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Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn said in one of his interviews: “I gave almost my whole life to the Russian revolution.”
The task of testifying to the hidden tragic turns of Russian history led to the need to search for and understand their origins. They are seen precisely in the Russian revolution. “As a writer, I am really put in the position of speaking for the dead, but not only in the camps, but for those who died in the Russian revolution,” Solzhenitsyn outlined the task of his life in an interview in 1983. “I have been working on a book about the revolution for 47 years, but In the course of working on it, I discovered that the Russian year 1917 was a rapid, as if compressed, sketch of the world history of the 20th century. That is, literally: the eight months that passed from February to October 1917 in Russia, then furiously scrolled, are then slowly repeated by the whole world throughout the entire century. In recent years, when I have already finished several volumes, I am surprised to see that in some indirect way I also wrote the history of the Twentieth Century” (Publicism, vol. 3, p. 142).
A witness and participant in Russian history of the 20th century. Solzhenitsyn himself was there. He graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Rostov University and entered adulthood in 1941. On June 22, having received his diploma, he came for exams at the Moscow Institute of History, Philosophy, Literature (MIFLI), where he had studied correspondence courses since 1939. Regular session occurs at the beginning of the war. In October he was mobilized into the army, and soon entered the officer school in Kostroma. In the summer of 1942 - the rank of lieutenant, and at the end - the front: Solzhenitsyn commanded a sound battery in artillery reconnaissance. Solzhenitsyn's military experience and the work of his sound battery are reflected in his military prose of the late 90s. (two-part story “Zhelyabug settlements” and story “Adlig Schvenkitten” - “New World”. 1999. No. 3). As an artillery officer, he travels from Orel to East Prussia and is awarded orders. Miraculously, he finds himself in the very places of East Prussia where the army of General Samsonov passed. The tragic episode of 1914 - the Samson disaster - becomes the subject of depiction in the first “Knot” of “The Edge of the Wheel” - in “August the Fourteenth”. On February 9, 1945, Captain Solzhenitsyn was arrested at the command post of his superior, General Travkin, who, a year after the arrest, would give his former officer a reference in which he would, without fear, remember all his merits - including the night withdrawal of a battery from encirclement in January 1945, when fighting was already taking place in Prussia. After the arrest - camps: in New Jerusalem, in Moscow at the Kaluga outpost, in special prison No. 16 in the northern suburbs of Moscow (the same famous Marfinsk sharashka described in the novel “In the First Circle”, 1955-1968). Since 1949 - camp in Ekibastuz (Kazakhstan). Since 1953, Solzhenitsyn has been an “eternal exiled settler” in a remote village in the Dzhambul region, on the edge of the desert. In 1957 - rehabilitation and a rural school in the village of Torfo-product near Ryazan, where he teaches and rents a room from Matryona Zakharova, who became the prototype of the famous hostess of “Matryona’s Yard” (1959). In 1959, Solzhenitsyn “in one gulp”, over the course of three weeks, created a revised, “lightened” version of the story “Shch-854”, which, after much trouble, A.T. Tvardovsky and with the blessing of N.S. himself. Khrushchev was published in “New World” (1962. No. 11) under the title “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.”
By the time of his first publication, Solzhenitsyn had serious writing experience behind him - about a decade and a half: “For twelve years I calmly wrote and wrote. Only on the thirteenth did he falter. It was the summer of 1960. From writing many things - both with their complete hopelessness and complete obscurity - I began to feel overwhelmed, I lost the lightness of concept and movement. I began to run out of air in the literary underground,” Solzhenitsyn wrote in his autobiographical book “A Calf Butted an Oak Tree.” It was in the literary underground that the novels “In the First Circle,” several plays, and the film script “Tanks Know the Truth!” were created. about the suppression of the Ekibastuz prisoner uprising, work began on “The Gulag Archipelago”, a novel about the Russian revolution codenamed “R-17” was conceived, which decades later was embodied in the epic “The Red Wheel”.
In the mid-60s. the story “Cancer Ward” (1963-1967) and a “light” version of the novel “In the First Circle” were created. It was not possible to publish them in Novy Mir, and both were published in 1968 in the West. At the same time, work began earlier on “The Gulag Archipelago” (1958-1968; 1979) and the epic “Red Wheel” (intensive work on the large historical novel “R-17”, which grew into the epic “Red Wheel”, began in 1969 G.).
In 1970, Solzhenitsyn became a Nobel Prize laureate. he does not want to leave the USSR, fearing to lose his citizenship and the opportunity to fight in his homeland - so the personal receipt of the prize and the speech of the Nobel laureate are postponed for now. The story of receiving the Nobel Prize is described in the chapter “Nobeliana” (“A calf butted an oak tree”). At the same time, his position in the USSR is increasingly deteriorating: his principled and uncompromising ideological and literary position leads to expulsion from the Writers' Union (November 1969), and a campaign of persecution against Solzhenitsyn is unfolding in the Soviet press. This forces him to give permission for the publication in Paris of the book “August the Fourteenth” (1971) - the first volume of the epic “The Red Wheel”. In 1973, the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago was published by the Paris publishing house YMCA-PRESS.
Solzhenitsyn not only does not hide his ideological opposition, but also directly declares it. He writes a number of open letters: Letter to the IV All-Union Congress of the Union of Soviet Writers (1967), Open Letter to the Secretariat of the RSFSG Writers Union (1969), Letter to the Leaders of the Soviet Union (1973), which he sends by mail to the addressees of the CPSU Central Committee, and without receiving a response, distributed in samizdat. The writer creates a series of journalistic articles that are intended for a philosophical and journalistic collection.” “From under the boulders” (“On the return of breath and consciousness”, “Repentance and self-restraint as categories of national life”, “Education”), “Do not live by lies!” (1974).
Of course, there was no need to talk about the publication of these works - they were distributed through samizdat.
In 1975, the autobiographical book “A Calf Butted an Oak Tree” was published, which is a detailed story about the writer’s creative path from the beginning of literary activity to the second arrest and deportation and an essay on the literary environment and customs of the 60s and early 70s.
In February 1974, at the peak of the unbridled persecution launched in the Soviet press, Solzhenitsyn was arrested and imprisoned in Lefortovo prison. But his incomparable authority among the world community does not allow the Soviet leadership to simply deal with the writer, so he is deprived of Soviet citizenship and expelled from the USSR. In Germany, which became the first country to accept an exile, he stays with Heinrich Böll, after which he settles in Zurich (Switzerland). Solzhenitsyn’s second autobiographical book, “A Grain Landed Between Two Millstones,” tells about life in the West, which he began publishing in Novy Mir in 1998 and continued in 1999.
In 1976, the writer and his family moved to America, to Vermont. Here he works on the complete collected works and continues historical research, the results of which form the basis of the epic “The Red Wheel”.
Solzhenitsyn was always confident that he would return to Russia. Even in 1983, when the idea of a change in the socio-political situation in the USSR seemed incredible, when asked by a Western journalist about the hope of returning to Russia, the writer replied: “You know, in a strange way, I not only hope, I am internally convinced of it. I just live in this feeling: that I will definitely return during my lifetime. By this I mean the return by a living person, and not by books; books, of course, will return. This contradicts all reasonable reasoning; I cannot say for what objective reasons this could be, since I am no longer a young man. But often History goes so unexpectedly that we cannot foresee the simplest Things” (Publicism, vol. 3, p. 140).
Solzhenitsyn's prediction came true: already in the late 80s. this return began to gradually take place. In 1988, Solzhenitsyn was returned to USSR citizenship, and in 1989, the Nobel lecture and chapters from the Gulag Archipelago were published in Novy Mir, then, in 1990, the novels In the First Circle and Cancer Ward were published. . In 1994, the writer returned to Russia. Since 1995, Novy Mir has published a new cycle - “two-part” stories.
The purpose and meaning of Solzhenitsyn’s life is writing: “My life,” he said, “passes from morning to late evening at work. There are no exceptions, distractions, vacations, trips - in this sense, “I really am doing what I was born for” (Publicism, vol. 3 p. 144). Several desks, on which lie dozens of open books and unfinished manuscripts, make up the writer’s main everyday environment - both in Vermont, in the USA, and now, according to boi. returning to Russia. Every year new works of his appear: the journalistic book “Russia in Collapse” about the current state and fate of the Russian people was published in 1998. In 1999, “New World” published new works by Solzhenitsyn, in which he addresses previously uncharacteristic topics military prose.
Analysis of literary works
It would not be an exaggeration to say that the subject of Solzhenitsyn’s epic was the Russian 20th century in all its tragic changes - from Augustus the Fourteenth to the present day. But being primarily an artist, he is trying to understand how these events affected the Russian national character.
The concept of personality in stories of the 60s and 90s. At one time, M. Gorky very accurately described the contradictory character of the Russian person: “Piebald people are good and bad together.” In many ways, this “piebaldness” became the subject of research by Solzhenitsyn.
The main character of the story “An Incident at Kochetovka Station” (1962), a young lieutenant Vasya Zotov, embodies the kindest human traits: intelligence, openness towards a front-line soldier or encircled man who entered the room of the line commandant’s office, a sincere desire to help in any situation. Two female images, only slightly outlined by the writer, highlight Zotov’s deep purity, and even the very thought of cheating on his wife, who found herself in occupation under the Germans, is impossible for him.
The compositional center of the story is Zotov’s meeting with those around him who have lagged behind his echelon, who amazes him with their intelligence and gentleness. Everything - the words, the intonations of the voice, the soft gestures of this man, who is capable of carrying himself with dignity and gentleness even in the monstrous flaw he wears, burns the hero: he “was extremely pleased with his manner of speaking; his manner of stopping if it seemed that the interlocutor wanted to object; his manner is not to wave his arms, but to somehow explain his speech with light movements of his fingers.” He reveals to him his half-childhood dreams of escaping to Spain, talks about his longing for the front and looks forward to several hours of wonderful communication with an intelligent, cultured and knowledgeable person - an actor before the war, a militiaman without a rifle - at its beginning, his recent environment, a miracle who got out of the German “cauldron” and now are left behind from their train - without documents, with a meaningless catch-up sheet, in essence, not a document at all. And here the author shows the struggle of two principles in Zotov’s soul: human and inhuman, evil, suspicious. Already after a spark of understanding ran between Zotov and Tveritinov, which once arose between Marshal Davout and Pierre Bezukhov, which then saved Pierre from execution, in Zotov’s mind a circular appears, crossing out the sympathy and trust that has arisen between two hearts that have not yet had time to cool down in the war. “The lieutenant put on his glasses and again looked at the catch-up sheet. The catch-up sheet, in fact, was not a real document; it was drawn up from the applicant’s words and could contain the truth, or it could contain a lie. The instructions demanded that we treat those around us extremely carefully, and even more so those who are alone.” And Tveritinov’s accidental slip of the tongue (he only asks what Stalingrad was called before) turns into disbelief in Zotov’s young and pure soul, already poisoned by the poison of suspicion: “And - everything broke off and went cold in Zotov. So, not an encirclement. Sent! Agent! Probably a white emigrant, that’s why his manners are like that.” What saved Pierre did not save the unfortunate and helpless Tveritinov - the young lieutenant “surrenders” the person he had just fallen in love with and was so sincerely interested in to the NKVD. And Tveritinov’s last words: “What are you doing! What are you doing! After all, you can’t fix this!!” - are confirmed by the last, chordal, as always with Solzhenitsyn, phrase: “But never later in his entire Life could Zotov forget this man...”.
Naive kindness and cruel suspicion - two qualities, seemingly incompatible, but completely conditioned by the Soviet era of the 30s, are combined in the hero’s soul.
The inconsistency of character sometimes appears from the comic side - as in the story “Zakhar-Kalita” (1965).
This short story is entirely built on contradictions, and in this sense it is very characteristic of the writer’s poetics. Its deliberately lightweight beginning seems to parody the common motifs of confessional or lyrical prose of the 60s, which clearly simplify the problem of national character.
