious formulation of the zemstvo matter; no effort should be stopped to finally move it.
The first right of the price nobility, invested with trust from above, should be the right to independently judge the dignity and ability of each of its members - both those born and those who re-enter its ranks, hereditary or personally, and those elected to zemstvo positions, without any fiat imposed from the outside. measures except, of course, in those cases when a person’s rights are limited by a court verdict. The government, no doubt, will reserve the approval of elections for the highest zemstvo positions; perhaps it will also retain the right to directly appoint local residents known to it to some of these positions.
This double control will be quite sufficient. But then the zemstvo cause will become a fully alive matter only when local voters become the only judges of the question of who deserves or does not deserve, regardless of their social status, to stand in their ranks, when they are recognized as having an inalienable right to be accepted into their midst or elected to the position of anyone worthy, no matter what his rank, and at the same time exclude from it anyone unworthy, no matter who he is. The price-based noble electorate is not the popular vote, not even the motley French bourgeoisie of the thirties; it will consist of selected people, and therefore must be closely united among themselves and responsible to the government and the opinion of Russia for its collective actions, and therefore for each of its members.
The essential guarantee for those elected lies not in external, completely elusive signs, but in the quality and freedom of action of voters; only under this condition will they be able to take full responsibility for everything that is done. From time to time, such amazing personalities emerge from the Russian people that another innkeeper can become an excellent zemstvo figure. After all, they will accept him into the assembly of the nobility at a price if he becomes a merchant and makes a million - and the dignity of a person cannot be measured by the art of making money alone. The judges of this dignity must be the voters. In the same way, no magnificent social position guarantees the qualities of a person, and therefore voters must be able to clear their environment from a person who embarrasses or disparages it, even just from a person who consistently distances himself from it, showing obvious indifference to the common cause.
It is very desirable that the exclusion of someone from the local electorate by the Tsens nobility should also be reflected in his other rights; a coherent state class must have some degree of coercive power over its members, otherwise it will not have the power to carry out its task in all its breadth. We also believe that local voters should not be obliged to accept into their midst a new person who at least satisfies all the requirements of the law, without a preliminary vote. The repeal of such decrees can belong only to the supreme will and to no one else.
With the transfer of full responsibility for those elected to voters, any price on education must cease. In some barbarian countries, where they are just beginning to transplant knowledge from foreign soil, it is possible to evaluate forty-year-old people by the points they received in the exam. Who knows what a person has learned between twenty and forty years of his life? Do not put gray-haired elders on an exam according to the famous Speransky law. It must be admitted that the science of life is incomparably higher than the science of school.
Under the price nobility, management, that is, the right of superior orders in the district and the execution of orders from higher authorities, should be exclusively in the hands of persons elected by the nobility. We do not undertake to discuss the very method of appointment to zemstvo positions, which requires, for correct implementation, a preliminary meeting of the government with zemstvo people. This method can be twofold for various positions: election by the nobility or appointment from the highest authority from local residents.
Nothing prevents both methods from operating simultaneously, especially at the beginning, the second supplementing everything that the first will not be able to achieve satisfactorily. Direct appointment will become a means in the hands of the government to stimulate the activity of local voters. They will be more cautious and diligent, knowing that the highest power, in any case, can do without the candidate of their choice. The chief person of the district would, of course, remain the leader of the nobility, but in this case, new regulations would be required to determine the new rights of his office. It is also possible to leave the leader as the head and guardian of the estate, giving him an assistant to manage the local police, directly subordinate to him, if the leader did not want or could not combine both of these titles.
It is clear that the mobility and practical management needed by a police officer are not the qualities by which a leader should be judged, although they are necessary in their place. The direct appointment from the government of the head of the district, who at the same time will become the head of the estate, like the current leaders of the western provinces (or the Prussian Landrat), would be fundamentally contrary to our natural order. This chapter, imposed on local voters, will never enjoy the necessary influence among them, which would lead to moral confusion of the class itself, on the unanimity of which the strength of our social order and the development of Russian life depend. Therefore, zemstvo self-government, transferred to the hands of the cultural class, cannot do without an elected class leader.
