What is the fatherland. Fatherland is native land

This concept has a subtext so emotional that it is not easy to define it. When a person just explains that the Fatherland or Fatherland is the land of ancestors, that is, fathers, wishing to clarify the semantic component of a given word, a hot wave of feeling is born in his soul. None of the morally healthy people is alien to patriotism.

War as a factor in history

And the defender of the Fatherland is basically a warrior. It just so happened that war in any state is the most important factor in the history of the Fatherland, and, for example, Russians practically did not have an absolutely peaceful time. At all times, either the defense of their lands or the protection of the country's interests outside of it was required. These are the conditions for the existence of Russia - it needs both geopolitical and cultural and historical integrity. Therefore, here a military man always enjoys a special attitude: they trust him, he is respected, they are afraid of him. It is his memory that is most often perpetuated. It is thanks to him that the country is alive, located on a sixth of the earth. The phrase itself usually refers to soldiers, officers, sailors and military men of all specialties, because the defense of the Fatherland is their job. But even here the words mean a much greater and broadest meaning.

History of the issue

The military threat to our country - therefore, the entire centuries-old history of the Fatherland - is a war, endless and, to varying degrees, bloody. Thus, behind the gray-haired curtain of incredibly distant time, it was formed, as it were, with a mobilization type of development. Suffice it to recall the Stalinist modernization in the thirties of the last century, when the whole society, all the country's resources worked to solve military and political problems. Creation of an army and navy in the first case and a powerful military-industrial complex in the second. And these are not the only examples.

Memory of generations

In the sixteenth century, Russia fought for forty-three years, in the seventeenth - forty-eight, in the eighteenth - sixty-one years, in the nineteenth - already sixty-seven. 20th century - The Soviet Union survived two world wars. World War II - the main tragedy world history... With an unprecedented number of victims. Armed forces of Russia and other republics Soviet Union Hitler's fascism was defeated when the entire civilization was threatened with destruction. It is all the more strange and even regrettable to hear how some people who are not close to history discuss such and now burning topic. The history of the Fatherland is the memory of generations, their spiritual state and healthy self-awareness, therefore it is necessary to protect our past from falsifications. Without protection, the thread of the events of history is lost, which has linked the people for many centuries. If we forget how to respect our own army, we will have to respect someone else's on our own land.

Vladimir Lenin and defense of the fatherland

This is the whole history of Russia, its exceptional position both from the point of view of geography and from the side of the foreign policy situation require the presence of powerful armed forces. The rest of the world knows about the colossal natural resources, and will certainly begin to build relations with Russia - only from a position of strength. War is war - strife. Vladimir Ilyich notes that defending the Fatherland is also not always true. Thus, he shares the lies of imperialist wars, which replace all law and all democracy with violence during military operations, in fact, fighting only to replenish the profits of the top of the exploiters. Civil and Patriotic wars are waged solely in the interests of the people, not by force of money, but by common forces and social harmony. Not the redistribution and plundering of colonies and not the division of spheres of influence, but the mass movement of the people overthrowing national oppression - a just war. Isn't it easy to build a bridge across a century from V.I. Lenin to contemporary events? Today's wars are characterized by a lie: you have an oil field, but there is absolutely no democracy, we are coming to you. Lenin also wrote about the modern information war, when even such phrases had not yet been born. A philosopher of genius in perspicacity. He was also right in the fact that the Fatherland is us, all the people. Therefore, the defense of the homeland is entirely our task.

Vladimir Dal about the Fatherland

In the first words, the great lexicographer says the same thing as everyone else: Fatherland is our native land, where our ancestors lived and died, and where we would like to live and die. He asks: who is not sweet about the earth ?! Vast and strong, our homeland gives everyone the pride that he was born a warrior-warrior, and the whole history of the Fatherland is a continuation of the fatherly glory in grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He recalls the year 1812, when both the old and the little one girded themselves with sabers: the Orthodox Kingdom did not perish! You need to defend your Motherland at every hour, ”says the Dane by blood, but Russian by the breadth of his soul,“ because the homeland is your home and your coffin, cradle and domina, your daily bread and life-giving water. Fatherland is our shelter and protection. You cannot renounce the Russian land, because the Lord will renounce such a villain.

