Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin about reading and criticism. Philosopher Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin about reading - you can quote and quote! Book of art criticism “On darkness and enlightenment”
The last century of the second millennium is an ambiguous synthesis of various historical events and moods. Wars, industrialization, crisis of religious consciousness, technical revolutions shook Russia and aggravated the political situation in the country. The process of substituting concepts and abandoning the truth begins to take on terrifying proportions. People are finally losing the ability to think critically and resist evil.
During this difficult time for Russia, the great Russian philosopher, lawyer and literary critic Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin lived and worked. For many decades his works were hidden from the Russian public. The work of Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin rose and burst into light in the life of Russia only at the end of the twentieth century, and naturally fell into the soul of a person of Russian culture. His ideas are now experiencing a renaissance. The top officials of the state quote the philosopher and lay flowers at his grave. A philosopher's statements about philosophy are always interesting. For Ilyin, philosophy was equal to creativity; it was not an external skill or activity, but “the creative life of the soul.” And his criticism has a large philosophical, even ideological, component.
Vasily Belov said at the 9th Congress of Russian Writers that if he had previously been familiar with the works of Ivan Ilyin, he would have lived and written differently. Indeed, every citizen who sincerely loves his Motherland cannot help but respond to Ilyin’s precise and deep, strict and elegant, fiery word.
Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin was born in Moscow on March 28 (old style) 1883. His pedigree came from noble families and served his Fatherland faithfully.
His paternal grandfather was quite close to the royal family; the godfathers of his son, the future father of the philosopher, were Alexander II. Ivan Alexandrovich's parents gave their son a good upbringing and education. For the philosopher, the family has always been a great value in life; later in his works he will write: “The family is the first, natural and at the same time sacred union, into which a person enters out of necessity. He is called to build this union on love, on faith, and in freedom - to learn from it with the first conscientious movement of the heart and - to rise from it to further forms of human spiritual unity - the homeland and the state."
In 1901, Ivan Ilyin graduated from the 1st Moscow Classical Gymnasium with a gold medal. While studying at the First Moscow Gymnasium, Ivan Alexandrovich met P.N. Miliukov, N.S. Tikhopravov, Vladimir Solovyov. According to the recollections of a classmate, Ilyin was “light blond, almost red, lean and long-legged; he was an excellent student... but, apart from a loud voice and wide, relaxed gestures, at that time he seemed to be nothing remarkable. Even his comrades did not imagine that he Philosophy may have become a specialty."
In 1901 - 1906 he was a student at the Faculty of Law of the Moscow Imperial University. Dreaming of enrolling in the Faculty of Philology, he applied for admission to the Faculty of Law. He studied law under the guidance of the legal philosopher P.I. Novgorodtsev, who managed to awaken young Ilyin’s interest in philosophy.
In August 1906, he married Natalia Nikolaevna Vokach (1882 - 1962). She studied philosophy, art history, and history. Natalya Nikolaevna, Ilyin’s eternal companion, had a wise calmness, and always supported and helped her husband. The young couple lived on the pennies they earned by transferring money. Neither he nor she wanted to sacrifice time, which they devoted entirely to philosophy.
Sharp turns of fate, extensive life experience of a difficult existence directly affected the creativity and worldview of Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin. Over time, his abilities and talent were supplemented by a feeling of love for the Motherland, love for the Russian people, love for life.
Ilyin’s range of creative interests focuses on the work of Hegel. Since 1914-1917. six large articles on Hegel’s philosophy were published one after another, which were later included in the two-volume study “Hegel’s Philosophy as a Teaching about the Concreteness of God and Man” (1918)
From the memoirs of G.A. Leman-Abrikosov about Ivan Ilyin: “His work is a work of extraordinary depth, complexity and is accessible to few people in its abstractness. But he immediately placed Ilyin highly in the opinion of Russian society, which gave him the nickname “Hegelian,” which, however, should not be understood as a supporter of the teachings of Hegel, namely only as the author of a work on Hegel."
At this time, many showed interest in the personality of Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin. Who has not ranked Ilyin among various organizations and parties: starting with the Cadets, the Black Hundreds and ending with Freemasonry. Ilyin himself, in one of the articles for the supposed tenth issue of the Russian Bell magazine, spoke as follows: “I take this opportunity to declare once and for all: I have never been a Freemason, either in Russia or abroad; I have never been a member of any "To those who claim the opposite about me (it makes no difference whether they are Russians or foreigners), I publicly propose to classify themselves (your choice) as irresponsible talkers or dishonest people."
While on scientific trips to Germany, Italy and France, Ivan Aleksandrovich followed the events in Russia with emotional trepidation. If he perceived the February Revolution as a “temporary disorder,” then October 1917 as a catastrophe.
G.A. Leman-Abrikosov spoke about this time like this: “The October Revolution found Russian society in a strong religious upsurge. And the first years of the revolution were marked by filled churches, participation in religious processions by professors and academicians, reports on religious topics, thoughtful concepts of the events taking place in the religious aspect, etc. .p. This is also typical for Ilyin. But it should be noted that in this regard he stood completely alone, and in the sense that he did not belong to a single “circle”, movement, just as, as far as I know, he did not belong to those who can be called "churchmen".
In the late autumn of 1922, the steamship "Ober-Burgomaster Hakon" took away from Russia the "flower of the nation", outstanding people: scientists, philosophers and writers who turned out to be of no use to the new Russia. Among them, Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin and his wife Natalya Nikolaevna left their homeland forever.
Having received an excellent legal education at Moscow University, having interned at the best universities of Heidelberg, Freiburg, Berlin and Paris, Ivan Aleksandrovich, being at that time the chairman of the Moscow Psychological Society, like many other great minds of that time, was doomed to exile from Russia.
This exile was a substitute for the death penalty to which Ilyin was sentenced after numerous arrests for his harsh criticism of Bolshevism in lectures he gave to student audiences, as well as at public appearances in various scientific societies.
While living in Berlin, Ivan Aleksandrovich continued to work a lot, is one of the founders of the Russian Scientific Institute, was the dean of the Faculty of Law, a corresponding member of the Slavic Institute at Londov University, actively publishes in newspapers, gives lectures and reports.
At this time, he wrote a number of books on issues of philosophy, politics, religion and culture: “The Religious Meaning of Philosophy”, “On Resistance to Evil by Force” (1925), “The Path of Spiritual Renewal” (1935), “Fundamentals of Art. About Perfection in art" (1937), etc.
During these years, he also actively participated in the political life of the Russian emigration and became one of the ideologists of the white movement.
In his numerous works, Ivan Aleksandrovich impressively reveals the beneficial social significance of Christian values and the harmfulness of the anti-Christianity of the Bolsheviks. Working in this direction, Ivan Ilyin indirectly exposed the anti-Christian policies of Nazi Germany. Ilyin’s views led to Gestapo bans on public lectures and the arrest of the philosopher’s printed works. And he, dismissed from the Russian scientific institute and receiving a ban on any public activity, was forced to emigrate from Germany to Switzerland in 1938.
Twice Ilyin lost all means of life and started all over again. He was given strength by his faith and service to his homeland, and the support of like-minded people.
The best spiritual people were drawn to Ilyin and shared his views: writer Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev, music creators Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninov and Nikolai Karlovich Medtner, theater genius Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky, Bishop John Pommer, artists Mikhail Vasilyevich Nesterov and Evgeniy Evgenievich Klimov, military men Pyotr Nikolaevich Wrangel and Alexey Alexandrovich von Lampe.
Largely thanks to Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninov and many of his other friends, he settled with his wife near Zurich. Fearing a reaction from Germany, the Swiss authorities limited the activities of the Russian philosopher, but gradually his position strengthened and he was already able to actively engage in creative activities. In addition to a large number of articles and essays published in various publications, in particular, which later formed the collection “Our Tasks,” Ivan Aleksandrovich also published in German three books of philosophical and artistic prose, united by a common concept, “The Singing Heart. The Book of Quiet Contemplations,” as well as fundamental research on the “Axioms of Religious Experience” and preparations were made for the publication of the book “The Path of Evidence” (1957).
All this suggests that Ilyin’s range of interests was very wide: he was interested in both religious and legal, socio-political, philosophical, as well as ethical, aesthetic, anthropological, literary and poetic problems and areas of knowledge.
At the end of his days, Ivan Aleksandrovich wrote: “I am 65 years old, I am summing up the results and writing book after book. I have already published some of them in German, but in order to implement what was written in Russian. Nowadays I write only in Russian. I write and I put it aside - one book after another and give them to my friends and like-minded people to read... And my only consolation is this: if Russia needs my books, then the Lord will save them from destruction, and if neither God nor Russia needs them, then they are not I also need it myself. For I live only for Russia."
Ilyin went down in the history of Russian culture not only as an Orthodox thinker, lawyer, orator, but also as a major literary critic, whose works are distinguished by philosophical depth, keen observation and independence from outdated cliches and false myths. The originality of his critical manner lies in the fact that he combines aesthetic analysis of a work of art or the work of a writer as a whole with spiritual, philosophical and religious analysis.
True culture, according to Ilyin, is always imbued with the light of spirituality and hope, love and striving for perfection, when the artist’s heart is turned to the God-created world, full of mysterious and inexplicable miracles, when he understands and feels with all his soul that the great and brilliant created by humanity, comes from the bright spaces of God’s world, from the contemplating and singing human heart.
True culture, according to Ilyin, embodies the very spirituality that is often identified with ideology, intellectuality, and education. Ilyin’s merit is that he showed and revealed in his works the ambiguity and complexity of the concept of “spirituality,” which includes not only faith in God, an alien world and the immortality of the soul, but also love for “patriotic graves, native ashes”; love for native nature, the Motherland, as well as responsibility for their fate. Spirituality also presupposes striving for the ideal of perfection, i.e. to the fulfillment of the gospel covenant “Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect”
In the lecture “Alexander Pushkin” as a guiding star of Russian culture (1943), Ilyin calls Pushkin a Renaissance figure, a harmoniously singing classic, the founder of beautiful artistic forms, destroying chaos with his light. For Ilyin, Pushkin represents a wonderful example of a national genius, a brilliant prophet who showed that the Motherland is not an ordinary word, but a deeply spiritual concept. And the one who does not live by the Spirit has no homeland. It will remain a dark mystery and strange uselessness for him.
Ilyin sees the originality of Russian poetry in the fact that it has “fused, dissolved with Russian nature: Russian poetry has learned from its nature - contemplation, sophistication, sincerity, passion, rhythm; it has learned to see in nature not only chaos and space, but a living presence and "the living power of the Divine. That is why there is a close connection, an indissoluble affinity between Russian nature and the bright Orthodox worldview of the Russian soul, yearning for love, mercy and blessing all life on earth, from the last blade of grass in the field to every star in the night sky."
Ilyin sees the peculiarity of Russian poetry in its naturalness: “It is neither a product of the mind, nor a product of rhetoric. It is the generation and outpouring of the Russian heart - in all its contemplation, passionate sincerity, in all its love of freedom and boldness; in all its God-seeking, in all its immediate depth." Ivan Alexandrovich says that the Russian poet does not describe his objects, but reincarnates in them.
However, Russian poets also saw the history of Russia, its paths and destinies, its dangers and temptations. For centuries, Russian poetry has been the exponent of “Russian religiosity, Russian national philosophy and the Russian prophetic gift. It expressed in its inspired language what other peoples have long become the property of journalism.”
At the same time, Russian poetry has always perceived Russia as a living being, as a living brotherhood of peoples, even “without insisting on the seniority of the Russian tribe and the Slavic trunk, but simply realizing this seniority by itself, by poetic inspiration, by this manifestation of spiritual maturity, spiritual soaring and leadership.” Russian poetry has never glorified the enslavement of peoples and the oppression of small nations. And it is no coincidence that Russian poetry counts in its ranks the Baltic German Delvig, the Russified half-German May, the Jews Nadson and M. Voloshin, the son of an Englishman and a Polish woman, Dixon, and many others.
And finally, according to Ilyin, the most significant feature of Russian poetry is that for it there were no small and insignificant things. She had the greatest ability to poeticize everyday life, when “a trifle begins to play and sparkle in its rays; and prose beams with laughter and fun, and everyday life turns out to be poeticized and glorified.” This world, according to Ilyin, becomes clairvoyant and transparent, and from it Holy Rus' itself begins to shine and radiate.
Along with this, Ilyin notes other trends both in Russian poetry and in life, trends that arose not without the influence of French enlighteners - Voltaire’s irony, his “rational prosaism” and “secret, all-corroding nihilism,” on the one hand, and on the other - Byron's gloomy and despondent “world sorrow”. These two influences. Dominant in Europe in the 1st half of the 19th century, in the 2nd they reached Russia, only to be “refreshed and renewed by the influence of Nietzsche and Marx.”
