The entire public life of Russia was placed under the strictest supervision by the state, which was carried out by the forces of the 3rd department, its extensive network of agents and informers. This was the reason for the decline of the social movement.
A few circles tried to continue the work of the Decembrists. In 1827, at Moscow University, the Kritsky brothers organized a secret circle, the goals of which were the destruction of the royal family, as well as constitutional reforms in Russia.
In 1831, N.P.’s circle was discovered and destroyed by the tsar’s guards. Sungurov, whose participants were preparing an armed uprising in Moscow. In 1832, the “Literary Society of the 11th Number” operated at Moscow University, of which V.G. was a member. Belinsky. In 1834, the circle of A.I. was opened. Herzen.
In the 30-40s. Three ideological and political directions emerged: reactionary-protective, liberal, revolutionary-democratic.
The principles of the reactionary-protective direction were expressed in his theory by the Minister of Education S.S. Uvarov. Autocracy, serfdom, and Orthodoxy were declared the most important foundations and a guarantee against shocks and unrest in Russia. The conductors of this theory were professors of Moscow University M.P. Pogodin, S.P. Shevyrev.
The liberal opposition movement was represented by the social movements of Westerners and Slavophiles.
The central idea in the concept of the Slavophiles is the conviction in the unique path of development of Russia. Thanks to Orthodoxy, harmony has developed in the country between different layers of society. Slavophiles called for a return to pre-Petrine patriarchy and the true Orthodox faith. They particularly criticized the reforms of Peter the Great.
Slavophiles left numerous works on philosophy and history (I.V. and P.V. Kirievsky, I.S. and K.S. Aksakov, D.A. Valuev), in theology (A.S. Khomyakov), sociology, economics and politics (Yu.F. Samarin). They published their ideas in the magazines “Moskovityanin” and “Russkaya Pravda”.
Westernism arose in the 30s and 40s. 19th century among representatives of the nobility and various intelligentsia. The main idea is the concept of the common historical development of Europe and Russia. Liberal Westerners advocated a constitutional monarchy with guarantees of freedom of speech, the press, a public court and democracy (T.N. Granovsky, P.N. Kudryavtsev, E.F. Korsh, P.V. Annenkov, V.P. Botkin). They considered the reform activities of Peter the Great the beginning of the renewal of old Russia and proposed to continue it by carrying out bourgeois reforms.
Huge popularity in the early 40s. acquired the literary circle of M.V. Petrashevsky, which over the four years of its existence was visited by leading representatives of society (M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, F.M. Dostoevsky, A.N. Pleshcheev, A.N. Maikov, P.A. Fedotov, M.I. Glinka, P.P. Semenov, A.G. Rubinshtein, N.G. Chernyshevsky, L.N. Tolstoy).
Since the winter of 1846, the circle became radicalized; its most moderate members left, forming the left revolutionary wing led by N.A. Speshnev. Its members advocated a revolutionary transformation of society, the elimination of the autocracy, and the liberation of the peasants.
The father of the “theory of Russian socialism” was A.I. Herzen, who combined Slavophilism with socialist doctrine. He considered the peasant community to be the main unit of the future society, with the help of which one can reach socialism, bypassing capitalism.
In 1852, Herzen went to London, where he opened the Free Russian Printing House. Bypassing censorship, he laid the foundation for the Russian foreign press.
The founder of the revolutionary democratic movement in Russia is V.G. Belinsky. He published his views and ideas in “Notes of the Fatherland” and in “Letter to Gogol,” where he sharply criticized Russian tsarism and proposed the path of democratic reforms.
Abstract on the history of Russia
After the suppression of the Decembrist uprising, the reaction intensified in the country. In the fight against new ideas, the government used not only repression, but also weapons of an ideological nature. This was S.S. Uvarov’s theory of “official nationality”, the goal of which was: “To erase the confrontation between the so-called European education and our needs; to heal the newest generation from a blind, thoughtless addiction to the superficial and foreign, spreading in their souls reasonable respect for the domestic ..." Its main slogans were: Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality.
However, the Uvarov triad did not receive widespread support in Russian society. Despite official opposition, the social movement developed, and in the 40s there was a clear demarcation in it. The feudal-serf system survived the last decade. Sober-minded people wondered what would replace it, what path Russia’s development would take.