Actions to protect the Fatherland are the function of the state

The most important direction in the work of the state is ensuring independence and integrity. The primary reason for this is national interests in the form of military, economic and political doctrines, concepts and programs. The forms and means of protecting the security of the Fatherland are those that are most effective in achieving the goals set by the state, but created on the principles of universal humanism. Here, first of all, the defense of the country, the protection of sovereignty, the guarantee of military security, as well as the integrity and territorial inviolability are important. All this is provided by specially created state organizations - Military establishment and other military formations.

Fatherland is a native country, Motherland. The word fatherland denotes the country of ancestors, fathers, a person, and also has an emotional connotation, implying that some have a special, sacred feeling for the fatherland, which combines love and a sense of duty.
The origins of love for the fatherland
The Fatherland evokes a special feeling among some of its inhabitants (patriots) for the following main reasons: Fatherland is the collective property of the people who live in it. This is a source of wealth, which, according to patriots, must be honored and protected.
In the fatherland, as a rule, a person's young years pass, in which the formation of his interests, habits, character takes place.
The Fatherland and its people invest in each new citizen the costs, efforts and labor that contribute to his formation. It is believed that as a result of this, a debt arises that must be repaid.
For many, the fatherland is a country blessed by Gods - a sacred land.

Fatherland and ideology
There is a point of view according to which the stability of the state and social order is largely due to the extent to which the dominant ideology can formulate the need to serve the fatherland in this particular form. There are the following ideological justifications for this need: Fatherland is associated with God. Thus, serving the fatherland and its rulers is the same as serving God.
Fatherland is associated with the principles on which the state is built. For example, the principles of capitalism: freedom, equality, democracy. To preserve them, you need to support the fatherland. Communism promotes serving the class interests of the working people as the main principle of serving the fatherland.
The fatherland is associated with a particular nation. Thus, serving the fatherland contributes to the preservation of the nationalities of the characteristics of the people inhabiting it.
The fatherland is presented as a collective defense against external enemies who seek to destroy it and thereby threaten personal security, the usual way of life and the well-being of the people.

In each specific situation, the official ideology represents a combination of these principles.
Fatherland in art
Practically in every state there are artists who serve the official ideology and present themselves as "singers of the fatherland." Famous examples from Russian history: Demyan Bedny.

But there are also art workers who sincerely love the fatherland: Sergei Yesenin
Vladimir Mayakovsky

Feats performed in the name of the fatherland
Alexander Matrosov.

An alternative point of view on the fatherland
There are people who have an extremely negative attitude towards their homeland and strive to emigrate from it. An example is the poet and religious thinker V. S. Pecherin (1807-1885), who wrote in one of his poems: “ How sweet it is to hate the Motherland and eagerly await its destruction ...»
Interesting Facts

Lev Alexandrovich Tikhomirov

What is Fatherland?

The subject of my reasoning comes down, in essence, to an examination of the question: does the Fatherland exist and what is it? At another time and in another country, such reasoning could have only academic significance, similar, for example, to the questions: does love exist? does man himself even exist? In practical terms, a person who feels his existence does not have the slightest need for any proof of this. The one who loves can only smile at the evidence that there is no love.

Quite the same ordinary normal person v usual time can refer to the question of whether there is a Fatherland and what it is. He feels it with all his soul, he loves him: The Japanese poet Motoori perfectly expressed the state of his patriotic soul: “If anyone asks what the soul of Japan is (“ Yamato Damassium ”), show him a flower that smells like morning sun… ”There is no definition, there is a simple indication of a self-arising and self-conscious life.

When this feeling of life is strong, the heart composes by itself

This cup to the Fatherland, friends!

The country where we are for the first time

We tasted the sweetness of being

Native fields, hills,

Sweet light of the native sky,

Familiar streams

Golden games of the early years

And the lessons of the first years

What will replace your charm?

Oh Holy Motherland,

What heart does not tremble

Blessing you? ..

(V. A. Zhukovsky)

In Russia we now see a completely different mood around us. All kinds of interests, all kinds of passions, all kinds of principles are put forward, but in their struggle one does not grasp either feelings or ideas of the Fatherland. The very word "patriot" is used rather in a mocking sense, and the reminder of the Fatherland does not affect the hearts. There were even doctrines denying the existence of the Fatherland. The call of the "proletarians of all countries" to unite against all fatherlands is heard from among the intelligentsia and finds an echo among the masses of the people. The ardent feeling of the Fatherland is not visible in other strata of society. It is not visible in the ruling spheres either.

