Academician Yuri Pivovarov: “There is no mystery in the Russian soul. "academician" Pivorov Yuri Pivorov Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Pivovarov Yuri Sergeevich was born on April 25, 1950 in Moscow. This academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences is best known as an outstanding historian and political scientist.

Biography

Yuri Pivovarov (was educated at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), graduating in 1972. In 1981, he became a candidate of historical sciences. The young specialist defended his dissertation on the topic of socio-political organizations of workers in Germany. In 1995- m Yuri Pivovarov is already a Doctor of Political Sciences.

Since the age of 25, the scientist has been working at INION - Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences. Pivovarov was the director of this institution from 1998 to 2015. At the same time, he headed the political science and legal department of INION. The historian gives lectures at the Russian State University for the Humanities and Moscow State University.

Positions and appointments

In 2001, Yuri Pivovarov was elected president of the RAPN - Russian Association. He also served as chairman of the expert council of the Higher Attestation Commission of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation for six years. At Moscow State University, the historian heads the Department of Comparative Political Science, which is part of the Faculty of Political Science. He has not only experience as a teacher, but also as an effective manager.

In 2010 - 2012 Yuri Sergeevich Pivovarov was a member of the Commission that examined historical falsifications that were detrimental to the interests of Russia. He also collaborates a lot with scientific journals (“Bulletin of the Archivist”, “Political Research”, “Philosophical Sciences”).

Fire at INION

On the night of January 31, 2015, a terrible fire occurred in the INION library, which destroyed not only the building, but also a significant part of the unique book collection of the library. The President of the Institute at that time was Yuri Sergeevich Pivovarov. The biography of the scientist and leader of scientific organizations and institutions is generally similar to the biographies of his colleagues, but the episode with the fire became a unique precedent for him.

More than 5 million publications were lost as a result of the fire. The losses amounted to about 20% of the library's collection, which was considered the heart of the country's humanitarian thought. Vladimir Fortov called the fire at INION “the Chernobyl of Russian science.” Because of the incident, Yuri Pivovarov was removed from the leadership of the Institute. In April 2015, leaving the presidency, he was appointed scientific director of INION.

Publications

Since childhood, Yuri Sergeevich Pivovarov, whose parents supported his interest in science, was interested in political science and history. As a professional scientist, in his work, in addition to these topics, he also touches on issues of Russian statehood and the methodology of humanities. Yuri Pivovarov has written more than 500 scientific papers. These include 8 monographs. A significant part of the political scientist’s work is devoted to Russia and Germany.

Also, most of Pivovarov’s research dates back to the twentieth century in Russian history. This is due to the fact that a real anthropological catastrophe occurred in Russia during this period. A colossal number of people died. Revolutions, wars, famines - the scientist tries to comprehend and generalize all this in his works. He considers the terrible Soviet terror the most ambitious in the history of mankind, on a par with the terror in Kampuchea.

Author's scientific style

Russian thought and political culture are two key disciplines that Yuri Sergeevich Pivovarov studied and is studying. “Married” to theoretical and methodological issues, it touches little on the specifics. The author himself, following the French historian Fernand Braudel, calls facts “dust.”

In raising questions and trying to answer them, Pivovarov turns to the creative heritage of Russian thinkers, justifying this by the fact that any national thought is a way and experience of collective self-knowledge. The scientist noted that the West is characterized by attention to epistemology and methodology, and in Russia - to historiosophical themes (topics of historical philosophy).

Russian thought

A significant part of Yuri Pivovarov’s scientific activity is connected with the study of the heritage of Russian social thinkers of the 20th century. In the nineties, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the lifting of ideological prohibitions, the opportunity arose to restore the intellectual, moral and aesthetic dynamics of Russian culture. This is what Yuri Sergeevich Pivovarov did. The scientist’s family is from Moscow, and during the Soviet era it was easier for him to get samizdat publications. Now, many forgotten works have been retrieved from special depositories, and unprecedented scope for work has appeared.

Soon, Yuri Pivovarov noted that the unexpected appearance of a huge layer of literature had no impact on society. The work of the scientist “Russian Thought” is devoted to this problem. The author also called it "an experiment in critical methodology." Pivovarov conducted his research using the example of the legacy of such thinkers as Boris Paramonov, Boris Groys, etc. The scientist identified several key problems of Russian thought. First of all, this is the desire of Russian philosophy to be original, using means developed in the West. Making incorrect demands on Russian thinkers is another important paradox that was revealed by Yuri Sergeevich Pivovarov (photos of the scientist are presented in the article). Photographically, he noted the key contradictions in Russian sociology of the 20th century.

State Nature Research

Yuri Pivovarov continuously connected Russian thought with Russian power. On the pages of his scientific works, he proved and continues to prove that these two phenomena have related, close features. This feature, in particular, has led to the fact that our state has always been different from Western European states. The author raised this problem in his work “Russian Power and Historical Types of Its Understanding.”

In all the main languages ​​of Europe, the term “state” means approximately the same thing: “state”, “Staat”, “stati”, etc. It appeared relatively recently - four centuries ago. This happened after the European Reformation. Then the “Constitutional state” appeared, in which the choice of religion became a personal matter for each person. This is how the foundations of European democracy were born. The metaphysical and religious were taken beyond the social. This is due to the fact that the main subject in Western constitutions is the citizen, society and nation.

Pivovarov Yuri Sergeevich biography, whose nationality and career were continuously connected with Russia, was able to formulate the main inconsistencies of the Russian state with the above-described European principles. There was no separation of the concepts of sovereignty and property. In Russia, both in the 19th and 20th centuries, power was associated with the right of ownership of the entire country and its inhabitants. From this flowed the key cataclysms of Russian history, as well as tsarist despotism and Soviet totalitarianism. This is the key thesis of Pivovarov’s scientific works on Russian statehood. For example, it can be seen in the author’s collection “The Last Death in Seriousness.”

The influence of fiction on politics

Exploring the history of the Russian state and society, Pivovarov touched upon the topic of the importance of fiction and philosophical literature in their development. As an example, the scientist re-evaluated the results of Leo Tolstoy’s work. In his novel War and Peace, he created a new reality and personality types, which ultimately determined a new perception of life in Russia in the second half of the 19th century. Pivovarov called Tolstoy’s system of such artistic myths “real Tolstoyism” (as opposed to the religious teachings of the classic).

Fyodor Dostoevsky is another myth-maker of this order, whose work was studied by Yuri Sergeevich Pivovarov. The writer’s “children” are his novels, and in them, among other things, the Russian revolution is predicted. We are talking about “The Brothers Karamazov” and “Demons”. Pivovarov compared the characters of 1917 with the creation of Dostoevsky’s imagination.

Dependence of domestic policy on foreign policy

Yuri Pivovarov’s bibliography contains several works on the political culture of Russia (including the monograph “Political Culture of Post-Reform Russia”). This also includes lectures and journalism by the author. One of the key questions that Pivovarov asks is the relationship between the external and internal dimensions of domestic policy.

Over the course of five centuries, Russia has steadily increased its territory, solving various global problems (for example, the problem of access to the seas). The existence of many neighbors and enemies with common borders has become the reason for regular wars in any historical era. Because of this, foreign policy has always greatly influenced and dominated domestic policy. This pattern has long been of interest to Yuri Pivovarov, who devoted many pages of his research to it.

Denial of historical laws

Yuri Pivovarov considers Russian political and legal culture to be “power-centric” (while, for example, the Western culture is “anthropocentric”). In Europe, everything starts from man - there he remains the measure of all things. In Russia, power is at the center. This is a tradition. She can hide and mimic, but still remains in the public consciousness.

It is interesting that Yuri Pivovarov in his lectures denies the existence of solid historical laws that would exist. Instead, there are traditions. The difference is that the latter can change, since the historical process is open in its properties. Pivovarov also puts free human will against the laws. For example, it was the actions of people that led to the October Revolution in Russia (and not economic, social and natural-climatic conditions).

Power and the Church in Russia

The difference between the Russian state and Western European Brewers is also explained by the medieval connection between Rus' and Byzantium. Having adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Greeks, the Eastern Slavs cut themselves off from the rest of the Old World. First of all, they found themselves outside the Latin world, since the church Latin language then served as an instrument of interethnic and scientific communication.

Yuri Pivovarova to some extent touches on the topic of relations between the state and the church. The scientist believes that the decisive role in their relationship is played by the question “who has more resources.” In other words, whoever is more influential interferes in someone else’s agenda. In Russia, in practice, this led to the state beginning to influence spiritual life. The Orthodox Church has never been as independent as, for example, the Catholic Church in the West. The fusion of spiritual and secular power influenced the further development of the institutions of Russian society.

Yuri Sergeevich Pivovarov was born on April 25, 1950. In 1972 he graduated from the Faculty of International Relations of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1975, he completed full-time graduate school at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He received the academic degree of Candidate of Historical Sciences in 1981. Since 1996 Doctor of Political Sciences. In 1996, he was awarded the academic title of professor at the Institute of Asian and African Countries at Moscow State University. Corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAN) since 1997, academician of the RAS since 2006.

Since 1976 he has been working at the Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences (INION) of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Since 1998 - Director of INION RAS, at the same time head of the department of political science and jurisprudence at INION RAS. President of the Russian Association of Political Science (RAPS) since February 2001, honorary president of RAPS since 2004. Member of the Bureau of the Historical and Philological Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences, member of the Bureau of the Library and Information Council of the Russian Academy of Sciences, member of the Bureau of the Council on Eurasian Economic Integration of the Russian Academy of Sciences, member of the Bureau of the Russian Historical Society, member of the Bureau of the National Committee of Historians, Chairman of the Russian-Hungarian Commission of Historians. Since 2015 - scientific director of INION RAS.

Yu. S. Pivovarov has been working at Moscow State University named after M. V. Lomonosov since 1996. In connection with the creation of the Department of Comparative Political Science at the Faculty of Political Science, by order of the rector dated January 18, 2010, he was appointed acting head of the Department of Comparative Political Science.

Pivovarov Yu. S. Two centuries of Russian thought. - M.: INION RAS Moscow, 2006. - ISBN 5–248–00265–6.
Pivovarov Yu. S. Russian politics in its historical and cultural relations. - M.: ROSSPEN, 2006. - ISBN 5–8243–0726–1.
Pivovarov Yu. S. Russian political tradition and modernity. - M.: INION RAS, 2006. - ISBN 978524800263.
Pivovarov Yu. S. Serious complete destruction. - M.: ROSSPEN, 2004. - ISBN 5–8243–0416–5.
Pivovarov Yu. S. Essays on the history of Russian socio-political thought of the 19th - first third of the 20th century. place of publication. - M.: INION Moscow, 1997.
Pivovarov Yu. S. Political culture: Methodological essay and place of publication. - M.: INION Moscow, 1996.
Pivovarov Yu. S. Political culture: Questions of theory and methodology (Russian experience and Western science). - M., 1995.
Pivovarov Yu. S. N. M. Karamzin “Note on Ancient and New Russia” in its political and civil relation. - M.: Academic Publishing Center "Science", 1991. - ISBN 5–02–017587–0
Pivovarov Yu. S. Catholic and Protestant ethics in bourgeois law. - M.: INION Moscow, 1987.
Pivovarov Yu. S. Socio-political views of R. von Weizsäcker. - M.: INION Moscow, 1986.
Pivovarov Yu. S. Socio-political views of O. von Nell-Bräuning. - M.: INION Moscow, 1985.
Pivovarov Yu. S. Positions of the main socio-political organizations of Germany on the problem of complicity. - M., 1981.

It is extremely popular in the media to announce the top five, ten, or hundred most popular songs, performers, actors, etc. In this series of publications, we will present the five most popular and, most importantly, influential domestic historians-falsifiers.

The famous French historian Marc Bloch believed that falsifications in history play no less important and positive role than documents containing true information. He found the opportunity to explore the motives of deception to be positive. Research into motives for lying usually helps to gain new knowledge. “It is not enough to expose the deception, we must reveal its motives. At least in order to better expose him,” taught Mark Blok.

Activity is always motivated. “Unmotivated” activity still has motives hidden from the observer or the subject himself.

In politics and economics, the motives for deception are the desire to gain capital and power. And what motive determines the actions of a falsifier of history?

A political system in which political power belongs to the wealthy elite of the ruling class is called plutocracy. In the era of general globalization, a world plutocracy has formed in the person of the world center of capital and power. The plutocrat is a representative of this elite, his goal is the accumulation of wealth (according to Aristotle - chremastics, or the pursuit of profit as such, regardless of the methods of obtaining it). The totality of plutocrats constitutes the elite (X-elite). Its goal, in addition to accumulating wealth, is to maintain political power. To achieve this, the X-elite creates and leads an influential party (X-Party), which lobbies its interests throughout the world.

X-Elite uses two control channels. The first channel is the manipulation of public consciousness (deception), and the second is lobbying for illegal gain in collusion with local elites, i.e. fraud. According to the definition of S.I. Ozhegova, “a rogue is a cunning and clever deceiver, a swindler.” Deception and fraud are committed in the interests of the local center of capital and power (LCCP) or the global center of capital and power (GCCP), or the X-elite. It follows that the “imaginary wise men” are in the service of either the LCCV or the GCCV. By the way, this service can be done without deception. We know of many Russian and Soviet historians who made fundamental contributions to historiography without resorting to lies. But we will explore the tricks of the “false wise men” and the reasons why they became such.

