Orthodox culture in the school. Orthodox culture is a subject that reveals light

Report of Bishop Feofan of Stavropol and Vladikavkaz

Orthodoxy is the living past, present and future of the Russian people. It is represented in every cell of life, in the images of the best sons of our people: spiritual and statesmen, thinkers and creators, warriors and ordinary workers.

Orthodoxy is living history and the living truth of the Russian people is culture and modern life, philosophy and worldview, ethics and aesthetics, upbringing and education. Therefore, to tear a Russian person away from Orthodoxy means to tear him away from his own history, his roots and soil, i.e. simply kill him. Thus, a return to Orthodoxy is the main condition for the salvation of the Russian people. To do this, we must provide every opportunity for every person to turn to faith, and above all, children. It is necessary that the connection between belief and life be formed from infancy, so that the child learns to motivate his behavior by the Christian faith, which gives spiritual strength. Therefore, it is the duty of the Church to make doctrinal truths alive in the eyes of people.

This task can be achieved through public policy, strengthening the traditional family and education.

It is necessary to return Orthodoxy, if not as a state ideology, then at least as a public ideology. Understanding it as a fundamental idea that will be understood and accepted by the majority of society. With its help, it will be possible to displace widespread ideologemes-myths from the consciousness of Russians: godless materialism, unspiritual consumerism with indifferent pluralism and spiritually dangerous cosmism with pantheism.

Today there are more and more insistent calls for a search for a common idea, a deep guideline, a universally valid ideal. Everyone now understands that it is impossible to reorganize people’s life, and especially the education and upbringing of young people, without a spiritual core, without an idea that unites and inspires people. Some people think that such a national idea can be invented and instilled in the people. But the history of the 20th century has convincingly shown us that invented national ideas most often turn out to be erroneous, false, and even when they master a people for a short time, they always lead them to disaster.

Such an idea must mature in the depths of the people's consciousness and reflect the deepest aspirations of millions. If its prerequisites are not formed in the depths of society, then no efforts of government agencies, theorists and ideologists will give a reliable result.

The roots of the modern civilizational collapse lie in the changed picture of the world that emerged in the modern era. With this understanding, God remains in both philosophy and pedagogy, but in a different capacity. He, in fact, is taken out of the brackets of this world, in which a person becomes the master, now endowed with creative power.

We must fight the idea of ​​anthropocentrism in the name of establishing the principle of theocentrism in our lives, for the focus of our existence is not earthly man, but the eternal God.

It is quite obvious that the most important task on this path is the education and upbringing of children and youth, those who should receive from us the age-old values ​​of national life.

If we do not cope with this problem, then no economic or political programs will change anything for the better. They, just as before, will be perverted and strangled by immorality, the selfish desire for profit by any means.

Orthodoxy understands true freedom as freedom from sin. This implies a person’s voluntary self-restraint, making some kind of sacrifice, imposing certain spiritual and moral bonds on himself in the name of salvation. The liberal standard asserts the exact opposite: stripping away from one’s being everything that limits, constrains, and does not allow, for the idea of ​​freedom is for him an idol above any faith in God. The direction that they are now trying to give to the system of secular education from kindergarten to higher education, focuses on the formation and approval of precisely this liberal standard of human freedom.

That is why we need to clearly define the purpose of education, identifying the fundamental reason that gives rise to all the consequences detrimental to our life and our salvation, testifying to the madness of the existence of an individual outside of faith as the norm of human existence, and educating a person in our own, Orthodox standards. Religious education, rooted in the Orthodox Tradition, should be oriented towards the formation of these standards, which include the worldview of the individual.

Children can be taught in different ways. Unfortunately, often the most common method is all sorts of prohibitions - on this or that clothing, certain hobbies, interests. Of course, restrictive, protective methods must be present along with others in the process of personality formation. But experience shows that this path is the least productive and the most fraught with a backlash of child and adolescent negativism. Mindless prohibitions naturally provoke a persistent desire to act contrary. It is equally erroneous to establish a positive ideal in a person’s mind by hammering home truisms, just as was done in Soviet times. But life always rebels against the scheme and always wins.

The problem is that it is impossible in principle to program people’s behavior using ready-made ideological clichés imposed from outside. A person simultaneously exists in a variety of everyday situations that do not fit into any schemes, which therefore turn out to be useless for him. The way out of this situation is that we put it into the concept of a standard. For if a person is brought up in a certain value system, then at the moment of any, and especially fateful, choice, due to the upbringing received, he will be able to make the right decision.

Thus, the task of including elements of religious education into secular education is seen in the formation of a standard of living, a certain system of values ​​that predetermine a person’s behavior in various circumstances and make the Christian motivation of actions and decisions essential for him. Through religious education to the Orthodox way of life - this should be the strategy of modern Orthodox pedagogy.

Without faith in God there is no national life. Faith is the soul of the people.

But is there a place for it in current legislation?

The Education Law states that education in our country must be “secular in nature”, that “At the request of parents or persons in their stead, with the consent of children studying in state and municipal educational institutions, the administration of these institutions, in agreement with the relevant authorities local government provides a religious organization with the opportunity to teach children religion outside of educational program: (Article 5, paragraph 4). Our entire educational system, subject to the inertia of previous years, perceives this law as the approval of atheistic education in public schools.

“Secular” does not mean atheistic, and therefore not clerical. All confessional secondary schools before the revolution in Russia, and now abroad, as well as modern Orthodox gymnasiums, provided and continue to provide a completely secular education.

The interpretation of the “secular nature” of education as atheistic is based not on the letter or essence of the law, but on a complete failure to understand that another completely legal approach to this problem is possible. It is necessary to use the regional 20% component, presented at the discretion of local authorities, for teaching religiously oriented subjects, to teach basic humanitarian subjects in such a way that they provide an objective scientific, and not a tendentious atheistic description of the place and significance of religion in history and culture.

Atheism, even if not militantly aggressive, is not some kind of objectively supra-religious progressive knowledge. It is just one of the worldviews that does not express the views of the majority of the world's population, and does not have any scientific basis.

In a country where more than half the population declares themselves to be believers, there are no reasonable grounds for atheism to occupy a dominant position in education and upbringing.

Atheism, denying the ontological existence of good and evil, is not capable of logically consistent substantiation of the necessity and obligation of morality.

Today Orthodoxy is the main spiritual and moral support of a very large part of the Russian population of our country. Therefore, it would be fair to include religiously oriented disciplines in the list of compulsory subjects on the principle of an equal alternative. Parents who want to raise their children as atheists can choose, for example, “Fundamentals of Morality” instead of “Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture.”

The system of Orthodox upbringing and education in Russia is being formed today in accordance with the following principles and directions.

First of all, the development of the spiritual and moral potential of humanitarian knowledge began, with the inclusion of religious components in its content. A system of spiritual and moral education is being created, based on both humanistic and religious traditions.

Today we can already say that it is possible to receive religious education in accordance with beliefs and at the request of children and parents, as an additional, optional one. Software and scientific and methodological support for teaching spiritual and moral disciplines is being created. In this regard, the activities of educational institutions and religious organizations are coordinated on issues of mutual interest.

A big step forward is the inclusion of Theology in the number of educational areas allowed by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation in state universities.

By raising the authority of Christian science, and, consequently, Christian education and upbringing, we can work to return our people to moral life, the norms of Christian morality. In addition, these measures will help eliminate blatant facts of anti-state educational activities sectarianism, which is becoming a real state disaster.

To do this, it is necessary to unite all forces, to include in cooperation the most authoritative educational and scientific structures - the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Education, Moscow State University, the Ministry of Education and Science, educational institutions of the Moscow Patriarchate, in order to carry out fruitful work, including promoting:

Exchange of information and transfer of experience in educational activities;

Mutual understanding in an objectively complete interpretation of legislative acts;

Conducting an analysis of existing experience and considering the issue of opening educational direction and specialty Orthodox Theology.

Preparation and coordination of standards in Theology and other humanitarian disciplines, corresponding in their composition to traditional higher theological education, consistent with existing standards (presence of compulsory disciplines, total number of hours and division of hours by subject) of the organization and
functioning of the Educational and Methodological Association for
multi-confessional direction and specialty Theology;

Study and implementation of traditional and modern experience of educational activities that imply religious
worldview and aimed at obtaining a secular education;

Interaction on a bilateral basis in matters of publishing educational literature, development and implementation of educational programs and other materials, holding various events in the field
education and expertise in relation to published books;

Involvement in the writing of programs and textbooks on basic humanitarian subjects of professional specialists from culture-forming faiths who are able to give an objective scientific description of the place and significance of religion in history and culture.

There are already significant shifts in the consciousness of the people, government officials, and employees of ministries and departments.

In the Stavropol and Vladikavkaz Diocese, active work is being carried out in the field of Orthodox education and the spiritual and moral education of children and youth. This work includes the improvement of secondary and higher education (introduction of the subject “Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture”), and a system of measures addressed to families and children preschool age; introduction of spiritual and moral content into the sphere of additional education, culture, healthcare, social protection, the work of public associations with teenagers and youth, the activities of law enforcement agencies.

The Diocese carries out activities to improve the qualifications of teachers, including not only scientific and practical educational conferences, seminars, round tables, but also the organization of teacher training courses “Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture”.

After the conclusion of the Agreement on Cooperation between the Stavropol and Vladikavkaz Diocese and the Ministry of Education of the Stavropol Territory dated May 16, 2002, it became possible to introduce the subject “Fundamentals” in 150 educational institutions of the Diocese
Orthodox culture" (mostly optional). On the basis of this Agreement, more than 30 Cooperation Agreements have already been concluded and programs of joint actions of executive authorities, bodies of the Education Department and commissions for religious education and catechesis have been developed in all deaneries of the Diocese.

But there are still spiritual problems that cannot be overcome yet.

Evil influence environment permeates our schools and is often perceived as coveted forbidden fruit;

We have a huge shortage of teachers. Our external successes far outstrip our internal - spiritual ones. Good, often religious people come to teach, but they themselves are neophytes: they do not have the proper upbringing, taste, do not understand their responsibilities, do not know how to educate
children in spiritual, church life, because they themselves do not know what spiritual life is. They confuse spiritual freedom with democracy, spiritual leadership with zombies, and so on.

How can you ignite a child’s soul with faith, so that it becomes not some kind of everyday condition, but so that the child’s heart ignites? How to do it? The heart lights up from the heart like a candle from a candle. Usually this happens due to a meeting with some wonderful believer, an ascetic of the faith. The beauty of a feat can captivate a child’s soul; it captivates him. If our teachers are such ascetics, then the children will be believers. If our teachers are simple Orthodox citizens, then our children will leave the Church, as happened before the revolution. Then the Law of God was taught everywhere, but this did not prevent a huge part of our people from renouncing their faith as soon as the revolution took place.

At school, religious disciplines cannot be taught in the same way as other subjects; it must be remembered that the main goal is to instill in the child’s soul the desire to be an ascetic of the faith, it is necessary to instill in him love for God, love for the Church.

At the same time, we must remember well that education is not just edification. Parenting means living together with children for many years.

Times are changing and secular education, experiencing a deep crisis, is turning to spiritual, traditional foundations.

The use of faith necessary for the revival and prosperity of Russia is well known. It consists of the body of those primordial values ​​of morality and civil life, which are the same for both the Gospel and the constitution of the modern state.

And the primary task of the modern period is to firmly establish these moral and civic values ​​in our schools. Moreover, put them at the center of education, since the future of the Fatherland primarily depends on the spiritual and moral potential of young people, on their kindness, honesty, justice and desire for selfless care for their neighbors and selfless love for their Motherland.

In the last period, moral imperatives triumph more and more significantly over immediate needs; they increasingly become

guidance for action by the government and the Ministry of Education and Science.

Reforms and innovations will be carried out on the basis of the National Doctrine of Education and the Federal Program for its Development that are currently being developed.

As a result, the leading role of spiritual and moral values ​​in the development of education will be restored, education will be returned to schools, and therefore the humanistic purpose will be strengthened at its very roots educational institutions.

At the proposal of His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Alexy II, a secular-religious commission on education was created, which is designed to free state educational standards, curricula, textbooks and teaching aids from manifestations of militant atheism.

Most of the tasks that determine the development of schools, universities and other educational institutions can be solved only with the active participation of the general public, representatives of religious, confessional, state, political and business circles.

Without social organization of the lives of children, adolescents and young people outside of school and other educational institutions, it is impossible to ensure the full education of the younger generation. It is very important that the Orthodox Church finds an opportunity to participate more actively in its own forms in the activities of public organizations for children and youth.

To summarize all of the above, it should be noted that a certain part of our society it's already underway along the path of reviving Russian national traditions and culture. Against the background of this process, the crystallization of the basic principles of Orthodox education occurs. This is, first of all, Christocentrism, the personal nature of education through the unity of family, parish and school, teaching works of love, churching, asceticism, moral and rational education ahead of rational-informative education, instilling skills of moral perception cultural values, fostering a sense of universal humanity and patriotism, a deeply moral attitude towards the world around us. On this basis, the national Russian culture and the self-awareness of our people were formed; there is hope that the spiritual revival of Russia will begin with the establishment and spread of Orthodox education.

Etymology of the word "Bible".

