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Lunacharsky Articles and speeches on international politicsWorld outlook and creativity of Dostoevsky
Works of D. play an exceptional role in Russian literature and provide him with one of the first places among its greatest writers. These works have acquired (especially in recent times) an enormous, almost global significance. An understanding of the main features of D. as a writer, thinker, and social activist is possible only in connection with the entire history of our society, in particular, with that moment in which Dostoevsky directly took part. There are three main social elements reflected in Dostoevsky's work.
First, the contemporary collapse of social foundations, and at the same time of social consciousness, morality, everyday forms, which brought with it more or less rapidly advancing capitalism. In particular, then Petersburg was already a highly Europeanized city with all that thirst for profit and career, with all that confusion of various individuals torn apart from each other, with all that irresistible intersection of old and new views, similar to which Balzac described, reflecting the life of Parnassus 30-40s. This chaos of the period of intensive primitive accumulation for the petty bourgeoisieturned into a particularly painful side, discarding the old restraining traditions and kindling the will to wealth, to power, to enjoyment. At the same time, the epoch hit hard on the vast majority of the representatives of this group, overthrowing them into the ranks of losers and exploited. Exorbitant painful dreams, new sufferings from constant insults, a feeling of indeterminacy of one's position - all this created a special torn hysterical psyche for this social stratum. There were no longer any firm ideas about good and evil, about what was allowed and what was not allowed. A person who has recently left the patriarchal church circle of the Old Testament, falling into the raging sea of capitalist competition, often desperately tried to grab hold of the scraps of the old foundations, to convince himself of some kind of their strength, back to a calmer shore and looked with horror at the abyss of unscrupulousness that awaited her, allowing everything, seductive, pushing to crime. The horror was the greater, the stronger the temptation turned out to be. - One can note many striking similarities between the ideological world and the actions of the then Russian petty bourgeoisie, especially its intelligent, conscious part, with what the great writers of the West depict, who had similar social phenomena in front of them and worked on the same social material (especially Balzac , Zola).
The second element that left its mark on the socially creative personality of D. was the thirst for salvation from this chaos by streamlining the public. For many people, the strongest in their minds, in terms of the breadth of the mental and emotional scope of the surrounding phenomena, the transition to socialism, which already lit the bright beacons of its then still utopian thought in the West, seemed the most serious way out. The tormenting contradictions, the bestial struggle between superior and inferior people—everything will be reconciled in the utopian realm of labor and equality. The proletarian and revolutionary paths to the true realization of socialism were, of course, extremely obscure. They were vaguely drawn even to the most consistent progressive thinkers who managed to break all the fetters of the past and possessed the ability to think with the utmost intellectual power. These were Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov and some others. For the rest, socialist ideas were easily intertwined with responses to the sermons of Christian love with all mystical dogmas and the most vague fantasy. In Petrashevsky's circle, we see various types, who, however, fit entirely within the framework of a very vague utopian socialism. Autocracy, however, treated such thoughts, especially when their bearers turned to propaganda, with boundless ferocity. D. became an adherent of this socialism and suffered for it. Utopian socialism, which the writer took out of Petrashevsky's circle, never left D., always continued to live in it in a peculiar way. This ideal constantly returned as a hope or a heavy reproach, demanding its replacement by some other teaching that would at least somewhat illuminate the hopeless hell of life. - The third element reflected in the personal fate of D. and his work, was the autocracy itself, as an organization of the ruling classes, including here its support - official Orthodoxy. This force hit Dostoevsky and not only forced him to live through one of the most terrible moments that can be imagined in the fate of a person, but also to go through humiliations that threatened to destroy his life and prematurely bury those creative forces that he felt in himself and save which seemed to him his mission. Unable to fight the autocracy, which, as it seemed to him, immensely surpassed his own forces, pursued by him, like Pushkin's Eugene the Bronze Horseman, D. made a semi-artificial, semi-sincere revision of his worldview. He retained much of his condemnation of lawlessness and violence in society, of his thirst for harmony.