Nowadays, falsification of history has become a systemic political work. Purposeful distortion of the past, mockery of the lives of our fathers and grandfathers is one of the components of the strategic information war waged against Russia with the aim of its disintegration and establishing an external control regime. Corrupt officials, business, science, and education contribute to achieving this goal. The US State Department, through a system of non-governmental organizations, finances Russian universities, academic institutes, departments, individual “independent” scientists and experts... As a rule, humanitarian and economic universities, departments, and academic institutes receive foreign financial support. It is these areas that have a decisive influence on the sustainability of Russia’s development.

During the training process, undergraduate and graduate students are selected; the most proven ones are sent to study “over the hill”, to the “metropolis” to continue their education. Then these masters and doctors, with the help of a lobbying system, are introduced into key positions in Russian business, politics, and education.

These young people can be found at the highest levels of government. They are part of a cohort of individuals representing the interests of Russia’s geopolitical competitors and transnational corporations. This same cohort also includes our “historians” who, out of selfish interests, malice or stupidity, contribute to the erosion of the value system and intellectual degradation of Russians. As a result of the activities of falsifiers, domestic science and education are dying before our eyes.

The threats from such “historians” also lie in the fact that they are allowed to participate in the educational process of our children, write textbooks, introduce general education standards, and represent Russia internationally level, after which Resolutions are born, similar to the Vilnius Resolution of the OSCE PA “Reuniting a Divided Europe” of July 3, 2009.

Liberal professors talk a lot about “freedom” and “pluralism.” However, “freedom” and “pluralism” exist only for them, not for students. For example, what grade will the “historian” Yu. Pivovarov give to a student if a student declares at an academician’s lecture that he confuses Hindenburg with Ludendorff, incorrectly names dates, invents events and, in general, he is not a historian at all, but an ignoramus and a liar?

Russia is losing “state immunity”, so the counterfeiters have completely lost their sense of proportion. In particular, academician RAS Yu.S. Brewers:

He is not afraid to promote his ideas of the disintegration of Russia and the reduction of its population;

He is not afraid of legal liability for insulting the honor and dignity of our fathers and grandfathers and damaging the business reputation of the Red Army;

Not afraid to show his ignorance;

He is not afraid that someone will have the courage to tell him that he is not a historian or a scientist!

“On June 10–11, the Hungarian Center for Russian Studies at the University of Budapest. Loranda Eotvos (Prof. Gyula Svak) and the Department of History of Eastern Europe (Prof. Tomas Kraus) held an international scientific conference in Budapest on the topic “The Great Patriotic War - 70 years of the attack of Nazi Germany on the USSR.” The Hungarian news agency MTI published two short messages on the pages of its portal about each day of the conference.

Of all the reports of the conference participants, only two presentations seemed particularly noteworthy to the MTI correspondent: senior researcher at INION RAS Irina Glebova and director INION RAS academician Yuri Pivovarov. Thus, in his report, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Yuri Pivovarov noted: “The cult of Soviet victory in the World War is the main legitimate basis of modern Russia. It is loudly voiced by television, newspapers, and other media. The consciousness of twenty-year-olds is built on this basis. This victory is everything to us, we will never give it up, only we can win - these are the main components of the myth. The myth of victory in the world war, which consigned millions of victims to oblivion, became after 1945 the main basis for legitimizing the second edition of the communist regime in the USSR, and then in present-day Russia.” So, for Yu. Pivovarov, as well as for the employees of the academic institute he heads, the Great Patriotic War is not Great and not Patriotic, and the “so-called” war, and victory in it, is a myth. The Hungarian MTI correspondent liked the last definition so much that he repeated it 15 times in his short message!

Russian historian Alexander Dyukov spoke about the report of Academician Pivovarov as follows: “As for the speech at the conference by the director of INION RAS Yu.S. Pivovarova, then it, being dedicated not considered at the conference, problems, and a general view of the history of the Soviet Union, clearly stood out from the general background. Listeners could see that what Yu.S. Pivovarov created the concept not by generalizing facts and creating a consistent concept based on them, but by using facts (including unverified ones) to illustrate an already formulated concept. This led to the presence in the speech of Yu.S. Pivovarov has a significant number of factual errors, which I pointed out during the ensuing discussion. The report of the director of INION RAS was met with very skepticism by his Hungarian colleagues. In any case, as stated by Yu.S. Pivovarov’s controversial historical concept deserves careful scientific criticism”...

So let’s take a critical look at the life path and “scientific creativity” of Academician Pivovarov.

Yuri Sergeevich Pivovarov (born April 25, 1950, Moscow) in 1967 entered the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGMIMO) of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from which he graduated in 1972. To enter the Institute of International Relations from school in those days was almost impossible. “Mere mortals” could enter this university (as a rule) after military service in the Soviet army, if they managed to join the ranks of the CPSU there and receive a referral from the political department military district to this prestigious university or on the recommendation of the district committee of the CPSU (for Moscow) or the regional committee of the CPSU for the province. It was necessary but not enough a condition for obtaining a MGIMO student card.

In 1975, Yuri Sergeevich graduated from graduate school at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He became a Doctor of Political Science, professor, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAN) since 1997 (during the “democratic period”), academician of the RAS since 2006.

How similar they all are, these now successful “historians”. All of them, without exception, made careers under the communist regime. Everyone without exception, making excuses for this, calls themselves dissidents. So Yuri Sergeevich, the grandson of a fiery revolutionary, Ilyich’s comrade-in-arms, told us: “Today is February 13, 2002. On February 13, 1972, exactly 30 years ago, I was first arrested by the KGB. I was arrested at the Yaroslavl station early in the morning of February 13” http://www.politstudies.ru/universum/esse/index.htm “Arrested for the first time,” i.e. it is assumed that the young dissident was repeatedly repressed: imprisoned, exiled, etc.

“I knew dissidents, transported samizdat literature, was detained once with reprints, and the persecution boiled down to the fact that after graduate school I was not hired and was unemployed for a year. I studied at MGIMO on the same course with Lavrov, Torkunov, Migranyan, with the Ambassador to America Kislyak in the same class at school - they were already making careers, and I walked around in a quilted jacket, in kirzachs with foot wraps, with a cigarette in my teeth "(http:// www.izvestia.ru/science/article3130724/) . You have to be able to do this: in the USSR you can talk for a whole year “with a cigarette in your teeth” without work. In those days, the article in the Criminal Code was "for parasitism" which was defined as long-term, more than four months in a row (or a year in total), residence of an adult able-bodied person on unearned income with evasion of socially useful work. According to Soviet criminal law, parasitism was punishable (Article 209 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR). By the way, I. Brodsky was convicted under this article. But Yuri Sergeevich gets away with everything; after a year of parasitism, he is hired to work at a prestigious academic institute.

Thus, in the winter of 1972, the “dissident” Pivovarov was arrested by the KGB, in the spring of that year he graduated from the prestigious MGIMO University of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and in the fall of the same year he was accepted into full-time graduate school at the no less prestigious IMEMO Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

Since 1976, Yuri Sergeevich has been working at the Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences (INION) of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Since 1998 - Director of INION RAS, at the same time head of the department of political science and jurisprudence at INION RAS. Since the early 1990s. gives a number of lecture courses at Moscow State University and Russian State University for the Humanities. President of the Russian Association of Political Science (RAPS) since February 2011, honorary president of RAPS since 2004.

Deputy Head of the History Section of the Department of Historical and Philological Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, member of the Bureau of the Information and Library Council of the Russian Academy of Sciences, deputy chairman of the Scientific Council on Political Science at the Department of Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, head of the section “Scientific and Cultural Policy, Education” of the Expert Council under the Chairman of the Federation Council, member of the Scientific Council under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, etc.

Yu. Pivovarov about Russian saints

Is it possible to publicly spit on an icon in the presence of 83 thousand people or to defiantly step on the Koran while surrounded by the same number of Muslims? “What a stupid question,” any normal person will answer. But why is it possible to insult Orthodox saints? For example, the holy blessed Grand Duke Alexander Nevsky. Here is how historian Yu. Pivovarov, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, speaks about the prince: “The same Alexander Nevsky is one of the controversial, if not stinking, figures in Russian history, but you can’t debunk him. ... And Nevsky, relying on the Horde, became its hired warrior. In Tver, Torzhok, Staraya Russa, he cut the ears of fellow believers who rebelled against the Mongols and poured boiling water and lead into their mouths. ... And the Battle of the Ice is just a small border conflict in which Nevsky behaved like a bandit, attacking a handful of border guards in large numbers. He acted just as ignoble in the Battle of Neva, for which he became Nevsky. In 1240, having made his way into the headquarters of the Swedish jarl, the ruler of Birger, he himself knocked out his eyes with a spear, which was considered not comme il faut among knights.” From an interview with Yu. Pivovarov to the magazine “Profile” No. 32/1 (circulation 83 thousand copies).

The events that Yu. Pivovarov discusses happened a very long time ago. There are no documents that could confirm the correctness of the academician’s conclusions. For this reason alone, we can say that he is wrong, since here the matter is a subjective assessment of the activities of the holy noble prince, and not in science. And evaluation is a matter of “free will.”

The academician’s “free will” determines his conclusion regarding the activities of Alexander Nevsky. Yu. Pivovarov is not original in his reasoning; even under Nicholas I, a little book about Russia “La Russie en 1839” by the Marquis de Custine was published in Paris. In his “travel notes” Custine not limited to By attacks on contemporary Russia, he seeks, on occasion, to debunk the Russian past, to undermine the historical foundations of the Russian people. Among Custine's attacks on the Russian past, noteworthy are the ironic words dedicated to the memory of the holy noble prince Alexander Nevsky. Custine says: “Alexander Nevsky is a model of caution; but he was not a martyr either for faith or for noble feelings. The national church canonized this sovereign, more wise than heroic. This is Ulysses among the saints." And pay attention: even this caveman Russophobe does not allow himself to stoop to the level of the dirty abuse that the historian Yu. Pivovarov hurls at the Russian saint.

There are several points of view on the actions of Alexander Nevsky. Yu. Pivovarov represents the point of view of Western liberals. The assessment of the activities of the Grand Duke Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev is exactly the opposite. And we have no reason L.N. Gumilev cannot be trusted, because he is wise, tactful and does not “distort” the facts.

Also, in passing, Yu. Pivovarov in his interview insulted the Russian Orthodox Church:

“Do you know when Dmitry Donskoy was canonized? You will laugh - according to the decision of the CPSU Central Committee. In 1980, when they celebrated the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kulikovo, they discovered - Donskoy not canonized and the Central Committee of the CPSU “recommended” the church to “correct the mistake,” says “historian” Pivovarov. It turns out that the academician “historian” (mostly Yu. Pivovarov studied the strange science of political science, but recommends himself to everyone as a historian) does not know that Prince Dmitry Ivanovich Donskoy was canonized in June 1988, during the celebrations in honor of the 1000th anniversary of Christianity in Rus'. For information (Yu. Pivovarov and others): at that time, intervention of the “CPSU Central Committee” in the affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church was simply impossible. So here our Yu. Pivovarov reveals himself as an ignorant and at the same time slander - which is “not comme il faut” for a historian.

Yu. Pivovarov about Russian national heroes

Our historian is consistent, he has few saints, and other Russian national heroes get from him. In particular: “The real Kutuzov has nothing to do with us, but the fictional one (by L. Tolstoy in the novel “War and Peace.” - S.B.) is the embodiment of the deep Russian spirit. But Kutuzov was a lazy person, an intriguer, an erotomaniac, who adored fashionable French actresses and read French pornographic novels.” This is how the academician characterizes a desperately brave warrior who made a career not on the floor in St. Petersburg, and in bloody battles, where he was seriously wounded three times.

In the battle near Alushta on July 23, 1774, Kutuzov, commanding the grenadier battalion of the Moscow Legion, was the first to break into the fortified village of Shumy; while pursuing the fleeing enemy, he was seriously wounded by a bullet in the temple. For this feat, the 29-year-old captain was awarded the Order of St. George, 4th degree. During the 2nd Turkish War, during the siege of Ochakov, Kutuzov was seriously wounded twice (1788). Let us note that he received these wounds while he was a general, that is, the “lazy and erotomaniac” M. Kutuzov did not hide behind the backs of his soldiers. In 1790, participating under the command of Suvorov in the assault on Izmail, Kutuzov at the head of the column captured the bastion and was the first to break into the city. This is how Suvorov assessed his subordinate: “Major General and Cavalier Golenishchev-Kutuzov demonstrated new experiments in his art and courage... he, serving as an example of courage, held his place, overcame a strong enemy, established himself in the fortress and continued to defeat enemies.” Kutuzov was produced to lieutenant general and appointed commandant of Izmail. Then there was participation in the war in Poland, diplomatic and administrative work, and in the finale - the most active participation in the victorious war with Napoleon. Or are these myths?

Suffice it to say that Field Marshal M.I. Kutuzov is a full holder of the Order of St. George. There were only four such people in the history of the Russian Empire (!). A significant part of Mikhail Illarionovich’s military service was spent on the battlefields, in the most difficult conditions. War is, first of all, hard work, exhausting work and the highest responsibility for the lives of subordinates and the Fatherland. Later this tension and numerous the wounds did their job: the body was completely worn out, the field marshal did not live to see seventy years of age.