The Russian intelligentsia, writes Ilyin, not without sarcasm, “learned from Voltaire a nihilistic smile, and from Byron a god-fighting pose. She adopted from Byron the manner of affectively idealizing the black corner of her soul.”
It is no coincidence that in Russian poetry of that time, interest in the theme of an evil spirit, condemned and rejected, but not giving up or submitting, arose and grew.
From the crossing of demonic irony and rational semi-science, Ilyin continues, there arises that “mental structure that first had the appearance of secular disappointed snobbery, then positivist nihilism, then nihilistic revolutionism and finally militant atheism, Bolshevism and Satanism.”
A special place in Ilyin’s creative heritage is occupied by the article “When will the great Russian poetry be revived?”, in which the critic connects the revival of Russian poetry with the upcoming spiritual and religious revival of Russia, with the process of “a hidden, secret return to faith and prayer.” All the great Russian poetry of the past was, in his words, “the product of a feeling of delight, animation, inspiration, set and fire - precisely from what we call the heart and why the human soul begins to sing...”
With the obsolescence of the “great contemplation of the heart,” the refinement of the content of poetry and its sentimentalism begins. Pointless and vague fantasizing begins, erotic “Tradyakovism”. Poetry turns into versification, either talented or mediocre, into a shameless laboratory of verbal tricks. Refusal of spiritual contemplation, the confidence that everything is permitted in art, and the readiness to bow to the demonic turn the poet into an “irresponsible talker,” a “coquettish braggart,” expressing in poetic form his personal “sensual eroticism” with “ever increasing shamelessness.”
Therefore, the first task of a real poet is to deepen and enliven his heart, the second is to grow, purify and ennoble his spiritual experience. In this Ilyin sees the true path to great poetry, which always and in everything seeks the sublime, the Divine, and sings from it. It was the feeling of this beginning that gave birth to Pushkin’s poetic fire, Yazykov’s delight, Lermontov’s worldly sorrow, Tyutchev’s sense of the abyss, A.K.’s love for the Fatherland. Tolstoy.
The future Russian poets, Ilyin concludes, will be able to illuminate the history of the collapse of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century and at the same time will be able to show the originality and greatness of the Russian spirit and the depth of the Orthodox faith.
In his book “On Resistance to Evil by Force” (Berlin, 1925), Ilyin, polemicizing with Tolstoy’s teachings, argued: “Wars, as the bearer of the sword and peace-accepting compromise, need a monk, as a confessor, and a source of living strength, religious wisdom, moral pleroma ": here he partakes of grace in the sacrament and receives strength for achievement; here he strengthens his conscience, checks the purpose of his service and purifies his soul. Such is Dmitry Donskoy at St. Sergius before the Battle of Kulikovo"
Ilyin's book "On Resistance to Evil by Force" was highly appreciated by his contemporaries. P.B. Struve wrote in his article “The Diary of a Politician” that Ilyin managed to “raise and, in a certain Christian sense, resolve the problem of resisting evil by force.” BUT. Lossky called Ilyin’s book a “valuable work” directed against Tolstoy’s doctrine of non-resistance, and agreed with its author that there are cases in life when “the use of force in relation to evil is certainly correct and salutary.” In turn, V.V. Zenkovsky argued that Ilyin’s book “breathes with authenticity and depth, there is a special stern honesty in it,” it is “extremely modern, full of what our time lives and worries about.”
Such a high assessment of Ilyin’s book is not accidental, because its author was not one of the first to begin a polemic with Tolstoy on a deep philosophical level. He began his criticism of Tolstoy's theory of non-resistance with a clear, philosophically precise definition of the essence of evil, emphasizing that violence as such is an evil that must be fought against, and every person who has been subjected to violence deserves sympathy and help. Describing the signs of evil, Ilyin notes its external aggressiveness, cunning, unity and diversity.
If evil did not have a tendency towards aggressiveness and violence and did not manifest itself in external actions, resisting it through physical intersection would be unnecessary and impossible. Only a naive person, explains Ilyin, can not notice the cunning of evil and believe that he is characterized by innocence, straightforwardness and chivalrous correctness, then one can negotiate with him, expecting fidelity, loyalty and a sense of duty from him.
The whole history of mankind, according to Ilyin, consisted in the fact that in different eras and in different communities the best people died, raped by the worst, and this always continued until the best decided to give the worst a “planned and organized rebuff.”
“The one who will be right,” writes Ilyin, “will be the one who pushes the unwary traveler away from the abyss; who snatches the bottle of poison from the embittered suicide; who hits the aiming revolutionary’s hand in time; who knocks down the arsonist at the last minute; who drives the blasphemous shameless people out of the temple; who will rush with weapons at a crowd of soldiers raping a girl; who will bind the insane and tame the possessed villain."
Ilyin recalls that in Rus' resistance to evil was always thought of and created as active, organized service to the cause of God on earth. Ilyin connects this idea of love and the sword with the ancient Russian Orthodox images of Michael the Archangel and St. George the Victorious, citing the words of St. Theodosius of Pechersk: “Live peacefully not only with friends, but also with enemies, but only with your enemies, and not with the enemies of God.”
A special place in Ilyin’s literary-critical heritage is occupied by the work “On Darkness and Enlightenment. A Book of Artistic Criticism,” in which Ivan Aleksandrovich analyzes the work of Bunin, Remizov and Shmelev from the point of view of the spiritual values of Orthodoxy.
The German philosopher W. Offermans called Ilyin a highly gifted, spiritually strong personality and prophet, who in 1979 published a book entitled “The Life Work of the Russian Religious Philosopher Ivan Ilyin - the Renewal of the Spiritual Foundations of Humanity.” In it, he notes that Ilyin’s thoughts on artistic creativity are based on his deep knowledge of masterpieces in all areas of world art: “He was a subtle and demanding connoisseur of art, for whom the most important thing was always the spiritual depth, the quality and internal content of the work, and to create artistically means to serve God and bring joy to people."
Indeed, the importance of Ivan Ilyin for the Russian public, despite various assessments, is very great. Many of Ilyin’s articles and books were written as if for us living at the beginning of the 21st century. In them you can find answers to a number of questions that concern our society today. Therefore, it is not accidental, but rather natural, that the work of the most famous thinker of his time, a brilliant publicist, a deeply religious man, I.A. Ilyin, has become the property of our contemporaries precisely since the beginning of the 90s, when a period of change began again in Russia.
“Being Russian means not only speaking Russian. But it means to perceive Russia with your heart, to see with love its precious originality, and its unique uniqueness throughout the entire universe, to understand that this originality is a Gift of God given to the Russian people themselves, and at the same time - an order from God that has to protect Russia from the encroachments of others peoples to demand for this Gift of freedom and independence on earth.”
I.A. Ilyin
In my article “,” written in the wake of the discussion about Russian classics that flared up, I had the opportunity to repeatedly refer to the literary heritage of Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin.
An outstanding thinker, publicist and public figure I.A. Ilyin left works not only on Russian legal consciousness, the foundations and tasks of Russian state building, Russian ideology, but also on culture, art and literature. He managed to deeply, subtly and comprehensively show the spiritual foundations of literary creativity. Works on criticism, artistry and creative contemplation, articles on Russian writers are substantive, evidence-based, accessible and imaginative. In addition, Ivan Aleksandrovich, who did not recognize “thinking without a heart,” appears in his works as inspired, sincere and lively, with “heartfelt contemplation,” “conscientious will,” and “believing thought.” As one of his first biographers, N.P. Poltoratsky, wrote about him, “he was the bearer of not only the right ideas, but a spiritual sword and a life-giving cross.”
I.A. Ilyin’s entire life was spent in the name of Russia and for Russia, although the great patriot of our Motherland had to spend most of his earthly journey in spatial isolation from it.
The tireless fighter for Russianness and the revival of Russia had the opportunity to experience expulsion from the Fatherland by the atheistic authorities, persecution and persecution in exile, unemployment and lack of material resources, and unbearable longing for the Motherland. Ilyin endured the blows of fate steadfastly and ascetically, maintaining an ardent filial love for Russia and firmly, undoubtedly believing in its spiritual resurrection.
In emigration, he also learned the hostility of some of the Russian diaspora. Having disagreed with the philosophers Berdyaev, Merezhkovsky, Bulgakov and their supporters in their views on Orthodoxy, Ilyin was subjected to particularly harsh criticism from them after his article “On Resistance to Evil by Force,” which received wide resonance. In it, he reasonably criticized Tolstoy’s doctrine of non-resistance to evil. He also criticized Merezhkovsky’s “creativity” with its paganism, esotericism, “neo-Christianity” and anti-Godism. As well as the works of Sergius Bulgakov, who preached the “doctrine” of Sophianism and defended Judas the traitor.
Therefore, apparently, after the death of Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin, the emigrant “Russian Thought” (01/14/1955) cowardly and insinuatingly wrote: “Not everything ... is irresistibly convincing in his religious and moral worldview...”
In the article “Mozart and Salieri” (Genius and Villainy), Ivan Aleksandrovich, reflecting on the causes of human envy, intrigue and slander, wrote: “Deprived of spiritual contemplation, he does not know its ennobling power, does not know that this is happening in the soul of the contemplator, and measures everything by its small and low standard. Moreover, he begins to envy the one who contemplates and creates, hates him and plots against him. And the more significant a person is... the greater the power of goodness, beauty and truth radiates from him - the more intolerable his appearance is for blind, vain and dependent natures...
The righteous, by his very life, denounces the crooked, the wicked and the hypocrites. The hero hurts the non-hero through his deeds alone. People do not tolerate prophets in their Fatherland. A great monarch must always be ready for an attempt on his life... What a person himself lacks, he does not tolerate in his neighbor - and responds to his dignity with envy, slander, denunciation, intrigue... Hegel was right when he pointed out the fact that lackey souls tend to raise slanderous gossip around big people.”
“However, our time is not distinguished by gentlemanliness and has an uncontrollable tendency to feed on the products of decomposition,” Ilyin wrote in the mid-20th century in the article “On Reading and Criticism.” Well, ours - today's time - suffers even more from the lack of nobility and generosity.
Nowadays, someone really wants to suspect I.A. Ilyin of “collaborationism” and, allegedly, his commitment to the National Socialist Party of Germany, which brought Hitler and his Nazi-fascist regime to power in the 30s.
In order not to be led by rumors, gossip and provocative suspicions, you need to turn to the real facts of I.A.’s biography. Ilyin and his works.
It must be said that if the name of this thinker, who sharply criticized the ideas of communism, was not known even in scientific circles in Russia in the 70s, today both his life path and his work have been studied in detail by many researchers (Poltoratsky N.P., Tomsinov V. .A., Sokhryakov Yu.I., Lisitsa Yu.T., Repnikova A.V., Zernov I., Evlampiev I.I., Blokhina N.N., Kalyagin A.N. and others).
In addition, to the Department of Rare Books and Manuscripts of the Scientific Library of Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov received Ilyin’s extensive library in 2006, along with his entire archive. Neither more nor less - 12 boxes with books on Russian literature, history and philosophy, where out of 630 publications - 563 are in Russian. And 88 boxes with documents, letters and photographs. Ilyin’s archive, taken from Switzerland by his student and researcher N.P. Poltoratsky has been kept at Michigan State University since 1965.
Since 1989, the works of I.A. Ilyin began to be published in Russia. From 1993 to 2008, 28 volumes of collected works were published (compiled by Yu.T. Lisitsa). Some of his books have also been published.
So, what is known for certain today about the life and works of I.A. Ilyin in exile?
In post-revolutionary Russia, the Bolsheviks arrested Ilyin six times and tried him twice (November 30, 1918 at the Presidium of the Board of the Department for Combating Counter-Revolution and December 28, 1918 at the Moscow Revolutionary Tribunal). Both times he was acquitted due to insufficient charges and given amnesty. He was arrested for the last time on September 4, 1922 and accused of the fact that “from the moment of the October revolution to the present time, he not only did not reconcile with the Workers’ and Peasants’ power existing in Russia, but did not stop his anti-Soviet activities for a single moment.”
Ilyin miraculously escaped execution under Article 58 (counter-revolutionary activity) and was deported with his wife Natalya Nikolaevna on September 26, 1922, along with a large group of learned philosophers and writers, by order of Lenin, on the “Philosophical Steamship” from Russia to Stettin, Germany.