The person of the leader thus becomes the link between the supreme power and the ruling class (that is, the entire zemstvo), whatever its official situation - which sufficiently shows the importance of the position itself in the general state system. The qualities required for this high rank are purely moral, requiring first of all respect from below and trust from above, regardless of age, health and even practical management and official accuracy, may often not be combined with the activity and diligence necessary in the head of the district administration and district police; although, on the other hand, no practical ability can replace them.
As a result, one must think, it will often be necessary to assign to the district leader a subordinate assistant from local residents to directly manage the zemstvo administration and make this second position, which requires external energy and mobility, not honorable, but paid, without, however, establishing such a division of activities as a general rule and leaving it to the will of the leader to combine both positions in his own person.
Then the first thing is to organize the volost as the lowest zemstvo unit, one might even say - a unit of state division, since all the initial measures, all the embryos of the most important functions of national activity should be concentrated in it: police, supply of recruits, collection of taxes. This subject has already been discussed more than once in the Russian press from different points of view, and all judgments always converged on one conclusion: on the importance of the volost, without the proper organization of which nothing will be firmly established in our country.
Indeed, while there is no proper supervision and leadership in the volost, it must be said that the entire rural population of the Russian kingdom remains without supervision and leadership, given at the arbitrary disposal of the volost clerks. With such an order of things in our roots, we will not go far, no matter how hard we try to decorate the tops of the state building. With the concentration of zemstvo self-government in the hands of the tsens nobility, the management of the volosts, as the initial cells of the entire social structure, should obviously belong to them.
We do not consider it possible to go into a discussion of the practical solution of this issue, as of all similar issues, but we will express our opinion, willingly conceding the advantage to another, better one, when it appears. We think that zemstvo administration should be, as long as possible, cheap, uncomplicated and limited to the smallest number of people: otherwise its benefits will not repay its cost, and zemstvo positions will become mere decoration, or, even worse, bait for personal gain; There are now more of them than there are suitable people for them.
In view of these goals, it seems to us most beneficial to combine the titles of volost trustee and local justice of the peace in the person of a local landowner at the choice of the nobility of the entire district, but from persons living in the volost or near it - free of charge; if this does not turn out to be the case, which at first must be foreseen in many localities, and in some provinces even permanently, then by appointment of the government - from local people, with a salary from the zemstvo. Direct appointment in such a case will be precisely the means of inciting local activity that we spoke about above.
The volost mayor, elected by the peasants, can serve as an assistant to the chief and correct the position during his short absences. The administration of the district will then easily be concentrated in the congress of these volost leaders, together with the city mayor, under the chairmanship of the leader; it may be necessary to add one or two members for permanent training in the center of the county. With such a structure, the management of the local police will pass directly into the hands of the volost trustees, that is, the local tax nobility; the government will remove from itself this burden, which has so far been carried very unsatisfactorily by several petty crown officials who are completely incapable of monitoring the moral side of the population.
With a fairly large number of volost chiefs, congresses of the magistrate’s court can be assembled not from the entire county at once, but in each locality separately and alternately. The district administration in this form will consist, at least, of people who respect themselves, are responsible for each other, and are really familiar with the matter and with local conditions; in any case, it will not burden the land government with the costs of maintaining the ever-increasing number of officials it creates. There should be no shortage of local candidates. Elective service in the district, we believe, should essentially be mandatory for a certain period of time for every nobleman who does not serve the state, whether he is at home or away.
We took a quick glance only at the internal structure of class self-government, as it can be established. We have already said that we present our thought not as the best solution, but only as one of the possible solutions to the problem. Let us now see what relationship class self-government would have with the lower strata, with the people.
Our zemstvo self-government will become a living matter only with the leavening of the nobility, under the supreme and impartial supervision of the government, which equally takes to heart the benefits of all classes, does not allow anyone to abuse their position for personal gain, but owns, to achieve its goals, only two tools, between which Now we have to choose - the bureaucracy or the nobility. The bureaucracy provides a certain guarantee of reliability and ability only in the highest strata, namely those who lead the administration - one might say theoretically, without directly coming into contact with life; the lower you go, the weaker its personnel become and, finally, at the very bottom, in the district, where you have to deal directly with the population, it turns out to be completely untenable.