Why does Yu. Pivovarov believe that M. Kutuzov has nothing to do with us (probably Russians)? Maybe because foreign languages ​​were very easy for him, and he knew a lot of them. Or because he was the most tender father and husband? He had six children. The only son died in infancy. There are five daughters left. Lisa, the ugliest and most beloved, was married to an officer in his army, a war hero. When his beloved son-in-law died on the battlefield, Kutuzov sobbed like a child. “Well, why are you killing yourself like that, you’ve seen so many deaths!” - they told him. He replied: “Then I was a commander, and now I am an inconsolable father.” He hid from Lisa for a month that she was already a widow.

Or was M. Kutuzov not Russian because he was the greatest strategist, surpassing Napoleon himself? The field marshal was against the march on Paris and the liberation of Europe, hostile to Russia, from Napoleon. He saw many years ahead and, in the end, he was right. Brothers Alexander and Nikolai were the “first” to fight the revolutionary infection in Europe, and it responded with aggression (the war of 1854-1856).

So, is Kutuzov too good or still bad for the Russians? What does Yu. Pivovarov mean when he says: “The real Kutuzov has nothing to do with us”?

Several years ago, Yu. Pivovarov discovered, by his own admission, a “completely astonishing... historical fact”: “In 1612, when Kuzma Minin gathered a militia to drive the Poles out of Moscow, he sold part of the population of Nizhny Novgorod into slavery. And with this money he formed a militia for Prince Pozharsky.” it was reported in a remarkable place - at the Gorbachev Foundation, at the round table “The Formation of Democracy in Modern Russia: from Gorbachev to Putin” with the participation of titled foreign colleagues.

What does Kuzma Minin have to do with it, one might ask, if our academician was invited to speak out about Gorbachev and Putin? But here’s what: “Russia,” explains Yuri Sergeevich, as if drawing a line from slave owners Kuzma Minin's habits to today's plunder of national wealth by those in power - has always used its natural resources. Once upon a time these were people...

The materials of the round table were published. And now V. Rezunkov, host of the radio station “Radio Liberty” (also on the budget of the US State Department), on November 4, that is, on the day of the celebration of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, as well as on the Day of National Unity, smartly broadcasts to the whole country: “Famous Russian scientist (?! – S.B.), historian Yuri Pivovarov discovered an amazing historical fact. In 1612, when Kuzma Minin was gathering a militia to drive the Poles out of Moscow, he sold part of the population of Nizhny Novgorod into slavery and with this money formed a militia for Prince Pozharsky.”

Currently, many historians are “fruitfully” operating in Russia, who, under the guise of “bringing the truth” to the people and the desire to “erase the blind spots of history,” sow citizens’ dislike for their Motherland...

Historians can both unite and divide society. This requires them to take a responsible approach to the subject. But here is what Yu. Pivovarov claims: “If we speak seriously, it is impossible to reconcile history with history. Reconcile pre-revolutionary, Soviet and modern Russia too.”

What does it mean to “reconcile history with history”? Apparently, what is meant is the following. On the time axis there are “break points” of a single historical process. These points are the times of events associated with the global redistribution of property in a particular country as a result of revolutions, colonization, occupation, etc. Yu. Pivovarov, in particular, speaks of “pre-revolutionary, Soviet and modern Russia”; the points of transition from era to era at this time were accompanied by a change in the owners of enormous wealth. Such shocks are the cause of “rewriting history.” This is an objective process. The historian often fulfills orders and receives a salary for this. History will always serve the interests of capital and power. This pattern is associated with risks, in particular the risk of a split in society, the possible consequences of revising previously concluded international agreements, etc. Sooner or later, a subjective interpretation of history will lead to upheavals. A far-sighted Customer makes sure that these risks are minimal, and that shocks are transferred to the longest possible period and cannot destroy the country and state. Modern management is engaged in solving this problem, and there is no need to be ironic about it. The red banner and tricolor are our history. Many glorious victories were achieved under these banners. And academician Yu. Pivovarov, director of a reputable academic institute, says about the fundamental the impossibility of solving the problem of minimizing risks from the impact on Russian citizens of many alternative versions of stories. Moreover, Yu. Pivovarov solves the inverse problem - he maximizes these risks. Let's prove it.

The academician’s Stalin, like Hitler, is “scum,” the USSR is an evil empire, and Soviet power is “Russia’s biggest tragedy in 1000 years.” its existence." But the academician is wrong, if only because without the communists there would be no Russia. At the same time, one cannot deny the fact that millions of Russian citizens are still grateful to the Soviet government, for example, for an excellent education, a happy, carefree youth, and this cannot be denied. Ideas of "debunking" and “humiliation” is not popular among the people. That is why organizations such as “Memorial”, “Fund them. HELL. Sakharov" and others like them are marginal and not interesting to the people. They exist solely through external grants.

In general, if you follow the logic of Yu. Pivovarov and agree that Stalin is “scum,” you need to go further: give similar characteristics to his entourage, then to the “Marshals of Victory,” scientists and the entire Soviet people, who as a result will turn out to be “slaves.” However, there is no vacuum, the place of “scum”, naturally, should be taken by “not scum”: generals Vlasov, Krasnov, Shkuro, according to this logic Rezun (Suvorov) and other traitors become fighters against the “totalitarian regime”, etc. The formation of a legion of “not scum” has been actively going on for more than twenty years. The academician takes an active part in this process, this is evident from his efforts in “debunking” Russian saints and national heroes. Similar processes took place in Ukraine and the Baltic states, their modern national heroes are known (S. Bandera, legionnaires of the SS troops, etc.). After completing the project of revising history according to Yu. Pivovarov, all that remains for us is to open museums of the “Soviet occupation” throughout Russia.

Thus, Pivovarov’s idea about the impossibility of “reconciling histories” leads to the need to update the conflicting version of history (several “irreconcilable histories”). However, the idea of ​​abandoning Russian saints and heroes and imposing new ones by force will definitely lead to a conflict that will smolder in society and at a critical moment will flare up as a destructive fire tornado. Moreover. It is absolutely clear that regardless of whether academician Yu.S. Whether Stalin’s brewers are “scum” or not, Stalin will take a worthy, prominent place in Russian history. A place similar to those occupied by Napoleon in French history, Cromwell and Churchill in English history, slave-owning presidents in the history of the United States, Mao Zedong in the history of China... This will be the case - if Russia plans to be a sovereign power...

"On the Laws of History"

“It is quite widely believed that history, in contrast to the so-called physical sciences, is concerned with the description of specific phenomena of the past, rather than with the search for general laws that can govern these events. Perhaps this view cannot be denied as a characteristic of the type of problem with which some historians are chiefly interested. But it is, of course, unacceptable as a statement about the theoretical function of general laws in scientific historical research” (Karl G. Hempel “The Logic of Explanation”, M., 1998).

Yu. Pivovarov has his own original opinion on the subject and methodology of history. “What does history study? French historian Fernand Braudel said: “Events are dust.” I would also not overestimate the role of archives and the role of documents. Yuri Tynyanov said: “I begin where the document ends.” He, the greatest expert on documents, did not have enough documents. In this sense, archives and facts do not answer the question of what history is. I like the definition of history given by the English historian Robin Collingwood: “History is the action of people in the past.” If this is so, then a person has free will and can do this or that. There are no laws for this, like in physics or chemistry. There is no law on the correspondence of productive forces to production relations, which if do not correspond then a revolution occurs. Rave".

With these words, Academician Pivovarov presents an effective universal method that explains everything. History as a science has ceased to exist if everything is determined by the “free will of man.” The Russians had “free will”, they “resisted” in 1941 near Moscow, so Hitler retreated, but in 1812 there was no such “free will”, Napoleon won, and the “lazy and erotomaniac” Kutuzov at that time read “ French pornographic novels." Stalin is “scum” and only his “free will” explains the “mass repressions”.

Let's note the following detail. The academician says literally the following: “This is our Borodino - a great victory, and in French and European history the battle for Moscow in 1812 is a victory for the genius of Napoleon. After all, we surrendered Moscow then.” We will not focus on the fact that Borodino and the “Battle of Moscow” are “two big differences,” but please note: Yu. Pivovarov is entirely on the side of “French and European history.” Although Napoleon said: “In the battle of Moscow the most valor was shown and the least success was achieved. The French showed themselves worthy of victory, and the Russians earned the right to be invincible." Pay attention to the respect with which Napoleon treats the Russians and how academician Yu. Pivovarov treats them.

Unfortunately, there is no such “free will”. There are many factors regulating the behavior of a person, society, and state. First of all, the economic factor. Geopolitics is dictated by economic laws. Economic interests rule the world. The doctrine of the interests of the state was substantiated by Machiavelli. In the 18th century the content of this teaching fits into the formula found by the Duke de Rohan: “Princes command nations, but princes are commanded by interests.” Pufendorf at the end of the 17th century was able, with the help of his enormous authority, to transform the teaching about government interests in the principle of understanding political actions. Karl Marx, whose works Yu. Pivovarov called “nonsense,” made fundamental discoveries in the field of economics and attempted to use them to explain some historical patterns. This was done very effectively at that time, and this approach is being successfully developed. The laws of economics and their influence on history are objective and no academician can abolish them, because this is tantamount to abolishing the law of universal gravitation. The academician said that there is no such law, and tomorrow a thrown stone will never fall to the ground.

History is a complex science that requires from the researcher encyclopedic knowledge. A historian must know many languages, often exotic and even dead. He must also be versed in economics, physical geography, philology, geophysics, paleontology, landscape science, ethnography, etc., etc., etc. A synthesis of history, geography, economics, sociology, demography - this is what the new science looked like in the eyes of the great historian Fernand Braudel. “I believe in the fruitful consequences of statistical analysis,” wrote Fernand Braudel. “The new economic and social history brings to the fore in its research the problem of cyclical change; it is fascinated by the phantom, but at the same time by the reality of the cyclical rise and fall of prices.”

Unfortunately, the time of the titans, who owned a rich arsenal of historical research, has passed and more and more “historians” are guided in their research by “free will”. It’s convenient, you don’t have to swallow dust in archives and know ancient languages.

But even “free will” requires the historian to adhere to elementary logic and at least some, albeit visible, decency.

About the Aurora shot

How Yu. Pivovarov provides information about Aurora as a revelation. “And the Aurora did not fire at Zimny. It was one of the strongest cruisers in the world, and if it had fired even once, the palace would have looked like the Reichstag in 1945 (the maximum caliber of a deck gun is 152 mm! - S.B.).” But not a single Soviet history textbook shows the cruiser Aurora firing at the Winter Palace. The Aurora's shot was a blank shot and should have served as a signal for the assault, this is stated in textbooks, so it is not clear who and what Yu. Pivovarov is educating?

The complete groundlessness of many of the academician’s statements is surprising. For example:

“The same “universal” education that Stalin gave the USSR was much higher in the former Russia. Before 1917, the level of education, in the sense of personal development, was such that we have not yet surpassed it. Solzhenitsyn called it “saving the people.”

And again our academician is lying. Firstly, in terms of literacy level (20-30%), pre-revolutionary Russia ranked last among the leading powers of the world. That is, less than a third of the population had the opportunity to “develop their personality.” Secondly, the Soviet education system was an excellent system, as objectively evidenced by the regular victories of Soviet schoolchildren at international mathematical, physical and other Olympiads, as well as the undeniable achievements of Soviet science. Thirdly - “in the sense of personal development.” Any Russian can name many names of Soviet scientists, engineers, workers, collective farmers, officers and generals, and even party functionaries, and Academician Pivovarov will never, ever prove how they were inferior “in terms of personal development” to their colleagues in the “former Russia.” Because it's not like that!

Lies within the framework of fuzzy logic

When familiarizing yourself with the history of the white movement based on archival materials of the Russian emigration, one becomes convinced that the “whites” were doomed to defeat.

Firstly, due to total corruption. There were not many convinced fighters for the ideals of a “united and indivisible Russia”.

Secondly, the Russian elite has degenerated so much that among it there was no personality commensurate with the scale of the tasks facing the Empire. The largest representatives of the white movement, Denikin, Kornilov, Kolchak, Yudenich, Wrangel, were neither strategists nor politicians.

Thirdly, the whites were never able to formulate a program for their movement. The solution to all problems was postponed “for later”, at the discretion of the Constituent Assembly.

Fourthly, there was no unity within the movement. At first, the bourgeoisie fought in alliance with the left to abolish the monarchy, then significant efforts were spent on destroying the army, and then destructive rivalry began within the white movement.

The real alternative to “totalitarian” development was the disintegration of Russia into several dozen states. The likelihood of collapse was commensurate with the likelihood of the Bolsheviks retaining power.

To illustrate the use of fuzzy logic in order to mislead the reader, we present an interview with an academician RAS Yu. Pivovarova(“Profile” No. 32/1). This is what, in particular, the academician is talking about: “On October 25, 1917, a small group entered the empty Winter Palace, where 4 ministers sat until nightfall, and they avoided meeting with visitors. Then the group went ahead and declared that the Provisional Government had been arrested, although it knew nothing about it. And Trotsky (not Lenin - pay attention!) announced that a revolution had taken place in Russia. Exactly four years later in Berlin, German Bolsheviks ran down the street Unter den Linden to the Reichstag to seize it. The old and fat General Ludendorff (this is about a 53-55 year old (depending on what events the academician is referring to) youthful, slender general) together with his adjutants lay down behind the machine guns and mowed down the Bolsheviks. Dot. The revolution did not happen. Be in St. Petersburg the same combat-ready battalion (that is, “old man” Ludendorff had a whole battalion of adjutants (!) – S.B.), he would have entered the Zimny, would have hanged Trotsky (where would they have found him, Trotsky never sat in the Zimny. – S.B.), and nothing would have happened.” This is how easy it is for an academician to do it if you don’t know what was really going on in Germany in 1918–1921. And this is what was happening.