The Lord destined him to live in Germany for 16 years. He actively participated in the organization of the Religious and Philosophical Academy, the philosophical society and its journal. Ivan Aleksandrovich worked at the Russian Scientific Institute in Berlin, which opened in January 1923, as a professor and teacher of law, ethics, and introduction to philosophy and aesthetics until 1934. He taught in Russian and German. In 1926-1938, he gave lectures about 200 times on Russian culture, the foundations of legal consciousness, and the revival of Russia in Germany, Latvia, Switzerland, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Yugoslavia and Austria. But philosophical creativity and politics occupied a central place in his life. In 1927-1930 he was editor-publisher of the Russian Bell magazine. But, adhering to the principles of non- and supra-partyism, he was never a member of any party or political organization.
By the way, he did not at all idealize that part of Russian society that found itself in the position of “vanquished.” “Had it not been for this impoverishment and darkness, the Russian army of fifteen million would not have fled, its faithful and valiant officers would not have been torn to pieces, conscience and honor would not have allowed the seizure of property ...” wrote I. A. Ilyin, pointing out that the revolution was “a breakdown into a spiritual abyss, religious impoverishment, patriotic and moral darkness of the Russian people’s soul” (“When will the great Russian poetry be revived?”)
Since 1925, his major philosophical works began to be published abroad: “On Resistance to Evil by Force”, “The Path of Spiritual Renewal”, “Fundamentals of Art. About perfection in art." His famous brochures were published: “The Motherland and We”, “The Poison of Bolshevism”, “The Creative Idea of Our Future”, “Fundamentals of Christian Culture”, “The Crisis of Godlessness”. The most famous books are “Our Tasks” and “Axioms of Religious Experience”.
In total, Ivan Ilyin wrote more than 50 books and over a thousand articles in Russian, German, French and English.
Germany in the 20s and 30s was experiencing an economic crisis, the collapse of the country, and a crisis of power. Before the First World War, even England was ahead in its economic development, but suffered a collapse in this war, Germany experienced economic decline and political collapse. Emperor Wilhelm II was overthrown by the bourgeois revolution of 1918. In the homeland of Marx, Engels, Bebel and Liebknecht, a revolutionary movement calling for socialism was widely developed. The country was torn into small parts, which constantly quarreled and fought with each other. Unemployment, chaos and impoverishment reigned.
All these problems of the German people were promised to be solved by the new National Socialist movement, which played on the feelings and expectations of the people, and later degenerated into fascism, which unleashed the 2nd World War, which brought untold disasters, sorrows and losses to the world, Russia and Germany itself. Obviously, taking into account the successes of the leader of the German communists, Thälmann and his comrades-in-arms in the struggle for socialism, the new movement did not fail to call itself “socialist” and moved towards its goal gradually.
Originating in 1919, the National Socialist German Workers' Party, with its leader Hitler, put forward, before coming to power, an ideological platform that promised to put a barrier to communism and carry out fair socio-political reforms. Hitler stated that his party “is guided by the principles of legality and strives to come to power only through constitutional means.”
The National Socialists proclaimed that they would build their political, legal and economic activities, supposedly, on social justice, fair distribution of property, non-classism, fraternal unity, renewal and revival of the country. The ideas of patriotism and protection of the identity of the German people were proclaimed, feelings of readiness for sacrificial service, discipline, and complete submission to strict one-party authority were cultivated, and it was proposed to bow under one “strong hand.”
How can one not remember Napoleon, who suppressed the French Revolution, but became a cruel dictator and an ambitious conqueror? The October Socialist Revolution of 1917 in Russia, which promised peace and victory in a bloody war, bread, land, property, social rights and freedom of conscience for the people and brought to power a totalitarian atheistic regime? How can one not remember the “guardians of the people’s welfare” and national independence in today’s Ukraine? And all the overthrows of thrones and rebellions that have ever flared in different parts of the world are carried out precisely “for the people and for the benefit of the people.”
The new “guardians” for the good of the German people, who brought Hitler to power in Germany, soon showed the world the terrible grin of fascism.
On August 2, 1934, Hitler, who had been appointed Reich Chancellor of the Weimar Republic on January 30, 1933, appropriated the titles of “Führer and Reich Chancellor” of Germany.
On August 19, 1934, a referendum was held on the issue of Hitler combining the functions of Reich President and Reich Chancellor. On the same day, the German Armed Forces swore an oath of allegiance to him. Thus, all the most important posts in the state are united, and the controlling authorities are destroyed.
Having received complete and undivided power, the new regime discarded its previous slogans.
But the “mass psychosis” of an entire nation did not happen overnight. Many were initially attracted by the ideas put forward in the hour of national danger, supposedly for the destruction of the “communist plague”, for the “happiness” and preservation of the German people.
In his article “National Socialism. The New Spirit,” published in Paris on May 17, 1933, written more than a year before the complete usurpation of state power by Hitler, I.A. Ilyin speaks precisely about those initially proclaimed ideas and reforms that all these years have been put forward and promised to the German people to implement in their interests and for their good by the National Socialist Party, striving for power, slyly hiding its essence. This article served as a reason for haters of the Russian patriot to throw stones at him.
The thinker himself treated the rumors and assumptions made during Ilyin’s lifetime about the possibility of supposedly “joint” actions of Russian anti-communist forces abroad and German National Socialists ironically. In the same 1933 article, he wrote that it seemed like a “philistine, childish” and “street provocative” idea to think about “when” and “where” the Russian and German enemies of communism “will begin to march together.” “You shouldn’t discuss this nonsense... Behind these phrases people of dark purposes are hiding... It’s difficult to stop them: it is recommended to simply not listen to their seductive chatter,” he wrote.
As soon as Hitler came to power, the guise of the people's benefactor was dropped. Sensible people in Germany quickly became sober.
I.A. Ilyin, who initially saw in the “new ideas” of National Socialism the search for fair socio-political reforms and the desire to protect the German people from communism, very early managed to recognize the true face of Nazism and understand that “Hitler is following the path of the Antichrist, anticipating the Bolsheviks "(On Fascism).
Already in 1934 (immediately after Hitler came to power), for refusing to teach in accordance with the National Socialist party program, Ilyin was removed from the Institute and persecuted by the secret police - the Gestapo. That is, he clearly and directly refused to cooperate with the fascist government. In 1938, the Gestapo seized all of his published works and banned him from public appearances. Ilyin decided to leave Germany. And although a ban was imposed on his departure, several happy accidents (in which he saw the Providence of God) helped him obtain visas for himself, his wife and go to Switzerland. Here they managed to gain a foothold thanks to the financial support of Sergei Rachmaninov.
In Switzerland, Ilyin was prohibited from political activity, so he wrote 215 absentee reading newsletters only for like-minded people. After his death, these political articles were published in the two-volume book “Our Tasks.”
In the remaining years of his life, Ivan Aleksandrovich managed to finish and publish a book on which he had been working for more than 33 years - “Axioms of Religious Experience.” His books of philosophical and artistic prose are published in German, united by one thought - “to see and show God’s ray in everything.” He gave the Russian versions of these books the names “Lights of Life. Book of Consolations”, “Singing Heart. The Book of Quiet Contemplations”, “On the Future Russian Culture”. Prepared the books “On the Monarchy” and “The Path to Obviousness.”
At the same time, I.A. Ilyin assessed fascism as a phenomenon. In his article “On Fascism,” written in 1948, he revealed all the dangers and threats lurking in it. Saying that “fascism is a phenomenon... far from being eliminated,” he warned that if ever any movement in the world with patriotic goals follows fascist ideology and practice, this will mean for him and those to whom they may be directed, collapse and death.
He points out the inconsistency and danger of fascism or “National Socialism”:
"1. Irreligion. Hostile attitude towards Christianity, towards religions, confessions and churches in general.
2. The creation of legal totalitarianism as a permanent and supposedly “ideal” system.
3. The establishment of a party monopoly and the resulting corruption and demoralization.
4. Going to extremes of nationalism and militant chauvinism (national “mania of grandiosity”).
5. Mixing social reforms with socialism and sliding through totalitarianism into the nationalization of the economy.
6. Falling into idolatrous Caesarism with its demagoguery, servility and despotism.”
“... Political regime,” according to I.A. Ilyin, - attacking the Church and religion, creates a split in the souls of his citizens, undermines the deep roots of legal consciousness and begins to lay claim to religious significance, which is insane... Hitler, with his vulgar atheism, behind which was hidden an equally vulgar self-deification, and I didn’t understand that he was following the path of the Antichrist, anticipating the Bolsheviks,” he wrote.
Ilyin also condemned the totalitarian regime of Nazism, which differs from the authoritarian regime, which, in his opinion, is possible even in the most democratic states in the hour of national danger, when all the healthy forces of the people are always concentrated in a protective dictatorial direction.
As well as the establishment of a party monopoly, indicating that the shortcomings and errors of party membership in Hitler's Germany reached their highest expression. Complete submission and the inability to think independently calls people to senselessness and hypocrisy, as a result of which malingerers, bribe-takers, predators, speculators, terrorists, flatterers and traitors come to power.
Ilyin also condemned the political “mania of grandiosity” of Nazi Germany, which despised other races and nationalities, as well as the desire to conquer and eradicate them. “Self-esteem is not at all arrogant pride,” the thinker pointed out, “patriotism does not at all call for the conquest of the universe; liberating your people does not at all mean conquering or eradicating all your neighbors. To raise everyone against one people means to destroy it.”
“Caesarism, which appeared with Hitler’s rise to power,” according to Ilyin, “is the direct opposite of monarchism. Caesarism is godless, irresponsible, despotic: it despises freedom, right, legality, justice and the personal rights of people; he is demagogic, terrorist, proud; he thirsts for flattery, “glory” and worship, he sees the mob among the people and inflames their passions; he is immoral, warlike, cruel. He compromises the beginning of authoritarianism and autocracy, because his rule pursues not state or national goals, but personal ones.”
This is what I.A. wrote. Ilyin, warning that no one in the world should repeat the crazy mistakes and terrible delusions of fascism during state building, when protecting their territorial and spiritual space, as well as during the activities of any patriotic movement.
Of course, those who would really like to “find a speck” in the eye of the great Russian patriot find it in his initial perception of the National Socialist movement in Germany. And, apparently, they don’t read his other works. Some people find this reading difficult, some people are too lazy to read, and some read it “at a gallop across Europe.”
About such people I.A. Ilyin wrote: “If the author needs the art of “writing,” then the reader needs the art of “reading.” To read means to perceive correctly and sensitively...” (“On Reading and Criticism”) ...There are also readers who like to put into the writer’s mouth what he never said and to see in his biography what he did not did. Someone, for example, suggests that Ilyin left Germany simply because they looked at him askance because he was Russian. Here I would like to recall the fact of his biography that on the “Philosophical Steamship”, which arrived in Stettin in September 1922, there were 160 Russian writers and philosophers expelled from Russia by the Soviet government. Is it known that any of them were persecuted by the new government in Germany in the 30s and 40s?
With the thought that those Russian people in exile who suffered from Soviet power, and those Russians who built a “new life” in Russia, are in insurmountable hostility among themselves and in endless hatred towards each other, - I.A. Ilyin categorically disagreed. As well as with the fact that Russia has forever split into two warring camps. He spoke about the confrontation between the so-called “whites” and “reds” today, who are allegedly ready to “gnaw” each other, in his report “The Creative Idea of Our Future,” made in Belgrade and Prague back in 1934.
We must tell the rest of the world, Ilyin declared, that Russia is alive, that burying it is short-sighted and unwise; that we are not human dirt and dust, but living people with a Russian heart, with a Russian mind and Russian talent; that it is in vain to think that we have all “quarreled” with each other and are in irreconcilable differences of opinion; as if we are narrow-minded reactionaries who only think of settling their personal scores with a commoner or “foreigner” (Encyclopedia of Russian Civilization. O.A. Platonov).
I.A. Ilyin, who developed the idea of a strong Orthodox state with a pronounced national idea, wrote a lot about Russian patriotism, covering it, first of all, from the point of view of the Gospel and patristic teaching. All the works of this thinker and publicist are illuminated by the light of Orthodoxy, which imbues the life values of a person in Holy Rus'. Even the years of direct fight against God in Russia could not extinguish this light.
