Projects and books. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky: posthumous roll call

Dostoevsky was for military intervention in the Balkans, while Tolstoy opposed it. The arguments they put forward are surprisingly relevant to our wars today.

To begin with, a little. In the summer of 1875, Orthodox Christians in Herzegovina rebelled against their Ottoman overlords. In 1876, the Slavic principalities of Serbia and Montenegro declared war on Turkey, and an uprising began in Bulgaria. Russia wholeheartedly supported the Serbian struggle. The Russians sent money and medicine to the Orthodox Slavs, and many Russian volunteers went to the Balkans to fight. Russian newspapers began to write about the Serbian struggle, as evidenced by the conversation between Koznyshev and Prince Shcherbatsky in Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina:

“All the most diverse parties in the world of the intelligentsia, so hostile before, have all merged into one. All discord is over, all public bodies are saying the same thing, everyone has sensed an elemental force that has captured them and is carrying them in one direction.”

“Yes, the newspapers all say the same thing,” said the prince. - This is true. Yes, it’s all the same, like frogs before a thunderstorm. Because of them, you don’t hear anything.”

From the summer of 1876 to the spring of 1877, there was a lively public debate in Russia about whether the country should intervene in the conflict in the Balkans. Fyodor Dostoevsky passionately advocated military intervention for humanitarian and patriotic reasons. Leo Tolstoy, although not yet a convinced pacifist at that time, did not see the point in Russia’s participation.

Dostoevsky spoke in unison with the prevailing mood in society. His "Writer's Diary", published in parts around the same time, often reminds me of the US "war blogs" of the 2002-03 period. It is simply amazing how Dostoevsky's various arguments and motivations in support of the war merge together and reinforce each other. His most commendable impulse was his keen empathy for suffering, his sense of a powerful humane need to put an end to the atrocities of the Turks. But he immediately moves easily from descriptions of terrible atrocities to fantasies about the Russian capture of Constantinople, which was the center of Orthodoxy. Dostoevsky admires Russian heroes and speaks with contempt of foreign diplomats, condemning those who “talk about the damage that war can cause in an economic sense.” He loftily expresses his confidence that the Serbs will welcome Russian intervention, and that those who will not are an unrepresentative class living in isolation from their own people. He has no sense that both sides are committing atrocities.

Dostoevsky feels that the national malaise in Russia has been overcome, that the level of popular support for the Serbs proves the spiritual superiority of the people over the intelligentsia. He is angry at those Russians who have sympathy for the Turks. He is absolutely confident of victory and that history is on his side. He gives advice and suggestions on what should be done after a complete defeat Ottoman Empire. He is convinced of the exclusivity of his own country, that the war movement “in its sacrificial nature and selflessness, in its devout religious thirst for suffering for a just cause, has almost no precedent among other nations.” He finds it difficult to believe in the integrity of those who look at it differently. Sometimes he thinks in categories " crusades" and allows himself apocalyptic dreams of decisive war between Christianity and Islam.

The leader of the English opposition, William Gladstone, was shocked by the Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria and believed that England should help expel the Turks from this country. But Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, acting in the spirit of realpolitik, pursued the official British line of an alliance with Turkey against Russia. The fact that Disraeli was a Jew gave Dostoevsky some opportunity to build conspiracy theories.

Meanwhile, Tolstoy was finishing Anna Karenina. After Anna’s suicide, Vronsky goes to war, raising a squadron with his own money. And this is a war not just anywhere, but in Serbia. Katkov's Russian Messenger, which published Tolstoy's extremely popular novel in parts, refused to print the eighth part of it, publishing instead the following note:

“In the previous issue, at the end of the next part of Anna Karenina, it was written “To be continued.” But with the death of the heroine, the novel actually came to an end. The author planned an epilogue of several pages, from which we learn that the distraught and grieving Vronsky went to Serbia as a military volunteer. The other heroes are all alive and well, and only Levin, in his rural solitude, remains hostile to the volunteers and to the Slavophiles. Perhaps the author will add several chapters about this in a special edition of the novel.”

“Vestnik” slyly makes it clear that the hero of the novel, Levin, copied directly from Tolstoy, is not entirely healthy. Anna's suicide in the penultimate issue is not very logical from the point of view of maintaining tension for the reader. But the real problem may have been that the Messenger was campaigning for intervention in the Balkans while Tsar Alexander II continued to waver.

Levin in the eighth part is not so much “hostile” towards the Slavophiles as confused. In conversations with people like Koznyshev, he does not even go for confrontation and does not seek to maintain an argument for a long time. His position - and this is essentially the position of Tolstoy himself - borders on bewilderment at why so many people are so passionately calling for action in a country about which they know little. The same feeling sometimes arises in myself when I hear arguments in favor of our current intervention in the affairs of Libya. Lewin suggests that when people are passionately devoted to some distant cause, rather than devoting themselves to solving problems that exist much closer, the reason for this should be sought in their psychology.

This is similar to Dostoevsky's diagnosis of perceptions. That great amount The arguments in favor of war that the writer gives raise doubts that this is the real reason. Slavoj Žižek makes a similar argument about George Bush and the Iraq War. Dostoevsky in his “Diary of a Writer” states that war is the only way unite the various classes of Russia, which moral duty Russia will take advantage of this chance to conduct an “unprecedented war in defense of the weak and oppressed” and fulfill its world-historical destiny. Where Dostoevsky argues that the most correct answers must be sought in strong emotions and in the belief that the world is ripe for transformation, Tolstoy advocates a dispassionate and common sense solution. Certainly, Political Views Tolstoy is equally a reflection of his own emotional state, his feeling of detachment from the war hysteria reigning around. This detachment may have deepened Tolstoy's sense of identity crisis and created the conditions for his later pacifism.

Tolstoy published the eighth part of Anna Karenina in separate publication and with your own money. After reading it, Dostoevsky became furious. He responded in A Writer's Diary by describing the terrible state of a girl forced to watch her father being flayed alive, and juxtaposing this description with the image of Levin serenely philosophizing on his vast estate. Pacifism requires a person to maintain a certain emotional distance. Dostoevsky bypasses Tolstoy with a direct emotional appeal: how can we stand by and do nothing when such terrible things are happening? Dostoevsky may be right that Tolstoy's privileged lifestyle contributed to this sense of detachment.

By this point in the dispute between the two writers, Russia had officially declared war on Turkey. The war lasted about a year. Cossacks systematically attacked Muslims and Jews, and by 1879, a third of all Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina had either emigrated or been killed. The intriguing aspect of this historical drama is that the war gave rise to the word "jingoism", which originated from a British music hall song:

"We don't want to fight, we don't want to, damn it
We have ships, we have soldiers, we have money.
We've fought a bear before
And while we are real British
The Russians will not take Constantinople."

In that case, the British stayed largely out of the war - although they did send a fleet to Constantinople when the Russian army began to approach that city. And then a Russian-Turkish treaty was signed, according to which most of Russia’s demands were satisfied. Serbia gained independence; self-government was established in Bosnia-Herzegovina; Restrictions for Christians under Turkish rule were reduced. But the united European powers demanded a revision of this treaty, and at the Berlin Congress, Russian conquests were eliminated. The Congress of Berlin allowed Austria-Hungary to occupy Bosnia-Herzegovina. And Britain, following a logic that puzzled all commentators of that time, for some reason captured Cyprus. And in none of these places lasting peace never came.

The more distant consequences of that war were later described by the great Russian prose writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his historical work"Russian Question". Solzhenitsyn notes that there were eight Russian-Turkish wars in total: four in the eighteenth century and four in the nineteenth century. He writes: “Two unfortunate ideas relentlessly tormented and pulled all our rulers in a row: to help-save the Christians of Transcaucasia and to help-save the Orthodox in the Balkans. One can recognize the height of these moral principles, but not to the point of complete loss of state meaning and not to the point of forgetting the needs of one’s own, also Christian, people...”

Solzhenitsyn particularly condemns the war of 1877: “Such a “won” war is worth losing, and it would be cheaper not to start it at all. Russia's military and financial forces were undermined, the public mood was depressed - and it was from here that the era of revolution and terror began and rolled out...”

The main long-term consequence of the Russian-Turkish war is the weakening of both empires until their collapse. The consequences of the humanitarian catastrophe that resulted were more terrible than those that Dostoevsky rightly condemned. Encouraging humanitarian intervention is a worthy cause, but it can result in a lengthy Civil War, a powerful bloodbath, as well as the weakening of the intervening states. Will future historians write that the series of wars in the Arab world at the dawn of the 21st century was one of the key reasons leading to the end of the “American Century”?

The VK publishing house published the book “Leo Tolstoy. The Last Diary. / Igor Volgin. Get away from everyone” (580 p.). For almost a hundred years, the diaries and notebooks L.N. Tolstoy 1910 (including “Diary for Oneself”). The second (and very significant) part of the book is great study Igor Volgin, partly dedicated to Tolstoy’s diaries, but also going beyond the usual commentary. In fact, this is a separate book about Leo Tolstoy, the author of which, analyzing documents, diaries, letters and testimonies of contemporaries, gives the reader the opportunity to look at a Tolstoy who may not have been known to the general public until now. In particular, the chapter “The Long Goodbye” is of great interest, which says about the relationship between two classics of Russian literature - Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. First of all, about what Leo Tolstoy thought about Dostoevsky and his works. With the kind permission of the VK publishing house, we will publish this chapter.

"Shakespeare annoys him"

They had never met in life: although there was a possibility. Having died, the author of “Demons” will never be able to occupy some kind of solid and specific place. He either touches or irritates the author of War and Peace - and sometimes this happens at the same time.

On September 22, 1885, Tolstoy talks with the writer G. Danilevsky, who will not hesitate to tell about this conversation in the Historical Bulletin magazine: “The count spoke most sympathetically about Dostoevsky, recognizing in him an inimitable heart psychologist and a completely independent writer, who has long had independent convictions.” were not forgiven in some layers of literature, just as one German, according to Carlyle, could not forgive the sun for the fact that it was impossible to light a cigar from it at any time.”

The metaphor is expressive and flattering in relation to Dostoevsky, although it is said quite generally about the writer himself. His independence as a writer is noted - a trait that always impressed Tolstoy.