The nobility, on the contrary, especially the landowning nobility, the price nobility, as a homogeneous layer, represents almost the same sum of moral forces below as above, in the district as in the capital; the difference turns out to be only in the brilliance of the positions, and not in actual ability. When our nobles managed their estates, when most of the retirees went to live out their lives in their homeland, in every district one could find many educated and, more importantly, self-respecting people. This should be the case in the future, and this will be the case as soon as the unfavorable conditions that scattered Russian landowners around the world are eliminated - conditions that inevitably resulted from transitional and uncertain relations after the reform period.
The government of the educational period had understandable motives to manage even local life through its personal servants-officials; but the government, which called the Russian people to independence, cannot have such motives. A practical question remains, which, in essence, cannot even be posed: who is more trustworthy for managing district affairs, which contain the roots of all state life - the local nobility or the last layer of officials recruited from the semi-literate, tail-coated proletariat, as alien to the government as to the local community?
While the functions of our district life were purely mechanical and consisted exclusively of collecting taxes, supplying recruits, capturing fugitives and repairing bridges, petty officials met the needs half-heartedly; but they turned out to be hopelessly untenable as soon as the first question arose about moral relations towards the population; and these moral questions will now begin to multiply every day. In political matters, the division of power in the district is not at all necessary, since the supreme power can rely on its nobility, taken as an estate, incomparably more than on any group of officials - everyone knows this.
In terms of efficiency, it would be strange to assign police duties in the county to two bailiffs, when each volost will have a trustworthy trustee. In relation to communication with the provincial authorities, each official noble becomes in the position of an official responsible before the court for negligence in his duties. The English rural police are considered exemplary, being exclusively in the hands of justices of the peace - local landowners.
It is clear, however, that the nobility will be placed in a position decent for them only when they have to not achieve dominance in local society, but use it as their legal right, which requires not election to zemstvo positions from the nobility, but, on the contrary, election to these positions by nobles - anyone; it is necessary that the class of zemstvo voters consist of the nobility, with the above-mentioned additions.
The goal would not have been achieved at all if, for example, the peasants had been given the right to elect nobles to the volost heads, as some wish. Besides the fact that at the present time, according to the general consciousness, an all-estate volost is needed, and often a person of the highest position would have to become under the control of some kisser who prevailed in the elections, which would lead to the final corruption of our social system, which is already shaken; but the modern need is precisely to give guidance to the ignorant crowd, which does not know how to develop a definite opinion, and not to receive guidance from it.
With an elective estate system for the entire district, peasant self-government under the supervision of volost trustees given to it by the nobility could remain almost in its current form, with only some improvements indicated by experience. Peasant worldly gatherings satisfactorily achieve their goals in subjects accessible to the personal understanding of the peasant; no one will undertake to teach them the distribution of communal lands and duties, as well as all the needs of their rural life; their failure in other respects, therefore, comes not from the incoherence of the rural world and not from the inability of the Russian commoner to self-government, which has long been known to him, but from the inaccessibility for him of the subjects imposed on him for discussion.
Closed in the peasant world, he was left completely without leaders and now falls prey to every semi-literate rogue. Trustees from the educated class will eliminate this deficiency without interfering with peasant self-government, on the contrary, developing and strengthening it gradually. The guardianship will not be arbitrary, since it will come under the supervision of the district congress, representing the entire local educated class; The legality of his actions will also be monitored by government authorities.
On the other hand, noble guardianship in the volosts will put an end to the disorder that forced a significant part of the landowners to flee in the sixties; it will make life in the countryside possible and comfortable and will itself increase its strength, attracting so many laggards to the zemstvo cause, and attracting recruits of the upper class, who are now growing almost exclusively in the cities.
Considering it necessary to unite local government in the hands of the nobility, that is, as we said above, the election of goals, means and figures, we do not at all want other classes to lose their voice in matters directly related to their benefits. Such deprivation would be a contradiction of Russian history, alien to class dominance, which created the hereditary cultural class as a tool, and not as a goal, of national life.
In addition to the fact that class selfishness, like personal selfishness, must be curbed by law, we also believe that no one can be benefited against his will. Therefore, we not only consider it necessary to preserve urban and rural self-government (extending the former to the smallest towns and placing the latter not under arbitrariness, but only under the leadership of an educated society), but we also believe that a voice in local self-government should rightfully belong to each group of people, connected by mutual interests - not to one agricultural community or a certain number of farmers in a given area, but also to any significant industry that wants to declare its collective needs.