In the spring of 1918, Ludendorff undertook a series of large-scale offensive operations in France. Ludendorff's strategy, calculated for simultaneous the defeat of Soviet Russia and the Entente countries failed and led to the complete depletion of the German army and Germany's defeat in the war. On October 26, 1918 he was dismissed. During the November Revolution of 1918 in Germany, the general fled to Sweden. This revolution began with a sailor's uprising in Wilhelmhaven and Kiel and a few days later covered all of Germany. On November 9, 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm II, under pressure from Chief of the General Staff Groener, who considered continuation of hostilities pointless, was forced to abdicate the throne and flee the country. Representatives of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) came to power.

Communists under the leadership of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who demanded the further development of the revolution and proclamation in Germany, under Soviet rule, rebelled in January 1919 against the Social Democrats. There was a real danger of civil war. The rebellion was suppressed by Freikorps detachments under the leadership of G. Noske, Liebknecht and Luxemburg were killed without trial.

In Bavaria, the revolution led to the emergence of an independent Bavarian (head Kurt Eisner) and then the Bavarian Soviet Republic (head Ernst Toller), which was also defeated by the army and Freikorps. Thus, “old man” Ludendorff had nothing to do with the defeat of the November Revolution!

Thus, it is completely unclear what events the academician is talking about in his interview. If about German revolution, then it was suppressed in 1919, when Ludendorff lived in Sweden; if about the Kapp Putsch and the Ruhr Uprising, then these events ended in 1920, and not in 1921 and not thanks to the efforts of the general. “This is how free will can decide everything.”

Thus, according to Yu. Pivovarov, it turns out that Russia at the beginning of the century had a chance to follow the “democratic” path of development, as soon as a “fat old general” was found. But the probability of this possibility was zero.

It is known for certain that from four o’clock in the morning until the morning of November 7 (October 25) Kerensky remained in Petrograd, in the premises of the General Staff,

Yuri Sergeevich Pivovarov- Director of the Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences (INION), academician, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Political Sciences, professor, honorary president of the Russian Association of Political Science, author of more than 200 scientific works on the history of Russia.

"A academician Yuri Pivovarov: “There is no mystery in the Russian soul”

Article Galina Sapozhnikova"AAcademician Yuri Pivovarov: “There is no mystery in the Russian soul.”

This is the statement made by Yu. Pivovarov. He can often be seen on TV. A distinctive feature is Russophobia! He's a libertarian.

Who is he?

"Pivovarov Yuri Sergeevich , 61 years old, Jewish by mother, Muscovite. In his own words, among his direct ancestors were the Decembrists and the Bolsheviks-Trotskyists, repressed under Stalin. In his youth, he was detained by state security agencies for distributing NTS anti-Soviet propaganda leaflets, which did not prevent him from graduating from MGIMO and graduate school at IMEMO. He is considered “the most prominent Russian political scientist, one of the most famous Russian historians”, “the father of Russian political science”, “the author of a new concept of Russian history”. Doctor of Political Sciences, Professor, Academician Russian Academy of Sciences , Director and Head of the Department of Political Science and Law INION RAS, Deputy Head History Sections of the Department of Historical and Philological Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences , member of the Bureau Information and Library Council of the Russian Academy of Sciences , vice-chairman Scientific Council for Political Science at the Department of Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences , member Bureau of the RAS Council for work with compatriot scientists living abroad , honorary president Russian Association of Political Science (RAPN), head of the section “Scientific and cultural policy, education” Expert Council under the Chairman of the Federation Council , member Scientific Council under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation , one of the leaders international project "European Information Network on International Relations and Regional Studies" , teacher Moscow State University And RSUH. The son is a functionary of the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, the daughter is a businesswoman, a citizen of the Czech Republic, the nephew is a TV presenter on the NTV channel Alexey Pivovarov.

Character about yourself:
"...At seven or eight years old, I was an unconditional anti-Stalinist, a person who understood a lot of things. And what was also very important for me, oddly enough, was that when I was sent to kindergarten, the whole group of us was taken to the factory. And when I saw the plant, I said to myself - I was six years old, I was sent to kindergarten late - I told myself that I would never work here .
...of course, as a child I was taught music, a teacher came to my house. My sister studied at a music school, and a teacher just came to me and I practiced the piano. And the language teacher came, and then, having matured, I began to go to classes myself. I, of course, had a happy childhood, which not every Soviet child had, since my grandmother was given back all her regalia. This was a quite wealthy Soviet family in a large apartment, and so on.
...my grandmother was a completely unrestrained person, and it was she who raised me more, because my parents worked. The grandmother was quick-tongued and did not know how to hide anything. But for all that, she was a communist. That is, it was not Stalinist, but rather Leninist, cultural.
...It became a habit for me (in the USSR, in 1967!) - it became a habit to read foreign magazines and newspapers, which I do to this day.
...I got into science by accident, because after graduating from MGIMO I was hired for military-diplomatic work, but not at the Foreign Ministry, but at the military attaché in Potsdam, since my first language was German. ...But I didn’t want to go to any military-diplomatic work, and went to graduate school. It was a way to go somewhere on the sidelines, to be free, to do nothing.
...I wrote my first work at the age of 22: “The Philosophy of History of Chaadaev.” Of course, this work is not scientific, it is nonsense, but this is the first touch on what I do. And in parallel, which was also very important for me - already at 18–19 I was an absolute anti-Soviet, anti-communist, although before I was 18 I still loved Lenin, my grandmother raised me that way. We at MGIMO created underground circles, prepared the murder of Brezhnev, but it was not I who had to kill.
...once they seized the MGIMO radio station, it was in my second year, and I addressed the students and teachers with a stormy speech. They didn’t kick us out, oddly enough, they left us. And then, in my fifth year, I was arrested for the first time. In 1972, I was arrested with a suitcase of samizdat at the Yaroslavl station. I was summoned for interrogation by the KGB, I thought that they would imprison me, but they not only allowed me to graduate from college, but also hired me for diplomatic work.
...I was a parasite, and for this alone they could have simply put me in prison. Thank God my parents could feed me...
...I didn’t think about any science at all then, I thought about literature, about dissidence, I went with a friend several times to see the camps in the northern subpolar Urals, and I realized that I was scared. I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to stand it physically. We went in winter and summer to see how prisoners lived. It seemed like they were going hunting or fishing, but in reality they wanted to watch and communicate with the escorted prisoners, and I was scared. Simply because I didn’t want to go to a camp, to prison, I was physically afraid of all this, I was afraid. All this seemed terrible to me.
...As a matter of fact, in a sense, I have never studied science either, because, for example, a historian does not consider me a historian, because I don’t sit in archives, I simply don’t know some things, because they didn’t teach me at MGIMO . But I was elected to the Academy of Sciences in the Department of History and in the specialty of Russian History, first as a corresponding member, then as an academician. But I don’t think I’ve written anything so classically historical.
...actually, it’s impossible to get much help from me - I don’t know how to do anything.
...I don’t go to the theater, or to the cinema, or anywhere.
...I'm deaf, I think I'm pretty dumb to music...
...I have no professional interests, in the literal sense of the word.
...My 26-year-old son works at the Ministry of Economic Development in Moscow. He is not interested in politics, he is interested in the state, Russia and so on, because he is not an intellectual at all. ...By the way, I don’t force my son to read books, he doesn’t know anything, he’s never read any poetry, he doesn’t need it - and for God’s sake.
...I am an absolutely tolerant person, but I am not tolerant of people who preach racism, Hitlerism, Stalinism - there can be no convention here, at least with me "

Pivovarov’s statement in the program “The Court of Time”:
"Godless Stalin created the disgusting cult of Alexander Nevsky "

From Pivovarov’s book “Complete destruction in earnest”:
"The essence of Russian life is unchanged: contempt for the individual, in one form or another, violence against a person and his - ultimately - enslavement, theft, the ability to self-organize only for evil deeds "

(http://general-ivanov.livejournal.com/925985.html )

So, Russophobe Pivovarov talks about the Russian soul: “KP columnist on the fate of the Russian ethnic group Galina Sapozhnikova talks with Doctor of Political Sciences, Director of the Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academician Yuri Pivovarov [video]

Mysterious Russian soul

- Let this question, Yuri Sergeevich, not seem strange to you: Could you explain to us who we are from the point of view of science? Some people sense nationalism in the word “Russian”. Yeltsin introduced the word “Russians” into everyday use, but many people find it too pretentious. Who are we, people living in the Russian Federation? Russians or Russians? Heirs to a thousand-year history or the new Russia since 1991? Europeans or Asians?

I think that we are, first of all, Russian, of course. Not in the ethnic sense. Because a Bashkir, a Tatar, a Frenchman, and a Jew who lives here and speaks Russian is a person of Russian culture. The concept of nationality is, first of all, a cultural concept. The main problem is that since 1991 people don’t even know who they are. Because Russia is not equal to the Russian Federation - neither geographically nor culturally. She's wider, she's bigger. And you can't do anything about it. Of course, we are Russians, we are the heirs of more than a thousand years of culture. There were different periods - Kievan Rus, Mongolian Rus, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Soviet. Now post-communist. It is really very difficult for us to understand who we are: part of Europe, or an independent civilization? Or the backwaters of Asia? We are so located that we can be assigned everywhere. And in our history there were many similarities with both Europe and Asia.

- Is that why the myth about the mysterious Russian soul arose?

I think it was actually invented in the West. After Peter the Great, Western people, coming here, saw a people similar to them and at the same time not similar - they seemed to have white skin and Christians, but everything else was different - and they started talking about the mysterious Russian soul. And then the Russians attributed it to themselves. It sounds very nice! I was always stopped by this pretentiousness - “the mystery of the Russian character.” I think that we are one of many nations, no worse and no better, we have something to be proud of and something to be ashamed of.

- What about Berdyaev: “Russian national thought feels the need and duty to solve the riddle of Russia, to understand the idea of ​​Russia, to determine its task and place in the world”?

Berdyaev is a Russian philosopher who lived in the first half of the last century. And then they especially liked to speak pompously, beautifully, vaguely... Science comes from the West, so they try to measure Russian history and Russian reality by Western standards. But it doesn’t work. Then a thesis is put forward: either Russians are somehow mysterious, unlike anyone else, or they must, as Berdyaev says, understand themselves. By the way, modern Russian science, which I also belong to, is doing this. We are trying to develop a concept, a category that can be used to describe Russian reality. This is called self-knowledge. But not like this: I’m sitting on the couch and thinking, who am I, Yuri Pivovarov, and what was I born for? I, as a historian and political scientist, must understand why we have such an economy, such a policy, why several revolutions took place in the 20th century, and why in 1917 and 1991 Russia suddenly fell apart? And what will happen to us? We used to expand and the population grew, but now we are shrinking geographically, and the demographics are bad. We need to understand what awaits us. Maybe someone will conquer? And who exactly?

Turbulence zone

- By the way, I have come across the theory many times in the West that Russians are brutal because they were under the Tatar-Mongol yoke for 300 years. Probably, initially we were kind and gentle, and then suddenly became rude... Does the set of qualities, which is called national character, change under the influence of time, space and circumstances? Let's say the 20th century, the most terrible century for Russian history, changed us? Have we become tougher after the Stalinist regime? More cynical after the collapse of the USSR?

There is such a famous American sociologist named Wallerstein, he was once asked: what has changed in the world? He said: “Everything has changed. Nothing changed". This is not absurdism or a mind game. When they say that the Russian character was formed as a result of the Golden Horde, I am skeptical about this. Because, firstly, the Golden Horde mixed only with the Russian aristocracy, and secondly, in reality, the Russian people had difficulty imagining what it was. The Tatars were not here, they roamed the southern steppes, and only occasionally raided Rus'. Therefore, it would be wrong to blame everything on the Tatar-Mongol yoke or on Ivan the Terrible.

Now regarding the twentieth century. It was a terrible century. But we arranged it for ourselves, not someone else! This means that there was something in our energy, in the chemistry of our soul and brain that allowed us to create all this. Today's wild renaissance of Stalin completely amazes me. It's as if Hitler was popular among Jews... Stalin killed Russians - how can we love this beast? They say: we won the war, we flew into space. Yes, he ruined so many souls that no war, no space is worth anything at all!

But this is not the only thing that characterizes the 20th century for Russians. A lot of feats, achievements, heroism, breakthroughs, epiphanies. That is, not only the terrible traits of the Russian person appeared, but also wonderful qualities. Alas, human history is such a drama, with nasty things, horrors, blood... Another thing is that for us that century turned out to be the most traumatic and difficult. We entered a turbulent zone at the beginning of the century, under Khrushchev and Brezhnev we rested a little, and then again this anti-communist revolution. All this led to the fact that people began to feel extremely uncomfortable, at least some kind of social security was destroyed, and life was shortened. In such situations, it is often not the best, but the worst qualities of a person that come to the fore - as a defensive reaction. But again I cannot say that these are precisely Russian qualities. Many foreigners tell me: if we were placed in the same social conditions, we would be worse beasts than you, you are still angels compared to us.

"Frightened Man"

- Today, despite the fact that the USSR has been gone for almost 20 years, are we still Soviet people?