The concept of "Covenant". Types of Covenants in the biblical text.

Slavic translation of the Holy Scriptures.

The concept of the "Ostrog Bible"

Russian proverbs and sayings, which are based on biblical texts and church historical motives.

Domestic literary works of the 20th century, which touch on biblical themes.

It is common knowledge that the Bible is the world's best-selling book of all time and that no other book is as popular as the Bible. This is not just an example of literature from the ancient world that is outdated and completely irrelevant today. On the contrary, it is a living, effective message from God to the world that transforms this world. The Bible is an inspired book. And this is a treasury of wisdom for all thinking people on Earth, whatever their beliefs.

The Bible, or Holy Scripture, is a sacred book that the Holy Spirit gave us: “All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16). “Inspired” means “breathed in by God,” that is, written by holy authors through the inspiration and revelation of the Holy Spirit. This term indicates the source of the message - God. Over 16 centuries, the Holy Spirit revealed the divine message to forty sacred writers - prophets and apostles. Thirty-two of them wrote down the Old Testament; eight – New. The addressee of Holy Scripture is the Church.

The name “Bible” is not found in the sacred books themselves and was first attributed to the collection of sacred books in the East in the 4th century by Saints John Chrysostom and Epiphanius of Cyprus.

The Bible translated from Greek means books. 20 kilometers north of the city of Beirut, on the Mediterranean coast, there is a small Arab (in ancient Phoenician) port city of Jibel (referred to as Ebal in the Holy Scriptures). Writing material was delivered from it to Byzantium, and the Greeks called this city “Byblos”. Then the writing material itself began to be called that way, and subsequently the books received this name. The Greeks called a book written on papyrus 'ε βίβλος, but if it was small, they said το βιβλίον - little book, and in the plural - τα βιβλία. Bible (βιβλία) is the plural of βίβλος. Thus, the literal meaning of the word “Bible” is books. Over time the Greek word plural neuter βιβλία turned into a singular feminine word, began to be written with capital letters and apply exclusively to Holy Scripture. The Bible is the Book of books, the Book in essence, in the special sense of the word, the primary, in the most general, highest and singular meaning. This is the great Book of Fates, keeping the secrets of life and the plans of the future.

The Bible consists of two large parts: the Old Testament and the New Testament. The word “covenant” in the Bible has a special meaning: it is not only an instruction bequeathed to followers and future generations, but also an agreement between God and people - an agreement on the salvation of humanity and earthly life in general.

The Old Testament (events of Sacred history from the creation of the world to the Nativity of Christ) is a collection of 39 books, and the New Testament (events after the Incarnation, that is, after the Nativity of Christ) is a collection of 27 books.

The canon (in translation from Greek - a reed, a measuring stick, that is, a rule, a model) or canonical books are sacred books recognized by the Church as authentic, inspired by God and serving as primary sources and norms of faith.

The books of both the New and Old Testaments can be roughly divided into four sections:

books of law, in which the basic moral and religious Law is given;

teaching books, which primarily reveal the meaning and implementation of the Law, giving examples from the Sacred history of righteous life;

historical books, which reveal important events of Sacred history through the prism of the history of God's chosen people;

prophetic books, which speak in a mysterious, hidden way about the future destinies of the world and the Church, and provide educational information about the Incarnation and salvation of mankind.

The Old Testament canon includes the so-called Pentateuch of Moses (Torah): Genesis, Leviticus, Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy; books: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1–4 Kings, 1, 2 Chronicles (Chronicles), Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Job, Psalms, Proverbs of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Lamentations of Jeremiah. The canonical Old Testament books also include the books of the prophets: the four great ones - Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel and the twelve little ones - Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi.

The non-canonical books of the Old Testament include the books: Judith, the Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach, the Wisdom of Solomon, the Epistle of Jeremiah, Baruch, Tobit, 1–3 Maccabees, 2, 3 Esdras. The Church does not place them on a par with the canonical ones, but recognizes them as edifying and useful.

Most of the Old Testament is written in Hebrew, with parts of some books written in Aramaic. The division of the text into chapters was made in the 13th century by Cardinal Hugon or Bishop Stephen Langton.

The New Testament canon includes: The Four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John). The first three Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) are called synoptic (Greek - general); Gospel of John (John) – pneumatic (from Greek – spiritual). The canon of the New Testament also includes the books: Acts of the Holy Apostles, seven epistles of the apostles (James, 1, 2 Peter, 1–3 John, Jude), 14 epistles of the holy Apostle Paul (Romans, 1, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians , Colossians, 1, 2 Thessalonians, or Thessalonians, 1, 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews).

The last, or final, book of the New Testament is the Apocalypse, or Revelation of John the Theologian. Among the books of the New Testament there are no non-canonical ones.

The Holy Bible is a sacred library, which for more than a thousand years has been composed of many verbal works created by different authors and in different languages. And at the same time, this is a holistic creation, amazing with its perfection and diamond strength in the most severe tests stories.

All New Testament texts are written in the Alexandrian dialect of the ancient Greek language (Koine, or Kini), with the exception of the Gospel of Matthew, originally written in Hebrew and at the same time translated, apparently, by the author himself into Greek. The New Testament was first divided into chapters and verses in the 16th century.

In general, the sacred biblical canon was formed already in the 2nd century. The canon in its current form was finally recognized by the entire Church at the Council of Laodicea (360–364), then at the Council of Hippo (393), Carthage (397) and subsequent councils.

Among the most important and famous translations of the Bible are the Septuagint (translation into Greek by 70 interpreters) of the Egyptian king Ptolemy Philadelphus (284–247 BC), Syriac (Peshito), Latin Itala (ancient) and Vulgata (Blessed Jerome Stridonsky, early 5th century, recognized at the end of the 6th century), Armenian (5th century), etc. The first Slavic translation of the Bible was carried out by the holy brothers Cyril and Methodius in the 9th century, translation into Russian of the entire text of the Holy Scriptures (Synodal translation) was completed in 1876.

Russia received the first printed Bible from Ostrog in 1581 thanks to the works of Prince Konstantin Konstantinovich Ostrog.

The books of Holy Scripture have given rise to countless other books in which biblical ideas and images live: numerous translations, transcriptions, works of literary art, interpretations, and various studies.

The Bible is one of the largest monuments of world culture and literature. Without knowledge of the Bible, many cultural values ​​remain inaccessible. Most of the artistic paintings of the classical era, Russian icon painting and philosophy cannot be understood without knowledge of biblical subjects.

In our country, until the beginning of the twentieth century, the main plots of the biblical narrative were familiar to almost everyone, regardless of the level of education. Many could quote lengthy passages from sacred biblical texts verbatim.

This is how our great poet A.S. spoke about the core of the Bible - the Holy Gospel. Pushkin: “There is a book in which every word is interpreted, explained, preached to all ends of the earth, applied to all possible circumstances of life and events of the world; from which it is impossible to repeat a single expression that everyone does not know by heart, which would not already be a proverb of peoples; it no longer contains anything unknown to us; but this book is called the Gospel, and such is its ever-new charm that if we, satiated with the world or depressed by despondency, accidentally open it, we are no longer able to resist its sweet enthusiasm and are immersed in spirit in its divine eloquence.”

Since the Baptism of Rus' by Saint Prince Vladimir, the Bible became the first and main book of Russian culture: using it, children were taught literacy and thinking, Christian truths and standards of life, the principles of morality and the basics of verbal art. The Bible has firmly entered into the people's consciousness, into everyday life and spiritual existence, into everyday and high speech. The books of Holy Scripture translated into the Slavic language by the holy enlighteners Cyril and Methodius, Equal-to-the-Apostles, were not perceived as translations, but as native and able to make people related. different languages and cultures.

Many biblical phrases live in modern Russian in the form of proverbs, sayings, and popular expressions, recalling its origins and stories our culture. For example, the proverb: “Whoever does not work, neither does he eat” - compare with the thought of the Apostle Paul “...if anyone does not want to work, neither should he eat” (2 Thess. 3:10). Direct quotes from biblical books are the expressions: “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Matthew 5:9), “Man cannot live by bread alone” (Matthew 4:4), “Those who take the sword will perish by the sword” (Matthew 26:52) ), “Tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Gen. 2:9), “By the sweat of the brow” (Gen. 3:19), “Darkness of Egypt” (Ex. 10:21), “Stumbling block” (Is. 8 , 14), “The abomination of desolation” (Dan. 9, 27), “Their name is Legion” (Mark 5, 9), “Not of this world” (John 17, 14), “The voice of one crying in the wilderness” (Isa. 40, 3; Matt. 3, 3), “Do not cast your pearls (beads) before swine” (Matthew 7, 6), “There is nothing hidden that will not become obvious” (Mark 4, 22 ), “Physician, heal yourself” (Luke 4:23) and many others. Everyone is well aware of the biblical expressions and common nouns: “A wolf in sheep’s clothing” (Matthew 7:15), “Panebble of Babylon” (Gen. 11:4), “Let this cup pass from me” (Matthew 26:39), " Prodigal son"(Luke 15:11-32), "Doubting Thomas" (John 20:24-29), "Salt of the Earth" (Matthew 5:13), "Crown of Thorns" (Mark 15:17), " The power of darkness" (Luke 22:53), "The stones will cry out" (Luke 19:40) and many others.

Having lost their bearings in the vain world, in the chaos of relative values, Russian authors have long begun to turn to Christian morality and later to the image of Christ as the ideal of this morality. In ancient Russian hagiographic literature, the lives of holy ascetics, righteous people, and noble princes were described in detail. Christ had not yet appeared as a literary character: the sacred awe and reverent attitude towards the image of the Savior were too great. In the literature of the 19th century, Christ was also not depicted, but images of people of the Christian spirit and holiness appear in it: in F.M. Dostoevsky - Prince Myshkin in the novel “The Idiot”, Alyosha and Zosima in “The Brothers Karamazov”; at L.N. Tolstoy - Platon Karataev in “War and Peace”. Paradoxically, Christ first became a literary character in Soviet literature. A.A. In his poem “The Twelve” (1918), Blok depicted Christ ahead of people consumed by hatred and ready to die, whose image symbolizes people’s hope for purification and repentance at least someday in the future. Perhaps A.A. Blok, seduced by revolutionary romanticism, saw Christ “in a white crown of roses” among the rebellious crowd as a symbol of the idea of ​​​​the struggle for social justice. Later, the author of "The Twelve" became disillusioned with the revolution, having seen many of the horrors of the riot of the mob. Awareness of the tragedy of his mistake brought the Russian poet to a premature grave. According to Z. Gippius, before his death, the poet “sees the light, seeing the face of those who insult, humiliate and destroy his Beloved - his Russia” (meaning the Bolsheviks). In the same 1918, Z. Gippius, in his poems (“Walked...” in two parts), will paint a completely different image of Christ in the Russian revolutionary turmoil - the image of a formidable and righteous Judge, angrily punishing the atrocities of the revolution. Later, Christ will appear in the novel by M.A. Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita” under the name Yeshua, in B.L. Pasternak - in Doctor Zhivago, in C.T. Aitmatov - in “The Block”, at A.I. Dombrovsky - in the “Faculty of Unnecessary Things”. Writers turned to the image of Christ as the ideal of moral perfection, the Savior of the world and humanity. In the image of Christ, writers also saw what was common to Him and what our era is experiencing: betrayal, persecution, unjust judgment.

The return of the Bible to our public life, its honest and unbiased study allowed modern readers to make a discovery: it turned out that all Russian literary classics, from antiquity to modern times, are connected with the Book of Books, based on its truths and covenants, moral and artistic values, correlated with her ideals, cites her sayings, parables, edifications.

The Bible came to Rus' along with Christianity, initially in the form of separate books from the Old and New Testaments. The first Russian literary work, “The Sermon on Law and Grace” by Metropolitan Hilarion of Kyiv (first half of the 11th century), was created on a biblical basis. This is a sermon thematically consonant with the Epistle to the Romans of the Holy Apostle Paul (Rom.). “The Tale of Bygone Years” (about 1113) by Nestor the chronicler, a monk of the Kiev Pechersk Monastery, reveals the connection between ancient Russian literature and the Bible. From the first lines, the holy author-chronicler rearranges the Book of Genesis, talks about the settlement of peoples on Earth, their division into seventy-two languages, and so on narrates the sacred story. The Monk Nestor notes: “From these same seventy-two the language came from the Slavic people, from the tribe of Japheth...”. The idea of ​​the unity of the Slavs with all the peoples of the world is further developed in pious stories about the journey of the Apostle Andrew the First-Called on the way from the Varangians to the Greeks, about the activities of the holy enlighteners Cyril and Methodius, about the sermons of the Apostle Paul in the Slavic lands, about the Baptism of Rus'. This will continue to be the case in literature, the beginning of which was The Tale of Bygone Years. An appeal to the Holy Scriptures expands the scope of the narrative, connects the native land with the whole Earth, and includes the national into the universal.

The appeal of ancient Russian literary authors to biblical images is contradictory and organically combined with their traditional pagan worldview. After Epiphany in Rus' arose and turned out to be quite stable for a long time a peculiar phenomenon usually called dual faith.