Nevertheless, in a well-ordered society, the breadth of the right to vote (if I may say so), the range of issues granted to him, must correspond to his mental outlook, otherwise self-government turns into lies and intrigue, issues are voted on unconsciously, as is the case today. You cannot impose zemstvo taxes without your own consent, unless the amount or subject of these fees are established by law, but then the matter will not be about taxation, but about disintegration.
The most visible benefit of any public expenditure does not at all establish its legality if it exceeds the funds of the payers or does not correspond to their concept of benefit; many things seem necessary to the Englishman, for which the Russian peasant does not see any need and will not consider himself at all happy if they become to forcefully impose English needs. Before you can live well, you must be able to live somehow; and therefore the duty of the upper class, into whose hands control is entrusted, is, in such a case, only to convince, and not in any way force, local payers.
On the other hand, as we have already said, every collective interest must have the right to declare its needs before the management; he also has a natural right, we think, to base his consent to the sacrifices required of him depending on the satisfaction of his stated needs. In both respects and for both purposes, the current all-class zemstvo assemblies are necessary in local self-government, only, we believe, not with the same task and partly not even in the form that they were given. The first is too wide for them, the second is too narrow.
Their purpose should consist solely of approving zemstvo taxes, reviewing monetary reporting, stating public needs and choosing persons managing public funds; Without the latter condition, the assembly's control over its local budget cannot become valid. But the choice of officials, vested with executive power in all other respects, enjoying the rights of police, court and moral supervision over the population, as well as the right to communicate with higher authorities on local needs and on general issues, should naturally belong to the enlightened assembly of the price nobility and persons admitted by him into his circle; Only elected nobility can manage in the literal sense of the word.
As for the composition of the zemstvo assembly, which correctly represents the district, it is determined by the very scope of its activities and justice, which requires the equalization of all payers in establishing and paying taxes, regardless of their ranks; a place in the assembly should rightfully remain for all valuable property in the district, no matter who it belongs to: a landowner, a community, a city owner or a capitalist. We completely agree with Prince Vasilchikov in the sense that every peasant community is a landowner just like any other.
But there is hardly any need for the representation of fractional assets by collective votes. We will not discuss this issue in detail; but the following can be noted: when property interests are protected, on the one hand, by large owners, and on the other, by peasant communities, then why force small owners to spend money on elections? It would be a different matter if our community members shared - in this case they would send elected officials from the volost; but this has not yet happened and is not expected to happen soon.
Although the actual zemstvo assembly should, in our understanding, represent only monetary interests, and not local power, it will still turn out to be stronger, more protective and prudent, consisting of individuals representing their own, and not collective and other people's benefits. With the preservation of zemstvo assemblies, at least slightly changed from the current composition, the transition to a new type of self-government would be accomplished easily and would be little noticeable to the people, which is also important. For the first time, it would be enough to transfer the elections of zemstvo officials, except for those in charge of public funds, to the noble assembly.
Self-government is feasible only in the county. The current province does not provide any data for him; it is a purely administrative and fractional unit. It would be a different matter if Russia were divided into larger regions, corresponding to natural geographical or ethnographic divisions, each gravitating to its own trade routes and to its own, significant center, governed by independent dignitaries close to the throne; such a region would have a personality, and therefore a need to express it in regional representation.
We think that the question of such a division will arise among us someday by itself, among the many great questions that lie ahead of us in the future. Russia has grown together too tightly for one to fear for its unity with any independence of the regions, and yet in such a vast body, the concentration of all social and mental life exclusively in one center is impossible without the gradual death of the members. We already see this deadening in practice: outside St. Petersburg and Moscow, Russian thought does not stir much more than it does not stir in France outside Paris - which is one of the most dangerous diseases of the French people; Given our vast state, this danger is even more obvious: if it drags on for too long, it will plunge nine-tenths of our spiritual forces into dead hibernation.