In the 40s, the main directions of social thought were formed, coming from the need for reforms in Russia: Slavophiles, Westerners and revolutionaries.
Westerners- This is the first bourgeois-liberal movement in Russia. Its prominent representatives were Kavelin, Granovsky, Botkin, Panaev, Annenkov, Katkov and others. They believed that Russia and the West were following the same path - the bourgeois one, and the only salvation for Russia from revolutionary upheavals was seen in borrowing through gradual reforms of bourgeois democracy. Westerners believed in the indivisibility of human civilization and argued that the West leads this civilization, showing examples of the implementation of the principles of freedom and progress, which attracts the attention of the rest of humanity. Therefore, the task of semi-barbaric Russia, which only came into contact with universal human culture with the time of Peter the Great, is to join the European West as soon as possible and thus enter a single universal civilization. As liberals, the ideas of revolution and socialism were alien to them. Until the mid-40s, Belinsky and Herzen spoke together with the Westerners, constituting the left wing of this movement.
The opponents of the Westerners became Slavophiles, who were hostile to the West and idealized pre-Petrine Rus', who trusted in the originality of the Russian people, who believed in a special path of its development. Prominent Slavophiles were Khomyakov, Samarin, the Aksakov brothers, the Kireevsky brothers, Koshelev and others.
Slavophiles argued that there is no and cannot be a single human civilization. Each nation lives with its own “identity,” the basis of which is an ideological principle that permeates all aspects of people’s life. For Russia, such a beginning was the Orthodox faith, and its embodiment was the community, as a union of mutual help and support. In the Russian village one can do without class struggle; this will save Russia from revolution and bourgeois “deviations.” Being convinced monarchists, they nevertheless advocated freedom of opinion and the revival of Zemsky Sobors. They are also characterized by rejection of revolution and socialism. Neither the principles nor the organizational forms of life of the West were acceptable to Russia. The Moscow kingdom corresponded more to the spirit and character of the Russian people than the monarchy built by Peter I according to European models. Thus, the Slavophil teaching reflected the Russian soil to the core and denied everything or almost everything brought into the life of Russians from the outside, and especially from Europe. Slavophiles put forward the reactionary idea of unifying the Slavic peoples under the auspices of the Russian Tsar (Pan-Slavism).
Their teaching contradictorily intertwined the features of bourgeois-liberal and conservative-noble ideologies.
Ideological differences between Westerners and Slavophiles, however, did not prevent their rapprochement in practical issues of Russian life: both movements denied serfdom; both opposed the existing government; both demanded freedom of speech and press.
In the 40s, having broken away from the Westerners, the third current of social thought took shape - revolutionary democratic. It was represented by Belinsky, Herzen, the Petrashevites, and the then young Chernyshevsky and Shevchenko.
Belinsky and Herzen did not agree with the Westerners regarding revolution and socialism. The revolutionary democrats were greatly influenced by the works of Saint-Simon and Fourier. But, unlike Western socialists, they not only did not exclude the revolutionary path to socialism, but also relied on it. The revolutionaries also believed that Russia would follow the Western path, but unlike the Slavophiles and Westerners, they believed that revolutionary upheavals were inevitable.
The utopian nature of their views is obvious - they believed that Russia could come to socialism, bypassing capitalism, and considered this possible thanks to the Russian community, which they understood as the “embryo of socialism.” They did not notice the private property instincts in the Russian countryside and did not foresee the class struggle in it. Given the embryonic state in which the Russian proletariat was, they did not understand its revolutionary future and hoped for a peasant revolution.