The horror of life was recognized by D. throughout his literary activity. The metaphysical question of the origin of evil, the question of what fate from all the benevolent will of God, which D. tried to accept and understand, the sea of evil that surrounded the writer arises, was often posed by him with the utmost force. D. could not be calmed down with a simple answer that the human evil will is to blame for this. In the famous tirade of Ivan Karamazov, D. with deep pain throws this Orthodox version in the face of "the suffering of children." However, he could never make ends meet, bearing in himself, on the one hand, pain for the ugliness of social life, and on the other, a thirst for religious faith in providence. Pathetic attempts to avoid the conflict of these principles by pointing to the sinless and patient, who suffered for us, the loving Christ could not for a moment convince the critical mind in the slightest. The metaphysical question worried Dostoevsky in the deepest way, and he did not find any logical, even if strongly saturated with emotion, solution. In any case, D. eschewed the simple idea that the main responsibility for the reigning evil lies with the ruling class and its government. - It was completely impossible to expect that D. approached this issue materialistically and saw its true root in the very development of society, and the cure for it in the growth of the productive forces of mankind and the revolutionary upheaval that the proletariat brings with it. D. was looking for another explanation, which also seemed to him profound, but which actually says nothing, namely, the recognition of each of his own guilt for the general "disorder", recognizing everyone as the culprits of the misfortune of human existence. Direct, practical ways to resolve the socio-philosophical question turned out to be ordered for D. partly by the philistine-intellectual inability to truly scientific generalizations, partly by internally imposed taboos not to notice the continuous crime that autocracy was.
The mind of D., like the mind of Gogol (in the words of Merezhkovsky), was "a huge mind, but dark." In any case, this mind was vast enough to be aware of the presence next to it of directions that follow other paths. The best part of the modern D. petty-bourgeois intelligentsia, not reaching a clear premonition of the role of capitalism and the proletariat that is born in its place, nevertheless, on the basis of the Russian experience (the fate and needs of the peasantry) and the European experience (a series of revolutions from the end of the 18th century to the time of D.) narrowly created for itself (especially in the face of Belinsky of the latest formation, Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov) a bright concept, a bright position, which served as a great preface to the events we are experiencing today, to the world outlook of the revolutionary proletariat. D. However, after such an unsuccessful attempt to join the Petrashevists, he realized this revolutionary solution to a vital problem as the main temptation, as the main enemy, and therefore set himself the most reactionary and base task of fully exposing the revolution and the bearers of its ideals. - If Tolstoy paid much attention to polemics with advanced raznochintsy, then in his lordly quest for a sufficiently powerful protest against impending capitalism, he was able to treat the revolutionaries relatively complacently, sometimes recognizing for them (“Resurrection”) some other moral virtues. Not that Dostoevsky. Himself a tormented, half-crushed petty-bourgeois commoner, he seemed to be destined by the whole course of his fate and his time to be the revolutionary herald of the "humiliated and insulted" against the oppressors and offenders. However, this mission of his turned out to be crashed against the inexorable wall of a still too strong feudal order. The fragments remain. These fragments got stuck in the mind, in the nature of D. and tormented him. With all the greater ruthlessness, D. again and again strove for the moral extermination of the revolution. This should have done, and in part, but only in part, made D. a clearly reactionary writer. Dostoevsky tries to thwart the attempt to create a harmonious society by means of rebellion, this seductive attempt, not by considerations about the external difficulties of this task, but by spitting on the attempt itself, for example, by the most false interpretation of the internally pure and noble theory of the advanced raznochintsy of that time, the theory of "egoism", i.e., the doctrine of that a person, even in his selflessness, is guided not by any higher divine principles, but by his own convictions, feelings, instincts that make him a social being. D. portrayed this "egoism" as a natural continuation of the gloomy careerism, the gloomy spirit of profit, which his class as a whole, the bourgeoisie and, to a large extent, D. himself was obsessed with. he brought out the primordially philistine into the light in order to draw the figures of revolutionaries with this mud.
The main engine of the revolution, according to D., is Smerdyakov - the worst embodiment of Karamazovism, the worst bearer of a voluptuously greedy attitude to life. With the other Karamazovs, their petty-bourgeois inflamed voluptuousness is brightened up, balanced by various higher principles, while with their illegitimate brother, the lackey Smerdyakov, whose image must be understood as the image of the lower mass, called to activity by the revolution, in the slogan "everything is allowed", egoism is transformed into more more monstrous cynicism, and even more animal greed than that of old Karamazov. And, so D. says, even if Ivan Karamazov, wonderful in his intellectual upsurge, in his high spiritual development, does not forget that the godless principles of freedom he promotes, in fact, mean only a gesture of pressing with an elegant wave of the hand the button of that infernal machine, which is the elemental greed of the Smerdyakovs.