“My friends, are you asking me to tell you something about summer cycling?” - this beginning, setting up something summer vacation and optional, contrasts with the content of the story itself, where on several pages the picture of the September battle of 1380 is recreated. But even turning back six centuries, Solzhenitsyn cannot sentimentally and blissfully, in accordance with the “bicycle "beginning, look at the turning point in Russian history, burdened with historiographical solemnity: "The truth of history is bitter, but it is easier to express it than to hide it: not only the Circassians and Genoese were brought by Mamai, not only the Lithuanians were in alliance with him, but also Prince Oleg of Ryazan. That’s why the Russians crossed the Don, so that the Don could protect their backs from their own people, from the Ryazan people: they wouldn’t hit you, Orthodox Christians.” The contradictions hidden in the soul of one person are characteristic of the nation as a whole - “Isn’t this where the fate of Russia came from? Is this where the turn of her story took place? Was it always only through Smolensk and Kyiv that enemies swarmed at us?..” So, from the inconsistency of national consciousness, Solzhenitsyn takes a step towards exploring the inconsistency of national life, which led much later to other turns in Russian history.
But if the narrator can pose such questions to himself and comprehend them, then the main character of the story, the self-proclaimed watchman of the Kulikovo field Zakhar-Kalita, simply embodies an almost instinctive desire to preserve a historical memory that has been lost. There is no sense in his constant, day and night, presence on the field - but the very fact of the existence of a funny, eccentric person is significant for Solzhenitsyn. Before describing it, he seems to stop in bewilderment and even slips into sentimental, almost Karamzin-like intonations, begins the phrase with such a characteristic interjection “Ah”, and ends with question marks and exclamation marks.
On the one hand, the Warden of the Kulikovo Field with his senseless activities is ridiculous, just as his assurances to reach Furtseva, the then Minister of Culture, in search of his truth, known only to him. The narrator cannot help but laugh, comparing him with a dead warrior, next to whom, however, there is neither a sword nor a shield, and instead of a helmet there is a worn-out cap and a bag with selected bottles near his arm. On the other hand, the completely disinterested and meaningless, it would seem, devotion to Paul as a visible embodiment of Russian history makes us see something real in this figure - grief. The author's position is not clarified - Solzhenitsyn seems to be balancing on the verge of the comic and the serious, seeing one of the bizarre and extraordinary forms of the Russian national character. Comical for all the meaninglessness of his life on the Field (the heroes even suspect that in this way Zakhar-Kalita is shirking hard rural work) is his claim to seriousness and self-importance, his complaints that he, the caretaker of the Field, is not given weapons. And next to this is the completely uncomic passion of the hero to testify to the historical glory of Russian weapons in the ways available to him. And then “all the mocking and condescending things that we thought about him yesterday immediately disappeared. On this frosty morning, rising from the hay, he was no longer a Caretaker, but, as it were, the Spirit of this Field, guarding it and never leaving it.”
Of course, the distance between the narrator and the hero is enormous: the hero does not have access to the historical material with which the narrator freely operates; they belong to different cultural and social environments - but what brings them together is their true devotion to national history and culture, belonging to which makes it possible to overcome social and cultural differences.
Turning to folk character in stories published in the first half of the 60s, Solzhenitsyn offers literature a new concept of personality. His heroes, such as Matryona, Ivan Denisovich (the image of the janitor Spiridon from the novel “In the First Circle” gravitates towards them), are people who do not reflect, living by certain natural, as if given from the outside, ideas developed in advance and not developed by them. And following these ideas, it is important to survive physically in conditions that are not at all conducive to physical survival, but not at the cost of losing one’s own human dignity. To lose it means to die, that is, having survived physically, to cease to be a person, to lose not only the respect of others, but also respect for oneself, which is tantamount to death. Explaining this, so to speak, ethics of survival, Shukhov recalls the words of his first foreman Kuzemin: “In the camp, this is who is dying: who licks the bowls, who hopes for the medical unit, and who goes to knock on the godfather.”
With the image of Ivan Denisovich, a new ethics seemed to come into literature, forged in the camps through which a very large part of society passed. (Many pages of The Gulag Archipelago are devoted to the study of this ethics.) Shukhov, not wanting to lose human dignity, is not at all inclined to take all the blows of camp life - otherwise he simply will not survive. “That’s right, groan and rot,” he notes. “If you resist, you’ll break.” In this sense, the writer denies the generally accepted romantic ideas about the proud opposition of the individual to tragic circumstances, on which literature brought up the generation of Soviet people of the 30s. And in this sense, the contrast between Shukhov and the captain Buinovsky, a hero who takes the blow upon himself, is interesting, but often, as it seems to Ivan Denisovich, it is senseless and self-destructive. The protests of the kavtorang against the morning search in the cold of people who have just woken up after getting up and shivering from the cold are naive:
“Buinovsky - in the throat, he’s used to his destroyers, but he hasn’t been in the camp for three months:
You have no right to undress people in the cold! You don’t know the ninth article of the criminal code!..
They have. They know. This is something you don’t know yet, brother.”
The purely folk, peasant practicality of Ivan Denisovich helps him survive and preserve himself as a man - without asking himself eternal questions, without trying to generalize the experience of his military and camp life, where he ended up after captivity (neither the investigator who interrogated Shukhov, nor he himself couldn’t figure out what kind of German intelligence mission he was carrying out). He, of course, does not have access to the level of historical and philosophical generalization of the camp experience as a facet of the national-historical existence of the 20th century, which Solzhenitsyn himself takes on in “The Gulag Archipelago.”
In the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” Solzhenitsyn is faced with the creative task of combining two points of view - the author and the hero, points of view that are not opposite, but similar ideologically, but differing in the level of generalization and breadth of material. This task is solved almost exclusively by stylistic means, when There is a barely noticeable gap between the speech of the author and the character, sometimes increasing, sometimes almost disappearing.
Solzhenitsyn turns to the skaz style of narration, which gives Ivan Denisovich the opportunity for verbal self-realization, but this is not a direct tale that reproduces the speech of the hero, but introduces the image of the narrator, whose position is close to that of the hero. This narrative form made it possible at some moments to distance the author and the hero, to make a direct conclusion of the narrative from the “author’s Shukhov’s” to the “author’s Solzhenitsyn’s” speech... By shifting the boundaries of Shukhov’s sense of life, the author gained the right to see what his hero could not see , something that is beyond Shukhov’s competence, while the relationship between the author’s speech plan and the hero’s plan can be shifted in the opposite direction - their points of view and their stylistic masks will immediately coincide. Thus, “the syntactic-stylistic structure of the story was formed as a result of the peculiar use of related possibilities of skaz, shifts from improperly direct to improperly authorial speech,” equally oriented towards the colloquial features of the Russian language.
Both the hero and the narrator (here is the obvious basis for their unity, expressed in the speech elements of the work) have access to that specifically Russian view of reality, which is usually called folk. It was the experience of a purely “peasant” perception of the camp as one of the aspects of Russian life in the 20th century. and paved the way for the story to the reader of the New World and the whole country. Solzhenitsyn himself recalled this in “Telenok”:
“I won’t say that this is an exact plan, but I had a correct guess and presentiment: the top man Alexander Tvardovsky and the top man Nikita Khrushchev cannot remain indifferent to this man Ivan Denisovich. And so it came true: it was not even poetry and not even politics that “decided the fate of my story, but this down-to-earth peasant essence of it, which has been ridiculed, trampled and reviled so much among us since the Great Turning Point, and even before that” (p. 27).
In the stories published then, Solzhenitsyn did not yet approach one of the most important topics for him - the topic of resistance to the anti-people regime. It will become one of the most important in the Gulag Archipelago. While the writer was interested in the national character itself and its existence “in the very interior of Russia - if such a thing existed somewhere, lived,” in the very Russia that the narrator is looking for in the story “Matrenin’s Dvor.” But he finds it untouched by the turmoil of the 20th century. an island of natural Russian life, but a national character that managed to preserve itself in this turmoil. “There are such natural-born angels,” the writer wrote in the article “Repentance and Self-restraint,” as if characterizing Matryona, “they seem to be weightless, they glide as if on top of this slurry, without drowning in it at all, even if they touch it with their feet surface? Each of us has met such people, there are not ten or a hundred of them in Russia, these are righteous people, we saw them, were surprised (“eccentrics”), took advantage of their goodness, in good moments answered them in kind, they have their way, - and here but they plunged again into our doomed depths” (Publicism, vol. 1, p. 61). What is the essence of Matryona's righteousness? In life, not by lies, we will now say in the words of the writer himself, spoken much later. She is outside the sphere of the heroic or exceptional, she realizes herself in the most ordinary, everyday situation, experiences all the “charms” of the Soviet rural novelty of the 50s: having worked all her life, she is forced to work for a pension not for herself, but for her husband , missing since the beginning of the war, measuring kilometers on foot and bowing to office desks. Unable to buy peat, which is mined all around but not sold to collective farmers, she, like all her friends, is forced to take it secretly. In creating this character, Solzhenitsyn places him in the most ordinary circumstances of rural collective farm life in the 50s. with her lack of rights and arrogant disregard for an ordinary, non-official person. Matryona's righteousness lies in her ability to preserve her humanity even in such inaccessible conditions.
But who does Matryona oppose, in other words, in a collision with what forces does her essence manifest itself? In a confrontation with Thaddeus, a black old man who appeared before the narrator, the school teacher and Matryona’s lodger, on the threshold of her hut, when he came with a humiliating request for his grandson? He crossed this threshold forty years ago, with rage in his heart and an ax in his hands - his bride from the war did not wait, she married his brother. “I stood on the threshold,” says Matryona. - I'll scream! I would throw myself at his knees!.. It’s impossible... Well, he says, if it weren’t for my dear brother, I would have chopped you both up!”
According to some researchers, the story “Matrenin's Dvor is hidden mystical.
Already at the very end of the story, after Matryona’s death, Solzhenitsyn lists her quiet advantages:
“Misunderstood and abandoned even by her husband, who buried six children, but did not have a sociable disposition, a stranger to her sisters, sisters-in-law, funny, foolishly working for others for free - she did not accumulate property for death. A dirty white goat, a lanky cat, ficus trees...
We all lived next to her and did not understand that she was the very righteous person without whom, according to the proverb, the village would not stand.
Neither the city.
Neither the whole land is ours.”
And the acutely dramatic ending of the story (Matryona dies under a train while helping Thaddeus transport the logs of her own hut) gives the ending a very special, symbolic meaning: she is no longer there, therefore, the village is not worth it without her? And the city? And all the land is ours?
In 1995-1999 Solzhenitsyn published new stories, which he called “two-part.” Their most important compositional principle is the opposition of the two parts, which makes it possible to compare two human destinies and characters that manifested themselves differently in the general context of historical circumstances. Their heroes are people who seemed to have sunk into the abyss of Russian history and left a bright mark on it, such as, for example, Marshal G.K. Zhukov, are considered by the writer from a purely personal perspective, regardless of official regalia, if any. The problematic of these stories is shaped by the conflict between history and the individual. The ways to resolve this conflict, no matter how different they may seem, always lead to the same result: a person who has lost faith and is disoriented in the historical space, a person who does not know how to sacrifice himself and makes a compromise, finds himself ground down and crushed by the terrible era in which he finds himself live.
Pavel Vasilyevich Ektov is a rural intellectual who saw the meaning of his life in serving the people, confident that “everyday assistance to the peasant in his current urgent needs, alleviation of people’s needs in any real form does not require any justification.” During the civil war, Ektov saw no other option for himself, a populist and lover of the people, than to join the peasant insurgent movement led by Ataman Antonov. The most educated person among Antonov's associates, Ektov became his chief of staff. Solzhenitsyn shows the tragic zigzag in the fate of this generous and honest man, who inherited from the Russian intelligentsia the inescapable moral need to serve the people and share the peasant pain. But betrayed by the same peasants (“on the second night he was handed over to the security officers following a denunciation from a neighbor’s woman”), Ektov is broken by blackmail: he cannot find the strength to sacrifice his wife and daughter and commits a terrible crime, in fact, “surrendering” everything Antonov headquarters - those people to whom he himself came to share their pain, with whom he needed to be in hard times, so as not to hide in his hole in Tambov and not despise himself! Solzhenitsyn shows the fate of a crushed man who finds himself faced with an insoluble life equation and is not ready to solve it. He can put his life on the altar, but the life of his daughter and wife? Is it even possible for a person to do such a thing? “The Bolsheviks used a great lever: taking families hostage.”