I will not prove this fact, because everyone who has preserved a holy feeling of closeness and love for the Fatherland sees it with bitterness and horror. I will not analyze the reasons that gave rise to this phenomenon, but I consider it necessary to point out that it undoubtedly represents some manifestation of mental illness.

For healthy person there is no need to prove what is evidenced to him by direct sensation, direct perception. But the weakening of direct perception, as it were, a certain devastation of the soul is a disease of the century, and especially of the Russian people. Psychiatry testifies to an increase in patients who doubt their own existence, that is, in other words, feel it badly. All the more, in such a state of mind, the feeling of social-organic processes can decrease, which is where the “invisibility” of the Fatherland, the weakness of feeling it, comes from. And in such a state of people, in order to cure a disease, it becomes extremely important to rely on the evidence of other mental abilities, in order to correct the evidence of a weakened feeling through them. Discourse about whether there is a Fatherland and what it consists of now acquires special significance. The help of the mind, supporting the remnants of a weakened feeling, gives it time to recover, rise in its functions and again begin to grow in souls.

Defense, proof, clarification of the idea of ​​the Fatherland - the apology of the Fatherland - now becomes before us the greatest duty in the name of the resurrection in weakened souls of the greatest of social ideas - the idea of ​​the Fatherland.

To put it this way, I am not exaggerating anything. In the abstraction, one can call other all-encompassing ideas: universal human solidarity, brotherhood, truth, etc. But the strength of the Fatherland lies in the fact that here the idea is combined with the fact, the human soul is united with society not in an abstract idea, but in real existence. Solidarity, brotherhood, truth, appear in the Fatherland not in the form of abstract formulas and principles, but in living realization. That is why the Fatherland has always been so dear to people and love for the Fatherland so exalted them themselves.

If we, having forgotten the phenomenon of sick modernity, look at the thousand-year history of peoples, we will see in everyone and at all times that there is no such treasure that a person would not be ready to sacrifice for the benefit of the Fatherland. Dozens of volumes can be filled with examples of an overwhelming sense of patriotism.

All people, great and small, all forms of states equally give us these examples. The greatest of our kings, under the cannonballs and bullets of Poltava, left his confession to posterity: “But know about Peter that life is not dear to him; Russia would live in honor and glory. " The humble peasant Susanin, who just accidentally became famous history, gives also without hesitation his life for the Motherland. The greatest revolutionary Danton does not want to save his life by fleeing from the Fatherland, exclaiming: "Will I take the Fatherland with me on my soles?" But what is there to interpret about life, when people give up for the Fatherland and all that because of which they value life - wealth, glory, love ... Mitskevich could not express the power of love more strongly, like a comparison:

But there is one sweetest word in the world

Except only the word "Motherland", "love" is the word.

Except only the word "Fatherland" ... Before the Fatherland, love is erased for him, and for his Fatherland, Alf leaves Aldona forever ...

But if it were necessary to indicate the infinity of the sacrifice that a person is able to bring to the Fatherland, I could not have found anything stronger and more amazing than the Apostle Paul, who did not hesitate to utter the almost terrible words: “I speak the truth in Christ, I do not lie, my conscience testifies to me in the Holy Spirit, that great sorrow for me and constant torment to my heart: I myself would like to be excommunicated from Christ for my brothers, relatives of me in the flesh, that is, the Israelites ... ”(Rom. 9: 1-4). This word, this confession escaped from the one who would like to be separated from the body, if only to live with Christ ...

But in this cry of all-consuming love for his native Israel, the Apostle Paul did not leave Christ, because the great feeling that spoke in him was sanctified by the Savior of the world Himself. He Himself wept, looking at Jerusalem and saying: “Oh, if only this day you knew that you are serving your world” (Luke 19:42), “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, beating up the prophets, how many times I wanted to gather your children like a bird gathers its chicks under its wings, and you did not want to ... "This grief did not leave the God-man even at the moment of His redemptive feat, and, bending under the weight of the cross, He said:" Daughters of Jerusalem, do not cry for Me, but for yourself and about their children ”, because at that time the image of the calamities of the Fatherland in the flesh, doomed to destruction, was presented before His gaze.