In the Russian people of the 12th century, the pagan perception of the world increasingly moved into the aesthetic sphere and manifested itself in works of folk art and literature. A striking example of this trend is “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” (1185–1187). In it we see a combination of pagan and Christian principles. For example, the author uses the Christian idea of ​​​​the pagan Cumans, and pagan ideas of animal totems, ancestors and patrons. He mentions the Christian God helping Igor, and then says something typically pagan about the transformation of the fugitive prince into an ermine, a white gogol, and a gray wolf. In the “Word” there are ancient Slavic deities: Stribog is the god of the sky, the universe, Dazhdbog is the sun god, the giver of all blessings. But Igor’s entire tragic path to insight, to understanding his duty to the Russian Land corresponds to Christian ideas about the purification of the soul, and the only victory that the prince wins in his reckless campaign is victory over himself. The combination of ancient pagan and new Christian beliefs creates a single worldview in the “Word”: man is perceived in the integrity of God’s entire universe and as the only earthly being bearing the image and likeness of God and endowed with responsibility for the whole world.

Direct biblical influence can be traced in Russian hagiographic literature. It developed starting from the 11th century, following the traditions of Byzantine hagiography, but acquired Russian characteristics, often reproducing living features of everyday life, human behavior and constantly returning to biblical sources. Such, for example, is the wonderful “Life of St. Alexander Nevsky" (late 13th century). The entire narrative is conducted in comparison of the hero with the images of Holy Scripture.

The Bible most clearly influenced the development of Russian lyric poetry, which was born in the 18th century. A decisive role in the development of Russian lyric poetry was played by poetic adaptations of biblical chants, primarily from the Psalter. The transcriptions of psalms by poets of the 18th century from Church Slavonic into their contemporary language were evidence of the special significance of biblical hymnography in the consciousness of Russian society and at the same time an expression of the historical development of poetry itself and its language. This is an arrangement of the 81st Psalm - “To Rulers and Judges” by G.R. Derzhavin, ode from Psalm 93 by I.A. Krylova and others. Undoubtedly, the lyrics of biblical psalms are one of the sources of Derzhavin’s ode “God” (1780–1784), which expressed the self-awareness of a Christian. Derzhavin vividly, emotionally and deeply reveals the quest of the human spirit, striving to understand its place in the world created by the Creator, its relationship to God, to nature, to the universe.

Biblical psalms also contributed to the planetary nature, cosmism, and philosophical generalizations so characteristic of Russian poetry. For example, the arrangement of Psalm 103 by M.V. Lomonosov (1743), where praise is exalted to God - the Creator of the Earth, stars, all the wonders of “nature”, and his “Morning Reflection on God’s Majesty” (1751), where the Sun is wonderfully depicted - a heavenly lamp lit by the Creator.

The adaptations created by Lomonosov and his followers, while remaining faithful to the biblical texts, absorbed the moods and experiences of Russian poets of the golden age of Russian literature.

The adaptations of the texts of the Holy Scriptures, characteristic of the 18th century, contributed to the rapprochement of the biblical Church Slavonic language with living, rapidly developing speech, and helped the formation of “high” speech styles that dominated civil and philosophical lyrics, heroic poems, odes, and tragedies. The majestic simplicity, vivid imagery, aphoristic precision, and energy of rhythm drawn from the Bible entered all “high” literary genres, but, above all, thanks to the transcriptions of psalms, into lyric poetry.

Undoubtedly, the lyrics of biblical psalms are one of the sources of Derzhavin’s ode “God” (1780–1784), which expressed the self-awareness of a Christian. G.R. Derzhavin vividly, emotionally and deeply reveals the quest of the human spirit, striving to understand its place in the world created by the Creator, its relationship to God, nature, and the universe.

The spiritual and moral potential of Russian classical literature of the 19th century still delights readers all over the world. And this is not accidental, for the roots of artistry, as noted by the famous Russian thinker and literary critic I.A. Ilyin, lie in those depths human soul, where the “winds of God’s presence” sweep through. Great art always bears the “stamp of God’s grace,” even when it develops secular themes and subjects that have no external connection with churchliness and religiosity. The phenomenon of Russian literature lies in the posing of the “eternal questions” of existence, the answer to which almost all Russian writers tried to give in their work.

Russian literature of the 19th century was, in its main tendency, educational; it always felt responsible for the state of the country and the world, and was always sensitive and responsive to the needs and misfortunes of its people and humanity. Literature taught in the highest sense of the word: it awakened in people dignity and honor, spirituality and creative aspirations, and shaped their worldview.

The brightest star of the Russian literary horizon of the 19th century was undoubtedly A.S. Pushkin. The deepest expression of Pushkin’s view of poetry and its meaning in life was the poem “The Desert Sower of Freedom...” (1823), the source of which was the famous Gospel parable (Matthew 13: 3-23). This poem by the great poet was echoed many times later in his own work and in the works of other Russian writers of the 19th and 20th centuries. It contains a reflection on the most tragic circumstance of human history - the mysterious tendency of peoples to herd obedience. “The Desert Sower of Freedom...” is not a political treatise; this poem connects a state of mind caused by specific circumstances and generalizations that go far beyond the poet’s life and the history of Europe. In this work, “I” includes the author’s personality, but is not identical to it. The universality and pan-humanity here are emphasized by the direct correlation of the poem with the Gospel parable. Pushkin not only took the epigraph from the Gospel, he considered the entire poem to be an imitation of Christ’s parable.

In 1826–1828 A.S. Pushkin creates the poem “Prophet”, where the connection with the poem “The Desert Sower of Freedom...” is obvious.

One of the Old Testament books - the book of the prophet Isaiah - depicts the painful cleansing of the soul of a man who wished to convey to people the lofty truth that was revealed to him, that is, to fulfill the work of the prophet. The holy prophet Isaiah tells how he was illuminated by a vision: the Lord appeared to his eyes, surrounded by six-winged seraphim. But can “unclean lips” tell about this? The fiery seraphim cleanses the prophetic lips by putting burning coals into them (see Isa. 6:1-8). Pushkin, creating the poem “Prophet,” follows the biblical text.

This beautiful poem belongs to those peaks from which the path of Russian poetry is far visible. In it, the poet’s mission, like the biblical prophet, is depicted as asceticism.

Arise, prophet, and see and listen,

Be fulfilled by my will,

And, bypassing the seas and lands,

Burn the hearts of people with the verb.

Here a stern warning is clearly sounded against the facile understanding of poetry: true poetry undergoes burning, unquenchable suffering, passes through death and resurrection in order to become prophecy.

Pushkin often directly or indirectly refers to the Holy Scriptures. Thus, he directly sets out a biblical story, for example, the beginning of the Old Testament book of Judith (“When the Lord of Assyria...”, 1835). Sometimes biblical motifs seem to be dissolved in the text and only a few details indicate parallels with sacred biblical texts. Thus, in “Poltava” (1828–1829), the shadow of the devil suddenly appears when Hetman Mazepa, not daring to directly tell Maria about the upcoming execution of her father, tries to wrest from her at least an involuntary almost consent to this atrocity. Biblical images act as moral guidelines and in the poem "Angelo" (1833).

A direct translation of church hymnography - the Lenten prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian "Lord and Master of my life..." - became the poem "Desert Fathers and Immaculate Wives..." (1836).

The Bible is constantly present in the creative thinking of the great poet; his artistic quests and his moral ideas are correlated with it.

Soon the theme of the prophet arises in M.Yu. Lermontov. We remember his poem "The Prophet".

Since the eternal Judge

He gave me the omniscience of a prophet,

I read in people's eyes

Pages of malice and vice.

Difference with “Prophet” A.S. Pushkina deep. For Pushkin, this was a vision of God and the world, a moment that the prophet experienced; Lermontov has a different theme: the vision of human sin. This is a bitter gift that poisons the prophet’s life on Earth. This also corresponds to the biblical model, because the prophets saw the evil of the world and exposed it mercilessly.

Perhaps with M.Yu. Lermontov in Russian literature of the 19th century, a sharp increase in the role of the Bible in verbal creativity begins: ideas, plots, images, style of the Holy Scripture acquire such a force of influence on verbal art that many of the most remarkable works cannot be fully read and adequately understood without turning to the biblical texts.

Believers see Lermontov as a spiritual poet and highlight in his multifaceted work such religious and spiritual peaks as “An angel flew across the midnight sky...”; two “Prayers” (1837 and 1839) and other poetic masterpieces, testifying to the high and bright faith of the poet.

God for him is an absolute reality. But the attitude towards Him in different contexts is manifested and perceived differently. Obsession with poetry leads the poet far from the paths of God, closes his ears to the word of the Lord, seduces his mind, darkens his gaze. Lermontov himself realizes this as undue, disastrous in himself and prays to the Almighty not to blame or punish him for it. He understands the full extent of his guilt before Him - hence the fear of appearing before His eyes:

I'm afraid to get close to You.

The contradiction between “internal man” (spiritual) and “external man” (mental-physical) remains in M.Yu. Lermontov is sharp and dramatic. It was also reflected in the poem “I Go Out Alone on the Road.”

The influence of the Bible affected not only the content of Lermontov’s works (the use of biblical names, images, plots), but also the form of his literary creations. Thus, the poet’s prayer genre received a new, special development. It was not his discovery, but became an important link in his poetic system. Biblical motives in M.Yu. Lermontov is a complex, multifaceted phenomenon. Their use in the same context is contradictory and is intended for a reader familiar with the Bible who will be able to understand the intricacies of their ideological and semantic orientation.

The rich spiritual heritage of N.V. is relevant and important for us. Gogol. “Gogol,” according to Professor Archpriest Vasily Zenkovsky, “is the first prophet of a return to an integral religious culture, a prophet of Orthodox culture... he feels that the main untruth of modern times is its departure from the Church, and he sees the main path in a return to the Church and the restructuring of the entire life in her spirit."

Gogol prophetically foresaw the spiritual state of our contemporary Western society; he wrote in about the Western Church: “Now that humanity has begun to achieve the fullest development in all its powers... The Western Church only pushes it away from Christ: the more it bothers about reconciliation, the more it contributes discord." And indeed, the conciliatory and accommodative march of the Western Church towards the world, crafty calls for unprincipled unification with different religious groups ultimately led to the emasculation of the Spirit in the Western Church, to the spiritual crisis of Western society.

In his social and philosophical views N.V. Gogol was neither a Westerner nor a Slavophile. He loved his people and saw that they “hear God’s hand more than others.”

Of course, N.V. Gogol is one of the most ascetic figures in our literature. His whole life testifies to his ascent to the heights of the spirit; but only the clergy closest to him and some of his friends knew about this side of his personality. In the minds of most contemporaries, Gogol was a classic type of satirical writer, an exposer of social and human vices. Contemporaries never recognized another Gogol, a follower of the patristic tradition in Russian literature, an Orthodox religious thinker and publicist, and author of prayers. With the exception of “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends,” spiritual prose remained unpublished during his lifetime. And if by the beginning of the 20th century Gogol’s spiritual image was restored to some extent, then in Soviet times his spiritual heritage (as well as the spiritual works of other authors) was carefully hidden from the reader for many decades.

The great writer was a deeply religious man. In January 1845, Gogol lived in Paris with Count A.P. Tolstoy. About this period he wrote: “I lived internally, as in a monastery, and in addition to that, I did not miss almost a single mass in our church.” He carefully studied the Greek texts of the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great. Gogol creates one of the best examples of spiritual prose of the 19th century - “Reflections on the Divine Liturgy”, which organically combines the theological and artistic sides. In working on this book, the pious author used the works on liturgics of ancient and modern theologians, but all of them served him only as aids. “Reflections” embodies the personal experience of N.V. Gogol, his desire to comprehend the liturgical word. “For anyone who just wants to move forward and become better,” he wrote in the “Conclusion,” “it is necessary to attend the Divine Liturgy as often as possible and listen attentively: it insensitively builds and creates a person. And if society has not yet completely disintegrated, if people do not breathe complete, irreconcilable hatred among themselves, then the hidden reason for this is the Divine Liturgy, reminding a person of holy, heavenly love for his brother.”

Unfortunately, even today little-known are Gogol’s spiritual works “The Rule of Living in the World,” “Bright Sunday,” “The Christian Moves Forward,” and “A Few Words about Our Church and the Clergy.” These works are a real storehouse of Orthodox wisdom, still hidden under a bushel.

In the works of religious thinkers, philosophers and clergy N.V. Gogol appears as a vivid example of spiritual achievement, modesty and honesty in the self-assessment of his works in the literary and social field.

High recognition by history of the literary merits and human significance of N.V. Gogol even more expressively and brightly highlights the greatness of his spiritual quest, moral defeats and moral victories, and this will increasingly reveal the impact of his personality on our contemporaries.

Among the great poets of the 19th century, whose work is colored by biblical motifs, one should also mention F.I. Tyutcheva.

Tyutchev in his work acts not only as a great master of the poetic word, but also as a thinker. In relation to him, we have the right to talk not only about his worldview, his worldview, but also about his ideological system, which received a unique expression and was embodied not in a philosophical work, but in poetry full of artistic perfection. In the poetic philosophical contemplations and thoughts of the poet there is an internal connection, and in poetry the intensity of philosophical thought has a certain purposefulness.