In emigration, Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin especially clearly and acutely felt the difference between the worldview of the Russian person, Russian ideology, the Russian view of the world and the understanding of the meaning of being a Western person. Here, in the West, he wrote in the book “The Path to Obviousness,” the entire culture (in the totality of economy, politics, social foundations) is built according to the law “man is a wolf to man.” This is a heartless culture. Even religion for a Western person is a “superstructure” over the material basis. While in Rus' the priority of values has always been built not on economic life, not on the acquisition of material wealth, but on the spiritual and moral sphere. For Russian people, development was not about moving forward in the same plane through technical progress, but about striving upward through internal transformation, towards Heaven. And this is incomprehensible and unacceptable for the West.
For Western Europe, wrote I.A. Ilyin, “Russian is foreign, restless, alien, strange and unattractive. Their dead heart is dead to us too. They proudly look down on us... In the world there are peoples, states, governments, church centers, behind-the-scenes organizations and individuals - hostile to Russia, especially Orthodox Russia, especially imperial and undivided Russia. Just as there are “Anglophobes,” “Germanophobes,” and “Japanophobes,” so the world is replete with “Russophobes,” enemies of national Russia who promise themselves every success from its collapse, humiliation and weakening. This must be thought through and felt to the end” (Encyclopedia of Russian Civilization. O.A. Platonov).
In his article “What the dismemberment of Russia promises the world” (1950), Ilyin truly prophetically pointed out: “Let us establish right away that the dismemberment of Russia being prepared by the international behind the scenes has not the slightest basis, no real-political considerations, except revolutionary demagoguery, absurd fear of united Russia and long-standing enmity towards the Russian monarchy and Eastern Orthodoxy. We know that Western peoples do not understand and do not tolerate Russian uniqueness. They experience a unified Russian state as a dam for their trade, linguistic and aggressive expansion. They are going to divide the universal Russian broom into twigs, break these twigs one by one and use them to kindle the fading fire of their civilization. They need to dismember Russia in order to lead it through Western equalization and decoupling and thereby destroy it: a plan of hatred and lust for power...
This is not smart. Not far-sighted... and hopeless for centuries. Russia is not human dust or chaos. She is, first of all, a great people who have not squandered their strength and have not despaired of their calling... Don’t bury him prematurely!
The historical hour will come, he will rise from the imaginary grave and demand all his rights back!”
In Ilyin’s article “Orthodox Rus'” about the work of I.S. Shmelev we read: “Oh, a terrible and instructive spectacle! The Russian people lost all this at once, in the hour of temptation and darkness - closeness to God, power over passions, the strength of national resistance, and organic like-mindedness with nature... And how all this was lost at once, together - so in place and re-establishment.”
And at the same time, Russian patriotism and healthy nationalism, which Ilyin wrote about, do not in any way carry the features of Nazism, as someone would like to imagine. Exaltation over other peoples was in no way inherent in this wonderful son of Russia, just as it is generally not inherent in the Russian people and the Russian people in principle.
Ivan Alexandrovich said: “We know that all nations in the face of God are good in their own way, and strong, and rich; and bad in their own way, and weak, and sinful, and meager. But a soul that yearns for its homeland does not marvel at someone else’s quality and dignity and does not judge other people’s weaknesses and sins. She wants one thing: her element, her spiritual spaces, her native singing, her joy and her suffering. And not just think about them, study your country or read books about it.. but breathe it, feel it around you,.. merge with it. Because she is the only one and irreplaceable. Whether she’s bad or good, she’s as bad in her own way as I am, the last of her sons; and she is good in her own way, just as I can be good only with her, only in her, only through her” (“Russia in Russian Poetry”).
Ivan Alexandrovich did not have a chance to return to Russia soon. His name and his works became known in his homeland only after the fall of Soviet power, in the early 90s (he said that this fall would inevitably happen, predicting the possible future paths of our Fatherland).
At the end of the 20th century, his works, according to his contemporaries, “set the vector of growth, because the time was difficult: the collapse of the country, the worship of the golden calf, a person became an object of purchase and sale.” Ilyin’s views influenced the worldview of many Russian intellectuals of the 20th century, who advocated for the traditional spiritual and moral values of Russia and its revival.
And in October 2005, the ashes of I.A. Ilyin and his wife, according to their will, were reburied in Russia - in the necropolis of the Donskoy Monastery in Moscow, not far from the grave of Ivan Alexandrovich’s beloved writer I.S. Shmeleva.
In April 2008, in Moscow, on the oldest building of Moscow State University on Mokhovaya, a memorial plaque was installed in memory of Ivan Ilyin, a graduate and teacher of the university.
June 15, 2012 in Yekaterinburg near the Ural Institute of Business named after I.A. Ilyin”, which began its work in 1990, a monument to Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin was unveiled.
Ilyin’s ideas are popular among the children of the Russian Orthodox Church and among prominent government and public figures.
Highly appreciated the works of I.A. Ilyin, the ever-memorable Metropolitan of St. Petersburg and Ladoga John (Snychev) and often relied on them in his works.
In an interview on June 24, 2014, a prominent church historian, professor of the International Slavic Academy Nikolai Kuzmich Simakov said: “In 1992, I created the Ivan Ilyin Society of Russian Orthodox Thought, which met at the Theological Academy for several years. The society set as its goal the protection of Orthodoxy, Russian culture, Russian thought from modern false teachings, from the challenges of the time...
When Metropolitan John (Snychev) read about I.A. Ilyin, he said that “he is a prophet; what he wrote has come true in our time.” Ilyin prophesied that “Russia will be reborn again when a throne for God and a throne for the Tsar again appear in the heart of the Russian person.”
Larisa Pakhomyevna Kudryashova , poet and writer
Book of art criticism “On darkness and enlightenment. Bunin - Remizov - Shmelev"
Interest in the legacy of Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin - a professional philosopher, active political and religious ideologist of the anti-Bolshevik movement for the restoration of Orthodox Russia - continues to this day. His legacy has not faded into the past. It is especially authoritative for the intensively developing direction of religious philology (M. Dunaev, I. Esaulov, T. Kasatkina, V. Zakharov, A. Lyubomudrov, V. Nepomnyashchiy, E. Iv. Volkova, etc.), and not only for him. Ilyin’s religious, ethical and aesthetic concept is close to a number of representatives of the artistic intelligentsia (V. Rasputin, V. Belov, etc.) and many readers.
In the variety of Ilyin’s energetic activities, literary criticism occupied a special place. It is no coincidence that the peaks of his active critical activity coincide with fateful periods in the life of his homeland - the beginning of the 30s (strengthening the Soviet system in the metropolis) and the beginning of the 40s (patriotic war). In 1927-34. the critic paid the greatest attention to his contemporaries (as well as Russian poetry and folklore), in 1942-1944. - classics of prose.
Conceptually, Ilyin's criticism is related to his program for the liberation of Russia. It cannot be understood without its organic connection both with this program and with Ilyin’s aesthetics.
In the 30s, as is known, his negative attitude towards Western civilization as formal and rational, towards Catholicism, as well as towards entertaining and farcical mass culture in favor of domestic traditions sharply intensified. He understood the Russian idea as the calling of the people to create a spiritual culture based on the thousand-year-old foundations of Orthodoxy and capable of overcoming the deep crisis experienced by godless humanity. Art plays a special role in this process: serving God’s work, it participates in its own way in the spiritual transformation of the world. Literary criticism should help him in this.
Ilyin’s criticism reflected his desire to avoid the dead end of European culture, to which it was supposedly moving, starting from the Renaissance, isolating itself from Christianity. Recognizing the legitimacy and autonomy of creativity, proposing to check it by the criteria of the “spirit of art,” Ilyin in fact always gave preference to the first - namely, the correspondence of the meaning of the work with the foundations of Orthodoxy. This stemmed from the ideological position of the critic. Ilyin substantiated the leading role of Orthodoxy in the creation of Christian culture by the historical experience of Russia.
The work of Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin in its entirety bears the following title: “On darkness and enlightenment. Book of art criticism: Bunin - Shmelev - Remizov." It was first printed in Munich in the printing house of St. Job Pochaevsky in 1959, when neither the author nor the characters indicated in the title were no longer in this world. The book grew out of the lecture course “New Russian Literature”, which Ilyin read at the Russian Scientific Institute in Berlin in 1934. Eight lectures were devoted to the work of I.S. Shmeleva, I.A. Bunina, D.S. Merezhkovsky and A.M. Remizova. At the last stage of work on the book in the late 30s and early 40s, Ilyin consulted with one of its heroes - I.S., who was ideologically and aesthetically close to him. Shmelev, and Ivan Sergeevich’s opinion was taken into account by the author when preparing the final text. This is evidenced by Shmelev’s letter to O.A. Bredius-Subbotina dated January 15, 1942: “I.A. wrote about modern writers, chose 4: Bunin, Remizov, Merezhkovsky, me. He let me read it. He lifted me up very high. Bunin - analyzed intelligently, noting “generic sexuality.” Remizov - y-so, tickled. Merezhkovsky - literally... crushed! - into nothing. I told him: why? He will kill you with a “brick” - his volumes are heavy... I.A. decided to release Merezhkovsky, i.e. throw it out of the book." Ilyin, therefore, chose not to aggravate the situation and not to enter into conflict with the old and sick Merezhkovsky, since in the chapter about him, indeed, there were many rude and not very fair assessments. The critic accused the writer of plagiarism from historical sources, historical irresponsibility and lies, weakness of artistic imagination, indifference to the inner world of heroes and indifference to “disgusting details” and “suffocating details,” sadism, masochism and many other vices. (The part of the book dedicated to Merezhkovsky was published by Ilyin’s biographer N.P. Poltoratsky).
In his articles about Bunin and Remizov, Ivan Aleksandrovich proceeds from the criteria of Orthodox culture, from the idea of a destined path for man from darkness through torment and sorrow to enlightenment. Bunin's heroes, from the point of view of the critic, are primitive, their religious ideas are vague, darkness and chaos reign in them. The writer does not touch upon the Divine in man and tragic issues, the critic believes. In his letters, Ilyin caustically ridicules the Nobel laureate (as well as N. Berdyaev, S. Bulgakov, G. Adamovich, V. Khodasevich). In Remizov’s works, according to Ilyin, darkness reigns. His world of “undead” is hostile to Orthodoxy, because it is associated with the irrational element, with the “underground of national consciousness.”
And only the creativity of I.S. Ilyin evaluates Shmeleva as “an event in the movement of national consciousness” of the people. At the tragic time of his history, the writer told the great truth about Russia, showed her face, her living substance - a simple Russian man, overcoming suffering and everyday vulgarity with his tearful repentance, thirst for righteousness and religious contemplation. In “The Summer of the Lord” and “Phygomatism,” the critic claims, Orthodox Rus' is recreated with all the “corners” of its spiritual and everyday life. Shmelev’s epic, soaked in “tears of tender memory,” instills “confidence in the inflexibility of Orthodox Kitezh.” This is the “Icon of Holy Rus'”. The symbolic name “Bogomolye” denotes the idea of the historical path of Russia. Ilyin argues that, like Dostoevsky, Shmelev poses a philosophical problem about the meaning of life, filled with torment and enlightening suffering, about the struggle in man of the primitive darkness of naive spirituality.
Thus, developed by I.A. Ilyin’s system of critical analysis of works of verbal artistic creativity, which he called “art criticism,” allowed him to put forward an original concept of the work of the largest Russian writers of the 20th century - representatives of the “first wave” of emigration - I.A. Bunina, A.M. Remizov and I.S. Shmeleva. The system of artistic and aesthetic principles for evaluating a work of art, developed by Ilyin, as well as his judgments about the work of I.A. Bunina, A.M. Remizov and I.S. Shmelev, were distinguished by their unusual approach, deep originality and captured into their orbit not only ideological and aesthetic analysis, but also consideration of the religious and philosophical aspects of their work.
220. 221. 222.
MESSAGE IN MEMORY
Professor Ivan Aleksandrovich ILYIN, made on May 1, 1955 at a meeting of officials of the Russian General Military Union in Casablanca by Roman Martynovich ZILE.
(The message is printed with abbreviations made by the lecturer himself, due to the need to fit the text into three issues of Our Tasks.)
My message is dedicated to the blessed memory of Professor Ivan Aleksandrovich ILYIN, who passed into another world, which I have the honor to bring to your attention.
I want to stipulate from the very beginning that my memorable word is a message not only from a simple Russian emigrant about a great Russian patriot and thinker, and not only from a follower about a teacher-philosopher and mentor in national work, but also from a student-friend about a deceased senior personal friend.
I met Ivan Aleksandrovich ILYIN at the beginning of 1928 and often met and communicated intensively with him in all subsequent years; and in the intervals between regular meetings we were connected by extensive, lively correspondence. My acquaintance with Ivan Aleksandrovich soon turned into a great friendship, I considered and still consider this friendship, I experienced it and now regard it as an invaluable gift of grace from fate for me and as the largest event in my personal life.