Considering the fate of our homeland in past centuries, we find it difficult to decide who was more of its builder: statesmen or saints? The ardent patriotism of the greatest ascetics and saints of Russia seems to be tempting for those of our contemporaries who are sick with the loss of immediate feeling or succumbed to the influence of sick doctrines. But the image of the Redeemer of the world, who came to save the people of all tribes and at the same time loves his Fatherland in the flesh, testifies that the feeling of love for the Motherland is also a sacred feeling, blessed by God, and justifies the ascetics of the Russian land, and not their current critics.

What is the Fatherland, if it is capable of attracting so boundlessly the hearts of people and love for it can live even in the heart of the God-man? Can something dreamy, something that does not really exist, something that does not possess high and beneficial properties, awaken the blessings of Heaven and Earth? Of course not ... And if we, shaking off the fog of sick false perceptions of our time, resort to our exact knowledge of history, social sciences, human psychology, if we weigh all these data even with simple scientific objectivity, then we cannot but see that that sphere of our existence, which is called the Fatherland, is actually the highest sphere of the rational and moral development human personality, the highest actually sphere in which reasonable and moral relations between people can be understood and developed.

Because of its beneficence for us, it cannot but arouse love in every healthy heart; out of necessity for the moral development of man, it cannot fail to receive the blessing of God.

The unity of human life and society, the unity of life of successive generations - that close connection of people with each other, which gives people moral unity and constitutes the sphere of development of our moral feeling - all this is really manifested and accomplished only in the Fatherland. Its existence in the form of a completely objective fact manifests itself both internally, psychologically, and externally, in the form of a well-known historical process.

The famous sociologist Gustave Le Bon perfectly characterizes the internal psychological unity of the life of the Fatherland, outlining what he calls the soul of the people. “We,” he says, “are both children of our parents and of our race. Not only feeling, but also physiology, heredity make the Fatherland a second mother for us. The influences to which a person is exposed and which govern his behavior are of three kinds. First, and probably most important, is the influence of ancestors. The second influence is direct parents. The third, which is usually considered the most powerful and which, however, is the weakest, is the influence of the environment. The influences of the environment begin to have a noticeable effect only when heredity has accumulated them in the same direction for a very long time.

Man - whatever he does - is always and above all a representative of his race. The stock of ideas and feelings that all the personalities of one people bring with birth forms the soul of the people. Invisible in its essence, this soul is very visible in its manifestations, so that in reality it controls the entire evolution of the people. " Fatherland, or "race", as Le Bon expresses in his striving for physiological visualization, should be viewed as "a permanent being, not subject to the action of time. This permanent being consists not only of living personalities who form it in this moment but also from the long line of the dead who were their ancestors. To understand the true meaning of race, it must be continued simultaneously into the past and into the future. The ancestors control that immeasurable area of ​​the unconscious (feelings, inclinations, instincts), that invisible area that keeps all manifestations of mind and character under their hand. The fate of the people is guided to a much greater extent by the dead generations than by the living. They have laid the foundation. Century after century, they have created ideas and feelings, that is, incentives for our behavior. Deceased generations transmit to us not only their physical organization, but also inspire us with their thoughts. The dead are gentlemen of the living. We bear the brunt of their mistakes, we are rewarded for their virtues. "

Perhaps Le Bon, being carried away with argumentation, somewhat exaggerates the mental influence of ancestors, diminishes the importance of our independence, but at the core he indicates an undoubted psychological and historical fact. It should also be added that the unity of generations, no matter how great the degree of psychological independence of each of them, is complemented by the commonality of their historical cause, and by will and involuntarily transmitted successively. The environment in which an individual and an entire generation develop is also a succession environment that accumulates influences from generation to generation.

The unity of the life of the Fatherland for centuries and millennia is created not only by psychology, but also by the conditions of external existence. Fatherland is not just a "race". It is an organized nation receiving the completion of its organization in the state. The entire history of the world is the history of states, these successively developing unions, these social organisms that are born, live for hundreds or thousands of years and develop, passing through various phases, from which each subsequent follows from the previous one, is conditioned by it and, in turn, provides the basis for development of the next phase. This fact is generally known not only to science, but is directly known to the members of the national whole, at least in relation to the next generations.