Man and nature, as a rule, are revealed in the poems of F.I. Tyutchev not only in general, but also, as it were, in pristine conditions. His poetic consciousness is fascinated by the natural elements that stood at the very origins of the creation of the world: water, fire and air (see Gen. 1).

Poem by F.I. Tyutchev’s “These poor villages...” (1855) made a strong impression on his contemporaries and aroused responses in literature for a long time. In it, the poet creates the image of Christ - a wanderer in Rus', as if he had lifted on his shoulders the entire immensity of the people's suffering:

Weighed down by the burden of the godmother,

All of you, dear land,

In slave form, the King of Heaven

He came out blessing.

The image of Christ is internally at the center of F.M.’s work. Dostoevsky. In his diaries there is an entry: “Write a novel about Jesus Christ.” He did not write a novel, but in a broad sense he wrote it all his life. Dostoevsky tried to recreate the image of Christ in a modern setting. In the Legend of the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov, the inquisitor talks about the happiness of humanity, about the future of the world: people will find happiness, but their freedom will be taken away from them. The old inquisitor talks and talks - but Christ is silent. And in this silence, the authenticity of the image of Christ is felt: the Lord did not say a single word, just as he stood before Pilate (Matthew 27:13-14, Mark 15:2-5, John 18:37-38). And this is the wondrous reality of God’s presence.

In the same novel, Dostoevsky has a wonderful chapter “From the Notes of Elder Zosima” - a chapter about the Bible, about the Holy Scriptures in the life of Elder Zosima. Let us remember the words that the writer pronounces through the lips of his hero: “What a book this Holy Scripture is, what a miracle and what power given to man with it!... Death to the people without the word of God.”

For Dostoevsky, the Bible was the right guide on the path of spiritual quest. “What kind of book is this Holy Scripture... An exact sculpture of the world and man, and human characters, and everything is named and indicated for all eternity. And how many secrets have been resolved and revealed... This book is invincible... This is the book of humanity,” he writes in the article “Socialism and Christianity.” For him, the world of the Bible is not at all the world of ancient mythologies, but a very real world, which is a tangible part of his own life. In the Book of Books, Dostoevsky sees the level of supramundane existence. For a writer, this is a kind of completeness of books, a seed in the depths of which reside the wonderful fruits of Christian literature and culture in general. For Dostoevsky, Holy Scripture is a “spiritual alphabet”, without knowledge of which the creativity of a true artist is impossible. In recent years, the Bible has become for the writer one of the main sources of ideas that create the philosophical and religious subtext of his works.

The Holy Bible, given to Dostoevsky by the wives of the Decembrists in Tobolsk on the way to the prison, was the only one allowed for him to read in hard labor. “Fyodor Mikhailovich,” writes his wife, “did not part with this holy book during all four years of his stay in hard labor. Subsequently, it always lay in plain sight, on his desk, and he often, having conceived or doubted something, opened the Gospel at random and read what was on the first page...” The writer drew strength and cheerfulness from the Bible, and at the same time, readiness to fight difficulties. It is deep faith in God, according to Dostoevsky, that provides firm support in all the vicissitudes of fate. Thanks to it, peace arises in a person’s soul for the fate of the world and his personal life.

Throughout his life F.M. Dostoevsky was accompanied by a personal direct feeling of the presence of Christ in earthly human existence, comprehending and elevating this existence to its heavenly goal - the result.

At the center of Dostoevsky’s entire worldview is God – “the most important world question.” The initial principle of Dostoevsky’s immediate worldview, which formed the basis of his artistic creativity, is the unfolding of earthly human existence in the face of “other worlds,” and not an abstract, “other dimension,” but specifically in front of the living “blessed face of the God-man.” The meaning of the presence of the New Testament text in the writer’s literary works is that he makes “incidents” that happen to the heroes, “events” that take place before the face of Christ, in His presence, as a response to Christ. The Gospel text brings into the plot of the works of F.M. Dostoevsky is a kind of meta-plot, a new dimension, a vision in Christ, an image of the real presence of Christ in human existence.

Dostoevsky’s unconditional sincere and deep religiosity is also expressed in his approach to national identification, in his famous formula: “Russian means Orthodox.” All his life he had a sharply negative attitude towards atheism, considering it “stupidity and thoughtlessness.” “None of you are infected with rotten and stupid atheism,” he says confidently in a letter to his sister. The writer generally doubted the existence of real atheism. In a letter to K. Opochinin (1880), he notes: “No one can be convinced of the existence of God. I think that even atheists retain this conviction, although they do not admit it, out of shame or something.”

F.M. Dostoevsky went through a long, complex and painful path of spiritual search for answers to world questions about the place of man in the real world, about the meaning of human existence. At the same time, the Holy Scripture and the personality of Christ always acted as the main spiritual guidelines for him, defining the moral, religious and artistic principles of the great Russian writer.

In his book “Fundamentals of Art. About perfection in art" I.A. Ilyin expressed the idea that the roots of true art are spiritual and religious in nature. Speaking about Russian classics, Ilyin, not without reason, asserted: “The 19th century gave Russia a flourishing of spiritual culture. And this flowering was created by people “inspired” by the spirit of Orthodoxy... And if we move our thoughts from Pushkin to Lermontov, Gogol, Tyutchev, L. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Leskov, Chekhov, then we will see the brilliant flowering of the Russian spirit from the roots Orthodoxy. And we will see the same thing in other branches of Russian art, in Russian science, in Russian law-making, in Russian medicine, in Russian pedagogy and in everything.”

Next to F.M. Dostoevsky bears the name of another giant of literature of the 19th century - L.N. Tolstoy, who also considered the problem of human happiness and also looked for answers to these questions in the Bible.

Dostoevsky tries to discern the image of God in man, since this is associated with deification and the salvation of man. Tolstoy looks for natural principles in a person, since this can contribute to a person’s earthly happiness.

Many people underestimate Tolstoy's religious quest. They are undoubtedly deeply sincere and painful. But the fact that a man who for almost thirty years considered himself a preacher of the Gospel found himself in conflict with Christianity, even excommunicated from the Church, shows that L.N. Tolstoy was a very complex figure, tragic and disharmonious. He, who sang such powerful, harmonious characters, was himself a man suffering from a deep spiritual crisis.

Even in his youth, Tolstoy wrote in his diary: “I have a goal, a most important goal, to which I am ready to devote my whole life: to create a new religion that would be practical and would promise good here on Earth.” Already in Tolstoy’s initial thoughts the entire main content of his religion, which had nothing in common with Christianity, was laid down. Strictly speaking, it is not a religion at all. This idea matured in his soul for the time being, until it sprouted at the turn of the 70s and 80s, at the time of the spiritual crisis that overtook L.N. Tolstoy. It should be noted that there is nothing new in Tolstoyism: they dreamed and talked about earthly bliss, about an earthly Kingdom created on a rational basis, both before and after him.

Leo Tolstoy entered the history of world culture, first of all, as one of the most brilliant artists and creators. But, perhaps, of even greater importance for the history of mankind is his experience of faith creation, which requires quite careful reflection.

At first, when he turned to the Holy Scriptures, he, like Dostoevsky, was captivated by the epic power of the Bible. Tolstoy immersed himself in the Old Testament, even studied the Hebrew language in order to read it in the original, then he abandons this and turns only to the New Testament. For the writer, the Old Testament becomes just one of the ancient religions. But even in the New Testament Tolstoy is not satisfied with much. The letters of the Apostle Paul seem to him to be an ecclesiastical perversion of the truth, and he limits himself to the Four Gospels. Then, in the Gospels, everything seems wrong to him, and he throws out for himself the miraculous, the supernatural. He throws out the highest theological concepts: “In the beginning was the Word”, the Word as divine cosmic Reason - Tolstoy says: “In the beginning there was understanding”; The glory of Christ, that is, the reflection of eternity in the person of Christ - for Tolstoy this is the teaching of Christ.

According to Tolstoy's views, there is some mysterious higher power and it can hardly be considered personal: most likely, it is impersonal, because personality is something limited. The writer, who created wonderful images of man, who was himself a bright personality on a global scale, was a fundamental impersonalist, that is, he did not recognize the value of the individual and hence his idea of ​​​​the insignificant role of the individual in history. According to his concept, a certain higher principle presented by the writer in some incomprehensible way encourages a person to be kind.

Summarizing the theological views of L.N. Tolstoy, it can be argued: God is defined by him, first of all, through the denial of all those properties that are revealed in the Orthodox dogma. Tolstoy has his own understanding of God, and it, by his own admission, existed in him from the very beginning. He is initially inclined to consider his concepts as the starting point in the study of Orthodoxy, and he elevates his misunderstanding of the doctrine to an absolute.

“This point of view,” notes I.A. Ilyin, - can be called autism (autos in Greek means oneself), that is, closure within oneself, judgment about other people and things from the point of view of one’s own understanding, that is, subjectivist pointlessness in contemplation and evaluation. Tolstoy is an autist: in worldview, culture, philosophy, contemplation, assessments. This autism is the essence of his doctrine.” L.N. Tolstoy perceives Christ externally - as an outside moral preacher. Union with Christ, life in Christ is not imagined by him, from which follows the meaninglessness and uselessness of life in the Church of Christ, deification and salvation in it. This is where the source of Tolstoy's spiritual tragedy is found. As you know, in 1901 Count L.N. Tolstoy was excommunicated from the Church by the Holy Synod.

At the very end of his life, Count Tolstoy experienced great embarrassment; he fled from himself and his ideas, trying to find help from the Church that he so passionately denied. This attempt remained unsuccessful, but still it happened.

From Yasnaya Polyana Tolstoy headed to Optina Pustyn, where he visited more than once. Many writers and thinkers, starting with the Kireevsky brothers and Gogol, sought and found support, consolation, and faith here. Tolstoy communicated in this monastery with the great elder - the Monk Ambrose. The reverend elder, in the words of N.A. Berdyaev, “was tired” of the writer’s pride. From the Astapovo station, a telegram came to Optina from the terminally ill Tolstoy asking Elder Joseph to come to the sick man. The telegram was sent while the writer was still free in his actions, but when Elder Barsanuphius (Elder Joseph could not leave the monastery at that moment) reached Astapov, the dark servants of evil from among his entourage, led by Chertkov, were already in charge. They did not allow either his wife, Sofia Andreevna, or the elder priest to see the dying man. “An iron ring bound the late Tolstoy, although Leo was there, but he could neither break the rings nor get out of it...” – this is what Elder Barsanuphius later said about the writer. This tragedy of the death of a great man causes horror and bitter regret.

“The history of Tolstoy’s soul,” wrote Archpriest Vasily Zenkovsky shortly after the writer’s death, “from its first phase of irreligion to its last wanderings and unnecessary and malicious struggle against the Church, is a harsh and formidable lesson for all of us.” “And therefore, it is not irritation or bitterness, but repentance and awareness of all our guilt before the Church that should evoke in us the fact that Tolstoy died alienated from Her,” Father Sergius Bulgakov wisely noted. “Tolstoy pushed away not only from the Church, but also from the unchurchishness of our life, with which we block the light of church truth.”

Opinions about the degree of religiosity of A.P. Chekhov, both his contemporaries and current researchers of his work, are ambiguous. Perhaps everyone agrees that Chekhov was never “fundamentally outside religion.” He did not inherit that Domostroevsky intolerant religiosity that reigned in his father’s house, and in this sense he had no religion. There was something deeper, more meaningful and complex that should be called Christian civilization - with a special attitude towards national history, to history in general; with the belief that in its movement it is progressive and continuous - starting from that initial spiritual effort, which he wrote about in his favorite story “Student”.

Professor M.M. speaks most objectively on this matter. Dunaev. In his book “Orthodoxy and Russian Literature”, the works of A.P. A large chapter is dedicated to Chekhov. A professor at the Moscow Theological Academy believes that “the combination of anguish about God with anguish about man... determined the entire system of worldview of the writer who was Orthodox in spirit.”

A.P. Chekhov was a man and writer of Orthodox culture, he was very fond of church singing, and knew divine services very well. In his works, he more than once turned to church themes and preached Christian ethics and morality.

The turn of the 19th – 20th centuries filled Russian literature with alarming forebodings and predictions. In this era, the appeal of literature to the Bible often expresses the idea of ​​​​the connection of times, the continuity of cultures, which became a kind of preparation for spiritual protection against threatening gaps and gaps in human memory, against the danger of the dissolution of human individuality in the political and social whirlpools of the approaching era, against the danger of absorption of man by the achievements of civilization .

The names of A.A. became a bright constellation of the literary horizon of the Silver Age. Akhmatova, D.S. Merezhkovsky, B.L. Pasternak and many others. It is obvious that Anna Akhmatova was a Christian poet, this is clearly evidenced by the Christian tone of her poetry. There is quite clear evidence of this in her own statements and in the testimony of her contemporaries. In his letter of 1940, B.L. Pasternak calls her a “true Christian” and notes: “She, and this is her uniqueness, had no evolution in religious views. She didn’t become a Christian, she always was one all her life.”

Religious motifs in Akhmatova’s poetry have a certain cultural, historical and ideological basis of the corresponding realities: biblical quotes and names, mentioned church calendar dates and shrines create a special atmosphere in her work.