In February 1910, he came across an article in “Russian Antiquity” about Dostoevsky’s time in hard labor - and suddenly remembered “how much interesting material is contained in Dostoevsky’s works and how little he borrowed from there” for his collection “For Every Day.” But he places Dostoevsky next to Gogol and “oddly enough” Pushkin - writers whom he especially values. However, value– does not yet mean love.

Having learned that Dostoevsky is V. Bulgakov’s favorite writer, Tolstoy exclaims: “That’s how it is! In vain, in vain! Everything is so confused for him - both religion and politics... But, of course, this real writer, with deep searching, not like some Goncharov.”

Chekhov told Bunin that he especially admired Tolstoy’s contempt for all other writers, “or better to say, that he considers all of us, other writers, to be absolutely nothing.” Tolstoy sometimes praises Maupassant, Kuprin, and Chekhov. And here Shakespeare he's annoyed.

Goncharov, of course, to Tolstoy Same not a rival. With the author of “The Idiot” the situation is not so simple.

He repeats several times that he would like to include Dostoevsky in the volume of world thinkers. However, the thoughts written out for this purpose by Bulgakov “didn’t particularly appeal to him. “Not strong, vague,” he said. “And then some kind of mystical attitude... Christ, Christ!..” Give it to him exactly thoughts- in their, so to speak, pure, unadulterated form; “artistic” does not seem to be taken into account here. (Although wasn’t he the one who insisted that in order to express the idea of ​​“Anna Karenina” in words, “I had to write the same novel that I wrote”?) He believes that thought is the alpha and omega of everything.

Once (in 1902), in response to Sofia Andreevna’s remark that the article “On Religion” she rewrote was “a very logical work, but does not captivate and does not elevate the soul,” he vividly objected: “... All that is needed is for it to be logical, all poetry and sublime obscurity only confuses understanding.”

He does not like Mystic Dostoevsky (“Christ, Christ!”), by which, obviously, he means all the same “poetry and sublime obscurity.” For him, Christ is just an ideologist, a teacher, devoid of any mystical status. Did he read Dostoevsky’s famous letter to N.D. Fonvizina, written in 1854, immediately after leaving hard labor? This question has never arisen. But, I think, it would be difficult for Tolstoy not to notice this text: it was published in the collection “Help to the Starving” (1892), which included his own article “On means of helping the population affected by crop failure.” “I will tell you about myself,” writes Dostoevsky, “that I am a child of the century, a child of disbelief and doubt to this day and even (I know this) to the grave. What terrible torment this thirst to believe has cost me and is now costing me, which is the stronger in my soul, the more contrary arguments I have. And yet, God sometimes sends me moments in which I am completely calm; in these moments I love and find that I am loved by others, and in such moments I formed within myself a symbol of faith in which everything is clear and sacred to me. This symbol is very simple, here it is: to believe that there is nothing more beautiful, deeper, sweeter, more intelligent, more courageous and more perfect than Christ, and not only is there not, but with jealous love I tell myself that it cannot be. Moreover, if someone could prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, and really if the truth were outside of Christ, then I would rather remain with Christ than with the truth.”

Dostoevsky is a “child of unbelief”: he does not hide the fact that his faith, as he would later say, passed “through the crucible of doubts.” Actually, Tolstoy also went through the same crucible - although with a completely different result. And they both admit highest value one. True, here one can detect an almost imperceptible distinction.

For Tolstoy, the truth is also in Christ. But - in Christ, who convinces not by miracle and not even " personal example”, but by irresistible logical correctness. Tolstoy would prefer to remain with such a Christ: right, but not resurrected. He does not at all have a purely personal, intimate perception of Jesus of Nazareth. He rather relates to him as a colleague. It is not without reason that back in 1855, at the age of 26, he wrote in his diary: “Yesterday, a conversation about God and faith led me to a great, enormous thought, the implementation of which I feel capable of devoting my life to. - This thought is the basis new religion“, corresponding to the development of humanity, the religion of Christ, but purified from faith and mystery, a practical religion that does not promise future bliss, but gives bliss on earth.” It is significant that after more than half a century this eudaimonic project has not undergone significant changes. “Tolstoy’s record,” notes a modern researcher, “strikingly resembles the plan of the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov.” It is not difficult to imagine how the author of the said novel would have reacted to this Tolstoy idea. Even V. Nabokov, who does not like Dostoevsky, but who adores Tolstoy, will express himself this way about the religious views of his idol: “a cross between the Buddhist teaching about nirvana and the New Testament.”

Noting in his diary of 1860 that he had “the idea of ​​writing a materialistic gospel, the life of a materialist Christ,” Tolstoy, in fact, fulfilled this wonderful intention, creating many years later his own “combined” translation of the New Testament. The enormous work (for which ancient Greek and Hebrew were learned) did not produce the expected effect: even among the proselytes of Tolstoyism, there were few people willing to delve into the “materialistic” version of Christianity. Not accepting Jesus as God, Tolstoy, however, does not really like him as a person.

Both, each in their own way, spent their entire lives searching for truth.

I would like to illuminate the issue of the relationship between secular and spiritual education through the prism of the creativity and phenomenon of religious faith of two outstanding representatives of Russian classical literature: writers F. M. Dostoevsky and L. N. Tolstoy, who celebrated his 185th birthday last year.
Since the study of literature is part of compulsory program teaching secondary schools, it is very important from what perspective this or that topic is presented. After all, it is certain that artistic heritage and the religious and philosophical worldview of these two authors had at one time and continue to have a significant influence on the spiritual formation of the individual.

In search of truth

Dostoevsky and Tolstoy were contemporaries living in the same country. They knew about each other, but never met. However, both, each in their own way, spent their entire lives searching for truth. Tolstoy’s religious quests led to the fact that he, according to the apt remark of the Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod, K. Pobedonostsev, became “a fanatic of his own teaching,” the creator of another false Christian heresy. The works of F. M. Dostoevsky still help to comprehend the main secrets of the existence of God and man. In my life I have met many people who do not like to read Dostoevsky. This is understandable: too much undisguised, frank, sometimes quite painful truth about a person is revealed to us in his novels. And this truth is not only impressive, it makes us think deeply about the most important question that each of us must decide for ourselves, positively or negatively. " Main question, with which I have been tormented consciously and unconsciously all my life - the existence of God...” - Dostoevsky would write as a mature man. It may seem strange, but last month Before his death, according to the recollections of eyewitnesses, the genius of world literature L. Tolstoy reread Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. Wasn’t the classic looking for an answer in the works of another?

Tolstoy regretted that he was never able to meet Dostoevsky, because he considered him perhaps the only serious author in Russian literature with whom he would really like to talk about faith and God. Not particularly appreciating Fyodor Mikhailovich as a writer, Leo Tolstoy saw in him a religious thinker capable of significantly influencing the mind and soul of a person through his works.

Dostoevsky’s daughter, in her memoirs, cites the story of the then Metropolitan of St. Petersburg, who wished to attend the reading of the Psalter for the deceased writer in the Church of the Holy Spirit of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. After spending part of the night in the church, the Metropolitan watched the students, who, on their knees, all the time took turns reading psalms at the tomb of the late Dostoevsky. “I have never heard such reading of psalms! - he recalls. “The students read them with voices trembling with excitement, putting their souls into every word they uttered. Which one magical power did Dostoevsky have the power to turn them back to God in this way?” Researcher of Dostoevsky’s work Tatyana Kasatkina writes that “...according to the testimony of many Orthodox priests, in the 70s of the 20th century, when the third generation of atheists was growing up in Russia, and their grandchildren were being raised by grandmothers - former Komsomol members, and it seemed that young people were completely lost to the Church, suddenly young people in large numbers began to be baptized and become church members. When the priests asked them, “What brought you to church?” - many answered: “I read Dostoevsky.” That is why in Soviet times literary critics the author of The Brothers Karamazov was not favored and his works were not very willingly included in the school curriculum. And if they were included, then the emphasis was more on the rebellious tendencies of Raskolnikov and Ivan Karamazov, and not on the Christian virtues of Elder Zosima.

Why does it happen that the works of one lead people to God, and the works of another lead people away from Him?

Creative dominants

The creative dominants of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy are different. That is why the result is different. Tolstoy's religious and philosophical approach is rational, Dostoevsky's is irrational. The author of War and Peace lived his whole life with a proud desire to explain everything in his own way; author of The Brothers Karamazov - a thirst for faith. Back in 1855, at the age of 26, Leo Tolstoy wrote in his diary: “The conversation about the divine and faith brought me to a great, enormous thought, the implementation of which I feel capable of devoting my life to. This thought is the foundation of a new religion, corresponding to the development of humanity, the religion of Christ, but purified from faith and mystery, a practical religion that does not promise future bliss, but gives bliss on earth.” That is why one saw in Christ only an ideologist and teacher, and the other saw the Truth: “...If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth, and it really were that the truth is outside of Christ, then I would rather remain with Christ than with the truth.” . This philosophical credo of Dostoevsky found its confirmation and development in his literary works.

Tolstoy's rational “religion without faith” found its development in the ideology of Theosophy and the modern New Age movement, where everything is mainly built on pantheistic monism. Dostoevsky was always attracted by the sincere faith in Christ, which he saw among the simple Russian people. Tolstoy believed that people did not understand the Gospel and Christianity as they should. By the way, this approach of Tolstoy is very prophetically depicted in many episodes of some of Dostoevsky’s novels. Everyone famous hero Alyosha Karamazov conveys to Kolya Krasotkin the opinion of a German who lived in Russia: “Show a Russian schoolchild a map of the starry sky, which he had no idea about until now, and tomorrow he will return this entire map corrected.” “No knowledge and selfless conceit - that’s what the German wanted to say about the Russian schoolboy,” says Alyosha. Against the background of such a “revision of the universe,” the self-confident author of “A Study of Dogmatic Theology,” Leo Tolstoy, really looks like a schoolboy. In 1860, Tolstoy came up with the idea of ​​writing a “materialistic Gospel” (a distant prototype of the code of the builder of communism). Many years later, he would realize his intention by creating his own translation of the New Testament, which, however, would not make an impression even on the followers of the Tolstoyan heresy. There was no one willing to delve into the materialistic ravings of the great genius.