I think yes. And not only people of my generation, but also yours, much younger. Even those who fought against the Soviet regime (Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov) were also Soviet people. The main thing that the Soviet government did was to educate the Soviet man, a new historical type, which is characterized by a non-religious attitude to life, poor knowledge of one’s own roots and one’s own history, very superficial education, the absence of some of the most important cultural and moral fundamental values, the knowledge of which was instilled in other cultures. . This is a scared man. I first came to the West when I was 38 years old. And despite the fact that he spoke several languages, he did not know how to buy a train ticket or how to turn on the shower. Or how to press a button to drink coffee. You learn this quickly, in general... I can see a Soviet person in the frightened eyes of any airport in the world. The Bolsheviks managed to create a new person who does not know his history well, but who is convinced that our country is the best. At the same time, he feels very insecure and ingratiates himself with foreigners.

- And what should we do about it now? Create a new person?

There is no need to create any “new people”, we need to live as we lived.

How we live now. I am against revolutions, against grandiose reforms. As a historian of Russia, I can tell you: the golden time is when people live their lives. Here I am, a teacher, teaching, a driver drives a car, a salesman sells, television makes its programs. Everyone does their job honestly.

“The Russian people have undermined their gene pool”

- And then suddenly this whole comfortably tailored world turns upside down, because something happens. Namely: an explosion of xenophobia in Russia. The question is not: were we ready for it? Were we predisposed?

It must be borne in mind that nationalism in Russia has never been as strong as, for example, in the West. Why? Because until 1917, the Russian Empire was divided not by nations, but by confessions. Today, Russia faces the problem of nationalism, and it is a very serious one. Because the main hardships of all the changes fell on the Russian ethnic group. And he feels the most deprived. He sees how many of the rich are ethnic non-Russians. He sees the expansion and migration of the Caucasus and Central Asia, and does not know how to react. The old ideologies are gone, both Marxist and liberal, but nationalist ideology has never been played out in Russia. Once, at the end of his reign, Stalin tried to combine the idea of ​​socialism with the idea of ​​Russian patriotism, but it did not work. Young people living in small towns or working-class outskirts, who have no social prospects, are rather poorly educated, not rich, but who see glamor and wealth on the Internet and TV, can easily be united by the idea of ​​nationalism. Moreover, animal, ethnic nationalism: whoever is not Russian will be punched in the face... The situation is extremely dangerous, and it cannot be underestimated. In addition, Russian nationalism is fueled by the growth of nationalism of the non-Russian peoples of the Russian Federation - Tatar, Bashkir, Caucasian. This is the bomb that can blow everything up. These Russian guys have a reason to be unhappy and protest, but the consequences could be catastrophic. And for these boys and girls themselves too. There is nothing worse now than falling into the ideas of great-power Russian nationalism.

- You said in one interview: “Who is to blame for National Socialism in Germany? German culture, religion." Can you draw parallels?

This does not mean that Goethe is specifically to blame. What was meant was this: German cultured people, writers, philosophers often wrote and said irresponsible things that educated the minds and souls of the masses. And in difficult moments of German history they acquired explosive significance. For example, the constant praise of the German, his elevation above everyone. Narcissism is included in the “price list” of all peoples, but at some point it becomes dangerous. What I'm saying is that an intellectual should always know what he is doing. Russian literature is to blame for what happened to us. She endlessly undressed, humiliated statehood and order. Leo Tolstoy, Saltykov-Shchedrin, even Dostoevsky are brilliant writers, we were raised by them. But they also gave us anti-state, anti-social nihilism...

On the other hand, one cannot fail to note the unique survival rate of our elite. How many times over the past century has it been completely washed out! The First World War, civil war, “white emigration”, collectivization, repressions, the Second World War, the collapse of the USSR, brain drain... And each time it was restored like a Phoenix bird.

Alas. I can say that the average level of both the Soviet and post-Soviet Russian elite is becoming lower and lower. I went to the Central Committee of the CPSU as a young man and now as an old man I walk through the current corridors of power. The bureaucratic level of work in the Central Committee (and I, mind you, is not a supporter of it at all) was higher than that of current officials. And in the tsarist ministries it is higher than in the Soviet ones. In the 20th century, the Russian people undermined their gene pool. The quality of our elites is disgusting.

Russian man is tired

- Editor of the magazine “Art of Cinema” Daniil Dondurei, speaking about Russians, once ironically remarked: in the West, supposedly, you cannot find a single Russian saucepan... Political scientist Vitaly Tretyakov explained this by saying that Russians are not interested in solving unoriginal problems. That is, the Orthodox mission, world communism is easy for us, but paving the road... is boring.

Something else kills me much more. Here I have a large institute, and Germans and French rent premises in it. And they brought a German worker to assemble their furniture! Because the Russians cannot do as great as the Germans... It offended my national pride. We are proud of Lefty, but we are inferior in quality of work. But before the revolution they did not give in. In the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the Russian economy developed like no other economy in the world. I'll tell you an amazing thing that few people know: in 1916, the capacity of Russian railways was higher than that of American ones. It would be the same as if our roads today were better than theirs. We were the only country in the world that did not introduce food rationing during the First World War: we were so rich, prosperous, and moving forward. If it were not for this terrible revolution, not for the Civil War, we would (and this is what the most serious scientists say) by 1940 we would have had the best economy in the world. But the map of history has laid out in such a way that we have been thrown back.

So it’s not the mysterious Russian soul that interests me, but whether a Russian can come to work on time, do it well and not cheat if he promised. These are the things where a person is tested.

A Russian person is the same as everyone else. But he is seriously ill. All this century he was persecuted so much that he broke down. There is no lift, no impulse, I don’t feel it. I’m not a pessimist, on the contrary, but I see that we need to take care of people. Not to perform some great feats, but to take care of them. Solve not global problems: rockets, Mars, the Moon, but real ones. Solzhenitsyn said: we should get out of world history for 100 years and take care of ourselves. When a person is tired, he needs to rest, lie down, and heal.

You have to be selfish, in the best sense of the word. Live for yourself, try to make life more or less comfortable for people. Nobody rides the kind of trains we ride anymore. Such trains, such quality planes - it’s terrible. We must learn to live more comfortably.

I’m only afraid that they won’t let us escape from these world affairs. We need an army, a navy, missiles, otherwise we will be devoured. But if all the money is spent on this again, nothing will happen here. This is the tragedy. - One American, a young man, having visited Russia, said: if you had an economy like ours, and your soul remained Russian, you would be a great country, and we Americans would emigrate to you.. .

Russia is already a great country. We, of course, have a disgusting economy, and it is getting worse. But the greatness of the country is not only in the economy. We have a great culture. Great language. And a great type of consciousness. We truly belong to those ethnic groups in world history that claim to be remembered like the ancient Greeks and ancient Romans.

Battle for the future

- Tell me, why is there suddenly an incredible demand for historical revision right now?

The fact is that Russia seems to have no future. People have no idea what will happen to them. Under Soviet rule, everyone was told: we live in the most developed society, socialism, then there will be communism. Some believed, some did not believe, but everyone lived within the framework of this paradigm. What will happen to us next? Some predict the end of Russia. Others, on the contrary, are a revival. No one has any projective vision of what will happen to us in 10 or 25 years. Since the future is completely unclear, people want to understand what we have with the past? You need legitimacy, confidence that you have the right to exist. It’s like replacing the terrible present with some other past. Why is there a rise in love for Stalin? This is the owner, a firm hand, there was order under him, we reached Berlin. Well, at least something against the backdrop of a tattered apartment and lack of money... This is not a love of history or interest. Nobody knew the real story, and still doesn’t. In fact, in the form of historical discussions there is a battle for the future of Russia. What kind of history we choose for ourselves, this is our future. Let's stand under the banners of Stalin or Ivan the Terrible and march. Let's choose the softer Speransky or Alexander II, let's go in the other direction. There is no need to blame anyone for what happened or will happen to us. We only have ourselves to blame for everything."

(http://www.kp.ru/print/25669.4/829776?geo=1/)

Historian, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, professor, director of the Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences (INION) of the Russian Academy of Sciences Yuri Pivovarov talks about the formation of the Russian state, parallels between the past and present, the history of government institutions, the most important documents and the people behind them.

Transcript of the 1st lecture by Yuri Sergeevich Pivovarov, aired on the Kultura TV channel as part of the ACADEMIA project:

