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Change of milestones of the intellectual community

"Change of milestones" - a collection of journalistic articles of philosophical and political content, published in Prague in 1921 by prominent representatives of the liberal trend in the social thought of the Russian emigration. Polemically starting from the similar collection “Milestones” created in the previous historical period, the participants of the “Change of milestones” attempted to comprehend the role of the Russian intelligentsia in the new political and economic conditions. The general idea of ​​the collection was the idea of ​​the possibility of accepting the Bolshevik revolution and reconciliation with its results in order to preserve the unity and power of the Russian state. The collection "Change of milestones" gave impetus to the emergence in the emigration of the ideological and political trend of "smenovekhovstvo".

Much, exaggeratedly, is being said about the intelligentsia moving to the left and reconciling it with the Soviet system.

There is no doubt that during these 4 years the intelligentsia gradually came to terms with the apparently inevitable misfortune that such an "uncomfortable" revolution was for the majority. On the whole, in the mass, the intelligentsia did not have enough enthusiasm for its correct assessment. This historical fact cannot be hidden from us by any subsequent manifestations and the sin of the intelligentsia of Sodom, individual righteous people will not atone. Of course, it would be extremely unfair to talk all this about the intelligentsia indiscriminately. First of all, the Russian intelligentsia, if it came to its senses, could proudly point to those intellectuals who gave all their strength to the Communist Party, and consequently, to the Great Russian and World Revolution. Secondly, we can gratefully name dozens of big names and point to hundreds, maybe thousands, of modest workers who at once, or more or less soon, but quite sincerely, went to the work of defense and building a new socialist fatherland. As for the intelligentsia philistine, then, according to my observations, it, as it was a swamp, has remained. There was, perhaps, a little more active malice—now there is more passive resignation, but a thousand-headed effervescent gossip lives among it, the same political and sociological ignorance, the same desire to endlessly whine over the inconveniences of life and undermine almost every work it sells to the proletarian state with cowardly sabotage. .

I repeat, if here, in this dead sea, there is any movement of water to the left, then only in the sense of an almost final lowering in the heart of an intellectual of hope for a speedy end to the hated period.

Another element of the intelligentsia is its politically and socialist-conscious units, that is, the Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Cadets and those who adjoin them. Is there any shift here? Again, only in the sense that the Martovs and Chernovs, and therefore the small fry following them, lost faith in an imminent victory and thought, waiting for the weather by the sea, over what tactics they should follow in such a timelessness that befell them. How these thoughts will be resolved is almost completely indifferent to us, for the pseudo-socialist intelligentsia is now deprived of all power and authority. The best that we could still get from her is, perhaps, a few dozen workers in secondary places, in the event of complete repentance. But I repeat, no real leftward movement, i.e. we do not see a really deep penetration into the meaning of the ongoing and accomplished revolution. We must not regard as a symptom of this the fact that Martov, in hindsight, is beginning to understand that the October Revolution was not an adventure, but a gigantic social phenomenon.

The youth. We have excellent youth, promoted by the peasantry and the proletariat through military schools, Sverdlovsk University, Party schools, as the intelligentsia of tomorrow. Already abroad, in the leading journals of the emigration, enthusiastic information about this new intelligentsia appeared. We can really rely on it. These people are born by the revolution and are unconditionally and enthusiastically loyal.

But that intelligent youth who made up the student cadre in the old days and the youth who went against this former student body? How is it with them? I will by no means say that there is no noticeable shift to the left, but, in my opinion, it happened much earlier and happened organically. It does not at all represent the character of some major shift to the left. In fact, the number of Communists in the universities, partly due to the rise of democratic and labor elements from below, partly due to the process of clarifying the souls of the most sensitive and courageous part of the intelligentsia - its youth - has steadily grown and is growing. The general mood of the students, it seems to me, from sharply hostile, counter-revolutionary under various sauces, has turned partly into a passive, partly into a businesslike one, which can be formulated approximately like this: "although we do not love you, we have to work with you, and we will try ". At my lectures at the university, which are thoroughly imbued with the Marxist worldview, there are many students. They listen attentively, and from the notes that are submitted, it is clear that the majority relate to the problems being analyzed in a businesslike manner, but there are also notes full of the most stupid philistine malice, of a vulgar-Socialist-Revolutionary, vulgar-Orthodox type. There are, therefore, such listeners, and, moreover, in the audience of a Marxist lecturer.

In a word, some molecular process, long and organic.