Russia, for example, has existed for a thousand years, during this time it has undergone many changes, there have even been moments when it disappeared as an independent political whole, was fragmented into parts captured in the spheres of influence and possession of other states. But when, in what century did the Russians not realize that they constituted something whole?

They knew this at the birth of the Russian state and then they could already talk about "homeland", about "homeland" in the sense of a common origin - perhaps even more clearly than we did, because they could name those persons from whom they expired. kinship. The first inhabitants, for example, of the future Great Russia knew that their ancestors came from Belaya Rus, that they were the brothers Radim and Vyatko, and that it was from them that the Radimichi and Vyatichi came from.

This community of "fatherland", "kinship" stood before their eyes in its most vivid form. They also knew that some Finnish tribes entered their union, as adoptees are accepted into a clan family. At the time of the founding of statehood, they saw that their living conditions were equally strong and weak sides so for common life all clans and tribes require one common measure. "Our land is great and abundant, but there is no order in it," they said to the princes, according to legend, "come to own and rule over us."

And from that first moment in our Fatherland, we can then see, century after century, the planned development of one whole. Sometimes it goes on more consciously, sometimes less, sometimes it seems to be interrupted - as, for example, under the pressure of southern nomads, the Tatar invasion, the influence of Poland, the Livonian knights, etc. But each time the national whole, torn or destroyed in one place, begins rebuild elsewhere with the forces of the surviving regions. The crisis that has undermined the entire nation in one generation, the next generation is trying to heal and eliminate, and all according to approximately the same plan. Looking over our destinies for a thousand years, we see the development of one and the same process, supported not only locally by all parts of the national organism, but in time by each of the generations, which comes into possession of the entire "fatherland", all the property left by the fathers and grandfathers , and uses it, and sometimes inherits a terrible situation and then tries to correct it, and then, in turn, leaves his inheritance to his heirs - children and grandchildren. The life of each individual generation in this common, unified, successive process makes sense only in the existence of the whole Fatherland.

History and social science show us the objective fact that not a single moment in the life of the state has an isolated existence, but is always a link in some whole thousand-year process, the life of the whole Fatherland. Only over the centuries are the institutions of the state formed, only over the centuries does it reach its normal boundaries, predetermined by geographical, ethnographic conditions, etc. During the centuries, the economic relations of the whole organism are being formed. Each generation is only one part of a whole process taking place in a number of them.

Not in the life of one generation, but in the life of a changing series, their community has its own purpose, fulfillment and completion.

This fact has as its consequence the important circumstance that the life of the Fatherland is incomparably more important for the development of society than the life of mankind.

The life of mankind gives only an idea that guides our abstract mind, and theoretical direction our moral feeling, but the real community of life in our world existence is much less than in the Fatherland.

Although, of course, in the whole of humanity there is a continuity of development and interaction of individual parts, neither one nor the other reaches approximately the same clarity and tension as in the Fatherland. The ego does not depend on the existence of international enmity.

Internal strife, fierce rivalry and even wars occur in the Fatherland no less than in humanity, just like the peaceful interaction of parts exists in humanity. But humanity in neither one nor the other does not have those powerful means for mutual understanding and a reasonable arrangement of the joint life of the parts, as it happens in the Fatherland.

The consciousness of the human community was born in the Fatherland when the various parts of humanity did not yet have a spark of this feeling. The deliberate rational adaptation of the interests of individual parts to the interests of the whole whole does not exist in humanity even to this day, or if it exists, then in the most insignificant extent. In the Fatherland, on the contrary, this constitutes the entire content of his life. Thus, the human community was born and developed in the Fatherland. It was and remains a school of social feelings. It was and remains a sphere in which people really pursue common goals, consciously setting them for themselves and systematically realizing them, not only because it is possible in one whole organism, but also because it cannot even be otherwise. In the Fatherland, the totality of external, internal and psychological conditions by itself compels people to come to the consciousness of their unity and act together, even if they initially did not want it. Reverse example gives socialism, which, having decided to place the public on the basis of all-humanity, in fact only undermines the human community, introduces into it disunity, enmity and struggle.