Being so close to Ivan Alexandrovich ILYIN - both as a Russian, and as a follower, and as a personal friend - I will say, without exaggerating or playing with words, that in the first days after receiving the news of the death of Ivan Alexandrovich, I experienced, in addition to personal sadness and a feeling of something irreparably fatefully happening, and a still chilling feeling of emptiness suddenly surrounding us - me personally, and all like-minded people, and all Russians in general. It is surprising, or rather, not surprising, that General A.A. LAMPE expressed almost the same words about the felt “emptiness” in his letter to the local department of the Russian General Military Union. Those who knew Ivan Alexandrovich well and closely, as well as his works and his activities, could not perceive the fatal loss differently.
The news of the death of Ivan Alexandrovich prompted me to take up his books and articles again. And so, re-reading his works, delving again into long-familiar pages, the feeling of emptiness gradually began to be replaced by the feeling availability immeasurable and still far from fully appreciated, wealth spiritual, which Ivan Aleksandrovich ILYIN gifted us with.
This heritage, unfortunately, has not yet become the property of the entire Russian Abroad. There are still too many who do not know either ILYIN or his works; There are still a very large number of people who know about him only very superficially or who have only heard about him by chance. Hence, there arises a moral obligation for those who have become fully involved in the spiritual work and national preaching of ILYIN - to do everything possible to familiarize those who are unfamiliar or not at all familiar with the life path of Professor ILYIN, his works and activities.
It is absolutely clear and obvious that the time has not yet arrived for a complete, all-encompassing and exhaustive presentation of the life service of Ivan Aleksandrovich ILYIN - there can, of course, be no talk of such in my present message. But my long-term friendship with Ivan Alexandrovich and familiarity with his works and activities oblige me to try to say what I know about him and what, in my understanding and conviction, every Russian patriot and nationally-minded Russian should know.
* * *
I turn to the works of Professor ILYIN, the fruit of his writing activity. I give a list of published and unpublished works, observing, as far as possible, the chronological order of their writing.
The first scientific work of Ivan Aleksandrovich ILYIN was published in 1910. It represents an experience in methodological analysis called “CONCEPTS OF RIGHT AND POWER”.
In 1911, Ilyin published his second scientific and philosophical work entitled “The Crisis of the Ideas of the Subject in the Teaching of Fichte the Elder.”
In 1916, his brochure “ON WAR” appeared in print.
In 1918, his most important work was published, the subject of his master’s thesis, which simultaneously earned him a doctorate: “HEGEL’S PHILOSOPHY AS A TEACHING ABOUT THE CONCRETEITY OF GOD AND MAN” (Volume I: The Doctrine of God, Volume II: The Doctrine of Man). In contrast to dialectical materialism, ILYIN puts forward the idealistic side of Hegel’s teachings. Ilyin shows that “dialectics is neither the main content nor the highest achievement of Hegel’s philosophy.”
I do not undertake to give even a brief summary of this work, much less a critically substantiated assessment of it. I will limit myself to reviews from more competent critics.
I remember, by the way, how in 1931 in Riga, when we first invited Ivan Alexandrovich to come to give a series of lectures, we had to turn to the Latvian Minister of Public Education for feedback in order to obtain an entry visa for Ivan Alexandrovich from the Latvian authorities. The Minister of Education in Latvia at that time was Professor TENTELIS, who had previously been a professor at the Faculty of History and Philology at St. Petersburg University, a Latvian nationalist not without a chauvinistic bias; When asked for a review, he only stated that this was “the same ILYIN who wrote the best book in the world about Hegel.” And visas have been issued without hindrance since then.
Ilyin's work about Hegel also came out in German, but only recently, in a slightly abbreviated form; it was published in 1948 in Bern, Switzerland.
In 1919, ILYIN completed a study on the essence of legal consciousness; it was given in the form of a course of lectures in Moscow higher educational institutions, and was discussed more than once at meetings of the Moscow Law Society and in private meetings of Moscow associate professors and professors. However, this book, entitled: “THE TEACHING ABOUT LEGAL CONSCIOUSNESS,” has not yet seen the light of day. Meanwhile, this is not just a most valuable contribution to legal literature, but a truly new, living word about the spiritual atmosphere that law and the state need for their prosperity.
In 1921, his “MAIN TASKS OF JURISDICTION IN RUSSIA” were written, but published already in exile, in Berlin in 1923. Here the first results of the experience of the revolution have already been summed up, especially in the context of the problem of teaching legal sciences.
In 1924, three speeches appeared in print in Paris, delivered at different times, but treating the same problem, under the general title: “The RELIGIOUS MEANING OF PHILOSOPHY.”
In 1925, the study “ON RESISTANCE TO EVIL BY FORCE” was published in Berlin. This, I would say, “battle book” brought with it a stream of long-awaited fresh, clean air
into a stagnant atmosphere poisoned by the spirit of non-resistance, which paralyzed the healthy instinct of national self-preservation among a significant part of the Russian cultural or simply educated stratum. It is not for nothing that the obvious and even more often implicit, “seductively hidden non-resisters, semi-non-resisters and not-so-non-resisters - but-and-not-that-resisters,” usually of the left formation, became alarmed and agitated, more than once angrily and hysterically; all of them turned out to be quite opposed when ILYIN, with this strictly scientific and philosophical treatise, for the first time, perhaps, truly and substantively posed and illuminated the problem of resistance to evil. They understood, or rather, instinctively sensed (for to understand, they usually have neither the desire, nor the spiritual will, nor the spiritual strength necessary to free themselves from the non-resistance dope and temptation), that there was finally a solution to the non-resistance myth. government They tried, absolutely unreasonably, of course, to discredit Ivan Aleksandrovich by giving him the epithet “evil Ilyin.” But with this very attempt to apply the epithet “evil” to ILYIN, these circles once again demonstrated their spiritual and cultural inferiority. ILYIN never was not evil either in life or in his writings - but angry he visited often, and it was always objectively justified. The inability to distinguish (if we assume that we were dealing with inability, and not with the juggling of concepts), the inability to distinguish between concepts like malice and anger, characteristically illustrate the loss of the ability not only to distinguish between nuances in concepts, but also the most categorical variety of concepts; It was from such inability that temptation and irresponsible and superficial confusion of concepts arose and were cultivated for decades.
In his book, Ilyin does not preach that the end supposedly justifies the means. Ilyin says that the tragedy of life's destinies can force, and in fact forces, in an inevitable and necessary manner, to make a spiritual compromise, consciously and voluntarily resorting to unrighteous means in the performance of a duty, often the most sacred. He who resorts to unrighteous means takes on this sin for the sake of fulfilling his duty, for the sake of preventing evil. In that tragic, but in this reality. Non-resistance people dream of living outside of tragedy, and therefore their teaching out of reality and sows only temptation.
In 1926, the publishing house of the Gallipoli Society, in Belgrade, published a small brochure entitled: “THE MOTHERLAND AND WE.”
In 1927, ILYIN began publishing his own magazine called “RUSSIAN BELL. JOURNAL OF A WILLED IDEA." The name itself speaks volumes about the publisher's intentions. Not Herzen’s “BELL”, which was once sensational and, alas, awakened quite a lot, but is far from the main thing - but Russian A bell that should awaken the national will and ring the alarm bell to call the Russian people to spiritually grounded and subject-wise patriotic work and service.
The magazine was editorially divided into two parts. In the first - articles are general ideological, on national topics, on modern spirituality
The crisis in its various aspects, about the revolution, its causes, about overcoming it, about Bolshevism and communism, about our tasks and responsibilities, about our future; in the second - information and instructional material that should equip the Russian patriot.
1. -KNOWLEDGE of the truth about old Imperial Russia.
2. - KNOWLEDGE of the essence of revolution and Bolshevism, as well as awareness of Soviet reality.
3. - KNOWLEDGE of the basic axioms and methods of political work and struggle.
Unforgettable- from this section - articles by ILYIN himself “On political work” and - especially - “How to keep a secret.” To all of us, our politicians, and especially our conspirators, our active fighters for the Russian Cause on these articles can and should study and study - the practical constructiveness of the articles in the second part of the Russian Bell is absolutely invaluable - whoever read them is unlikely to ever forget them.
In “Russian Bell” ILYIN managed to select a staff of exceptional quality and competence, a real - albeit small in number - national and cultural elite. I will only mention the names of the princes. N. B. SHCHERBATOVA, gen. A. A. LAMPE, I. S. SHMELEVA, V. F. GEFDING, N. A. TSURIKOVA. But a good half of the articles, if not more, were written by ILYIN himself.
"Russian Bell" existed until 1930. A total of nine book issues were published, each about 100 pages in size.
At the end of the twenties, Ilyin's first book was published on German language called "PRIVATE PROPERTY - OR COMMUNISM". This book is a summary of the countless lectures and reports ILYIN gave to Germans throughout Germany.
In 1931, Ilyin published, in German, the collection “ Welt for dem Abgrund "("THE WORLD BEFORE THE Abyss. Politics, economy and culture in a communist state, based on authentic sources"). This is a large volume, approximately 700 pages, providing - for the first time since the revolution - an amazing, strictly scientific, competent specialists basis Soviet sources compiled a picture of what turned RUSSIA into communist rule and What threatens to be realized in the rest of the world if the communists seize power there. The purpose of the collection is to help open your eyes foreigners to the threatening them disaster; the authors of the collection are Russians: a number of articles by Ilyin himself, other collaborators - AKSENOV, N. ARSENYEV, A. BUNGE, V. GEFDING, A. DEMIDOV, M. KRITSKY, N. KULMAN, B. NIKOLSKY, S. OLDENBURG, N. TIMASHEV.
At the end of 1930, the Russian Section of the Ober League published (anonymously) “THESES OF RUSSIAN FOREIGN ACTIVISM.” “THESES” is ILYIN’s keynote speech, delivered by him at the St. Julien Congress of Russian Activists. This little green, pocket-size brochure has become a
for many Russians, a constant companion and reference guide in their political work.
In 1931, the publishing house “Struggle for Culture” in Geneva, the brainchild of the St. Julien Congress, published the first issue in a series of brochures, Ilyin’s work “THE POISON OF BOLSHEVISM.” The author shows here that Bolshevism is by no means exclusively political phenomenon, but represents general spiritual and cultural infection, a product of decomposition and a factor of decomposition, a truly socio-psychic poison, poisoning and decomposing All areas of life, All branches - culture and law, economy and art, politics and morality, family and society.
Also in 1931, a small collection “ABOUT RUSSIA” was published in SOFIA. THREE SPEECHES."
From approximately 1930 to 1935, ILYIN worked on one of his most significant works, which in the Russian edition bears the title “THE PATH OF SPIRITUAL RENEWAL.” Here is the table of contents of this work:
Chapter 1. - About faith. Chapter 2. - About love. Chapter 3. - About freedom. Chapter 4 - About conscience. Chapter 5 - About family. Chapter 6 - About the homeland. Chapter 7 - About nationalism.
The fate of this book is curious. The success, and at that a huge one, of Ilyin’s lectures and readings for the Germans evoked a positive response from the organizers of these lectures - German church and public organizations - to Ilyin’s proposal to publish a work touching on more profound image of the problem of the modern spiritual crisis. But something unexpected happened: German publishers - church social activists, having familiarized themselves with the manuscript, refused (though with sincere regret, apparently) to publish this work, motivating their refusal by the fact that the interpretation proposed by ILYIN is still " zu Johanneisch ” (“still too Ioannistic,” that is, too imbued with the spirit of the Gospel of John) I must say that Ivan Alexandrovich repeatedly expressed regret to me that he wrote this book differently than he would have written it for the Russians, i.e. sought to present his main thoughts in such a way that they would be accessible and most convincing to the Germans. And yet the book turned out to be unsuitable, “ zu Johanneisch ", t.s. breathed “excessively” the bright principle of love, dominant in the Apostle JOHN. Here is the assessment of completely uninterested German outsiders of the “evil ILYIN”.
Ivan Aleksandrovich then took up the Russian text of this work and finished it in. 1935, and in 1937, having finally found a Russian publisher, he published this book in the Belgrade publishing house “Russian Library”. And the German version also eventually found a publisher, but not in Germany, but in Switzerland, where the book was published in 1939 under the title “Die ewigen Grundlagen des Lebens"("Eternal Fundamentals of Life"). It has also been translated into Italian, but has not yet been published.