I get a slightly different impression from the free audience, that is, from the free and paid lectures that I have to give. A lot of people usually gather for such lectures. We must do justice to this audience - they listen with great attention to what they say to her. Submitted notes also break up into a large part of a businesslike, thoughtful nature and into a much smaller part of a demonstration-hostile nature. With all sorts of discussions, it turns out that the audiences are free and paid, which differ somewhat from each other in composition (but oddly enough, not especially - here and there people of both sexes, of all ages and all social statuses, there are always quite a lot of Red Army soldiers, there are always obviously workers, there are always a lot of young people), are divided in a certain way into camps, and the camp of those who sympathize with the communists significantly exceeds the camp of neutrals and the camp of opponents. It is also characteristic that of all kinds of opponents who spoke against me on various topics, in my opinion, the Tolstoyans have the greatest success. It is characteristic that the Tolstoyans usually act as revolutionaries of the spirit, firmly and definitely condemn all aspects of the old order, the official church, etc., speak with great sympathy about communism, but only reject the violent methods of the revolution.
This is precisely what they obviously arouse the sympathy of a certain part of the intelligentsia. If one were to judge by the mood of this audience, which gathers, so to speak, from the street, but which is obviously the most mobile part of the intelligentsia, the one that is ready to run from afar into an unheated room and sit for two or two and a half hours without moving, in order to learn something, we can say that we have some base of sympathy, or at least sympathetic attention of the Moscow intelligentsia. At the same time, we must certainly take into account that a significant part of this audience consists of the new intelligentsia, which I spoke about above. However, this process is also not new, and I already had a similar audience in November 1917 in Petrograd at the first meeting, gathered by the poet Ivnev "for an explanation between the new government and the intelligentsia." Even more striking was the assembled comrade. Zinoviev held a rally in the fall of 1918, when the intelligentsia gathered in the Tauride Palace, apparently and invisibly (the crowd flooded the entire Tauride Palace, including the Catherine Hall, the adjacent courtyard and adjacent streets), there were at least 15 thousand people.

Does this mean that no new serious movement to the left has taken place among the intelligentsia? No, I don't want to say that at all. Indeed, a catastrophically sudden, so to speak, more revolutionary than evolutionary shift took place in certain circles, in the circles of a certain part of our enemies. The most striking symptom of this shift was, as you know, the collection "Change of Milestones". Of course, the authors of "Change of Landmarks" were preparing for their conversion by a more or less lengthy process, but the conversion itself appeared like a storm, appeared as an event. It caused a rather large movement among the emigration, spread to Russia, gave an interesting slogan about what is called National Bolshevism and, perhaps, will have some kind of future. I repeat that it is very important to realize here that the very core of these new allies of ours consists of our recent enemies, open, active, merciless. We learn from Snesarev's article that he fought against us with a rifle in his hands during the Yaroslavl conspiracy. We know that the deepest and most interesting of the Vekhi people, Ustryalov, was Kolchak's minister. We know that Bobrischev-Pushkin was one of the intellectual forces of Wrangelism.

What are these people? These are patriots. Yes, they are active patriots. These are people who, perhaps from a slightly different angle, are equally passionately interested in Russian statehood and the fate of the culture of the Russian people. These are public people, these are people as far as possible from the public swamp. These are people from a more or less right-wing camp, that is, by no means infected with absurd democratic prejudices and no pseudo-socialist offal. It would seem that a Right patriot, an active counter-revolutionary, who could be further from any kind of alliance with us, and if he declares himself to be our ally, is he not being cunning, is he not being sold to us, as Milyukov hints? Not at all. The whole point lies in the fact that these people, representing in essence one of the most conscious groups of the Russian bourgeois intelligentsia, have thought of it, raised themselves even in the era of their counter-revolutionary work, to a truly broad social and state thought. They grabbed rifles against us because they took us for the destroyers of Russia as a great power. It must be remembered that the classes do not always defend their interests in the form of a bare economic interest. Nothing like this. If a class is more or less vital, if it has something ahead, then it inevitably dresses its interests in the garb of this or that idealism. And these bourgeois groups, which represented not so much our merchant circles as well-known circles of the intelligentsia of the middle strata, also clothed their faith in great power, their state patriotism reaching mysticism, in various psychological and philosophical colors.

Consequently, we are dealing here with an ideological enemy, with the spokesmen of a certain part of Russia, who had a future in front of them, which they imagined in the form of democratization (though moderate) of Russian autocratic power, a system that would be able to utilize all the forces of the people and on the basis of the utilization of these massive forces will create an unusually brilliant international position for Russia. Following in the footsteps of the Slavophiles and Dostoevsky, these people are not averse to dreaming that this great Russia, something like Russland Russland uber alles, will at the same time serve mankind, bring a new stream into it, and go ahead of the peoples towards further progress. We recognize this great power. Didn't she have a place in the same imperialist Germany? The Russian bourgeoisie of all kinds, although they were, so to speak, downtrodden, but, nevertheless, not all of them.

And so, these are national liberals, sometimes almost national conservatives with a Slavophil lining, spokesmen for the most vital interests, the strongest groups of the middle and only in part, perhaps, the ruling classes (perhaps the most advanced industrialists).