Fatherland provides the only real realization of universal human life in all the diversity of its parts, not left to struggle, but reasonably and justly agreed upon. Man, as a member of the human race, is brought up and really lives only in the Fatherland.

Reasonable social existence of a person is even impossible otherwise than in this continuity of generations. Even his own interest, material or moral, cannot be associated with caring only about one day or only about directly close people. The present day will be replaced by tomorrow; having poorly arranged our lives today, we may suffer from this in a year or twenty years. The person we see around us today will disappear tomorrow, and another will approach us in a hostile or friendly way, from somewhere very far away. We have to think not about one day, but about an indefinitely long period, not only about those who are standing next to us this minute, but about all people. This concern for everyone is transferred to children and grandchildren, and, stimulating our moral content, it becomes a concern for a person in general, makes us think about those human beings who will live hundreds of years after us.

In the sphere of our thought about humanity, our personal connection with him and him with us has nothing burning, deeply affecting, prompting to action. In the sphere of thinking about the Fatherland, on the contrary, the smallest, most personal, even selfish question of life immediately connects us with previous generations, with the surrounding society and with the future. We see at every step that the good we use is due to the people around us or to our fathers. In the same way, we experience directly the consequences of their mistakes. We know that our own actions will certainly respond to those around us and to our children and grandchildren. Here, in every thought of ours and in every step we plunge, thus, into public life, and, moreover, not abstract, but real, which, with its content, either gives us moral satisfaction, or arouses reproaches of conscience, or generates fear for the fate of loved ones or those cases in which we have invested our efforts and our soul. Thus, only in this life - in the Fatherland - our social feeling arises and develops mightily, and not in life with universal human interests, which is almost always abstract, not clear, unable to express itself in facts, is not capable of arousing business energy.

In the same way, our social thought really arises, develops and reaches maturity only when it happens on the basis of the life of the Fatherland, and not of humanity. Of course, it happens that our actions can affect the life of mankind, our plans can sometimes cover the life of all mankind. But the lack of organized unity in humanity leads to the fact that the actual relationship between our thought and plan, on the one hand, and the life of humanity, on the other, can only appear by chance. And in these rare cases, we can only influence the life of mankind through our Fatherland. It is a mediator between our thought or deed and humanity, it provides ways of action. So, Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar carried with them an idea that was more common to all mankind, world than national. But they, too, could influence human life only through the content of the life of Greece and Rome, through the fact that in the life of their Fatherland they sensed and directed it towards implementation as a universal idea.

In the life of the Fatherland, naturally, voluntarily and involuntarily, the social, state thought of every person - both small and great - develops, from the first moments of his civilian age.

A citizen, especially a statesman, there is no such task that, from the request of the day, would not be forced to logically move into some account with the past, with the environment and with the future. Everything we do for the people's welfare or for mental development, for moral stability, for the improvement of the social order or government agencies, for any economic needs, etc. - all this cannot be arranged without thinking about the future, about what will happen when what we are arranging will ripen and bear fruit. After a very short practice, we are personally convinced that only what is calculated for usefulness in the historical destinies of the Fatherland can be truly useful for the present day. The solidarity of people in one union and the solidarity of generations in the historical life of the Fatherland - this idea grows gradually with clarity and persuasiveness in everyone. And this consciousness is the basis of any society. It is not an abstract armchair thought about universal solidarity that develops it in us, but real personal activity, concrete experiments and examples of their fruitfulness or failure.

The development of public feeling and the mind of people on the basis of the life of the Fatherland is made all the more powerful, clearly, with irresistible convincingness for the consciousness that in the life of the Motherland we always receive from previous generations a number of tasks of paramount importance, which were not started by us and will end not by us, but for ours. our own current lives are of great importance, so that we are certainly forced to deal with them.

This is due to the fact that the nation, the state, the Fatherland is a really existing collective process, in the accomplishment of which purely natural conditions, inevitable for us, act, whether they relate to the material or spiritual side of collective existence. The implementation of these conditions requires centuries, and it is necessary, because, as people of every generation see, their interests really depend on this. Hence in the Fatherland is the continuity of historical tasks and, accordingly, the continuity of politics.

State science gives us a number of such historical tasks, for the fulfillment of which several generations are working one after another.