Let's start our lecture. Today it is dedicated to the topic “Traditions of Russian, Russian statehood and modernity.” Why did I choose this particular topic for the lecture? Well, if we look at Russian history as a whole, like this, throughout its thousand-year development, we will see that the state, government, various government institutions have played and are playing a huge role in our history. And in this sense, I could call our culture - the power, political, legal culture - “power-centric”. Power-centric, that is, power is in the center. Unlike, for example, the Western, the European, which I could also call with such a tricky word “anthropocentric”. Anthropos is a person. That is, there is a person standing in the center. Man as the measure of all things. Everything starts from a person. For us - from the authorities. How did this happen? At what stage of Russian development? After all, at first it seemed that it was not so. This is interesting to look at, and we will talk about it today.
Why traditions? Because tradition is not a museum where we come and look: yeah, here’s a painting from the fourteenth century. They don't draw like that anymore. And we moved on. Tradition is something that lives constantly. Valid. Mimics, hides. Sometimes we don’t even see that this is a tradition. And sometimes it seems to us that this is an innovation. But a historian will explain to you that five hundred years ago, maybe it was in some other form, but in essence it already happened. It is very important. In general, when we talk about historical processes... History is a science. We know this. We must remember that this is a special science. Unlike, say, physics, chemistry or such natural sciences. This is, of course, my point of view. There are no laws. There are no laws of historical development. When I was young, we were taught in universities that there are laws of correspondence for something. Or some inconsistency. And as a result, something happens. So, I have been studying historical science and political science for many decades. And I am both a historian and a political scientist rolled into one. I came to the conclusion that there are no objective laws of historical development. History is an open process. The process is open. There are patterns, there are traditions. They need to be studied. And so I emphasize - traditions. Because we will talk about this. But there are no iron laws according to which, say, the October Revolution should have occurred in Russia and people would have begun to build a socialist society. There was no such historical law of development. Why? But because a person is a creature who has free will. And he can choose one way or another. And this is above all economic, social, natural and climatic conditions, and so on. It is very important. What else is very important when we talk about Russian or Russian history? We must remember that we are not a backward country. And that our development is in no way deviant. You know this word “deviance”, deviation, right? No no. We are following our own path, just like Poland, Portugal, Spain, Cambodia and any other country. And we didn’t fall behind anyone. We are not chasing anyone.
Our development is what it is. Within this development there is a corridor of opportunity. It can be better, it can be worse, it can be successful or less successful. But we are certainly not lagging behind anyone. And our development is not flawed in any way. That is, we are walking, as we did, along our own historical path, which we can criticize or admire, or do both. But, nevertheless, this is also a very important prerequisite. But let us return to the main topic of the lecture - “The traditions of our statehood and modernity.” Why did I put “and modernity” at the end? Well, “modernity” has several meanings in Russian. These are also today's years. Or, there, the years that were ten years ago. But this is also a special era. You know, there is such an English word. Surely, many people are now learning English. Modernity. Modernity. This is a historical era that began at the end of the eighteenth century. Times of the French Revolution. And it continues now. That is, this is modern society over the past two centuries.
And so I’m always interested in comparing Russian traditions, Russian traditions of state power with what. With that. With what is the modern world. This is what I think is very important. And we can explain much of what is happening here if we know. And I already talked about this. But let me emphasize again. What happened before? And here it is very important to take some position, some initial point of view. In science, in general, point of view is very important. I once read a prominent German philosopher who wrote that physicists (and I don’t study physics, I don’t know) noticed that when they observe an object for a long time, the object begins to change. That is, this is some kind of mysticism. Yes? It is difficult for a person who is not a physicist to believe this. But the position from which we look at the historical process is very important. Because, indeed, how he appears to us depends on this position, on this view. My position is to look at Russian development through the twentieth century. What happened in the twentieth century? It ended quite recently, ten years ago. And his breath is still noticeable. Do you understand? Its air, its effects and consequences, they still work. And so we need to understand what happened in the twentieth century.
Every century, every century in any country, and here in Russia, of course, is unique. The twentieth turned out to be completely unusual. Well, for the whole world it turned out to be unusual, if only because people invented a weapon that could destroy the whole world. This has never happened before. Crazy progress of science and technology. Well, you are witnesses to this, people of the early twenty-first century. But for Russia it was much different. The great Russian writer Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Prize laureate, once in his old age, shortly before his death, remarked: Russia lost the twentieth century. Russia lost the twentieth century. And this man was not a pessimist. On the contrary, he was a man of such sternly optimistic will. And yet, he states. And I agree with him. His younger contemporary. I agree with him. We lost the twentieth century. Despite the fact that it started out amazing. At the beginning of the twentieth century... Well, many people know about it. Development of the Russian economy. Development of Russian democracy, Russian education, culture. Yes, I have to tell you, it's fantastic. Now it’s hard to believe that in the sixteenth year, during the war, the throughput of Russian railways was higher than that of American ones. Imagine that the capacity of current highways in Russia would be higher than in America. This is how Russia developed. There was rapid economic growth. And Russia was moving towards democracy. Russia was moving towards prosperity, everyone noticed it. Of course, not everything was perfect, otherwise there would not have been a terrible revolution. And there were many unresolved problems. And others grew. But, nevertheless, the general tone, the general uplift was felt by everyone. And suddenly - a terrible revolution. And then several more revolutions followed. First February, October. Another revolution in the fifth and seventh year.
And the end of the century. These are probably the times when many of you were born. The end of the eighties - the beginning of the nineties, another revolution. Four revolutions in one century. Moreover, everyone was different from each other. Their nature must be understood. And we need to explain why they happened. Why are there so many revolutions? It didn't exist in Russia before. What else about the twentieth century? Twice the system completely collapsed. In the seventeenth year of the Russian Empire. Despite her enormous successes. We were the only country among the larger countries that did not introduce a card system during the First World War. Where did the economy develop? And there was no hunger. At this time, famine was already beginning in Germany. And here the country suddenly and unexpectedly fell apart. You know how the wind blew and the house of cards fell apart. Although there was a powerful bureaucracy and a powerful army. A huge working country. And suddenly everything fell apart. Inexplicably. But the same thing, for example. This has already happened before my eyes. Late eighties - early nineties. There was, of course, no such rapid flourishing as at the beginning of the twentieth century. But it is also impossible to say that everything is on its last legs. And suddenly, in an instant, in a few days, the country instantly fell apart in three or four days in August of ninety-one. We need to understand what kind of institutions of power these are, which, on the one hand. And I tell you that Russia is a power-centric country. Here power determines everything and dominates everything. And suddenly the institutions of power crumbled. And the country turned out to be ownerless. Anarchy has begun. We need to understand this too.
What else is very important for the twentieth century? An anthropic or anthropological catastrophe occurred in Russia. What I mean? A huge number of people died in Russia. Wars, revolutions, famines, Stalin's, unprecedented in history, terror. Stalin's terror towards his people. I think the most terrible of those that the history of large countries has known. Well, maybe somewhere in Kampuchea or Cambodia, as it was called, we can compare. But I haven’t seen anything similar in large countries, even in Germany, even in China. So, terrible terror.
And what did this lead to at the end of the century? To a sharp drop in the population in our country. Demographic catastrophe. Everyone is talking about this, both President Medvedev and others. Russia's population is declining terribly. But there was also an anthropic, anthropological catastrophe because the best were killed. The elites stood out, as they say in science. Some tsarist, some then Soviet. And so on. Through terror, through some kind of social changes, when the best people were simply thrown out of the control system. ..... Russia for centuries, starting, well, from the end of the fifteenth century, lived by expanding its territory. Already by the year one thousand six hundred, the territory of the Muscovite kingdom was equal to the territory of Western Europe. And even surpassed her. Every year there was an increase of approximately one Holland. And just like that, we expanded, expanded, swelled. And suddenly the narrowing began.
Moreover, three times over the course of a century we lost our best territories. First, according to the Brest-Litovsk Peace, the eighteenth year, which the Bolsheviks signed. Russia lost about a million, well, a little less, square kilometers and about forty-five million people. Moreover, this is a European cultural population. These are lands with a good climate. This is present-day Ukraine, Belarus. There is Don, Crimea and so on. Then forty-first year. A million square kilometers are occupied by the Germans. Seventy-five million of the population, forty-two percent, were under the Nazis for several years. We played this case again. And finally, the ninety-first year, the collapse of the USSR. And approximately the same Sami territories are leaving. That is, by the end of the twentieth century, Russia finds itself in a completely new situation. The population is declining. And before it grew. Russia at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century experienced a demographic boom. And then she started to fall. And it's the same with the territory. We expand, expand... and suddenly narrow. Today the territory of Russia is the territory of approximately the middle of the seventeenth century. Approximately, never exactly happens. These are the times of the reign, the initial reign of Alexei Mikhailovich the Quiet, father of Peter the Great, before the annexation of the left bank of Ukraine. That is, we went to the middle of the seventeenth century. And this is a completely new situation for Russia. But all the institutions of power, in general, the entire political management system, political culture, were built on territorial expansion and demographic expansion. Now the narrowing has begun. And we need to look, even though they have been modified, to continue to work. This is a huge task for historians and political scientists. And we must definitely address it. Otherwise, we will not understand where to sail next. One more thing, well, essentially, though, and an introductory remark that to people. People tend to exaggerate novelty. When I was young, like you, it also seemed to me that I was living in a completely new world, my generation would explain to the old people how to act. And today, against the background of a fantastic electronic revolution, against the background of a fantastic information revolution, with all the computers and so on and so forth, it seems that the world has completely changed. They talk about nanotechnology, an innovative path of development, about some completely different economy, social structure, globalization is underway. But at the same time, a lot, and in part I have already talked about this, has not changed. There is such a wonderful American sociologist Emmanuel Laverstine. He was once asked: what has changed? He replied: “Everything, - comma - nothing.” And this is not a game, so to speak. This is not the coquetry of such a great scientist, intellectual coquetry. This is indeed an indication of dialectic. That yes, on the one hand, there are rapid changes. Yes? Well, for example, what we haven’t talked about yet. The twentieth century. Early twentieth century. Russia is a peasant country. Russia is a peasant country. Up to eighty percent of the population lives in the countryside. The end of the twentieth century is the opposite. Russia is an urban country. And they moved to the cities. And they live in big cities. And, on the contrary, the village is emptying. Yes? And Russia is becoming an empty country, as people are drawn into the cities.
According to some estimates, up to one-seventh of the population of the entire Russian Federation lives in Moscow. This may be a bit of an exaggeration. Or maybe not an exaggeration. But this means that Russia, so to speak, Moscow and large cities are pulling the population out of the provinces. Which was absolutely not the case at the beginning of the twentieth century. And then there was overpopulation in the countryside, and now there is obvious overpopulation in the city. We all encounter problems in the subway, in traffic jams, and so on and so forth. This is due to the excess of people in big cities. That is, of course, the situation has changed. She changed a lot. And, at the same time, we can find a whole series of constants. That is, something that does not change. Which still define our lives. Shall we start from the beginning? What is the key factor for the development of our political institutions, government institutions, political culture, right? Here is the term “political culture”, it was introduced into science by the American political scientist Gabriel Amond. This is our attitude to politics. This is what we think about the institutions of power, the state, and so on. Yes? That is, it is the study of what we think about power. Yes? How we imagine it. So, what was decisive? ...Adoption of Christianity. We must always remember that Russia is a Christian country. Despite the fact that most of the twentieth century, and my generation - absolutely most of my life - we lived in an atheistic country, where religion was persecuted, destroyed, etc. Although in recent years all this has been much softer. We are a Christian country. This is perhaps the only thing that unites Russia with the West and Europe. In everything else we disagree. Both with Europe and with the West. The West is Christian. And we are Christian. This truly unites us. What does it mean when your lecturer says that the country is Christian for our topic? And this means the following. I always say to my students in the audience: “Have you been to the Tretyakov Gallery?” Well, the majority nod: yes, of course, we have been, taken to school, and so on. And there is a painting by an artist with such a typical Russian surname - Ge. Yes, a typical Russian surname Ge. This picture, you know, is so oblong. And there stands a young man with his eyes downcast. And in front of him stands this man my age. So, with a short, general-style haircut. And asks him: “What is truth?” That's what the picture is called. And this young man lowered his eyes so dejectedly. This is Pontius Pilate and Jesus Christ. The question arises: why did Christ, the son of God, lower his eyes and not say what the truth is? I couldn't understand for a long time. Then I realized when I started reading books. But in Christianity this question is impossible. In Christianity, the question is possible: who is the truth? Christ is the truth. That is why he does not answer this general and invader of Judea, Pontius Pilate, Jesus Christ.
Christianity is a personalistic religion. Personal religion. Theme of personality. Human theme. Hence, politicians then say that human rights and so on, so on, so on, so on. And everywhere, therefore, Western Christian civilization, as I told you at the very beginning of our lecture, is anthropocentric, human-centric. And Rus' started with this. And Rus' did not follow the path of other religions, because, say, Islam, Judaism, and some other options claimed. Rus' chose Christianity for itself. This is how it happened historically. And all Russian culture is personalistic. Personal. There is a theme of personality, a theme of man. What we will not find, for example, in Chinese civilization, in Indian civilization, in Arab civilization, and so on, so on, so on. Well, we won't waste time on that because our topic is different. But with the adoption of Christianity, another thing happened. We adopted Christianity from Byzantium. Not from the West, not from Rome, from Byzantium. And this immediately fenced us off from the pan-European, pan-Western path. It immediately fenced us off. Because Latin - the language of Western Catholicism, the language of interethnic communication, a language similar to today's English, which connects everyone, turned out to be inaccessible to the ancient Russians, our ancestors. Well, only, maybe, for some bookworms. And we took Christianity from Byzantium not in Greek. Because Byzantine Christianity was predominantly in Greek. What language did we take? In Old Bulgarian, which became Church Slavonic. Since a century before the adoption of Christianity, Cyril and Methodius, as we know, invented the alphabet and so on. This fenced us off even from the main movement of Orthodoxy in Byzantium. And it fenced us off from Byzantine scholarship, culture, from Byzantine law, and so on. That is, on the one hand, we have taken a step into the circle of European Christian peoples. On the other hand, at the same time they took a step into isolation. It's like being in a ghetto. This, of course, this double influence of Christianity largely determined our further development, the path of development of our culture, including political. And immediately we took the model of power from Byzantium. What people often forget. Not those who are engaged in medieval Russia or, there, just ancient Russia, but those who today are engaged in the analysis of power structures. That is, they forget that Rus' has a tradition within which it has developed for centuries. This is the tradition of the Byzantine understanding of the relationship between the state and the Church. The state and the Church are the two main subjects in the medieval world. Well, what a person’s life is like depended on their relationship. For example, in Catholic Rome and in the West the concept was called “two swords.” Not balls, but swords. Yes? That is, the swords with which they fight. One sword represented secular power. This was the emperor, therefore, of the German Empire. And the second sword, which personified spiritual power, was the Pope. These two swords fought with each other. What did this lead to? This led to the development of pluralism. Each of the Europeans of that time could choose who he relied on. To that power or to that one. He had a choice. And political scientists say: this is one of the reasons, one of the roots of European democracy. Pluralism, the moment of choice, the possibility of different identities. I am for these, I am for others. And political parties already emerged and fought among themselves. That is, such a prototype of the future Western world.
We took the Byzantine model. This is a model of a symphony. Yes? Symphonies, that is, agreements. Symphony, symphony - agreement. The meaning of this model is that in all spiritual matters, secular power gives way to spiritual power. And, on the contrary, in secular matters... And in spiritual matters - secular power. That is, they were inferior to each other, so to speak. Secular in spiritual matters, spiritual in secular matters. Such is the agreement, the symphony. But in practice, of course, in practice everything was not like that. And the main thing was the one who had, in today's language, more resources. And the secular authorities had a greater resource. It's clear. And therefore, by taking this model, we, as it were, initially submitted to the fact that secular power is stronger than spiritual power. Therefore, the influence of the Church and, in general, the spiritual principle in Russian political history is felt less than, for example, in Western, European history. Moreover, it is interesting that in the West, the center of spiritual power is in Rome, and the center of secular power is somewhere there, in the north, beyond the Apennines, in northern Europe almost for Rome. And Byzantium, like later in Moscow, the palace of the emperor and the palace of the patriarch were nearby. And in our country, as we know, patriarchal power or metropolitan power has always been located approximately in the same place as the main sovereign, the head of secular power. This is fundamentally important for the formation of institutions. And this is how our institutions began to develop from the very beginning. What else is very important to say about the initial stages of the formation of institutions, which still plays a role to this day. You probably know that there was such a wonderful Russian philosopher in the first half of the twentieth century. He died, died in exile, in France. Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev. Yes, such a very famous, wonderful name. And this man once said. He was, in general, a master of aphoristic statements. He said that Russian history was eaten up by Russian geography. What did he mean? The fact is that our ancestors, the Eastern Slavs, began to build a civilization in those places where, in general, no one had built before them. If, for example, the Germanic, Aryan peoples who came from northern India and the Iranian plateau to Europe, they populated the territory of the former Roman Empire, already cultivated and with a good climate, where more than one civilization had already developed with very high potential, with great achievements, then our ancestors, due to historical characteristics, the historical process, I apologize for the tautology, found themselves in this snow-covered northeastern Europe. Then twelve months are winter, the rest is summer. Where are the bad soils? Snow, forest. And there is nothing. And in this sense, we found ourselves in very poor areas, very difficult to live in and to develop the economy. I won’t talk about all this, because on this subject there is, in my opinion, a brilliant book by a relatively recently deceased professor at Moscow University, Leonid Vasilyevich Milov. Academician, professor, “The Great Russian Pope and the features of the Russian historical process.” This is a great book that shows us not to turn our noses up too much. We love, we love to say that in our depths lies the entire periodic table, that we have there a third of the mineral resources, according to UN statistics, of all humanity. Perhaps this is true. But we live poorly nonetheless. And Leonid Vasilyevich shows how the Russian people and the institutions of power were formed in this poor, cold, northern environment. This is humanity's first attempt to build civilization in the north. We are neither west nor east. We are north. And no Gulf Streams reach us. It is very cold here, despite all the warming climate now. And five hundred and a thousand years ago it was much colder. And these vast spaces with a small population, without a cultural basis. That is, no one here has essentially engaged in cultural and civilizational work before. All this has led to the fact that one of the fundamental qualities of Russian history is its material poverty. And our vast unprotected territories. Huge territories, because Russian people spread in those directions, in general, where they did not meet any resistance. You know that our ancestors reached the Pacific Ocean. Moreover, without a state, the Cossacks themselves went and got there. Because there was essentially no resistance. It was only in the West; there was nowhere to go to the north. We have already mastered practically everything there, we have already been there. Arctic Ocean. And our borders are open. Such a passage yard. And nomads here and there. And nomads here and there. And we are not an island state, there are no mountains. That is, all this taken together gives us a very complex and not always pleasant, not always convenient natural-climatic launching pad for the development of Russian history. We must remember this.
And in these conditions, in these conditions, with general poverty, and despite the fact that we were always open, and to this day are open to various attacks, since we were not naturally covered by anything, there was a very small surplus product. That is, people produced, but there was very little left that could be divided and invested in further development. And because of this, the role of the state has grown. Since wealth is scarce and there are many contenders for it, historically it so happened that the state said: I’d rather control and distribute. I would rather determine the measure of consumption, the measure of distribution, the measure of conservation, and so on. And where to invest small resources. And this is also one of the underlying principles for the development of such a special state. This special type of power that we have.