Another hero of Dostoevsky’s novel “Demons” is the atheist Stepan Verkhovensky, who, like Leo Tolstoy, for the sake of a “great idea”, leaving a comfortable life, embarks on his last wandering, also obsessed with the thought of “presenting his Gospel to the people.” The answer to the question of how the revision of the gospel truths and Christian values ​​might end can again be found in the works of Dostoevsky. He is interested not so much in life in its sensory-tangible manifestations (although partly this too), but in the metaphysics of life. Here the writer does not strive for external verisimilitude: for him, the “ultimate truth” is more important.

The idea “if there is no God, then everything is permitted” is not new in the novels of Dostoevsky, who does not imagine morality outside of Christ, outside of religious consciousness. However, one of the heroes of the novel “Demons” goes to its logical conclusion in this idea, asserting what none of the consistent atheists dared to do: “If there is no God, then I am God myself!” Using evangelical symbolism, the hero of the novel Kirillov seems to make just a formal rearrangement of parts of the word, but it contains the core of his idea: “He will come, and his name is Man-God.”
Scripture tells us about the God-man - Jesus Christ. And we are deified in Him to the extent that we are faithful and follow Him. But here it is not the eternal God who acquires human flesh, but, on the contrary, having rejected Christ, the “old false God,” who is “the pain of the fear of death,” man himself becomes an omnipotent and absolutely free God. It is then that everyone will know that “they are good” because they are free, and when everyone becomes happy, the world will be “completed”, and “there will be no more time”, and the person will even be reborn physically: “Now a person is not yet that person. There will be a new person, happy and proud.”

But the creation of not only a new person, but also a whole new, chosen race with superpowers is one of the main tasks of modern occult and near-occult teachings (suffice it to recall Hitler’s organization “Ananerbe” with its attempts to penetrate Shambhala to obtain sacred knowledge and super-destructive weapons).

It should be noted that this idea of ​​Kirillov (one of the heroes of the novel “Demons”) turned out to be one of the most attractive and fruitful for development philosophical literature And philosophical thought late XIX – early XX centuries. F. Nietzsche also used it in his own way, and the writer A. Camus largely based his version of existentialism on it, and even in early work M. Gorky, uncompromising ideological opponent Dostoevsky, Kirill’s programmatic ideas about a new, free, happy and proud Man are clearly visible (the coincidence of the epithets “new man”, “happy and proud man"by Kirillov and "Man - it sounds proudly" by M. Gorky). So that the last comparison does not look far-fetched, we should also cite V. G. Korolenko’s review of Gorky’s poem “Man”: “Mr. Gorky’s man, as far as one can discern his features, is precisely the Nietzschean “superman”; Here he goes “free, proud, far ahead of people... he is higher than life...”

It is no coincidence that the novel is called “Demons.” All these Verkhovenskys, Kirillovs, Shigalevs (the heroes of the novel) are trying to “arrange” future happiness for people, and no one asks the people themselves whether they need this very “happiness”? After all, indeed, people are just “material”, “a trembling creature”, and they “have the right”. Here it is appropriate to recall the slogan nailed to the gates of the Gulag: “Let us drive humanity into happiness with the iron fist of the dictatorship of the proletariat.”

Tormented by God

Through the mouth of one of his negative heroes, Dostoevsky says: “...God has tormented me all my life.” This painful question of “the existence or non-existence of God” is obvious to many, for if He does not exist, then “everything will be allowed to man.” And now demons enter the Russian people. The writer’s prophecy sounded long before 1917. This prophecy reeked of tragedy. After all, evil in any of its forms is life in emptiness, it is an imitation of life, a counterfeit of it. It's like shavings curled around emptiness. After all, evil is not existential, it has no real nature, it is only back side truth and truth. The devil can only be an imitator of life, love and happiness. After all, true happiness is participation, the coincidence of parts: my part and God’s part; only then is a person truly happy. It is in the words of the prayer that the secret of such participation is contained: “Thy will be done.”

The secret of false happiness is contained in the proud: “Not Your will, but mine be done.” Therefore, the devil can only be an imitator of life, for evil is a paradoxical existence in the non-existent, in what in the Jewish tradition is called “Malchut”. Evil therefore arises as we move away from God. Just as going into the shadows no longer provides an excess of light and warmth, and going into the basement completely hides this light from us, so moving away from the Creator increases sin in us and at the same time makes us thirst for genuine truth and light.

Stavrogin's face, central character“Demons” not only resembled a mask, but, in essence, was a mask. The right word here is “personality.” Stavrogin himself is not there, because he is possessed by the spirit of non-existence, and he himself knows that he does not exist, and hence all his torment, all the strangeness of his behavior, these surprises and eccentricities, with which he seems to want to dissuade himself of his non-existence, as well as that the death that he inevitably and inexorably brings to the creatures associated with him. A “legion” lives in it. How is such a rape of the free human spirit, the image and likeness of God, possible? What is this obsession, this black grace of demon possession? Doesn’t this question come into contact with another question, namely, how the healing, saving, regenerating and liberating grace of God works; How is redemption and salvation possible? And here we come to the deepest mystery in the relationship between God and man: Satan, who is the monkey of God, the plagiarist and the thief, sows his black grace, binding and paralyzing the human personality, which only Christ frees. “And when they came to Jesus, they found a man from whom the demons had gone out, and sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind” (Luke 8:35).

Leo Tolstoy, too, was “tormented by God” all his life, like Dostoevsky’s heroes. But Christ as God and Savior was never born in his heart. One Western theologian said wonderful words about this: “Christ could have been born as many times as he wanted anywhere on our planet. But if He is not born one day in your heart, then you are lost.” This human pride - to become a god besides God - is a substitution of deification for man-theism. “The beginning of pride is the removal of a person from the Lord and the retreat of his heart from his Creator; for the beginning of sin is pride” (Sir. 10:14). In essence, pride is the desire, conscious or unconscious, to become a god besides God by showing selfishness.

Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk writes: “What evil behavior we notice in cattle and beasts, the same exists in man, unregenerate and unrenewed by the grace of God. We see pride in cattle: it wants to devour food, greedily grabs it and devours it, other cattle do not allow it and drive it away; the same is true in man. He himself does not tolerate offense, but he offends others; He himself does not tolerate contempt, but he despises others; he doesn’t want to hear slander about himself, but he slanders others; does not want his property to be stolen, but he himself steals someone else’s... In a word, he wants to be in every prosperity and avoids misfortune, but he neglects others, like himself. This is bestial and vile pride!”

Saint Dmitry of Rostov echoes him: “Do not boast yourself and do not accept praise from others with pleasure, so as not to accept reward for your good deeds with human praise. As the prophet Isaiah says: “Your leaders lead you astray and corrupt the way of your paths.” For from praise comes self-love; from self-love - pride and arrogance, and then separation from God. It is better to do nothing glorious in the world than to be immensely proud after having done it. For the Pharisee, who did something glorious and boasted, perished by heaping up; The publican, who had done nothing good, humbly escaped. For one, his good deeds became a pit from praise, while the other was pulled out of the pit through humility; for it is said that the publican “went justified into his house...ˮ (Luke 18:14).”

Tolstoy's graceless humanism (that is, religion purified from faith in God) lays, according to Dostoevsky's observation, the foundations for the inevitable depravity of man and society, since the criterion of truth is transferred from the sacred sphere to the area of ​​human self-will. Therefore, there can be no unity of Truth, as well as moral unity, under the dominance of such a system. “And without faith it is impossible to please God; therefore, everyone who comes to God must believe that He exists and rewards those who seek Him.”

Dostoevsky therefore rejects such abstract humanism and writes: “The Russian people are entirely in Orthodoxy and in its idea. There is nothing more in him and he has - and there is no need, because Orthodoxy is everything. Orthodoxy is the Church, and the Church is the crown of the building and is forever... He who does not understand Orthodoxy will never understand anything about the people. Moreover, he cannot even love the Russian people, but will love them only as he would like to see them.”

In contrast to Tolstoy’s tossing and turning, it was love for Christ that made Dostoevsky realize and feel that the fullness of Christ’s truth is associated solely with Orthodoxy. This is a Slavophile idea: only one who owns its fullness can unite everyone in the Truth. Therefore, the Slavic idea, according to Dostoevsky, is: “ Great idea Christ, there is no higher. Let us meet Europe in Christ." The Savior Himself said: “You are the light of the world; you are the salt of the earth. If the salt loses its strength, what will you do to make it salty…” Such a salt that salts everything in the recording of Dostoevsky’s thoughts is precisely the idea of ​​​​Orthodoxy. He writes: “Our purpose is to be a friend of nations. By serving them, we are the most Russian... We bring Orthodoxy to Europe.” (Suffice it to recall the contribution of Russian emigration to the cause Orthodox mission, which is associated with the names of Archpriest. John Meyendorff, Georgy Florovsky, Sergiy Bulgakov, Vasily Zenkovsky, Vladimir Lossky, I. Ilyin, N. Berdyaev, etc.).

The writer ends his diary this way: “Slavophiles lead to true freedom, reconciling. Russian all-humanity is our idea.” And the essence of freedom is not rebellion against God, because the first revolutionary was the devil, who rebelled against God; In a similar way, Tolstoy raised a protest against the royal world order, becoming overnight the “mirror of the Russian revolution.” Whereas about Dostoevsky it should be noted that the Gospel revealed to him the secret of man, testified that man is not a monkey or a holy angel, but the image of God, which in its original God-given nature is good, pure and beautiful, but due to sin has been deeply distorted, and the earth “thorns and thistles” began to grow in his heart. That is why the human state, which is now called natural, is in reality sick, distorted, in it the seeds of good and the chaff of evil are simultaneously present and mixed together. It is no coincidence that all of Dostoevsky’s work is about suffering. All of his work is a theodicy: the justification of God in the face of evil. It is suffering that burns out the tares of evil in a person: “Through great sorrows one must enter the Kingdom of Heaven”; “Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many will go there... Strive to enter through the strait gate, for the strait gate and narrow is the way that leads to eternal life,” Scripture testifies.