This is, for example, a territorial task. Human society is able to live and develop only if it has the necessary material conditions and inner freedom disposition of oneself, independence in ordering oneself. For this, society must first of all define and occupy its natural territory, the one without which it cannot have sufficient funds and independence. Such a territory is indicated by the external nature itself. The state does not arbitrarily choose certain boundaries for itself, but willy-nilly it strives to achieve the so-called natural boundaries. It is obligatory for him to achieve them, and it almost cannot go over them without harm and inconvenience.

These natural boundaries in countries, for example, rich and mountainous, are usually less extensive. In Russia, for example, they, on the contrary, forcibly cover a huge space for us from the Baltic and the Carpathians to The Pacific, from the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea, the Caucasus, Turkestan, Altai and Manchuria. One cannot live in all this space except in one state union; every nation, having started life here, willy-nilly is forced to strive step by step to the natural borders, covering a territory well demarcated from neighbors, giving the possibility of world relations and naturally containing various resources for the existence of the nation. As you know, such a desire to spread to the entire specified space characterizes our history both in the instinctive movement of the masses of the people, and in public policy... Our territorial policy for a thousand years has had the same tendency. Much has changed, but the tasks of territorial policy remained the same, which is why they created the same policy for all governments, no matter how different they were in the mind and energy of the rulers.

The same successively transmitted task is economic policy - the definition and implementation of methods for the material existence of the people. This task begins with distant ancestors and extends to their great-great-grandchildren, while remaining very similar in basic principles. In our country, for example, in Russia, it has long been reduced to processing, if possible, large quantity land and at the same time, if possible, achieve the internal processing of products. I do not dwell on a detailed description of this complex problem, which has faced Russia in a monotonous manner for centuries. My goal is only to point out the involuntary continuity of this age-old task, in the solution of which each generation was constantly forced to reckon with the past and think about the future.

The same long-term and necessary task of every nation is constituted by its own development, its self-creation, spiritual and external unity.

The ego is not a task of any "taste", but of necessity. An unfinished nation, which has not completed the unity of its psyche, language, and spiritual unity, cannot harmoniously and conveniently create its outer life. Every generation feels this. It feels that its life, harmonious, harmonious, friendly, and therefore prosperous, suffers from every manifestation of incomplete national unity. We are now, as it sometimes seems, on the brink of ruin precisely because we allowed the elements of national unity to weaken and allowed the extra-national elements that were included in one way or another in our Fatherland, but not yet merged, to rage. The policy of national unity in all states is a task that is successively transmitted and carried out throughout the life of the nation. And this task of national unity is very difficult: it includes many constituent elements, each of which has to be developed with the same continuity and systematicity, otherwise we will immediately feel the effect of decay that violates all the functions of living together. On this basis, the life and concerns of each generation, whether they want it or not, constitute only one moment of the integral existence of the Fatherland.

The organization general management, organization of the state.

States cannot be founded at any moment, not for a single moment. A generation that sees itself without a state immediately feels that it is in danger of death in the most literal sense of the word, if it does not create a state. But a state cannot be created otherwise than by adapting its plan to the tasks of the ages, and, however, it is impossible and completely to foresee the conditions of the future, and most importantly, it is impossible to create at once those feelings and auxiliary institutions, without which a well-functioning state is inconceivable. Thus, in achieving this task, the efforts of all generations must be combined successively, starting it according to a certain plan and constantly completing the building that was started, adapting it to the conditions of the time, and at the same time inevitably taking into account the influence of what was done earlier by previous generations.

I will not multiply examples. What has been said is enough to remind us that in the Fatherland we live in the only real, even inevitable for us social organization and that it is only in the Fatherland that we develop our social feelings and reason. In the Fatherland, we learn to understand society, learn to value and love it, learn the laws of its existence, learn the art of using these laws. In the Fatherland, we only get to know humanity and the feelings developed by domestic life, we transfer by analogy to all of humanity.

So, in the Fatherland we have a certain collective whole that gave birth to us, educated us, prepared us the means for life and at the same time significantly predetermined our activities for future times.

Fatherland fully justifies the meaning of the word by which we call it. The community of each separate generation is eternally born in it from one common successive community. The ego is a historical and social fact.