In 1937, the Russian Academic Society in Latvia published the book “FUNDAMENTALS OF ART. ABOUT EXCELLENCE IN ART." In this work, which grew out of an absolutely exceptionally successful lecture given here in Riga in 1935,
The author introduces a new word in the field of aesthetics, indicating religious roots all sorts of things art, revealing in a new way with obvious convincingness the problem of perfection and perfection in art. The book also shows the path for artistic criticism - and reveals and exposes the artistic dishonesty and spiritual irresponsibility of modern modernist art.
In the same 1937, a number of more articles, speeches, and lectures by Ilyin appeared in print:
“PUSHKIN’S PROPHETIC CALLING” is an academic speech delivered at the Pushkin celebrations in Riga on the occasion of the centenary of the death of the great poet.
“A CREATIVE IDEA FOR OUR FUTURE” - public speech delivered in 1934 in Riga, Berlin, Belgrade and Prague; in this speech ILYIN treats the foundations of spiritual character - and proclaims one of the most essential and inevitably necessary requirements- FORGE IN THE RUSSIAN SOUL A SPIRITUAL CHARACTER, WILLED AND WORTHY.
“FUNDAMENTALS OF CHRISTIAN CULTURE” - in the publication of the Bureau of the Confederation of Russian Christian Working People in Geneva.
The following year, 1938, “FUNDAMENTALS OF THE STRUGGLE FOR NATIONAL RUSSIA” was published in the publication of the Berlin representative office of the National Labor Union of the New Generation.
Before moving on to further published the works of Ivan Aleksandrovich, I will return to 1935. While living this year in Latvia, in Kokenhusen-Kokneze, Ivan Aleksandrovich wrote a major work on literary criticism - unfortunately, it has not yet been published. The book is called: “ABOUT DARKNESS AND ENLIGHTENMENT. Book of art criticism. Creativity of Bunin - Remizov - Shmelev." Together with the introductory chapter “On Reading and Criticism,” this work is a typescript of 272 pages. In the introductory chapter, ILYIN substantiates the tasks of literary criticism and at the same time shows how Russian literary criticism endlessly sinned with the vulgarity of measuring works of art by non-artistic standards and how “in the person of radical and revolutionary epigones, they still sin with this decline.” Considering the work of the three largest Russian writers of recent decades - Bunin, Remizov and Shmelev, Ilyin deliberately focused on these three writers, based on the desire to show how the artistic and creative act of a writer comes from out of darkness: in Bunin from the darkness of spiritual instinct, in Remizov from the darkness of torment, fear and pity, - and from enlightenment from this darkness in Shmelev, about whom Ilyin says that “Shmelev’s images lead from suffering through purification to spiritual joy.”
Since 1938, a number of ILYIN’s works in German have appeared in print. Of the three-volume series of books connected by a single internal content and design, the first book was published in Berlin in 1938: “ Ich schaue ins Leben "(in Russian: "LIGHTS OF LIFE. BOOK OF CONSOLIATIONS"). Initially, individual sketches from this book were published in the newspaper " Berliner Tageblatt ", under a pseudonym Karl von Brabisius . This book was published in a second edition in Berlin in 1939. The second book in this series is out.
already in Switzerland in 1943 under the name " Das verchollene Herz "(in Russian: "THE SINGING HEART. BOOK OF QUIET CONTEMPLATIONS") The third book was also published in Switzerland, in 1945 German edition -" Blick in die Ferne ”, the Russian text is entitled “ABOUT THE COMING RUSSIAN CULTURE. King of tasks and hopes."
These three books represent a completely unique literary work: they are, as it were, collections of either philosophical sketches, or artistic meditations, or educational-in-depth observations, on a wide variety of topics, but imbued with one single creative act of writing - SEEING AND SHOWING EVERYTHING “ GOD RAY“, because - I quote - “there are no indifferent, i.e., spiritually empty or dead circumstances.” In his book “AXIOMS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE” ILYIN points out that “The art of life, purification, growth and wisdom consists in the ability to “decipher” all these sent to each of us. God's hieroglyphs and contemplate their true and wonderful meaning; and not only contemplate, but assimilate his wisdom, comprehending every event and phenomenon of one’s life as a personal appeal from God to man.”
Ilyin gives an attempt at such contemplations in these three books, gradually ascending from simple to complex. It must be admitted that many of these contemplations (let's call them that) are real masterpieces of artistry and insight. And, moreover, these contemplations are presented in such a German language that one can already have a presentiment of WHAT artistic and spiritual beauty these contemplations will shine in our native Russian language. Ivan Aleksandrovich has been working on Russian texts for a long time. “THE SINGING HEART” is finished, and “ABOUT THE COMING RUSSIAN CULTURE” is “being written,” Ivan Aleksandrovich wrote to me back in 1948. About the first book - “THE FIRE OF LIFE” - I have no information about whether he managed to finish the Russian text. It would be an unforgivable omission if these pearls of ILYIN’s work did not see the light of day in Russian, transcribed by the author himself.
In Switzerland in 1942 the first edition was published, and in 1944 the second edition of Ilyin’s book was published: “Wesen und Eigenart der russischen Kultur"("THE ESSENCE AND ORIGINALITY OF RUSSIAN CULTURE"). This book has been translated into French and English, but not published.
After the end of the war, ILYIN again published a number of articles in Russian: “RUSSIA AND EMIGRATION”, “FOR THE FREEDOM OF RUSSIA”, “THE CRISIS OF GODLESSNESS” (written before the war), “ON THE POWER OF JUDGMENT”, “WHAT SHOULD WE DO?” and a number of others. The first chapter of the big book “ABOUT THE COMING RUSSIA”, entitled “FAITH IN RUSSIA”, is coming out of print.
The most confusing, absurd and mixed up post-war situation in Europe forces ILYIN to publish some of his works and articles anonymously; Part of the reason for this is the position of the Swiss government, which grants foreigners the right of residence only if they renounce political activity. In such an anonymous manner, a well-known, probably
Brochure for everyone: “THE SOVIET UNION IS NOT RUSSIA. MEMORY OF A CULTURAL EMIGRANT.” This brilliant brochure was translated into French and, in a rotator edition, gained widespread circulation in French political circles.
She came out anonymously, or rather, under a pseudonym"WITH. P.”, brochure “ABOUT THE CHURCH IN THE USSR”, published with a foreword by Kartashev in 1947.
And, finally: starting from 1948, “Our Tasks”, periodically regular bulletins of the Russian General Military Union began to be published anonymously, starting in 1948, which acquired great undoubted success, which was a collection of 215 issues and about 100 articles on all kinds of relevant national-patriotic topics , All written by ILYIN's hand. I won’t dwell on them; most of you are already very familiar with “Our Tasks”.
Finally, in 1953, “AXIOMS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE” appeared in print. one of the final ones all the creativity of Ilyin's most capital works. “AXIOMS” should be familiar to many of you. Here is what Professor BILIMOVICH writes about this book: “This is a book of deep thoughtfulness and absolutely overwhelming erudition, manifested in extensive literary additions to each volume. This is not at all the history of religions, and not dogmatic, liturgical or canonical theology, it is not even religious psychology in the usual sense, but a very deep analysis of the foundations (axioms) of the personal spiritual state of the believer, that is, the basic experiences, contemplations, aspirations and tasks of the believing soul and a heart that perceives the divine. At the same time, this is a book about the perversion of religiosity, about the tragic problems of the latter and its abuses, about joining the divine light and falling away from it. The book, which the author, according to him, had been nurturing for about 30 years... is a book of exceptional significance.”
On my own behalf, I will say that while reading this work, I personally experienced a feeling of sincere, final spiritual joy. In this work, ILYIN so surprisingly harmoniously sums up the final results of many of his works that the last remnants of possible doubts, ambiguities, uncertainties or not-completely-truly-certainties disappear. And I, a reader who went through ILYIN’s entire journey - from his first works to his last - while reading “AXIOM”, repeatedly wanted to exclaim: “God! It’s so good that THIS is possible!” - what is possible and implemented that organic integrity and harmony that I had wanted for a long time, but, it seemed, could not be dreamed of.
I often heard that reading ILYINA difficult. This is both true and false. And accordingly, “AXIOMS” can give joy and may or may NOT give.
The spiritual act, and especially, perhaps, the reading act, is so varied and varied, so rarely, alas, is one read in the consciousness of necessity build your act of reading, and, moreover, to build like this in a way that is as accurate as possible reproduce creative act writer, that the meeting, the meeting of the author with the reader, does not always and far from immediately take place,
For the sake of which they were written - a book, a novel, a story, a treatise, a sermon, a study, an author's confession. ILYIN is difficult to read if you follow the line of least resistance, that is, without trying to build your reading act in relation to the creative act of the author himself. And what more foreign, how more opposite direction the reader's act is the more difficult. But ILYIN himself gives - in the abundance of his works - the way and the opportunity to gradually bring the reader's act closer to the author's. This is the path from “RUSSIAN BELL” and “OUR TASKS” through “CREATIVE IDEA OF OUR FUTURE” and “PATH OF SPIRITUAL RENEWAL”, as well as through his books on art and literature “FUNDAMENTALS OF ART” and “ON DARKNESS AND ENLIGHTENMENT” to the final “AXIOMS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE"
It remains for me to say one more thing about ILYIN’s works, both published and unfinished and only planned. As I have already mentioned, two large works have not been published: “ON DARKNESS AND ENLIGHTENMENT. BOOK OF ART CRITICISM. CREATIVITY OF BUNIN - REMIZOV - SHMELEV" and "STOCK ON LEGAL CONSCIOUSNESS"
The book “ABOUT THE COMING RUSSIA” has not been published. In 1948, half of this book had already been written; I have no information whether ILYIN completed this work. Only the first chapter, entitled “FAITH IN RUSSIA,” was published. A total of 31 chapters were supposed.
Unfortunately, the book “ON MONARCHY” is not finished. This work, which ILYIN also nurtured for decades, letting it mature before responsibly coming out with it - too much irresponsible, non-substantive and not-really-important was written and published about Monarchy. Alas, to finish this major work Not was destined for the author. And another major work, which was also supposed to lay - in another aspect - the foundation for everything that Ilyin taught, turned out to be unwritten - this one was not even begun, although “ already completely ready in the shower“, as Ivan Alexandrovich’s widow, Natalia Nikolaevna ILINA, wrote to me now. This is a book about OBVIOUSITY, a topic that ILYIN considered one of the main in the construction of his entire teaching.
With this I complete the list of ILYIN’s main works. I did not list, and could not list, many of his articles in various newspapers and magazines and collections; there were many of them, but now I don’t have the opportunity to restore the list - yes, I think that this is the task of the future biographer of ILYIN.
_________
I turn to Ilyin’s non-writing activities, which can, conditionally, of course, be divided into three types: 1) academic-teaching, 2) lecturing and 3) political.
I briefly touched upon Ilyin’s academic and teaching activities in connection with his biography. I will now dwell on his lecturing and political activities.
Hardly anyone at least once whoever heard any public lecture by Ilyin will be able to forget that's amazing and at the same time enchanting impression of brilliant perfection presentation and subject-quality knowledge and skills the subject of what is being presented. ILYIN is a brilliant orator, BUT - an orator in the ancient classical sense - Not an improviser-juggler of words, stunning listeners with a brilliant fireworks of words (and often only words), but a SUBJECT-RESPONSIBLE ARTIST OF VERBAL SPEECH AND THE SUBJECT EXPRESSED. His lectures are always written, the manuscript is always on his lectern, although he knows his reports and lectures almost by heart; he reads them from the manuscript in order to preserve the integrity of the content and form. Moreover, he reads so skillfully that you do not see or notice the use of the manuscript; I have more than once encountered sincere amazement from people who have repeatedly attended Ilyin’s lectures when I told them that Ilyin “reads from the manuscript” his reports.
The success of Ilyin's public lectures was absolutely exceptional. I remember how in Riga, where Ilyin visited five times in the 30s, lectures were often sold out, and those who did not stock up on tickets in advance were unable to get into the large Blackheads Hall, where Ilyin usually read.
In addition to lectures in Russian for Russians, ILYIN gave countless lectures in German in a huge number of German cities, as I already mentioned in the first part of my message. With an amazing command of the German language, ILYIN shocked and fascinated, convinced and enlightened the Germans with the same success.
