In an immoral society, all inventions are magnifying. “In an immoral society, all inventions that increase the power of man over nature are not only not good, but an undeniable and obvious evil. A little-known publication by Leo Tolstoy about patriotism and

Question 1. Find the definitions of the words "personality" and "society" in two or three dictionaries. Compare them. If there are differences in the definition of the same word, try to explain them.

Personality is a person as a social and natural being, endowed with consciousness, speech, and creative possibilities.

Personality is a person as a subject of social relations and conscious activity.

Society - A set of people united by the method of production of material goods at a certain stage of historical development, certain production relations.

Society - A circle of people united by a common position, origin, interests, etc.

Question 3. Read the figurative definitions of society given by thinkers of different times and peoples: “Society is nothing but the result of a mechanical balance of brute forces”, “Society is a set of stones that would collapse if one did not support the other”, “ Society is a yoke of scales that cannot raise some without lowering others. Which of these definitions is closest to the characterization of society outlined in this chapter? Justify your choice.

"Society is a vault of stones that would collapse if one did not support the other." Because society in a broad sense is a form of association of people with common interests, values and goals.

Question 4. Make as complete a list of various human qualities as possible (a table of two columns: "Positive qualities", "Negative qualities"). Discuss it in class.

POSITIVE:

modest

frank

sincere

confident

decisive

purposeful

assembled

bold, brave

balanced

calm, cool

quick-witted

generous, generous

resourceful, resourceful, resourceful

prudent, prudent

healthy, sane

accommodating, accommodating

hardworking

meek, soft

caring, attentive to others

sympathetic

polite

selfless

merciful, compassionate

witty

cheerful, cheerful

serious

NEGATIVE:

self-satisfied, conceited

dishonest

deceitful, mean

cunning, cunning

insincere

unconfident,

indecisive

scattered

cowardly, cowardly

hot-tempered

unbalanced

vicious, cruel

vindictive

unimaginative, stupid

imprudent, reckless

cruel

selfish

indifferent, indifferent

rude, impolite

greedy

pitiless, ruthless

gloomy, gloomy, gloomy

Question 5. LN Tolstoy wrote: "In an immoral society, all inventions that increase man's power over nature are not only not good, but an undeniable and obvious evil."

How do you understand the words "immoral society"? Considering that the above thought was expressed more than 100 years ago, has it been confirmed in the development of society over the past century? Justify your answer with specific examples.

Immorality is the quality of a person who ignores moral laws in his life. This is a quality that is characterized by a tendency to comply with the rules and norms of relations that are opposite, directly opposite to those accepted by humanity, a person in faith, in a particular society. Immorality is evil, deceit, theft, idleness, parasitism, depravity, profanity, debauchery, drunkenness, lack of conscience, self-will, etc. Immorality is a state of primarily spiritual depravity, and then physical, it is always lack of spirituality. The slightest manifestations of immorality in children should evoke a need in adults to improve the environment of upbringing and educational work with them. The immorality of an adult is fraught with consequences for the whole society.

LEADING: Lev Nikolaevich, what is “patriotism” for you?

TOLSTOY: Patriotism is an immoral feeling because instead of recognizing oneself as the son of God, as Christianity teaches us, or at least as a free man guided by his own reason, every person, under the influence of patriotism, recognizes himself as the son of his fatherland, the slave of his government and commits acts contrary to his reason. and your conscience. Patriotism in its simplest, clearest and most undoubted meaning is nothing else for the rulers, as a tool for achieving power-hungry and selfish goals, and for the ruled - the renunciation of human dignity, reason, conscience and the slavish submission of oneself to those who are in power. This is how it is preached everywhere.

LEADING: Do you really think that there can be no modern positive patriotism?

TOLSTOY: Patriotism cannot be good. Why do people not say that selfishness cannot be good, although this could rather be argued, because selfishness is a natural feeling with which a person is born, while patriotism is an unnatural feeling, artificially instilled in him. So, for example, in Russia, where patriotism in the form of love and devotion to the faith, the tsar and the fatherland is instilled in the people with extraordinary intensity by all the tools in the hands of the government: churches, schools, the press and all solemnity, the Russian working man is a hundred million Russian people Despite the undeserved reputation that they have given it as a people especially devoted to their faith, the tsar and the fatherland, there is a people most free from the deceit of patriotism. For the most part, he does not know his faith, that Orthodox, state one, to which he is allegedly so devoted, but as soon as he finds out, he abandons it and becomes a rationalist; to his king, in spite of the incessant, intensified suggestions in this direction, he treats like all the authorities - if not with condemnation, then with complete indifference; but he either does not know his fatherland at all, if he does not mean by this his village, volost, or, if he knows, then he does not make any difference between him and other states.

LEADING: So you think that the feeling of patriotism in people and it is not necessary to educate?!

TOLSTOY: I have already several times had to express the idea that patriotism in our time is an unnatural, unreasonable, harmful feeling, causing a large proportion of the disasters from which humanity suffers, and that therefore this feeling should not be cultivated, as it is done now - on the contrary, it is suppressed and destroyed by all means depending on reasonable people.

(There is panic in the editorial office, the bugs in the ears of the presenters are bursting ...)

HOST: Well, you know... We don't... You... at least put on a nice suit!!

TOLSTOY: But the amazing thing is, despite the undeniable and obvious dependence only on this feeling of general armaments ruining the people and destructive wars, all my arguments about backwardness, untimeliness and the dangers of patriotism have met and still meet either silence, or deliberate misunderstanding, or always one and the same thing. but with a strange objection: it is said that only bad patriotism, jingoism, chauvinism is harmful, but that real, good patriotism is a very lofty moral feeling, to condemn which is not only unreasonable, but also criminal. What this real, good patriotism consists of is either not said at all, or instead of explanation, pompous high-sounding phrases are uttered, or something is presented under the concept of patriotism that has nothing in common with the patriotism that we all know and from which everything suffer so hard.

... HOST: We have one minute left, and I would like all the participants in the discussion to formulate literally in two or three words - what is patriotism?

TOLSTOY: Patriotism is slavery.

Quotations from LN Tolstoy's articles "Christianity and Patriotism" (1894), "Patriotism or Peace?" (1896), "Patriotism and Government" (1900). Note that the time is quiet and prosperous; The Russo-Japanese War, the First World War and the rest of the 20th century are still ahead ... However, Tolstoy is a genius for that.)

Leo Tolstoy about civilization
14.11.2012

A selection of Maxim Orlov,
Gorval village, Gomel region (Belarus).

I have seen ants. They crawled up and down the tree. I don't know what they could take there? But only those that crawl up have a small, ordinary abdomen, while those that descend have a thick, heavy one. Apparently, they were gaining something inside themselves. And so he crawls, only knows his path. On the tree - bumps, growths, he bypasses them and crawls further ... In old age, it is somehow especially surprising to me when I look at ants like that, at trees. And what do all airplanes mean before that! So it's all rude, clumsy! .. 1

Went for a walk. A wonderful autumn morning, quiet, warm, greenery, the smell of a leaf. And people, instead of this wonderful nature, with fields, forests, water, birds, animals, arrange for themselves in cities a different, artificial nature, with factory pipes, palaces, locomobiles, phonographs ... Terrible, and you can’t fix it in any way ... 2

Nature is better than man. There is no bifurcation in it, it is always consistent. She should be loved everywhere, for she is beautiful everywhere and works everywhere and always. (...)

Man, however, knows how to spoil everything, and Rousseau is quite right when he says that everything that came out of the hands of the creator is beautiful, and everything that comes from the hands of man is worthless. There is no wholeness in man at all. 3

It is necessary to see and understand what truth and beauty are, and everything that you say and think, all your desires for happiness both for me and for yourself, will shatter into dust. Happiness is being with nature, seeing it, talking to it. 4

We destroy millions of flowers in order to build palaces, theaters with electric lighting, and one color of burdock is more precious than thousands of palaces. 5

I picked a flower and threw it away. There are so many of them that it is not a pity. We do not appreciate this inimitable beauty of living beings and destroy them, not sparing - not only plants, but animals, people. There are so many. Culture * - civilization is nothing but the destruction of these beauties and their replacement. With what? Tavern, theater ... 6

Instead of learning to live a love life, people learn to fly. They fly very badly, but they stop learning about the life of love, if only to learn how to fly somehow. It's the same as if birds stop flying and learn to run or build bicycles and ride them. 7

It is a great mistake to think that all inventions that increase the power of people over nature in agriculture, in the extraction and chemical combination of substances, and the possibility of a great influence of people on each other, such as ways and means of communication, printing, telegraph, telephone, phonograph, are good. Both power over nature and an increase in the possibility of people influencing each other will be good only when people's activity is guided by love, the desire for good for others, and will be evil when it is led by egoism, the desire for good only for themselves. The dug out metals can be used for the convenience of people's lives or for cannons, the consequence of increasing the fertility of the earth can provide food for people and can be the reason for the increased distribution and consumption of opium, vodka, ways of communication and means of communication of thoughts can spread good and evil influences. And therefore, in an immoral society (...) all inventions that increase the power of man over nature, and means of communication, are not only not good, but an undeniable and obvious evil. 8

They say, I say, that printing did not contribute to the welfare of people. This is not enough. Nothing that increases the possibility of people influencing each other: railways, telegraphs, backgrounds, steamships, cannons, all military devices, explosives and everything that is called "culture" has in no way contributed to the welfare of people in our time, but on the contrary. It could not be otherwise among people, most of whom live a non-religious, immoral life. If the majority is immoral, then the means of influence, obviously, will only contribute to the spread of immorality.

The means of influence of culture can be beneficial only when the majority, albeit a small one, is religious and moral. It is desirable that the relationship between morality and culture is such that culture develops only simultaneously and slightly behind the moral movement. When culture overtakes, as it does now, it is a great calamity. Perhaps, and even I think that it is a temporary calamity, that due to the excess of culture over morality, although there must be temporary suffering, the backwardness of morality will cause suffering, as a result of which culture will be delayed and the movement of morality will be accelerated, and the right attitude will be restored. 9

The progress of mankind is usually measured by its technical, scientific success, believing that civilization leads to good. This is not true. Both Rousseau and all those who admire the wild, patriarchal state are just as right or just as wrong as those who admire civilization. The benefit of people living and enjoying the highest, most refined civilization, culture, and the most primitive, wild people is exactly the same. It is just as impossible to increase the welfare of people by science - civilization, culture, as to make sure that on a water plane the water in one place would be higher than in others. An increase in the good of people only from an increase in love, which by its very nature equalizes all people; scientific and technical progress is a matter of age, and civilized people are just as little superior to uncivilized people in their well-being as an adult person is superior to a non-adult in his well-being. The only blessing comes from an increase in love. 10

When people's lives are immoral and their relations are not based on love, but on selfishness, then all technical improvements, the increase in man's power over nature: steam, electricity, telegraphs, all kinds of machines, gunpowder, dynamites, robulites - give the impression of dangerous toys that are given in children's hands. eleven

In our age there is a terrible superstition that we enthusiastically accept every invention that reduces labor, and consider it necessary to use it, without asking ourselves whether this invention that reduces labor increases our happiness, whether it destroys beauty. . We are like a woman who by force eats up beef, because she got it, although she does not want to eat, and the food will probably harm her. Railways instead of walking, cars instead of horses, stocking machines instead of knitting needles. 12

Civilized and wild are equal. Mankind advances only in love, and there is no and cannot be progress from technical improvement. 13

If the Russian people are uncivilized barbarians, then we have a future. The Western peoples are civilized barbarians, and they have nothing to look forward to. It is the same for us to imitate the Western peoples as it is for a healthy, hard-working, unspoiled fellow to envy the bald-headed young rich man in Paris sitting in his hotel. Ah, que je m "embete!**

Do not envy and imitate, but regret. 14

The Western nations are far ahead of us, but they are ahead of us on the wrong path. In order for them to follow the real path, they have to go a long way back. We only need to deviate a little from that false path that we have just embarked on and along which the Western peoples are returning to meet us. 15

We often look at the ancients as if they were children. And we are children in front of the ancients, in front of their deep, serious, uncluttered understanding of life. 16

How easily what is called civilization, real civilization, is assimilated by individuals and nations! Go through the university, clean your nails, use the services of a tailor and a hairdresser, go abroad, and the most civilized person is ready. And for the peoples: more railways, academies, factories, dreadnoughts, fortresses, newspapers, books, parties, parliaments - and the most civilized people are ready. This is why people seize on civilization, and not on enlightenment - both individuals and nations. The former is easy, requires no effort, and evokes approval; the second, on the contrary, requires strenuous effort and not only does not evoke approval, but is always despised, hated by the majority, because it exposes the lies of civilization. 17

They compare me to Rousseau. I owe a lot to Rousseau and love him, but there is a big difference. The difference is that Rousseau denies all civilization, while I deny false Christian civilization. What is called civilization is the growth of mankind. Growth is necessary, you can't talk about it, whether it's good or bad. It is, it has life in it. Like the growth of a tree. But the bough, or the forces of life, growing into the bough, are wrong, harmful, if they absorb all the force of growth. This is with our pseudo-civilization. 18

Psychiatrists know that when a person begins to talk a lot, to talk without ceasing, about everything in the world, without thinking about anything and only in a hurry to say as many words as possible in the shortest possible time, they know that this is a bad and sure sign of an incipient or already developed mental illness. . When, at the same time, the patient is fully convinced that he knows everything better than anyone, that he can and should teach everyone his wisdom, then the signs of mental illness are already beyond doubt. Our so-called civilized world is in this dangerous and miserable position. And I think - already very close to the same destruction that the previous civilizations were subjected to. 19

External movement is empty, only by internal work is a person freed. Belief in progress, that someday it will be good and until then we can unreasonably arrange life for ourselves and others, is a superstition. 20

* Reading the works of N.K. Roerich, we are accustomed to understanding Culture as "reverence for the light", as a constructive, inviting moral force. In the quotes cited by Leo Tolstoy here and below the word "culture", as we can see, is used in the meaning of "civilization".

** Oh, how I'm mad with boredom! (French)

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828-1910). Artist I. E. Repin. 1887

The famous Russian theater director and creator of the acting system, Konstantin Stanislavsky, wrote in his book “My Life in Art” that in the difficult years of the first revolutions, when despair seized people, many remembered that at the same time Leo Tolstoy lived with them. And it became easier on the soul. He was the conscience of mankind. At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, Tolstoy became the spokesman for the thoughts and hopes of millions of people. He was a moral support for many. It was read and listened to not only by Russia, but also by Europe, America and Asia.

True, at the same time, many contemporaries and subsequent researchers of Leo Tolstoy's work noted that, outside of his works of art, he was largely contradictory. His greatness as a thinker was manifested in the creation of wide canvases devoted to the moral state of society, in the search for a way out of the impasse. But he was petty picky, moralizing in search of the meaning of the life of an individual. And the older he got, the more actively he criticized the vices of society, he was looking for his own special moral path.

The Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun noted this feature of Tolstoy's character. According to him, in his youth, Tolstoy allowed many excesses - he played cards, dragged after young ladies, drank wine, behaved like a typical bourgeois, and in adulthood he suddenly changed, became a devout righteous man and stigmatized himself and the whole society for vulgar and immoral acts . It was no coincidence that he also had a conflict with his own family, whose members could not understand his split, his dissatisfaction and

Leo Tolstoy was a hereditary aristocrat. Mother - Princess Volkonskaya, one paternal grandmother - Princess Gorchakova, the second - Princess Trubetskaya. In his Yasnaya Polyana estate, portraits of his relatives, well-born titled persons, hung. In addition to the title of count, he inherited a devastated economy from his parents, relatives took over his upbringing, home teachers, including a German and a Frenchman, studied with him. Then he studied at Kazan University. At first he studied oriental languages, then legal sciences. Neither one nor the other satisfied him, and he left the 3rd year.

At the age of 23, Leo lost a lot in cards and had to repay the debt, but he did not ask anyone for money, but went as an officer to the Caucasus to earn money and gain impressions. He liked it there - exotic nature, mountains, hunting in local forests, participation in battles against the highlanders. It was there that he took up the pen for the first time. But he began to write not about his impressions, but about his childhood.

Tolstoy sent the manuscript, which was called "Childhood", to the journal "Domestic Notes", where in 1852 it was published, praising the young author. Encouraged by good luck, he wrote the stories "The Morning of the Landowner", "The Case", the story "Boyhood", "Sevastopol Stories". A new talent has entered Russian literature, powerful in reflecting reality, in creating types, in reflecting the inner world of heroes.

Tolstoy arrived in Petersburg in 1855. Count, the hero of Sevastopol, he was already a famous writer, he had money that he earned by literary work. He was received in the best houses, the editors of Otechestvennye Zapiski were also waiting to meet him. But he was disappointed with secular life, and among the writers he did not find a person close to him in spirit. He was tired of the dreary life in wet St. Petersburg, and he went to his place in Yasnaya Polyana. And in 1857 he went abroad to disperse and look at another life.

Tolstoy visited France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, was interested in the life of local peasants, the system of public education. But Europe did not suit him. He saw idle rich and well-fed people, he saw the poverty of the poor. The flagrant injustice wounded him in the very heart, an unspoken protest arose in his soul. Six months later he returned to Yasnaya Polyana and opened a school for peasant children. After his second trip abroad, he secured the opening of more than 20 schools in the surrounding villages.

Tolstoy published the pedagogical journal Yasnaya Polyana, wrote books for children, taught them himself. But for complete well-being, he lacked a close person who would share with him all the joys and hardships. At 34, he finally married 18-year-old Sophia Bers and became happy. He felt like a zealous owner, bought land, experimented on it, and in his spare time wrote the epoch-making novel War and Peace, which began to be published in Russkiy Vestnik. Later, criticism abroad recognized this work as the greatest, which became a significant phenomenon in the new European literature.

Following Tolstoy wrote the novel "Anna Karenina", dedicated to the tragic love of the woman of light Anna and the fate of the nobleman Konstantin Levin. Using the example of his heroine, he tried to answer the question: who is a woman - a person who requires respect, or just a keeper of the family hearth? After these two novels, he felt some kind of breakdown in himself. He wrote about the moral essence of other people and began to peer into his own soul.

His views on life changed, he began to admit many sins in himself and taught others, spoke about non-resistance to evil with violence - they hit you on one cheek, turn the other. This is the only way to change the world for the better. Many people were under his influence, they were called "Tolstoyans *", they did not resist evil, they wished good to their neighbor. Among them were famous writers Maxim Gorky, Ivan Bunin.

In the period of the 1880s, Tolstoy began to create short stories: The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Kholstomer, Kreutzer Sonata, Father Sergius. In them, as an experienced psychologist, he showed the inner world of a simple person, a willingness to submit to fate. Along with these works, he worked on a large novel about the fate of a sinful woman and the attitude of those around her.

Resurrection ”was published in 1899 and struck the reading public with a sharp topic and authorial subtext. The novel was recognized as a classic, it was immediately translated into the main European languages. The success was complete. In this novel, Tolstoy for the first time with such frankness showed the ugliness of the state system, the abomination and complete indifference of those in power to the pressing problems of people. In it, he criticized the Russian Orthodox Church, which did nothing to rectify the situation, did nothing to facilitate the existence of fallen and miserable people. A violent conflict broke out. The Russian Orthodox Church saw blasphemy in this harsh criticism. Tolstoy's views were recognized as extremely erroneous, his position was anti-Christian, he was anathematized and excommunicated.

But Tolstoy did not repent. He remained true to his ideals, his church. However, his rebellious nature rebelled against the abominations of not only the surrounding reality, but also the aristocratic way of life of his own family. He was weary of his well-being, the position of a wealthy landowner. He wanted to give up everything, go to the righteous, in order to purify his soul in a new environment. And left. His secret departure from the family was tragic. On the way, he caught a cold and contracted pneumonia. He could not recover from this illness.

-) Money is not only a blessing, but also a huge misfortune for humanity.
-) Competition occurs there and then, where and when there is a deficit in something.
-) Trade was born when the exchange took the form of money.
-) The economy arises only when people need to reasonably distribute rare goods, and the market is invented as the most rational and efficient method to obtain such goods.
-) Simple commodity production existed both in the era of the ancient Egyptian pharaohs and in the era of Soviet leaders

Urgently! Help!) At least answer something)

Read an excerpt from the pedagogical writings of the outstanding Russian teacher P.F. Kapterev.

About a truly educated person:

This is a person who owns not only different
third-party knowledge, but also the ability to manage it, which
who is not only knowledgeable, but also quick-witted, who has
king in the head, unity in thoughts; who can not only
to think, act, but also work physically, and enjoy
indulge in the beauty of nature and art.

This is the kind of person who feels alive and
an active member of the modern cultural society,
accepts the close connection of his personality with humanity, with
his native people, with all the former workers on
the field of culture, which, to the best of its ability, moves the human
culture forward.

This is the kind of person who feels open in
himself all his abilities and properties and does not suffer from internal
early disharmony of their aspirations.

This is a physically developed person, with a healthy organ
body, with a keen interest in physical exercise,
sensitive also to the pleasures of the body. Answer the questions: 1) What does it mean to be able to manage your knowledge? 2) What does it mean to be a “living and active member of a modern cultural society”, to the best of our ability to move human culture forward? 3) Why is it necessary to develop all your abilities? 4) Open the connection of health, physical development with human education.

From the work of a modern Russian scientist, academician I. N. Moiseev (reflections on the place of Russia in civilized development).