Characterizing the era of the 40s of the 19th century, Herzen wrote: “About the 40s, life began to break through more strongly from under tightly pressed valves.” 74 The change, noticed by the attentive gaze of the writer, was expressed in the emergence of new directions in Russian social thought. One of them was formed on the basis of the Moscow circle of A.V. Stankevich, which arose in the early 30s. Stankevich, his friends N.P. Klyushnikov and V.I. Krasov, as well as V.G. Belinsky, V.P. Botkin, K.S. Aksakov, M.N. Katkov, M.A. who later joined them. Bakunin, fascinated by German philosophy, jointly studied the works of Schelling, Fichte, Kant, Hegel, and then Feuerbach. In these philosophical and ethical systems, the ideas of the dialectical development of society, the problem of the spiritual independence of the human person, etc., acquired special significance for them. These ideas, addressed to the reality around them, gave rise to a critical attitude towards Russian life in the 30s. As Aksakov put it, Stankevich’s circle developed “a new view of Russia, mostly negative.” Simultaneously with the Stankevich circle, the circle of A. I. Herzen and his university friends N. P. Ogarev, N. X. Ketcher, V. V. Passek, I. M. Satin arose, who were adherents of the ideas of the French utopian socialists, mainly Sen -Simone.
The ideas of German and French philosophers had a direct impact on young Russian thinkers. Herzen wrote that Stankevich’s philosophical ideas, his “view - on art, on poetry and its attitude to life - grew in Belinsky’s articles into that powerful criticism, into that new view of the world, of life, which amazed all thinking in Russia and made all pedants and doctrinaires recoil in horror from Belinsky.” 75
The basis of this new direction was anti-serfdom aspirations, liberation ideology and literary realism.
Under the influence of public sentiment, social topics are increasingly being covered in literature, and the democratic current is becoming more noticeable. In the works of leading Russian writers, the desire for truthfulness in the depiction of Russian life and especially the position of the lower strata of society is strengthened. A large role in strengthening this direction and gathering progressive literary forces was played by the circle headed by V. G. Belinsky.
In the fall of 1839, V. G. Belinsky, having moved from Moscow to St. Petersburg, was invited by A. Kraevsky to head the literary critical department of Otechestvennye zapiski. Already the first articles of the young critic caused a great public outcry: without yet creating a new literary movement, they created a new reader. Young people in the capital and the provinces, among the nobility and common gentry, began to systematically monitor the department of criticism and bibliography, which contained an analysis and evaluation of every book that appeared in the recent past. Belinsky introduced into literature the intensity of ethical quests, intellectualism, and thirst for knowledge.
These qualities made him the ideological leader of the circle that met in I. I. Panaev’s apartment. The owner’s nephew recalled this: “It was not so much intelligence and logic that determined him (Belinsky - N. Ya.) strength, as much as their combination with moral qualities. This was a knight fighting for justice and truth. He was the executioner of everything artificial, artificial, false, insincere, all compromises and all untruths... At the same time, he possessed enormous talent, a sharp aesthetic feeling, passionate energy, enthusiasm and the warmest, most delicate and responsive heart.” 76
People who knew Belinsky closely noted his enormous moral influence on the members of the circle: “He had a charming effect on me and on all of us. It was something much more than an assessment of intelligence, charm, talent - no, it was the action of a person who not only went far ahead of us with a clear understanding of the aspirations and needs of that thinking minority to which we belonged, not only illuminating and showing us the way, but for everyone lived with his being for those ideas and aspirations that lived in all of us, surrendered to them passionately, filled his life with them. Add to this civil, political and all impeccability, mercilessness towards oneself... and you will understand why this man reigned autocratically in our circle.” 77
Belinsky proclaimed “sociality” as the motto of his literary-critical activity. “Sociality, sociality - or death! This is my motto,” he wrote to V.G. Botkin in September 1841. “My heart bleeds and shudders convulsively when I look at the crowd and its representatives. Grief, heavy grief takes possession of me at the sight of barefoot boys playing knucklebones in the street, and ragged beggars, and a drunken cab driver, and a soldier coming from a divorce, and an official running with a briefcase under his arm.” 78 Members of Belinsky’s friendly circle shared these new social interests, began to turn in their creativity to depicting the plight of the St. Petersburg lower classes, and were increasingly imbued with the pathos of “sociality.” In the early 40s, on the basis of this group of writers, the so-called “natural school” arose, uniting a number of realist writers. The appearance of Gogol’s “Dead Souls” in 1842 contributed to the formation of this realistic trend, which, according to Herzen, “shocked all of Russia” and caused a galaxy of imitations. The new school took shape during 1842-1845; V.G. Belinsky, I.S. Turgenev, I.I. Panaev, D.V. Grigorovich, N.A. Nekrasov, I.A. Goncharov were joined by some of the writers - members of the Petrashevsky circle: S.F. A. I. Pleshcheev, M. E. Saltykov, V. N. Maikov, F. M. Dostoevsky, who shared the views of Belinsky and his friends. Dostoevsky enthusiastically recalled his meeting with the great critic:
“I left him in ecstasy. I stopped at the corner of his house, looked at the sky, at the bright day, at the people passing by, and with all my being I felt that a solemn moment had occurred in my life, a turning point forever, that something completely new had begun, but something that I had no idea then in my most passionate dreams.” 79
The writers of the natural school were not united in their socio-political views. Some of them had already taken the position of revolutionary democracy - Belinsky, Nekrasov, Saltykov. Others - Turgenev, Goncharov, Grigorovich, Annenkov - professed more moderate views. But what they all had in common—hatred of the serf system and the conviction of the need to destroy it—became the connecting link in their joint activities.