The conditions are such that a person’s virtuous qualities turn against him. A bloody civil war squeezes a private person between two millstones, grinding his life, his destiny, his family, his moral convictions.
“Sacrifice his wife and Marinka (daughter - M.G.), step over them - how could he??
For who else in the world - or for what else in the world? - is he responsible for more than for them?
Yes, the fullness of life - and they were.
And hand them over yourself? Who can do this?!.”
The situation appears to the Ego as hopeless. The irreligious-humanistic tradition, dating back to the Renaissance era and directly denied by Solzhenitsyn in his Harvard speech, prevents a person from feeling his responsibility beyond his family. “In the story “Ego,” says modern researcher P. Spivakovsky, “it is precisely shown how the irreligious-humanistic consciousness of the main character turns out to be a source of betrayal.” The hero's inattention to the sermons of rural priests is a very characteristic feature of the worldview of the Russian intellectual, which Solzhenitsyn casually draws attention to. After all, Ektov is a supporter of “real,” material, practical activity, but focusing on it alone, alas, leads to forgetting the spiritual meaning of life. Perhaps the church sermon, which the Ego arrogantly refuses, could be the source of “that very real help, without which the hero falls into the trap of his own worldview,” that same humanistic, irreligious, which does not allow the individual to feel his responsibility before God, but his own fate - as part of God's providence.
A person in the face of inhuman circumstances, changed, crushed by them, unable to refuse a compromise and, deprived of a Christian worldview, defenseless before the conditions of a forced transaction (can the Ego be judged for this?) is another typical situation in our history.
Two traits of the Russian intellectual led Ego to a compromise: belonging to non-religious humanism and following the revolutionary-democratic tradition. But, paradoxically, the writer saw similar collisions in Zhukov’s life (the story “On the Edges,” paired with “Ego” in a two-part composition). The connection between his fate and the fate of Ego is amazing - both fought on the same front, only on opposite sides: Zhukov - on the side of the Reds, Ego - on the side of the rebel peasants. And Zhukov was wounded in this war with his own people, but, unlike the idealist Ego, he survived. In his history, full of ups and downs, in victories over the Germans and in painful defeats in apparatus games with Khrushchev, in the betrayal of people whom he himself once saved (Khrushchev twice, Konev from the Stalinist tribunal in 1941), in the fearlessness of his youth , in the commander’s cruelty, in the senile helplessness, Solzhenitsyn is trying to find the key to understanding this fate, the fate of the marshal, one of those Russian soldiers who, according to I. Brodsky, “bravely entered foreign capitals, / but returned in fear to their own” ( “On the Death of Zhukov”, 1974). In ups and downs, he sees weakness behind the iron will of the marshal, which manifested itself in a completely human tendency to compromise. And here is a continuation of the most important theme of Solzhenitsyn’s work, which began in “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” and reached its culmination in “The Gulag Archipelago”: this theme is connected with the study of the limits of compromise, which a person who wants not to lose himself must know. Diluted with heart attacks and strokes, senile infirmity, Zhukov appears at the end of the story - but this is not his problem, but in the next compromise (he inserted two or three phrases into the book of memoirs about the role of political instructor Brezhnev in the victory), which he made in order to see your book published. Compromise and indecision at turning points in life, the same fear that he experienced when returning to his capital, broke and finished off the marshal - in a different way than the Ego, but, in essence, in the same way. Just as the Ego is helpless to change anything when it terribly and cruelly betrays, Zhukov, too, can only look back helplessly at the edge of life: “Perhaps even then, even then, I should have made up my mind? 0-oh, it seems - played a fool, played a fool?..” The hero is not given the opportunity to understand that he was mistaken not when he did not decide on a military coup and did not become the Russian de Gaulle, but when he, a peasant son, almost praying for his hero Tukhachevsky, participated in the destruction of the world of the Russian village that gave birth to him, when peasants were gassed out of the forests, and “probandied” villages were completely burned down.
The stories about Ektov and Zhukov are addressed to the destinies of subjectively honest people, broken by the terrible historical circumstances of the Soviet era. But another version of a compromise with reality is also possible - complete and joyful submission to it and natural oblivion of any pangs of conscience. This is what the story “Apricot Jam” is about. The first part of this story is a terrible letter addressed to a living classic of Soviet literature. It is written by a semi-literate person who is quite clearly aware of the hopelessness of the Soviet clutches of life, from which he, the son of dispossessed parents, will no longer escape, having perished in labor camps:
“I am a slave in extreme circumstances, and I have been destined to live like this until the last insult. Maybe it would be inexpensive for you to send me a grocery parcel? Have mercy..."
The food parcel contains, perhaps, the salvation of this man, Fyodor Ivanovich, who has become just a unit of the forced Soviet labor army, a unit whose life does not have any significant value at all. The second part of the story is a description of the life of the beautiful dacha of the famous Writer, rich, warmed and caressed at the very top, a man happy from a successfully found compromise with the authorities, joyfully lying both in journalism and literature. The Writer and the Critic, conducting literary and official conversations over tea, are in a different world than the entire Soviet country. The voice of a letter with words of truth that have flown into this world of rich writers' cottages cannot be heard by representatives of the literary elite: deafness is one of the conditions for a compromise with the authorities. The Writer’s delight at the fact that “a letter with a pristine language emerges from the depths of modern readers is the height of cynicism. what a masterful, and at the same time captivating combination and control of words! The writer is envious too!” A letter that appeals to the conscience of a Russian writer (according to Solzhenitsyn, the hero of his story is not a Russian, but a Soviet writer) becomes only material for the study of non-standard speech patterns that help stylize folk speech, which is interpreted as exotic and subject to reproduction by a “folk” Writer, like would know national life from the inside. The highest degree of disdain for the cry of a tortured person heard in the letter is heard in the Writer’s remark when he is asked about his connection with the correspondent: “Why answer, the answer is not the point. It's a matter of finding a language."
The truth of art as interpreted by the writer. Interest in reality, attention to everyday details, even the most seemingly insignificant ones, leads to documentary storytelling, to the desire to reproduce a life event authentically as it actually happened, avoiding, if possible, fiction, whether we are talking about death Matryona (“Matryona’s Dvor”) or about the death of Stolypin (“Red Wheel”). In both cases, life reality itself contains details that are subject to religious and symbolic interpretation: the right hand of Matryona, who was hit by a train, remained untouched on the disfigured body (“The Lord left her right hand. She will pray to God there...”), Stolypin’s right hand, shot through by a terrorist’s bullet, with which he could not cross Nicholas II and did it with his left hand, unwittingly committing an anti-gesture. The critic P. Spivakovsky sees the ontological, existential, conditioned by God's Providence, meaning of a real life detail, read by Solzhenitsyn. “This happens because,” the researcher believes, “that Solzhenitsyn’s artistic system, as a rule, assumes a close connection between what is depicted and the true reality of life, in which he strives to see what others do not notice - the action of Providence in human existence.” This, first of all, determines the writer’s attention to genuine life authenticity and self-restraint in the sphere of artistic fiction: reality itself is perceived as a perfect artistic creation, and the artist’s task is to identify the symbolic meanings hidden in it, predetermined by God’s plan for the world. It was precisely the comprehension of such truth as the highest meaning that justifies the existence of art that Solzhenitsyn always affirmed. He thinks of himself as a writer who “knows a higher power over himself and joyfully works as a little apprentice under the sky of God, although his responsibility for everything written, drawn, for the perceiving souls is even stricter. But: this world was not created by him, he is not controlled by him, there is no doubt about its foundations, the artist is given only more acutely than others to feel the harmony of the world, the beauty and ugliness of the human contribution to it - and acutely convey this to people” (Publicism, vol. 1, p. . 8). As a writer with a religious perspective, he became the first Orthodox laureate of the Templeton Prize (May 1983) “For progress in the development of religion.”
Genre specificity of Solzhenitsyn's epic. The desire to minimize fiction and artistically comprehend reality itself leads in Solzhenitsyn’s epic to the transformation of traditional genre forms. “The Red Wheel” is no longer a novel, but a “narrative within a measured period” - this is the genre definition the writer gives to his work. “The Gulag Archipelago” also cannot be called a novel - it is, rather, a completely special genre of artistic documentary, the main source of which is the memory of the Author and the people who went through the Gulag and wished to remember it and tell the Author about their memories. In a certain sense, this work is largely based on the national memory of our century, which includes the terrible memory of the executioners and victims. Therefore, the writer perceives “The Gulag Archipelago” not as his personal work - “this book would be beyond the power of one person to create”, but as “a common friendly monument to all those tortured and killed.” The author only hopes that, “having become the confidant of many later stories and letters,” he will be able to tell the truth about the Archipelago, asking forgiveness from those who did not live long enough to tell about it, that he “didn’t see everything, didn’t remember everything, didn’t guess everything.” . The same thought is expressed in the Nobel lecture: rising to the lectern, which is not given to every writer and only once in a lifetime, Solzhenitsyn reflects on those who died in the Gulag: “And today, accompanied by the shadows of the fallen, and with a bowed head, letting me pass ahead to this place others, worthy earlier, today I need to guess and express what they would like to say? (Publicism, vol. 1, p. 11).
The genre of “artistic research” involves combining the positions of a scientist and a writer in the author’s approach to the material of reality. Saying that the path of rational, scientific-historical research into such a phenomenon of Soviet reality as the Gulag Archipelago was simply inaccessible to him, Solzhenitsyn reflects on the advantages of artistic research over scientific research: “Artistic research, like the artistic method of understanding reality in general, provides opportunities , which science did not burn. It is known that intuition provides the so-called “tunnel effect”, in other words, intuition penetrates reality like a tunnel into a mountain. This has always been the case in literature. When I worked on The Gulag Archipelago, it was this principle that served as the basis for erecting a building where science could not. I collected existing documents. Examined the evidence of two hundred and twenty-seven people. To this must be added my own experience in the concentration camps and the experience of my comrades and friends with whom I was imprisoned. Where science lacks statistical data, tables and documents, the artistic method allows generalizations to be made based on individual cases. From this point of view, artistic research not only does not replace scientific research, but also surpasses it in its capabilities.”
“The Gulag Archipelago” is compositionally constructed not according to a romantic principle, but according to the principle of scientific research. Its three volumes and seven parts are devoted to different islands of the Archipelago and different periods of its history. It is exactly how the researcher Solzhenitsyn describes the technology of arrest, the investigation, the various situations and options possible here, the development of the “legislative framework”, he tells, naming the names of people he personally knows or those whose stories he heard, exactly how, with what artistry they arrested, how they interrogated the imaginary guilt. It is enough to look only at the titles of chapters and parts to see the volume and research rigor of the book: “Prison Industry”, “Perpetual Motion”, “Extermination Labor”, “The Soul and Barbed Wire”, “Katorga”...
The idea of “The Red Wheel” dictates a different compositional form to the writer. This is a book about historical, turning points in Russian history. “In mathematics there is such a concept of nodal points: in order to draw a curve, you do not need to find all its points, you only need to find special points of breaks, repetitions and turns, where the curve intersects itself again, these are nodal points. And when these points are set, the shape of the curve is already clear. So I focused on the Nodes, for short periods, never more than three weeks, sometimes two weeks, ten days. Here “August”, for example, is eleven days in total. And in the interval between the Nodes I don’t give anything. I only get points that, in the Reader’s perception, will later connect into a curve. “August the Fourteenth” - like Since such is the first point, the first Knot” (Publicism, vol. 3, p. 194). The second Node was “October the Sixteenth,” the third was “March the Seventeenth,” and the fourth was “April the Seventeenth.”