Today Russia is a bridge between two oceans, two centers of economic power. By the will of fate, we saddled the path "from the British to the Japanese", as in the old days the path "from the Varangians to the Greeks." We have received a bridge between two civilizations, and we have the opportunity to draw on the best that is on both banks - if we have enough intelligence, as our ancestors did, who took a book from the Byzantines, and a sword from the Varangians. This is a circumstance given to us by nature and history; it can become one of the most important sources of our prosperity and stabilization. And our niche in the world society. The fact is that this bridge is needed not only by us - everyone needs it. Not only Russia, but also the European Peninsula, and the developing Pacific region, and even America. The whole planet needs this bridge! This is where our niche, inscribed by fate, lies - the north of the Eurasian supercontinent. This niche does not divide, but binds peoples, does not oppose or threaten anyone. Our great national goal is not to assert our ambitions in Europe, not to implement Eurasian doctrines and utopias in the same spirit as the Eurasianists preached in the 1920s, but to turn the north of the Eurasian supercontinent, this bridge between the oceans and different civilizations, into a heavy-duty, reliable working structure.
Questions and tasks for the document
1. Determine how the author of the text relates to globalization.
2. How do you understand the words of N. N. Moiseev about “the opportunity to draw the best that is on both banks”?
3. Why do you think the scientist considers Russia's position "between ... two centers of economic power" as one of the sources of its prosperity?

what we see and perceive comes to us colored by expectations and predispositions. They are based on our culture: we see the world through glasses colored by our culture. The vast majority of people use these glasses without even knowing they exist. The predispositions evoked by invisible glasses are all the more powerful because the "cultural glasses" remain invisible. What people do directly depends on what they believe in, and their beliefs, in turn, depend on the culturally colored vision of themselves and the world around them ... In the course of historical development, great cultures of mankind arose and created their own vision of the world. At the dawn of history, the world was seen as atavistic: not only people, but also animals and plants had souls - everything in nature was alive. A spring in the savanna inspired awe of the spirits and forces of nature, as well as the souls of the dead; a deer that found itself in the middle of a human settlement was identified with the spirit of an ancestor who came to visit relatives; thunder was considered a sign given by the ancestor - the Mother or the almighty Father. Throughout recorded history, traditional cultures have been overwhelmed with sensory tales of invisible beings arranged in symbolic hierarchies. classical cultures Ancient Greece replaced the world view based on myth with concepts based on reasoning, although the latter were rarely tested by experiment and observation. Since biblical times in the West and for several millennia in the East, the views of people have been dominated by the prescriptions and images of religion (or other accepted belief systems). This influence was greatly weakened in the 16th and 17th centuries, when experimental science arose in Europe. Over the past three centuries, the scientific and technological culture has come to dominate the mythological and religious views of the Middle Ages, although it has not completely replaced them. In the XX century. the science and technology culture of the West has spread across the globe. Non-Western cultures are now faced with the dilemma of whether to open up to Western culture, or to shut themselves up and continue to follow traditional ways while maintaining their traditional way of life, occupations and cults. (E. Laszlo)

Culture is a powerful factor in human activity: it is present in everything we see and feel. "Immaculate perception" does not exist - everything

what we see and perceive comes to us colored by expectations and predispositions. They are based on our culture: we see the world through glasses colored by our culture. The vast majority of people use these glasses without even knowing they exist. The predispositions evoked by invisible glasses are all the more powerful because the "cultural glasses" remain invisible. What people do directly depends on what they believe in, and their beliefs, in turn, depend on the culturally colored vision of themselves and the world around them ... In the course of historical development, great cultures of mankind arose and created their own vision of the world. At the dawn of history, the world was seen as atavistic: not only people, but also animals and plants had souls - everything in nature was alive. A spring in the savanna inspired awe of the spirits and forces of nature, as well as the souls of the dead; a deer that found itself in the middle of a human settlement was identified with the spirit of an ancestor who came to visit relatives; thunder was considered a sign given by the ancestor - the Mother or the almighty Father. Throughout recorded history, traditional cultures have been overwhelmed with sensory tales of invisible beings arranged in symbolic hierarchies. The classical cultures of Ancient Greece replaced the myth-based view of the world with concepts based on reasoning, although the latter were rarely tested through experiment and observation. Since biblical times in the West and for several millennia in the East, the views of people have been dominated by the prescriptions and images of religion (or other accepted belief systems). This influence was greatly weakened in the 16th and 17th centuries, when experimental science arose in Europe. Over the past three centuries, the scientific and technological culture has come to dominate the mythological and religious views of the Middle Ages, although it has not completely replaced them. In the XX century. the science and technology culture of the West has spread across the globe. Non-Western cultures are now faced with the dilemma of whether to open up to Western culture, or to shut themselves up and continue to follow traditional ways while maintaining their traditional way of life, occupations and cults. (E. Laszlo) С1. What does the author call "cultural points"? How do they affect people's lives? C2. Name the stages in the development of culture that the author singled out, and select a brief description of each of them in the text. C3. Based on the text, knowledge of the course and personal social experience, give three explanations for the author's thought: "Culture is present in everything we see and feel." C4. The author mentioned the dilemma facing contemporary non-Western cultures. List one positive and one negative consequence of each choice.

Question: Please help social science Grade 8 workshop 1. Find the definition of the word?? PERSONALITY and SOCIETY in two or three dictionaries. Compare them. If there are differences in the definition of the same word, try to explain them. 2. Read the figurative definitions of society given by thinkers of different times and peoples: “Society is nothing but the result of a mechanical balance of brute forces”, “Society is a set of stones that would collapse if one did not support the other”, “Society - this is the yoke of the scales, which cannot raise some without lowering others. Which of these definitions is closest to the characterization of society outlined in this chapter? Justify your choice. 3.Make as complete a list of various human qualities as possible (a table of two columns: Positive qualities Negative qualities) Discuss it in class 4 L.N. Tolstoy wrote: "In an immoral society, all inventions that increase man's power over nature are not only not good, but an undeniable and obvious evil." How do you understand the words "immoral society"? Considering that the above thought was expressed more than 100 years ago, has it been confirmed in the development of society over the past century? Justify your answer with specific examples. 5.Uncover the meaning of the Arabic proverb "People are more like their time than their fathers" Think about how society is different in our time from what it was at the time when your parents finished school.

Please help social science Grade 8 workshop 1. Find the definition of the word?? PERSONALITY and SOCIETY in two or three dictionaries. Compare them. If there are differences in the definition of the same word, try to explain them. 2. Read the figurative definitions of society given by thinkers of different times and peoples: “Society is nothing but the result of a mechanical balance of brute forces”, “Society is a set of stones that would collapse if one did not support the other”, “Society - this is the yoke of the scales, which cannot raise some without lowering others. Which of these definitions is closest to the characterization of society outlined in this chapter? Justify your choice. 3.Make as complete a list of various human qualities as possible (a table of two columns: Positive qualities Negative qualities) Discuss it in class 4 L.N. Tolstoy wrote: "In an immoral society, all inventions that increase man's power over nature are not only not good, but an undeniable and obvious evil." How do you understand the words "immoral society"? Considering that the above thought was expressed more than 100 years ago, has it been confirmed in the development of society over the past century? Justify your answer with specific examples. 5.Uncover the meaning of the Arabic proverb "People are more like their time than their fathers" Think about how society is different in our time from what it was at the time when your parents finished school.

Answers:

A person is a concrete living person with consciousness and self-consciousness. Society of association of people with common interests, values and goals.

TOLSTOY Leo

To be kind and to lead a good life means to give to others more than you take from them. - Lev Tolstoy

To be yourself, to believe and think in your own way - is it so difficult, is it impossible under any circumstances and conditions? .. - Lev Tolstoy

It is impossible to put a substance alien to it into a living organism without this organism suffering from efforts to free itself from the alien substance invested in it and sometimes perish in these efforts. - Lev Tolstoy

There is only one undoubted happiness in a person's life - to live for others! - Lev Tolstoy

In true faith, it is not important to talk well about God, about the soul, about what was and what will be, but one thing is important: to know firmly what should and should not be done in this life. - Lev Tolstoy

In a true work of art there are no limits to aesthetic enjoyment. Whatever a trifle, whatever a line, then a source of pleasure. - Lev Tolstoy

There is a side to the dream that is better than reality; in fact, there is a side that is better than dreams. Complete happiness would be a combination of both. - Lev Tolstoy

In a world where people run like trained animals and are incapable of any other thought than to outsmart each other for the sake of mammon, in such a world they may consider me an eccentric, but I still feel in myself a divine thought about the world which is so beautifully expressed in the Sermon on the Mount. It is my deepest conviction that war is only a trade on a large scale, a trade of ambitious and powerful people in the happiness of peoples. - Lev Tolstoy

At my age, you have to hurry to do what you have planned. There is no time to wait. I'm going to death. - Lev Tolstoy

When we are young, we think that there is no end to our memory, our perceptual abilities. By old age, you feel that memory has limits. You can fill your head so much that you can no longer hold it: there is no room, it falls out. Only this is perhaps for the best. How much rubbish and rubbish we fill in the head. Thank God that at least in old age the head is freed. - Lev Tolstoy

In science, mediocrity is still possible, but in art and literature, whoever does not reach the top falls into the abyss. - Lev Tolstoy

In our time, the life of the world goes on its own course, completely independent of the teachings of the church. This teaching has remained so far behind that the people of the world no longer hear the voices of the teachers of the church. Yes, and there is nothing to listen to, because the church only gives explanations of the structure of life from which the world has already grown and which either no longer exists at all, or which is irresistibly destroyed. - Lev Tolstoy

In our time, it cannot but be clear to all thinking people that the life of people - not only Russian people, but all the peoples of the Christian world, with their ever-increasing need of the poor and the luxury of the rich, with their struggle of all against all, revolutionaries against governments, governments against revolutionaries, enslaved peoples against enslavers, the struggle of states among themselves, the west against the east, with their ever-growing and absorbing the strength of the people's weapons, their refinement and depravity - that such a life cannot continue, that the life of Christian peoples, if it does not change, it will inevitably become more and more miserable. - Lev Tolstoy

In our time, only a person who is completely ignorant or completely indifferent to the questions of life, sanctified by religion, can remain in the church faith. - Lev Tolstoy

In the realm of goodness there are no boundaries for man. He is free as a bird! What prevents him from being kind? - Lev Tolstoy

In the field of sciences, research is considered necessary, verification of what is being studied, and although the subjects of pseudoscience are insignificant in themselves, i.e. everything that concerns the serious moral questions of life is excluded from it; nothing absurd, directly contrary to common sense, is allowed in it. - Lev Tolstoy

The vast majority of letters and telegrams say essentially the same thing. They express sympathy for me because I contributed to the destruction of false religious understanding and gave something that is beneficial to people in a moral sense, and this alone makes me happy in all this - precisely the fact that public opinion has been established in this respect. How sincere it is is another matter, but when public opinion is established, the majority directly sticks to what everyone says. And this, I must say, is extremely pleasing to me. Of course, the most joyful letters are from the people, workers. - Lev Tolstoy

One smile consists of what is called the beauty of the face: if a smile adds charm to the face, then the face is beautiful; if she does not change it, then it is usual; if she spoils it, then it is bad. - Lev Tolstoy

You can't say stupid things in a mouthpiece. - Lev Tolstoy

In the old days they kept slaves and did not feel the horror of this. When you go around the peasants now and see how they live and what they eat, you become ashamed that you have all this ... They have bread with green onions for breakfast. For an afternoon snack - bread with onions. And in the evening - bread with onions. There will be a time when the rich will be just as ashamed and impossible to eat what they eat and live as they live, knowing about this bread and onions, how ashamed we are now for our grandfathers who kept slaves ... - Lev Tolstoy

In clever criticism of art, everything is true, but not the whole truth. - Lev Tolstoy

There is one law in private and public life: if you want to improve your life, be ready to give it away. - Lev Tolstoy

What is the purpose of life? Reproduction of one's own kind. For what? Serve people. And what about those whom we will serve? Serve God? Can't He do what He needs without us? If He commands us to serve Himself, it is only for our good. Life cannot have any other purpose than goodness, joy. - Lev Tolstoy

In an immoral society, all inventions that increase the power of man over nature are not only not good, but an undeniable and obvious evil. - Lev Tolstoy

In the matter of cunning, a stupid person leads smarter ones. - Lev Tolstoy

In money matters, the main interest of life (if not the main, then the most constant) and in them the character of a person is best expressed. - Lev Tolstoy

God lives in every good person. - Lev Tolstoy

In a moment of indecision, act quickly and try to take the first step, even if it is wrong. - Lev Tolstoy

In the periodic forgiveness of sins at confession, I see a harmful deception that only encourages immorality and destroys the fear of sinning. - Lev Tolstoy

In the presence of a Jew, I always feel worse. - Lev Tolstoy

In the very devotion to another being, in the renunciation of oneself in the name of the good of another being, there is a special spiritual pleasure. - Lev Tolstoy

In the best, friendly, and simple relationships, flattery or praise is necessary, as grease is necessary for wheels to keep them moving. - Lev Tolstoy

Bringing people together is the main task of art. - Lev Tolstoy

In the old days, when there was no Christian doctrine, for all the teachers of life, starting with Socrates, the first virtue in life was abstinence and it was clear that every virtue must begin with it and pass through it. It was clear that a person who did not control himself, who developed a huge number of lusts in himself and obeyed all of them, could not lead a good life. It was clear that before a person could think not only about generosity, about love, but about disinterestedness, justice, he had to learn to control himself. In our opinion, this is not necessary. We are quite sure that a person who has developed his lusts to the highest degree in which they are developed in our world, a person who cannot live without the satisfaction of hundreds of unnecessary habits that have gained power over him, can lead a completely moral, good life.

In our time and in our world, the desire to limit one's lusts is considered not only not the first, but not even the last, but absolutely unnecessary for leading a good life.

Lev Tolstoy

There are no accidents in fate; man creates rather than meets his destiny. - Lev Tolstoy

While we are the living graves of slaughtered animals, how can we hope for any improvement in the conditions of life on earth? - Lev Tolstoy

It has always been and will always be important only what is needed for the good of not one person, but all people. - Lev Tolstoy

It is not the quantity of knowledge that matters, but the quality of it. Nobody can know everything. - Lev Tolstoy

It is not the quantity of knowledge that matters, but the quality of it. No one can know everything, and it is shameful and harmful to pretend that you know what you do not know. - Lev Tolstoy

... We are all carried away into the distance on the same planet - we are the crew of one ship. Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Without the belief that nature is subject to laws, there can be no science. Norbert Wiener

Good nature has taken care of everything so that everywhere you find something to learn. Leonardo da Vinci

Closest to the Divine in this world is nature. Astolf de Custine

The wind is the breath of nature. Kozma Prutkov

In an immoral society, all inventions that increase the power of man over nature are not only not good, but an undeniable and obvious evil. Lev Tolstoy

In undeveloped countries, it is deadly to drink water; in developed countries, it is deadly to breathe air. Jonathan Rayban

In nature, everything is connected with each other, and there is nothing accidental in it. And if a random phenomenon comes out, look for a human hand in it. Mikhail Prishvin

In nature, there are both grains and dust. William Shakespeare

In nature, nothing is wasted except nature itself. Andrey Kryzhanovsky

Time destroys false opinions, and the judgments of nature confirm. Mark Cicero

Nature has its own poetry in its time. John Keats

All the best in nature belongs to everyone together. Petronius

All living things are afraid of torment, all living things are afraid of death; know yourself not only in man, but in every living being, do not kill and do not cause suffering and death. Buddhist wisdom

In all areas of nature ... a certain regularity dominates, independent of the existence of thinking humanity. Max Planck

In his tools man has power over external nature, while for his purposes he is rather subordinate to it. Georg Hegel

The richest countries of old were those whose nature was most abundant; the richest countries today are those in which man is most active. Henry Buckle

Every thing in nature is either a cause towards you or an effect from us. Marsilio Ficino

As long as people do not listen to the sound mind of nature, they will be forced to obey either dictators or the opinion of the people. Wilhelm Schwebel

Stupid is he who is not satisfied with what happens according to the laws of nature. Epictetus

They say one swallow does not make spring; but is it really because one swallow does not make spring, that swallow that already feels spring does not fly, but wait. So it is necessary to wait then for every bud and grass, and there will be no spring. Lev Tolstoy

Grandiose things are done by grandiose means. Nature alone does great things for free. Alexander Ivanovich Herzen

Even in his most beautiful dreams, man cannot imagine anything more beautiful than nature. Alphonse de Lamartine

Even the smallest pleasure bestowed on us by nature is a mystery beyond the comprehension of the mind. Luc de Vauvenargues

The ideal of human nature lies in orthobiosis, i.e. in the development of man with the aim of achieving a long, active and cheerful old age, leading in the final period to the development of a feeling of saturation with life. Ilya Mechnikov

The search for goals in nature has its source in ignorance. Benedict Spinoza

He who does not love nature does not love man either, that is a bad citizen. Fedor Dostoevsky

Whoever looks at nature superficially is easily lost in the boundless "All," but whoever listens more deeply to its miracles is constantly led to God, the Lord of the world. Carl de Geer

Our callousness, our selfishness induces us to look with envy at nature, but she herself will envy us when we recover from ailments. Ralph Emerson

There is nothing more inventive than nature. Mark Cicero

But why change the processes of nature? There may be a deeper philosophy than we have ever dreamed of, a philosophy that reveals the secrets of nature, but does not change its course by penetrating into it. Edward Bulwer-Lytton

One of the most difficult tasks of our time is the problem of slowing down the process of destruction of wildlife ... Archie Carr

The main law of nature is the preservation of mankind. John Locke

Let us thank the wise nature for making the necessary easy and the heavy unnecessary. Epicurus

As long as people do not know the laws of nature, they blindly obey them, and once they know them, then the forces of nature obey people. Georgy Plekhanov

Nature will always take its toll. William Shakespeare

Nature is the house in which man lives. Dmitry Likhachev

Nature is impassive to man; she is neither an enemy nor a friend to him; it is now a convenient, now an inconvenient field for his activity. Nikolay Chernyshevsky

Nature is an eternal example of art; and the greatest and noblest thing in nature is man. Vissarion Belinsky

Nature has implanted in every good heart a noble feeling, by virtue of which it cannot be happy itself, but must seek its happiness in others. Johann Goethe

Nature has invested in man some innate instincts, such as: the feeling of hunger, sexual feeling, etc., and one of the strongest feelings of this order is the feeling of ownership. Pyotr Stolypin

Nature is always stronger than principles. David Hume

Nature is one, and there is nothing equal to her: the mother and daughter of herself, she is the Deity of the gods. Consider only her, Nature, and leave the rest to the common people. Pythagoras

Nature is, in a certain sense, the gospel, loudly proclaiming the creative power, wisdom, and all the greatness of God. And not only the heavens, but also the bowels of the earth preach the glory of God. Mikhail Lomonosov

Nature is the cause of everything, it exists by itself; it will exist and act forever... Paul Holbach

Nature, which endowed every animal with the means of subsistence, gave astronomy as an assistant and ally astrology. Johannes Kepler

Nature scoffs at the decisions and decrees of princes, emperors and monarchs, and at their request she would not change her laws one iota. Galileo Galilei

Nature does not make people, people make themselves. Merab Mamardashvili

Nature does not know a stop in its movement and executes any inactivity. Johann Goethe

Nature does not presuppose any goals for itself ... All final causes are only human inventions. Benedict Spinoza

Nature does not recognize jokes, she is always truthful, always serious, always strict; she is always right; errors and errors come from people. Johann Goethe

Patience is most reminiscent of the method by which nature creates its creations. Honore de Balzac

What is contrary to nature never leads to good. Friedrich Schiller

A person has quite enough objective reasons to strive for the conservation of wildlife. But in the end, only his love can save nature. Jean Dorst

Good taste suggested to good society that contact with nature is the very last word of science, reason, and common sense. Fedor Dostoevsky

Man does not become the master of nature until he has become the master of himself. Georg Hegel

Mankind - without ennobling it with animals and plants - will perish, become impoverished, fall into the rage of despair, like a lonely man in solitude. Andrey Platonov

The more one goes into the workings of nature, the more visible becomes the simplicity of the laws that she follows in her doings. Alexander Radishchev

Name any three features that unite industrial and post-industrial societies.

Answer:

	score
The following similarities can be named: high level of development of industrial production; intensive development of engineering and technology; introduction of scientific achievements into the production sphere; the value of the personal qualities of a person, his rights and freedoms. Other similarities can be named.
Named three similarities in the absence of incorrect positions
Named two similarities in the absence of incorrect positions, OR named three similarities in the presence of erroneous positions
Named one similarity OR along with one or two correct features, an incorrect position(s) is given, OR the answer is wrong
Maximum score

The American scientist F. Fukuyama in his work "The End of History" (1992) put forward the thesis that the history of mankind ended in the triumph of liberal democracy and market economy on a planetary scale: "Liberalism has no viable alternatives left." Express your attitude to this thesis and justify it with three arguments based on the facts of social life and knowledge of the social science course.

Answer:

(Other formulations of the answer are allowed that do not distort its meaning)	score
The correct answer must contain the following elements: graduate position, for example, disagreement with the thesis of F. Fukuyama; three arguments, For example: in the modern world, both societies with a market economy and societies with traditional and mixed economic systems coexist; the applicability of the model of liberal democracy in a particular country is limited, for example, by the mentality of the nation; in the modern world, there are both societies based on the values of liberal democracy and authoritarian, totalitarian societies. Other arguments may be given. Another position of the graduate can be expressed and justified.
The position of the graduate is formulated, three arguments are given
OR the position of the graduate is not formulated, but is clear from the context, three arguments are given
The position of the graduate is formulated, two arguments are given, OR the position of the graduate is not formulated, but is clear from the context, two arguments are given,
The position of the graduate is formulated, but there are no arguments, OR the position of the graduate is not formulated, one argument is given, OR the answer is wrong
Maximum score

A comment

This substantive section tests knowledge of the most general concepts and problems of the social science course: society, social relations, the systemic nature of society, the problems of social progress, the current state and global problems of society. It is a significant degree of theoretical generalization, which requires a high level of intellectual and communicative skills, that makes this material particularly difficult.

Graduates experience the greatest difficulties in identifying signs of a systematic society and manifestations of the dynamism of social development. The identified problems can be associated with the nature of the educational material: the assimilation of philosophical categories of a high level of generalization requires serious time costs and causes serious difficulties, especially in a group of poorly trained students. It also seems possible to influence the established practice of teaching, which is characterized by weak integrative links, which allow using the material of other subjects to show the phenomenon of systemicity and dynamism as one of the characteristics of systemic objects.

Let's look at some of the most problematic issues.