In addition to PUBLIC lectures (and academic, of course, in higher educational institutions, most recently at the Russian Scientific Institute in Berlin), ILYIN also organized a number of SEMINARY-LIKE READINGS. I will mention, as the most interesting (of those known to me), two private seminars. FIRST - in Berlin in the 30s, on religious and philosophical topics, mainly with Russian youth; THE SECOND - literary, in 1935 in Riga, where simultaneously and in parallel (the number of participants was so large that two groups were organized), ILYIN read, in a private circle, about modern Russian writers. From these literary readings-seminars about Bunin, Remizov, Shmelev, Kuprin, Aldanov, Krasnov and Merezhkovsky, Ilyin’s book “ON DARKNESS AND ENLIGHTENMENT” grew, which he devoted to an artistic and critical analysis of the work of the first three of these writers.
Ilyin’s lecture activities were of great importance in that they contributed to raising national self-awareness, aroused interest in all issues of Russian history, Russian culture, our Russian tasks and national responsibilities, RAISED THE LEVEL OF INTERPRETATION of many topical and pressing issues and, in addition, contributed to the dissemination of ideas and popularization of books by Ilyin himself; Too often, ILYIN’s books were kept silent, because they “did not suit” the press, for the most part (especially large newspapers and magazines) still in captivity of the pre-revolutionary ideology of left radicalism and revolutionism, an
Timonarchism and anti-nationalism - an oral, and, moreover, captivatingly brilliant living word made a hole here and its living creative ideas lit an unquenchable fire in the souls
__________
I turn to the political activities of ILYIN. My first duty is to eliminate one misunderstanding that I have observed quite often. Since ILYIN wrote on political topics, especially since the appearance of THE RUSSIAN BELL, many, many believed that ILYIN should take the leading political place in emigration corresponding to his rank and qualities.
Repeatedly ILYIN was offered to participate in various political organizations, more than once he was offered to organize and lead himself - either an active political anti-Bolshevik organization, or a knightly order or another order-type organization. Ilyin rejected all these proposals. ILYIN never aspired to be a “leader” or to head any political organization abroad. Ilyin always believed that political organizations were almost inevitably doomed to party politicking, and nothing aroused Ilyin’s patriotic anger more than wasting national energy on party feuds. His article in “RUSSIAN BELL” is significant - “THE POISON OF THE PARTY.” “In emigration,” writes ILYIN, “where there is neither AUTHORITY, over which the parties fight, nor the PEOPLE, which they try to captivate and CRUDE UNDER THEMSELVES, involvement in partisanship is a particularly Idle and HARMFUL matter. It is not the party spirit that we must prepare for the future Russia, but the national, patriotic and state spirit.”
ILYIN had no calling at all for political work. But where he could help with his knowledge, his skill, his power of judgment, his experience, he never refused assistance. Indicative are his words expressed among friends, when - after many years of painstaking research work on the protocols of the Comintern, the writings of Lenin, on materials from the Soviet press, reports of communist congresses, etc., etc. - exhausted and suffocating MORALLY in In the atmosphere of these documents of human vulgarity and malice, ILYIN complained to us about his fate: “I am a gentle violin, and I am forced to endlessly clean sewage pits.” Anyone who really knows ILYIN well understands that the words about a gentle violin are not an illusion or an invention, but the absolute truth. But this “gentle violin” has an iron will and a completely unshakable and precisely true consciousness of patriotic duty - where his knowledge, his skill, his experience, his authority are needed, there he, without hesitation, takes on the task of “cleaning sewage pits” , - and years are spent exposing the Bolshevik poison.
In fulfillment of his patriotic duty, we see ILYIN at the St. Julien Congress of 1930. Organized and convened by the Russian Section of the International League to fight the Third International (better known as the "OBERT LEAGUE"), this congress
The goal was to gather - not the leaders of the emigrant Olympus - but ordinary responsible active workers of Russian anti-Bolshevik organizations. The task of the congress was the following: through the exchange of opinions from experience and the practice of active work, to find and establish the most appropriate and substantive ways and methods of work. Not being himself a representative of any organization, Ilyin immediately became the center and soul of the congress. His speech on the tasks and methods of Russian foreign activism was a real event and the central place of work of the congress.
It was a businesslike and realistic list of everything that a Russian emigrant can, and therefore should, do in the struggle for Russia against Bolshevism, indicating methods and methods of work; all this was expressed in such a clear and convincing form, with such knowledge of the political situation and political psychology, with such real consideration of the capabilities of our enemy and our own, that the congress decided on the need to print Ilyin’s speech as a general instruction for every Russian foreign activist - that and it was carried out - the result of this speech is the small green brochure “THESES OF RUSSIAN FOREIGN ACTIVISM”, which I have already spoken about.
It is very difficult to draw an exact line between Ilyin’s political activities and his scientific and lecturing activities. His lectures about Russia, about the revolution, about Bolshevism and communism are also a scientific contribution to the study of history and modernity, they are also propaganda for Russia, for the TRUTH about Russia, i.e. undoubtedly political activism. Educating foreigners about Russian problems is undoubtedly the most vital Russian national political work. It is difficult to take into account and evaluate it, since it cannot be measured or calculated, but Ivan Aleksandrovich’s authority and erudition, experience and sincerity in persuading an interlocutor or audience are so significant and impressive that we, witnesses of his activity, have only one thing left to say: ILYIN DID EVERYTHING HE COULD. AND WHAT HE COULD DO. HE DID THE BEST WAY.
I will limit myself to what has been said about ILYIN’s political activities - much more could be said, but this would overly expand the scope of my message, and I don’t have comprehensive information about everything - and maybe the time has not yet come to talk about everything.
________
Remembering the appearance of Ivan Aleksandrovich ILYIN, who left us for another world, it seems to me correct to say the following, if I try to formulate my impressions as briefly and concisely as possible: Intelligence, power of judgment, oratorical talent, the ability to see the Main thing in everything, etc., etc. etc., are God's gifts with which ILYIN, in the order of GRACE, was ROYALLY gifted.
But what causes sincere admiration is the red thread running through his entire life: the desire to use these gifts of God in the BEST WAY and the ABILITY TO APPLY these gifts
in substantive service to the REALLY MAIN, SACRED AND OBVIOUSLY WORTHY.
Hence that sense of responsibility, this composure and the resulting HIGH DEMANDING - demandingness not only towards OTHERS, but also towards YOURSELF - which you could not help but feel even from the very first times of your acquaintance with Ivan Alexandrovich.
This high exactingness manifests itself in ILYIN as a writer and speaker, especially in the field of LANGUAGE CULTURE, an area in which ILYIN was an exceptional master. And not only in the sense of amazing mastery of all the obvious and hidden riches of language, but also in the sense of investing new, insightful meaning into already existing words, as well as in the sense of reviving concepts and words that have lost their original, primordial and subject-rich meaning.
The word “OBJECT”, but not in its narrow material-utilitarian meaning, - with its derivatives; “objective”, “non-objective”, “non-objective”, “objectified”, “not-pre-objectified”;
“OBVIOUSITY”, as an act and as a result of insight with a holistic perception (and not a partial mental-rational one);
“THE MAIN” with a capital letter, and accordingly “according to the Main”, “from the Main”, “and the Main”;
“ACT”, as a style, as an individual manner, if you want, as an individually unique way of spiritual doing, spiritual perception, spiritual response, in its varieties of “religious act”, “creative act”, “artistic act”, “national act” etc.
“SUBJECTIVE”, “OBVIOUSLY”, “MAIN”, “ACT” - these are a few of the newly rich, and in their original content, animated words that ILYIN introduces into the mandatory composition of the updated terminology; Among the followers of Ilyin, these words, along with other terms, have already become quite common. And we can safely say that after ILYIN, not only scientific and philosophical, but also genuine cultural terminology in general will not be able to pass by these concepts and simply cannot do without them.
ILYIN is characterized by precise elaboration of texts to the end and, I would say, creative penetration into the very living fabric of language - hence the usage of words, often for the first time, in a new way, revealing the true meaning and origin of the meaning of words, hence the imagery, accuracy, accuracy, expressiveness of his speech.
We find the same culture of language in his works in German.
Composure, a sense of responsibility and self-demandingness made it possible for Ilya to CARRY OUT his LIFE PLAN, TO FULFILL THAT Oath that he took to himself in Soviet prisons - to RELENTLY FOLLOW THE PATH OF RESEARCH, which he talks about in the article “WHAT SHOULD WE DO?” (In the 16th collection “THE DAY OF THE RUSSIAN CHILD”, 1949):
“After what happened in Russia... we will have to revise and update ALL THE FUNDAMENTALS OF OUR CULTURE... All, all soul-
The spiritual culture, in all its sacred foundations, requires from us RESEARCH AND NEW NATIONAL-RUSSIAN ANSWERS.”
The extraordinary power of judgment of his mind, his highly cultivated consciousness of responsibility, together with this strict demands on himself, completely excluded ILYIN from claiming to be a know-it-all. The principle of objectivity, professed and preached by Ilyin, strictly defined in his mind the area of his own competence, outside of which he strictly refrained from the temptation of amateurism and amateurism. Hence - HUMILITY inherent only in truly great thinkers and scientists - truly insightful knowledge knows about the boundaries and limits of knowledge in general and about the limits of its own competence. Therefore, nothing outraged Ilyin more than a fiction hiding behind a scientific form or philosophical terminology.
ILYIN never allowed himself to touch upon the area of pure theology, neither in his works, nor in lectures, nor in private conversations. Many times I heard, in different settings and in the presence of a variety of people, Ilyin say: “in theology I am a student, and my teacher is a knowledgeable clergyman, and even more so, of course, an enlightened lord and hierarch.” “Here I ask and inquire, and they explain to me and teach me.”
Being an irreconcilable enemy of any party spirit, the dangers of which he repeatedly spoke out both in print and orally, and castigating any unsubstantive and unfounded division of emigration along often completely insignificant and in any case irrelevant grounds, ILYIN, of course, himself never belonged to any party.
All those who published his works were involuntarily somehow inclined to consider ILYIN “one of their own.” This is both true and false. ILYIN was nobody's business, since the matter concerned the narrow interests of one or another Russian organization, and no one, of course, has the right to ascribe to themselves a monopoly on ILYIN. But he belonged to everyone who sincerely, honestly and lovingly strived to do and did the real Russian Cause. But to the man ILYIN, the Russian All-Military Union was still closer than others and dearer to his heart and remained to the end, as a cadre of White Knights who were the first to raise the sword of resistance against the enslavers of Russia. This spiritual sympathy received its personal reinforcement in the long-term friendship of Ivan Alexandrovich with General Alexei Alexandrovich LAMPE, during the entire 15-year (1923-1938) joint residence in Berlin.
Trying to bring to your attention a few impressions of his appearance from communication with Ivan Aleksandrovich, it seems significant to me to also point out the amazing and, in general, quite rare combination of ILYIN’s ability to AT THE SAME TIME the ability to think abstractly, to what is commonly called philosophical abstractions , and to concrete practical insight into the most pressing requirements of reality. That is why the marks are so real, so vividly concrete and practically valuable are his instructions not only on WHAT to do, but also on HOW to act.
But everything I said about ILYIN characterizes him in his work and writings, in his office as a scientist, in the academic department, at public appearances, at congresses, meetings, lectures, and conversations. It is necessary, however, to say a few words about what Ivan Aleksandrovich ILYIN is like outside of all this.
A true CULTURE OF RECREATION is what dominates Ivan Aleksandrovich’s hours and days of leisure. He often spoke to us a lot about the healing need to let go of tension and overexertion, half-jokingly using the German word “ Entspannung "(Entspannung: literally - letting go or letting go of tension, discharge) - and, quite jokingly, he liked to pronounce it in the Russian way: “Entspannunging.”
In his rest, in this Entspannung, he loved and recognized childish playful playfulness, contemplative and meditative relaxation, and an artistic and savory perception of the creations of all types of art, but NEVER allowed his leisure hours to be filled with vulgar contents and vulgar entertainment.
He loved jokes and puns and was a great master and artist in this area, reminiscent of Pushkin’s cheerful appearance. I remember a whole humorous poem he wrote about a young Russian figure called “How Stupid Saved Russia.” This comic poem was a kind of masterpiece of political humor, psychological analysis and literary and poetic skill, and aroused sincere admiration in our circle for its graceful playfulness and unparalleled humor.
I also mentioned contemplative meditative rest. I am now still happy to remember the hours of relaxation spent together with Ivan Aleksandrovich - either during a trip to Potsdam on a boat along the picturesque surrounding lakes and rivers of Berlin, - or while walking among the forests surrounding Gauting near Munich, - or in contemplation of Lago Maggiore with heights of Madopna del Sasso above Locarno. How charmingly Ivan Alexandrovich could talk about what he contemplated, about what was observed. How highly he valued in OTHERS the joy and skill of contemplating beauty, how soulfully he understood SELF-SUFFICIENT MEDITATION, which does not necessarily require creative re-imagination, meditation on the beautiful that reveals itself to the contemplating gaze.