It should also be noted that not one of our provinces has yet grown together into something whole, and will never grow together, due to its insignificance and artificiality, which does not allow for independent interests. No one has heard a Trans-Volga Simbirsk complain that he was turned into a Samaran; therefore, the new regional reorganization of the state will not affect any existing interests in us, but will undoubtedly create living collective interests over time. But here is a question of the future that has nothing to do with our generation; People living today have only one internal task, the greatest of tasks: to eradicate social fragmentation, in which all the questions that beset us will remain forever stillborn.
We mentioned the regional division only to stipulate the failure of the current provinces in the sense of unity and national significance. But nevertheless, some kind of unification, if not self-government, then at least the direction of district self-government, is also necessary in the current province, for which a central body was established for it. In addition, the nobility of each province (one among all classes) has already somewhat grown together; it needs a common representative and, in some cases, a common congress; There are too many counties for each of them to plead their cases before the government. The provincial leader of the nobility is necessary as the head, representative and intercessor of the estate.
With the transfer of self-government into the hands of the estates, if it were realized, this head cannot remain only an honorary person; it will become the center of all self-government and, in this capacity, should enjoy the right to convene leaders and elected nobility as needed, and in especially important cases or at regular intervals - a meeting of the entire price nobility with the persons assigned to it.
Without complete, fairly well-deserved trust from above in the nobility, self-government will not work for us; and therefore it is desirable that the provincial leader not only not be constrained in the rights he needs, but also have an advisory voice in the highest government environment. You can rely on the common sense of the Russian developed class: when the provincial leader becomes from the amphitryon, as he was before, a person of state importance, he will begin to choose people appropriate for this position.
The importance of the face of the provincial leader cannot constrain the governor's power. The governor will remain the representative of the government, the head of the crown administration and the highest prosecutor of state power in local self-government, not allowing him to go beyond the limits specified to him; Only the title of owner of the province should be removed from him, which now constitutes a glaring contradiction, since the economy has officially been transferred to other hands.
We recognize the importance of provincial congresses only in the sense of congresses of the nobility as an estate endowed by the government with a certain degree of independence, but we do not see any purpose in the provincial all-estate assembly if the task of all-estate assemblies is limited to approving taxes. To do this, they do not need to move together. Even if any general tax is necessary for the province, it can be voted on the spot, by a majority (by count) of the district assemblies.
We think that in general the tasks of public administration, noble self-government and property rights of approving and spending local taxes should be strictly differentiated from each other.
Exercise 1.I. S. Turgenev wrote:
1. “Doctor's Notes.”
2. “Notes on cuffs.”
3. “Notes of a Hunter.”
4. “Notes from a Dead House.”
Task 2.
“To accurately and powerfully reproduce the truth, the reality of life, is the highest happiness for a writer, even if this truth does not coincide with his own sympathies.” Who does I. S. Turgenev sympathize with?
1. Revolutionary democrats.
2. Commoners.
3. Liberals.
4. Monarchists.
Task 3.
A novel is:
1. The genre of epic, in which the main problem is the problem of personality and which strives to most fully depict all the diverse connections of a person with the reality around him, all the complexity of the world and man.
2. The epic genre, on the basis of allegory and simple life examples, explains any complex philosophical, social or ethical problem.
3. The genre of epic, the artistic method of which is based on the description of one small completed event and its author's assessment.
Task 4.
To whom is the dedication of the novel “Fathers and Sons” addressed?
1. A. I. Herzen.
2. V. G. Belinsky.
3. N. A. Nekrasov.
4. To another person.
Task 5.
Epilogue is:
1. A relatively independent part of a literary work in which some event occurs, one of the units of artistic division of the text.
2. An additional element of composition, a part of a literary work, separated from the main narrative and following after its completion to provide the reader with additional information.
3. A relatively short text placed by the author before the work and designed to briefly express the main content or ideological meaning of the text that follows it.
Task 6.
The disputes between the heroes of the novel “Fathers and Sons” were conducted around various issues that worried the social thought of Russia. Find the odd one out.
1. On the attitude towards the cultural heritage of the nobility.
2. About art, science.
3. About the system of human behavior, about moral principles.
4. On the situation of the working class.
5. About public duty, about education.
Task 7.
Giving a general assessment of the political content of Fathers and Sons, I. S. Turgenev wrote: “My whole story is directed against...” (choose the correct one).