Along with poems that are somewhat close to prayer and prophetic denunciation, there are works with manifestations of everyday religiosity, superstition, and sometimes even involuntary almost blasphemy. Poems of this kind reveal the spirit and character inherent in the very atmosphere of the Silver Age. In them we see many premonitions, omens, dreams and fortune-telling. Over the years, her poetry becomes more balanced and strict in spiritual terms, the strengthening of the civic sound is accompanied by a deepening of her initially inherent Christian worldview, the thought of a consciously chosen sacrificial path.

Religiosity A.A. Akhmatova was poetic, transforming the world. Religion expanded the sphere of beauty, including the beauty of feeling, the beauty of holiness, and the beauty of church splendor.

The theme of the Passion of Christ and the Resurrection occupies a special place in Akhmatova’s poetry. The poetess’ passionate theme is associated with an understanding of personal sacrifice, life as the Way of the Cross, the idea of ​​redemption and the high meaning of suffering.

They wound Your holy Body,

They cast lots for Your garments.

This is a direct transcription of the lines from the Psalter: “I divided My garments for myself, and cast lots for My clothing” (Ps. 21:19). The fulfillment of this Old Testament prophecy about the suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ is repeated in one of the 12 Passion Gospels (passages) read at the Matins of Great Heel (taken on the evening of Great Thursday): “When the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took His clothes and divided them into four parts, for each a warrior in a piece, and a tunic; The tunic was not sewn, but entirely woven on top. So, they said to each other: “We will not tear it apart, but let us cast lots for it, whose it will be,” so that what was said in Scripture might be fulfilled: They divided My garments among themselves and cast lots for My clothing” (John 19:23-24) . We hear these same words in the prokinna at the Matins of Great Heel.

In the early period of her work, A. Akhmatova reconsidered the tasks and feats of a Christian poet and patriot. In light of the tragic events of the war of 1914, the all-Russian collapse of 1917 and personal losses inseparable from them, the theme of “last times”, the approach of the Antichrist, the end of the world and the Last Judgment, the theme of “fulfilling deadlines” and fulfilling prophecies begins to clearly sound in Akhmatova’s poetry.

During the Soviet period, loyalty to historical memory, fatherly faith, national, national, universal foundations required courage, and sometimes sacrifice, from the creative people of Russia, testifying to internal freedom in the conditions of denunciations, terror and totalitarianism.

Many years of persistent torture with fear, which seemed worse than death itself, is expressed in the lines of the brave poetess:

It would be better on the green square

Lie down on the unpainted platform

And to the cries of joy and groans

Bleed red until the end.

I press a smooth cross to my heart:

God, restore peace to my soul!

The smell of decay is swooningly sweet

It blows from the cool sheet.

A real poet cannot live and create under the rule of fear, otherwise he ceases to be a poet. During the years when Akhmatova was persecuted and not published, deprived of words and bread, she created a cycle of “Bible Verses” (1921–1924), which expressed her protest, challenge to the dictatorial atmosphere and rejection of fear. She imagines herself in the image of the wife of the biblical Lot, whom an angel leads out of the city of Sodom, which is perishing for her grave sins, forbidding her to look back (Gen. 19, 1-23), but this is beyond her strength:

To the red towers of our native Sodom,

To the square where she sang, to the yard where she spun,

On the empty windows of a tall house,

Where I gave birth to children to my dear husband,

She looked and, shackled by mortal pain,

Her eyes could no longer look;

And the body became transparent salt,

And the fast legs grew to the ground.

For many years A.A. Akhmatova wrote without hope of publication and often burned what she wrote. The author never had a chance to see the poem “Requiem” (1935–1940) published in his homeland; the first domestic publication appeared in perestroika 1987.

Russian writers who remained “in the country of victorious socialism” or were forced to leave it were united in their attitude towards the biblical tradition. Regardless of their personal attitude towards religion, they were disgusted by the desecration of the fatherly faith instilled by those in power, the so-called “exposure” of the Bible, ridicule of it - blasphemy, which called itself “scientific atheism”, but in fact desecrated the true science that has always been respect for freedom of conscience and the greatest treasures of culture is characteristic.

Such real, honest and courageous writers, fulfilled with a genuine civic duty, should include B.L. Pasternak. Born and raised in a Jewish family, he independently and meaningfully comes to Orthodoxy. This path for the future poet and writer began with the influence of his Orthodox, deeply religious nanny.

From his first literary experiments (in the anthology “Lyrics”; 1913) to “Hamlet,” which opens a cycle of poems on gospel themes, is a journey of half a life. The poet became interested in symbolism, moderate futurism, and temporarily became close to the LEF association. But the poet’s personality was never completely captured by these ideological programs and false concepts. Even during this period, the Christian theme was not completely alien to him. Thus, the poem “Balzac” (1927), dedicated to the exhausting labors and difficult everyday worries of the French writer, unexpectedly ends with the stanza:

When, when, wipe off the sweat

And dry the coffee,

He will be protected from worries

The sixth chapter of Matthew?

The sixth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew contains part of Christ's Sermon on the Mount. The Lord here gives a perfect example of prayer (“Our Father”) and indicates the path to salvation: Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all this will be added to you (Matthew 6:33).

Even in a poem on a revolutionary theme, written in 1927, when a new period of persecution of the Church began in Soviet Russia, the poet finds the following reminiscence appropriate:

O idol of the state,

Freedom is the eternal threshold!

Ages are stolen from cells,

Animals roam the Colosseum

And the preacher's hand

Fearlessly baptizes the damp cage,

Training a panther with faith,

And a step is always taken

From Roman circuses to Roman churches,

And we live by the same standard

We, the people of the catacombs and mines.

What is important is not even this episodic appeal to the New Testament theme, but the joyful, sometimes enthusiastic, attitude towards life that permeates all the work of these decades. The poetic image “sister is my life” is included in the title of an entire collection (1923), which Boris Pasternak considered the beginning of his poetic life. In his poems there is none of that insatiable selfishness that can be observed in many poets of the so-called “Silver Age”. There is also no demonic gloom and tragic brokenness.

The years of brutal defeat and terror of the 30s were a time of moral testing and choice for all people. B. Pasternak discovered such a structure of the soul, which inevitably should have led him to the conscious acceptance of Christianity. The war years finally determined and shaped the Christian worldview of B.L. Pasternak. The poem “Death of a Sapper” is imbued with evangelical thought. The poet speaks of the immortality of the feat of a warrior who sacrifices his life for the sake of others. This is not an illusory and rhetorical immortality, which atheists love to talk about, but real immortality: whoever fulfills the Divine commandment becomes the heir of eternal life. The poem “Scouts” talks about three fearless warriors who are protected by prayer:

There were three of them, frankly.

Desperate to youth,

Freed from bullets and captivity

Prayers in the depths of the fatherland.

In the poem “The Living Fresco,” images of church life are directly used when describing the battle:

The earth hummed like a prayer service

About the disgust of the howling bomb,

Censer smoke and rubble

Throwing you out of the carnage.

Between battles, the warrior remembers the fresco on the walls of the chapel where his mother took him, and in his imagination there arises the image of the holy Great Martyr and Victorious George, as if descending from it and defeating the enemy:

Oh, how he remembered those clearings

Now that I'm in my pursuit

He tramples enemy tanks

With their menacing dragon scales!

He crossed the land borders,

And the future is like the expanse of heaven,

Already raging, but not dreaming,

Approaching, wonderful.

In the poem “Indiscriminateness,” in which Pasternak writes about the valiant Russian sailors, he uses church language:

Invincible - many years,

Use it for the famous!

Expanse to live in this world,

And endless sea surface.

Execute is an abbreviation for episcopal longevity: “Ipolla these despots” (Greek - for many years, ruler).

The novel “Doctor Zhivago” (1946–1955) was the result of not only a long creative journey, but also an attempt to comprehend the life lived in the light of the Christian worldview. In a letter to his cousin Olga Freidenberg (October 13, 1946) he wrote: “Actually, this is my first real work. In it I want to give a historical image of Russia over the last forty-five years, and at the same time, with all sides of my plot, heavy, sad and detailed, as, ideally, in Dickens and Dostoevsky - this thing will be an expression of my views on art, on The Gospel, on human life in history and much more. The novel is currently called “Boys and Girls.” In it I settle scores with Jewry, with all types of nationalism (and in internationalism), with all shades of anti-Christianity and its assumptions that some peoples exist even after the fall of the Roman Empire, and it is possible to build a culture on their raw national essence. The atmosphere of the thing is my Christianity.” It is not by chance that Jewishness is mentioned. For a person born into a traditional Jewish family, the national idea becomes a kind of religion, being the cause of a centuries-old insensitivity to New Testament truth. In the novel “Doctor Zhivago,” Mikhail Gordon, who converted to Orthodoxy, expresses the thoughts of B. Pasternak himself: “The national thought has placed upon him the deadening necessity of being and remaining a people and only a people for centuries, during which, by the power that once emerged from its ranks, the whole world was delivered from this demeaning task. How amazing! How could this happen? This holiday... this rise above the stupidity of everyday life, all this was born on their land, spoke their language and belonged to their tribe. And they saw and heard this and missed it? How could they allow a soul of such absorbing beauty and power to leave them, how could they think that next to its triumph and reign they would remain in the form of an empty shell of this miracle...” (Doctor Zhivago. Part four. Overdue inevitabilities). The anti-Christianity mentioned in O. Freidenberg's letter was the main element of the society in which the writer lived for the last 40 years. Militant atheism in the USSR was uniquely combined with neo-paganism (the cult of party leaders and numerous idol monuments, quasi-religious Soviet rituals, etc.).

The writer perceived the work on the novel as his Christian duty and saw the Divine will in this. From a religious point of view, the most important theme in the novel Doctor Zhivago is the theme of life, death and Resurrection. The first title of the novel in the 1946 manuscript is “There Will Be No Death.” B. Pasternak took these words from the Apocalypse of the Holy Apostle John the Theologian: “And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death; There will be no more mourning, nor crying, nor pain, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:4). The surname of the main character of the novel – Zhivago (Church Slavonic form of the genitive case of the word “alive”) – also indicates the main idea. The work begins with death (the funeral of Yuri's mother) and ends with the death of the main character. However, at the end of the book and the poetic appendix of the novel there is the poem “The Garden of Gethsemane,” which speaks of the great victory over death.

The All-Russian catastrophe of 1917 had one of its consequences in the return of part of the Russian intelligentsia to the paternal Orthodox faith, into the bosom of the Mother Church. Already in the “first wave” of Russian emigration, a number of writers appeared, with varying degrees of artistic talent, who entered the world of Russian Orthodoxy and embodied it on the pages of their works. The providential mission of the Russian exiles was to reveal to their compatriots and open to the world the spiritual treasures of “Holy Rus'”. B.K. Zaitsev admitted that the suffering and turmoil he experienced during the revolution allowed him to discover the “Russia of Holy Rus'”, which he might never have seen without these trials.

Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev belongs to the Russian writers who were deeply imbued with the spirit of Orthodoxy and reliably reflected it in their works. He was one of those Russian emigrants who, being cut off from their beloved Russia, in difficult thoughts about separation from their homeland, comprehended all the greatness of its spirituality.

After the defeat of Wrangel’s Volunteer Army in Crimea, where the Shmelevs lived during those years of the Civil War, the Bolsheviks spared the writer, but shot his only son, an officer. This tragedy deeply shocked I.S. Shmeleva. Subsequently, he wrote: “I testify: I saw and experienced all the horrors, surviving in Crimea from November 1920 to February 1922. If an accidental miracle and an imperious international commission could obtain the right to carry out an investigation on the ground, it would collect such material that would abundantly absorb all the crimes and all the horrors of beatings that have ever happened on earth! On November 20, 1922, the Shmelevs left Moscow for Berlin, and two months later they moved to Paris.

Shmelev’s entire creative heritage is imbued with Christian ideas; his entire creative path testifies to a gradual but steady spiritual ascent, an ever closer merging of the earthly and heavenly in his works. Already in the earliest works created in their homeland, Christian motifs are present.

The image of Russia - Holy Rus' - is central in the work of I.S. Shmeleva. He shows the reader a harmonious world, in which “holidays, joys, sorrows go in their order,” the peace of the Lord, and at the same time as close as possible to Everyday life a person, his life. But the world discovered by the writer is at the same time spiritually sublime, for at its core lies Orthodox view, Christian worldview, knowledge of the human heart and soul, the path of an individual and all of Russia as a whole.

In 1930–1931, Shmelev created “Bogomolye”. This is a wonderful story about a pilgrimage to the Holy Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, as a child, with sincere and pious people - old Gorkin and with his father. Here the writer depicts a living contact with the world of Russian holiness, shows the senile service of the ascetic - Elder Barnabas of Gethsemane, and describes his works. The work unfolds a picture of a pilgrimage to the monastery to St. Sergius and Father Barnabas of many different people from different social strata. All believing Russia appears before us late XIX century. “Pilgrim” is a reflection of a pure child’s perception of the world.

In 1932–1933 I.S. Shmelev is working on the novel “Nanny from Moscow”, on the pages of which a soulful image of a Russian believing old woman is revealed.