One of the greatest influences, of course, on the development of our institutions of statehood was made by the Golden Horde. Mongol invasion. A lot has been written about this. Yes? And before we were taught in schools, in Soviet ones. I don’t know how they teach in post-Soviet countries now. That the Tatar-Mongol conquest stopped the development of Russia, there, and so on. Everything is in this direction. Everything is very bad. Later we learned that there is another point of view. What there are, or rather, there were, they are already dead, Russian philosophers, Eurasianists, who claim: on the contrary, the Mongols did a great thing. They saved us from the corrupt influence of the West. They shaped our soul. They shaped our political orders, systems, etc., etc. True, there is another point of view. Third. It belongs to the best Russian historian of all time, Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky. Who generally said that do not overestimate the importance of the Mongols. The Mongols influenced only the elite, the top. The people didn't know anything. I think that my beloved historian Klyuchevsky is wrong. And in many respects, of course, both of these points of view are right, that, yes, the Mongols, of course, stopped our development. Yes, sure. The Mongols, by the way, acted very competently. They took away, as we know, literate people from Russian cities. Because they understood that knowledge is power. They took the masons away because a wooden Kremlin or wooden gates and walls are easier to break into than stone ones. That is, everything was very competent. But the Mongols really played a huge role in Russian history. That is, the history that is already after Kievan, Muscovite Rus'. And when, for example, today's Ukrainian historians say that you, Muscovites, are not the heirs of Kievan Rus, we are the heirs of Kievan Rus in Ukraine, and you are the heirs of the Golden Horde... Okay, yes. We are the heirs of the Golden Horde. Yes, in many ways modern Rus', Moscow, then St. Petersburg, Soviet and today's are, among other things, the heir of the Golden Horde, although Kievan Rus too, of course. They are wrong about this. But we must not give up this inheritance, this heritage. Because we got it.
In the twentieth century, I already told you this, I quoted about Berdyaev. His younger contemporary and no less remarkable philosopher, Georgy Fedotov, Georgy Vladimirovich Fedotov, also lived in exile and died after the revolution, said. He commented on the end of the Mongol-Tatar yoke. Here's what happened. Yes? One thousand four hundred and eightieth, as we were taught at school. The end of the Tatar-Mongol yoke. Although it actually continued further. But it doesn't matter. What phrase did he sum it all up? "The Khan's headquarters was moved to the Kremlin." The Khan's headquarters was moved to the Kremlin. That is, the khan moved to the Kremlin. That is, Moscow became Tatarized, became un-Mongolized, and the Russian Tsar, the Russian Grand Duke is the Khan. In a sense, he is, of course, right. Of course, without a doubt. What's the matter? But the fact is that, being under the Mongols for two and a half centuries, the Russian princes, coming, well, mainly to Sarai, yes, when there was already the Golden Horde, that is, the western part of the Mongol Empire, they met with some completely an incredible type of power that they had never seen before either in Europe or in Rus'. This was an incredible amount of power for one person. This is the Mongolian type of power, when one person is everything, and everyone else is nothing. He can do absolutely everything. Everyone else - his relatives, his children, wives, I don’t know who, the princes - are, in general, no one. Nothing. They don't exist. He is one subject. The rest are nothing. This was not typical for ancient Rus'. But for centuries, being in such creative political communication with the Mongols, the Russian princes began to get used to this type of power. And it’s not just a matter of volume. Power is a very complex substance in general. Yes? Power is always violence. Yes? Well, use power. The same power of parents in the family. Yes? Or, I don’t know, in some kind of friendly... An older friend and a younger friend. His power. The power of the teacher in relation to students. Even here there are elements of violence, and even more so when we talk about the state and politics. But power is also a contract. Here is the modern government in Europe and the West, it has elements of both violence and agreement. When we enter into an agreement: yes, I obey you, but on these terms. I'm a worker, I work at your factory. But these are the conditions. Such payment, such, so to speak, social assistance, and so on. That is, there is an agreement. Self-restraint. I give in to you, you give in to me. The Mongolian government completely denies any agreement. Any convention. All cooperation and agreement between the two. Mongolian power is exclusively a power of violence. And so. They're not bad either. They are no worse or better than others. And we are no worse or better than others. But in nomadic empires it was apparently impossible to do otherwise. And now the Russians are adopting this. Russian tsars and Russian great princes are gradually adopting precisely this culture of power. It is this type of power. This is precisely the political attitude. And it gets stronger, stronger, stronger. And even later, in times, so to speak, closer to us, in such civilized and beautiful times. There was such an emperor, Paul the First. Yes? This is the son of Catherine and the father of Alexander the First, who was killed, who did not rule for long. He was an absolutely wonderful person in his own way. “Our romantic emperor,” Pushkin called him. He once, talking with the French ambassador, told him: “In Russia, only the one with whom I am talking means something. And only while I’m talking to him.” This is a very accurate formulation of Russian power. That's how it started then, and that's how it goes on, on, on. And so, let's see. Well, there is. We look at the twentieth century and see the same thing. This is the type of power that was formed by Mongolian influence, these natural and climatic conditions, and much more. It existed and exists. And this is very important to understand. No matter how the power changes. The Tsarist Empire, the Republic, the Soviet or system, or the Russian Federation, nevertheless, we see in changing forms the same content, the same substance.
But, of course, the formation of Russian power was largely influenced by the well-known, I think this audience is aware of, concept “Moscow is the third Rome.” Yes? Historians don’t know exactly, they haven’t attributed exactly how it happened. Well, this is some kind of late fifteenth - early sixteenth century. This means that the teacher or elder Philotheus is from Pskov, who formulates the concept of “Moscow - the third Rome,” which is not at all exclusively Russian. It is rooted, as we know, in the book of the prophet Daniel, in the Old Testament, where the entire history of mankind is interpreted as the history of successive kingdoms. And in Western Europe this concept was very developed. By the way, such a late replica, a late version of this concept was Hitler’s concept of the “Third Reich”. Also such a secular and such a fascist form, but essentially, so to speak, taking it from here. So, Philotheus, as we know, addresses Tsar Ivan the Third, his son, Vasily the Third, with a series of messages, and says that Moscow is the third Rome. That first, this is Rome, yes, where the Church begins.
Apostle Peter, the first Pope, begins to build the Church. But the Romans beat Christians, persecution. And the Church. And the Church, according to Christian mythology, is the bride of Christ. And Christ is her groom. The Church flees to Byzantium, to Constantinople, where it becomes the state religion. Byzantine Empire. But then the Florentine Union of 1439, when the weakening Byzantium asks for help from Rome and enters into the union and submits to it. The Church, of course, cannot remain in this “filthy” place where they entered into an alliance with Catholics. But for the Orthodox, the Catholics were worse, I don’t know why. And where should they run? Well, of course, he ran to Moscow. Here is Moscow. This is Moscow - the third Rome. Last. There will be no fourth, as we know,” says Filofey. That is, world history ends here. We are God's chosen people. Although we know that according to the Christian faith, according to the Holy Scriptures, there is one people, God’s chosen people. These are Jews. Yes? God makes a deal with them. Here we are. This is where the story ends. And what did this lead to? This led to incredible pride for the Russian people. Just yesterday we were some kind of backward province and ulus of the Western Horde, and now we are, so to speak, ahead of the rest, since Christianity has found its stronghold here. And we are the guardians of the ultimate truth. It’s incredible, so to speak, such a proudly ambitious concept. But that’s not all Filofey says. Philotheus talks about who directly has the key to open this chest of truth or the door where the truth is stored. Who, so to speak, holds it, who is the key to this truth? Tsar. Tsar. According to the doctrine of Philotheus, the Russian Tsar becomes the holder of the ultimate truth. He becomes a priest-king. In fact, the first clergyman. That is, on the one hand, you see what a powerful Mongolian tradition is in power as violence. And here is the Christian Orthodox tradition, which, firstly, is the truth with us. And secondly, the king. That is, the personification of power. That is, remember, “the Khan’s headquarters has been moved to the Kremlin.” So to speak, the Russian Khan has the ultimate spiritual truth. This is an absolutely amazing idea. And, by the way, you historians remember that this coincides with his marriage to Sophia Paleologus. Niece of the last Byzantine emperor. With the construction of the current Kremlin. And with many such things, when the structure of life changes. It's still the same era. Here, the end of the fifteenth - beginning of the sixteenth century. And amazing things happen. After all, the Russians used to be... I will allow myself such a lyrical digression for two or three minutes. Previously, Muscovites, residents of Moscow, saw their Grand Duke or Tsar, as he was later called, quite often. He was, so to speak, first among equals, essentially a Christian elder. Headman in the village. He differed from them, let's say, a little. And here is Byzantine pomp and courtyard. And people began to see their king twice a year. Once at Easter. And Easter, you know, is in the spring. Once at Christmas, when there was a religious procession. And this, you know, is in winter. Yes? That is, our tsar appeared on Red Square twice. And why, since Moscow is, therefore, the capital of world Christianity and the keeper of the truth, many churches began to be built immediately towards the Kremlin, around the Kremlin and in the Kremlin. The relics of saints were kept there. That is, it was as if they wanted to magnetize this place with holiness. Why am I telling this? At the beginning of the twentieth century, when the capital of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic returns from Petrograd to Moscow again and the concept of building a communist society is announced, the Third International will be convened. There is the third Rome, and here is the third International. And when the Soviet people declare that they are the guardians of the ultimate truth, since they are the guardians of the Marxist-Leninist truth, which is essentially a secular analogue of what happened before, the Kremlin will begin to do the same. When I was little, I went to kindergarten, we were taught this song based on poetry, it seems, by Sergei Mikhalkova: “Everyone knows that the Earth begins with the Kremlin.” That is, the Earth is round, it begins with the Kremlin. And look what the Bolsheviks did. They also began to appear twice a year, showing themselves to the people. Once in the spring. It's the First of May. Close to Easter. And another time in winter. Well, it’s November 7th, but it’s already winter here, close to Christmas. About the same. And in the same way they began to magnetize with their relics, the relics of saints. And today you can come to their secular temple, called the mausoleum. By the way, it is an architecturally brilliant piece of work. Where lies the main saint. Yes? Moreover, he is truly alive for them. Because, remember, if they still teach Mayakovsky: “Lenin is still more alive than all the living.” But Lenin died a long time ago. And why did he say this? But because Christ died, but then was reborn. Do you understand? And around there is a whole graveyard, a whole cemetery, where the relics of other saints lie. This is not at all accidental. This is a continuation of these traditions that work, work, work. And in this sense, I must say that if you look centuries later at Russian political culture, at Russian power culture, I would call it autocratic. Autocratic or power-centric. The power of one. The power of one autocrat, who always personifies it in himself. This is a specific person. This is a specific person. And it has all the power. And spiritual, and political, and economic, and any other. And this remains virtually unchanged over the centuries. It may weaken and appear less intense. It always depends on the person. For example, Ivan the Terrible or Peter are cool characters. And they greatly strained their power. Well, for example, some Alexey Mikhailovich the Quietest. Well, he was the quietest man, so to speak. When people were late to report to him, he killed, so to speak, they killed on his orders. Not scary. Yes? And if it was some other person, he would have killed terribly. Well, there were tyrants, and there were non-tyrants. But this did not change the essence. And she passed through the centuries. And this is neither our failure nor our shortcoming. You may like it or not. Let's say I don't like it. But, again, this is a matter of taste, there are no comrades for color. But in principle, as a historian and political scientist, I see that yes, it all happened under certain conditions. Yes, it works in different forms, in different guises. And we must, of course, when thinking about what will happen later, in the near future, especially you, young people, when thinking about what is happening now, of course, we must definitely keep this in mind. What else can we say about our institutions of power, about their traditions? Of course, one of the most important elements... And that’s all, what I will say now follows from what has already been said. This is the existence of the phenomenon of property power. There is such a word, there is such a term in science when the words “power” and “property” are combined into one, into one word, and it is written “power-property”. This is also what historians say is the type of power in Russia. They say "patrimonial" or "patrimonial". Remember the ancient Russian word “votchina” or “patrimonial”? Power ownership. What does it mean? This is when property and power are not two separate phenomena, not two separate, two separate substances, but together. They can't even be separated. This means that whoever has power also has property. That property does not walk on its own. Moreover, the word “property” is not entirely accurate, because... Although, we don’t have time for that. Property is a special legal institution. But here, rather, we are talking about property. About material substance. In the course of Russian political evolution, it turned out that the practically controlling and disposing person over this material substance was always the government. Even at the end of the nineteenth century, when these wonderful reforms were already underway, which I told you about, which you know about. Under Nicholas II, during the first census, Nicholas, as you know, wrote “owner of the Russian land” in the “profession” column. Master. He is both a ruler and a master in economic terms. Moreover, this was at a time when, it would seem, this trend was not particularly evident. But to this day in our country, whoever has power has control over property. And this, again, is connected with the course of Russian historical evolution. And property as a separate institution has not grown here. What else is such an important element of Russian power traditions? They always say: in Russia there is no law, there are no laws. And if there are, they don’t work. Their courts are corruptible and so on. This is not only what you will hear today when you turn on NTV or REN-TV. This happened a hundred years ago, and they talked about this topic two hundred years ago. A lot of wonderful works of Russian classical literature have been written. Why did this happen? And here, too, is an absolutely amazing, unique thing.