1. The proletariat as an advanced class.
2. The nobility as an advanced class.
3. The peasantry as an advanced class.
4. Revolutionary democrats as the advanced class.
Task 8.
Which of the characters in the novel “Fathers and Sons” corresponds to the following characteristics:
1. A representative of the young noble generation, quickly turning into an ordinary landowner, spiritual limitations and weakness of will, superficiality of democratic hobbies, a tendency to eloquence, lordly manners and laziness.
2. An opponent of everything truly democratic, a self-admiring aristocrat whose life has been reduced to love and regret for the passing past, an esthete.
3. Uselessness and inability to adapt to life, to its new conditions, the type of “outgoing nobility”.
4. Independent nature, not bowing to any authority, nihilist.
Evgeny Bazarov.
Arkady Kirsanov.
Pavel Petrovich.
Nikolai Petrovich.
Task 9.
Which of the novel's characters owns the words:
“We know approximately why physical illnesses occur, and moral illnesses arise from bad upbringing... from the ugly state of society, in a word, correct society, and there will be no illnesses.”
1. Arkady Kirsanov.
2. N. P. Kirsanov.
3. E. V. Bazarov.
4. P. P. Kirsanov.
Task 10.
Typing is:
1. Image of the general through the individual, i.e. the combination of the characteristic and the individual in a single artistic image.
2. A situation that is frequently repeated or widespread.
3. Literary experience in creating an artistic world, accumulated by many generations of authors.
Task 11.
“Bazarov” wrote a critical article:
1. I. S. Turgenev.
2. V. G. Belinsky.
3. A. I. Herzen.
4. D. I. Pisarev.
Task 12.
In which circles of Russian society does E. Bazarov place his hopes:
1. Peasantry.
2. Noble aristocracy.
3. Russian patriarchal nobility.
4. Intelligentsia.
Task 13.
Why was E. Bazarov especially distant from the author of the novel?
1. Misunderstanding of the role of the people in the liberation movement.
2. Nihilistic attitude towards the cultural heritage of Russia.
3. Exaggeration of the role of the intelligentsia in the liberation movement.
4. Separation from any practical activity.
Problem 14.
Find the correspondence between the characters in the novel and their social status.
nia:
1. "Emancipe".
2. Russian aristocrat.
3. Regimental doctor.
4. Baric student.
5. Democratic student.
3 assignment 15.
People close to Evgeny Bazarov in spirit are called:
1. Sixties.
2. Pentecostals.
3. Decembrists.
4. Eighties.
Task 16.
What moment in the biography of Evgeny Bazarov became a turning point in his awareness of his personality:
1. Love for Odintsova.
2. Breakup with Arkady.
3. Dispute with P.P. Kirsanov.
4. Visiting parents.
Task 17.
Find the correspondence between the characters in the novel and their portrait descriptions.
1. “Everything was still young and green: her voice, the fluff all over her face, her pink hands... and her slightly clenched shoulders,” she blushed incessantly and quickly took a breath.”
2. “Long and thin (face), with a wide forehead, a flat upward, pointed downward nose, large greenish eyes and drooping sand-colored sideburns, it was enlivened by an awkward smile and expressed self-confidence and intelligence.”
3. “He looked about 45 years old, his short-cropped gray hair shone with a dark shine, like new silver; his face, bilious, but without wrinkles, unusually regular and clean, as if drawn with a thin and light chisel, showed traces of remarkable beauty.”
Vorontsova.
Kate.
Pavel Petrovich.
Evgeny Bazarov.
Nikolai Petrovich.
Arkady Kirsanov.
Key.
1) 3.
2) 3.
3) 1.
4) 2.
5) 2.
6) 4.
7) 2.
8) 1 - Arkady, 2 - P. P. Kirsanov, 3 - N. P. Kirsanov, 4 - E. Bazarov.
9) 3.
10) 1.
11) 4.
12) 4.
13) 2.
14) 1 - Kukshina, 2 - P. P. Kirsanov, 3 - V. I. Bazarov, 4-A. N. Kirsanov, 5 - E. Bazarov.
15) 1.
16) 1.
17) 1 - Katya, 2 - E. Bazarov, 3 - P. P. Kirsanov.