Why, however, cannot D. be recognized as simply a reactionary writer, even on the basis of his most reactionary novels and chapters? The fact is that D.'s hatred stems from the inner consciousness of the strength of his opponent. D. was forced to bury the revolutionary movement of his desecrated heart. But this hateful and at the same time sacred grave never wanted to close. The dead man buried alive constantly raised his voice, and D. again, with torment and fury, tried to drown out this voice and counter it with his poisonous invectives or fragile arguments. D. is a great tradesman who could have become a revolutionary, but was thrown off this path by the will of fate, crippled as a result of this endless titanic struggle with himself, with the best part of himself, moreover, a struggle without victory. Huge. true talent was reflected in the fact that D. was again and again forced to give free rein to his "Satan", his "Prometheus", whom he himself chained to a rock in Tartarus, and at the same time such brilliant arguments were sometimes put into the mouth of the "enemy" that all the weapons that the victorious D. , the “official” D., the bearer of Christian truth, turned out to be weak. This is the undoubted involuntary objective revolutionary spirit of D.
One of the main weapons that D. used in this struggle was the Christian ideology. In the stinking world of official reality, he tried to find a bright side. He began to pray frantically before the smoky icon, which was supposed to be a shrine for the entire gloomy old casemate of Rus'. He tried to listen, to ponder over the distant voices of those democratic strata in whose midst Christianity had once been created. Pitiful, perverted, these voices used for the most vile purposes nevertheless repeated something about forgiveness, about love, about faith in the coming kingdom of heaven, where all contradictions will be resolved and all torments will be healed.
All this, for that time for an educated person, a very naive construction, was shaken by one blow from the powerful hand of the revolutionary D.. Ivan Karamazov, with his statement about “returning the ticket to God”, if after this immense sea of tears and grief they want to bribe him, Karamazov, with a pass to the pleasure gardens of the Lord, this historical messianism, which has always been only an attempt to oppose at least some hope to the genuine hopelessness of being powerless classes. But D. frantically searched for allies in monastic faces, in Zosimas, in the warriors of the church, thirsting for her victory over the secular state by mystical methods and stubbornly repeating "and wake up, and wake up," in the blessed angelic Alyosha. However, all this mystical props did not satisfy him. And every time when, among the smooth speeches of Orthodox sages, the red flame of revolutionary-rebellious speeches breaks out, it becomes obvious how easy it is for this flame to devour religious cardboard houses. - The writer is the spokesman for a certain public. But of course the writer is not at all equal to any of his contemporaries. Otherwise, all contemporaries could be writers and even great writers. But a great writer is somehow different from his contemporaries, something that makes him especially striking and, in this sense, especially typical. Epochs of crises, epochs of painful changes find their heralds in sick, exhausted people. A healthy balanced psychology, if it is born in such an epoch, cannot express its torments for that part of contemporaries who feel them quite keenly. Only a person can scream about pain with artistic images, whose nerves are especially sensitive to this pain, and the entire emotional system of the era is looking for such a suitable instrument. The thunderous music of the revolution cannot be contained in a flute, just as it is impossible to play a gentle madrigal on bells and brass sirens.
The fate of D. naturally developed painfully and disharmoniously, since such was the surrounding life. This was further aggravated by his innate nervousness, in which both his artistic impressionability and artistic expressiveness were rooted. The colossal strain of the creative will of D. in his desire to overcome the world and his contradictions did not help to find a way out. The social function of the dialectic—to seek resolution of contradictions by rejecting the only true path, the path of revolution—was itself an enormous danger to its bearer.