Tasks for the content unit "Society as a dynamic system", with all their formal diversity, essentially boil down to three questions: What is the difference between broad and narrow definitions of society? What are the features of a systematic society? What signs indicate the dynamic nature of society? It is worthwhile to focus on these issues.

The experience of the Unified State Examination shows that the examinees experience the greatest difficulties when completing tasks for highlighting the characteristics of society as a dynamic system. Working on this issue, it is important to distinguish as clearly as possible the systemic features and signs of the dynamism of society: the presence and interconnection of structured elements characterize society as a system (and are inherent in any, including a static system), and the ability to change, self-development is an indicator of its dynamic nature .

A certain difficulty is the understanding of the following relationship: SOCIETY + NATURE = MATERIAL WORLD. Usually, “nature” is understood as the natural habitat of a person and society, which has qualitative specifics in comparison with society. Society, in the process of development, became isolated from nature, but did not lose touch with it, and together they constitute the material, i.e. real world.

The next "problematic" element of the content is "Interrelationship of the economic, social, political and spiritual spheres of society." The success of completing tasks largely depends on the ability to identify the sphere of public life by its manifestations. It should be noted that graduates, confidently completing the usual tasks for determining the sphere of public life by manifestation with one choice of answers out of four, find it difficult to analyze a number of manifestations and choose several of them related to a particular subsystem of society. Difficulties are also caused by tasks focused on identifying the relationship of subsystems of society, for example:

The public organization publishes a cultural and educational newspaper at its own expense, in which it criticizes the government's policy towards socially vulnerable groups of the population. What areas of public life are directly affected by this activity?

The algorithm for completing the task is simple - a specific situation (no matter how many spheres of society it has to be correlated with) is “decomposed” into components, it is determined which sphere each of them belongs to, the resulting list of interacting spheres correlates with the proposed one.

The next difficult element of the content is "Variety of ways and forms of social development." Approximately 60% of graduates cope with even the simplest tasks on this topic, and in the group of subjects who received a satisfactory mark (3) at the end of the USE, no more than 45% of the exam participants can identify the characteristic features (or manifestations) of a certain type of society.

In particular, the task that involved the exclusion of the superfluous component of the list turned out to be problematic: only 50% of the subjects were able to detect a characteristic that did not correspond to the characteristics of a certain type of society. It can be assumed that such results are explained, firstly, by the lack of time devoted to the study of this topic, and secondly, by the fragmentation of the material between the courses of history and social science, the program of grades 10 and 11, the lack of proper interdisciplinary integration in the study of this issue, and also weak attention to this material in the course of the basic school.

To successfully complete tasks on the topic under consideration, it is necessary to clearly understand the characteristics of traditional, industrial and post-industrial society, learn to identify their manifestations, compare different types of societies, identifying similarities and differences.

As the practice of conducting the Unified State Examination has shown, certain difficulties for graduates are presented by the topic “Global problems of our time”, which seems to be comprehensively considered in various school courses. When working out this material, it is advisable to clearly define the essence of the concept of "global problems": they are characterized by the fact that they manifest themselves on a global scale; jeopardize the survival of humanity as a biological species; their sharpness can be removed by the efforts of all mankind. Further, one can fix the most important of the global problems (environmental crisis, the problem of preventing a world war, the problem of the "North" and "South", demographic, etc.), identify and specify their signs using examples of public life. In addition, it is necessary to clearly understand the essence, directions and main manifestations of the globalization process, to be able to analyze the positive and negative consequences of this process.

Tasks for the section "Human"

Both human activity and animal behavior are characterized by

Answer: 2

What is characteristic of man in contrast to the animal?

instincts

needs

consciousness

Answer: 4

The statement that a person is a product and subject of socio-historical activity is a characteristic of his

Answer: 1

Both man and animal are capable of

Answer: 1

Man is a unity of three components: biological, psychological and social. The social component includes

Answer: 1

Man is a unity of three components: biological, psychological and social. biologically determined

Answer: 1

Determination of the possible consequences of the reform of preferential payments (monetization of benefits) is an activity

Answer: 4

The farmer works the land with the help of special equipment. The subject of this activity is

Leo Tolstoy about civilization
14.11.2012

A selection of Maxim Orlov,
Gorval village, Gomel region (Belarus).

Nature is better than man. There is no bifurcation in it, it is always consistent. She should be loved everywhere, for she is beautiful everywhere and works everywhere and always. (...)

We destroy millions of flowers in order to build palaces, theaters with electric lighting, and one color of burdock is more precious than thousands of palaces. 5

Civilized and wild are equal. Mankind advances only in love, and there is no and cannot be progress from technical improvement. 13

Do not envy and imitate, but regret. 14

We often look at the ancients as if they were children. And we are children in front of the ancients, in front of their deep, serious, uncluttered understanding of life. 16

** Oh, how I'm mad with boredom! (French)

Question 1. Find the definitions of the words "personality" and "society" in two or three dictionaries. Compare them. If there are differences in the definition of the same word, try to explain them.

Personality is a person as a social and natural being, endowed with consciousness, speech, and creative possibilities.

Personality is a person as a subject of social relations and conscious activity.

Society - A set of people united by the method of production of material goods at a certain stage of historical development, certain production relations.

Society - A circle of people united by a common position, origin, interests, etc.

"Society is a vault of stones that would collapse if one did not support the other." Because society in a broad sense is a form of association of people with common interests, values and goals.

Question 4. Make as complete a list of various human qualities as possible (a table of two columns: "Positive qualities", "Negative qualities"). Discuss it in class.

POSITIVE:

modest

frank

sincere

confident

decisive

purposeful

assembled

bold, brave

balanced

calm, cool

quick-witted

generous, generous

resourceful, resourceful, resourceful

prudent, prudent

healthy, sane

accommodating, accommodating

hardworking

meek, soft

caring, attentive to others

sympathetic

polite

selfless

merciful, compassionate

witty

cheerful, cheerful

serious

NEGATIVE:

self-satisfied, conceited

dishonest

deceitful, mean

cunning, cunning

insincere

unconfident,

indecisive

scattered

cowardly, cowardly

hot-tempered

unbalanced

vicious, cruel

vindictive

unimaginative, stupid

imprudent, reckless

cruel

selfish

indifferent, indifferent

rude, impolite

greedy

pitiless, ruthless

gloomy, gloomy, gloomy

Question 5. LN Tolstoy wrote: "In an immoral society, all inventions that increase man's power over nature are not only not good, but an undeniable and obvious evil."

Material for the preparation of an integrated lesson and an elective “history + literature”
on the topic “Attitude of the Russian society to the Stolypin reforms. Civil motives in the works of Leo Tolstoy”. 9, 11 grades

Views of L.N. Tolstoy on the agrarian modernization of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century.

The life and work of Leo Tolstoy is devoted to a huge number of the most diverse works - both in our country and abroad. These works reflected many important issues related to the unique artistic gift of the great writer and thinker of Russia, whose ideas still attract the close attention of creative, searching, “passionate” people, awaken people's conscience...

Great selfless work on the study of Tolstoy's heritage and familiarization of our contemporaries with it is carried out by employees of the State Memorial and Natural Reserve “Museum-estate of L.N. Tolstoy “Yasnaya Polyana””
(director - V.I. Tolstoy), the State Museum of L.N. Tolstoy (Moscow), a number of institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences (primarily the Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences).

On September 2, 1996, at the Tula State Pedagogical University, named after the outstanding writer and philosopher, the Department of the Spiritual Heritage of Leo Tolstoy was established, since 1997 it has been the organizer of the International Tolstoy Readings. A number of educational institutions of the country are working on the experiment "School of Leo Tolstoy".

At the same time, many issues related to the ideological heritage of Leo Tolstoy and its influence on society are still insufficiently studied, and sometimes cause heated discussions. Let us consider only one, but a very important problem, namely: the views of L.N. Tolstoy in the early twentieth century. on the transformation of the Russian countryside, taking into account its real economic and socio-cultural problems in the context of the dramatic process of domestic modernization: it was during these years that the Stolypin agrarian reforms were carried out.

The writer acutely felt the colossal gap between the life of the bulk of the peasantry and the majority of the landowning nobility, which caused him an angry and resolute protest. It is noteworthy that as early as 1865 he noted in his notebook: “The Russian revolution will not be against the tsar and despotism, but against landed property.” On June 8, 1909, L.N. Tolstoy wrote in his diary: “I especially acutely felt the insane immorality of the luxury of those in power and the rich and the poverty and oppression of the poor. I almost physically suffer from the consciousness of participation in this madness and evil. In his book “Suppression of Peasant Unrest” (Moscow, 1906), he resolutely protested against the torture of starving peasants with rods. "Sinfulness the lives of the rich”, based primarily on the unfair solution of the land issue, was considered by the great Russian writer as the key moral tragedy of those years.

At the same time, the methods proposed by him for solving the problem, actively promoted in the press (for example, in the article “How to free the working people?”, 1906), objectively did not at all contribute to the evolutionary solution of the most acute economic and socio-cultural problems of Russian agriculture, since they denied the possibility of joint creative work representatives of all classes. Meanwhile, only by joining efforts is it possible to renew civilization of any nation, and, consequently, to modernize its economic and socio-cultural life. The historical experience of the Stolypin agrarian reforms clearly proved this: despite all the difficulties, Russia at that time achieved noticeable socio-economic successes, and, above all, thanks to the selfless joint work of employees of zemstvos, ministries, as well as members of economic, agricultural and educational societies - t .e. all persons interested in the revival of the country.

What are the reasons for this approach of Leo Tolstoy to modernization? First of all, we note that he quite deliberately denied most of the material and technical achievements of European culture at the beginning of the 20th century, consistently taking an “anti-civilizational” position, idealizing patriarchal moral values and forms of labor (including agricultural labor) and not taking into account the significance of the modernizing processes. Sharply criticizing the Stolypin agrarian reform, he did not understand that, despite all the costs, it was an attempt to eliminate archaic communal traditions that hampered agrarian progress. Defending the inert communal foundations, Tolstoy wrote: “This is the height of frivolity and impudence, with which people allow themselves to toss and turn the people's charters established over the centuries ... After all, this alone is worth something, that all matters are decided by the world - not only me, but the world - and what business! The most important to them."

Unlike Leo Tolstoy, who idealized the peasant community, his son Leo Lvovich Tolstoy, on the contrary, sharply criticized communal traditions. In 1900, in his book “Against the Community,” he noted that “the personality of the Russian peasant is now up against the communal order, as if against a wall, and is looking for and waiting for a way out of it.” In the article “The Inevitable Path” published in the same place, L.L. Tolstoy, convincingly proving the need for change, wrote: “The serf community is the greatest evil of modern Russian life; community is the first cause of our routine, our slow movement, our poverty and darkness; it was not she who made us what we are, but we became what we are, despite the existence of the community ... and only thanks to the infinitely tenacious Russian man. Speaking about attempts to improve the peasant economy with the help of multi-field and grass sowing (which was pointed out by numerous defenders of the community), L.L. Tolstoy rightly noted that these efforts cannot “eliminate the main negative aspects of communal ownership, the striped fields ...”, and at the same time time cannot “inspire the peasant with the spirit of citizenship and personal freedom that he lacks, eliminate the harmful influence of the world ...” What was needed was not “palliative measures” (compromises), but cardinal reforms of agrarian life.

As for Leo Tolstoy, he probably intuitively realized the fallacy of his many years of commitment to the archaic - now no longer noble, but peasant. “Tolstoy’s departure from Yasnaya Polyana,” notes the 7th volume History of world literature(1991) - was one way or another an act of protest against the life of the lord, in which he took part against his own will, and at the same time - an act of doubt in those utopian concepts that he developed and developed over the course of a number of years.

It is noteworthy that even in the upbringing of his own children according to the method of “simplification” (upbringing “in a simple, working life”), which he actively promoted in the press, L.N. Tolstoy did not succeed. “The kids felt the disagreement of their parents and unwittingly took from everyone ... what they liked best,” recalled his youngest daughter Alexandra Tolstaya. - The fact that the father considered education necessary for every person ... we passed on deaf ears, catching only that he was against teaching. ... a lot of money was spent on teachers, educational institutions, but no one wanted to study” ( Tolstaya A. The youngest daughter // New World. 1988. No. 11. S. 192).

In the family. 1897

The general approaches of the writer and philosopher to artistic creativity (including the creation of literary texts) did not differ in consistency either. In a letter to P.A. Boborykin in 1865, he defined his position as follows: “The goals of the artist are incommensurable ... with social goals. The goal of the artist is not to undeniably resolve the issue, but to make you love life in its countless, never exhausted manifestations.

However, towards the end of his life, his approaches changed dramatically. This is clearly evidenced by one of his last entries on art: “As soon as art ceases to be the art of the whole people and becomes the art of a small class of rich people, it ceases to be a necessary and important matter and becomes empty fun.” Thus, universal humanism was actually replaced by a class approach, albeit in a specific “anarchist-Christian” ideological form with Tolstoy’s characteristic moralization, which had a detrimental effect on the artistic quality of his creations. “While Count Leo Tolstoy does not think, he is an artist; and when he begins to think, the reader begins to languish from non-artistic resonance, ”the philosopher I.A. Ilyin, one of the people who most deeply understood the spiritual traditions of Russia, later noted.

It should be noted that such a criterion as democracy was completely unreasonably put forward by L.N. Tolstoy as the central criterion of any creative activity. The origins of this trend were laid down by V. G. Belinsky, to which the authoritative connoisseur of Russian art, Prince S. Shcherbatov, drew attention: “Since the time of Belinsky, who said that “art is a reproduction of reality and nothing more ...”, a withering wind blew and a kind of fad began, carrying a destructive infection, - he noted in his book “The Artist in the Bygone Russia”, published in Paris in 1955. “Nekrasov's tears and populism spoiled the holiday of the 18th century; both fueled a dislike for the aesthetics of life. Aesthetics was seen as the most important obstacle in the way of ethics and public service to the social idea. An idea that also infected our nobility, who lived festively and beautifully in the previous century. Hence all the everyday life and hopeless scum, along with a certain fanaticism and rigorism - scum, enveloping, like fog, an entire era, mired in ugliness and bad taste.

The concept of sin as a key element of human nature was placed at the center of both ethics and the entire system of philosophical views of L.N. Tolstoy. Meanwhile, as European history shows, such an approach (generally not characteristic of the Orthodox tradition) also had negative consequences: for example, it was excessive immersion in a sense of one’s own guilt that turned out for Western European civilization not only with mass psychoses, neuroses and suicides, but also with fundamental cultural shifts, the result of which was the total de-Christianization of the entire Western European culture (for more details, see Delumeau J. Sin and fear. Formation of a sense of guilt in the civilization of the West (XIII-XVIII centuries)./Trans. from French Yekaterinburg, 2003).

Leo Tolstoy's attitude to such a key concept for Russians - in all historical epochs - as patriotism was also inconsistent. On the one hand, according to the testimony of the Hungarian G. Shereni, who visited him in Yasnaya Polyana in 1905, he condemned patriotism, believing that it “serves only rich and powerful self-lovers who, relying on armed force, oppress the poor.” According to the great writer, "Fatherland and the state - this is what belongs to the past dark ages, the new century should bring unity to mankind." But, on the other hand, when addressing topical foreign policy problems, L.N. Tolstoy, as a rule, took a pronounced patriotic position. This, in particular, is evidenced by his statement in a conversation with the same G. Shereni: “The German people will no longer be in sight, but the Slavs will live and, thanks to their mind and spirit, will be recognized by the whole world ...”

An interesting assessment of the creative heritage of Leo Tolstoy was given by Max Weber, whose scientific authority for modern humanists is beyond doubt. In his work “Science as a vocation and a profession” (based on a report read in 1918), he noted that the great writer’s reflections “increasingly centered around the question of whether death has any meaning or does not. Leo Tolstoy's answer is: for a cultured person - no. And precisely because it is not, because the life of an individual, civilized life, included in endless progress, according to its own inner meaning, cannot have an end, completion. For he who is included in the movement of progress is always in the face of further progress. A dying person will not reach the peak - this peak goes to infinity. … On the contrary, a man of culture, included in a civilization that is constantly enriched with ideas, knowledge, problems, can get tired of life, but cannot get enough of it. For he captures only an insignificant part of what spiritual life gives birth to again and again, moreover, always something preliminary, not final, and therefore for him death is an event devoid of meaning. And since death is meaningless, cultural life as such is also meaningless - after all, it is precisely this, with its meaningless progress, that dooms death itself to meaninglessness. In Tolstoy's later novels, this idea is the main mood of his work.

But what did such an approach give in practice? In fact, it meant a complete denial of modern science, which in this case turned out to be “meaningless, because it does not give any answer to the only questions that are important for us: What should we do?, How should we live? And the fact that she does not answer these questions is completely undeniable. “The only problem is,” M. Weber emphasized, “in what sense it does not give any answer. Maybe instead she is able to give something to someone who puts the question right?

In addition, it is necessary to take into account both the narrowness of the circle of people who finally believed in Tolstoy's social ideas, and the fact that most interpretations of Tolstoyism turned out to be incompatible with the modernization of the 20th century, which actually determined the content and nature of civilizational development. The "rulers of thoughts" of the intelligentsia were teachers and teachings that went far from the old religiosity, - later noted in his memoirs one of the leaders of the Socialist-Revolutionaries V.M. Chernov. - Only Leo Tolstoy created something of his own, but his God was so abstract, his faith was so emptied of any concrete theological and cosmogonic mythology that it absolutely did not provide any food for religious fantasy.

Without captivating and amazing images, this purely head construction could still be a refuge for the intelligentsia, which developed a taste for metaphysics, but for the more concrete mind of a commoner, the specifically religious side of Tolstoyism was too innocent and empty, and it was perceived either as a purely moral teaching, or was a stage towards total unbelief.”

“Tolstoy's theological work did not create any kind of lasting movement in the world...,” Archbishop John (Shakhovskoy) of San Francisco emphasizes in his turn. - Tolstoy has no positive, wholesome, creative followers and students in this area at all. The Russian people did not respond to Tolstoyism either as a social phenomenon or as a religious fact.”

However, these conclusions are not shared by all researchers. “Tolstoyism was a rather powerful and large-scale social movement,” notes the modern philosopher A.Yu. Ashirin, “it united around itself people of various social strata and nationalities and geographically stretched from Siberia, the Caucasus to Ukraine.” In his opinion, "Tolstoy's agricultural communes were a kind of institutions of social ethics, which for the first time carried out a social experiment of introducing humanistic principles and moral norms into the organization, management and structure of the economy."

At the same time, the generally accepted in the Soviet historiography of the 20th century seems not quite legitimate. a sharply negative assessment of the campaign of condemnation launched against Leo Tolstoy at the beginning of the same century, a campaign that until now has been identified exclusively with the “anti-autocratic” and “anti-clerical” views of the great writer. The representatives of the Russian intelligentsia, who most acutely felt the tragedy of the time, understood that the path proposed by the great master of the word was the path of imitation of peasant life; a way to the past, but by no means to the future, because without modernization (bourgeois in its essence), it is impossible to update almost all aspects of society. “Leo Tolstoy was a gentleman, count, “forged” like a peasant (the worst, fake Repin portrait of Tolstoy: barefoot, behind a plow, the wind blows his beard). Gentry tenderness of a peasant, grief of repentance,” noted the writer I.S. Sokolov-Mikitov.

It is characteristic that L.N. Tolstoy failed to solve the “land issue” even in his Yasnaya Polyana estate, and the daughter of the writer T.L. Ovsyannikovo “to the full disposal and use of two peasant societies,” later noted that as a result, the peasants not only stopped paying rent, but began to speculate in land, “receiving it for free and renting it out to neighbors for a fee.”

Thus, Tolstoy's naive "democratism", faced with the realities village life(thirst for enrichment at the expense of others), was forced to yield. It was a logical result: the writer did not know deeply the peasant life. Contemporaries have repeatedly noted the conspicuous poverty and unsanitary conditions in the huts of the Yasnaya Polyana peasants, which came into sharp conflict with Tolstoy's humanistic appeals to improve people's life. It should be noted that rationalizing landowners often did much more to improve the economic life of “their” peasants. At the same time, the peasants of Yasnaya Polyana generally had a good attitude towards the landowner who helped them more than once, as evidenced by their published memoirs.

It is also indicative that Tolstoy failed to create a single convincing image of the Russian peasant in his works (Platon Karataev is the artistic embodiment of purely intelligent ideas “about a peasant”, far from the harsh reality of the Russian village; it is no coincidence that M. Gorky often used this image as the personification of illusory ideas about the obedience of the Russian people). Characteristically, even Soviet literary critics were forced to join such conclusions, trying in every possible way to “modernize” the writer’s work.

So, T.L. Motyleva noted: “In Karataev, the properties developed in the Russian patriarchal peasant by centuries of serfdom are concentrated, as it were, - endurance, meekness, passive obedience to fate, love for all people - and for no one in particular. However, an army composed of such Platons could not have defeated Napoleon. The image of Karataev is to a certain extent conditional, partly woven from the motifs of epics and proverbs.

As L.N. Tolstoy believed, who idealized the “natural labor existence” of the peasantry in the Rousseauist spirit, the land issue in Russia could be solved by implementing the ideas of the American reformer G. George. Meanwhile, the utopian nature of these ideas (similar to the main postulates of modern anti-globalists) has been repeatedly pointed out by scientists both at the beginning of the 20th century and today. It is noteworthy that these concepts received official support only from the radical wing of the British Liberal Party.

As is known, Leo Tolstoy himself did not support radical methods of solving agrarian problems. This circumstance has been repeatedly pointed out not only by literary critics, but also by domestic writers. So, V.P. Kataev in the article “On Leo Tolstoy” noted: “In all his statements he completely denied the revolution. He appealed to the workers to give up the revolution. He considered the revolution to be immoral. However, not one of the Russians, and even foreign writers, destroyed with such amazing force all the institutions of the Russian tsarism he hated ... as Leo Tolstoy ... "

According to his daughter A.L. Tolstoy, back in 1905 he predicted the complete failure of the revolution. “Revolutionaries,” said Tolstoy, will be much worse than the tsarist government. The tsarist government holds power by force, the revolutionaries will seize it by force, but they will rob and rape much more than the old government. Tolstoy's prediction came true. The violence and cruelty of people who call themselves Marxists have surpassed all the atrocities committed so far by mankind at all times, throughout the world.”