The idea of documentary, the direct use of a historical Document becomes one of the elements of the compositional structure in “The Red Wheel”. The principle of working with the document is determined by Solzhenitsyn himself. These are “newspaper montages”, when the author either translates a newspaper article of that time into a dialogue between the characters, or introduces documents into the text of the work. Review chapters, sometimes highlighted in the text of the epic, are devoted either to historical events, reviews of military operations - so that a person does not get lost, as the author himself will say - or to its heroes, specific historical figures, Stolypin, for example. Petit gives the history of some games in his review chapters. “Purely fragmentary chapters” are also used, consisting of brief descriptions of real events. But one of the most interesting discoveries of the writer is the “movie screen”. “My screenplay chapters are made in such a way that you can either shoot or see them without a screen. This is a real movie, but written on paper. I use it in those places where it’s very bright and you don’t want to be burdened with unnecessary details. If you start writing it in simple prose, you’ll need to collect and convey to the author more unnecessary information, but if you show a picture, it conveys everything!” (Publicism. vol. 2, p. 223).
The symbolic meaning of the title of the epic is also conveyed, in particular, with the help of such a “screen”. Several times in the epic, a broad image-symbol of a rolling, burning red wheel appears, crushing and burning everything in its path. This is a circle of burning mill wings, spinning in complete calm, and a fiery wheel rolling through the air; the red accelerating wheel of a steam locomotive will appear in Lenin’s thoughts when he, standing at the Krakow station, thinks about how to make this wheel of war spin in the opposite direction; it will be a burning wheel that bounces off the hospital wheelchair:
"WHEEL! - rolls, illuminated by fire!
independent!
unstoppable!
everything is oppressive!<...>
A wheel painted with fire is rolling!
Joyful fire."
Crimson Wheel!!”
Two wars, two revolutions, leading to a national tragedy, ran through Russian history like this crimson burning wheel.
In a huge circle of characters, historical and fictional, Solzhenitsyn manages to show the seemingly incompatible levels of Russian life of those years. If real historical figures are needed in order to show the peak manifestations of the historical process, then fictional characters are primarily private persons, but in their environment another level of history is visible, private, everyday, but no less significant.
Among the heroes of Russian history, General Samsonov and Minister Stolypin visibly reveal two facets of the Russian national character.
In “The Calf” Solzhenitsyn will draw an amazing parallel between Samsonov and Tvardovsky. The scene of the general's farewell to his army, his powerlessness, helplessness coincided in the author's mind with Tvardovsky's farewell to the editors of Novy Mir - at the very moment of his expulsion from the magazine. “They told me about this scene in those days when I was preparing to describe Samsonov’s farewell to the troops - and the similarity of these scenes, and immediately the strong similarity of the characters, was revealed to me! - the same psychological and national type, the same inner greatness, largeness, purity - and practical helplessness, and failure to keep up with the times. Also - aristocracy, natural in Samsonov, contradictory in Tvardovsky. I began to explain Samsonov to myself through Tvardovsky and vice versa - and I understood each of them better” (“The Calf Butted an Oak Tree,” p. 303). And the end of both is tragic - the suicide of Samsonov and the imminent death of Tvardovsky...
Stolypin, his killer provocateur Bogrov, Nicholas II, Guchkov, Shulgin, Lenin, the Bolshevik Shlyapnikov, Denikin - almost any political and public figure, at least somewhat noticeable in Russian life of that era, turns out to be in the panorama created by the writer.
Solzhenitsyn's epic covers all the tragic turns of Russian history - from 1899, with which the "Red Wheel" opens, through the Fourteenth, through the Seventeenth - to the era of the Gulag, to the comprehension of the Russian national character, as it developed, passing through all historical cataclysms, by the middle of the century. Such a broad subject of depiction determined the syncretic nature of the artistic world created by the writer: it easily and freely includes, without rejecting, the genres of a historical document, a scientific monograph of a historian, the pathos of a publicist, the reflections of a philosopher, the research of a sociologist, and the observations of a psychologist.
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Between two anniversaries (1998-2003): Writers, critics, literary scholars about the work of A.I. Solzhenitsyn: Almanac / Comp. N.A. Struve, V.A. Moskvin. M.: Russian way, 2005. 552 p.
The almanac contains the latest publications by A.I. Solzhenitsyn, as well as fragments from his unpublished works (first section). The second section contains the most notable speeches of domestic writers, publicists, critics and literary scholars dedicated to the life and work of A.I. Solzhenitsyn and dedicated to his 80th and 85th anniversaries. The third section consists of materials from the International Scientific Conference “Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Problems of Artistic Creativity. To the 85th anniversary of the writer" (Moscow, 2003)
CONTENT
From the compilers Part one
A. SOLZHENITSYN. FROM NEW PUBLICATIONS
Three excerpts from the “Diary of R-17” From travel notes, 1994 Conversation with Vittorio Strada (October 20, 2000) Interview with Peter Holenstein (December 2003) Part two
RUSSIAN PUBLISHIP IN RECENT YEARS ABOUT A.I. SOLZHENITSYN
L. Saraskina. The Solzhenitsyn Code (Russia. 1996. No. 1) T. Ivanova. From the person who accomplished the feat (Book Review. 1996. No. 38) Yu. Kublanovsky. Solzhenitsyn under democracy (Trud. 1997. February 26) V. Berestov. Returnee (Stas. 1997. May No. 5) O. Pavlov. “Solzhenitsyn is Solzhenitsyn” (Moscow. 1998. November) M. Zolotonosov. Bull at the wreckage of an oak (Moscow News. 1998. November 29 - December 6) A. Antonov. Prophet in his homeland and the world (Express Chronicle. 1998. December 7) Yu. Kublanovsky. Solzhenitsyn in exile (Tpyd. 1998. December 9) V. Krupin. He lived and lives not by a lie (Indirect speech) (Parliamentary newspaper. 1998. December 10) G. Vasyutochkin. Anticipatory voice (Evening Petersburg. 1998. December 11) M. Novikov. Solzhenitsyn’s problem is 80 years old (Kommersant. 1998. December 11) Yu. Krokhin. Archipelago of Fate (Rossiyskaya Gazeta. 1998. December 11) M. Sokolov. Soil Stolz (Izvestia. 1998. December 11) A. Arkhangelsky. One warrior in the field (Izvestia. 1998. December 11) A. Nemzer. Artist under the sky of God (Time MN. 1998. December 11) G.Vladimov. Solzhenitsyn's List (Moscow News. 1998. December 6-13) E.Popov. Cheerful Isaich (Black humor on a red lining) (Ogonyok. 1998. December 14) M. Novikov. The last prophet of Russian literature (Kommersant AUTHORITY. 1998. December 15) P. Lavrenov. From mouth to mouth (Book Review. 1998. December 15) S. Averintsev. We forgot that such people exist (Obshchaya Gazeta. 1998. December 10-16) L.Anninsky. God gives honor to those who can demolish (Obshchaya Gazeta. 1998. December 10-16) I. Vinogradov. The Paradox of the Great Recluse (Obshchaya Gazeta. 1998. December 10-16) A. Muzykantsky. If only the authorities read his books... (Obshchaya Gazeta. 1998. December 10-16) E. Yakovlev. Zemstvo teacher of freedom (General newspaper. 1998. December 10-16) O. Georgy (Chistyakov). Has Russia read Solzhenitsyn? (Russian thought. 1998. December 10-16) V.Nepomnyashchiy. Solzhenitsyn must be earned (Culture. 1998. December 10-16) V. Leonidov. The return of the Russian diaspora, or the Solzhenitsyn Library (Russian News. 1998. December 16) G. Pomerantz. The loneliness of the prophet (He is not inclined to dialogue. We are ready for dialogue) (Vek. 1998. No. 48) V. Yudin. The Solzhenitsyn phenomenon (Bulletin of Tver State University. 1998. December. No. 6) P. Lavrenov. The Image of Time in the Works of A.I. Solzhenitsyn (Report made at the Solzhenitsyn readings in the editorial office of the magazine “Moscow” on March 22, 2000) A. Zubov. Between despair and hope: political views of A.I. Solzhenitsyn in the 1990s. (Seeding 2000. No. 12) O. Mramornov.“Rebirth of Humanism” (Nezavisimaya Gazeta. 2001. January 19) G. Gachev. Man of Destiny in the field of open battle (Moskovsky Komsomolets. 2003. December 8) A.Yakhontov. Solzhenitsyn as a mirror of the Russian intelligentsia (Moskovsky Komsomolets. 2003. December 7-13). Yu. Karyakin. And it is still unknown what he will say (Apexandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn is 30,035 days old (or approximately 85 years old)) (Novaya Gazeta. 2003. December 9-10) M. Pozdnyaev. Rock Prophet (New News. 2003. December 11) A. Nemzer. Soul and Barbed Wire (Vremya Novostey. 2003. December 11) Yu. Kublanovsky. Not inferior to time (Tpyd-7. 2003. December 11-17) V. Linnik. Giant (Word. 2003. December 19-25) L.Donets. The First Circle (Film about the Solzhenitsyns) (Literaturnaya Gazeta. 2003. December 24-30) Part three
MATERIALS OF THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE “ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN: PROBLEMS OF ARTISTIC CREATIVITY. TO THE 85TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE WRITER" (Moscow, December 17-19, 2003)
Yu. Luzhkov. Participants of the International Scientific Conference “Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Problems of Artistic Creativity. To the 85th anniversary of the writer" Yu.Osipov. To the participants of the International Scientific Conference “Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Problems of Artistic Creativity” N. Struve. The appearance of Solzhenitsyn. Attempt at synthesis S. Schmidt. Solzhenitsyn - historian A. Muzykantsky. Man in his Fatherland M. Nicholson. House and “road” near Solzhenitsyn L. Saraskina. Historiosophical image of the 20th century in the works of A.I. Solzhenitsyn T. Kleofastova. The work of A. Solzhenitsyn in the context of the twentieth century A. Klimov. The theme of moral awakening in Solzhenitsyn O. Sedakova. A small masterpiece: “The Incident at Kochetovka Station” I. Zolotussky. Alexander Solzhenitsyn and “Selected passages from correspondence with friends” N.V. Gogol V. Rasputin. Thirty years later (journalism of A.I. Solzhenitsyn in the early 1970s, before his deportation to the West) L. Borodin. Solzhenitsyn - reader E. Chukovskaya. Alexander Solzhenitsyn. From speaking out against censorship to testifying about the Gulag Archipelago A. Usmanov. The concept of Eros in the works of A. Solzhenitsyn J. Guangxuan. A. Solzhenitsyn in Chinese criticism R. Tempest. Tolstoy and Solzhenitsyn: meeting in Yasnaya Polyana V. Zakharov. About the deep similarities between Solzhenitsyn and Dostoevsky P. Spivakovsky. Polyphonic picture of the world by F.M. Dostoevsky and A.I. Solzhenitsyn M. Petrova. The first experience of a textual critic working with an author O. Lekmanov. Ivans in “Ivan Denisovich” A.Ranchin. The theme of hard labor in “The Gulag Archipelago” by A.I. Solzhenitsyn and in Russian literature of the 19th century. Some observations by E. Ivanov. Legend and fact in the fate of the “GULAG Archipelago” A. Zubov. Self-knowledge of the people in the works of Solzhenitsyn S. Sheshunova. Orthodox calendar in the "Red Wheel" N. Shchedrin. The nature of artistry in A. Solzhenitsyn’s “Red Wheel” A. Vanyukov.“Adlig Schwenkitten” by A. Solzhenitsyn. The concept of memory and the poetics of the genre Yu. Kublanovsky. Prose is visible, audible, olfactory... (The experience of reading the war stories of Alexander Solzhenitsyn) P. Fokin. Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Art outside the game G. Gachev. Solzhenitsyn - a man of destiny, an organ and body of history O. John (Privalov). The appearance of Solzhenitsyn and the experience of his church reception Zh. Niva."Living Classic" I. Rodnyanskaya. Chronicler of the fateful hours of Russia Plan
Introduction 3
Righteous themes in the works of Leskov N.S. 4
Righteous themes in the works of Solzhenitsyn A.I. 17
Conclusion 32
Bibliography 33
Introduction
The path to art lay through the comprehension of multifaceted relationships
people, the spiritual atmosphere of the time. And where specific phenomena were somehow linked to these problems, a living word, a vivid image was born. Writers strived for a creative transformation of the world. And the path to true existence lay through the artist’s self-deepening. Thus, it is through the artist’s self-deepening that a new image is created that reflects actual reality. And these images reflect the character of a person. In my opinion, the problem of righteousness is very important and interesting, since over the years it has worried the minds of many writers and scientists. The topic of my essay is quite unusual. Righteous themes in the works of Leskov N.S. and Solzhenitsyn A.I. This topic is not widely described in Russian literature, although writers such as Leskov and Solzhenitsyn turned to the search for examples of the righteous life of the people. I want to analyze several works. The essay will examine several works, their analysis and critical articles on these works. In my essay I will try to express my thoughts and thoughts on this topic.