D. was an epileptic. To what extent epilepsy was a prerequisite for his artistic and teaching mission, or to what extent, on the contrary, it was a product of it, is a difficult question. It is probable that both took place here. The social flow rushes along the channel most suitable for it. The social stream of hopeless torment of the bourgeoisie, thirsting for a bright life and crushed to powder by capitalism, could most easily rush through a sick psyche. But this flow itself was supposed to exacerbate the "illness". So it was with Dostoevsky. Epileptic seizures, which D. himself and many others characterize as a moment of bliss, seizures that have always been a pathological material substratum of all kinds of mystical ecstasies, were a help to D. It seemed to him that at these moments he was in contact with that highest truth, which will eventually conquer the painful disharmony of being (Prince Myshkin in The Idiot). But on such paths, pathological in their essence and savage in their social appearance, it is certainly impossible to acquire a genuine influence on the health of the masses of readers. Therefore, Dostoevsky constantly tried to act with logic as well, straining his mind, his “thinking in images” in order to convince others of the correctness of his position and kindle the fire of hope. Yes, and he himself was inwardly aware of the flimsiness of painful ecstasies, their terrible and dark side. Returning to the world, Dostoevsky again found its contradictions and again began his colossal Sisyphean struggle, which did not lead to any conclusion and remained a monument of division, majestic in its suffering. - The other side of D.'s personal psychology, what made him a brother and guiding sage of the philistinism, of this huge heterogeneous mass of petty-bourgeois intelligentsia, was just his Karamazov-voluptuous attitude to life. What strikes in D., what captivates and rivets in him is a quivering fiery passion that bubbles all the time in his works. D. wants to live with all the fibers of his being: he wants some exorbitant experiences, pleasures, for the full sharpness of which pain is also needed - the frame of suffering and cruelty. It is the philistinism, awakened by capitalism, driven in all directions by its winds, carried away by its brilliance, its alluring ogies, that can give rise to such an insatiable, because always insatiable, desire for pleasure. Dostoevsky himself, tormented by all torments and doubts, in a brilliantly painful form, seeks to find pleasure in the very self-humiliation, in the suffering itself. Ready every minute to trample down those below him with his feet and tear with his teeth those standing next to him - a typical tradesman awakened by capitalism, torn from his usual rut, receives the highest rapture in causing suffering to others. And this is by no means alien to Dostoevsky. D.'s lust for life gave birth to all the immense wealth of his human gallery. He himself lives in all, he himself wants to live in all. It was his exorbitant will to live, blocked by the dam of circumstances, powerfully crashed into foam, playing with a motley rainbow, dazzling and painful. gave birth to all the immense wealth of his human gallery.
All this explains the features of D's style. His style is determined not only by subjective factors, which in the end also stem from certain social roots, but also by purely objective ones, i.e., taking into account the tastes of the new public. It is not difficult to see D.'s dependence on Balzac, on Hugo, J. Zagd, and especially on E. Syu. A new large audience must be entertained and captivated by a complex plot, unexpected effects, amazing outcomes, after which the knot is tied again, remarkable events, hyperbolic, almost caricature reliefs of physiognomies, melodramatic. opposing light types to dark ones, etc. Anyone who, through Dostoevsky, does not feel the French novelists who found crowds of readers among small people, does not feel the very essence of D.'s methods. Of course, D. is more talented than Xu, subtler, philosophically deeper than Hugo, more tragic than Balzac, but his manner is in many ways reminiscent of these writers. However, it is impossible to reduce his complex tortuous development of the plot only to a thirst to get the appropriate reader. Dostoevsky himself was a reader of this kind. His manner suited his own taste. The agitated epoch, which tore the petty-bourgeois personality out of its way of life and confused it, found expression in such a plot structure. In the same way, not only an outwardly spectacular technique, but also something that met D.'s internal needs, was his manner of conducting events through the narrator. This narrator, whether he is one of the actors or just a narrator, is always intensely interested in his story. He giggles all the time, hints, worries, gets ahead of himself. It seems that passion prevents him from speaking. And this is what greatly enhances the dynamism of the story. Finally, an important literary device D. is that, ignoring things in their passivity, almost abandoning the landscape, he is entirely occupied with the relationship of people, behind which, in essence, are ideas. However, if people with D. are always more or less hidden masks of ideas, then these ideas, in turn, are connected, perhaps not fully conscious for D. himself, with the roots of the social position of people. The vast turbulent public sea was a multitude of individuals thrown out of habitual forms of life, moving like molecules of bodies turned into a gaseous state, in all directions. This creates a confusing diversity: the most diverse destinies refract their consciousness and the subconscious sphere of their mental life. When they collide with each other, whole abysses of contradictions open up. And hence their endless dispute. This dispute is often a genuine dialogue. The dispute is conducted by two or more participants. But this is not just a dispute between different systems of thought. It often resembles a conversation between two enemies before a fight. It is necessary to convince each other, to understand each other, because otherwise it is impossible to live further together in the world. This is how Dostoyevsky's novels and short stories turn into gigantic philosophical dramas. At the same time, the socio-philosophical richness does not interfere with the flying drama of the action. Dostoevsky knew how to choose such carriers for his ideas so that the clash of ideas would turn into a vital clash of wills, and at the same time, all the same leitmotifs always sound mercilessly: passion for life, suppressed or distorted, downtrodden or perverted, the constant thought of redemption, accompanied by a struggle against the only short redemptive idea - against the revolution,
D. was a new type of writer in Russian literature. He was aware of this. He bitterly disliked the past and the literature of the nobility that was still brightly developing nearby. He complained that the nobles, provided with other people's labor, can conscientiously polish their works, while he, D., needs to always rush in order to feed his family. He sent sometimes very irreverent arrows to the camp of noble writers. Everyone knows those fairly transparent caricatures that were given to them of Gogol (in "The Village of Stepanchikovo"), of Turgenev and Granovsky ("Demons"), etc.