Obviously, L.N. Tolstoy could not approve not only unjustifiably exalted at the beginning of the 20th century. methods of violence, but also the denial of religious spiritual principles, characteristic of revolutionaries, which are organically inherent in Russian people. “God,” V.I. Lenin wrote in one of his letters to A.M. Gorky, “is (historically and everyday) primarily a complex of ideas generated by the stupid oppression of man and external nature and class oppression, ideas that reinforce this oppression lulling the class struggle.” Such ideological attitudes were deeply alien to Leo Tolstoy. The followers of the religious and philosophical teachings of Leo Tolstoy also strongly opposed social democratic propaganda, for which they were subsequently persecuted by the Soviet authorities (officially “Tolstoyism” was banned in 1938).

However, the views of the writer, reflecting his painful spiritual evolution, were extremely contradictory. Just two years later, in his book “On the Significance of the Russian Revolution” (St. Petersburg, 1907), he noted that “it is no longer possible for the Russian people to continue to obey their government,” because this meant “to continue to bear not only ever-increasing ... disasters ... deprivation of land, hunger , heavy taxes ... but also, most importantly, to take part in those atrocities that this government is now committing for its own protection and, obviously, in vain. The reason for the change of position was the harsh measures taken by the government to suppress the revolution.

“Leo Tolstoy combined in himself two characteristic Russian features: he has a genius, a naive intuitive Russian essence - and a conscious, doctrinaire, anti-European Russian essence, and both are represented in him to the highest degree,” noted the outstanding writer of the twentieth century. Hermann Hesse. - We love and honor the Russian soul in it, and we criticize, even hate in it the newly appeared Russian doctrinairism, excessive one-sidedness, wild fanaticism, superstitious passion for the dogmas of the Russian man, who has lost his roots and become conscious. Each of us had a chance to experience a pure, deep awe before the works of Tolstoy, reverence for his genius, but each of us, with amazement and confusion, and even with hostility, also held Tolstoy’s dogmatic programmatic works in his hands ”(quoted from: Hesse G. About Tolstoy // www.hesse.ru). Interestingly, V.P. Kataev also expressed similar assessments in many respects: “His ingenious inconsistency is striking. …His strength was in constant denial. And this constant negation most often led him to the dialectical form of the negation of negation, as a result of which he came into conflict with himself and became, as it were, an anti-Tolstoyan.

The people who most subtly felt the depth of patristic traditions understood that Leo Tolstoy's “ideological throwing” and the doctrines developed by him were far from national Orthodox life principles. As noted in 1907 by the elder of the Optina Hermitage, Fr. Clement, “his heart (Tolstoy. - Auth.) looking for faith, but confusion in thoughts; he relies too much on his mind…” The elder “foresaw many troubles” from the impact of Tolstoy’s ideas on “Russian minds”. In his opinion, "Tolstoy wants to teach the people, although he himself suffers from spiritual blindness." The origins of this phenomenon lurked both in the noble education that the writer received in childhood and youth, and in the influence of the ideas of the French encyclopedist philosophers of the 18th century on him.

L.N. Tolstoy clearly idealized the peasant community, believing that “during agricultural life, people least of all need the government, or, rather, agricultural life, less than any other, gives the government reasons to interfere in the life of the people.” The unhistoricity of this approach is beyond doubt: it was the lack of real state support for the cause of agrarian undertakings that for many decades was one of the main factors in the backwardness of the Russian countryside. At the same time, considering the Russian people living “the most natural, most moral and independent agricultural life”, L.N. Tolstoy, speaking from an anarchist position, naively believed that “it is only for the Russian agricultural people to stop obeying the violent government and stop participating in it , and taxes would immediately be destroyed by themselves and taxes ... and all the oppression of officials, and land ownership ... ... All these disasters would be destroyed, because there would be no one to produce them.

According to L.N. Tolstoy, this would change the very course of the historical development of Russia: “... in this stop of the procession along the wrong path (that is, to replace agricultural labor with industrial. - Auth.) and an indication of the possibility and necessity .... another ... path than the one along which the Western peoples were walking, this is the main and great significance of the revolution now taking place in Russia. Respectfully referring to the humanistic pathos of such ideas, one cannot help but recognize their author's obvious misunderstanding of the objectively inevitable processes associated with the development of bourgeois modernization at the beginning of the 20th century.

L.L. Tolstoy, acting as an ideological opponent of his father, emphasized: “I wanted to say that the Russian peasant community, in the form in which it is now, has outlived its life and purpose. That this form is archaic and hinders Russian peasant culture. That it is more convenient for a peasant to cultivate land when it is in one piece around his yard… That the gradual shrinking of allotments complicates the communal question… That it is necessary to give rights to the peasant, and above all the right to land, in order to put him in the first condition of civil freedom.”

One should also take into account the tragic inner evolution of Leo Tolstoy. His son L. L. Tolstoy, who observed this evolution for many years, noted: “He suffered due to three main reasons.

Firstly, the physical, former strength left and all his bodily worldly life weakened over the years.

Secondly, he created a new world religion, which was supposed to save mankind ... and since ... he himself could not understand the countless contradictions and absurdities arising from it, he suffered, feeling that he would not succeed in the task of creating a new religion.

Thirdly, he suffered, like all of us, for the injustices and untruths of the world, unable to give him a personal rational and bright example.

All Tolstoyanism is explained by these feelings, and its weakness and temporary influence are also explained.

Not just me, but many young or sensitive good people fell under it; but only limited people followed him to the end.”

What was the positive significance of Tolstoy's ideas in relation to the problems of agrarian modernization in Russia? First of all, let us single out the principle of self-limitation of one's own needs, on which L.N. Tolstoy stubbornly insisted: for the peasants and landowners of Russia in the early twentieth century. it was of particular importance, since the transition from extensive to intensive farming was impossible without a consciously voluntary rejection of the traditions of archaic economic psychology with its reliance on “maybe”, “Oblomovism”, unrestrained exploitation of natural resources (including the destruction of forests).

At the same time, however, we note that the great humanist failed to realize this principle even in his own family, and L.N. Tolstoy could not go beyond self-flagellation. One of his letters to V.G. Chertkov is characteristic, in which he admitted: “We now have a lot of people - my children and the Kuzminskys, and often without horror I cannot see this immoral idleness and gluttony ... And I see ... all rural labor that goes around us. And they eat ... Others do for them, but they do nothing for anyone, even for themselves.

At the beginning of the twentieth century. LN Tolstoy was visited three times by Tomas Masaryk (in the future - not only a prominent liberal politician, the first president of Czechoslovakia in 1918-1935, but also a classic of Czech sociology and philosophy). During conversations with Tolstoy, he repeatedly drew the writer's attention to the fallacy of not only Tolstoy's views on the Russian village, but also the very life practice of "simplification", tirelessly promoted by Tolstoy himself and his followers. Noting the poverty and squalor of the local peasants, who most of all needed concrete help, and not “moralization” (“Tolstoy himself told me that he drank from a glass of syphilitic so as not to reveal disgust and thereby humiliate him; he thought about this, but here to protect your peasants from infection - no more about that”), T. Masaryk subjected Tolstoy’s ideological orientation to lead a “peasant life” to sharp but fair criticism: “Simplicity, simplification, simplify! Lord God! The problems of the city and the countryside cannot be solved by sentimental morality and by declaring the peasant and the village exemplary in everything; agriculture is now also being industrialized, it cannot do without machines, and the modern peasant needs a higher education than his ancestors ... ”However, these ideas were deeply alien to L.N. Tolstoy.

In fairness, we note that at the beginning of the twentieth century. not only L.N. Tolstoy, but also many other representatives of the domestic intelligentsia, were characterized by idealistic ideas about the Russian peasant and about communal orders. The origins of such an attitude went into the ideological delusions of the last century: it is no coincidence that the outstanding Russian historian A.A. Zimin focused on the phenomenon of “the people's god”, which was characteristic of the noble literature of the 19th century and even then acted as a fruitless alternative to specific educational work among the peasantry.

Of course, such a psychological and “ideological and political” attitude did not carry a positive charge, preventing an objective analysis of agrarian problems, and most importantly, the consolidation of rural society in order to solve these problems locally. The roots of this approach lay mainly in the “anti-capitalist” position of the bulk of the intelligentsia during this period, which rejected bourgeois norms both in public life and in the field of state organization. However, such ideological and psychological attitudes did not at all testify to the “progressiveness” of the mass intelligentsia consciousness, but rather to the opposite: to its stable conservatism (with a clear emphasis on the archaic).

At the beginning of the twentieth century. The position of the “repentant intellectual” was most clearly represented precisely in the work of L.N. Tolstoy. Subsequently, critically evaluating this feature of the Russian intelligentsia, which survived until the 1920s, the Soviet literary critic L. Ginzburg noted: “The penitent nobility made amends for the original sin of power; the penitent intelligentsia is the original sin of education. No disasters, no experience… can completely remove this trail.”

Of course, such sentiments (even those dictated by a sincere desire to help the “common people” and get rid of the intelligentsia’s “guilt complex” before them) did not have a positive impact on the national modernization of the early 20th century. They obscured the really pressing problems facing Russian society, including in the agrarian sector.

Well, to sum it up. The basis of not only socio-economic, but, to a certain extent, religious views of L.N. Tolstoy was deeply patriarchal (and, in fact, archaic) psychological and life attitudes, which contradicted not only bourgeois modernization, but, most importantly, civilizational renewal of Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century.

However, noting whole line flaws inherent in Tolstoy's ideological doctrine, we must not lose sight of its positive aspects. The writings of Leo Tolstoy in the period under review were widely disseminated in Russia. Despite their obvious utopianism, they also carried a positive charge, clearly and convincingly revealing the most acute economic and social contradictions of the traditional agrarian system, the mistakes and shortcomings of both the authorities and the Russian Orthodox Church. These works have become a real discovery for thousands of people both in Russia and abroad, who have experienced the joy of familiarizing themselves with the amazing artistic world of Leo Tolstoy; were a powerful stimulus for deep moral renewal. “He was the most honest man of his time. His whole life is a constant search, a continuous desire to find the truth and bring it to life, ”wrote the great philosopher of the twentieth century. Mahatma Gandhi, paying special attention to the role of Leo Tolstoy in the development of the ideas of non-violence and his preaching of self-restraint, for "only it can give true freedom to us, our country and the whole world." The recognition of the significance of this invaluable universal human spiritual experience by both modern researchers and Orthodox church hierarchs is also characteristic. So, at one time, Metropolitan Kirill, who now heads the Russian Orthodox Church, in his 1991 article “The Russian Church - Russian Culture - Political Thinking” focused on “Tolstoy’s special accusatory frankness and moral anxiety, his appeal to conscience and call to repentance ".

L.N. Tolstoy was undoubtedly right when he sharply criticized not only the basic principles, but also the forms of implementation of bourgeois modernization in Russia: from the point of view of humanism, the new reforms were largely inhuman in nature and were accompanied by the loss of a number of centuries-old peasant cultural and everyday life traditions. However, we must take into account the following points. First, despite all the costs, bourgeois reforms (above all, Stolypin's agrarian reforms) were not only historically inevitable, but, most importantly, objectively necessary for the country, society, and the most enterprising peasants who were striving to break free from the oppressive grip of the communal collectivism and leveling. Secondly, it is worth considering: perhaps some obsolete traditions should then (and not only then) be abandoned? For many years, such traditions (closely associated with prejudices and communal customs) as the notorious habit of relying on “maybe” in everything, disorganization, paternalism, domestic drunkenness, etc., acted as a powerful barrier to the development of both agriculture and the entire peasantry.

As you know, L.N. Tolstoy himself did not want to call himself a “fatalist”, however, as the well-known Saratov literary scholar A.P. Skaftymov convincingly proved in 1972, in fact Tolstoy’s philosophy of history was fatalistic, and this was precisely what it the main ideological flaw. As an argument, let's cite one more testimony of T. Masaryk. According to him, during a visit to Yasnaya Polyana in 1910, “we argued about resisting evil with violence ... he (L.N. Tolstoy. - Auth.) did not see the difference between a defensive struggle and an offensive one; he believed, for example, that the Tatar horsemen, if the Russians had not resisted them, would soon be tired of the killings. Such conclusions do not require special comments.

The criticisms made by us, of course, by no means call into question the significance of Leo Tolstoy's ideas. On the contrary, it is precisely an objective, unbiased analysis, without the property of “going to extremes” inherent in the Russian mentality, in our opinion, that will help to better understand the place and role of the great thinker’s multifaceted creative heritage in relation to a specific historical situation. recent years the existence of imperial Russia; to understand the reasons not only for the outstanding spiritual breakthroughs of the mighty genius of world literature, but also for those real life failures that he had to endure ...

S.A. KOZLOV,
Doctor of Historical Sciences,
(Institute of Russian History RAS)

Memoirs of Yasnaya Polyana peasants about Leo Tolstoy. Tula, 1960.

LN Tolstoy in the memoirs of his contemporaries. T. 1-2. M., 1978.

Sukhotina-Tolstaya T.L. Memories. M., 1980.

Yasnaya Polyana. House-Museum of Leo Tolstoy. M., 1986.

Memoirs of Tolstoyan Peasants. 1910-1930s. M., 1989.

Remizov V.B. Leo Tolstoy: Dialogues in time. Tula, 1999.

Burlakova T.T. World of memory: Tolstoy places of the Tula region. Tula, 1999.

She is. Humanistic educational system of the orphanage: Implementation of the philosophical and pedagogical ideas of Leo Tolstoy in the practice of the Yasnaya Polyana orphanage. Tula, 2001.

Tolstoy: pro et contra. The personality and work of Leo Tolstoy in the assessment of Russian thinkers and researchers. SPb., 2000.

Ashirin A.Yu. Tolstoyism as a type of Russian worldview // Tolstovsky collection. Materials of the XXVI International Tolstoy Readings. Spiritual heritage of Leo Tolstoy. Part 1. Tula, 2000.

Tarasov A.B. What is truth? Righteous Leo Tolstoy. M., 2001.

A number of Runet information resources are also dedicated to the richest creative heritage of Leo Tolstoy:

Essay example (mini essays)

Man has always sought to put the laws of nature at his service. The most important form of spiritual culture today is science. The role of natural sciences - physics, chemistry, biology is especially great. However, in the 20th century, the voices of those who call science for social responsibility have been heard loudly.

For example, based on knowledge of the laws of thermodynamics, man invented the internal combustion engine. The invention became the most important prerequisite for the scientific and technological revolution. This, in turn, led to widespread industrialization, the construction of factories, the development of transport links, and the growth of cities. But at the same time, natural resources were mercilessly destroyed, the environment was polluted, and at the same time, processes in society became more complicated - the number of urban residents increased, villages emptied, and social instability increased. So human greed and consumer attitude towards nature and other people called into question the good that scientific knowledge brings.

Or another example. In search of an inexhaustible source of energy, scientists have discovered a thermonuclear reaction. But this knowledge of nature served as the basis for the creation of the atomic bomb, which today threatens the life of all mankind. The lust for power, the desire to win the arms race, the lack of compassion for people have turned a useful invention into a source of suffering.

Therefore, it is difficult to disagree with the statement of Lev Nikolayevich. After all, spiritual culture is not limited to the sciences. L.N. Tolstoy gives priority to morality. Ethical attitudes should, in his opinion, precede any other knowledge. This is the only way to find harmony with nature and with yourself.

Morality is a set of generally significant values and norms formed on the basis of such categories as “good” and “evil”, “love for all living things”, “compassion”, “conscience” and “responsibility”, “non-possessive”, “moderation” , "humility". Of course, this is often not enough for those who implement the results of scientific progress. Standing on the brink of ecological catastrophe, reaping the fruits of abuses in the production of weapons, political technologies, excessive consumption, modern man it is necessary to learn to be guided by moral principles, to finally understand the meaning of morality, which L.N. Tolstoy.

... We are all carried away into the distance on the same planet - we are the crew of one ship. Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Without the belief that nature is subject to laws, there can be no science. Norbert Wiener

Good nature has taken care of everything so that everywhere you find something to learn. Leonardo da Vinci

Closest to the Divine in this world is nature. Astolf de Custine

The wind is the breath of nature. Kozma Prutkov

In an immoral society, all inventions that increase the power of man over nature are not only not good, but an undeniable and obvious evil. Lev Tolstoy

In undeveloped countries, it is deadly to drink water; in developed countries, it is deadly to breathe air. Jonathan Rayban

In nature, everything is connected with each other, and there is nothing accidental in it. And if a random phenomenon comes out, look for a human hand in it. Mikhail Prishvin

In nature, there are both grains and dust. William Shakespeare

In nature, nothing is wasted except nature itself. Andrey Kryzhanovsky

Time destroys false opinions, and the judgments of nature confirm. Mark Cicero

Nature has its own poetry in its time. John Keats

All the best in nature belongs to everyone together. Petronius

In all areas of nature ... a certain regularity dominates, independent of the existence of thinking humanity. Max Planck

In his tools man has power over external nature, while for his purposes he is rather subordinate to it. Georg Hegel

The richest countries of old were those whose nature was most abundant; the richest countries today are those in which man is most active. Henry Buckle

Every thing in nature is either a cause towards you or an effect from us. Marsilio Ficino

As long as people do not listen to the sound mind of nature, they will be forced to obey either dictators or the opinion of the people. Wilhelm Schwebel

Stupid is he who is not satisfied with what happens according to the laws of nature. Epictetus

Grandiose things are done by grandiose means. Nature alone does great things for free. Alexander Ivanovich Herzen

Even in his most beautiful dreams, man cannot imagine anything more beautiful than nature. Alphonse de Lamartine

Even the smallest pleasure bestowed on us by nature is a mystery beyond the comprehension of the mind. Luc de Vauvenargues

The search for goals in nature has its source in ignorance. Benedict Spinoza

He who does not love nature does not love man either, that is a bad citizen. Fedor Dostoevsky

Whoever looks at nature superficially is easily lost in the boundless "All," but whoever listens more deeply to its miracles is constantly led to God, the Lord of the world. Carl de Geer

Our callousness, our selfishness induces us to look with envy at nature, but she herself will envy us when we recover from ailments. Ralph Emerson

There is nothing more inventive than nature. Mark Cicero

One of the most difficult tasks of our time is the problem of slowing down the process of destruction of wildlife ... Archie Carr

The main law of nature is the preservation of mankind. John Locke

Let us thank the wise nature for making the necessary easy and the heavy unnecessary. Epicurus

As long as people do not know the laws of nature, they blindly obey them, and once they know them, then the forces of nature obey people. Georgy Plekhanov

Nature will always take its toll. William Shakespeare

Nature is the house in which man lives. Dmitry Likhachev

Nature is impassive to man; she is neither an enemy nor a friend to him; it is now a convenient, now an inconvenient field for his activity. Nikolay Chernyshevsky

Nature is an eternal example of art; and the greatest and noblest thing in nature is man. Vissarion Belinsky

Nature has implanted in every good heart a noble feeling, by virtue of which it cannot be happy itself, but must seek its happiness in others. Johann Goethe

Nature has invested in man some innate instincts, such as: the feeling of hunger, sexual feeling, etc., and one of the strongest feelings of this order is the feeling of ownership. Pyotr Stolypin

Nature is always stronger than principles. David Hume

Nature is one, and there is nothing equal to her: the mother and daughter of herself, she is the Deity of the gods. Consider only her, Nature, and leave the rest to the common people. Pythagoras

Nature is the cause of everything, it exists by itself; it will exist and act forever... Paul Holbach

Nature, which endowed every animal with the means of subsistence, gave astronomy as an assistant and ally astrology. Johannes Kepler

Nature scoffs at the decisions and decrees of princes, emperors and monarchs, and at their request she would not change her laws one iota. Galileo Galilei

Nature does not make people, people make themselves. Merab Mamardashvili

Nature does not know a stop in its movement and executes any inactivity. Johann Goethe

Nature does not presuppose any goals for itself ... All final causes are only human inventions. Benedict Spinoza

Nature does not recognize jokes, she is always truthful, always serious, always strict; she is always right; errors and errors come from people. Johann Goethe

Patience is most reminiscent of the method by which nature creates its creations. Honore de Balzac

What is contrary to nature never leads to good. Friedrich Schiller

A person has quite enough objective reasons to strive for the conservation of wildlife. But in the end, only his love can save nature. Jean Dorst

Good taste suggested to good society that contact with nature is the very last word of science, reason, and common sense. Fedor Dostoevsky

Man does not become the master of nature until he has become the master of himself. Georg Hegel

Mankind - without ennobling it with animals and plants - will perish, become impoverished, fall into the rage of despair, like a lonely man in solitude. Andrey Platonov

The more one goes into the workings of nature, the more visible becomes the simplicity of the laws that she follows in her doings. Alexander Radishchev

Answers:

A person is a concrete living person with consciousness and self-consciousness. Society of association of people with common interests, values and goals.

Answers:

A person is a concrete living person with consciousness and self-consciousness. Society of association of people with common interests, values and goals.

On patriotism and government...

“Patriotism and the consequences of its war bring enormous profit to the newspapermen and advantage to the majority of traders. Every writer, teacher, professor secures his position the more he preaches patriotism. Every emperor, king gains glory the more, the more he is devoted to patriotism.

In the hands of the ruling classes are the army, money, school, religion, and the press. In schools they kindle patriotism in children with stories, describing their people as the best of all peoples and always right; in adults, this same feeling is kindled with spectacles, celebrations, monuments, and false patriotic press; most importantly, they kindle patriotism by committing all kinds of injustice and cruelty against other peoples, inciting enmity in them towards their own people, and then they use this enmity to incite enmity among their own people ...

... In the memory of all, not even old people of our time, an event took place that most obviously showed the amazing stupefaction to which the people of the Christian world were driven by patriotism.