Righteous themes in the works of Leskov N.S.
Although Leskov’s name is known to the modern reader, he, as a rule, has no true idea of the scale of his work. A very small number of the writer’s works have been heard: “The Cathedral People”, “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk”, “Lefty”, “The Stupid Artist”, “The Enchanted Wanderer”, “The Captured Angel”, “The Man on the Clock”, and even anti-nihilistic novels. “Nowhere” and “At Knives”. Meanwhile, Leskov left a huge legacy - both artistic and journalistic. Active mastery of it is now especially important, because Leskov’s work is unusually in tune with our time. The sixties of the 19th century, when Leskov entered literature, are in many ways reminiscent of the period of history that we are experiencing now. It was a time of radical economic and social reforms, the time when glasnost first appeared in Russia. The focus was on the peasant question, the problem of liberation of the individual, the protection of his rights from the encroachments of the state bureaucratic apparatus and the growing power of capital, and the struggle for economic freedom. A century and a half later, we actually found ourselves again faced with the same problems, which is why it is so important to take advantage of the experience of a wise and practical person who knew Russia in breadth and depth.
Now we have already learned to appreciate Leskov the artist, but we still underestimate him as a thinker. Like Dostoevsky, he turned out to be a prophet-writer. The difference between them is that Dostoevsky, in his prophecies about the future, relied on the present, saw in it the shoots of the future and saw what they would develop into. And Leskov, in determining the trend of Russian life, relied on the past of Russia, on the national-historical foundations of life that were stable and unchanged for a long time. He singled out features in Russian life that remain vital despite all social disruptions and historical changes. Therefore, Leskov’s observations on everyday life, state and social institutions of Russian life seem unusually relevant now. Among the persistent ills of Russian social life, Leskov named mismanagement, the dominance of the bureaucracy, protectionism, bribery, the inability of people in power to cope with their responsibilities, lawlessness, and disregard for individual rights. In his opinion, in order to successfully combat these ulcers of Russian life, “Russia needs and what is most important is knowledge, self-knowledge and self-awareness.” Believing that a country, like a person, goes through different age stages of development, he equated Russia with a gifted youth who can still come to his senses.
Not a single Russian writer paid as much attention to the problem of national character as Leskov. He described the Russian national character in many ways and along the way made very interesting and subtle sketches of the national character of the Germans, French, English, Poles, Jews, Ukrainians, and Tatars. Now, in an era of aggravated interethnic relations, the work of Leskov, who preached national and religious tolerance, who saw the beauty of life in the bright colors of national life, various national structures, customs, characters, is very relevant.
Leskov was undoubtedly one of the most interesting religious minds in Russian literature of the second half of the 19th century. His work, like the work of L. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, reflected the intense moral search of the Russian people during the crisis of Christian ideology caused by the collapse of the foundations of feudalism. Leskov is a moralist writer and preacher, in this he is very close to Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. But his moral demands are not characterized by maximalism. They are more adapted to the capabilities of the average person, not an ascetic or a hero. Leskov’s interest in the positive principles of Russian life is strikingly stable: heroes of a righteous disposition are often found in Leskov’s very first and last works. Sometimes they find themselves on the periphery of the narrative (“Little things in the life of a bishop,” “Notes of an unknown person”), more often they are the main characters (elder Gerasim, conscientious Danila, Immortal Golovan, one-minded Ryzhov, Archpriest Tubrozov, etc.), but they are always present. In our field of view will be the cycle of stories about the righteous created in the 1870s, as well as the chronicles “The Soborians” and “The Seedy Family,” where the topic of interest to us is developed with the greatest completeness. We are interested in how Leskov’s concept of righteousness relates to the senile tradition. Is it possible to talk about the continuity of phenomena, can the righteous Leskov (the righteous type created by him) be considered an old man (senile type)? As you know, eldership is a church institution that determines the relationship between teacher and student in the matter of spiritual improvement. It is based on the spiritual guidance of a teacher to a student, the principle of which is a relationship of mutual asceticism, the practice of soul guidance and obedience. The elder is an experienced monk, and the student is a novice monk who takes upon himself the cross of asceticism and needs his guidance for a long time. The ideal of elder leadership is the student’s perfect obedience to his elder.
The Orthodox Russian eldership is genetically a continuation of the ancient Eastern eldership, but it is tolerable, and I went to look for the righteous...” Thus, he made an attempt to create bright, colorful characters that exist in reality, moreover, are foundations of the earth and can strengthen the faith of his contemporaries in the Russian people and in the future of Russia. Like L. Tolstoy, Leskov created a kind of moral alphabet, contrasting the contradictory modernity with the foundations developed by the centuries-old way of life of the people. He called his ideal heroes “righteous”, for they, like the ancient holy ascetics, acted in everything “according to God’s law” and lived in truth. The main thing that determines their behavior in life is service to a living cause. Every day his heroes perform an imperceptible feat of kind participation and help to their neighbors. Leskov's righteous people see the meaning of life in active morality: they simply need to do good, otherwise they do not feel like people. It acquired distinctive features, probably due to the uniqueness of the Russian mentality and the cultural and historical demands of later eras. First of all, Russian elders popularly, the main gift of the Russian elder is “the ability to speak spiritually with the people.” The type of Russian elder-lover of the people is a Russian historical type and ideal; this point of view is generally accepted in Russian religious philosophy (positions of S. Bulgakov, V. Ekzemplyarsky, V. Kotelnikov, etc.). The second half of the 19th century was the heyday of the senile tradition, and it was at this time that N.S. Leskov turns to the image of the Russian righteous man. The gallery of Leskov's righteous people was created in the 70s - 90s. What is Leskov’s righteous concept? The search for “hearts... warmer and souls more sympathetic” led the writer to the creation of righteous legendary images... S. Leskov explained his choice this way: “Is it really possible to see nothing but rubbish in neither mine, nor his, nor anyone else’s Russian soul? ?... How can the whole earth survive with only the rubbish that lives in my and your soul... It was unbearable for me, and I went to look for the righteous..." 1 . Thus, he made an attempt to create bright, colorful characters that exist in reality, moreover, are foundations of the earth and can strengthen the faith of his contemporaries in the Russian people and in the future of Russia. Like L. Tolstoy, Leskov created a kind of moral alphabet, contrasting the contradictory modernity with the foundations developed by the centuries-old way of life of the people. Leskov emphasized: “The strength of my talent is in positive types. I gave the reader positive types of Russian people” 2. The writer searched in reality for “that small number of three righteous people,” without whom “there is no standing city.” In his opinion, they “have not disappeared among us, and they will not disappear... They just don’t notice, but if you look closely, they are there.” He called his ideal heroes “righteous”, for they, like the ancient holy ascetics, acted in everything “according to God’s law” and lived in truth. The main thing that determines their behavior in life is service to a living cause. Every day his heroes perform an imperceptible feat of kind participation and help to their neighbors. Leskov's righteous people see the meaning of life in active morality: they simply need to do good, otherwise they do not feel like people. As has been repeatedly noted, the source of the spiritual strength of Leskov’s heroes is the national soil. National Holy Russian the way of life with its views and customs is the only acceptable way of life for Leskov’s heroes. “My hero longs for unanimity with the fatherland; he is convinced of the goodness of this existence, seeing at its basis a world order that should be preserved as a shrine” 3. The deep essence of Russian life is at the same time the essence of Leskov’s hero. A person’s separation of himself from a given world order, much less opposing his “I” to it, is unthinkable for a writer.
It is known that some of the stories from the righteous cycle are based on hagiographic plots and represent a kind of artistic stylization with the author’s development of the plot, detail and composition (“The Lion of Elder Gerasim”, “Conscientious Danila”, “The Woodcutter”, “The Mountain”). Our tasks do not include an analysis of the dialogue between Leskov’s righteous cycle and the hagiographic tradition, but it is important to identify the very fact that the writer used hagiographic sources. True Christianity and the official church of clergy are not identical concepts for Leskov. In 1871 he wrote: “I am not an enemy of the church, but her friend, or more: I am her obedient and devoted son, and a confident Orthodox - I do not want to discredit her; I wish her honest progress from the stagnation into which she fell, crushed by statehood. The church, subordinate to the state, lost its spiritual freedom. Mercy, a meek and kind attitude take on the character of an external duty prescribed by law as a means of pleasing the formidable Master” 4 .
Having a hagiographical heritage as one of his sources, the writer found righteous people in the living people, because he saw the moral principles that contribute to the improvement of man and society in the people, and Leskov associated the formation of the Russian national character and the very idea of righteousness with Christianity. The people preserve that living spirit of faith,” without which Christianity loses its vitality and becomes an abstraction. Christianity, according to Leskov, “is a worldview plus ethical standards of behavior in everyday life, in life... Christianity requires not just a Christian worldview, but also actions. Without action, faith is dead." 5 Therefore, his artistic message of love, kindness and participation is based on earthly affairs. In 1891, Leskov would say this with all certainty: “Away with mysticism, but “break and give” - that’s the point” 6 . Leskov's religion is a religion of action, a religion of good deeds, expressed in the idea of serving people as the most important in Christianity. Driven by “brotherly” love for people, Golovan (“Golovan”) takes care of the sick during a pestilence with such fearlessness and dedication that his behavior is interpreted mystically, and he receives the nickname “non-lethal.” Christian worldview for N.S. Leskova is, first of all, a lesson in purely practical morality: preaching unpretentiously simple and ordinary things. Leskov’s righteous people live in the world and are fully involved in the web of ordinary everyday relationships, but it is in unfavorable life circumstances that the moral originality of Leskov’s righteous people manifests itself, it is in the world that they become righteous. Conscientious Danila ("Conscientious Danila"), while in captivity, teaches the barbarians the Christian life, what deserves the respect of infidels, Elder Gerasim ("Lion of Elder Gerasim") gives his property to the poor, for the sake of harmony among people, and then becomes their adviser. This happens because in the consciousness of Leskov’s righteous man, the ideal is thought of as real. Moral principles are a given, and therefore are strictly followed, regardless of what those around them are (one can draw a clear parallel with Elder Zosima, who argued that one must follow the ideal, “even if it happened that everyone on earth has gone astray”) . Leskovsky’s righteous man is free from the prevailing opinions around him and this makes him attractive. The ethical norm of the Leskovsky righteous is independently worthy service, and service in the world (Father Kiriyak refuses to forcibly baptize pagans, conscientious Danila does not accept the formal forgiveness of priests, but seeks true forgiveness among people). A distinctive feature of Leskov’s righteous people is their rejection of the world-breaking practice of solitary self-improvement. The Leskovsky righteous people, as M. Gorky wrote, “have absolutely no time to think about their personal salvation - they constantly worry about the salvation and consolation of their neighbors” 7 . The need to do good as an all-consuming feeling that leaves no room for concerns about oneself is a motive that sounds very persistent in Leskov. His heroes are characterized by evangelical self-care. The essence of righteousness is contained for the writer in the lines of “The Sealed Angel” about Pavma: “... a meekly shining ray calmly does what a fierce storm cannot do.” Leskov's heroes sometimes shy away from fighting even in those cases when, it would seem, it is necessary to defend high moral principles: they do not go out to sow and aggravate discord. Tuberozov in “Soboryans” avoids, as far as possible, clashes with Barnabas Prepotensky, while he in every possible way seeks reasons for them.