Mid-eleventh century. Eleventh century. Kievan Rus. Metropolitan Hilarion. Yes? Metropolitan is the head of the Russian Church within the Patriarchate of Constantinople. One of two ethnically Russian people, metropolitans of the Kyiv era. Monk, then metropolitan. He writes the work “The Word on Law and Grace.” It is even taught in schools. This is one of the first classic works. It is artistic, legal, philosophical, foreign policy, whatever. Yes? And for me it has always been a mystery. Just a few decades ago, the Russian people were illiterate. That is, there was no Christianity, there was no alphabet, they didn’t know how to write or read. And suddenly, after a few decades, a thinker is born, a person is born who, well, as if after millennia, he saw where Russia would go. This is absolutely amazing.
I cannot imagine, and I do not know of a single analogue, at least in Russian history. Well, you know, this piece is quite simple. He writes that there are different options, so to speak, for management. Well, I will speak in today's language, of course. Society. There is a law that guides us here in life, but it does not concern our internal structure, since it does not penetrate the soul. Follow the law and everything is fine. “Crime and Punishment” by Dostoevsky was written on this topic. Yes? He wanted to kill the old woman, already a criminal. A criminal when he has already killed. Here, the law is only if you killed. Well, there is grace. Grace is something that descends from God, but not to everyone, since, again, according to Christian mythology, few will be saved. And on those on whom grace will descend, but it is unknown on whom. Who gets it? This is such an exclusive, rare thing, so to speak. Again, speaking in today's, not very beautiful language. And apparently... I'm trying to reconstruct. Hilarion thought about how to connect. Because somehow this is not enough, and even quite rare for social life. And he introduces the category “truth”. Is it true. Yes, truth becomes a key term, which partly includes the law and these legal principles. It also includes some elements, perhaps grace, as well as justice. Includes social justice, equality and so on. That is, the word “truth”. The term “truth” is loaded with enormous meanings. Or, as they say in science, connotations. And, for example, it is very difficult to translate this word into English, French, German, because these contents, these connotations are not there. And again, remember? It is wonderful that the code of Russian laws in the first century of Russia’s existence was called “Russian Truth”. Yes? That is, it seemed to be flying in the air. We also remember, for example, that at the beginning of the nineteenth century, one ambitious officer, who wanted to make a revolution in Russia, wrote a work also called “Russian Truth.” Pavel Pestel. He thought Russia would live. And at the beginning of the twentieth century, one ambitious political emigrant called his newspaper Pravda. Yes? Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. And it became the main newspaper of the twentieth century. That is, this term remained in Russia for a thousand years.
“Pravda” is a key term in Russian political culture. Why am I saying this? And to the fact that the presence of this term for the presence of this concept, a phenomenon within the framework of which Russian culture fits, blocked the possibility of law. That is, our ancestors built a state of truth. Where there is justice, and equality, and law, and grace. And whatever. But our European brothers built a state of law. Well, really, it’s a law that doesn’t pretend to be anything special in their lives. Therefore, in our culture there was not even a desire to have the right. In general, the word “right”, in the legal sense, arose in the Russian language when it was translated from German. Feofan Prokopovich at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Yes? The German word “das recht”, “right”, was translated into Russian - “right”. They also have a right hand - “rekht”, and the right is the same with us. Yes? That is, this is actually a translated word. That is, our ancestors did not even imagine that there is law as the main regulator of social life, and there is truth. And this explains Russia’s penchant for communism, for example. Because this is also an attempt at some truth on earth. And this explains why our courts are so weak. Why is our legal system so weak in general? Of course, in Russian history you can find some other traditions that can be qualified as legal. But we won't talk about that now. Do not have the time. But in general, this phenomenon of truth, I’ll tell you again, blocked the possibility of Russia’s development along some legal paths. But I would like to end our lecture here today. At the next lecture, tomorrow, when we gather, we will continue to talk about the development of Russian political institutions, about their traditions. What has been preserved, what has gone. Thank you.
QUESTION: At the beginning of your speech, you put forward one such position: that the history of Russian statehood is power-centric. But, you see, if you describe everything else through power, be it property, or relations with the Church, then it turns out that there is nothing but power. And if there is nothing but power, and everything is described through power, then it turns out that there is nothing at all. This is the first question. And the second question. You said that Moscow is the heir to the Golden Horde, in this sense it is an ulus. This is, of course, debatable. But this is the situation. This means that the situation continues in the sense that, indeed, since that time there has been suppression by the supreme bearer of power of the entire rest of the population. And that the population itself, spreading, colonizing other territories, actually fled from this center. And settling in new territories, it calmly managed, at least for some time, without state power. And the state power subsequently caught up with them. What do you think about this? Thank you.
Pivovarov: I can answer. Yes? The questions are very correct, understandable and interesting. That is, you study well, that means. First question. Yes, of course, I am forced to somewhat stylize the approach in the lecture in order to more clearly show what I want to say within the time frame given to me. Of course, it is impossible to completely reduce everything to power. It `s naturally. But look. I said: our culture, including our political one, is power-centric. He immediately said: Western is anthropocentric, human-centric. Consequently, we can say: what, in Europe, in the West, everything comes down only to man, through man? Of course not. But if we want to understand the features of Russian political state legal development, we still must talk about some of the most important features. From the point of view of this professor, this is power. And once, together with one of my colleagues, when we wrote a work on the methodology of Russian history, we called the Russian government “a mono-subject of Russian history.” The only subject in Russian history. Understanding full well that, of course, there are other actors, there are other figures. But we needed to emphasize this particular part. And to look. In general, this question that you asked has the most important methodological significance. So I formulated for myself how to approach history, and social phenomena in general. I called it. Well, everyone now learns English using a “possibilitist approach.” Possibility. Possibility approach. That is, Professor Pivovarov will look through the authorities. Professor Milov - through the situation with the Russian plowman. Professor Yanin - through some archaeological things. And genius - through the European concept. Another - through some other one. In the dispute, for example, the famous one, which to this day excites and gives Russian historians a heart attack, is about Norman origin, not Norman. I am for there to be different points of view. And the possibilitist ones are that this is an opportunity, these are different points of view. And only then, you know, there are different cameras to see better. Yes, here? I'm a football fan. Yes? And we see the match better. So is the historical process. Yes? But I can actually look through all the eyepieces at once. Today in this lecture I look through this eyepiece and emphasize this. Well, if we don’t get away from the irony a little, indeed, I don’t know of any other social history of Christian countries where power would play such a role, and where power would be such. Now, as for the Golden Horde. And this is also a very interesting question. Moreover, you know where the most interesting one is? The fact that they walked themselves. They walked on their own. Yes. Of course. Moreover, at first, as we know, the authorities somehow did not quite understand where they were going, why they were going and, in general, what was happening. But there is an absolutely wonderful modern anthropologist - Svetlana Lurie, who writes. She investigates the issue. And who writes that the Cossack communities, which were advancing and engaged in colonization, they reproduced. And the Cossacks are those who fled from the central regions of Russia. They reproduced the social relationships they brought with them. That is, they conquered, but they built the same social power relations that existed before they got there. And then power came. And then I finalized it all. Although, of course, a certain Cossack autonomy, specificity was left. That is, that, yes, they did it themselves. But they reproduced Russia and the Russian social structure, and the political power and economic structure on these lands. How. Well, the Golden Horde, in general, was not particularly connected, in fact. This has nothing to do with the Golden Horde. Because, well, they bore tribute, of course, and elements of this Horde tradition in Russian history. But, in general, you say: it is debatable whether we were an ulus or not. This is not a topic at all. Or rather, the real theme is the theme that, of course, we are continuers of many traditions. This is completely obvious. Moreover, here we must not be proud, not cry. It is a fact. Moreover, any country is a successor of various traditions. Here we talk painfully about the Normans and so on. Okay, the Battle of Hastings. One thousand sixty six. Remember, William the Conqueror. The Normans take over there. And they make this country different. Yes? And no one refuses this. The Normans arrive and capture Sardinia. And all, for example, the Italian aristocracy wears these? completely Italian surnames, like Belinger. This is the leader of the once Italian Communist Party, Marquis Belinger. Do you understand? That is, they are everywhere, they are everywhere. Italy has Norman traditions. They don't refuse. That is, Swedish, Scandinavian. We have Horde ones. Why not?
QUESTION: At the suggestion of Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev and Vladimir Putin, there is a very popular term “feedback”. That is, the people's response to the actions of the authorities. Do you think there is a feedback link between the people and the authorities in the Russian political historical tradition? Thank you.
PIVOVAROV: Thank you. I just have to, with all due respect to both Vladimir Vladimirovich and Dmitry Anatolyevich, say that they, of course, did not come up with the phrase “feedback”. It has been around for a long time. And they just, like Russian people, use it. Yes? This is the same as it is sometimes said that the term “Aziopes” (from Eurasia - Asiapes, on the contrary) was invented by Yavlinsky. No, it was the historian and politician Miliukov who came up with it. Feedback exists. Remember, there was such a poet Pushkin? He said: "A senseless and merciless riot." For example, Razin, Pugachev, peasant revolutions and so on. This is one feedback. When a people, driven to despair, to horror, to the horror of exploitation, economic, moral, and all kinds of physical, physiological, and so on, rebels in a terrible way... There were other riots. For example, the city uprisings of the first years of the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich, when the townspeople very reasonably demanded the law. And hence the cathedral code, which was printed in two thousand copies. A huge circulation for those times, not only for Russia, but for the whole world. That is, there were such feedbacks. There were also feedbacks in local government. And this is not only the zemstvo of the times of Alexander the Second, in which there were not only enlightened nobles and educated merchants, but also peasants. And these are the zemstvo movements before that. Wasn’t there feedback when power fell? For example, popular movements to restore the state in times of unrest, for example. In ancient Rus' there was generally popular self-government, and in Novgorod - until the end of the fifteenth century, we know. Feedback was not only when people voted with their feet, as they say now. That is, Cossacks. The Cossacks fled, this was also feedback when they ran away and did not give up. The feedback is when the Old Believers, not wanting to become Peter’s recruits, burned themselves. This is also feedback. Your question, in fact, is what influence did the people, the masses of the people have on this? Huge, of course. Enormous influence. At the same time, I already told you that, together with my colleague, we called the government such a mono-subject of Russian history. But we called the people a population. Special biological term. We didn't want to offend people. We did not specifically call it a nation or a people, since these terms are already taken. They have their own meaning. A population is a population devoid of subjective energy. When speaking in such strictly scientific language. Here is the subject of history, his energy, the people were deprived. And this is especially true during the times of serfdom, when people were reduced to nothing. The same thing happened, by the way, in the most terrible years of Stalinism, when people were turned into nothing. It is not for nothing that the VKP(b), the name of the dominant party, was popularly deciphered: “the second serfdom of the Bolsheviks.” All-Union Communist Party. Not by chance. That is, Russian history is the history of the cruelest suppression of Russians by Russians. It was not the Mongols who killed the Russians, not like the Germans, but the Russians who killed the Russians. Russians, Tatars, everyone who lived here. Yes? Ukrainians, and so on, and so on, and so on. And in this sense, the history of both popular resistance and the history of popular struggle is very important. And people's self-government. You know, for example, that in the northern districts of Russia, for example, especially in the first half of the sixteenth century, before Ivan the Terrible, there was an absolutely wonderful time of economic growth and relative, so to speak, calm before the atrocities of this fanatic, let’s say, which he began in the sixties years. For example, labial self-government flourished. Lip prefects. Even prototypes of jury trials. This is people's self-government. And it definitely happened. By the way, the history of the occupation shows that people can do it. Here, forty-second, forty-first, forty-third. People in partisan territories recreated power structures. It was then that security partisans, emissaries, and so on flew in from the center. With weapons, there, with directives and so on. But the people themselves restored self-government and did not die out. And entire huge areas, including in some forested areas of Russia. Well, first of all, in Belarus, in the north of Ukraine, and so on, and so on. That is, the role of the people is enormous. And, in general, I must tell you that the people... The revolution of the seventeenth year is a people's revolution. And the role of the people - please. On August 19, 1991, ten thousand people gathered near the White House, where Yeltsin was and so on. Of course, they could have tanked them all, but they stood up and said: no. And the tanks didn’t come. And the people overthrew this government. This was also a people's revolution. That is, the role of the people is enormous, but we must know that in Russian history the population, the people, that is, you and me, were endlessly suppressed. Like, perhaps, nowhere among Christian countries.