The German ruling classes inflamed the patriotism of their popular masses to such an extent that in the second half of the 19th century a law was proposed to the people according to which all people, without exception, were to be soldiers; all sons, husbands, fathers, scholars, saints must be trained in murder and be obedient slaves of the first highest rank and be unquestioningly ready to kill those whom they are ordered to kill:

to kill people of oppressed nationalities and their workers defending their rights, their fathers and brothers, as the most arrogant of all rulers, Wilhelm II, publicly declared.

This terrible measure, which most crudely offends all the best feelings of people, was, under the influence of patriotism, accepted by the people of Germany without grumbling. The result was a victory over the French. This victory further inflamed the patriotism of Germany and later of France, Russia and other powers, and all the people of the continental powers resignedly submitted to the introduction of general military service, i.e. slavery, with which none of the ancient slavery can be compared in terms of the degree of humiliation and lack of will.

After that, the slavish obedience of the masses, in the name of patriotism, and the audacity, cruelty and madness of governments knew no limits. The seizures of foreign lands in Asia, Africa, and America, and the growing distrust and bitterness of governments towards each other, began to interruption caused partly by whim, partly by vanity, partly by self-interest.

The destruction of peoples in the occupied lands was taken for granted. The only question was who would first seize foreign land and destroy its inhabitants.

All rulers have not only violated and are violating the most primitive demands of justice against the conquered peoples and against each other in the most obvious way, but they have committed and are committing all kinds of deceit, fraud, bribery, forgery, espionage, robbery, murder, and the peoples not only sympathized and sympathize with everything this, but rejoice in the fact that not other states, but their states commit these atrocities.

The mutual hostility of peoples and states has recently reached such amazing limits that, despite the fact that there is no reason for one state to attack another,

everyone knows that all states always stand against each other with their claws extended and their teeth bared, and are only waiting for someone to fall into misfortune and weaken, so that they can attack him with the least danger and tear him apart.

But even this is not enough. Any increase in the troops of one state (and every state, being in danger, tries to increase it for the sake of patriotism) forces the neighboring one, too, out of patriotism, to increase its troops, which causes a new increase in the first.

The same thing happens with fortresses, fleets: one state built 10 battleships, neighboring ones built 11; then the first builds 12 and so on in an infinite progression.

"And I'll pinch you." - And I fist you. - "And I'll whip you." - And I'm a stick. - "And I'm from a gun" ...

Only evil children, drunken people or animals argue and fight like this, and meanwhile, this is done among the highest representatives of the most enlightened states, those same ones who direct the education and morality of their subjects ...

The situation is getting worse and worse, and there is no way to stop this deterioration leading to obvious death.

The only way out of this situation, which seemed to gullible people, is now closed by the events of recent times; I am talking about the Hague Conference* and the immediately following war between England and the Transvaal.

*1st Hague Conference 1899. The peace conference was convened on the initiative of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia on August 29, 1898. The conference opened on 18 (6) May, the Emperor's birthday, and ran through 29 (17) July. 26 states participated. During the conference, international conventions on the laws and customs of war were adopted. The idea of world disarmament proposed by Emperor Nicholas II was not taken seriously...

If people who think little and superficially could still console themselves with the thought that international courts can eliminate the disasters of war and ever-increasing armaments, then the Hague Conference, with the war that followed it, clearly showed the impossibility of resolving the issue in this way.

After the Hague Conference, it became obvious that as long as there were governments with troops, the cessation of armaments and wars was impossible.

In order for an agreement to be possible, it is necessary that those agreeing to believe each other. In order for the powers to be able to trust each other, they must lay down their arms, as parliamentarians do when they come together for conferences.

As long as the governments, not trusting each other, not only do not destroy, do not reduce, but constantly increase the troops in proportion to the increase in their neighbors, they strictly follow every movement of troops through spies, knowing that any power will attack the neighboring one as soon as will have the possibility of this, no agreement is possible, and every conference is either stupidity, or a toy, or deceit, or insolence, or all of this together.

The Hague conference, which ended in terrible bloodshed - the Transvaal war, which no one tried and is not trying to stop, was nevertheless useful, although not at all what was expected of it; it was useful in that it showed in the most obvious way that the evils from which the peoples suffer cannot be corrected by governments, that governments, if they really wanted to, cannot abolish either armaments or wars.

Governments must exist in order to protect their people from the attacks of other peoples; but no people wants to attack and does not attack another, and therefore the governments not only do not want peace, but diligently arouse the hatred of other peoples.

Having aroused the hatred of other peoples towards themselves, and patriotism in their own people, the governments assure their people that they are in danger and must be defended.

And having power in their hands, governments can both irritate other peoples and evoke patriotism in their own, and diligently do both, and cannot but do this, because their existence is based on this.

If governments were needed before in order to protect their peoples from attacks by others, now, on the contrary, governments artificially violate the peace that exists between peoples and cause enmity between them.

If it was necessary to plow in order to sow, then plowing was a reasonable business; but, obviously, it is crazy and harmful to plow when the crop has sprouted. And this is what forces governments to create their own peoples, to destroy the unity that exists and would not be violated by anything if there were no governments.

What is a government?

Indeed, what are governments in our time, without which it seems impossible for people to exist?

If there was a time when governments were a necessary and lesser evil than that which came from defenselessness against organized neighbors, now governments have become an unnecessary and much greater evil than all that with which they frighten their peoples.

Governments, not only military ones, but governments in general, could be, not to mention useful, but harmless, only if they were composed of infallible, holy people, as is supposed by the Chinese. But after all, governments, by their very activity, which consists in committing violence, always consist of elements most opposed to holiness, of the most impudent, rude and depraved people.

Every government, therefore, and even more so a government to which military power has been entrusted, is a terrible, most dangerous institution in the world.

Government in the broadest sense, including both the capitalists and the press, is nothing but an organization in which the greater part of the people is in the power of the minority standing over them; this smaller part is subject to the power of an even smaller part, and this still smaller, etc., finally reaching several people or one person who, through military violence, gain power over all the rest. So that the whole institution is like a cone, all parts of which are in the complete power of those persons, or that one person, who is at the top of it.

The top of this cone is captured by those people or the person who is more cunning, daring and shameless than others, or the accidental heir of those who are more daring and shameless.

Today it is Boris Godunov, tomorrow Grigory Otrepyev, today the dissolute Catherine, who strangled her husband with her lovers, tomorrow Pugachev, the day after tomorrow the insane Pavel, Nikolai, Alexander III.

Today Napoleon, tomorrow Bourbon or Orleans, Boulanger or a company of Panamists; today Gladstone, tomorrow Salisbury, Chamberlain, Rode.

And such and such governments are given complete power not only over property, life, but also over the spiritual and moral development, over education, over the religious guidance of all people.

People will arrange for themselves such a terrible machine of power, leaving it to anyone to seize this power (and all the chances are that the most morally trashy person will seize it), and slavishly obey and are surprised that they feel bad

They are afraid of mines, of anarchists, and not afraid of this terrible device, which threatens them with the greatest disasters at any moment.

To save people from those terrible calamities of armaments and wars that they are now suffering and which are increasing and increasing, what is needed is not congresses, not conferences, not treatises and courts, but the destruction of that instrument of violence, which is called governments and from which the greatest disasters of people originate. .

For the destruction of governments, only one thing is needed: people need to understand that the feeling of patriotism, which alone supports this instrument of violence, is a feeling of rude, harmful, shameful and bad, and most importantly, immoral.

Rough feeling because it is peculiar only to people who stand on the lowest level of morality, expecting from other peoples the very violence that they themselves are ready to inflict on them;

bad feeling because it disrupts profitable and joyful peaceful relations with other peoples and, most importantly, produces that organization of governments in which the worst can and always gets the power;

shameful feeling because it turns a person not only into a slave, but into a fighting cock, a bull, a gladiator, who destroys his strength and life for the purposes not of his own, but of his government;

immoral feeling because, instead of recognizing oneself as the son of God, as Christianity teaches us, or at least as a free man guided by his own reason, every person, under the influence of patriotism, recognizes himself as the son of his fatherland, the slave of his government and commits acts contrary to his reason and his conscience.

As soon as people understand this, and of course, without a struggle, the terrible chain of people called the government will fall apart, and with it the terrible, useless evil that it inflicts on the peoples.

And people are starting to understand this. Here is what, for example, a citizen of the North American States writes:

“The only thing we all ask, we farmers, mechanics, merchants, manufacturers, teachers, is the right to mind our own business. We have our own homes, we love our friends, we are devoted to our families and do not interfere in the affairs of our neighbors, we have a job and we want to work.

Leave us alone!

But politicians don't want to leave us. They tax us, eat our property, rewrite us, call our youth to their wars.

Entire myriads of those living at the expense of the state depend on the state, are supported by it in order to tax us; and in order to tax successfully, permanent troops are kept. The argument that the army is needed in order to defend the country is a clear deception. The French state frightens the people by saying that the Germans want to attack them; Russians are afraid of the British; the English are afraid of everyone; and now in America they tell us that we need to increase the fleet, add troops, because Europe can unite against us at any moment.

This is a lie and a lie. The common people in France, Germany, England and America are against the war. We only want to be left in peace. People who have wives, parents, children, homes have no desire to go out and fight anyone. We are peace-loving and afraid of war, we hate it. We only want not to do to others what we would not want them to do to us.

War is an indispensable consequence of the existence of armed men. A country with a large standing army will sooner or later go to war. A man who prides himself on his strength in a fistfight will someday meet a man who considers himself the best fighter, and they will fight. Germany and France are just waiting for an opportunity to test their strength against each other. They have fought several times already and will fight again. It's not that their people want war, but the upper class inflates their mutual hatred and makes people think they have to fight to defend themselves.

People who would like to follow the teachings of Christ are taxed, insulted, deceived and dragged into wars.

Christ taught humility, meekness, forgiveness of offenses, and that it is wrong to kill. Scripture teaches people not to swear, but the "upper class" makes us swear on a scripture that we don't believe in.

How can we get rid of these spendthrifts who do not work, but are dressed in fine cloth with copper buttons and expensive ornaments, who feed on our labors, for which we cultivate the land?

Fight them?

But we do not recognize bloodshed, yes, besides, they have weapons and money, and they will last longer than we do.

But who makes up the army that will fight with us? We make up this army, our deceived neighbors and brothers, who were assured that they serve God, protecting their country from enemies. In reality, our country has no enemies, except for the upper class, which undertook to look after our interests, if only we would agree to pay taxes. They suck our funds and set our true brothers against us in order to enslave and humiliate us.

You cannot send a telegram to your wife, or a parcel to your friend, or give a check to your supplier, until you have paid the tax levied on armed men who can be used to kill you, and who will certainly put you in jail if you do not pay.

The only salvation it is to inspire people that killing is not good, to teach them that the whole law and the prophet is to do to others what you want them to do to you. Silently disregard this upper class by refusing to bow before their warlike idol.

Stop supporting the preachers who preach war and expose patriotism as something important.

Let them go to work like we do. We believe in Christ, but they don't. Christ said what he thought; they say what they think will please the people in power of the "upper class".

We will not enter the service. Let's not fire on their orders. We will not arm ourselves with bayonets against a good, meek people. We will not, at the suggestion of Cecil Rhodes, shoot at shepherds and farmers who are defending their homes.

Your false cry: "wolf, wolf!" won't scare us. We pay your taxes only because we are forced to do so. We will only pay as long as we are compelled to do so. We won't pay church taxes hypocrites, not a tenth of your hypocritical charity, and we will, in any case, express our opinion.

We will educate people. And all the time our silent influence will spread; and even people already recruited as soldiers will hesitate and refuse to fight. We will inspire the idea that the Christian life in peace and good will is better than a life of struggle, bloodshed and war.

"Peace on earth!" can come only when people get rid of the troops and will want to do to others what they want to be done to them.

This is how a citizen of the North American States writes, and from different sides, in different forms, the same voices are heard.

Here is what a German soldier writes:

“I made two campaigns together with the Prussian guards (1866-1870) and I hate the war from the bottom of my heart, because it made me unspeakably unhappy. We, wounded warriors, for the most part receive such a miserable reward that we really have to be ashamed that we were once patriots. As early as 1866, I took part in the war against Austria, fought at Trautenau and Königrip, and saw enough horrors.

In 1870, as a reserve, I was called up again and was wounded during the assault in S. Privas: my right arm was shot twice along. I lost a good position (I was....then a brewer) and then couldn't get it again. Since then, I have never been able to get back on my feet. The dope soon dissipated, and the disabled warrior could only feed on beggarly pennies and alms ...

In a world where people run like trained animals and are not capable of any other thought than to outsmart each other for the sake of mammon, in such a world they may consider me an eccentric, but I still feel in myself the divine thought of the world which is so beautifully expressed in the Sermon on the Mount.

It is my deepest conviction that war is only a trade on a large scale, a trade of ambitious and powerful people in the happiness of peoples.

And what only horrors do not experience at the same time! I will never forget them, those plaintive moans penetrating to the marrow of my bones. People who never do harm to each other kill each other like wild animals, and petty slave souls mix up the good god as an accomplice in these matters.

Our commander, Crown Prince Friedrich (later the noble Emperor Friedrich) wrote in his diary then: “War is an irony on the Gospel…”

People are beginning to understand the deception of patriotism in which all governments are trying so hard to keep them.

“But what will happen if there are no governments?”- they usually say.

Nothing will happen; it will only be that what was no longer needed for a long time and therefore superfluous and bad will be destroyed; the organ that, having become unnecessary, has become harmful, will be destroyed.

- “But if there are no governments, people will rape and kill each other”,- they usually say.

Why? Why would the destruction of an organization that arose as a result of violence and, according to legend, was passed on from generation to generation to produce violence - why would the destruction of such an organization that has lost its use cause people to rape and kill each other? It would seem, on the contrary, that the destruction of the organ of violence will do that that people will stop raping and killing each other.

If, however, even after the abolition of governments there will be violence, then it will obviously be less than what is being produced now, when there are organizations and regulations specially organized for the production of violence, under which violence and murder are recognized as good and useful.

The destruction of governments will only destroy, according to legend, the transient, unnecessary organization of violence and its justification.

"There will be no laws, no property, no courts, no police, no public education" - Mr. they usually say that they deliberately confuse the violence of power with the various activities of society.

The destruction of the organization of governments established to work violence against people does not in any way entail the destruction of either laws, or courts, or property, or police fences, or financial institutions, or public education.

On the contrary, the absence of the brute power of self-supporting governments will promote social organization without the need for violence. And the court, and public affairs, and public education, all this will be to the extent that the peoples need it; only that which was bad and hindered the free expression of the will of the peoples will be destroyed.

But even if we admit that in the absence of governments there will be turmoil and internal clashes, then even then the position of the peoples would be better than it is now.

The state of the nations is now that worsening it is hard to imagine. The people are all ruined, and ruin must inevitably go on and intensify.

All men are turned into military slaves and must wait every minute for an order to go to kill and be killed.

What else to expect? For ruined peoples to die of hunger? This is already starting in Russia, Italy and India. Or that, in addition to men, they would also take women into soldiers? In the Transvaal, this is already beginning.

So, if indeed the absence of governments meant anarchy (which it does not mean at all), then even then no disturbances of anarchy could be worse than the situation to which governments have already brought their peoples and to which they are leading them.

And therefore, liberation from patriotism and the destruction of the despotism of governments based on it cannot but be useful for people.

Come to your senses, people, and, for the sake of all the good both bodily and spiritual and the same good of your brothers and sisters, stop, think again, think about what you are doing!

Come to your senses and understand that your enemies are not the Boers, not the British, not the French, not the Germans, not the Czechs, not the Finns, not the Russians, but your enemies, only enemies - you yourself, supporting with your patriotism the governments that oppress you and make your misfortunes.

They undertook to protect you from danger and brought this imaginary position of protection to the point that you have all become soldiers, slaves, you are all ruined, you are being ruined more and more, and at any moment you can and should expect that the tensioned string will break, that a terrible beating of you and your friends will begin. children.

And no matter how great the beating and no matter how it ends, the situation will remain the same. In the same way, and with even greater intensity, governments will arm and ruin and corrupt you and your children, and to stop, to prevent this, no one will help you if you do not help yourself.

Help is only in one thing - in the destruction of that terrible clutch of the cone of violence, in which one or those who manage to climb to the top of this cone rule over the whole people and rule the more surely, the more cruel and inhuman they are, as we know from the Napoleons. , Nicholas I, Bismarcks, Chamberlains, Rhodes and our dictators who rule the peoples on behalf of the tsar.

There is only one way to break this linkage - awakening from the hypnosis of patriotism.

Understand that all the evil from which you suffer, you do to yourself, obeying those suggestions that emperors, kings, members of parliaments, rulers, military men, capitalists, clergy, writers, artists - all those who need this deception of patriotism in order to live by your labors.

Whoever you are - a Frenchman, a Russian, a Pole, an Englishman, an Irishman, a German, a Czech - understand that all your real human interests, whatever they may be - agricultural, industrial, commercial, artistic or scientific, all these interests are the same , as well as pleasures and joys, in no way contradict the interests of other peoples and states, and that you are bound by mutual assistance, the exchange of services, the joy of broad fraternal communication, the exchange of not only goods, but thoughts and feelings with people of other peoples.

Understand that the question of whether your government or another succeeded in capturing Wei Hai-wei, Port Arthur or Cuba, is not only indifferent to you, but any such seizure made by your government harms you because it inevitably entails any kind of influence on you by your government in order to force you to participate in the robberies and violence necessary for the capture and retention of the captured.

Understand that your life cannot be improved in the least by Alsace being German or French, and Ireland and Poland free or enslaved; whoever they are, you can live wherever you want; even if you were an Alsatian, an Irishman or a Pole, understand that your every kindling of patriotism will only worsen your position, because the enslavement in which your people find themselves has come only from the struggle of patriotisms, and every manifestation of patriotism in one people increases reaction against him in another.

Understand that you can be saved from all your misfortunes only when you free yourself from the obsolete idea of patriotism and the obedience to governments based on it, and when you boldly enter the realm of that higher one. the idea of fraternal unity of peoples, which has long since come into being and is calling you to itself from all sides.

If only people would understand that they are not the sons of any fatherlands and governments, but the sons of God, and therefore they cannot be either slaves or enemies of other people, and those crazy, no longer needed for anything, left over from antiquity, will be destroyed by themselves. destructive institutions called governments, and all the suffering, violence, humiliation and crime that they bring with them.

P.S. : At that time, Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy could not have known or imagined the existence in the future of such a friendship of peoples, which had no analogues in the world, and the friendship of peoples would be called the Union of Soviet Socialists. Republic That union, that friendship of peoples, which will fall apart in the early 90s and the idea of universal peace and brotherhood will be destroyed again. And the former peace and friendship will no longer be.

A war will begin on their own land - in Chechnya, with the people whose grandfathers and great-grandfathers fought shoulder to shoulder for our peaceful existence in the Great Patriotic War ... The peoples of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, Moldova will simply be called guest workers, and the peoples of the Caucasus - chocks or khachs ...

But, there was a model of peace and brotherhood. Was. And there was no hatred for each other. And there were no oligarchs. And the natural wealth of the people were. And all nations had prosperity. Will there be a revival? In our age?

Essay example (mini essays)

Morality is a set of generally significant values and norms formed on the basis of such categories as “good” and “evil”, “love for all living things”, “compassion”, “conscience” and “responsibility”, “non-possessive”, “moderation” , "humility". Of course, this is often not enough for those who implement the results of scientific progress. Standing on the verge of an ecological catastrophe, reaping the fruits of abuses in the production of weapons, political technologies, immoderate consumption, a modern person needs to learn to be guided by moral principles, to finally understand the meaning of morality, which L.N. Tolstoy.

Tolstoy L.N. Tolstoy L.N.