Leskov's righteous people feel life as a priceless gift, which is why there is no reaction of resentment towards life in their being. “Whoever offends him however he wants, he will not be offended and will not forget his dignity,” says Rogozhin about Chervev 8 . His words are consonant with the words of Zosima: “Love all the creatures of God, the whole, and love every grain of sand, every leaf, every ray of God. Love animals, love plants, love every thing” 9. For Leskov’s heroes, being offended means forgetting about your dignity. Wisdom for them is not in seeking a more prominent and worthy position, but, on the contrary, in living righteously while remaining in their place. Selfless goodness and strict fulfillment of moral duty are considered by the writer to be deeply rooted in people’s life (although not sufficiently “fixed” by the social structure). What is humanly valuable is formed, according to Leskov, in the common centuries-old Russian life. The basis for Leskov’s ideas about a morally perfect person were the ideals of Christian ethics, the principles of which he associated with the unwritten laws of “practical morality” of the people.
The formulation of the problem of the ideal and personality of a beautiful person in Leskov’s work has deeply original features. Unlike Dostoevsky, who perceives the chaotic state of contemporary life primarily through the prism of the all-determining principles of faith and unbelief, all-human brotherhood, Leskov, in his stories about the righteous, decisively distances himself from posing such ideological problems. His focus is on remarkable characters, described by him with almost documentary accuracy, real destinies and events. Feeding, like L. Tolstoy, a distrust of any “theories,” Leskov deliberately limits his copyright, reducing them to the role of a collector and recorder of transmitted “reliable” everyday stories. The main plot collisions on which righteous stories are built are, as a rule, not a confrontation of ideas, doctrines, theories, but a clash of goodness and altruistic love and cold indifference, high honesty and shameless resourcefulness. It is no coincidence that in his article “The Little Man”, inspired by an everyday episode from the life of Dostoevsky, Leskov calls this writer a “spiritual Christian” and, slightly making fun of the darkness of his prophecies, contrasts him with the “practical Christian” Tolstoy, about his coincidence with whom on many issues he stated more than once in letters and literary speeches. For Leskov, Dostoevsky is a “spiritual Christian,” and Tolstoy is a “practical Christian.” Dostoevsky's "Righteous" is interesting and significant as a man who found the right idea that would give him strength. Not only the behavior, but also the well-being of such a hero is entirely determined by this idea.
Leskov's righteous people are free from the omnipotence of ideas. In general, they are most often far from any theoretical search and follow in their opinions and actions the immediate movement of the heart. According to Gorky: “Leskov’s heroes are enchanted by love for people - that is, radiating the light of perfect, brotherly love” 10. However, Leskov and Dostoevsky reveal the secret of this “phenomenon of Russian life” in different ways and present the possibilities of active spiritual influence and service in the world in different ways.
Zosima appears before the reader as a person who has long ago received a certain freedom from any specific class-hierarchical and everyday, everyday restrictions; this position allows him to develop a holistic moral and philosophical concept. From the story of Zosima himself it follows that it was precisely to the wanderings and sufferings that raised him above the oppressive power of everyday life that he owed a feeling of reverent respect for the great mystery of life, experienced and realized as a religious feeling. Responding with his whole being to the boundless indescribable beauty of nature, Zosima ascends to a new stage of his spiritual growth - the acquisition of inner tenderness, love for everyone, a vision of the “other”. These great spiritual benefits, acquired by him in wandering and suffering, Zosima brings to the “world”, where they do not go unnoticed. The moral charm of the elder is so great that every person who encounters him feels the elder’s influence and guidance. We can observe a similar pathos of tenderness and openness to “others” in Leskov’s Golovan. A natural aspiration for good is expressed in the face of the “righteous” Golovan: “A calm and happy smile did not leave Golovan’s face for a minute: it shone in every feature, but mainly played on the lips and in the eyes of those who were smart and kind, but seemed a little mocking” 11 . Golovan himself believes in the inherent ability of every person to manifest goodness and justice at a decisive moment in life. Forced to act as an adviser, he, like the elders, does not give ready-made solutions, but tries to activate the moral forces of his interlocutor, inviting him to put himself in a situation that requires the last and therefore righteous decision: “...pray and do as if you are now you have to die. So tell me: what would you do in such a time?” He will think and answer. Golovan will either agree, or even say: “And I, brother, dying, this is what I did better. And as usual, he tells everything cheerfully, with a constant smile.” 12 . Golovan does not frighten people with the fear of God’s judgment; on the contrary, he seems to infect others with the “ease” with which he himself does good. The righteous, like the elders, are in the grip of a non-imperative, quiet desire to bring into life the “kingdom of truth and selflessness.” In this facet of their appearance, they inherit the style of spiritual and cultural life that emerged in the 14th century, which arose as a result of the practical creation in Rus' of hesychasm, which came from Byzantium and determined much in the Russian culture of subsequent eras. According to V.O. Klyuchevsky, Upper Volga Great Russia was created by “the friendly efforts of a monk and a peasant” and, in particular, by “quiet deeds”, “meek speeches” and the discreet but impressive example of people from the circle of Sergius of Radonezh, who, in order to revive Russia and “unite and strengthen state order,” used “elusive, silent moral means, about which you don’t even know what to tell.” 13 This interpretation of the personality of the “righteous man” reflected Leskov’s organic closeness to the traditions of ancient Russian literature. It is known that the ideal characters of the Pechersk Patericon, with a few exceptions, are not martyrs, but guardians, and not so much for faith as for truth. Leskov associates the ability to live according to high moral laws with the fact that his “black earth” and “small grass” heroes are the embodiment of the best moral forces of the people (Odnodum, Golovan, etc.). The secret of the invincible moral strength of Leskov’s heroes is in the closest ties with the world of people’s life, which allow each of them to overcome the instinct of self-preservation at the decisive moment and show daring fearlessness. There is a significant similarity between the appearance of the Leskovsky righteous people and the Trans-Volga elders - non-acquisitive people of the 15th century, among whom the most prominent figure was Nil Sorsky, a champion of inconspicuous and quiet “smart doing”, who did not claim to be “teacher” and authority among his contemporaries and in the memory of his descendants. Leskov’s well-known intention (not realized later) to write about Nil Sorsky pursued, according to the writer, the following goal: “This will be an exemplary biography of a Russian saint, who has no analogue anywhere in terms of the soundness and reality of his Christian views” 14. At the same time, Leskov’s righteousness differs significantly from the Russian asceticism of the 14th-15th centuries, which was accompanied by solitude from people, contemplative immersion in prayer and the struggle with one’s own sinfulness. The idea of solitary, focused moral self-improvement, so important in hagiography, is alien to Leskov. Man's complete preoccupation with personal perfection in the name of rising above people is condemned by the writer in the image of Hermias ("Buffoon Pamphalon"). This man, who left people for the salvation of his soul and became famous for his holiness, having met the selfless Pamphalon, realized that he lived as a sinner: he forgot about the existence of worthy people, giving in to pride and admiring himself. Pamphalon says: “I cannot think about my soul when there is someone who needs to be helped.” The ethical norm proclaimed by Leskov is opposed to the idea of purely individual salvation of the soul through asceticism and escape from the world. Leskov's righteous people are not concerned about the attention of others, they do not strive for their nobility to be noticed by anyone. “You shouldn’t think about what others will do when you do good to them,” Chervev believes 15. And here is the final phrase in the story “The Man on the Clock”: “I think about those mortals who love goodness simply for its own sake and do not expect any rewards for it, wherever it may be. These straightforward and reliable people, too, it seems to me, should be quite satisfied with the holy impulse of love...” 16
The self-awareness of Leskov's heroes is free from reflection. Lack of concentration on oneself, complete absorption in the worries and sorrows of other people - this is what constitutes a historically enduring value for Leskov. The unselfishness and selflessness of a righteous person, according to Leskov, are incompatible with a sense of one’s own chosenness and spiritual privilege. Leskov contrasts with a hero familiar to Russian literature of the 19th century, involved in the mentality of the era, striving to establish himself and his position, a person of a different orientation: connected to a greater extent with the cultural and historical past and standing aloof from the trends of modernity. The writer does not try to form human values as a result of revising customary views, but, on the contrary, finds something alive in the depths of the traditional way of life. In his work, he tried to reveal the fundamental principles of Russian spiritual and practical culture in general and the senile tradition in particular. In his modernity, contradictory and dynamic, Leskov saw, first of all, what makes it similar to distant antiquity. In the writer’s own words, he was interested in “the quiet, secret streams that flowed under the upper ripples of Russian waters, in some places overcome by directional winds” 17. However, the writer is far from a romantic idealization of Russian antiquity. On the contrary, with his characteristic “quiet causticity,” he portrays the arrogance of provincial mentors and the bureaucracy of provincial society, characteristic of a bygone era of Russian life. But Leskov values human qualities and connections that go through centuries. The phrases characteristic of many stories about the righteous: “he is with us...”, “with us in Rus'...”, “In Rus', all Orthodox people know...” indicate the relative integrity of the world of Russian life that is receding into the past. Leskov formulates his concept of righteousness and discovers a positive type of Russian person. The ascetic existence of Ryzhov, the dramatic “life” of Tuberozov, the tireless self-sacrifice of Golovan - all these options for the ascetic life path are at the center of Leskov’s understanding of the past. “To live a righteously long life day after day without lying, without deceiving, without being deceitful, without upsetting your neighbor and without condemning a biased enemy, is much more difficult than throwing yourself into the abyss, like Curtius, or plunging a bunch of bayonets into your chest, like a famous hero Swiss freedom" 18. Leskov's righteous man is quite typical: all righteous heroes are united by the principle of active love, rejection of spiritual privilege and popular demand. These same principles underlie the phenomenon of Russian eldership. Such conceptual and semantic parallels allow us to assert that Leskov’s concept of righteousness is Leskov’s independent insight (in the situation of the spiritual crisis of the late 19th century and on the eve of the religious renaissance at the turn of the century) is a natural understanding of the senile tradition, proving the paradigmatic continuity of the phenomenon of senility. But in this case, one cannot speak of a “popularization” projection of a church institution (phenomenon) onto the canvas of fiction, since there is a meaningful desire of the writer to create and consolidate in culture the Russian righteous type of person, based on spiritual ascetic principles developed by the centuries-old way of life of the people.
Righteous themes in the works of Solzhenitsyn A.I.
Solzhenitsyn's work is fundamentally religious. A. Solzhenitsyn began his literary career in the era of Khrushchev’s “thaw”. This was, as we can now assume, the last stage in the development of Russian culture, when the writer’s voice, to use Lermontov’s line, “sounded like a bell on the veche tower / During the days of national celebrations and troubles.” Then, at the beginning of the 60s, he managed to realize the opportunities given to the writer by a short thaw: he declared himself, became known and noticeable, and never gave up on himself. Moreover, he managed to strengthen and make more significant the role of the writer-preacher already in the Brezhnev era, when even that insignificant freedom of speech that was given by the Khrushchev era was curtailed and curtailed every year. His deep faith helped him feel the line between good and evil and naturally direct his life and creativity along the path of good. Solzhenitsyn was a writer who continued the traditions of realistic literature of the mid-19th century, but also a very modern one, organically close to the worldview of the 19*60s. The main ethical and aesthetic criterion for him was and remains the criterion of truth in life. “A true artist,” he will say about Tvardovsky, reflecting on the story “Matryonin’s Dvor,” “he could not reproach me that this is not true, 19 he carried on the conversation, shuddering from the instinct of truth, ahead of both the fingers and eyes of the poet.” Solzhenitsyn involuntarily expresses the idea that the ethical side cannot be the only one, it is only a certain form of embodiment of life’s truth: “Confident that the main thing in creativity is truth and life experience, I underestimated that forms are subject to aging, the tastes of the twentieth century change dramatically and cannot be ignored by the author.