Artistically, the writers of the natural school were united by the desire for truthfulness and honest observations of the life of the people. The manifesto of the new direction was the collections of stories - “Petersburg Collection” and “Physiology of Petersburg”. Their participants set themselves the task of showing the capital of the Russian Empire not from the official, ceremonial side, but from behind the scenes, to depict the common people’s life in city slums and back streets. Passion for “physiological” problems led the participants in the new collections to a thorough study of individual social layers, individual parts of the city and their way of life.
Deep interest in the fate of representatives of the lower classes was shown not only by Nekrasov, who knew well the life of the working people - from his own experience, not only by Dal, endowed with the gift of a linguist and ethnographer, but also by the noble youths Turgenev and Grigorovich.
At the same time, the ideological orientation of the essays demonstrates a close proximity to Belinsky’s views. Thus, the collection “Physiology of St. Petersburg” is preceded by an article by a critic in which he compared Moscow and St. Petersburg. Belinsky believes that the defining feature of Moscow society is the preservation of the traditions of feudal life: “everyone lives at home and fences himself off from his neighbor,” but in St. Petersburg he sees the center of government administration and the Europeanization of the country. The following works by various authors illustrate or develop the thoughts expressed by Belinsky. The critic, for example, writes that in “Moscow, janitors are rare,” since each house represents a family nest, not inclined to communicate with the outside world, but in St. Petersburg, where every house is inhabited by a variety of people, a janitor is an obligatory and important figure. This theme is continued by Dahl’s essay “The Petersburg Janitor” included in the collection, which tells about the work, life, and views of yesterday’s peasant, who became a prominent figure in St. Petersburg apartment buildings.
The creativity of writers of this trend was not limited to depicting the inhabitants of the St. Petersburg outskirts. Their works also reflected the life of the serf peasantry. In Nekrasov’s poems, in Grigorovich’s story “Anton the Miserable” and Herzen’s “The Thieving Magpie”, serfs appear as the main characters. This theme was further embodied in the stories of Turgenev and the novels of Dostoevsky. The new era, naturally, gave birth to realist writers and a new democratic hero in the work. The enlightened nobleman was replaced in Russian literature by the “little man” - an artisan, a petty official, a serf.
Sometimes, carried away by the depiction of the psychological or speech characteristics of the characters depicted, the authors fell into naturalism. But with all these extremes, the works of writers of the natural school represented a new phenomenon in Russian literature.
Belinsky wrote about this in the introduction to the collection “Physiology of St. Petersburg”, in an article devoted to the review of the “Petersburg Collection”, and in the work “A Look at Russian Literature of 1846”. They said that for the normal development of literature, not only geniuses are needed, but also talents; Along with “Eugene Onegin” and “Dead Souls” there should be journalistic and fictional works that, in a form accessible to readers, would acutely and timely respond to the topic of the day and would strengthen realistic traditions. In this regard, as Belinsky believed, the natural school stood in the forefront of Russian literature. 80 So, from individual outstanding realistic works to the realistic school - this is the path that Russian literature took from the mid-20s to the mid-40s. In addition, collections of the natural school returned Russian literature to the militant principles of the “Polar Star” of Ryleev and Bestuzhev. But in contrast to the civil-romantic orientation of the Decembrist almanac, the collections of the “natural school” proclaimed the tasks of democracy and realism.