The godless pursuit of happiness is misfortune and the death of the soul. After all, true happiness is the desire to learn how to make others happy: “We have nothing, but we enrich everyone,” says the apostle. And you say that “... you are rich, have become rich and have no need for anything; but you do not know that you are wretched and pitiful and naked and poor and blind...” (Rev. 3:17).

Suffering, through which sin is eliminated, cleanses the soul and gives true happiness to its owner. It should be remembered that temporary earthly happiness, if it does not grow into eternity, cannot satisfy a person. The paradox is that the criteria for spiritual happiness are acquired by self-restraint of earthly pleasures and joys.

Not by overthrowing state foundations and institutions, Dostoevsky is looking for new “horizons of truth” in the life of mankind, but by telling the story of one of characteristic episodes in the novel Crime and Punishment. This episode is the semantic and energetic hub of the writer’s entire work. Where Sonya Marmeladova reads to Raskolnikov, at his request, the Gospel episode of the resurrection of Lazarus - this gives a powerful cleansing discharge to the human soul. Without faith, resurrection is impossible, because the Savior Himself said what Raskolnikov heard in Sonya’s reading: “I am the resurrection and the life; He who believes in Me, even if he dies, will live..." (John 11:25). The resurrection of Lazarus is greatest miracle, accomplished by the Savior in His earthly life. And such a miracle was possible only for God, and not for man. Disbelief in the authenticity of this event is disbelief in the omnipotence of God.

The murder of the old woman turned into Raskolnikov’s suicide, as he himself says: “I didn’t kill the old woman - I killed myself.” Allowing yourself to bleed out of conscience is the fatal limit of choice. Everything else is just a consequence. For internal readiness for sin is already sin. Sin always begins with a pretext, which is essentially the starting point of sin. That is, a pretext is always the source of an illness, and an act is only a consequence. Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk wrote: “Satan plunges us into vanity, so that we seek our own glory, and not God’s.” Therefore, at all times it sounds, without stopping: “You will be like gods...” To establish your selfhood is an unquenchable thirst, and this thirst can never be quenched in the godless space of humanism (which is what Tolstoy was so wrong about!). Lazarus cannot resurrect himself; a person cannot overcome his powerlessness: “Without Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

Not Tolstoy’s creation of “his own religion”, free from faith, but the churching of all humanity - that’s main idea Dostoevsky. However, there is a force that prevents this - Catholicism, which is based on three components: miracle, mystery and authority. Catholic papocaesarism is an attempt by the church to rely on the sword of state, where political ideas and worldly preferences become priorities. The Orthodox Saint Theophan the Recluse said this about this: “The more addictions, the smaller the circle of freedom.” Being seduced, a person dreams of himself, as if enjoying complete freedom. The bonds of this captive are an addiction to non-spiritual persons, things, ideas, which are painful to part with. But true freedom is inseparable from the truth, since the latter frees you from sin: “Know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32).

For communist ideologists, whose arrival was essentially sanctioned by Tolstoy, the concept of freedom is rooted not in the word of the Gospel, but in the story of the fall of man (the novel “Demons”), who picks the fruits from the forbidden tree in order to “become God himself.” The proud man opposes freedom as obedience to God's will with the freedom of revolutionary initiative (the godless International). The struggle between these two freedoms represents the main problem of all humanity: “The devil fights with God, and the battlefield is human hearts” (Dostoevsky).

The writer, through the ugliness of revolutionary ideas, strives to gain insight into the mountainous Truth that will save the world. Understanding Beauty and the very idea of ​​saving the world with Beauty is impossible without revealing the nature of this Beauty. Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev wrote: “Throughout his entire life, Dostoevsky carried an exceptional, unique feeling of Christ, a kind of frenzied love for His Face. In the name of Christ, out of endless love for Christ, Dostoevsky broke with the humanistic world of which Belinsky was the prophet. Dostoevsky’s faith in Christ passed through the crucible of doubt and was tempered in fire.”

“Beauty will save the world” - these words belong to F. M. Dostoevsky.

Later the poet Balmont will write:

There is only one Beauty in the world,
Love, sadness, renunciation,
And voluntary torment
Christ crucified for us.

On the contrary, L. Tolstoy came to deny the Divine nature of Christ the Savior. He initially rejects faith and the mystery of His Resurrection as the basis of his new religion invented by him - and therefore lowers the hope for future bliss from heaven to earth. His faith is pragmatic - the establishment of the Kingdom of freedom here on earth, “in justice.” The idea of ​​immortality is not needed in this case, because for the writer, immortality is us in generations. The commandments no longer carry any meaning sacred meaning, after all, Christ Himself is only a philosophical man who “successfully formulated his thoughts,” which explains His success. Tolstoyism, in essence, is the arrangement of the earthly kingdom on a rational basis through one’s own efforts. But human nature damaged by sin will not lead to harmony for all of humanity. This is now an axiom that does not require proof: “If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit,” as Scripture says. The communists seduced the Russian people and took them into this very “pit”. Being themselves slaves of sin, they decided to “bless” humanity with their delusional ideas - all this demonic army, led by the Lenins, Sverdlovs, Dzerzhinskys and other rabble, plunged humanity into bloody chaos, and did not lead them onto the path of freedom and love. How many maternal tears and curses fell on these monsters, and Heaven, obviously, heard these tears. So the unburied mausoleum corpse hangs between heaven and earth as God’s punishment as a reproach to all tribes, peoples and languages... And the ideologist of the “Kingdom of God on earth” Tolstoy himself died without parting words and funeral service, a hateful death, buried not even in a cemetery, but in grove, without a cross on the grave. Truly, God cannot be mocked!

Tolstoy’s indignation against civilization was expressed in the fact that he called for “simplification of life” - he began to wear bast shoes, a blouse, took up the plow, and gave up meat. This is how the master had fun from the many fats on his family estate... Why not act like a fool and play Tolstoy with a considerable estate, serfs, numerous household members, with his faithful wife Sofya Andreevna, with whom he had thirteen children; called for the destruction of all state institutions, but at the same time enjoyed all the benefits that these same institutions provided him...

Right of free choice

If Dostoevsky thought of happiness in a soteriological aspect (soteriology is the doctrine of salvation), then Tolstoy absolutizes the eudaimonic perception of the world (eudaimonism considers the meaning of life as good. But what is it?). Of course, Tolstoy is talented as an artist. But as a religious thinker, human pride hinders him.

In his Critique of Dogmatic Theology, he rejects the dogma of the Holy Trinity. The question of human freedom also became a stumbling block for the writer. He recognized it as impossible in the system of Orthodox dogma. The first thing that impedes, in his opinion, human freedom is the Providence of God. He writes: “The theologians have tied themselves a knot that cannot be untangled. Almighty, good God, Creator and Provider of man - and unfortunate, evil and free man- two concepts that exclude each other.” If you look at it superficially, the writer is right: if human free will operates, then there is no place for Providence. And vice versa, if Providence dominates, you only need to obey it. Where then is freedom?

God gives us the right free choice, and we choose. Prayer becomes a sign of our choice. In prayer, we express our consent to collaborate with God in the matter of our salvation and show our faith that everything He sends is good for us: “Thy will be done...” Thus, a person’s prayer and his participation in the Sacraments is a sign free acceptance of the Grace of God, a sign of collaboration with God in the implementation of the Sacraments. Here the believer seems to say: “Lord, I know that You can do this according to Your will regardless of me, but you want me to desire and accept the action of Your will, so I ask that Your will be done.” If a person does not pray, does not participate in the Sacraments, then this expresses his reluctance to Grace. And God does not perform the Sacraments against the will of man. Therefore, there are no contradictions here.

The writer's need for the common good is inextricably linked with the despotic pride of reason and the pride of virtue outside of God. Striving for unity in love, Tolstoy, contrary to his will and intention, paved the way for Bolshevism with the idea of ​​“graceless holiness,” which saw its ally in the writer, calling him “the mirror of the Russian revolution.” This duality of consciousness of the “godless harmony of humanity” responded in the depths of his existence with a craving for non-existence. Going into “nothing” is, in essence, Tolstoy’s understanding of salvation. (Just as Bolshevism “went into nothingness,” into oblivion, rejecting the “living, precious and cornerstone,” which is Christ Himself).

Tolstoy’s “departure” from Yasnaya Polyana, his tossing and turning last days life, convulsive attempts to reconcile with the Church are fraught with providential meaning. They give a lesson to the whole world: denial of the Resurrection inevitably gives rise to a thirst for non-existence.

Professor Chernyshev V.M.

In January 1894, young Ivan Bunin (who at that time tried to be a devout Tolstoyan) visited the author of Anna Karenina in Khamovniki. Bunin conveys the speech of his interlocutor as follows:

“Do you want to live a simple life, working life? It's good, just don't force yourself, don't do it uniform from it, in every life you can be a good person...” [i] [Tolstoy 1978, 234].

There is something very familiar in these words.

In the February issue of “A Writer’s Diary” for 1877, referring to the just published “Anna Karenina” (specifically, the conversation between Stiva and Levin on a hunt - “about the distribution of property”), Dostoevsky writes: “Yes, in essence, there is no need to even distribute certainly estates - for every inevitability here, in the matter of love, it will be similar to uniform , to the rubric, to the letter... You must do only what your heart tells you: if it tells you to give up your property, give it away, if it tells you to go work for everyone, go, but even here, don’t do it like other dreamers who directly take up the wheelbarrow: “ They say, I’m not a gentleman, I want to work like a man.” The car again uniform "[Dostoevsky 1972-1990, 25, 61].

However, if he forgot Dostoevsky’s article, they will hasten to remind him of it.