In his amazingly profound analysis of Tolstoy, Lenin pointed out that this gentleman, who transferred his lordly misfortune to the village, became great because he was an indirect, but vivid reflection of the painful transitional state of the peasantry during the breakdown of feudal life and its replacement by capitalist. The situation is somewhat different with D. In his personality and in his works, he was only a reflection of the colossal tragedy that was endured by broad sections of the bourgeoisie, that is, the petty urban bourgeoisie and, in particular, the raznochintsy intelligentsia. Precisely because D. was the classic spokesman for a confused drama, Europe, in those countries and in those strata that are experiencing something similar (for example, post-war Germany), experiences the inexpressibly attractive force of this brilliant singer and martyr of social decay. — D. died surrounded by glory and some kind of vague bewilderment, for no one knew exactly who he was in essence? This debate continues to this day. Known elements of revolutionary spirit, as can be seen from everything that has gone before, cannot be denied in D.. But for almost his entire life (after the “execution”), D. considered these elements alien to himself, did everything in his power to subdue them, to destroy them. And it can be said that it is not his fault, and certainly not his merit, if these revolutionary aspects of objective existence made some revolutionary strings of our consciousness tremble revocably and turned out to be so strong that we cannot but recognize their significance. However, they must be dug up, separating them from the heaps, from the innumerable accretions of the publicist D., who entirely served the counter-revolution. if these revolutionary aspects of objective existence made certain revolutionary strings of our consciousness tremble responsibly and turned out to be so strong that we, too, cannot fail to recognize their significance. However, they must be dug up, separating them from the heaps, from the innumerable accretions of the publicist D., who entirely served the counter-revolution. if these revolutionary aspects of objective existence made certain revolutionary strings of our consciousness tremble responsibly and turned out to be so strong that we, too, cannot fail to recognize their significance. However, they must be dug up, separating them from the heaps, from the innumerable stratifications of the publicist D., who entirely served the counter-revolution.
As an artist, D. is great for his dynamism, richness of experiences, conquering sincerity of his passionate struggle with himself and with the whole world. But it is unlikely that his manner and his methods can find any living reflection in the proletarian fiction, which belongs to the near future. D. was a sick talent, he reflected the crisis experienced by an entire class, a difficult era for this class. The dynamism of the proletariat, the affirmations and denials of its struggle, are far from the experiences of D. If one can learn from other classics only with the greatest vigilance, with constant criticism, so that instead of some magnificent artistic techniques that one must learn, one can also assimilate the rudiments of class-alien elements , then about D. this must be said especially. It is necessary to critically pass through D.. This is a good self-hardening. But through this fiery haze, above these black abysses, under these hanging clouds, through the strings of these faces distorted by malice and suffering, through the tense noise of these disputes and curses, one can only pass in the armor of a complete class self-consciousness. Such a reader will emerge from reading D. with a wiser new knowledge of life, especially with regard to those elements with which the proletariat has to deal, for it must fight both against them and because of them. The direct influence of D., i.e., subordination to him in something, is in general a thing for the proletarian that is not only harmful, but also shameful and hardly even possible. The presence of such an influence can serve as evidence of the presence of significant elements of petty-bourgeois individualism in a person who is exposed to it, whether a writer or just a reader. one can pass through the strings of these faces distorted by malice and suffering, through the tense noise of these disputes and curses, only in the armor of a complete class self-consciousness. Such a reader will emerge from reading D. with a wiser new knowledge of life, especially with regard to those elements with which the proletariat has to deal, for it must fight both against them and because of them. The direct influence of D., i.e., subordination to him in something, is in general a thing for the proletarian that is not only harmful, but also shameful and hardly even possible. The presence of such an influence can serve as evidence of the presence of significant elements of petty-bourgeois individualism in a person who is exposed to it, whether a writer or just a reader. one can pass through the strings of these faces distorted by malice and suffering, through the tense noise of these disputes and curses, only in the armor of a complete class self-consciousness.
A. Lunacharsky.