The successes of the “natural school” provoked fierce criticism from its opponents and, above all, reactionary journalists like Bulgarin and Grech. Under the pretext of defending “pure art,” Bulgarin accuses supporters of the “natural school” of being partial to the rough, low sides of life, of striving to depict nature without embellishment. “We,” he wrote, “keep to the rules... Nature is only good when it is washed and combed.” N. Polevoy, who now collaborated with Bulgarin, and Moscow University professor Shevyrev, who participated in the Slavophile magazine “Moskvityanin”, became an active opponent of the “natural school.” Then wider literary and artistic circles joined the hostile polemic against the “natural school”. Intensifying their accusations against “naturalists,” this press in every possible way emphasized the “baseness” of the subject matter, the “dirtiness of reality” in the work of young writers. One of the publications even featured a caricature of Grigorovich, depicting him rummaging through a trash heap. However, emphasizing the “unaesthetic” artistic style of the “natural school,” its opponents did not mention a word about the truthfulness of the picture depicted, or about the fact that the writers of this school illuminate the people’s life, the life of the oppressed segments of the population. The fact that opponents ignored the social aspect in the works of writers of the “natural school” showed that the struggle was not so much about creative principles, but rather about a socio-political position.
During the first half of the 19th century, Russian literature went through a long and complex path of artistic and ideological development: from classicism to sentimentalism, progressive romanticism, and then to critical realism; from enlightenment - through the ideas of Decembrism - to the ideas of democracy. The outstanding successes of Russian literature of this period were due to its close connection with the socio-historical development of the country, the life of the people, and the social movement. She was an exponent of the most humane and progressive ideas of her era. A modern researcher of the history of Russian culture assessed the importance of literature in this way: “Literature played the main stabilizing and creative role in Russian culture of the 19th-20th centuries - in its highest, most perfect, “classical” phenomena.” 81 Advanced Russian literature, which has become the moral vector of its era, is increasingly beginning to focus on a wide readership. In the 1830s, this trend was just emerging, but by the 40s and 50s it manifested itself quite clearly. Literature “was no longer satisfied with handwritten notebooks as copies, private letters as journalism, elegant toys - almanacs as press. It was now happening with noise, addressed to the crowd; she created thick magazines, and she gave real power to Belinsky’s magazine battles.” 82
The process of democratization of Russian literature is also stimulated by the appearance of the first common writers. The nationality of Russian literature increases with each new stage of the liberation movement.
As a result, the social prestige of literary creativity and the influence of literature on various layers of readers who saw in it a progressive social force increased enormously. “Questions of literature,” a contemporary wrote, “became questions of life, beyond the difficulty of questions from other spheres of human activity. The entire educated part of society rushed into the book world, in which alone a real protest was made against mental stagnation, against lies and double-mindedness.” 83
In 1841, the British took Canton, Amoy and Ningbo. In 1842 the British captured Shanghai and Zhenjiang. The threat to Nanjing forced China to sue for peace. China ceded Hong Kong to England, opened Canton, Amoy and Fuzhou to English trade, returned Ningbo and Shanghai to Britain and paid an indemnity of 20 million dollars.
Notes:
* To compare events that took place in Russia and Western Europe, in all chronological tables, starting from 1582 (the year of the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in eight European countries) and ending with 1918 (the year of the transition of Soviet Russia from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar), in the column DATES indicated date only according to the Gregorian calendar, and the Julian date is indicated in parentheses along with a description of the event. In chronological tables describing the periods before the introduction of the new style by Pope Gregory XIII (in the DATES column) Dates are based on the Julian calendar only.. At the same time, no translation is made to the Gregorian calendar, because it did not exist.
Literature and sources:
Russian and world history in tables. Author-compiler F.M. Lurie. St. Petersburg, 1995
Chronology of Russian history. Encyclopedic reference book. Under the direction of Francis Comte. M., "International Relations". 1994.
Chronicle of world culture. M., "White City", 2001.