The pinnacle of creativity and the stage of Shmelev’s spiritual path was the book “The Summer of the Lord” (part 1 - 1927-1931, parts 2 and 3 - 1934-1944). The words of Christ “...unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 18:3) are quite applicable to her. In order to somehow soften the pain of contemplating a desecrated, ruined Russia, to get rid of the painful images of the bloody nightmare of the civil war, the writer turns to the years of his distant childhood.

In “The Summer of the Lord” Shmelev vividly, fully and deeply recreates the church-religious layer of national life. He depicts people's lives, inextricably linked with church life and worship. The writer shows a person’s life not in the changing seasons, but in the church liturgical circle - a person walks through time, marked by the events of church life. The meaning and beauty of Orthodox holidays, rituals, and customs, which remain unchanged from century to century, are revealed so accurately that the book, both in emigration and reaching the modern domestic reader, has become a kind of encyclopedia for many believers. In addition, the psychological experiences, emotions, and prayerful states of an Orthodox Christian are revealed here. “The Summer of the Lord” is a story about the entry of the truths of Orthodoxy into the human soul.

The last masterpiece of I.S. Shmelev’s novel “Heavenly Paths” (Volume I was published in Paris in 1937, Volume II in 1948) is a unique phenomenon in Russian literature. The pious author created a work in which human life is inextricably linked with the action of Divine Providence. I.A. writes about this new feature in Russian literature. Ilyin. “And since the existence of Russian literature, for the first time an artist showed this wonderful meeting of world-sanctifying Orthodoxy with the open and responsive-tender soul of a child. For the first time, a lyrical poem has been created about this meeting, which takes place not in dogma, and not in sacrament, and not in worship, but in everyday life. For everyday life is permeated through and through with the currents of Orthodox contemplation.”

Shmelev left us with a clear understanding that nothing is scary, because Christ is everywhere. The writer suffered through this truth and encourages us to see it and feel it constantly. This is what the artistic requirement to find hidden Beauty under the grimaces of life means. This world-saving Beauty is Christ. Previously, he was looking for it on earthly paths, but it turned out that he was only preparing himself for the “heavenly paths.” In these ways I.S. Shmelev left earthly life.

In December 1949 he said: “God gave life to the sinner, and this is obligatory. I want to live as a real Christian and I can only do this in church life.” On June 24, 1950, Shmelev went to the small monastery of the Intercession Mother of God 150 kilometers from Paris. Finally, his desire for monastic peace and quiet, leisurely prayer and quiet holidays came true. He unpacked his things, stood, breathing in the fresh air of a summer evening under the quiet ringing of bells, and, a few hours later, died. Such a death is God’s gift: not in anger and confusion, but in peace and spiritual rejoicing, his Lord’s summer ended.

“The Bible is a book addressed to all humanity,” noted Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Rus'. “The Bible spoke to our ancestors, speaks to us and will speak to our descendants about the relationship between God and man, about the past, present and future of the Earth on which we live.”

15. Culture of Orthodoxy

People brought up in the traditions of Orthodoxy, who took part in church Sacraments and attended services in churches, were gradually imbued with the very spirit of Christianity. A person who was baptized in infancy and raised in Orthodox rituals and customs felt himself Orthodox from birth. Through the Holy Tradition, the seeds of the Christian faith penetrated deeply into the souls of people. Accustomed to certain moral norms and moral values ​​in society, people were gentle, kind, honest and sympathetic. Brought up on Christian values, a person felt differently the world and perceived people.

People of the 19th century knew about many sins theoretically, or had no idea. Many things and actions that are easily done today could not have occurred to a person of the 20th century. However, one cannot idealize the 19th century. In the history of Russia even at that time there were crimes, rudeness and evil. But the mentality of Russian society, in general, was different than it is now.

Orthodox by birth, education and upbringing, subjects Russian Empire, and not only this state, have developed and created a culture that is Orthodox in its essence, spirit and internal content. It included a whole system of views on the state, social order, the universe and man's place in it.

Orthodox culture has developed a special attitude towards man, as well as a god-like being, an individual. It determined public opinion, literature, music, painting, philosophy and many other branches of human knowledge.

From the depths of the church comes the state idea of ​​Russia as an Orthodox Christian state. In 1524, the abbot of the Belozersky Pskov Monastery, Elder Philotheus, in one of his letters to a private individual, formed the state idea of ​​Russia: “Two Romes have fallen, the third stands, but the fourth will not exist.” Moscow, the capital of the Russian state, became the third Rome. Historical events by the 16th century developed in such a way that the only large Orthodox kingdom was Moscow. Rome, capital great empire, fell under the blows of the barbarians, and later fell into “Latinism,” as Catholicism was called in the East. Constantinople, or New Rome, was taken by the Crusaders, and the Byzantine Empire fell and disappeared from the political map. The Russian Tsar became the sovereign of all Orthodox Christians, “the king of all Romans,” and the regalia of imperial power and the coat of arms of the Byzantine (Roman, as they called themselves) emperors were transferred to Moscow. The Grand Duke of Moscow became the “Tsar of Moscow and All Rus',” and the small appanage principality grew to the size of a huge empire. The coat of arms of Byzantium became Russian, and the metropolitan, the head of the Russian Church, became the patriarch.

From the first decades of the existence of the Russian state, the idea of ​​“Moscow – the Third Rome” became decisive for Russia. When, in the 17th century, St. Petersburg became the new capital of the state, the state continued to develop according to its original principles. The socio-political idea of ​​the Third Rome continued to live and exist in the Russian emigration. It was studied by famous scientists and philosophers (Soloviev, Berdyaev), and embodied in artistic images by poets and writers. This religious idea continues to develop in our time, during the restoration of Russian statehood.

There were many deeply believing Orthodox people in Russian science, art, literature, and philosophy. They were bearers of Orthodox culture and the Christian faith. It is enough to name just a few names of great people who left a deep mark on Russian thought.

The founder of Russian science, Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov, a graduate of the Holy Greek-Latin Theological Academy, was a deeply religious man. He was the first to oppose the “Norman theory” of the creation of the Russian state, according to which priority in the creation of the state formation of Kievan Rus belongs to the Varangians invited from overseas, Rurik and the Normans who arrived with him. Later historical research proved the inconsistency of this theory. Mikhail Vasilyevich laid the foundations of Russian literature, defining the Russian language as a literary language and wrote the work “Letters on the Rules of Russian Poetry,” where he outlined the foundations of Russian poetry. Compiled the first scientific grammar of the Russian language.

Lomonosov laid the foundations of the “corpuscular theory”, theoretical physics and chemistry. Developed the basic principles of ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy. He was an outstanding artist.

In addition to scientific works, Mikhail Vasilyevich wrote several philosophical and theological treatises. Having determined the development of Russian science, Lomonosov always remained an Orthodox man.

Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev is perhaps the most famous Russian chemist, the founder of modern theoretical chemistry. He formulated the periodic law, on the basis of which the Periodic Table was created chemical elements, was also a deeply religious person. He left his religious reflections in diary entries and individual articles.

The famous Russian philosopher, Alexander Fedorovich Losev, a world-class specialist in ancient aesthetics, was a monk of the Russian Orthodox Church. He wrote a number of major philosophical works on antiquity, history, and ethics. His systematic works in the field of antiquity are recognized by the scientific world as classical and translated into all European languages. Alexander Fedorovich wrote many theological works that are little known to a wide circle of readers.

Most famous Russian artists decorated Orthodox churches, painted icons for churches, and designed iconostases. Many icons by Vasnetsov are still known. Many painters devoted almost entirely their work to religious themes. These are Alexander Ivanov, and Surikov, the famous marine painter Aivazovsky.

Orthodox commanders - Suvorov and Kutuzov began military maneuvers with prayer, asking for God's blessing for the battle with the enemy. Fedor Fedorovich Ushakov, an admiral who never knew defeat, was canonized as a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church. The Great Commander of World War II, Zhukov, was a believer, and Marshal Vasilevsky was a graduate of the Kazan Theological Seminary.

Alexander Andreevich Ivanov, a world-famous artist, devoted most of his works to Christian subjects. He wrote a series of compositions under the general title “Biblical Sketches.” The most famous painting, “The Appearance of Christ to the People,” was painted by him over the course of twenty years and is a masterpiece of group portraiture. In his later works - “Biblical Sketches”, Alexander Andreevich, maintaining connections with the traditions of classical monumentalism, reached an extraordinary depth of philosophical generalization and interpretation of the theme of the work.

Victor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov, a monumental painter, in 1895 finished painting the Vladimir Cathedral in Kyiv, creating frescoes of extraordinary beauty and artistic style. They combined the traditions of Orthodox icon painting and the features of ancient Russian painting.

A figure of the Russian Orthodox Church, Archbishop Luka Voino-Yasenetsky, our contemporary, was a hierarch of the Church and had a secular education as a doctor. During the Great Patriotic War, he volunteered for the front, where he worked as a surgeon in one of the hospitals. Archbishop Luke proposed a new method of healing wounds, which saved the lives of many Red Army soldiers. For his work “Experience in Purulent Surgery” he was awarded the Stalin Prize.

In the social life of the mid-19th century there was a special direction religious and philosophical thought, known as Slavophilism. It was a fairly large public association, which included famous artists, writers, philosophers, and art critics. The narrow circle of the founders of Slavophilism included I. S. and K. S. Aksakov, I. V. Kirievsky, A. I. Koshelev, Yu. F. Samarin, A. S. Khomyakov, V. A. Cherkassky and others. V.I. Dal, A.I. Ostrovsky, A.A. were close to this form of social thought. Grigoriev, F.I. Tyutchev. Slavophiles argued, in contrast to revolutionary-minded circles of Russian society, about the absence of class struggle among the Russian people. They opposed Westerners who spoke of Russia's European path. Slavophiles believed that the Russian people and the Russian state had their own special, own path of historical development. They advocated the abolition of serfdom, arguing that the only form of organization peasant life Russia is a community. Slavophiles advocated the monarchical structure of the Russian state, believing that this system was the most perfect. The unifying force of the state and society, in their opinion, is the Orthodox Church. They put forward the well-known formula: “Autocracy, nationality, Orthodoxy.”

One of the founders of Slavophilism, A. S. Khomyakov, was a significant religious philosopher of his time. According to Yuri Samarin, Khomyakov became the first secular theologian in Russia to interpret Orthodox doctrine in a new way, from a philosophical point of view. One of A. S. Khomyakov’s students said about his teacher: “We treat the Church out of obligation, out of a sense of duty, like those elderly relatives whom we visited two or three times a year... Khomyakov did not treat the Church at all, precisely because he simply lived in it, and not from time to time, not in fits and starts, but always and constantly.”

Khomyakov could not publish his works in Russia - spiritual censorship did not allow this. Khomyakov's theological activities seemed suspicious. He approached the essence of the church from the inside, and not from the outside. Alexey Stepanovich talked about the Church as a person living in the society of true Christians, as an interlocutor with the saints, as a spectator of God. He formulated the doctrine of the Christian Church from a practical position, and not from the point of view of official scholasticism. In 19th-century theology, the Church was traditionally understood as “the union of the elders of a region with their bishop, which serves as the main means of uniting all the believers of the region into one holy family.” Khomyakov believed that the purity of rituals and the immutability of dogmas were entrusted not to one church hierarchy, but to the entire church people, who are the Body of Christ.

Khomyakov did not divide the Church into earthly and heavenly, as was the tradition of theological schools of the Russian Empire. He saw the Church in unity, and saw this kind of division as conditional. All nations belong to the Church, Alexey Stepanovich argued, when Christianity spreads throughout the world, when local divisions of the united Church disappear. He wrote about the unity of the Church, believing that it comes from the unity of God. The Church is not a multitude of individual persons, but the unity of God’s love living in a multitude of rational creatures. Under the words “intelligent creatures”, A.S. Khomyakov understood everyone, people, angels, people who lived, are living, and even people who will live on earth, since God sees the entire Church as a whole, being unlimited in time. He develops his thought this way: “The Church is one, despite its visible division for a person still living on earth. Those who live on earth, who have completed the earthly path, who were not created for the earthly path - are all united in one Church, since the not yet revealed creation is obvious to God, and He hears the prayers and knows the faith of those who have not yet been called by Him from non-existence to being.” Khomyakov expanded the boundaries of time and space in his works.

Contrary to outdated theological doctrines, Alexey Stepanovich believed that an unbaptized person who believes in Christ can achieve the salvation of his soul. “Confessing one baptism for the remission of sins, as a Sacrament prescribed by Christ Himself for entry into the New Testament Church, the Church does not judge those who have not become involved in it through baptism,” wrote Khomyakov. These words cannot be regarded as a denial of the Sacrament of Baptism, because he supplements his words: “Baptism is obligatory, for it is the door to the New Testament Church, and in baptism alone a person expresses his consent to the redemptive action of grace.”

It was A. S. Khomyakov who formulated one of the main postulates of Slavophilism. He wrote that the main principle of the Church is not obedience to external authority, but conciliarity. According to N. O. Lossky, Khomyakov expressed conciliarity as follows: “Conciliarity is the free unity of the foundations of the Church in action in the matter of common understanding and truth, or their joint search for the path to divine righteousness.” Alexey Stepanovich laid theoretical basis one of the branches of social thought of the mid-19th century. Yu. Samarin, the closest student of A. S. Khomyakov, said this about his teacher: “In the old days, those who served Orthodoxy such a service as Khomyakov served him, who were given the logical understanding of one or another aspect of Church teaching to win for the Church over by one error or another a decisive victory, they were called teachers of the Church.”