In the October days of 1910, the wife of V.G. Chertkova forwards Tolstoy a letter from his former secretary N.N. Gusev. Gusev notes that in recent years a lot has been written about Dostoevsky in literature and he “has been presented as the greatest and most perfect teacher of the faith.” Therefore, he, Gusev, “after the novels, it was very interesting to get acquainted with those writings of Dostoevsky, where he speaks on his own behalf.” He “expected a lot” from “A Writer’s Diary,” but alas, “he was severely disappointed. Everywhere Dostoevsky presents himself as an adherent of the people's faith; and in the name of this popular faith, which he, I dare to think, did not know<...>he preached the most cruel things, like war and hard labor.” Next, Gusev remembers Dostoevsky’s words about “Anna Karenina,” “in the last part of which Lev Nikolaevich then still expressed his denial of war and violence in general.” From the “Diary of a Writer,” Gusev unexpectedly learns for himself “that Dostoevsky was an ardent advocate of resisting evil through violence, argued that shed blood is not always evil, but can also be good...” [Tolstoy 1928-1958, 58, 554-555] . And Gusev cites “the most terrible place from this terrible article” - fantastic scene, which Dostoevsky conjectured when talking about “Karenina”:

"Let's imagine<...>Levin is already standing in place, there (that is, in Bulgaria, where the Turks committed a massacre of civilians. - I.V.), with a gun and a bayonet (“why would he take such a dirty trick?” - Gusev adds “on his own behalf”), and two steps away from him the Turk is voluptuously preparing to gouge out the eyes of a child who is already in his hands with a needle... What would he do? - No, how can you kill! No, you can't kill a Turk! “No, he’d better gouge out the child’s eyes and torture him, and I’ll go to Kitty.”

Gusev reports that he was “horrified” when he read the following lines from the one whom many Russian intellectuals now consider their spiritual leader: “What can we do? Is it better to let your eyes be pierced so as not to somehow kill the Turk? But this is a perversion of concepts, this is the stupidest and crudest sentimentalism, this is ecstatic straightforwardness, this is the most complete perversion of nature.” Gusev is also not satisfied with the practical conclusion made by the author of the “Diary”: “But the eyes of babies should not be allowed to gouge out, and in order to stop crime forever, it is necessary to free the oppressed for good, and snatch the weapons from the tyrants once and for all” [Dostoevsky 1972-1990, 25, 220-222].

After reading Gusev’s letter, Tolstoy wrote to Chertkova on October 23: “A strange coincidence happened. I, having forgotten everything, wanted to remember the forgotten Dostoevsko<го>and took to read Take<ев>Karamaz<овых>(I was told that<то>This is very good). I started reading and I can’t overcome my disgust at the anti-art, frivolity, antics and inappropriate attitude towards important subjects. And here is N.N. writes something that explains everything to me” [Tolstoy 1928-1958, 89, 229].

This is almost verbatim! - coincides with the words of another Nikolai Nikolaevich - Strakhov, who in 1883 wrote to Tolstoy - about his work on the biography of Dostoevsky - “I struggled with the disgust that was rising in me...” [Tolstoy, Strakhov 2003, 652].

“Not this, not that!..” - Dostoevsky clutched his head and repeated in a “desperate voice”, reading Tolstoy’s letter to Countess A.A. a few days before his death. Tolstoy, where her correspondent expounded his new faith [Tolstoy, Tolstaya 1911, 26]. “Not that, not that!” - Tolstoy could exclaim (and practically exclaims) when leaving Yasnaya Polyana (or rather, from life) and reading “on the road” sunset novel by Dostoevsky.

Meanwhile, when it comes to the main thing, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy reveal amazing similarities.

On May 29, 1881, Tolstoy writes in his diary: “Conversation with Fet and his wife. Christian teaching is unfulfillable. - So it's nonsense? No, but it's not feasible. - Have you tried to perform it? - No, but it’s impossible” [Tolstoy 1928-1958, 49, 42].

That is, for Tolstoy, Christianity is not an abstract theory, but a kind of “guide to action”: it should be applicable to all phenomena of real life without exception. (He is precisely the one “trying to perform.”) But, according to Dostoevsky, is this not what a person should be guided by, not only in his everyday behavior, but, so to speak, in the world arena? Christian consciousness must be brought into all spheres of existence: only in this way will the Testament be fulfilled.

“No,” writes the author of “A Writer’s Diary” (in the same February 1877 issue, where Tolstoy is discussed), “it is necessary that the same truth, the same truth of Christ, be recognized in political bodies, as for everyone believer. At least somewhere this truth must be preserved, at least one of the nations must shine. Otherwise, what will happen: everything will become darkened, confused and drowned in cynicism” [Dostoevsky 1972-1990, 25, 51].

The Gospel commandments must become the “constitution” of this world: otherwise this world is doomed. So suddenly the artistic worlds of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy converge.

Meanwhile in artistic experience his older contemporary, Tolstoy could have discovered even more unexpected plots. Talking about the properties of Russian national character, the author of “The Karamazovs” unknowingly points out some fundamental features of the personality of the “furious Leo”.

Alyosha Karamazov tells Kolya Krasotkin the opinion of “one foreign German who lived in Russia”: “Show me<...>to a Russian schoolboy a map of the starry sky, about which until then he had no idea, and tomorrow he will return this map to you corrected.” “No knowledge and selfless conceit - that’s what the German wanted to say about the Russian schoolboy,” comments Alyosha [Dostoevsky 1972-1990, 14, 502].

Of course, the author of A Study in Dogmatic Theology is far from a schoolboy. Before you begin to “correct the map” (whether The World History, religion, Shakespeare etc.), he tries to study the subject most carefully. But the impulse is characteristic. The “revision of the universe” is carried out without sacred awe and worship of authorities; they look at the “map” with a clear, unclouded gaze. It is not without reason that the above story evokes complete delight in Alyosha’s young interlocutor: “Bravo, German!<...>Conceit - let it be, it comes from youth, it will be corrected<...>but also an independent spirit, from almost childhood, but also courage of thought and conviction<...>But still the German said it well! Bravo, German!

“Bravo, German!” - we could exclaim, attributing his observation no longer to a hypothetical Russian schoolboy, but to Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy himself. “Correcting the map” is a purely Russian trait, which, by the way, convinces us social practice XX century.

And in his religious rebellion, Tolstoy has something to rely on.

In the “Diary of a Writer” of 1873, Dostoevsky cites the story of a certain elder confessor about a village boy who crawled to him on his knees: he, by his own admission, committed the greatest sin - at the instigation of his friend, he held the sacrament in his mouth, took it out of the temple and, putting it in the garden on a pole, he began to take aim with his gun. But just as he was about to shoot, the Crucified One appeared to him on the cross, and he “fell unconscious with the gun.”

Dostoevsky says that the mentioned blasphemers (the instigator and the perpetrator) represent “two folk type, depicting to us to the highest degree the entire Russian people as a whole.” What is this national trait that struck the author so much? “This is, first of all, the oblivion of any measure in everything<...>the need to reach over the edge, the need for a frozen sensation, to reach the abyss, hang halfway into it, look into the very abyss and - in special cases, but very often - throw yourself into it like a madman upside down" [Dostoevsky 1972-1990, 21, 33 -35].

Tolstoy in no way recognizes himself as a desecrator of sacred objects. He will never “crawl” to the elder with contrition and repentance. (Although after leaving, already in Optina, there will be cut circles around the cell of Elder Joseph - in the hope of a meeting). He “throws himself into the abyss” with full consciousness of his own rightness, with the hope that this is the outcome worthy of every thinking person. He, says Dostoevsky (not about Tolstoy, of course, but about his “village Mephistopheles”), “comes up with unheard-of audacity, unprecedented and unthinkable, and in its choice an entire people’s worldview was expressed” [Dostoevsky 1972-1990, 21, 37].

So, “unheard-of audacity” is also a Russian mental property. But if “below” it appears as wild mischief, temptation and deliberate blasphemy, threatening eternal destruction, then “above” (in Tolstoy) is conscious religious free-thinking (a kind of manifestation of freedom of conscience), which serves as a tool for achieving the truth. The initial impulse of these impulses is different; Moreover, moral motivations are incomparable. However, both there and here familiar picture the starry sky is called into question.

But posthumous roll call Dostoevsky and Tolstoy are not limited to this. The first critic of Tolstoyism, as it were, sees something that the inhabitants of Yasnaya Polyana are not yet aware of.

In the novel “Demons” the “distressed writer” - intellectual Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky leaves the house of General Varvara Petrovna Stavrogina, with whom he had high , that is, an exclusively spiritual relationship and where he thrived for twenty years in bliss and relative peace. This one is for him desperate step- a break with an established and comfortable existence, a moment of truth, a transition to another life full of meaning.

At the same time, Stepan Trofimovich is a tragicomic figure.

It has been rightly noted that the artistic situation reproduced in the novel “Demons” in 1872 in some way anticipates (in a parodic, grotesque, ironically reduced form) those dramatic events, which the world witnessed in the year 1910.

“The Last Wandering of Stepan Trofimovich” is the title of the chapter in “Demons”, which tells about the departure of Verkhovensky Sr.

“...He,” says the novel about Stepan Trofimovich, “even with the clearest awareness of all the horrors awaiting him, would still have gone out to high road and walked along it! There was something proud here that delighted him, in spite of everything. Oh, he could have accepted Varvara Petrovna’s luxurious conditions and remained at her mercy “comme un mere hanger-on”! But he did not accept mercy and did not stay. And so he himself leaves her and raises the “banner of the great idea” and goes to die for him on high road! That's how it must have felt to him; this is exactly how his action should have seemed to him” [Dostoevsky 1972-1990, 10, 480].

Of course, such rapprochements are of a purely formal nature: there is a huge distance between the “last wanderings” of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy and Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky. All the more surprising is the roll call of seemingly small and random details, “accessories”, positions, plot moves: in the context of “ideological departure” all this takes on a symbolic meaning. So, Stepan Trofimovich, trying to unwind, takes into his ascetic pilgrimage such a necessary thing as an umbrella. Tolstoy, upset that he forgot his nail brush in Yasnaya Polyana (a break with the past does not necessarily imply a change in hygiene habits), asks, along with the equally forgotten second volume of The Brothers Karamazov, to send him this item. Stepan Trofimovich “goes out into the world” with forty rubles in his pocket; the amount seized by Tolstoy (50 rubles) is not much more.

But the main thing is that both fugitives are terrified of being chased - of being pursued by the women they left behind. Tolstoy, covering his tracks, changed trains and even purchased a ticket only while already in the carriage. Stepan Trofimovich “was afraid to take the horses, because Varvara Petrovna could visit and detain him by force, which she probably would have done, and he probably would have obeyed and - then goodbye to the great idea forever.” In the end, the pursuers overtake the pursued - with the difference, however, that General Stavrogina is caring for the sick Stepan Trofimovich and closes his eyes, and Countess Sofya Andreevna will admitted only when the agony begins.