The religious perception of the world predetermines the nature of the interpretation of life’s truth, as it appears in the writer’s works. Interest in reality, attention to everyday details, the most seemingly insignificant, leads to a documentary narration, to the desire to reproduce a life event authentically as it actually happened, avoiding, if possible, fiction, whether we are talking about the death of Matryona 20 or about the death of Stolypin 21. In both cases, the reality of life itself contains details that are subject to religious-symbolic interpretation: the right hand of Matryona, who was hit by a train, remained untouched on her disfigured body (“The Lord left her right hand, she will pray to God there”) , Stolypin’s right hand was shot through by a terrorist’s bullet, with which he could not cross Nicholas II and did it with his left hand, unwittingly committing an anti-gesture. This is how he appears in his journalism, in his thoughts full of pain, but also hope, about the fate of Russia.
Many are struck by the amazing feature of Solzhenitsyn’s journalism - its relevance, not decreasing, but increasing over the years. This happens, in my opinion, because over time Solzhenitsyn’s thoughts, always based on unshakable Christian truths, become more and more convincing.
The deep religiosity of his works largely determines the attitude of readers towards them. There are two types of perception of Solzhenitsyn’s work. This is either an almost unconditional acceptance, or, conversely, a sharp denial of the foundations and ideas of his works. In the latter case, critics, as a rule, do not provide any substantiated evidence, no serious analysis. They feel irritated by Solzhenitsyn's works. They feel that Solzhenitsyn’s ideas must be discussed in a language of a higher spiritual level than the one they speak. And hence the irritation. An example of such criticism is V. Voinovich’s book “Portrait against the Background of Myth.” I do not agree with the opinion that the abuse and insults that densely fill almost two hundred pages are dictated only by feelings of envy and resentment. No, Voinovich is trying to justify his ideological positions. But the true ones for him are some half-Soviet, half-liberal values, which, in comparison with the spiritual height of Solzhenitsyn’s ideas, look meaningless and polemics with which are impossible. But even a positive assessment of Solzhenitsyn’s journalism sometimes evokes a bitter feeling. They say: “All this is good, but it is not feasible” or: “These are beautiful dreams, but we should not start with them.” Such statements can often be heard from people who love Solzhenitsyn’s work, but do not share his religious beliefs.
Researcher P. Spivakovsky sees the ontological, existential, conditioned by God's Providence, meaning of a real life detail, read by Solzhenitsyn. “This happens because,” the researcher believes, “that Solzhenitsyn’s artistic system, as a rule, presupposes a close connection between what is depicted and the true reality of life, in which he strives to see what others do not notice - the action of Providence in human existence.” 22 This, first of all, determines the writer’s attention to genuine life authenticity and self-restraint in the sphere of artistic fiction: reality itself is perceived as a perfect artistic creation, and the artist’s task is to identify the symbolic meanings hidden in them, predetermined by God’s plan for the world. It was precisely the comprehension of such truth, as the highest meaning that justifies the existence of art, that Solzhenitsyn always asserted. What spiritual principles underlie Solzhenitsyn’s journalism, especially in the journalism of the 90s, in which he gives a deep analysis of the past and present of Russia and gives clear and specific recommendations for the revival of Russia?
The first, and perhaps the main, principle is the priority of the spiritual over the material. “In the beginning was the Word... and the Word was God” (John 1:1). “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33). Solzhenitsyn repeatedly and persistently turns to this fundamental gospel principle of existence. “The source of the strength or powerlessness of society is the spiritual standard of living, and only then the level of industry,” he writes in the article “How can we develop Russia” (hereinafter abbreviated as “Establishment”) and continues in the work “Russia in Collapse” (hereinafter referred to as “ Collapse"): “Our future, and our children, and our people, depends first and foremost on our consciousness, on our spirit, and not on the economy.” Solzhenitsyn calls for all efforts to be directed to solving spiritual problems, and not to participating in “political games” (elections, round tables, public chambers, etc.) organized by the authorities; “games” in which almost all of our educated society willingly participates, believing that it is important for the development of Russia.
So, what are these spiritual tasks? Solzhenitsyn examines in detail three, in his opinion, the main ones: the formation of personality, the revival of the national spiritual environment, and the creation of a self-organizing (civil) society.
Personality is one of the central concepts not only of journalism, but also of his entire work. Only through a person capable of realizing himself as a particle of God is the connection between the world and God realized. “I am the Vine, and you are the branches; He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit...” (John 15:5). Solzhenitsyn agrees with the authors of the famous collection “Vekhi”, who wrote back in 1906 that “the inner life of the individual is the only creative force of human existence, and it, and not the self-sufficient principles of political order, is the only solid basis for any social construction.” A person is able to distinguish between good and evil and defend good. Only personality creates and creates. Characteristic personality traits are goodwill, interest in other individuals and the resulting mutual assistance and mutual enrichment of individuals. “Serve one another, each with the gift which you have received as good stewards of the manifold grace of God” (1 Pet. 4:10).
Before the coup of 1917, in all social groups and classes, the majority of Russians were individuals. Almost every peasant who stood firmly on the ground was an individual. Immediately after October 1917, the mass extermination of individuals and their forced transformation into individuals began. During the 70 years of communist rule, the greatest tragedy in Russian history occurred - the almost complete extermination of the gene pool of the Russian nation. By the beginning of the 90s of the last century, the Russian people mainly consisted of individuals incapable of spiritual creativity, of distinguishing between good and evil. Lies, violence, irresponsibility, cruelty have become the norms of life. That is why the exhausted, confused people were unable to organize life in the country on solid moral principles at that rare historical moment that presented itself to them in the early 90s. As a result, the totalitarian communist regime was replaced by a quasi-democratic regime, no less cruel and soulless. There is a long and difficult road ahead for the recovery of the nation, the reverse transformation of the majority of Russians from individuals into individuals.
Solzhenitsyn identifies three personality traits as the most necessary today: morality, responsibility, and perseverance. Especially morality. In his work “The Russian Question by the End of the 20th Century” he writes: “We must build a moral Russia - or none at all, then it doesn’t matter.” All major world religions emphasize three moral virtues - prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Obviously, in spiritual consonance with this, Solzhenitsyn calls, first of all, for repentance (prayer), self-restraint (fasting), and mercy (almsgiving).
“Repentance (repentance) is the first inch under the foot, from which only one can move forward... only with repentance can spiritual growth begin,” he writes in 1973 in the article “Repentance and Self-Restraint.” Sins that must be gotten rid of and repented of are a running theme in Solzhenitsyn’s work. These are national sins - serfdom, the destruction of historical Russia by the communists; These are also personal sins - lies, violence, irresponsibility, cruelty, etc. Solzhenitsyn’s theme of repentance for personal sins is constant, starting from his early works - the poem “Dorozhenka”, plays, etc. There are especially many repentant passages in his autobiographical books “A Calf Butted an Oak Tree” and “A Grain Satisfied...”.
“After repentance,” writes Solzhenitsyn, “self-restraint is put forward as the most natural principle. Repentance creates an atmosphere for self-restraint...” Self-restraint frees a person from the mass of material and mental attachments that absorb the bulk of time and energy in life. It makes him free and takes him to a higher spiritual level of life.
The core of Solzhenitsyn's worldview is his faith in God. Chronologically, this can be seen for the first time when in Samizdat the “Easter Procession” (1967) and Solzhenitsyn’s prayer went from hand to hand, when in the preface to the Russian edition of “August the 14th” (1971) Solzhenitsyn wrote that in his homeland it would be necessary write the word “God” with a small letter (“and I can no longer bow to this humiliation”), and finally, after the “Letter to Patriarch Pimen” (1971) and in the letter to the “Third Council of the Russian Church Abroad” (1974). Creating himself, like every person, “an apprentice of God,” Solzhenitsyn believes that “the entire turn of the world over the past three centuries is part of a single formidable process of humanity losing God.” However, being a Christian, contrary to what is often written about him, he is extremely chaste in formulating the shades of his vision of God. He tries not to take the name of the Lord in vain, and references to the Gospel are by no means replete with the pages of his texts, artistic or journalistic. Solzhenitsyn's constant theme is mercy. Back in 1973, in “Letter to the Leaders...” he writes: “Let there be an authoritarian system, but one based not on “class hatred”, but on love of humanity... and the very first sign that distinguishes this path is generosity, mercy towards prisoners." He devotes his entire historiosophical work “The Russian Question by the End of the 20th Century” to the topic of violation of Christian norms of mercy by the Russian authorities in relation to their people throughout almost the entire centuries-old history of the country. In “Collapse,” he speaks with heartache about the shameful attitude of Russians towards millions of their fellow tribesmen, abandoned to the mercy of fate in the CIS countries. “And this,” he writes, “is the most terrible sign of the fall of our people.” Orthodox Solzhenitsyn does not withdraw into the shell of narrow confessionalism. On October 27, 1971, he wrote an appeal to the Vatican Conference “Common Christian Roots of European Nations,” filled with concern for the fate of Christian civilization as a whole and the need for united efforts to save it.
In “October the 16th,” one of the most important characters in the novel says: “In exclusivity and intolerance lie all the movements of world history. And how could Christianity surpass them - only by renouncing exclusivity, only by growing to a multi-accepting meaning. Let us assume that not all of the world’s truth has been captured by us alone. We will not curse anyone to the extent of his imperfection.” But specializing in “modern Russian history,” the world writer does not go that far into history. In his statements, he examines the fate of Christian civilization starting from the late Middle Ages. In his ideas about the world and the ways of its development, Solzhenitsyn is close to the view of the ancient Russian author. He sees the meaning of the development of progress not only in the material or scientific and technical sphere, but also in the field of spiritual self-improvement of man and humanity in their approach to divine truth. The path to approaching this truth was disrupted several centuries ago during the Renaissance, when a self-confident person conceptualized himself as the highest goal of all that exists. Comprehension of spiritual values has been replaced by the pursuit of material progress, which can only bring life’s comforts and benefits, but also make it possible, as a result of its development, to destroy all life on earth. (After all, it is precisely this thought that pierces Innokenty Volodin, who takes the insane step that sets up the plot of the novel “ In the first circle": with his call to the American embassy, he is trying to benefit and save the whole world from the nuclear abyss by preventing the transfer of the secret of the atomic bomb to a Soviet intelligence officer). In the crisis of religious faith, in the oblivion of Christian morality, in deafness to church sermons, whether delivered by a metropolitan or a village priest, Solzhenitsyn finds the main cause of the evil that has befallen Russia and Europe. The pursuit of other values - be it world domination, power over others, self-development, career, satiety, wealth, super-profits - has blinded modern man and the attentive reader will find in Solzhenitsyn’s works capacious images and symbols indicating a departure from the true meaning of life, from true history. Colonel Yakonov of the MGB comes to the foundation of the destroyed church at the most difficult moment; Innokenty and Clara find themselves in the abandoned Church of the Nativity during their country summer trip (“In the First Circle”). Solzhenitsyn associates the revival of Russia with increased responsibility and perseverance of individuals. He writes in “Collapse”: “Even methodicality, perseverance, internal discipline - the Russian character is most painfully lacking; this may be our main vice. “And he continues: “due to the high demands of the coming electronic information age, in order to mean something among other nations, we must be able to rebuild our character to the expected high intensity of the 21st century.” Solzhenitsyn believes in the possibility of overcoming these vices, which are not organically inherent in the Russian people, but arose from the violent breakdown of the Russian character and loss of religiosity. "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7–8), “Whoever has, to him will be given and he will have abundance” (Matthew 13:12). For centuries, the Russian peasant believed and followed these precepts of Christ, organizing his life and strengthening the power of his country. However, during the years of the communist regime, along with faith, the sense of personal responsibility was brutally eradicated. All that was required from the people was unconditional obedience to the party, which supposedly took responsibility for everything, from caring for childhood and family to worldview and creativity. Narrow and rigid boundaries for thoughts and actions undermined initiative and a sense of perseverance. And today, as a justification for the social passivity ingrained in the people, one hears: “We ourselves can’t do anything” or: “nothing in the country depends on me personally”...