Loyalty to church duty amazed the contemporaries of Alexei Stepanovich. The commander of the regiment in which he served, Count Osten-Sacken, recalled 73 years later about his subordinate: “Khomyakov had willpower not like a young man, but like a man, seasoned by experience. At that time there was already a significant number of freethinkers, deists, and many mocked the implementation of the statutes of the Church, claiming that they were established for the mob. But Khomyakov inspired such love and such respect for himself that no one allowed himself to touch his beliefs.”

The ideas of the Slavophiles were developed in the culture, science and art of the 19th – early 20th centuries. They gave birth to the “Silver Age” of Russian literature, gave impetus to philosophy, and revived interest in many problems of the religious worldview of the Russian people. The activities of the society have given rise to many thinkers among Russian society.

One of them, Vladimir Sergeevich Solovyov (1853–1900), was a remarkable personality in the life of secular society. At the age of 21, he defended his master's thesis and was elected associate professor at Moscow University. He quickly became a popular lecturer, liberal publicist and writer. Thanks to your original views and judgments, he almost immediately earned both a lot of approval and praise, and a lot of censure from his numerous listeners, readers and interlocutors, but he did not leave any of them indifferent to his work - be it special philosophical works, journalism or poetry. He was an extraordinarily prolific and creatively gifted author. Its rich creative heritage amazes not only with its volume ( full meeting Solovyov’s works in the modern edition amount to 12 volumes), but also by the breadth of views expressed and topics raised, many of which have not lost their relevance to this day.

The freedom of thought and views of V. Solovyov was never limited to any one particular direction, any one philosophical school exclusively. He was no less familiar with the works of the holy fathers than with the philosophy of modern times. Soloviev was never content in his work with just one cultural-historical worldview layer, be it the classical philosophy of antiquity, medieval scholasticism or German idealism. These and many other directions of religious and philosophical thought, taken separately from each other, did not suit him much; Vladimir Solovyov’s broad creative nature was cramped within the narrow confines of one closed system.

A close friend of the philosopher, Prince Evgeny Trubetskoy, wrote about this: “He did not reject the values ​​inherited from the past; on the contrary, he carefully collected them: they all fit in his soul and in his philosophy, but he did not find final satisfaction in them. He saw in them particular manifestations of the one and complete truth, various refractions of that light that shines for everyone, but has not yet been revealed in its fullness in any human teaching.” To the undoubted merit of Vladimir Solovyov, his researchers attribute the fact that he, perhaps more than anyone else, managed to combine the rich philosophical heritage of previous eras in his extensive work. Contemporaries wrote about him that in the history of philosophy it is difficult to find a broader, more comprehensive synthesis of the great and valuable that human thought has produced.

The most authoritative researcher of Solovyov’s life and work, A.F. Losev, notes that this philosopher “was a believer from the bottom of his heart. But, in addition, he was also an intellectualist systematizer of faith.” According to V. Ivanov, Soloviev was “an artist of the internal forms of Christian consciousness.” In the thinking of this man, philosophy and theology are closely connected; for him, philosophy played a preaching role in relation to theology. Sometimes Vladimir Solovyov was directly called a theologian, meaning a certain specific focus of some of his works, containing views that closely resonated with themes traditional for the Christian worldview and doctrine.

In his writings, Soloviev, indeed, sometimes touched upon issues that were repeatedly raised in patristic literature. These questions concern the most diverse spheres of the Christian religion and church life; they have been repeatedly discussed by many thinkers at different times. At times he almost completely ignored all Orthodox dogma, and sometimes he acted as a principled supporter of the purest canonical Orthodoxy.

Famous Russian philosopher and religious thinker, N. O. Lossky, thus, defines one of the great merits of his outstanding predecessor: “The main work of Solovyov’s life was the creation of Christian Orthodox philosophy, revealing the richness and inner strength of the basic tenets of Christianity, which in the minds of many people have turned into a dead letter, divorced from life and philosophy.” Vladimir Solovyov himself wrote that “my task is not to restore traditional theology in its exclusive meaning, but, on the contrary, to free it from abstract dogmatism, to introduce religious truth in the form of free rational thinking and to realize it in the data of experimental science and, thus to organize the whole field of true knowledge into a complete system of free and scientific philosophy.”

Solovyov's philosophical system was created in the atmosphere of Schelling's ideas, but his Christian worldview is directly opposite in spirit to naturalistic pantheism. The similarity between Schelling and Solovyov turns out to be superficial. Neither natural philosophy nor Schelling's philosophy of revelation could influence Solovyov's worldview. He draws from the theology of the Church Fathers (especially Maximus the Confessor, Gregory of Nyssa, Dionysius the Areopagite, partly Origen and St. Augustine), whom Schelling also studied in the last period of his life. Most of the coincidences in the works of Schelling and Solovyov are explained by this general dependence.

Father Georgy Florovsky, apparently in an earlier period of his work, spoke enthusiastically about the philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov: “The spirit of Solovyov’s philosophy is the spirit of true Greek-Eastern Orthodoxy, and the ideas of his philosophy are the idea of ​​God-manhood, the idea of ​​the Church, the idea of ​​integral knowledge, free unity - inspired by patristic thought."

Vladimir Solovyov, the greatest Russian philosopher and religious thinker, was not entirely immune from errors. The main reason for his mistakes was that his deeply cheerful soul was filled with a living, immediate feeling of the accomplished and future transfiguration and Resurrection. But he did not sufficiently feel and penetrate with his mental gaze the abyss between God and the unenlightened man here, that mortal sorrow that is overcome only by death on the cross. He lacked that feeling of the abyss of sin. Precisely because he was given the opportunity to come so close to the Divine in contemplation, he did not sufficiently feel how far it was still from our reality. And here is the source of his most important, fundamental misconceptions.

Vladimir Solovyov was not only a secular man and a subtle thinker. He was a romantic and a poet, so he did not sufficiently feel the entire abyss between the human world and that world, which seemed to him divine. This has always made him too free-thinking for Orthodoxy.

The largest modern researcher of Solovyov’s work writes about him: “With all the deepest originality and even with many of his extravagant philosophical, primarily Gnostic, overexposures, Solovyov is a traditional Christian thinker, as if accidentally lost in the age of positivism, Nietzscheanism and Marxism. A thinker who did not lose her original Christian identity, but who accepted the immutable problematics of her time onto herself and into herself. One can argue endlessly about the degree of success or failure with which he resolved this issue in his philosophical and sociopolitical discussion, but the very importance of the talent and integrity of Solovyov’s perception is hardly in doubt.”

Vladimir Sergeevich Solovyov was an outstanding figure during a turbulent era for Russia, unprecedented successes in science and technology, the Narodnaya Volya movement in Russia, the beginning and imminent collapse of liberal government reforms. A turning point in the history of Russia was a time of great hopes, achievements and disappointments. It gave birth to many great personalities, these were philosophers and writers, scientists and politicians, military leaders and ascetics.

In religious philosophy, these are Nikolai Berdyaev, Lossky, Father Georgy Florensky, Losev, Solovyov, Alexander Men, Archbishop Cyprian Kern, A. Schmemann and others, individuals, thanks to whose work, religious philosophy has become a publicly accessible and understandable discipline. These people have the honor of adequately representing Russian philosophical thought in the modern world.

The ideas of Christianity have deeply penetrated Russian literature, which is considered the most Christocentric in the world literary heritage. Many Russian authors became famous thanks to the inner, deeply Christian content of their works. Almost all Russian writers XIX mid-20th century, carried the ideas of Orthodoxy. The Western world often learned about the ancient Christian faith from the literary works of Russians. The works of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, Nikolai Semenovich Leskov, Garin-Mikhailovsky, Shmelev and many other writers contain all the most important Christian doctrinal and moral truths.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, with the help of his high gift of writing, penetrated deeply into the soul of a believer, managing to show in it everything high and bright, vile and base, sinful and holy. His life, literary and family fate unusual. Fyodor Mikhailovich was born into the family of a doctor at the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor in St. Petersburg. The writer's father came from a noble family noble family Pinsk district in southern Belarus. The Dostoevo family estate gave the name to the author of Crime and Punishment. The ancestors of Fyodor Mikhailovich were famous aristocrats who participated in the creation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In 1501, one of the famous writer’s ancestors was publicly executed for the murder of her husband and attempts on the life of her stepson. Dying on the scaffold, the ancestress of the Dostoevsky family cursed the entire family. And indeed, the Dostoevsky family was haunted by an evil fate: some of the family ended their lives under unclear circumstances, some committed suicide, and some members of the family went crazy. Based on the current situation, the Dostoevsky family began to ask God for forgiveness for the sins of their ancestors - many members of the family became clergy, monks, and one of the writer’s ancestors, Lavrenty Dostoevsky, became a bishop of the Orthodox Church.

Fyodor Mikhailovich's father was destined for a spiritual career; with the blessing of his parents, he was to become a clergyman. But Mikhail Dostoevsky abandoned his destiny, for which he received an inheritance and left to seek his fortune in St. Petersburg. Having received a medical education, the writer's father served as a simple doctor in a hospital for the poor. The future was born in a small house next to the Mariinsky Hospital great writer Russia. Fyodor Mikhailovich, as was the custom of that time, received an engineering education and was enlisted in the engineering department. However, the spiritual need to write and the Christian skills that Fyodor Mikhailovich was instilled in as a child gave such a moral impetus that he left public service and devoted himself to writing.

Fyodor Mikhailovich’s first novel, “Poor People,” brought him into the ranks of recognized writers of the natural school. In this novel, the author's attention was drawn to the “little man” with his special little world and spiritual needs, worries and anxieties. Later, “White Nights” and “Netochka Nezvanova” appeared, in which a profound psychologism was revealed that distinguishes Dostoevsky from other writers. Fyodor Mikhailovich actively attended the circle of revolutionaries - Petrashevites, and was carried away by the ideas of the French utopian socialists. Carried away by the fashionable criticism of monarchical power among the intelligentsia of the second half of the 19th century, the writer was drawn into a revolutionary terrorist circle. The activities of the terrorists were exposed, and Dostoevsky was sentenced to death penalty. Pardoned at the last moment, Fyodor Mikhailovich reconsidered his entire life and spiritual values, learning the joy of salvation through Jesus Christ.

Dostoevsky devoted the rest of his life to the spiritual struggle against evil. Returning from hard labor to St. Petersburg, he published a number of mournful stories and novels: “ Uncle's dream”, “The village of Stepanchikovo and its inhabitants”, “Humiliated and insulted”, “Notes from a dead house”. The writer renounced revolutionary terrorism, socialism and utopianism. He became an ardent supporter of the ideas of the Slavophiles, defending with them the idea of ​​a special historical path for Russia. He developed the theory of pochvennichestvo, according to which the writer of the national idea is the peasantry. Fyodor Mikhailovich foresaw a spiritual catastrophe among the intelligentsia and upper class of Russia, which would lead to a revolutionary situation in the country.

Looking at the surrounding reality from the position of a religious person, Dostoevsky considered the revolutionary situation in the state to be a manifestation of an evil force of demonic origin. In the novels “Demons” and “The Brothers Karamazov” he pursues the idea that revolutionaries are people possessed by demons, because such actions committed by them cannot be the actions of normal people. Fyodor Mikhailovich believed that Russia should move along a different path of historical development than Western Europe and avoid the evils generated by revolutions. He opposed the all-conquering power of money, which manifested itself in Europe and was brewing in Russia, arguing that the purpose of human life was spiritual self-improvement.

In the “Diary of a Writer,” published in the 80s, the writer included personal experiences, spiritual quests and reasoning. Masterfully mastering the art of psychological analysis, Fyodor Mikhailovich showed in his works that the suppression of human dignity and the enslavement of the soul by sin bifurcates his consciousness and suppresses the will. A person develops a feeling of his own insignificance and, as a result of spiritual emptiness, the need for protest matures. Individuals who strive for self-affirmation and, in order to achieve this goal, renounce God, turn to crime. Revolutionaries, according to the writer, were criminals in the full sense of the word, oathbreakers and apostates.

advancing on Russian society At the end of the 19th century, the writer in his works contrasted spiritual evil with an ideal beginning. This idea led Dostoevsky to the image of Christ, in which, according to the writer, the highest moral criteria were concentrated. In the novel “The Brothers Karamazov”, in “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor”, Fyodor Mikhailovich ponders the situation that could arise in the world in the event of the coming of Jesus Christ. The writer refutes the idea of ​​a “happy society” promised by revolutionary reformers by demonstrating the high personal value of each person. The forced “happiness” promised by socialists and communists will, in the writer’s opinion, lead to the destruction of freedom, God’s main gift to people.