The change of front in these people is quite reasonable and completely natural. The first thing they crave is a solid statehood. They were horrified already under Kerenskyism. Looking closely at the face of our Socialist-Revolutionaries and our Mensheviks, they became convinced that these chatterbox parties are only capable of completely mixing up all the forces of the peoples of the former Russian Empire. They became convinced that attempts at counter-revolution (such as Kolchakism, Wrangelism, etc.) represent a sale of Russia to foreigners and, moreover, they are witnesses of complete poverty and the spiritual state poverty of the ruling classes. They should have fallen into despair, but then they noticed that while they were fighting the Bolsheviks, the Bolsheviks had created statehood, created a stable political system, created a large and beautiful inspired Red Army, that they not only did not squander Russia, but behind completely insignificant with exceptions, they united the territory of the former empire in the form of a free union of peoples, a union that by no means contradicts the greatest concentration of forces, complete centralization. They were convinced that the Soviet constitution did not contradict great power. Having looked closely at the tactics of the Comintern, they (true, crookedly, erroneously, convinced that this tactic benefits the great power of Russia, creating friends in the West and East among the millions of the oppressed. The erroneous assessment of their assessment lies only in the fact that they do not clearly understand deep internationalism and the communist character of our tactics dominating everything, but that on our internationalist path we are at the same time doing the work of recreating Russia, and that one task by no means contradicts the other is, of course, true.

And these patriots naturally thought about this phenomenon and realized that it was precisely now that a deep democratization of Russia had taken place, though much more vivid than the one they would like. But, after all, they were afraid of complete democratization, so that power would not be dispersed, but now from this democratization a new strong government has grown to the ground, fully capable of utilizing all the people's forces.

The only thing that could repel them as a group that has a certain class instinct is our immediate communism. Immediate communism historically accompanied the civil war in our country, but, so to speak, sociologically, it is the expression of the interests of only one class—the proletariat and, perhaps, even the poorest elements of the peasantry. This, firstly, should have inspired certain doubts: Russia is a peasant country. The policy of immediate communism is an anti-peasant policy, no matter how the new government breaks its neck here. Secondly, it was repugnant to the group we are talking about. She portrays Russia's progress in terms of any individual initiative, a broad and free public on the basis of individualism. This shows their bourgeoisness.

That is why their souls overflowed with delight when they saw that we were abandoning the policy of immediate communism; the slogan of a lasting alliance with the peasantry, as the first political task, calmed their fears, showed them that power remains in the deepest way popular. The slogan of unleashing private initiative in the field of industry not only provided the basis for the individualism "for a long time and in earnest", dear to their hearts, but also serves as a guarantee for them of the gradual development and free forms of cultural life.

Of course, they are aware that the Communists, making this detour, are steadily moving towards their intended goal - the world revolution and the establishment of the final socialist order in Russia and other countries; but that doesn't scare them. If this is a systematic process, if this is not a gamble, if this is not a fight against the pricks, then why should they be afraid? They say with confidence that if a revolution really breaks out in Europe, they will be pleased to know that our homeland has opened its doors to it, and they add: if such a revolution does not come soon, Russia will still be unusually democratic, unusually popular, unusually powerful. a country that will occupy a prominent place among the powers of the world and before which, in any case, days are opening infinitely more brilliant than the dull days of the decline of autocracy.

How many of these elements do we have? We don't know.

There are middle-monarchist elements in it, of course, unprincipled in this sense, monarchists are rubbish. Of the monarchists, only Struve is painfully aware of the opposition of Ustryalov's ideas to his ideas. I wouldn't even be surprised if Pyotr Bernardovich himself would go through some similar internal process over time. But Struve does not count; he is a completely individualized figure. There is a philistine intellectual swamp in Russia. So it doesn't matter. It sours and serves only as a test for others. There is a Cadet-Menshevik-Socialist-Revolutionary opposition in Russia, a talkative, politically mediocre, exhausted one. There is great communism in Russia, iron, inspired, sharp-sighted, wise. Perhaps, besides communism, there is also real, genuine bourgeois patriotism in Russia, the remnant of the vital force of individualist groups and classes. If it is, then it will be grouped around a kind of banner thrown by the knights of the "Change of milestones".

We want to rely on the living forces of the country. Who is alive in our country? First, the vast sea is outside the limits of the Communist Party, the worker-peasant non-party system. Whether it will join the Communist Party, whether it will form into another party, whether it will remain as a kind of atmosphere around the communist nucleus, in any case it is our main counterparty and our main ally. If, besides it, there are still deeply patriotic elements in Russia who approach our task from a different angle, who speak of the salvation of the fatherland, of its consolidation, of its industrial and cultural progress, and believe that all this must be built on the foundations of the revolutionary acquisitions of the October revolution, then with such groups we could also be companions for a long time, with the great hope that they too will gradually become associated with our party in their best elements.

This is what the appearance of the "Change of milestones" means. This is the shift, this is the historical fact that we have before us - a very slow molecular process, the slow chemistry of our philistine intelligentsia, much slower than we would like.