What to do if the manifestation of the will of the people is so weak, if the individuals are so few in number? Solzhenitsyn sees and believes in the powerful force of formation and development of personality. This force is the national spiritual environment. But for many this is not obvious.
Today, especially among liberals, there is a fairly widespread opinion that no special conditions other than sufficient material resources are required for the formation of an individual. In one of the magazines we read the following: “The whole trouble (or joy) is that the Soviet regime managed to create a new person, and this person turned out to be a normal Western European in his life attitudes, only still hungry and disheveled. But it's only a matter of time. It is important to understand the main thing: Russia no longer exists as an independent civilization. Russian culture has not existed for many years, and we must say this to ourselves boldly... and ethnic characteristics have nothing to do with it - both the French and the British have them, calmly combining them with being part of European civilization. These ethnic features will remain in Russia.” There is only one thing we can agree with in this statement. Indeed, a disaster has occurred. For 70 years, the Soviet regime managed to create a stable type of Soviet person, obedient and irresponsible, gravitating toward totalitarianism, not trying to get out of the shackles of lies, violence, and cruelty. Everything else in the above statement is deeply alien to Solzhenitsyn. He is convinced and has written more than once that Russia is a unique civilization, that the individual and society in Russia can only develop in a national spiritual environment. Only what is sown on good soil bears fruit (Matthew 13:23) and only that which is sanctified by God, for “every plant that My Heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted” (Matthew 15:13).
The restoration of this “good land” and everything “previously planted by God,” that is, the entire centuries-old culture of Russia - Orthodoxy, language, art, history, school, national character, national traditions, is today the second main task of the revival of Russia. With bitterness, Solzhenitsyn writes in “Collapse” about the losses that our national culture, our national character suffered during the years of Soviet power, and calls for the restoration of continuity with historical (pre-communist) Russia in all areas of cultural, civil, state development, calls for liberation from communist and post-communist distortions of the norms of our life, to the perception and critical understanding of the heritage of thousands of years of Russian history.
Solzhenitsyn is especially concerned about the state of our school. He writes in “Collapse”: “Many obstacles have now arisen before the preservation of the Russians as a single people. And the first among them: the fate of our youth. Will our school be the center of Russian culture? Will it ensure its continuity, the vivacity of historical memory and the self-respect of the people?.. In reality, the process going on today in Russian education is directed precisely back to our salvation.” This harsh assessment was given by Solzhenitsyn in 1998. It is with bitterness that we have to note that nothing fundamentally has changed in our school over the past seven years.
And, of course, the revival of Russia is impossible without the revival of Orthodoxy - first of all, as a worldview, as the historical, cultural, existential basis of the nation. Solzhenitsyn writes: “Orthodoxy, preserved in our hearts, customs and actions, will strengthen that spiritual meaning that unites Russians above tribal considerations.” He notes that today our Church cannot yet adequately contribute to the revival of Russia by taking upon itself the mission of spiritual leadership of the country. It cannot because the period is too short after the heavy losses of the period of the Empire and the brutal extermination and ruin under the communists. The Church still has to resolve a number of complex internal and external problems, which will take many years, and Solzhenitsyn calls on all believers, and especially the believing intelligentsia, to help the people and the Church in the revival of Orthodox spirituality.
Solzhenitsyn believes in the divine origin of culture and art, in their enormous creative power. In his Nobel lecture, he says: “Through art, sometimes they send to us - vaguely, briefly - such revelations as cannot be developed by rational thinking.” The writer seems to echo Pushkin, who said:
Arise, prophet, and see and listen,
Be fulfilled by My will.
And, going around the seas and lands, burn the hearts of people with the verb.
Yes, the power of art and culture is great. But today the power of counterculture has also increased. I mean primarily television, advertising, computer games, etc. Anticulture is not a negative culture, not just a “bad” culture. This is a completely different entity. If culture affects feelings, reason and resides in the manifested material world, then anticulture affects instincts; The world of anticulture is darkness, oblivion, death. And we, unfortunately, have not yet fully comprehended this circumstance, and have not decided on the means of combating the destructive effect of anticulture. In relation to the previously mentioned problem of the secondary school, Solzhenitsyn writes: “... if we do not lead our children out of the dangers of an incoherent, dark consciousness, permeated with the burning interests of pagan cruelty and gainful passion at any cost, this will be the end of the Russian people and Russian history.” The warning is very serious. But how can it be different if, before our very eyes, the people are being rapidly corrupted, turning them into third-rate ethnic material?
The processes of the formation of personality and the revival of the national environment are interconnected and interdependent and lead to the transformation of the people from a crowd of individuals into a self-organizing society of individuals (civil society), in which “not only does everyone care about himself, but everyone also cares about others” (Phil. 2:4) . Solzhenitsyn examines in detail the structure and methods of building civil society in “Arrangement” and “Collapse”. The creation of a civil society should be carried out not from above, by the central government, but from below, by the people themselves. “Our salvation lies in our self-action, revived from the bottom up,” he writes in “Collapse.” “From below” because approximately 80% of all vital needs of the country’s population, as world experience shows, are satisfied locally, without connection with the central government. For example, during the construction and operation of schools, hospitals, shops, housing, local transport, recreation areas, small and medium-sized industries, etc. no government intervention required. All these tasks are solved by local authorities with the involvement of funds from local residents and local taxes.
Solzhenitsyn identifies three main parts of civil society:
1. Local self-government, independent of the central government and being a prototype of the political governance of the country. (The current local government is not such, but is an appendage of the central government.)
2. Local small and tiny economy, free from state tutelage, with a large number of horizontal (rather than vertical) connections covering the needs of production, distribution and marketing.
3. A wide network of non-profit public organizations providing employment, legal protection, development and presentation of various civil initiatives and other types of social needs of the population.
This is where the above-mentioned personality traits should appear - responsibility and perseverance - which we lack today. As well as such properties as friendliness, mutual trust, mutual assistance, honesty, decency. Without this, civil society cannot be built. And no economic success of the state will help here. Many people share this point of view. Solzhenitsyn cites in “Collapse” statements he heard during a trip around the country: “We ourselves are to blame... everyone should have an impulse for action” or: “... if we don’t save culture, we won’t save the nation.”
Understands and feels the problem of creating a civil society and power. And although in words she supports the ideas of local self-government, expansion of public initiatives, and encouragement of small business, in reality the opposite is true. As the Duma makes adjustments to the law on local self-government, its essence becomes increasingly distorted; the number of public organizations has been decreasing, especially in recent years; small businesses are still crushed by bureaucratic arbitrariness.
The importance of power, however, should not be exaggerated. The authorities can slow down or speed up the creation of civil society, but whether it exists or not depends on the people themselves. Moreover, the central power itself, its tasks and structure are derived from the state of the people, from its deep properties, which were mentioned above. Even in his early work, 1973, “On the Return of Breath and Consciousness,” Solzhenitsyn wrote: “In relation to the true earthly goal of people, the state structure is a secondary condition. Christ pointed out to us this secondary importance: “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” not because every Caesar is worthy of it, but because Caesar is not concerned with the most important thing in our lives.” Until the creation of a self-organizing (civil) society in the country, the state structure is unstable and largely artificial. It reflects the interests of the main power groups. Groups in power change, and the state structure also changes. And only after the creation of civil society, political, economic and social systems are firmly and naturally formed in the country, corresponding to the interests of the entire people in a certain period of their national development. Only a government created, managed and controlled by civil society is worthy and capable of building Russia together with the people. “And David realized that the Lord had established him as king... for the sake of the people” (2 Sam. 5:12).
In the cruel, godless twentieth century of Russia, when it seemed that Russian civilization had perished, Solzhenitsyn, by God's providence, continued the tradition of Russian geniuses - to identify, preserve and affirm the spirit of the Russian nation. A tradition that helped unite and strengthen Russia for more than a millennium, until the beginning of the twentieth century, the creators of which were Sergius of Radonezh, Seraphim of Sarov, Pushkin, Gogol, Leskov, Dostoevsky, John of Kronstadt and other great Russian people.
In his work - literary, historical, journalistic - Solzhenitsyn showed at the highest artistic level how the principles and norms of Christian life can and should be perceived in our difficult life today. He showed it not only in relation to an individual person, but also to the whole people. He showed not only through his creativity, but also through the example of his entire life.
The problem of the revival of Russia for Solzhenitsyn is primarily a spiritual problem. And the three main components of this problem - the formation of personality, the revival of the national spiritual environment, the creation of a self-organizing society - these are mainly spiritual tasks. Their solution lies not in external paths related to politics, economics, etc., but in internal, personal ones.
Everyone must consider these problems first in relation to himself. “My spirit, my family and my work,” writes Solzhenitsyn in “Collapse.” This is the beginning. And if everything is not in order here, this is where we should stop. Only by learning to heal yourself do you gain the right to heal others. Well, if you have confidence and strength, move on to the ever-expanding environment. Always adhere to the rule: with all your talents given by God (and everyone has them!), serve people, nature, the country, the world - otherwise all these talents will disappear (see: Matt. 25).
The path to Russia's revival is long. “If we have been going down for almost a whole century, then how long will it take us to rise? Even just to realize all the losses and all the illnesses, we need years and years,” writes Solzhenitsyn in “Collapse.” But there is no other way.
While solving these problems aimed at the future, we simultaneously take care of the most urgent needs of today - the physical and spiritual health of the nation, a decent standard of living, a healthy environment, law-abiding authorities, etc. etc. - in a word, about “SAVING THE PEOPLE” - a matter that Solzhenitsyn considers the most important.
Conclusion
There are many works by Leskov and Solzhenitsyn on the topic of righteousness; they can be analyzed for a very long time, because this topic occupies a whole period of life in the lives of the authors. They created their own unique righteous man. People from different walks of life were righteous in their works. You can find so many works on this topic. Without these works, the literary gallery of the righteous would not be complete. Leskov and Solzhenitsyn made a huge contribution to the understanding of this topic.
Bibliography
1. Malko A.V. Christian motives in A.I. Solzhenitsyn’s novel “In the First Circle” // Culture and text. St. Petersburg; Barnaul, 1997, Issue 1: Literary studies.
2. Starygina N.N. More faith, more light in the high calling of man // N.S. Leskov. Legendary-
new characters. M., 1989.
3. Stolyarova V.I. In search of the ideal (creativity of N.S. Leskov). L., 1978.
4. Khalizev V., Mayorova V. Leskova’s Righteous Ones // In the World N.S. Leskova. M., 1983.
5. Lyubimov B.N. Predicting history // Action and action. - M., 1997. - T.1
6. Garkavenko O.V. Christian motives in the novel by A.I. Solzhenitsyn “Cancer Ward” // Russian novel of the 20th century: Spiritual world and poetics of the genre: Collection of scientific works - Saratov, 2001
7. Rokotyan Yu. Christian roots of Solzhenitsyn’s journalism // Moscow. - M 2005
8. Kosykh G.A. Righteousness and the righteous in the works of N.S. Leskova 1870s. - Volgograd 1999
9. Leskov N.S. Collected works in 11 volumes. Volume 6. M., 1956-1958.
1 Leskov N.S. Collected works in 11 volumes. Volume 3. Page 180
2 Leskov N.S. Collected works in 11 volumes. Volume 2. Page 5
3 Leskov N.S. Collected works in 11 volumes. Volume 4. Page 384
4 Leskov N.S. Collected works in 11 volumes. Volume 2. Page 7
5 Leskov N.S. Collected works in 11 volumes. Volume 2. Page 6
6 Leskov N.S. Collected works in 11 volumes. Volume 3. Page 55
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