The writer contrasts the heroes of the works, endowed with an atheistic, godless mind and destructive forces of the soul, with other people endowed with subtle spiritual intuition, kindness of heart, a believing and sympathetic soul. This is Sonya Marmeladova in Crime and Punishment, Lev Myshkin in the novel The Idiot, Alyosha Karamazov in The Brothers Karamazov. These people brought good into the world and fought against moral vice and sin. Truth and moral strength remained behind them. The final chapter of the novel “The Brothers Karamazov,” “At Tikhon’s” ends in the monastic cell.

In A Writer's Diary, Dostoevsky stated: “Evil languishes in every person deeper than the socialist healers assume; no matter the structure of society, you cannot escape evil.” He was deeply convinced that people could be beautiful and happy without losing the ability to live on earth. Dostoevsky said: “I do not want and cannot believe that evil is the normal state of people.” He combined the strength of a brilliant psychologist, the intellectual depth of a thinker, the passion of a publicist and the strength of faith of an Orthodox Christian.

Dostoevsky was the creator of an ideological novel, in which the development of the plot is determined by the struggle of ideas, the clash of worldviews. The author, within the genre framework of a detective plot, posed the social and philosophical problems of his time. Dostoevsky's novels are distinguished by their polyphony. “The multiplicity of independent and unmerged voices and consciousnesses, the true polyphony of full-fledged voices is truly a feature of Dostoevsky’s novels,” writes M.M. Bakhtin, the first to study the polyphonism of the writer’s work. The polyphony of artistic thinking was a reflection of the polyphony of social reality itself, which Dostoevsky brilliantly discovered, reached extreme tension at the beginning of the 20th century.

The writer had special spiritual sensitivity and exceptional writing talent. Many contemporaries: V.V. Rozanov, D.S. Merezhkovsky, N.A. The Berdyaevs considered Dostoevsky a Christian teacher. This explains the powerful influence of Fyodor Mikhailovich not only on artistic culture, but also on the philosophical and aesthetic thought of the 20th century. The ideas expressed by the great writer and a convinced Orthodox Christian had a huge influence on Russian and world literature.

The second, no less significant figure in Russian literature is Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, one of the greatest Russian writers, a world-class personality, the creator of the grotesque style, a man who made an enormous contribution to the artistic culture of Russia. He created truly countless works, worthy, according to criticism, to become “the head of literature, the head of poets.” The writer’s literary fame was brought to him by “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka”, the collection “Arabesques”, “Mirgorod”. In these works, Nikolai Vasilyevich created a special atmosphere, an extraordinary world populated by collective images personifying Russian characters of the first half of the 19th century. The pinnacle of Gogol’s work as a playwright was the play “The Inspector General,” which caused an emotional explosion in Russian society. The production of “The Inspector General” in the St. Petersburg theater went differently than the author expected, and reduced the comedy, which reveals the negative features of bureaucratic society, to the level of vaudeville. This caused Gogol to become deeply depressed, as a result of which he left Russia.

In Rome, Nikolai Vasilyevich meets Alexander Ivanov, a famous Russian artist. There he conceived and created a work of genius, in its depth, “Dead Souls”. This work has been perceived and interpreted in different ways, evaluated by different critics, and read by millions of people. Theories of its perception and understanding have been put forward. The poem “Dead Souls” is a deeply Christian work; under this name there are human personalities who have died spiritually for God and eternal life with Christ. The writer highlighted the most severe spiritual illnesses that plagued Russian society of his time. The spiritual wounds uncovered by the writer took on the appearance of living people. The heroes of “Dead Souls” are unreal existing people, these are spiritual passions, sins, which, having enslaved a person, turn him into an obedient slave. The Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church, engaged in ascetic studies of the human soul, discovered in it an accumulation of sinful passions, which, like poisonous snakes, entwine the heart of God’s highest creation. Only a spiritually strong person, an ascetic or a monk can discern all the spiritual rot of human nature.

Gogol, like the Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church, pulled out all the abominations from human souls and presented them in his work in the image of people from whom the main character Chichikov bought up peasants who were listed in revision fairy tales. In them, many readers praised themselves, their acquaintances, superiors and subordinates. The world of passions, revived in the guise of Nozdryov, Manilov, Plyushkin, Korobochka and others, appeared in a veiled form. Nikolai Vasilyevich exposed modern vices and tried to draw public attention to the spiritual deadness that was spreading among the Russian people.

Having shown the severity of the moral state of Russian society in the poem “Dead Souls,” Gogol creates another work - the book “Selected Places of Correspondence with Friends,” where, in the form of instructions, he sought to show the path to moral renewal. "Selected Passages" contains a little-known work: "Reflections on the Divine Liturgy." In it, Gogol turns to thinking about the great Sacrament of the Orthodox Church - Communion.

Having exposed the abyss of sin and spiritual imperfection before human eyes, Nikolai Vasilyevich proposed the only path to the salvation of the soul - Christ. Mental passions, having enslaved people, became omnipotent over the human personality. Gogol shows the powerlessness of human efforts in eradicating moral evil. Gogol demonstrates the only possibility of changing a sinful human being in the Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ. Only Jesus, who bore the sins and vices of all mankind and redeemed all living and unborn, can extend a saving palm to perishing people, as happened with the drowning Apostle Peter.

“Reflections on the Divine Liturgy” are based on the works of the Holy Fathers and Doctors of the Church, who explained the doctrinal and moral truths of Christianity. Nikolai Vasilyevich repeatedly quotes the works of Christian theologians of the early and late Middle Ages; he makes accessible to readers a layer of the Christian worldview and spiritual values. Having penetrated into the depths of a human being, the brilliant writer, horrified by spiritual evil, burns the second volume of the manuscripts of “Dead Souls”. Carrying out the planned task of renewing human souls becomes an impossible task for Gogol.

He creates a series of works known as the Petersburg Tales. They contain the theme of hierarchical fragmentation of society and terrible human loneliness. Gogol contrasted this way of life with the ideal of human will, brotherhood and high spiritual values. IN " Old world landowners"shows selfless devotion to each other, genuine Christian love of two elderly people. Service becomes a Christian ideal life goal writer. “There is no other way to direct society,” Gogol believed, “towards the beautiful until you show the full depth of its real abomination.” In eradicating vices, sins and passions, Nikolai Vasilyevich followed the path of hermits - ascetics, monks, who argued that the true salvation of the human soul from the slavery of sin begins in the case of self-knowledge of the latter.

The likening of characters to animals or inanimate objects is the main technique of Gogol’s grotesque. He imprinted the moral character modern society in images of such colossal psychological capacity that they outlived their era. Showing the way to beauty was central problem when creating the second volume of Dead Souls. The writer chose the path to the renewal of society through the moral abstinence of the individual, its component. This is the pastoral way of Christ Himself and main feature activities of the Orthodox Church in the world around it. Gogol believed that it was in Russia, first of all, that the principle of Christian brotherhood would be established. He looked for those high Christian qualities in the people's soul that would serve as the guarantee of moral and ethical revival. He considered the nation to be a single living organism, and the vices that befell him as a spiritual illness. The writer interpreted the Russian people as Orthodox, considering Christianity an integral part of them. This explains the writer’s increasing religiosity in the last years of his life.

He was confident that the monarchical structure of the Russian state was the only correct one and considered the foundations of Russian social life to be unshakable. The internal complexity of Gogol's work, which gained worldwide fame, has led to intense debate in criticism about his assessments. Various schools of Russian and foreign literary criticism have given numerous interpretations of his work. However, fragmentary judgments cannot provide a comprehensive picture of the interpretation of Gogol’s works. The writer’s activities cannot be considered without analyzing his inner spiritual life. Diary entries from “Selected Places” provide a snapshot of the emotional character of Nikolai Vasilyevich, who all his life was a believer, an Orthodox Christian. His literary creations should be considered from an Orthodox Christian position; this is an ascetic sermon of a contemporary to subsequent generations. Gogol tried to influence Russian society with his literary words, seeing it as one living organism that was possessed by a spiritual illness. The healing of vices and passions, according to the writer’s conviction, could only be achieved in the Orthodox Church, and through it - in Christ. Nikolai Vasilyevich was and remains a Christian writer, a continuer of the traditions of ancient Russian spiritual literature. His contribution to Russian and Myrrh literature is enormous, and his works have lasting value.

Often the spiritual meaning of the works of two famous writers Russian literature Gogol and Dostoevsky are compared together. The continuity of ideas of these authors is obvious. Works that provide a snapshot of the social life of the Russian state in the mid- and late 19th centuries, the central canvases of both writers’ creativity – “Dead Souls” and “Demons” – are consistent in their description of spiritual reality. The Russian people have experienced several states of apostasy - from the death of human souls to obvious demonic possession. These spiritual illnesses of society led to a spiritual crisis, expressed in a bloody revolution and fratricidal war. The new, anti-Christian government tried to destroy and eradicate all the seeds of goodness and Christian love in the souls of people.

A worthy successor of Christian traditions in Russian literature is V.V. Nabokov, Russian writer, forced emigrant who left Russia during the bloodshed of the civil war. Born into the family of a Russian aristocrat and politician, Vladimir Nabokov continued the literary traditions of Gogol. Just as Nikolai Vasilyevich created in his works an illusory world of passions and vices, dressed in human faces - masks, Vladimir Vladimirovich synthesized the world of ideas, endowing them with life. Nabokov is a world-famous writer, an author with a masterly command of language and figurative symbolic style. He created a unique literary style, an inimitable play of passions. By creating the novel “Mashenka,” Nabokov opened a new page in world literature.

The story “The Defense of Luzhin” concentrated the author’s life position. The main character, the famous chess player Luzhin, is so immersed in the world of the game that the surrounding reality seems unreal and unsteady to him. He sees people in the form of chess pieces, and their actions in the form of steps. Nabokov argues that the world is nothing more than an illusion. Life is a drama, a comedy or a tragedy, a theatrical play performed by an unknown author. In his work, the writer, masterfully using the word, separates and revives individual concepts, properties of things and ideas. They begin to live an independent life with him. Earthly life is illusory, its manifestations and goals are illusory. Nabokov believes that the desire for material values ​​is stupid because they are transitory and relative. Having achieved a certain goal, having achieved a result, Nabokov’s hero stumbles upon an emptiness that does not bring complete moral satisfaction.

The world always rejects a person who does not correspond to it, Nabokov believes. Any extraordinary personality causes aggression, anger and envy among others. An outstanding person is doomed to misunderstanding and loneliness. Like Cincinnatus T, the hero of the work “Invitation to an Execution,” a talented person is defenseless in front of the crowd, goodness and love and decency are punished very cruelly in the world - suffering and death. Cincinnatus C is a literary image of Jesus Christ, who differs from the scribes and Pharisees. His righteousness was greater than their legality. Nabokov analyzes the causes of human anger and finds their root in envy - an ancient passion that has befallen humanity. It was envy that pushed the zealots of Jewish legalism to demand the death of Christ. Everyone understood perfectly well that Christ is the Messiah promised to the Jewish people, this is He, Whom they have been waiting for so much. But even a full understanding of the gravity of their act forced the Jews to shout “Crucify him!” This idea was also expressed by Vladimir Vladimirovich in “Invitation to Execution.” People as spectators calmly await the murder of an innocent person; they are invited to execution. But Cincinnatus C understands that everything that happens is an illusion, and the illusion can be overcome and defeated. He overcomes the influence of the mirage of life, He conquers lies and gains immortality.

In understanding the personality of Cincinat C lies an attempt to illuminate in a new way the events of the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The timeless events of two thousand years ago are revisited by the great writer. Nabokov continues the creative line of Dostoevsky and Gogol. In the novel “Despair,” he describes the state of the soul of an atheist, a person who not only does not believe in God, but also does not want to know or listen about him. The mental state of “Dead Souls”, “Demons”, replace the latter human feeling– “Despair” followed by death, achieved by suicide.

According to the holy fathers of the Orthodox Church, this is precisely how a person’s individual absorption into sin occurs. A deadened soul is deprived of God; it is simply unable to retain the Being within itself. According to the Gospel, such an empty soul is inhabited by demons. Having found a human soul unfilled with grace, the demon moves into it, bringing with it several more demons stronger than itself. The last step of a person desperate in life is suicide, the most terrible sin that a person can commit, because in this case he completely and forever renounces God and the redeemer of the sins of all mankind - Jesus Christ.

Vladimir Vladimirovich is accused of literary snobbery and reminiscences. However, his works have a different goal - to demonstrate to the world the thirst for divine love in the human soul and his search for the only worthy goal of human life - Jesus Christ. It's deep individual style not everyone understands, just as it was not clear to contemporaries of Gogol’s work. However, most of his works are Christocentric, imbued with the spirit of Christianity in Russian literature. The three apostles of Russian literature - Gogol, Dostoevsky and Nabokov - saw the goal of their work in the spiritual awakening of humanity. They lived and wrote at different times, for different people and in different spiritual atmospheres, but all together they expressed the natural desire of the human soul to find rest in God. All human good goals are concentrated in Christ. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” the Lord said to his followers.

Russian culture and public life XIX- the beginning of the 20th century was the product of the best traditions of the Russian people, purified by the fire of love for God. The tradition contained in the rituals and customs of Russians has educated and nurtured great thinkers who created the Russian national mentality. It is embodied in the language, actions, motivations for actions, goals, desires, objects of love of the people, about whom they say: “Russian means Orthodox.”