Ivan Alexandrovich loved music very much and was a great connoisseur of this art. He especially loved to analyze the scores of Russian operas, lovingly showing his interlocutor on the piano the beauty of this or that modulation, this or that harmony.
In moments of rest, even in moments of childishly playful “Entspannungovaii”, as we in Riga, following Ivan Aleksandrovich, are accustomed to expressing ourselves, communicating with Ilyin, surrendering himself to a restful lightness and being with him in a released-discharged state, NEVER ceased to feel high LEVEL of such relaxation, RANK of such recreation or entertainment. And besides, this never caused a painful or still-to-some-degree-forced, and therefore not-sincere, not-free feeling of “forced” gaiety. No! consciousness of this level and rank has always been joyful, objectively light, festive and
At the same time, SHOWING that “Entspannung”, that rest should not consist at all in “GOING FROM THE BOTTOM” to simple elementary, worthy UNOBJECTIVE pleasures and pleasures, and certainly not at all to vulgar entertainment, but in CHANGE AND TEMPORARY RESTRUCTURING OF YOUR SPIRITUAL AND SOUL ACT. In other words, while remaining at a high level and maintaining the rank of your spirituality, temporarily change the direction - your intention, your attention - and rejoice - well, at least what Ivan Aleksandrovich writes about in his most wonderful and delightful sketch-contemplation “ Die Seifenblase ", rejoice in the innocent beauty of the rainbow play of colors of a large soap bubble.
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If we consider the fact of emigration not only as a national tragedy and cultural catastrophe, but as a DUTY, as a national duty to USE the opportunity to SERVE RUSSIA IN FREEDOM by applying all our strength, understanding and will, then it must be said that the number of those who did SO MUCH and SO MUCH in fulfillment of their national duty was small, hardly anyone Such a rich national heritage was left behind by Ivan Aleksandrovich ILYIN, who passed on to another world:
And besides, ILYIN had objective service to the Main One - both subjectively and objectively, both qualitatively and quantitatively - permeated with the desire to devote oneself to the end of a perfect and sacred goal, the creation of the perfect, actually-true and-in-fact- necessary-Main.
QUALITATIVELY - his works and his activities have always been at the rarely achieved heights of subject knowledge, sophisticated evidence and spiritual rank.
QUANTITATIVELY - if we talk only about written works - this is a whole library-treasury of national thought and wisdom, a university or academy of spiritual-religious-national-patriotic knowledge, insights and evidence.
SUBJECTIVE - all the years of stay in exile, right up to the last years of life, when painful illnesses were already eroding and weakening health, all life in exile (32 years) was continuous service, uninterrupted work on labors, bearing them, lectures, courses, reports, seminars , travelling, participation in congresses and countless conversations, instructions and teachings.
OBJECTIVELY - the legacy of Ivan Aleksandrovich ILYIN is so great and significant, so fertilizingly ideologically rich and fundamentally affecting everything, that an exhaustive and objectively fair assessment of his life’s service would require a real NATIONAL SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. I believe and clearly foresee what research study of heritage is
Ivan Aleksandrovich ILYIN will turn out to be simply an inevitable necessity, especially in a liberated and resurgent Russia.
But the national emigration currently has another responsibility.
Without knowing the timing of when the revival and liberation of our Motherland will come, we - Russian patriotic emigrants - are obliged to do everything so that the legacy left by ILYIN is not only preserved for Russia in the form of the printed word in the form of books, brochures that already exist or are yet to be published , magazines, but a LIVING FIRE would burn within OURSELVES and would expand both in depth and breadth, IN ORDER TO BRING IT TO us or to our children in a liberated Russia; and the longer our stay abroad drags on, the more responsible this responsibility becomes. ILYIN in his autobiographical article “WHAT SHOULD WE DO?” he writes with bitterness that “I have no Russian publishers. And my only consolation is this: if Russia needs my books, then the Lord will save them from destruction; and if neither God nor Russia need them, then I myself do not need them. For I live ONLY FOR RUSSIA.”
I am deeply confident that the Lord will protect ILYIN’s legacy from destruction. But “Trust in God, but don’t make a mistake yourself!” With our hands, our perseverance, our means, our skill, our passion and love, we must preserve Ilyin’s legacy, and the Lord will then bless the fulfillment of this duty of ours.
ILYIN's legacy, in all its abundance, in all its diversity, represents for us, as it were, one single GREAT PATRIOTIC TESTAMENT.
SUBJECT SERVE THE MAIN, GOD AND RUSSIA.
In the article “WHAT SHOULD WE DO?” ILYIN writes that salvation and revival are in our NATIONAL SPIRITUAL RENEWAL, for “the essence of our national catastrophe is SPIRITUAL - in the fateful years of the First World War, the Russian masses did not find the necessary spiritual forces within themselves, these forces were found only in the heroic minority of Russian people , and the corrupted majority was seduced about everything - about faith, about the church, about the homeland, about fidelity, about honor and about conscience, and followed the seducers. The political and economic REASONS that led to this disaster are indisputable. But its ESSENCE is much deeper than politics and economics: it is SPIRITUAL... AND WE SHOULD NOT, WE MUST NOT SIMPLIFY and REDUCE the problem of our national revival.”
ILYIN therefore never ceased to call on the Russian people to fully understand that SALVATION is not in one bare replacement of communism with one or another regime, but in our SPIRITUAL RENEWAL. This, God forbid, does not mean a renunciation of activism, on the contrary. But active struggle must be conducted based on this attitude.
And therefore:
|
not amateurism |
And the objectivity |
|
not a fantasy, not a fiction |
And the obviousness |
|
not permissiveness |
And legal consciousness |
|
not "anything" |
A Main , |
|
not vulgar |
And the sacred |
|
not appearing |
And the service |
|
not sentimentality |
And love, sometimes, if necessary, is formidable, strong-willed, |
|
not just an impulse |
And the character |
|
not what I like |
And what is REALLY GOOD, |
|
not “with anyone, at least with the devil” |
But only with GOD and with those who are with GOD. |
and ultimately
|
not lack of ideas |
But the sacred idea of the MOTHERLAND. |
__________
Speaking about the patriotic legacy left to us by ILYIN, I allow myself to end my message with the words of Ivan Aleksandrovich ILYIN, taken from his first article in the first issue of “RUSSIAN BELL”:
“The first thing Russia needs is a religious and patriotic, national and state idea... We must see an IDEAL Russia, our Motherland, in its possible and future PERFECTION. To see with the sacred dream of our heart and the fire of our living will. And seeing her like this and seeing her like this, create those forces that will realize her...
“This sacred idea of the Motherland shows us the goal of all our struggle and all our service. And not only for the immediate future, but for centuries to come. It embraces all the forces of Russia and all its achievements: from faith to everyday life... from song to work... from spirit to nature... from language to territory... from heroism to institutions...
“This is the idea of a great-power Russia, erected on the foundations of a truly Christian, strong-willed and NOBLE statehood.
“This is the idea: a Motherland serving God and therefore sacred.
“In this idea, Christian and merciful and at the same time state and TERRIBLE, our entire goal, our future, our greatness are expressed. She rejects the slave and the boor; and approves brother and knight. She teaches to honor the divine in man; and therefore requires spiritual education for him. It gives a person freedom for the spirit, for love and for creativity; but does not give him freedom for lies, for hatred and for villainy. She teaches to accept law, law and discipline with good will; and demands that we earn our freedom by spiritual self-control. It teaches how to build a state not on profit and arbitrariness, but on respect and trust; not on ambition and
Conspiracy, but on discipline and devotion to the Leader for conscience. And therefore she calls us to cultivate in ourselves the “MONARCHIC foundations of legal consciousness”...
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PREFACE ABOUT READING
Every writer worries about how they will be read? Will they understand? Will they see what he wanted to prove? Will they feel what his heart loved? And who will be his reader? So much depends on this... And above all, will he have the desired, spiritual meeting with those distant but close ones for whom he secretly wrote his book?
The fact is that not all readers master the art of reading: the eyes run over the letters, “some word always comes out of the letters” (Gogol) and every word “means” something; words and their meanings are connected with each other, and the reader imagines something - “second-hand”, vague, sometimes incomprehensible, sometimes pleasantly fleeting, which is quickly carried away into the forgotten past... And this is called “reading”. A mechanism without a spirit. Irresponsible fun. "Innocent" fun. But in reality it is a culture of superficiality and a stream of vulgarity.
No writer desires such “reading” for himself. We all fear such “readers.” For real reading happens completely differently and has a completely different meaning...
How did what you wrote come into being, how did it mature?
Someone lived, loved, suffered and enjoyed; observed, thought, wished, hoped and despaired. And he wanted to tell us about something that is important for all of us, that we need to spiritually see, feel, think through and assimilate. It means something significant about something important and precious. And so he began to look for the right images, clear, deep thoughts and precise words. It was not easy, it was not always possible and not immediately. A responsible writer nurtures his book for a long time: for years, sometimes for his whole life; does not part with her either day or night; gives her his best strength, his inspired hours; “sick” with its theme and “healed” by writing. He searches at once for truth, and beauty, and “precision” (in Pushkin’s words), and the right style, and the right rhythm, and all in order to tell, without distorting, the vision of his heart... And finally, the work is ready. Last viewing with a stern, watchful eye; the last corrections - and the book breaks away and goes to the reader, unknown, distant, maybe frivolous and capricious, maybe hostile and picky... It leaves - without him, without the author. He turns himself off and leaves the reader “alone” with his book.
And so we, the readers, take on this book. Before us is an accumulation of feelings, comprehensions, ideas, images, volitional discharges, instructions, calls, evidence, a whole building of the spirit, which is given to us in secret, as if using a code. It is hidden behind these black dead hooks, behind these well-known, faded words, behind these publicly available images, behind these abstract concepts. Life, brightness, strength, meaning, spirit - the reader himself must get from them. He must recreate in himself what the author created; and if he doesn’t know how, doesn’t want and won’t do it, then no one will do it for him: his “reading” will be in vain and the book will pass him by. People usually think that reading is accessible to anyone who is literate... But, unfortunately, this is not the case at all. Why?
Because a real reader gives the book his free attention, all his spiritual abilities and his ability to evoke in himself that correct spiritual attitude that is necessary for understanding this book. Real reading is not a matter of running printed words through the mind; it requires concentrated attention and a strong desire to truly hear the author's voice. Reason alone and empty imagination are not enough for reading. Necessary feel with the heart and contemplate from the heart. You must experience passion - with a passionate feeling; one must survive drama and tragedy with a living will; in a tender lyrical poem one must listen to all the sighs, tremble with all the tenderness, look into all the depths and distances; and a great idea can require no more and no less than the whole man.
This means that the reader is called upon to faithfully reproduce within himself the emotional and spiritual act of the writer, to live by this act and trustingly surrender to it. Only under this condition will the desired meeting between both take place and the reader will discover what is important and significant about what the writer was worried about and what he worked on. True reading is a kind of artistic clairvoyance, which is called and capable of faithfully and fully reproducing the spiritual visions of another person, living in them, enjoying them and being enriched by them. The art of reading conquers loneliness, separation, distance and era. This is the power of the spirit - to revive letters, reveal the perspective of images and meaning behind words, fill the internal “spaces” of the soul, contemplate the intangible, identify with unknown or even dead people and, together with the author, artistically and mentally comprehend the essence of the God-created world.
Reading means search and find: for the reader, as it were, is looking for a spiritual treasure hidden by the writer, wanting to find it in its entirety and appropriate it for himself. This is a creative process, because to reproduce means to create. This is a struggle for a spiritual meeting: this is free association with the one who first acquired and buried the sought-after treasure. And to those who have never achieved this or experienced this, it will always seem that the “impossible” is being demanded of him.
The art of reading must be acquired and developed in oneself. Reading must be in-depth; it must become creative and contemplative. And only then will its spiritual value and its soul-forming power be revealed to all of us. Then we will understand what should be read and what should not be read, for there is reading that deepens a person’s soul and builds his character, and there is reading that corrupts and weakens.
By reading you can recognize and identify a person. For each of us is what he reads; and every man is how he reads; and we all become imperceptibly what we read from what we read - like a bouquet of flowers we collected in reading...
The book for which I am writing this preface is born in the heart, written from the heart and speaks of heartfelt singing. Therefore, it cannot be understood in a heartless reading. But I believe that it will find its readers who will understand it correctly and see that it was written for Russians about Russia.