Tolstoy Lev Nikolaevich (1828 - 1910)
Russian writer Aphorisms, quotes - Tolstoy L.N. - biography
All thoughts that have huge consequences are always simple. Our good qualities harm us more in life than bad ones. A person is like a fraction: in the denominator - what he thinks about himself, in the numerator - what he really is. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction. Happy is he who is happy at home. Vanity ... It must be a characteristic feature and a special disease of our age. We must always marry in the same way as we die, that is, only when it is impossible otherwise. Time passes, but the spoken word remains. Happiness is not in always doing what you want, but in always wanting what you do. Most men demand virtues from their wives, which they themselves are not worth. All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Be truthful even in relation to a child: keep your promise, otherwise you will teach him to lie. If a teacher has only love for the job, he will be a good teacher. If the teacher has only love for the student, like a father, a mother, he will be better than the teacher who has read all the books, but has no love either for the work or for the students. If a teacher combines love for work and for students, he is a perfect teacher. All the disasters of people come not so much from the fact that they did not do what is necessary, but from the fact that they do what should not be done. In an immoral society, all inventions that increase man's power over nature are not only not good, but an undeniable and obvious evil. Labor is not a virtue, but an inevitable condition of a virtuous life. Your country breeds only moneybags. In the years before and after the Civil War, the spiritual life of your people flourished and bore fruit. Now you are miserable materialists. (1903, from an interview with the American journalist James Creelman) The easier it is for the teacher to teach, the harder it is for the students to learn. For the most part, it happens that you argue passionately only because you can’t understand what exactly the opponent wants to prove. Freeing oneself from labor is a crime. No matter how you say it, the native language will always remain native. When you want to speak to your heart's content, not a single French word comes into your head, but if you want to shine, then it's another matter. America, I'm afraid, believes only in the almighty dollar. Not the teacher who receives the upbringing and education of a teacher, but the one who has inner confidence that he exists, should be and cannot be otherwise. This certainty is rare and can only be proven by the sacrifices a person makes to his vocation. You can hate life only because of apathy and laziness. One girl was asked what is the most important person, what is the most important time and what is the most necessary thing? And she answered, thinking that the most important person is the one with whom you are communicating at this moment, the most important time is the time in which you are now living, and the most necessary thing is to do good to the person with whom you are dealing at every given moment. (the idea of one story) The most common and widespread reason for lying is the desire to deceive not people, but ourselves. We must live in such a way as not to be afraid of death and not to desire it. A woman who tries to be like a man is as ugly as an effeminate man. The morality of a person is visible in his attitude to the word. An undoubted sign of true science is the consciousness of the insignificance of what you know, in comparison with what is revealed. A slave who is content with his position is doubly a slave, because not only his body is in bondage, but also his soul. The fear of death is inversely proportional to the good life. We love people for the good we have done to them, and we do not love them for the evil we have done to them. A cowardly friend is more terrible than an enemy, because you fear the enemy, but you hope for a friend. The word is the deed. Exterminating each other in wars, we, like spiders in a jar, cannot come to anything else but to destroy each other. If you have doubts and do not know what to do, imagine that you will die by evening, and the doubt is immediately resolved: it is immediately clear that it is a matter of duty and that personal desires. The most miserable slave is a man who gives his mind into slavery and recognizes as true what his mind does not recognize. The smarter and kinder a person is, the more he notices goodness in people. Women, like queens, hold nine-tenths of the human race in captivity of slavery and hard work. And all from the fact that they were humiliated, deprived of their equal rights with men. Destroy one vice and ten will disappear. Nothing confuses the concepts of art so much as the recognition of authorities. Every art has two deviations from the path: vulgarity and artificiality. If how many heads - so many minds, then how many hearts - so many kinds of love. The best proof that the fear of death is not a fear of death, but of a false life, is that often people kill themselves out of fear of death. A lot is needed for art, but the main thing is fire! Great objects of art are great only because they are accessible and understandable to everyone. The main property in any art is a sense of proportion. Ideal is a guiding star. Without it, there is no firm direction, and no direction - no life. It always seems that we are loved for being good. And we do not guess that they love us because those who love us are good. To love is to live the life of the one you love. It is not shameful and not harmful not to know, but it is shameful and harmful to pretend that you know what you do not know. Education seems to be difficult only as long as we want, without educating ourselves, to educate our children or anyone else. If you understand that we can educate others only through ourselves, then the question of education is abolished and only one question remains: how should one live oneself? Only then is it easy to live with a person when you do not consider yourself higher, better than him, or him higher and better than yourself. Previously, they were afraid that objects that corrupt people would not fall into the number of objects of art, and they forbade everything. Now they are only afraid that they might be deprived of some pleasure given by art, and patronize everyone. I think that the latter error is much grosser than the first, and that its consequences are much more harmful. Don't be afraid of ignorance, be afraid of false knowledge. From him all the evil of the world. There is a strange, rooted misconception that cooking, sewing, washing, nursing are exclusively women's business, that it is even a shame for a man to do this. Meanwhile, the opposite is insulting: it is a shame for a man, often unoccupied, to spend time on trifles or do nothing while a tired, often weak, pregnant woman cooks, launders or nurses a sick child through force. A good actor can, it seems to me, perfectly play the most stupid things and thereby increase their harmful influence. Stop talking as soon as you notice that you are irritated by yourself or the person you are talking to. The unspoken word is golden. If I were a king, I would make a law that a writer who uses a word whose meaning he cannot explain is deprived of the right to write and receives a hundred lashes. It is not the quantity of knowledge that matters, but the quality of it. You can know a lot without knowing the most necessary. Knowledge is knowledge only when it is acquired by the efforts of one's thought, and not by memory. __________ "War and Peace", volume 1 *), 1863 - 1869 He spoke in that exquisite French language, which our grandfathers not only spoke, but also thought, and with those quiet, patronizing intonations that are characteristic of a significant person who has grown old in society and at court. - (about Prince Vasily Kuragin) Influence in the world is a capital that must be protected so that it does not disappear. Prince Vasily knew this, and once he realized that if he began to ask for everyone who asks him, then soon he would not be able to ask for himself, he rarely used his influence. - (Prince Vasily Kuragin) Drawing rooms, gossip, balls, vanity, insignificance - this is a vicious circle from which I cannot get out. [...] and at Anna Pavlovna's they listen to me. And this stupid society, without which my wife cannot live, and these women ... If only you could know what all these women of good society and women in general are! My father is right. Selfishness, vanity, stupidity, insignificance in everything - these are women when everything is shown as they are. You look at them in the light, it seems that there is something, but nothing, nothing, nothing! - (Prince Andrei Bolkonsky) Bilibin's conversation was constantly sprinkled with original, witty, complete phrases of common interest. These phrases were prepared in Bilibin's internal laboratory, as if on purpose, of a portable nature, so that insignificant secular people could conveniently memorize them and transfer them from living rooms to living rooms. The gentlemen who visited Bilibin, secular, young, rich and cheerful people, both in Vienna and here, made up a separate circle, which Bilibin, who was the head of this circle, called ours, les nеtres. This circle, which consisted almost exclusively of diplomats, apparently had its own interests of high society, relations with certain women, and the clerical side of the service, which had nothing to do with war and politics. Prince Vasily did not consider his plans. He even less thought to do evil to people in order to gain an advantage. He was only a man of the world who had succeeded in the world and made a habit out of this success. He constantly, depending on the circumstances, on rapprochements with people, drew up various plans and considerations, in which he himself did not fully realize, but which constituted the whole interest of his life. Not one or two such plans and considerations happened to him in use, but dozens, of which some were just beginning to appear to him, others were achieved, and still others were destroyed. He did not say to himself, for example: "This man is now in power, I must gain his confidence and friendship and through him arrange for a lump-sum allowance," or he did not say to himself: "Here, Pierre is rich, I must lure him to marry his daughter and borrow the 40,000 I need"; but a man in strength met him, and at that very moment instinct told him that this man could be useful, and Prince Vasily approached him and at the first opportunity, without preparation, instinctively, flattered, became familiar, talked about that, about what was needed. For such a young girl and such tact, such masterful manners! It comes from the heart! Happy will be the one whose it will be! With her, the most non-secular husband will involuntarily occupy the most brilliant place in the world.- (Anna Pavlovna to Pierre Bezukhov about Helen) Prince Andrei, like all people who grew up in the world, loved to meet in the world that which did not have a common secular imprint. And such was Natasha, with her surprise, joy and timidity, and even mistakes in French. He spoke with her especially tenderly and carefully. Sitting beside her, talking to her about the simplest and most insignificant subjects, Prince Andrei admired the joyful gleam in her eyes and smile, which related not to spoken speeches, but to her inner happiness. Anna Pavlovna's drawing room began to gradually fill up. The highest nobility of St. Petersburg arrived, people of the most heterogeneous in age and character, but the same in terms of the society in which everyone lived [...] - Have you seen it yet? or: - you don't know ma tante? (aunty) - Anna Pavlovna said to the visiting guests and very seriously led them to a little old woman in high bows, who swam out of another room, as soon as the guests began to arrive [...] All the guests performed the ceremony of greeting an unknown, uninteresting and unnecessary aunt to anyone. Anna Pavlovna followed their greetings with sad, solemn sympathy, tacitly approving them. Ma tante spoke to everyone in the same terms about his health, about her health and about the health of Her Majesty, which today was, thank God, better. All those who approached, without showing haste out of decency, with a sense of relief from the heavy duty they had performed, moved away from the old woman, so that they would not go up to her all evening. [...] Anna Pavlovna returned to her occupations as a mistress of the house and continued to listen and look, ready to give help to the point where the conversation was weakening. Just as the owner of a spinning shop, having seated the workers in their places, paces around the establishment, noticing the immobility or the unusual, creaking, too loud sound of the spindle, hurriedly walks, restrains or sets it in its proper course, so Anna Pavlovna, pacing around her drawing room, approached the silent or a mug that was talking too much, and with one word or movement would start up again a regular, decent conversational machine. [... ] For Pierre, brought up abroad, this evening of Anna Pavlovna was the first he saw in Russia. He knew that all the intelligentsia of St. Petersburg were gathered here, and his eyes widened like a child in a toy shop. He was afraid of missing the smart conversations he might overhear. Looking at the confident and graceful expressions of the faces gathered here, he kept waiting for something especially clever. [...] Anna Pavlovna's evening was started. The spindles from different sides evenly and incessantly rustled. Apart from ma tante, beside which sat only one elderly lady with a weepy, thin face, somewhat a stranger in this brilliant society, the society was divided into three circles. In one, more masculine, the center was the abbot; in the other, young, the beautiful Princess Helen, daughter of Prince Vasily, and the pretty, ruddy, too plump for her youth, little Princess Bolkonskaya. In the third Mortemar and Anna Pavlovna. The viscount was a pretty young man, with soft features and manners, who obviously considered himself a celebrity, but, out of good manners, modestly allowed himself to be used by the society in which he found himself. Anna Pavlovna, obviously, treated her guests to them. Just as a good maître d’hotel serves as something supernaturally beautiful that piece of beef that you don’t want to eat if you see it in a dirty kitchen, so this evening Anna Pavlovna served her guests first the viscount, then the abbot, as something supernaturally refined.