And further. “Oh, we will forgive, we will forgive, first of all we will forgive everyone and always,” exclaims Stepan Trofimovich, who has gone on the run. - Let's hope that they will forgive us too. Yes, because everyone and everyone is guilty before the other. Everyone is to blame!..” [Dostoevsky 1972-1990, 10, 491] Before leaving, Tolstoy is going to write “There are no guilty people in the world” [Goldenweiser 2002, 580].

Unlike Tolstoy, Stepan Trofimovich is an old atheist. He meets a woman bookseller who offers him the Gospel. “With the greatest pleasure,” replies Verkhovensky Sr. - Je n"ai rien contre l"Evangile, et...”. The Sermon on the Mount is read aloud to him, and he is quite satisfied with its content (“Do you really think that this not enough!"). And he himself is ready to willingly sell these “beautiful books.” “The people are religious, c"est admis, but they do not yet know the Gospel. I will explain it to them... In an oral presentation, you can correct the mistakes of this wonderful book..." [Dostoevsky 1972-1990, 10, 486-497].

Tolstoy will soon ask himself such a task: it is he who will try - in writing and in detail - to “correct the mistakes of this wonderful book.” And even after his departure, had he remained alive, he would hardly have given up oral preaching, which was more accessible to the popular understanding. (“I will be useful on the highway,” says Stepan Trofimovich.)

Once upon a time, the author of “The Village of Stepanchikova” humorously depicted some of Gogol’s features in the image of the hanger-on despot Foma Opiskin. It was a pretty brutal retrospective parody. Completing “Demons,” he could not imagine that life itself, many years later, would mockingly take advantage of his novel plot and that the tragicomedy generated by his imagination would turn into a great world drama - also not without a comic shade.

Obviously, V. Rozanov was right when he asserted that “all the Dobchinskys from all over Russia came running to Tolstoy’s coffin, and, except for the Dobchinskys, there was no one there; due to the crowded crowd, they didn’t let anyone in there yet. So “Tolstoy’s funeral” at the same time turned out to be an “exhibition of the Dobchinskys” ...” (quoted from: [Rozanov 2004, 56]).

Alas, this is true. And yet the deaths of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy are key points Russian stories. One can even say that both of them, in a certain sense, completed it - and with opposite signs.

Dostoevsky died shortly after the Pushkin holiday in Moscow (which turned out to be nothing more than a “pre-parliament” that united almost the entire spectrum of existing social forces). In an atmosphere of intense constitutional hopes, Dostoevsky’s dull voice sounded from the first national rostrum: “Humble yourselves, proud man, and above all, break your pride. Humble yourself, idle man, and first of all work in your native field...” The call was addressed not only to the terrorist underground, but also to the “terrorist” government, which also seemed to be a kind of “proud man.”

The farewell of the author of “A Writer’s Diary”, unprecedented in scope - when all political forces, from conservatives to radicals, bowed their banners - was a clear signal sent by society “from the bottom up”: a historical compromise is possible. The death of Dostoevsky seemed to materialize this social illusion, opening up the prospect of a peaceful exit from the deepest national crisis, from the bloody confusion at the turn of the 1870s - 1880s (see: [Volgin 1986]).

The regicide of March 1, 1881, which took place a month after the death of Dostoevsky, dashed these hopes.

On the other hand, the stunning death of L.N. Tolstoy in November 1910, in front of the whole world, and the subsequent churchless, emphatically opposition the funeral marked the collapse of the traditional formula “poet and king” (replaced by another, uncompromising: “poet or Tsar"), the final break between society and power. In its historical and philosophical content, Tolstoy’s departure is directly opposite to the “event of death” of 1881: it became a harbinger of the coming national catastrophe.

But in both events there was a common - deep - meaning. The funerals of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy were the first attempts at self-organization civil society , which in the second case excommunicated both the state and the Church.

Literature

Volgin 1986 - Volgin I.L. Last year Dostoevsky: historical notes. M., 1986.

Goldenweiser 2002 - Goldenweiser A.B. Close to Tolstoy: Memoirs. M., 2002.

Dostoevsky 1972-1990 - Dostoevsky F.M. Full collection Op. in 30 t. L., 1972-1990.

Makovitsky 1979 - Literary heritage. T. 90. “Yasnaya Polyana Notes” by D.P. Makovitsky. M., 1979. Book. 3.

Rozanov 2004 - Rozanov V.V. Miniatures. M., 2004.

Tolstoy 1928-1958 - Tolstoy L.N. Full collection Op. in 90 volumes. M., 1928-1958.

Tolstoy 1978 - L.N. Tolstoy in the memoirs of his contemporaries. M., 1978. T. 2.

Tolstoy 2010 - Tolstoy L.N. The last diary. Diaries, notebooks of 1910. M., 2010.

Tolstoy, Strakhov 2003 - L.N. Tolstoy - N.N. Strakh. Complete collection of correspondence. T. 2. Ottawa, 2003.

Tolstoy, Tolstaya 1911 - Tolstoy Museum. T. 1. Correspondence of L.N. Tolstoy with gr. A.A. Tolstoy. 1857-1903. St. Petersburg, 1911.

Notes

These considerations were first presented in our report “Gogol and Dostoevsky,” read at the Gogol Festival in Paris on April 2, 2009.

On June 6, 1910, pianist Goldenweiser, who was visiting Yasnaya Polyana, recorded the following words from Tolstoy: “Today I again received a long and very clever (I think English) letter, and again there is the same child who is being killed before my eyes. I always say: I lived 82 years and never saw this child that everyone tells me about.<...>Yes, finally, who is stopping you from protecting him with your body when you see such a child?..” [Goldenweiser 2002, 315]. Does this mean some kind of collective, “common” child - or is it still a “child of Dostoevsky”?

It is interesting to compare this letter from Tolstoy with the note of his doctor Dushan Makovitsky dated September 21, 1908: “Today I continued to read the second volume of the biography of L. N. Biryukov. Dostoevsky's criticism of Anna Karenina had a strong impact. I told L.N. about it, he wanted to read it and said: “Dostoevsky is a great man”” [Makovitsky 1979, 206]. That is, apparently, in 1910, this criticism was no longer news to Tolstoy. It is surprising that at the time of the appearance of the Diary with an article about Anna Karenina, this text, undoubtedly important for him and his correspondents, was not reflected in Tolstoy’s correspondence (for example, with Strakhov). As often happened with Tolstoy, his reaction could depend on his mood, on the moment.

How (French).

I have nothing against the Gospel, and... (French).

It's set (French).

Both, each in their own way, spent their entire lives searching for truth.

I would like to illuminate the issue of the relationship between secular and spiritual education through the prism of the creativity and phenomenon of religious faith of two outstanding representatives of Russian classical literature: writers F. M. Dostoevsky and L. N. Tolstoy, who celebrated his 185th birthday last year.
Since the study of literature is included in the compulsory curriculum of secondary schools, it is very important from what angle a particular topic is presented. After all, there is no doubt that the artistic heritage and religious and philosophical worldview of these two authors had in their time and continue to have a significant influence on the spiritual formation of the individual.

In search of truth

Dostoevsky and Tolstoy were contemporaries living in the same country. They knew about each other, but never met. However, both, each in their own way, spent their entire lives searching for truth. Tolstoy’s religious quests led to the fact that he, according to the apt remark of the Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod, K. Pobedonostsev, became “a fanatic of his own teaching,” the creator of another false Christian heresy. The works of F. M. Dostoevsky still help to comprehend the main secrets of the existence of God and man. In my life I have met many people who do not like to read Dostoevsky. This is understandable: too much undisguised, frank, sometimes quite painful truth about a person is revealed to us in his novels. And this truth is not only impressive, it makes us think deeply about the most important question that each of us must decide for ourselves, positively or negatively. “The main question with which I have been tormented consciously and unconsciously all my life is the existence of God...” – Dostoevsky would write as a mature man. It may seem strange, but in the last month before his death, according to the recollections of eyewitnesses, the genius of world literature L. Tolstoy reread Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. Wasn’t the classic looking for an answer in the works of another?

Tolstoy regretted that he was never able to meet Dostoevsky, because he considered him perhaps the only serious author in Russian literature with whom he would really like to talk about faith and God. Not particularly appreciating Fyodor Mikhailovich as a writer, Leo Tolstoy saw in him a religious thinker capable of significantly influencing the mind and soul of a person through his works.

Dostoevsky’s daughter, in her memoirs, cites the story of the then Metropolitan of St. Petersburg, who wished to attend the reading of the Psalter for the deceased writer in the Church of the Holy Spirit of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. After spending part of the night in the church, the Metropolitan watched the students, who, on their knees, all the time took turns reading psalms at the tomb of the late Dostoevsky. “I have never heard such reading of psalms! - he recalls. “The students read them with voices trembling with excitement, putting their souls into every word they uttered. What kind of magical power did Dostoevsky possess to turn them back to God like that?” Researcher of Dostoevsky’s work Tatyana Kasatkina writes that “...according to the testimony of many Orthodox priests, in the 70s of the 20th century, when the third generation of atheists was growing up in Russia, and their grandchildren were raised by grandmothers - former Komsomol members, and it seemed that young people were completely lost to the Church , suddenly young people in large numbers began to be baptized and join the church. When the priests asked them, “What brought you to church?” - many answered: “I read Dostoevsky.” That is why, in Soviet times, literary critics did not favor the author of The Brothers Karamazov and his works were not very willingly included in the school curriculum. And if they were included, then the emphasis was more on the rebellious tendencies of Raskolnikov and Ivan Karamazov, and not on the Christian virtues of Elder Zosima.

Why does it happen that the works of one lead people to God, and the works of another lead people away from Him?

Creative dominants

The creative dominants of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy are different. That is why the result is different. Tolstoy's religious and philosophical approach is rational, Dostoevsky's is irrational. The author of War and Peace lived his whole life with a proud desire to explain everything in his own way; author of The Brothers Karamazov - a thirst for faith. Back in 1855, at the age of 26, Leo Tolstoy wrote in his diary: “The conversation about the divine and faith brought me to a great, enormous thought, the implementation of which I feel capable of devoting my life to. This thought is the foundation of a new religion, corresponding to the development of humanity, the religion of Christ, but purified from faith and mystery, a practical religion that does not promise future bliss, but gives bliss on earth.” That is why one saw in Christ only an ideologist and teacher, and the other saw the Truth: “...If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth, and it really were that the truth is outside of Christ, then I would rather remain with Christ than with the truth.” . This philosophical credo of Dostoevsky found its confirmation and development in his literary works.

Tolstoy's rational “religion without faith” found its development in the ideology of Theosophy and the modern New Age movement, where everything is mainly built on pantheistic monism. Dostoevsky was always attracted by the sincere faith in Christ, which he saw among the simple Russian people. Tolstoy believed that people did not understand the Gospel and Christianity as they should. By the way, this approach of Tolstoy is very prophetically depicted in many episodes of some of Dostoevsky’s novels. The well-known hero Alyosha Karamazov conveys to Kolya Krasotkin the opinion of a German who lived in Russia: “Show a Russian schoolchild a map of the starry sky, which he had no idea about until now, and tomorrow he will return this entire map corrected.” “No knowledge and selfless conceit - that’s what the German wanted to say about the Russian schoolboy,” says Alyosha. Against the background of such a “revision of the universe,” the self-confident author of “A Study of Dogmatic Theology,” Leo Tolstoy, really looks like a schoolboy. In 1860, Tolstoy came up with the idea of ​​writing a “materialistic Gospel” (a distant prototype of the code of the builder of communism). Many years later, he would realize his intention by creating his own translation of the New Testament, which, however, would not make an impression even on the followers of the Tolstoyan heresy. There was no one willing to delve into the materialistic ravings of the great genius.

Another hero of Dostoevsky’s novel “Demons” is the atheist Stepan Verkhovensky, who, like Leo Tolstoy, for the sake of a “great idea”, leaving a comfortable life, embarks on his last wandering, also obsessed with the thought of “presenting his Gospel to the people.” The answer to the question of how the revision of the gospel truths and Christian values ​​might end can again be found in the works of Dostoevsky. He is interested not so much in life in its sensory-tangible manifestations (although partly this too), but in the metaphysics of life. Here the writer does not strive for external verisimilitude: for him, the “ultimate truth” is more important.

The idea “if there is no God, then everything is permitted” is not new in the novels of Dostoevsky, who does not imagine morality outside of Christ, outside of religious consciousness. However, one of the heroes of the novel “Demons” goes to its logical conclusion in this idea, asserting what none of the consistent atheists dared to do: “If there is no God, then I am God myself!” Using evangelical symbolism, the hero of the novel Kirillov seems to make just a formal rearrangement of parts of the word, but it contains the core of his idea: “He will come, and his name is Man-God.”
Scripture tells us about the God-man - Jesus Christ. And we are deified in Him to the extent that we are faithful and follow Him. But here it is not the eternal God who acquires human flesh, but, on the contrary, having rejected Christ, the “old false God,” who is “the pain of the fear of death,” man himself becomes an omnipotent and absolutely free God. It is then that everyone will know that “they are good” because they are free, and when everyone becomes happy, the world will be “completed”, and “there will be no more time”, and the person will even be reborn physically: “Now a person is not yet that person. There will be a new person, happy and proud.”

But the creation of not only a new person, but also a whole new, chosen race with superpowers is one of the main tasks of modern occult and near-occult teachings (suffice it to recall Hitler’s organization “Ananerbe” with its attempts to penetrate Shambhala to obtain sacred knowledge and super-destructive weapons).

It should be noted that this idea of ​​Kirillov (one of the heroes of the novel “Demons”) turned out to be one of the most attractive and fruitful for the development of philosophical literature and philosophical thought of the late 19th – early 20th centuries. F. Nietzsche also used it in his own way, the writer A. Camus largely based his version of existentialism on it, and even in the early works of M. Gorky, an uncompromising ideological opponent of Dostoevsky, Kirill’s programmatic ideas about the new, free, happy and Proud Man (especially symptomatic is the coincidence of the epithets “new man”, “happy and proud man” in Kirillov and “Man - that sounds proud” in M. Gorky). So that the last comparison does not look far-fetched, we should also cite V. G. Korolenko’s review of Gorky’s poem “Man”: “Mr. Gorky’s man, as far as one can discern his features, is precisely the Nietzschean “superman”; Here he goes “free, proud, far ahead of people... he is higher than life...”

It is no coincidence that the novel is called “Demons.” All these Verkhovenskys, Kirillovs, Shigalevs (the heroes of the novel) are trying to “arrange” future happiness for people, and no one asks the people themselves whether they need this very “happiness”? After all, indeed, people are just “material”, “a trembling creature”, and they “have the right”. Here it is appropriate to recall the slogan nailed to the gates of the Gulag: “Let us drive humanity into happiness with the iron fist of the dictatorship of the proletariat.”

Tormented by God

Through the mouth of one of his negative heroes, Dostoevsky says: “...God has tormented me all my life.” This painful question of “the existence or non-existence of God” is obvious to many, for if He does not exist, then “everything will be allowed to man.” And now demons enter the Russian people. The writer’s prophecy sounded long before 1917. This prophecy reeked of tragedy. After all, evil in any of its forms is life in emptiness, it is an imitation of life, a counterfeit of it. It's like shavings curled around emptiness. After all, evil is not existential, it has no real nature, it is only the other side of truth and truth. The devil can only be an imitator of life, love and happiness. After all, true happiness is participation, the coincidence of parts: my part and God’s part; only then is a person truly happy. It is in the words of the prayer that the secret of such participation is contained: “Thy will be done.”

The secret of false happiness is contained in the proud: “Not Your will, but mine be done.” Therefore, the devil can only be an imitator of life, for evil is a paradoxical existence in the non-existent, in what in the Jewish tradition is called “Malchut”. Evil therefore arises as we move away from God. Just as going into the shadows no longer provides an excess of light and warmth, and going into the basement completely hides this light from us, so moving away from the Creator increases sin in us and at the same time makes us thirst for genuine truth and light.

The face of Stavrogin, the central character of “Demons,” not only resembled a mask, but, in essence, was a mask. The right word here is “personality.” Stavrogin himself is not there, because he is possessed by the spirit of non-existence, and he himself knows that he does not exist, and hence all his torment, all the strangeness of his behavior, these surprises and eccentricities, with which he seems to want to dissuade himself of his non-existence, as well as that the death that he inevitably and inexorably brings to the creatures associated with him. A “legion” lives in it. How is such a rape of the free human spirit, the image and likeness of God, possible? What is this obsession, this black grace of demon possession? Doesn’t this question come into contact with another question, namely, how the healing, saving, regenerating and liberating grace of God works; How is redemption and salvation possible? And here we come to the deepest mystery in the relationship between God and man: Satan, who is the monkey of God, the plagiarist and the thief, sows his black grace, binding and paralyzing the human personality, which only Christ frees. “And when they came to Jesus, they found a man from whom the demons had gone out, and sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind” (Luke 8:35).

Leo Tolstoy, too, was “tormented by God” all his life, like Dostoevsky’s heroes. But Christ as God and Savior was never born in his heart. One Western theologian said wonderful words about this: “Christ could have been born as many times as he wanted anywhere on our planet. But if He is not born one day in your heart, then you are lost.” This human pride - to become a god besides God - is a substitution of deification for man-theism. “The beginning of pride is the removal of a person from the Lord and the retreat of his heart from his Creator; for the beginning of sin is pride” (Sir. 10:14). In essence, pride is the desire, conscious or unconscious, to become a god besides God by showing selfishness.

Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk writes: “What evil behavior we notice in cattle and beasts, the same exists in man, unregenerate and unrenewed by the grace of God. We see pride in cattle: it wants to devour food, greedily grabs it and devours it, other cattle do not allow it and drive it away; the same is true in man. He himself does not tolerate offense, but he offends others; He himself does not tolerate contempt, but he despises others; he doesn’t want to hear slander about himself, but he slanders others; does not want his property to be stolen, but he himself steals someone else’s... In a word, he wants to be in every prosperity and avoids misfortune, but he neglects others, like himself. This is bestial and vile pride!”

Saint Dmitry of Rostov echoes him: “Do not boast yourself and do not accept praise from others with pleasure, so as not to accept reward for your good deeds with human praise. As the prophet Isaiah says: “Your leaders lead you astray and corrupt the way of your paths.” For from praise comes self-love; from self-love - pride and arrogance, and then separation from God. It is better to do nothing glorious in the world than to be immensely proud after having done it. For the Pharisee, who did something glorious and boasted, perished by heaping up; The publican, who had done nothing good, humbly escaped. For one, his good deeds became a pit from praise, while the other was pulled out of the pit through humility; for it is said that the publican “went justified into his house...ˮ (Luke 18:14).”

Tolstoy's graceless humanism (that is, religion purified from faith in God) lays, according to Dostoevsky's observation, the foundations for the inevitable depravity of man and society, since the criterion of truth is transferred from the sacred sphere to the area of ​​human self-will. Therefore, there can be no unity of Truth, as well as moral unity, under the dominance of such a system. “And without faith it is impossible to please God; therefore, everyone who comes to God must believe that He exists and rewards those who seek Him.”

Dostoevsky therefore rejects such abstract humanism and writes: “The Russian people are entirely in Orthodoxy and in its idea. There is nothing more in him and he has - and there is no need, because Orthodoxy is everything. Orthodoxy is the Church, and the Church is the crown of the building and is forever... He who does not understand Orthodoxy will never understand anything about the people. Moreover, he cannot even love the Russian people, but will love them only as he would like to see them.”