On the third day of the holidays there was to be one of those balls at Yogel's (dance teacher), which he gave on holidays for all his students. [...] Iogel had the funniest balls in Moscow. That's what the mothers said, looking at their adolescentes (girls) doing their newly learned pas; it was said by adolescentes and adolescents themselves (girls and boys) who danced till you drop; these grown girls and young people who came to these balls with the idea of descending to them and finding the best fun in them. In the same year, two marriages took place at these balls. Two pretty princesses Gorchakovs found suitors and got married, and all the more they let these balls into glory. What was special at these balls was that there was no host and hostess: there was, like fluff flying, bowing according to the rules of art, good-natured Yogel, who accepted tickets for lessons from all his guests; was that these balls were still attended only by those who wanted to dance and have fun, as 13- and 14-year-old girls want this, putting on long dresses for the first time. All, with rare exceptions, were or seemed pretty: they all smiled so enthusiastically and their eyes lit up so much. Sometimes the best students even danced pas de ch?le, of which the best was Natasha, distinguished by her grace; but at this, the last ball, only ecossaises, anglaises and the mazurka, which was just coming into fashion, danced. The hall was taken by Yogel to Bezukhov's house, and the ball was a great success, as everyone said. There were many pretty girls, and the Rostov young ladies were among the best. Both of them were especially happy and cheerful. That evening, Sonya, proud of Dolokhov's proposal, her refusal and explanation with Nikolai, was still circling at home, not allowing the girl to comb her braids, and now shone through with impetuous joy. Natasha, no less proud that she was in a long dress for the first time, at a real ball, was even happier. Both were in white, muslin dresses with pink ribbons. Natasha became in love from the very moment she entered the ball. She was not in love with anyone in particular, but she was in love with everyone. In the one she looked at at the moment she looked, she was in love with him. [...] They played the newly introduced mazurka; Nikolai could not refuse Yogel and invited Sonya. Denisov sat down next to the old women and, leaning on his saber, stamping his feet, told something merrily and made the old ladies laugh, looking at the dancing youth. Yogel in the first pair danced with Natasha, his pride and best student. Softly, gently moving his feet in his shoes, Yogel was the first to fly across the hall with Natasha, who was timid, but diligently doing her steps. Denisov did not take his eyes off her and tapped time with his saber, with an air that clearly said that he himself did not dance only because he did not want to, and not because he could not. In the middle of the figure, he called to him Rostov, who was passing by. - That's not it at all. Is this a Polish mazu? And she dances well. - Knowing that Denisov was even famous in Poland for his skill in dancing the Polish mazurka, Nikolai ran up to Natasha: - Go, choose Denisov. Natasha's turn, she got up and quickly fingering her shoes with bows, timidly, she ran alone through the hall to the corner where Denisov was sitting... He came out from behind the chairs, firmly took his lady by the hand, raised his head and put his foot only on horseback and in the mazurka Denisov's small stature was not visible, and he seemed to be the very fine fellow he felt himself to be. and, like a ball, rebounded resiliently from the floor and flew along in a circle, dragging his lady along with him. He silently flew half the hall on one leg, and it seemed he did not see the chairs standing in front of him and rushed straight at them; but suddenly, snapping his spurs and spreading his legs, he stopped on his heels, stood like that for a second, with a roar of spurs tapped his feet in one place, quickly turned around and, snapping his left foot with his right, again flew in a circle. Natasha guessed what he intended to do, and, not knowing how herself, followed him - surrendering to him. Now he circled her, now on his right, then on his left hand, then falling to his knees, circled her around him, and again jumped up and rushed forward with such swiftness, as if he intended, without taking a breath, to run across all the rooms; then he would suddenly stop again and make another new and unexpected knee. When he, briskly circling the lady in front of her seat, clicked his spur, bowing in front of her, Natasha did not even sit down to him. She fixed her eyes on him in bewilderment, smiling as if she did not recognize him. - What is it? she said. Despite the fact that Yogel did not recognize this mazurka as real, everyone was delighted with the skill of Denisov, they incessantly began to choose him, and the old people, smiling, began to talk about Poland and about the good old days. Denisov, flushed from the mazurka and wiping himself with a handkerchief, sat down next to Natasha and did not leave her the whole ball. "War and Peace", Volume 4 *), 1863 - 1869 The science of law considers the state and power, as the ancients considered fire, - as something absolutely existing. For history, however, the state and power are only phenomena, just as for the physics of our time, fire is not an element, but a phenomenon. From this fundamental difference between the views of history and the science of law, it follows that the science of law can tell in detail how, in its opinion, power should be arranged and what such power is, immobilely existing outside of time; but to historical questions about the significance of power that changes over time, it cannot answer anything. The life of peoples does not fit into the lives of several people, because the connection between these several people and peoples has not been found. The theory that this connection is based on the transfer of the totality of wills to historical persons is a hypothesis not supported by the experience of history. *) Text "War and Peace", Volume 1 - in Maxim Moshkov's Library Text "War and Peace", volume 2 - in the Library of Maxim Moshkov Text "War and Peace", volume 3 - in the Library of Maxim Moshkov Text "War and Peace", Volume 4 - in the Library of Maxim Moshkov "War and Peace", volume 3 *), 1863 - 1869 The actions of Napoleon and Alexander, on whose word it seemed that the event took place or not took place, were as little arbitrary as the action of every soldier who went on a campaign by lot or by recruitment. It could not be otherwise, because in order for the will of Napoleon and Alexander (those people on whom the event seemed to depend) to be fulfilled, the coincidence of innumerable circumstances was necessary, without one of which the event could not have taken place. It was necessary that millions of people in whose hands was real power, soldiers who fired, carried provisions and guns, it was necessary that they agreed to fulfill this will of individual and weak people and were led to this by countless complex, diverse reasons. Fatalism in history is inevitable for explaining unreasonable phenomena (that is, those whose rationality we do not understand). The more we try to rationally explain these phenomena in history, the more unreasonable and incomprehensible they become for us. Each person lives for himself, enjoys freedom to achieve his personal goals and feels with his whole being that he can now do or not do such and such an action; but as soon as he does it, so this action, committed at a certain moment in time, becomes irrevocable and becomes the property of history, in which it has not a free, but a predetermined significance. There are two aspects of life in every person: personal life, which is all the more free, the more abstract its interests, and spontaneous, swarm life, where a person inevitably fulfills the laws prescribed to him. A person consciously lives for himself, but serves as an unconscious tool for achieving historical, universal goals. A perfect deed is irrevocable, and its action, coinciding in time with millions of actions of other people, acquires historical significance. The higher a person stands on the social ladder, the more he is connected with great people, the more power he has over other people, the more obvious is the predestination and inevitability of his every action. When an apple is ripe and falls, why does it fall? Is it because it gravitates towards the earth, because the rod dries up, because it dries up in the sun, because it becomes heavier, because the wind shakes it, because the boy standing below wants to eat it? Nothing is the reason. All this is only a coincidence of the conditions under which every vital, organic, spontaneous event takes place. And the botanist who finds that the apple falls down because the cellulose decomposes and the like will be just as right and just as wrong as that child standing below who says that the apple fell down because he wanted to eat. him and that he prayed for it. Just as right and wrong will be the one who says that Napoleon went to Moscow because he wanted it, and because he died because Alexander wanted him to die: how right and wrong will he who says that he collapsed into a million pounds the dug-out mountain fell because the last worker struck under it for the last time with a pick. In historical events, the so-called great men are labels that give names to the event, which, like labels, have the least connection with the event itself. Each of their actions, which seems to them arbitrary for themselves, is in the historical sense involuntary, but is in connection with the entire course of history and is determined eternally. “I don’t understand what a skilled commander means,” Prince Andrei said with a sneer. - A skillful commander, well, one who foresaw all accidents ... well, guessed the thoughts of the enemy. - (Pierre Bezukhov)“Yes, it’s impossible,” said Prince Andrei, as if about a long-decided matter. - However, they say that war is like a chess game. - (Pierre Bezukhov)- Yes, with the only difference that in chess you can think as much as you like about each step, that you are there outside the conditions of time, and with the difference that a knight is always stronger than a pawn and two pawns are always stronger than one, and in war one a battalion is sometimes stronger than a division, and sometimes weaker than a company. The relative strength of the troops cannot be known to anyone. Believe me, if anything depended on the orders of the headquarters, then I would be there and make orders, but instead I have the honor to serve here, in the regiment with these gentlemen, and I think that tomorrow will really depend on us, and not from them ... Success has never depended and will not depend either on position, or on weapons, or even on numbers; and least of all from the position. - (Prince Andrei Bolkonsky)- And from what? - From the feeling that is in me ... in every soldier. ... The battle will be won by the one who is determined to win it. Why did we lose the battle near Austerlitz? Our loss was almost equal with the French, but we told ourselves very early that we had lost the battle - and lost. And we said this because we had no reason to fight there: we wanted to leave the battlefield as soon as possible. - (Prince Andrei Bolkonsky) War is not a courtesy, but the most disgusting thing in life, and one must understand this and not play war. This terrible necessity must be taken strictly and seriously. All in this: put aside lies, and war is war, not a toy. Otherwise, war is the favorite pastime of idle and frivolous people ... The military estate is the most honorable. And what is war, what is needed for success in military affairs, what are the morals of a military society? The purpose of the war is murder, the weapons of war are espionage, treason and encouragement, the ruin of the inhabitants, robbing them or stealing for the food of the army; deceit and lies, called stratagems; morals of the military class - lack of freedom, that is, discipline, idleness, ignorance, cruelty, debauchery, drunkenness. And despite that - this is the highest class, revered by all. All kings, except for the Chinese, wear a military uniform, and the one who killed the most people is given a big reward ... They will converge, like tomorrow, to kill each other, kill, maim tens of thousands of people, and then they will serve thanksgiving prayers for having beaten many people (whose number is still being added), and they proclaim victory, believing that the more people are beaten, the greater the merit. How God watches and listens to them from there! - (Prince Andrei Bolkonsky) (Kutuzov) listened to the reports brought to him, gave orders when it was required by subordinates; but, listening to the reports, he did not seem to be interested in the meaning of the words of what was said to him, but something else in the expression of the faces in the tone of speech that informed him interested him. Through many years of military experience, he knew and understood with his senile mind that it was impossible for one person to lead hundreds of thousands of people fighting death, and he knew that the fate of the battle was decided not by the orders of the commander in chief, not by the place on which the troops stood, not by the number of guns and killed people, and that elusive force called the spirit of the army, and he followed this force and led it, as far as it was in his power. The militia brought Prince Andrei to the forest, where the wagons stood and where there was a dressing station. ... Around the tents, more than two acres of space, lay, sat, stood bloody people in various clothes. ... Prince Andrei, as a regimental commander, walking over the unbandaged wounded, was carried closer to one of the tents and stopped, waiting for orders. ... One of the doctors... came out of the tent. ... After moving his head to the right and left for some time, he sighed and lowered his eyes. “Well, now,” he said to the words of the paramedic, who pointed him to Prince Andrei, and ordered him to be carried to the tent. A murmur arose from the crowd of waiting wounded. - It can be seen that in the next world the gentlemen live alone. Several tens of thousands of people lay dead in various positions and uniforms in the fields and meadows that belonged to the Davydovs and state peasants, in those fields and meadows where for hundreds of years the peasants of the villages of Borodino, Gorki, Shevardin and Semenovsky had simultaneously harvested and grazed cattle. At the dressing stations for the tithe, the grass and earth were saturated with blood. ... Over the whole field, previously so cheerfully beautiful, with its sparkles of bayonets and smoke in the morning sun, there was now a haze of dampness and smoke and smelled of strange acid of saltpeter and blood. Clouds gathered, and it began to rain on the dead, on the wounded, on the frightened, and on the exhausted, and on the doubting people. It was as if he was saying, "Enough, enough, people. Stop... Come to your senses. What are you doing?" Exhausted, without food and without rest, the people of both sides began to equally doubt whether they should still exterminate each other, and hesitation was noticeable on all faces, and in every soul the question was equally raised: “Why, for whom should I kill and be killed? Kill whoever you want, do what you want, and I don't want any more!" By the evening this thought had equally matured in the soul of everyone. Any moment all these people could be horrified by what they were doing, drop everything and run anywhere. But although by the end of the battle people felt the full horror of their act, although they would have been glad to stop, some incomprehensible, mysterious force still continued to guide them, and, sweaty, in gunpowder and blood, remaining one by three, artillerymen, although stumbling and suffocating from fatigue, they brought charges, loaded, directed, applied wicks; and the cannonballs just as quickly and cruelly flew from both sides and flattened the human body, and that terrible deed continued to be done, which is done not by the will of people, but by the will of the one who guides people and worlds. "But whenever there were conquests, there were conquerors; whenever there were upheavals in the state, there were great people," says history. Indeed, whenever there were conquerors, there were also wars, the human mind replies, but this does not prove that the conquerors were the causes of wars and that it was possible to find the laws of war in the personal activity of one person. Whenever, looking at my watch, I see that the hand has approached ten, I hear that the evangelization is beginning in the neighboring church, but from the fact that every time the hand comes to ten o'clock when the evangelization begins, I I have no right to conclude that the position of the arrow is the cause of the movement of the bells. The activities of a general have not the slightest resemblance to those activities that we imagine sitting freely in an office, analyzing some campaign on the map with a known number of troops, on either side, and in a known area, and starting our considerations with some famous moment. The Commander-in-Chief is never in those conditions of the beginning of some event, in which we always consider the event. The Commander-in-Chief is always in the middle of a moving series of events, and in such a way that he is never, at any moment, in a position to consider the full significance of an ongoing event. The event is imperceptibly, moment by moment, cut into its meaning, and at every moment of this successive, continuous cutting out of the event, the commander-in-chief is in the center the hardest game , intrigues, worries, dependencies, power, projects, advice, threats, deceptions, is constantly in need of answering the countless number of questions offered to him, always contradicting one another. This event - the abandonment of Moscow and its burning - was as inevitable as the retreat of the troops without a fight for Moscow after the Battle of Borodino. Every Russian person, not on the basis of conclusions, but on the basis of the feeling that lies in us and lay in our fathers, could predict what happened. ... The consciousness that this will be so, and will always be so, lay and lies in the soul of a Russian person. And this consciousness, and, moreover, the premonition that Moscow would be taken, lay in Russian Moscow society in the 12th year. Those who began to leave Moscow back in July and early August showed that they were waiting for this. ... "It's a shame to run away from danger; only cowards flee from Moscow," they were told. Rostopchin inspired them in his posters that it was shameful to leave Moscow. They were ashamed to receive the title of cowards, they were ashamed to go, but they still went, knowing that it was necessary to do so. Why were they driving? It cannot be assumed that Rostopchin frightened them with the horrors that Napoleon produced in the conquered lands. Wealthy, educated people were the first to leave, knowing very well that Vienna and Berlin remained intact and that there, during their occupation by Napoleon, the inhabitants had fun with the charming French, who were so loved then by Russian men and especially ladies. They went because for the Russian people there could be no question whether it would be good or bad under the control of the French in Moscow. It was impossible to be under the control of the French: it was the worst of all. The totality of the causes of phenomena is inaccessible to the human mind. But the need to find causes is embedded in the human soul. And the human mind, not delving into the innumerability and complexity of the conditions of phenomena, each of which separately can be represented as a cause, grabs at the first, most understandable approximation and says: here is the cause. In historical events (where the subject of observation is the actions of people), the most primitive rapprochement is the will of the gods, then the will of those people who stand in the most prominent historical place - historical heroes. But one has only to delve into the essence of each historical event, that is, into the activity of the entire mass of people who participated in the event, in order to be convinced that the will of the historical hero not only does not direct the actions of the masses, but is itself constantly guided. One of the most tangible and advantageous deviations from the so-called rules of war is the action of scattered people against people huddled together. This kind of action always manifests itself in a war that takes on a popular character. These actions consist in the fact that, instead of becoming a crowd against a crowd, people disperse separately, attack one by one and immediately flee when they are attacked by large forces, and then attack again when the opportunity presents itself. This was done by the Guerillas in Spain; this was done by the highlanders in the Caucasus; the Russians did it in 1812. A war of this kind was called guerrilla warfare, and it was believed that by calling it that, its meaning was explained. Meanwhile, this kind of war not only does not fit any rules, but is directly opposed to the well-known and recognized as an infallible tactical rule. This rule says that the attacker must concentrate his troops in order to be stronger than the enemy at the time of the battle. Guerrilla warfare (always successful, as history shows) is the exact opposite of this rule. This contradiction arises from the fact that military science accepts the strength of troops as identical with their numbers. Military science says that the more troops, the more power. When it is no longer possible to stretch further such elastic threads of historical reasoning, when the action is already clearly contrary to what all mankind calls good and even justice, historians have a saving concept of greatness. Greatness seems to exclude the possibility of a measure of good and bad. For the great - there is no evil. There is no horror that can be blamed on one who is great. "C" est grand! (It's majestic!) - say historians, and then there is no good or bad, but there is "grand" and "not grand". Grand - good, not grand - bad. Grand is a property, according to their concepts, of some special animals, which they call heroes. And Napoleon, getting home in a warm coat from not only dying comrades, but (in his opinion) the people he brought here, feels que c "est grand, and his soul is at peace. ... And it would never occur to anyone that recognition greatness, immeasurable by the measure of good and bad, is only the recognition of one's insignificance and immeasurable smallness. For us, with the measure of good and bad given to us by Christ, there is no immeasurable. And there is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth. When a person sees a dying animal , horror seizes him: what he himself is - his essence, in his eyes is obviously destroyed - ceases to be. But when a dying person is a person, and a loved one is felt, then, in addition to the horror of the destruction of life, a gap and a spiritual wound are felt , which, like a physical wound, sometimes kills, sometimes heals, but always hurts and is afraid of an external irritating touch. In the 12th and 13th years, Kutuzov was directly accused of mistakes. The sovereign was dissatisfied with him. And in the story written recently, by the highest command, it was said that Kutuzov was a cunning court liar who was afraid of the name of Napoleon and, with his mistakes near Krasnoye and near the Berezina, deprived the Russian troops of glory - a complete victory over the French. Such is the fate not of great people, not grand-homme, whom the Russian mind does not recognize, but the fate of those rare, always lonely people who, comprehending the will of Providence, subordinate their personal will to it. The hatred and contempt of the crowd punish these people for the enlightenment of higher laws. For Russian historians - it is strange and terrible to say - Napoleon is the most insignificant instrument of history - never and nowhere, even in exile, who did not show human dignity - Napoleon is an object of admiration and delight; he grand. Kutuzov, the man who, from the beginning to the end of his activity in 1812, from Borodin to Vilna, never betraying himself with a single action, not a word, is an extraordinary example of history of self-denial and awareness in the present of the future meaning of an event, - Kutuzov seems to them something indefinite and pathetic, and, speaking of Kutuzov and the 12th year, they always seem to be a little ashamed. Meanwhile, it is difficult to imagine a historical person whose activity would be so invariably and constantly directed towards the same goal. It is difficult to imagine a goal more worthy and more in line with the will of the whole people. It is even more difficult to find another example in history where the goal set by a historical person would be so completely achieved as the goal towards which Kutuzov’s entire activity was directed in 1812. This simple, modest and therefore truly majestic figure (Kutuzov) could not lie down in that deceitful form of a European hero, allegedly controlling people, which history invented. For a lackey there can be no great person, because the lackey has his own idea of greatness. If one assumes, as historians do, that great men lead mankind to certain goals, which are either the greatness of Russia or France, or the equilibrium of Europe, or the spreading of the ideas of the revolution, or general progress, or whatever it is, it is impossible to explain the phenomena of history without the concepts of chance and genius. ... "Chance made the situation; genius took advantage of it," says history. But what is a case? What is a genius? The words chance and genius do not designate anything really existing and therefore cannot be defined. These words only denote a certain degree of understanding of phenomena. I do not know why such and such a phenomenon occurs; I think I can't know; therefore I do not want to know and I say: chance. I see a force producing an action disproportionate to universal human properties; I don’t understand why this is happening, and I say: genius. For a herd of rams, that ram, which every evening is driven off by a shepherd into a special stall to feed and becomes twice as thick as the others, must seem like a genius. And the fact that every evening this very ram ends up not in a common sheepfold, but in a special stall for oats, and that this very same ram, drenched in fat, is killed for meat, must seem like an amazing combination of genius with a whole series of extraordinary accidents. . But sheep need only stop thinking that everything that is done to them is only to achieve their sheep goals; it is worth admitting that the events happening to them may have goals that are incomprehensible to them - and they will immediately see unity, consistency in what happens to the fattened ram. If they do not know for what purpose he was fattening, then at least they will know that everything that happened to the ram did not happen by accident, and they will no longer need the concept of either chance or genius. Only by renouncing the knowledge of a close, understandable goal and recognizing that the ultimate goal is inaccessible to us, we will see consistency and expediency in the life of historical figures; we will discover the reason for the action that they produce, disproportionate to universal human properties, and we will not need the words chance and genius. Abandoning knowledge ultimate goal , we will clearly understand that just as it is impossible to invent for any plant other colors and seeds more appropriate to it than those that it produces, in the same way it is impossible to invent two other people, with all their past, which corresponded to such an extent, to such smallest details, to the appointment that they were supposed to fulfill. The subject of history is the life of peoples and mankind. It seems impossible to directly catch and embrace in a word - to describe the life of not only mankind, but one people. All ancient historians used the same technique to describe and capture the seemingly elusive - the life of the people. They described the activities of individual people ruling the people; and this activity expressed for them the activity of the whole people. To questions about how individual people forced peoples to act according to their will and how the very will of these people was controlled, the ancients answered: to the first question - by recognizing the will of the deity, which subordinated the peoples to the will of one chosen person; and to the second question, by the recognition of the same deity who directed this will of the chosen one to the intended goal. For the ancients, these questions were resolved by faith in the direct participation of the deity in the affairs of mankind. Modern history has rejected both of these propositions in its theory. It would seem that, having rejected the beliefs of the ancients about the subordination of people to a deity and about a certain goal towards which peoples are led, the new history should have studied not the manifestations of power, but the causes that form it. But the new history did not. Rejecting the views of the ancients in theory, it follows them in practice. Instead of people endowed with divine power and directly guided by the will of a deity, the new history has either heroes gifted with extraordinary, inhuman abilities, or simply people of a wide variety of qualities, from monarchs to journalists who lead the masses. Instead of the former goals pleasing to the deity, the goals of the peoples: Jewish, Greek, Roman, which the ancients presented as the goals of the movement of mankind, the new history set its own goals - the benefits of French, German, English and, in its highest abstraction, the goals of the benefit of the civilization of all mankind, under which of course, usually peoples occupying a small northwestern corner of a large mainland. As long as the histories of individuals are being written - whether they are Caesars, Alexandras or Luthers and Voltaires, and not the history of all, without one exception, all the people who take part in the event - there is no way to describe the movement of mankind without a concept of the force that makes people to direct their activities towards one goal. And the only such concept known to historians is power. Power is the totality of the wills of the masses, transferred by express or tacit consent to the rulers elected by the masses. Historical science so far in relation to the questions of mankind is similar to circulating money - banknotes and specie. Biographical and private folk stories similar to banknotes. They can walk and turn, satisfying their purpose, without harm to anyone, and even with benefit, until the question arises of what they are provided with. One has only to forget about the question of how the will of the characters produces events, and the stories of the Thiers will be interesting, instructive, and, moreover, will have a touch of poetry. But just as doubt about the real value of paper money arises either from the fact that, since it is easy to make them, they will begin to make a lot of them, or from the fact that they want to take gold for them, in the same way there arises a doubt about the real meaning of stories. of this kind, either from the fact that there are too many of them, or from the fact that someone in the simplicity of his soul asks: by what force did Napoleon do this? that is, he wants to exchange a walking piece of paper for the pure gold of a real concept. General historians and historians of culture are like people who, recognizing the inconvenience of banknotes, would decide instead of paper to make a voiced coin from a metal that does not have the density of gold. And the coin would indeed come out voiced, but only voiced. A piece of paper could still deceive those who did not know; and a coin that is voiced, but not valuable, cannot deceive anyone. Just as gold is only gold when it can be used not only for exchange, but also for a cause, so general historians will only be gold when they are able to answer the essential question of history: what is power? General historians answer this question inconsistently, and cultural historians dismiss it altogether, answering something completely different. And just as tokens resembling gold can only be used between an assembly of people who have agreed to recognize them as gold, and between those who do not know the properties of gold, so general historians and historians of culture, without answering the essential questions of mankind, for some then they serve their purposes as a walking coin for universities and a crowd of readers - hunters for serious books, as they call it. "War and Peace", Volume 2 *), 1863 - 1869 On December 31, on the eve of the new year 1810, there was a ball at the Ekaterininsky grandee. The ball was supposed to be the diplomatic corps and the sovereign. On the Promenade des Anglais, the famous house of a nobleman shone with countless lights of illumination. At the illuminated entrance with red cloth stood the police, and not only the gendarmes, but the police chief at the entrance and dozens of police officers. The carriages drove off, and new ones all drove up with red footmen and with footmen in feathers on their hats. Men in uniforms, stars and ribbons came out of the carriages; ladies in satin and ermine carefully descended the noisily laid steps, and hurriedly and soundlessly passed along the cloth of the entrance. Almost every time a new carriage drove up, a whisper ran through the crowd and hats were taken off. - Sovereign? ... No, minister ... prince ... envoy ... Can't you see the feathers? ... - said from the crowd. One of the crowd, dressed better than the others, seemed to know everyone, and called by name the noblest nobles of that time. [...] Together with the Rostovs, Marya Ignatievna Peronskaya, a friend and relative of the countess, a thin and yellow maid of honor of the old court, who led the provincial Rostovs in the highest St. Petersburg society, went to the ball. At 10 pm, the Rostovs were supposed to call for the maid of honor to the Tauride Garden; and meanwhile it was already five minutes to ten, and the young ladies were still not dressed. Natasha was going to the first big ball in her life. She got up that day at 8 o'clock in the morning and was in feverish anxiety and activity all day long. All her strength, from the very morning, was focused on ensuring that they all: she, mother, Sonya were dressed in the best possible way. Sonya and the countess vouched for her completely. The countess was supposed to be wearing a masaka velvet dress, they were wearing two white smoky dresses on pink, silk covers with roses in the corsage. The hair had to be combed a la grecque (in Greek) . Everything essential had already been done: the legs, arms, neck, ears were already especially carefully, according to the ballroom, washed, perfumed and powdered; shod already were silk, fishnet stockings and white satin shoes with bows; the hair was almost finished. Sonya finished dressing, the countess too; but Natasha, who worked for everyone, fell behind. She was still sitting in front of the mirror in a peignoir draped over her thin shoulders. Sonya, already dressed, stood in the middle of the room and, pressing painfully with her little finger, pinned the last ribbon that squealed under the pin. [...] It was decided to be at the ball at half past ten, and Natasha still had to get dressed and stop by the Tauride Garden. [...] The case was behind Natasha's skirt, which was too long; it was hemmed by two girls, hastily biting the threads. A third, with pins in her lips and teeth, ran from the countess to Sonya; the fourth held the entire smoky dress on a high-raised hand. [...] - Excuse me, young lady, allow me, - said the girl, kneeling, pulling at her dress and turning the pins from one side of her mouth to the other. - Your will! - Sonya cried out with despair in her voice, looking at Natasha's dress, - your will, again long! Natasha stepped aside to look around in the dressing-glass. The dress was long. “By God, madam, nothing is long,” said Mavrusha, who was crawling along the floor after the young lady. “Well, it’s a long time, so we’ll sweep it, we’ll sweep it in a minute,” said the resolute Dunyasha, taking out a needle from a handkerchief on her chest and again set to work on the floor. [...] At a quarter past eleven we finally got into the carriages and drove off. But still it was necessary to stop by the Tauride Garden. Peronskaya was already ready. Despite her old age and ugliness, exactly the same thing happened with her as with the Rostovs, although not with such haste (for her it was a habitual thing), but her old, ugly body was also perfumed, washed, powdered, also carefully washed behind the ears. , and even, and just like at the Rostovs, the old maid enthusiastically admired the outfit of her mistress when she went into the living room in a yellow dress with a cipher. Peronskaya praised the Rostovs' toilets. The Rostovs praised her taste and dress, and, taking care of their hair and dresses, at eleven o'clock they got into the carriages and drove off. Natasha had not had a moment of freedom since the morning of that day, and had never had time to think about what lay ahead of her. In the damp, cold air, in the cramped and incomplete darkness of the swaying carriage, for the first time she vividly imagined what awaited her there, at the ball, in the illuminated halls - music, flowers, dances, sovereign, all the brilliant youth of St. Petersburg. What awaited her was so wonderful that she did not even believe that it would be: it was so inconsistent with the impression of cold, crowdedness and darkness of the carriage. She understood everything that awaited her only when, having walked along the red cloth of the entrance, she entered the hallway, took off her fur coat and walked beside Sonya in front of her mother between the flowers along the illuminated stairs. Only then did she remember how she had to behave at the ball and tried to adopt that majestic manner that she considered necessary for a girl at the ball. But fortunately for her, she felt that her eyes were running wide: she could not see anything clearly, her pulse beat a hundred times a minute, and the blood began to beat at her heart. She could not adopt the manner that would have made her ridiculous, and she walked, dying from excitement and trying with all her might only to hide it. And this was the very manner that most of all suited her. In front and behind them, talking in the same low voice and also in ball gowns, the guests entered. The mirrors on the stairs reflected ladies in white, blue, pink dresses, with diamonds and pearls on their open arms and necks. Natasha looked into the mirrors and in the reflection she could not distinguish herself from others. Everything was mixed in one brilliant procession. At the entrance to the first hall, a uniform rumble of voices, steps, greetings - deafened Natasha; the light and brilliance blinded her even more. The host and hostess, who had been standing at the front door for half an hour and saying the same words to those who came in: "charm? de vous voir" (in awe to see you) , we also met the Rostovs and Peronskaya. Two girls in white dresses, with identical roses in their black hair, sat down in the same way, but the hostess involuntarily fixed her gaze longer on thin Natasha. She looked at her, and smiled at her alone, in addition to her master's smile. Looking at her, the hostess remembered, perhaps, her golden, irrevocable girlish time, and her first ball. The owner also looked after Natasha and asked the count, who is his daughter? - Charmante! he said, kissing the tips of his fingers. Guests were standing in the hall, crowding at the front door, waiting for the sovereign. The Countess placed herself in the front row of this crowd. Natasha heard and felt that several voices asked about her and looked at her. She realized that those who paid attention to her liked her, and this observation calmed her somewhat. "There are people like us, there are worse than us," she thought. Peronskaya called the countess the most significant persons who were at the ball. [...] Suddenly everything stirred, the crowd began to talk, moved, parted again, and between the two parted rows, with the sounds of music playing, the sovereign entered. Behind him were the owner and mistress. The emperor walked quickly, bowing to the right and left, as if trying to get rid of this first minute of the meeting as soon as possible. The musicians played Polish, known then for the words composed on it. These words began: "Alexander, Elizabeth, you delight us ..." The sovereign went into the living room, the crowd rushed to the doors; several faces with changed expressions hurried back and forth. The crowd again retreated from the doors of the drawing room, in which the sovereign appeared, talking with the hostess. Some young man with a confused look was advancing on the ladies, asking them to step aside. Some ladies with faces expressing complete forgetfulness of all the conditions of the world, spoiling their toilets, crowded forward. Men began to approach the ladies and line up in Polish pairs. Everything parted, and the emperor, smiling and leading the hostess of the house out of time by the hand, went out of the doors of the drawing room. Behind him were the owner with M.A. Naryshkina, then envoys, ministers, various generals, whom Peronskaya called incessantly. More than half of the ladies had cavaliers and were walking or preparing to go to Polskaya. Natasha felt that she remained with her mother and Sonya among the smaller part of the ladies pushed back to the wall and not taken in Polskaya. She stood with her slender arms lowered, and with a measuredly rising, slightly defined chest, holding her breath, with shining, frightened eyes, looked in front of her, with an expression of readiness for the greatest joy and the greatest grief. She was not interested in either the sovereign or all the important persons that Peronskaya pointed out - she had one thought: “is it really that no one will come up to me, really I won’t dance between the first, really I won’t be noticed by all these men who now, they don't seem to see me, and if they look at me, they look with such an expression, as if they say: Ah, it's not her, there's nothing to look at. No, it can't be!" she thought. - "They must know how I want to dance, how well I dance, and how fun it will be for them to dance with me." The sounds of Polish, which had gone on for quite some time, were already beginning to sound sad, a memory in Natasha's ears. She wanted to cry. Peronskaya moved away from them. The count was at the other end of the hall, the countess, Sonya and she stood alone as if in a forest in this alien crowd, uninteresting and unnecessary to anyone. Prince Andrei walked past them with some lady, apparently not recognizing them. The handsome Anatole, smiling, said something to the lady he was leading, and looked at Natasha's face with the look with which they look at the walls. Boris walked past them twice and each time turned away. Berg and his wife, who were not dancing, approached them. This family rapprochement here, at the ball, seemed insulting to Natasha, as if there was no other place for family conversations except at the ball. [...] Finally, the sovereign stopped beside his last lady (he danced with three), the music stopped; the preoccupied adjutant ran up to the Rostovs, asking them to move somewhere else, although they were standing against the wall, and the distinct, cautious and fascinatingly measured sounds of a waltz rang out from the choir. The emperor looked at the hall with a smile. A minute passed and no one started yet. The adjutant manager approached Countess Bezukhova and invited her. She raised her hand, smiling, and laid it, without looking at him, on the adjutant's shoulder. The adjutant-manager, a master of his craft, confidently, unhurriedly and measuredly, hugging his lady tightly, set off with her first on a glide path, along the edge of the circle, at the corner of the hall, grabbed her left hand, turned her, and because of the ever-accelerating sounds of music were heard only measured clicks of the spurs of the adjutant's quick and dexterous legs, and every three beats at the turn, the fluttering velvet dress of his lady seemed to flare up. Natasha looked at them and was ready to cry that it was not she who was dancing this first round of the waltz. Prince Andrei, in his colonel's white (for cavalry) uniform, in stockings and boots, lively and cheerful, stood in the forefront of the circle, not far from the Rostovs. [...] Prince Andrei watched these cavaliers and ladies, who were timid in the presence of the sovereign, trembling with the desire to be invited. Pierre went up to Prince Andrei and grabbed his hand. - You always dance. Here is my protege, young Rostova, invite her [...] - Where? Bolkonsky asked. “I’m sorry,” he said, turning to the baron, “we will finish this conversation in another place, but at the ball we have to dance.” - He stepped forward, in the direction that Pierre indicated to him. Natasha's desperate, fading face caught Prince Andrei's eyes. He recognized her, guessed her feelings, realized that she was a beginner, remembered her conversation at the window, and with a cheerful expression approached Countess Rostova. “Let me introduce you to my daughter,” said the countess, blushing. “I have the pleasure of being acquainted, if the countess remembers me,” said Prince Andrei with a courteous and low bow, completely contradicting Peronskaya’s remarks about his rudeness, going up to Natasha, and raising his hand to hug her waist even before he finished the invitation to dance. He suggested a waltz tour. That fading expression on Natasha's face, ready for despair and delight, suddenly lit up with a happy, grateful, childish smile. “I have been waiting for you for a long time,” as if this frightened and happy girl said, with her smile that appeared because of ready tears, raising her hand on the shoulder of Prince Andrei. They were the second couple to enter the circle. Prince Andrei was one of the best dancers of his time. Natasha danced superbly. Her feet in ballroom satin shoes quickly, easily and independently of her did their job, and her face shone with the delight of happiness. Her bare neck and arms were thin and ugly. Compared to Helen's shoulders, her shoulders were thin, her chest indefinite, her arms thin; but Helen already seemed to have varnish from all the thousands of glances that glided over her body, and Natasha seemed like a girl who was naked for the first time, and who would be very ashamed of it if she had not been assured that it was so necessary. Prince Andrei loved to dance, and wanting to quickly get rid of the political and intelligent conversations with which everyone turned to him, and wanting to quickly break this annoying circle of embarrassment formed by the presence of the sovereign, he went to dance and chose Natasha, because Pierre pointed her out to him. and because she was the first of the pretty women that caught his eye; but as soon as he embraced this thin, mobile body, and she moved so close to him and smiled so close to him, the wine of her charms hit him in the head: he felt revived and rejuvenated when, catching his breath and leaving her, he stopped and began to look on the dancers. After Prince Andrei, Boris approached Natasha, inviting her to dance, and that adjutant dancer who started the ball, and still young people, and Natasha, passing her excess gentlemen to Sonya, happy and flushed, did not stop dancing the whole evening. She did not notice and did not see anything that occupied everyone at this ball. She not only did not notice how the sovereign spoke for a long time with the French envoy, how he spoke especially graciously with such and such a lady, how the prince did such and such and said such and such, how Helen had great success and received special attention such and such; she did not even see the sovereign and noticed that he left only because after his departure the ball became more lively. One of the merry cotillions, before supper, Prince Andrei again danced with Natasha. [...] Natasha was as happy as ever in her life. She was at that highest stage of happiness when a person becomes completely trusting and does not believe in the possibility of evil, misfortune and grief. [...] In Natasha's eyes, all those who were at the ball were equally kind, sweet, wonderful people, loving friend friend: no one could offend each other, and therefore everyone should have been happy. "Anna Karenina" *), 1873 - 1877 Respect was invented to hide the empty space where love should be. - (Anna Karenina to Vronsky) This is a dandy from St. Petersburg, they are made by car, they are all the same, and everything is rubbish. - (Prince Shcherbatsky, Kitty's father, about Count Alexei Vronsky) Petersburg higher circle, in fact, one; everyone knows each other, they even visit each other. But this great circle has its subdivisions. Anna Arkadyevna Karenina had friends and close connections in three different circles. One circle was the service, official circle of her husband, consisting of his colleagues and subordinates, connected and disconnected in the most diverse and whimsical way in social conditions. Anna could now hardly recall the feeling of almost pious respect which she had at first held for these persons. Now she knew all of them, as they know each other in a county town; she knew who had what habits and weaknesses, who had what kind of boot squeezes his leg; knew their relationship to each other and to the main center; she knew who clings to whom and how and by what, and who converges and diverges with whom and in what; but this circle of governmental, male interests could never, despite the suggestions of Countess Lidia Ivanovna, interest her, she avoided it. Another circle close to Anna was the one through which Alexey Alexandrovich made his career. The center of this circle was Countess Lidia Ivanovna. It was a circle of old, ugly, virtuous and pious women and smart, learned, ambitious men. One of the smart people belonging to this circle called him "the conscience of St. Petersburg society." Aleksey Alexandrovich cherished this circle very much, and Anna, who knew how to get along with everyone so well, found herself friends in this circle in the early days of her Petersburg life. Now, on her return from Moscow, this circle had become unbearable for her. It seemed to her that she and all of them were pretending, and she became so bored and uncomfortable in this company that she went to see Countess Lidia Ivanovna as little as possible. The third circle, finally, where she had connections, was the light itself - the light of balls, dinners, brilliant toilets, the light, holding on to the courtyard with one hand so as not to descend to half-light, which the members of this circle thought they despised, but with which tastes he had not only similar ones, but the same ones. Her connection with this circle was maintained through Princess Betsy Tverskaya, the wife of her cousin, who had a hundred and twenty thousand income and who from the very appearance of Anna in the world especially loved her, looked after her and drew her into her circle, laughing at the circle of Countess Lidia Ivanovna . “When I’m old and ugly, I’ll be the same,” said Betsy, “but for you, for a young, pretty woman, it’s too early to go to this almshouse. Anna at first avoided, as far as she could, this light of the Princess of Tverskoy, since he demanded expenses above her means, and, to her liking, she preferred the first; but after the trip to Moscow, the opposite happened. She avoided her moral friends and traveled to the big world. There she met Vronsky and experienced an exhilarating joy at these meetings. Mom is taking me to the ball: it seems to me that she only takes me then in order to marry me as soon as possible and get rid of me. I know it's not true, but I can't shake these thoughts away. I cannot see the so-called suitors. It seems to me that they take measurements from me. Before, it was a simple pleasure for me to go somewhere in a ball gown, I admired myself; Now I'm embarrassed, embarrassed. - (Kitty)- So now when is the ball? - (Anna Karenina)- Next week, and a fine ball. One of those balls that are always fun. - (Kitty)- Are there any places where it's always fun? Anna said with a gentle sneer. - Strange, but there is. The Bobrischevs always have fun, the Nikitins too, and the Meshkovs are always bored. Didn't you notice? “No, my soul, for me there are no more balls where it’s fun,” said Anna, and Kitty saw in her eyes that special world that was not open to her. - For me, there are those that are less difficult and boring ... - How can you be bored at the ball? - Why can't I be bored at the ball? Kitty noticed that Anna knew what the answer would be. Because you are always the best. Anna had the ability to blush. She blushed and said: - First of all, never; and secondly, if it were, then why should I? - Are you going to this ball? Kitty asked. - I think that it will be impossible not to go. [...] - I'll be very glad if you go - I'd like to see you at the ball. - At least, if I have to go, I will console myself with the thought that it will make you happy... [...] And I know why you invite me to the ball. You expect a lot from this ball, and you want everyone to be here, everyone to take part. [...] how good your time is. I remember and know this blue fog, like that on the mountains in Switzerland. This fog that covers everything at that blissful time when childhood is about to end, and from this huge circle, happy, cheerful, the path is becoming narrower and narrower, and it is fun and eerie to enter this enfilade, although it seems both bright and beautiful... Who hasn't been through this? *) Text "Anna Karenina" - in Maxim Moshkov's Library The ball had just begun when Kitty and her mother walked up the large, light-flooded staircase lined with flowers and lackeys in powdered and red caftans. A rustle of movement, steady as in a beehive, rushed from the hall, and while they were adjusting their hair and dresses in front of a mirror on the platform between the trees, the cautiously distinct sounds of the violins of the orchestra, which began the first waltz, were heard from the hall. An old civilian, who was straightening his gray temples at another mirror and pouring out the smell of perfume from himself, ran into them on the stairs and stood aside, apparently admiring Kitty, who was unfamiliar to him. A beardless young man, one of those secular youths whom the old Prince Shcherbatsky called tyutki, in an extremely open waistcoat, adjusting his white tie as he walked, bowed to them and, running past, returned, inviting Kitty to a quadrille. The first quadrille had already been given to Vronsky, she had to give this young man the second. The military man, fastening his glove, stepped aside at the door and, stroking his mustache, admired the pink Kitty. Despite the fact that the toilet, the hairdo and all the preparations for the ball cost Kitty a lot of work and consideration, now, in her complex tulle dress on a pink cover, she entered the ball as freely and simply as if all these rosettes, lace, all the details toilets did not cost her and her family a minute of attention, as if she had been born in this tulle, lace, with this high hairdo, with a rose and two leaves on top of it. When the old princess, in front of the entrance to the hall, wanted to straighten the wrapped ribbon of her belt around her, Kitty deviated slightly. She felt that everything should be fine and graceful on her by itself, and that nothing needed to be corrected. Kitty was on one of her happy days. The dress was not crowded anywhere, the lace beret did not go down anywhere, the rosettes did not crumple and did not come off; pink shoes with high arched heels did not pinch, but cheered up the foot. Thick braids of blond hair held like their own on a small head. All three buttons were fastened without breaking on a high glove that wrapped around her hand without changing its shape. The black velvet of the medallion surrounded her neck especially tenderly. This velvet was lovely, and at home, looking at her neck in the mirror, Kitty felt that this velvet was talking. There could still be doubt about everything else, but the velvet was lovely. Kitty smiled here at the ball too, glancing at her in the mirror. Kitty felt a cold marbling in her bare shoulders and arms, a feeling she especially loved. The eyes were shining, and the ruddy lips could not help but smile from the consciousness of their attractiveness. No sooner had she entered the hall and reached the tulle-ribbon-lace-colored crowd of ladies who were waiting for an invitation to dance (Kitty never stood still in this crowd), when she was invited to a waltz, and the best cavalier, the main cavalier in the ballroom hierarchy, invited her, the famous conductor of balls, master of ceremonies, a married, handsome and stately man Yegorushka Korsunsky. Having just left Countess Banina, with whom he danced the first round of the waltz, he, looking around his household, that is, several couples who had begun to dance, saw Kitty coming in and ran up to her with that special, cheeky amble characteristic only of ball conductors, and, bowing, did not even asking if she wanted to, raised his hand to hug her thin waist. She looked around to whom to pass the fan to, and the hostess, smiling at her, took it. - It's good that you arrived on time, - he told her, hugging her waist, - and what a way to be late. She laid her left hand bent on his shoulder, and her little feet in pink shoes moved quickly, lightly and measuredly to the beat of the music on the slippery parquet. "You're resting while waltzing with you," he told her, setting off on the first slow steps of the waltz. - Charm, what ease, precision, - he said to her what he said to almost all good acquaintances. She smiled at his praise and continued to survey the hall over his shoulder. She was not a newcomer, whose faces at the ball merge into one magical impression; she was not a girl worn out at balls, to whom all the faces of the ball were so familiar that they were bored; but she was in the middle of these two—she was excited, and at the same time she possessed herself so much that she could observe. In the left corner of the hall, she saw, grouped the color of society. There was the impossibly naked beauty Lidi, Korsunsky's wife, there was the hostess, there Krivin shone with his bald head, always being where the flower of society was; young men looked there, not daring to approach; and there she found Stiva with her eyes and then saw Anna's lovely figure and head in a black velvet dress. [...] - Well, another tour? You are not tired? said Korsunsky, slightly out of breath. - No, thank you. - Where can I take you? - Karenina is here, it seems ... take me to her. - Where do you order. And Korsunsky waltzed, moderate his pace, straight at the crowd in the left corner of the hall, saying: "Pardon, mesdames, pardon, pardon, mesdames", and, maneuvering between the sea of lace, tulle and ribbons and not catching a feather, turned his lady around sharply , so that her thin legs in fishnet stockings opened, and the train was blown apart by a fan and covered Krivin's knees with it. Korsunsky bowed, straightened his open chest, and held out his hand to lead her to Anna Arkadyevna. Kitty, blushing, removed the train from Krivin's knees and, whirling a little, looked around, looking for Anna. Anna was not in lilac, as Kitty certainly wanted, but in a black, low-cut velvet dress that showed off her chiseled, like old ivory, full shoulders and breasts, and rounded arms with a thin, tiny hand. The whole dress was trimmed with Venetian guipure. On her head, in black hair, her own without admixture, was a small garland pansies and the same on a black ribbon belt between white lace. Her hair was invisible. Only noticeable, decorating her, were those masterful short ringlets of curly hair, always knocked out at the back of her head and temples. There was a string of pearls on a chiseled strong neck. [...] Vronsky went up to Kitty, reminding her of the first quadrille and regretting that all this time he had not had the pleasure of seeing her. Kitty gazed admiringly at Anna as she waltzed and listened to him. She expected him to invite her to the waltz, but he did not, and she looked at him in surprise. He blushed and hurriedly invited her to waltz, but he had just put his arms around her thin waist and taken the first step, when suddenly the music stopped. Kitty looked at his face, which was at such a close distance from her, and for a long time afterwards, several years later, this look, full of love, with which she then looked at him and to which he did not answer her, cut her heart with painful shame. - Pardon, pardon! Waltz, waltz! - Korsunsky shouted from the other side of the hall and, picking up the first young lady that came across, began to dance himself. Vronsky went through several waltz tours with Kitty. After the waltz, Kitty went up to her mother, and had hardly had time to say a few words to Nordston when Vronsky had already come to fetch her for the first quadrille. During the quadrille, nothing significant was said. [...] Kitty didn't expect more from a quadrille. She waited with bated breath for the mazurka. It seemed to her that everything should be decided in the mazurka. The fact that he did not invite her to the mazurka during the quadrille did not disturb her. She was sure that she was dancing the mazurka with him, as at previous balls, and she refused the mazurka to five, saying that she was dancing. The whole ball until the last quadrille was for Kitty a magical dream of joyful colors, sounds and movements. She did not dance only when she felt too tired and asked for rest. But, dancing the last quadrille with one of the boring young men, who could not be refused, she happened to be vis-a-vis with Vronsky and Anna. She had not met Anna since her arrival, and then suddenly she saw her again completely new and unexpected. She saw in her the trait of exhilaration from success that she knew so well. She saw that Anna was drunk with the wine of admiration that she aroused. She knew this feeling and knew its signs and saw them on Anna - she saw a trembling, flashing gleam in her eyes and a smile of happiness and excitement, involuntarily bending her lips, and a distinct grace, fidelity and ease of movement. [...] The whole ball, the whole world, everything was shrouded in mist in Kitty's soul. Only the strict school of education she passed through supported her and forced her to do what was required of her, that is, to dance, answer questions, speak, even smile. But just before the beginning of the mazurka, when the chairs were already being arranged and some of the couples moved from the little ones to the big hall, a moment of despair and horror came upon Kitty. She refused five and now did not dance the mazurkas. There was not even a hope that she would be invited, precisely because she was too successful in the world, and it could not have occurred to anyone that she had not been invited until now. She should have told her mother that she was ill and gone home, but she did not have the strength to do so. She felt slain. She went into the back of the small living room and sank into a chair. The airy skirt of her dress rose like a cloud around her thin waist; one naked, thin, tender girlish hand, lowered helplessly, sank into the folds of a pink tunic; in the other, she held a fan and fanned her flushed face with quick, short movements. But, despite this sight of a butterfly, just clinging to the grass and ready, just about to flutter, unfold its iridescent wings, terrible despair gnawed at her heart. [..] Countess Nordston found Korsunsky, with whom she danced the mazurka, and told him to invite Kitty. Kitty danced in the first pair, and, fortunately for her, she did not have to talk, because Korsunsky was running all the time, taking care of his household. Vronsky and Anna sat almost opposite her. She saw them with her far-sighted eyes, saw them up close when they met in pairs, and the more she saw them, the more convinced she was that her misfortune had come to pass. She saw that they felt alone in this full room. And on Vronsky's face, always so firm and independent, she saw that expression of bewilderment and submissiveness that struck her, like the expression of an intelligent dog when it is guilty. [...] Kitty felt crushed, and her face expressed this. When Vronsky saw her, running into her in the mazurka, he did not suddenly recognize her - she had changed so much. - Great ball! he said to her to say something. “Yes,” she replied. In the middle of the mazurka, repeating the complex figure again invented by Korsunsky, Anna went to the middle of the circle, took two cavaliers and called one lady and Kitty to her. Kitty looked at her fearfully as she approached. Anna squinted at her and smiled, shaking her hand. But noticing that Kitty's face only responded to her smile with an expression of despair and surprise, she turned away from her and spoke gaily to the other lady. "After the ball" *), Yasnaya Polyana, August 20, 1903 On the last day of Shrovetide, I was at a ball with the provincial marshal, a good-natured old man, a rich hospitable man and a chamberlain. He was received by his wife, as good-natured as he, in a velvet puce dress, with a diamond ferroniere on her head and with open old, plump, white shoulders and breasts, like portraits of Elizabeth Petrovna. The ball was wonderful; the hall is beautiful, with choirs, the musicians are famous at that time serfs of the amateur landowner, the buffet is magnificent and the bottled sea of champagne. Although I was a fan of champagne, I did not drink, because without wine I was drunk with love, but on the other hand I danced until I dropped, danced quadrilles, and waltzes, and polkas, of course, as far as possible, all with Varenka. She was in a white dress with a pink sash, and white kid gloves, a little short of her thin, pointy elbows, and white satin shoes. The mazurka was taken from me; the repulsive engineer Anisimov [...] So I danced the mazurka not with her, but with a German woman whom I had courted a little before. But, I'm afraid, that evening I was very disrespectful to her, did not speak to her, did not look at her, but saw only a tall, slender figure in a white dress with a pink belt, her radiant, reddened face with dimples and tender, sweet eyes. I'm not the only one, everyone looked at her and admired her, both men and women admired her, despite the fact that she eclipsed them all. It was impossible not to admire. According to the law, so to speak, I did not dance the mazurka with her, but in reality I danced with her almost all the time. She, not embarrassed, walked straight to me across the hall, and I jumped up without waiting for an invitation, and she thanked me with a smile for my ingenuity. When we were brought up to her and she did not guess my quality, she, offering her hand not to me, shrugged her thin shoulders and smiled at me as a token of pity and consolation. When the figures of the mazurka were made by the waltz, I waltzed with her for a long time, and she, breathing often, smiled and said to me: "Encore" (also French). And I waltzed again and again and did not feel my body. [...] I danced more with her and did not see how time passed. The musicians, with a kind of despair of weariness, you know, as it happens at the end of a ball, picked up the same mazurka motif, rose from the drawing rooms already from the card tables of papa and mama, waiting for supper, the lackeys more often ran in, carrying something. It was the third hour. It was necessary to use the last minutes. I chose her again, and for the hundredth time we walked along the hall. [...] “Look, dad is asked to dance,” she said to me, pointing to the tall stately figure of her father, a colonel with silver epaulettes, standing in the doorway with the hostess and other ladies. “Varenka, come here,” we heard the loud voice of the hostess in a diamond ferroniere and with Elizabethan shoulders. - Persuade, ma chere (darling - French), father take a walk with you. Well, please, Pyotr Vladislavich, - the hostess turned to the colonel. Varenka's father was a very handsome, stately, tall and fresh old man. [...] When we approached the door, the colonel refused, saying that he had forgotten how to dance, but nevertheless, smiling, throwing his hand to his left side, he took out a sword from his belt, gave it to an obliging young man and, pulling a suede glove over right hand - "everything is necessary according to the law," he said smiling, took his daughter's hand and stood at a quarter turn, waiting for the beat. Waiting for the beginning of the mazurka motif, he briskly stamped one foot, threw out the other, and his tall, heavy figure, now softly and smoothly, now noisily and stormily, with the clatter of soles and foot to foot, moved around the hall. The graceful figure of Varenka floated beside him, imperceptibly, shortening or lengthening the steps of her little white satin legs in time. The whole room watched every movement of the couple. I not only admired, but looked at them with enthusiastic tenderness. I was especially touched by his boots, trimmed with stilettos, good calf boots, but not fashionable, sharp, but antique, with square toes and without heels. [...] It was evident that he had once danced beautifully, but now he was heavy, and his legs were no longer elastic enough for all those beautiful and fast steps that he tried to do. But he still deftly passed two laps. When, quickly spreading his legs, he again connected them and, although somewhat heavily, fell on one knee, and she, smiling and straightening the skirt that he caught, smoothly walked around him, everyone applauded loudly. With some effort, he got up, gently, sweetly wrapped his arms around his daughter's ears and, kissing her on the forehead, led her to me, thinking that I was dancing with her. I said that I'm not her boyfriend. “Well, it doesn’t matter, now you go for a walk with her,” he said, smiling affectionately and putting his sword into his harness. [...] The mazurka was over, the hosts asked the guests for dinner, but Colonel B. refused, saying that he had to get up early tomorrow, and said goodbye to the hosts. I was afraid that they would take her away, but she stayed with her mother. After supper, I danced the promised quadrille with her, and, despite the fact that I seemed to be infinitely happy, my happiness grew and grew. We didn't talk about love. I didn't even ask her or myself if she loved me. It was enough for me that I loved her. And I was afraid of only one thing, so that something would not spoil my happiness. [...] I left the ball at five o'clock. *) Text "After the ball" - in Maxim Moshkov's Library