In contrast to Tolstoy’s tossing and turning, it was love for Christ that made Dostoevsky realize and feel that the fullness of Christ’s truth is associated solely with Orthodoxy. This is a Slavophile idea: only one who owns its fullness can unite everyone in the Truth. Therefore, the Slavic idea, according to Dostoevsky, is: “The great idea of ​​Christ, there is no higher. Let us meet Europe in Christ." The Savior Himself said: “You are the light of the world; you are the salt of the earth. If the salt loses its strength, what will you do to make it salty…” Such a salt that salts everything in the recording of Dostoevsky’s thoughts is precisely the idea of ​​​​Orthodoxy. He writes: “Our purpose is to be a friend of nations. By serving them, we are the most Russian... We bring Orthodoxy to Europe.” (It is enough to recall the contribution of Russian emigration to the work of the Orthodox mission, which is associated with the names of Archpriests John Meyendorff, Georgy Florovsky, Sergius Bulgakov, Vasily Zenkovsky, Vladimir Lossky, I. Ilyin, N. Berdyaev, etc.).

The writer ends his diary this way: “Slavophiles lead to true freedom, reconciling. Russian all-humanity is our idea.” And the essence of freedom is not rebellion against God, because the first revolutionary was the devil, who rebelled against God; In a similar way, Tolstoy raised a protest against the royal world order, becoming overnight the “mirror of the Russian revolution.” Whereas about Dostoevsky it should be noted that the Gospel revealed to him the secret of man, testified that man is not a monkey or a holy angel, but the image of God, which in its original God-given nature is good, pure and beautiful, but due to sin has been deeply distorted, and the earth “thorns and thistles” began to grow in his heart. That is why the human state, which is now called natural, is in reality sick, distorted, in it the seeds of good and the chaff of evil are simultaneously present and mixed together. It is no coincidence that all of Dostoevsky’s work is about suffering. All of his work is a theodicy: the justification of God in the face of evil. It is suffering that burns out the tares of evil in a person: “Through great sorrows one must enter the Kingdom of Heaven”; “Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many will go there... Strive to enter through the strait gate, for the strait gate and narrow is the way that leads to eternal life,” Scripture testifies.

The godless pursuit of happiness is misfortune and the death of the soul. After all, true happiness is the desire to learn how to make others happy: “We have nothing, but we enrich everyone,” says the apostle. And you say that “... you are rich, have become rich and have no need for anything; but you do not know that you are wretched and pitiful and naked and poor and blind...” (Rev. 3:17).

Suffering, through which sin is eliminated, cleanses the soul and gives true happiness to its owner. It should be remembered that temporary earthly happiness, if it does not grow into eternity, cannot satisfy a person. The paradox is that the criteria for spiritual happiness are acquired by self-restraint of earthly pleasures and joys.

Not by overthrowing state foundations and institutions, Dostoevsky is looking for new “horizons of truth” in the life of mankind, but by narrating one of the characteristic episodes in the novel “Crime and Punishment.” This episode is the semantic and energetic hub of the writer’s entire work. Where Sonya Marmeladova reads to Raskolnikov, at his request, the Gospel episode of the resurrection of Lazarus - this gives a powerful cleansing discharge to the human soul. Without faith, resurrection is impossible, because the Savior Himself said what Raskolnikov heard in Sonya’s reading: “I am the resurrection and the life; He who believes in Me, even if he dies, will live..." (John 11:25). The resurrection of Lazarus is the greatest miracle performed by the Savior in His earthly life. And such a miracle was possible only for God, and not for man. Disbelief in the authenticity of this event is disbelief in the omnipotence of God.

The murder of the old woman turned into Raskolnikov’s suicide, as he himself says: “I didn’t kill the old woman - I killed myself.” Allowing yourself to bleed out of conscience is the fatal limit of choice. Everything else is just a consequence. For internal readiness for sin is already sin. Sin always begins with a pretext, which is essentially the starting point of sin. That is, a pretext is always the source of an illness, and an act is only a consequence. Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk wrote: “Satan plunges us into vanity, so that we seek our own glory, and not God’s.” Therefore, at all times it sounds, without stopping: “You will be like gods...” To establish your selfhood is an unquenchable thirst, and this thirst can never be quenched in the godless space of humanism (which is what Tolstoy was so wrong about!). Lazarus cannot resurrect himself; a person cannot overcome his powerlessness: “Without Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

Not Tolstoy’s creation of “his own religion”, free from faith, but the churching of all humanity - this is Dostoevsky’s main idea. However, there is a force that prevents this - Catholicism, which is based on three components: miracle, mystery and authority. Catholic papocaesarism is an attempt by the church to rely on the sword of state, where political ideas and worldly preferences become priorities. The Orthodox Saint Theophan the Recluse said this about this: “The more addictions, the smaller the circle of freedom.” Being seduced, a person dreams of himself, as if enjoying complete freedom. The bonds of this captive are an addiction to non-spiritual persons, things, ideas, which are painful to part with. But true freedom is inseparable from the truth, since the latter frees you from sin: “Know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32).

For communist ideologists, whose arrival was essentially sanctioned by Tolstoy, the concept of freedom is rooted not in the word of the Gospel, but in the story of the fall of man (the novel “Demons”), who picks the fruits from the forbidden tree in order to “become God himself.” The proud man opposes freedom as obedience to God's will with the freedom of revolutionary initiative (the godless International). The struggle between these two freedoms represents the main problem of all humanity: “The devil fights with God, and the battlefield is human hearts” (Dostoevsky).

The writer, through the ugliness of revolutionary ideas, strives to gain insight into the mountainous Truth that will save the world. Understanding Beauty and the very idea of ​​saving the world with Beauty is impossible without revealing the nature of this Beauty. Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev wrote: “Throughout his entire life, Dostoevsky carried an exceptional, unique feeling of Christ, a kind of frenzied love for His Face. In the name of Christ, out of endless love for Christ, Dostoevsky broke with the humanistic world of which Belinsky was the prophet. Dostoevsky’s faith in Christ passed through the crucible of doubt and was tempered in fire.”

“Beauty will save the world” - these words belong to F. M. Dostoevsky.

Later the poet Balmont will write:

There is only one Beauty in the world,
Love, sadness, renunciation,
And voluntary torment
Christ crucified for us.

On the contrary, L. Tolstoy came to deny the Divine nature of Christ the Savior. He initially rejects faith and the mystery of His Resurrection as the basis of his new religion invented by him - and therefore lowers the hope for future bliss from heaven to earth. His faith is pragmatic - the establishment of the Kingdom of freedom here on earth, “in justice.” The idea of ​​immortality is not needed in this case, because for the writer, immortality is us in generations. The commandments now do not carry any sacred meaning, because Christ Himself is only a man-philosopher who “successfully formulated his thoughts,” which explains His success. Tolstoyism, in essence, is the arrangement of the earthly kingdom on a rational basis through one’s own efforts. But human nature damaged by sin will not lead to harmony for all of humanity. This is now an axiom that does not require proof: “If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit,” as Scripture says. The communists seduced the Russian people and took them into this very “pit”. Being themselves slaves of sin, they decided to “bless” humanity with their delusional ideas - all this demonic army, led by the Lenins, Sverdlovs, Dzerzhinskys and other rabble, plunged humanity into bloody chaos, and did not lead them onto the path of freedom and love. How many maternal tears and curses fell on these monsters, and Heaven, obviously, heard these tears. So the unburied mausoleum corpse hangs between heaven and earth as God’s punishment as a reproach to all tribes, peoples and languages... And the ideologist of the “Kingdom of God on earth” Tolstoy himself died without parting words and funeral service, a hateful death, buried not even in a cemetery, but in grove, without a cross on the grave. Truly, God cannot be mocked!

Tolstoy’s indignation against civilization was expressed in the fact that he called for “simplification of life” - he began to wear bast shoes, a blouse, took up the plow, and gave up meat. This is how the master had fun from the many fats on his family estate... Why not act like a fool and play Tolstoy with a considerable estate, serfs, numerous household members, with his faithful wife Sofya Andreevna, with whom he had thirteen children; called for the destruction of all state institutions, but at the same time enjoyed all the benefits that these same institutions provided him...

Right of free choice

If Dostoevsky thought of happiness in a soteriological aspect (soteriology is the doctrine of salvation), then Tolstoy absolutizes the eudaimonic perception of the world (eudaimonism considers the meaning of life as good. But what is it?). Of course, Tolstoy is talented as an artist. But as a religious thinker, human pride hinders him.

In his Critique of Dogmatic Theology, he rejects the dogma of the Holy Trinity. The question of human freedom also became a stumbling block for the writer. He recognized it as impossible in the system of Orthodox dogma. The first thing that impedes, in his opinion, human freedom is the Providence of God. He writes: “The theologians have tied themselves a knot that cannot be untangled. Almighty, good God, Creator and Provider of man - and unhappy, evil and free man - two concepts that exclude each other.” If you look at it superficially, the writer is right: if human free will operates, then there is no place for Providence. And vice versa, if Providence dominates, you only need to obey it. Where then is freedom?

God gives us the right to free choice, and we choose. Prayer becomes a sign of our choice. In prayer, we express our consent to collaborate with God in the matter of our salvation and show our faith that everything He sends is good for us: “Thy will be done...” Thus, a person’s prayer and his participation in the Sacraments is a sign free acceptance of the Grace of God, a sign of collaboration with God in the implementation of the Sacraments. Here the believer seems to say: “Lord, I know that You can do this according to Your will regardless of me, but you want me to desire and accept the action of Your will, so I ask that Your will be done.” If a person does not pray, does not participate in the Sacraments, then this expresses his reluctance to Grace. And God does not perform the Sacraments against the will of man. Therefore, there are no contradictions here.

The writer's need for the common good is inextricably linked with the despotic pride of reason and the pride of virtue outside of God. Striving for unity in love, Tolstoy, contrary to his will and intention, paved the way for Bolshevism with the idea of ​​“graceless holiness,” which saw its ally in the writer, calling him “the mirror of the Russian revolution.” This duality of consciousness of the “godless harmony of humanity” responded in the depths of his existence with a craving for non-existence. Going into “nothing” is, in essence, Tolstoy’s understanding of salvation. (Just as Bolshevism “went into nothingness,” into oblivion, rejecting the “living, precious and cornerstone,” which is Christ Himself).

Tolstoy’s “departure” from Yasnaya Polyana, his tossing and turning in the last days of his life, convulsive attempts to reconcile with the Church are fraught with providential meaning. They give a lesson to the whole world: denial of the Resurrection inevitably gives rise to a thirst for non-existence.

Professor Chernyshev V.M.