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In an immoral society, all inventions are magnifying. “In an immoral society, all inventions that increase the power of man over nature are not only not good, but an undeniable and obvious evil. A little-known publication by Leo Tolstoy about patriotism and

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TOLSTOY Leo

Views of L.N. Tolstoy on the agrarian modernization of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century.

In the family. 1897

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An ardent opponent of the state system, he was always on the side of the peasants. He repeatedly stated that “the strength of the government rests on the ignorance of the people, and it knows this and therefore will always fight against enlightenment ...”

On patriotism and government...

to kill people of oppressed nationalities and their workers defending their rights, their fathers and brothers, as the most arrogant of all rulers, Wilhelm II, publicly declared.

everyone knows that all states always stand against each other with their claws extended and their teeth bared, and are only waiting for someone to fall into misfortune and weaken, so that they can attack him with the least danger and tear him apart.

In order for an agreement to be possible, it is necessary that those agreeing to believe each other. In order for the powers to be able to trust each other, they must lay down their arms, as parliamentarians do when they come together for conferences.

Governments must exist in order to protect their people from the attacks of other peoples; but no people wants to attack and does not attack another, and therefore the governments not only do not want peace, but diligently arouse the hatred of other peoples.

Every government, therefore, and even more so a government to which military power has been entrusted, is a terrible, most dangerous institution in the world.

People will arrange for themselves such a terrible machine of power, leaving it to anyone to seize this power (and all the chances are that the most morally trashy person will seize it), and slavishly obey and are surprised that they feel bad

Stop supporting the preachers who preach war and expose patriotism as something important.

It is my deepest conviction that war is only a trade on a large scale, a trade of ambitious and powerful people in the happiness of peoples.

All men are turned into military slaves and must wait every minute for an order to go to kill and be killed.

Understand that all the evil from which you suffer, you do to yourself, obeying those suggestions that emperors, kings, members of parliaments, rulers, military men, capitalists, clergy, writers, artists - all those who need this deception of patriotism in order to live by your labors.

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