But in a sick time, a question arises in sick minds: is the interest and the good of all the constituent parts of the whole really realized in this process? Isn't this just a successive system of exploitation of some classes by others, as modern socialism asserts? This slander against the Fatherland constitutes a slander against the entire human community, which has never been carried out otherwise than in the form that the Fatherland represents.

To admit such a thought is to admit that the entire human community is nothing more than a system of exploitation of some classes by others. But we know very well that people are not able to live otherwise than in the public, that otherwise they perish, and therefore they, in the person of all classes, in all millennia of the existence of thousands of human tribes, saw this so clearly that they certainly created a community and recreated it if it began to collapse somewhere. Therefore, we must deduce from here that there is exploitation. necessary condition so that people do not die out, but can live in the world. But then one would have to admit that exploitation is the greatest human blessing! This is the absurdity of the civilly demoralized and historically ignorant point of view that slanders the attitude of the common Fatherland to the interests of its individual parts.

Where did this slander come from? It is based on the fact that, turning a blind eye to an essential sign of a phenomenon, it is determined on the basis of a secondary one. In this way of sophistry it is easy to expose any absurdity. Fire, for example, is necessary for all people, and without using it, one cannot live. But people are burned on fire and sometimes fires occur from it. What can we say about reasoning if, defining the meaning of fire for humanity, it declares: fire is a way of burning human dwellings and causing dangerous burns to people themselves? Such is the sophism through which socialism proves that the Fatherland has always been a system of exploitation of some classes by others.

Human society is supported by the fact that people in it provide services to one another, that is, each person in it uses the existence of other people and himself serves to use them. Social justice requires that this exchange of services be equal or proportional, that is, that a person does not take from others more than he gives them. Such an exchange of services has nothing to do with exploitation; on the contrary, it is a system of mutual benefit. The difference in the nature of the services people provide to each other, of course, does not in itself create exploitation, but, on the contrary, precisely makes the exchange of services especially valuable and necessary for everyone. Exploitation occurs only if one party receives a disproportionate amount in the exchange of services.

But this is no longer the law of the life of the Fatherland, but a violation of the law. Of course, the fact of exploitation is very common in the human community, it is as sure as the fact that fire produces fires and burns. But it is absolutely not true that any society was ever built on this. In those cases when exploitation develops strongly, society, on the contrary, as a result of this begins to collapse, because it is based mainly on the voluntary submission of all to the given system and voluntary support from all, and when the system of society becomes exploitative, it ceases to be supported.

A certain amount of coercion, that is, violence, is inevitable in society. It itself creates a power that receives the right and obligation to act coercively. But coercion is only an aid for that voluntary maintenance of a given system, which is produced by the entire mass of society. No power and no class can be held by violence alone, even if it seized power. Each class is held together by providing some kind of service to the other classes. Even in cases of pure conquest, as, for example, England by the Normans, the conquerors strive to socially justify their dominion and take on some function necessary for society. In England, as you know, the conquerors created such an excellent society with such inner freedom that no other nation had. The conquered themselves kept their discontent in their souls more because of national pride, and in all other respects they could not but admit that the conquerors arranged their land better than they could do themselves. Hence the remarkable fact that the English aristocracy - the descendants of the Norman conquerors - is deeply respected by the people even to this day.

So, if violence and exploitation exist between people, if in society there is also exploitation of one class by another, then this is not the essence of society, but in the mutual services of classes and people. The system of these mutual services constitutes society, and not exploitation, which is an element of collateral, abnormal, harmful, illegal and, as far as possible, destroyed. The true law and basis is the common good of all members and classes of society, which, to the extent of strength and understanding, has always been realized in the Fatherland.

The task of the common good based on the exchange of class services is what creates society. So it was in history.

When, at the dawn of Russian history, Oleg says to the Radimichs: “Do not give tribute to the Khazars, give it better to me,” this is nothing more than an offer of their services as a judge and a warrior, and the Radimichs agree - obviously, finding that it is more profitable for them to be with Oleg than under the Khazars. When Igor collected tribute from the Drevlyans for the first time, this was recognized as part of the exchange of services, but when he came another time, they killed him, saying that he was acting like a wolf; his act, therefore, was already recognized as exploitation. Olga avenged her husband's death, but immediately took up the establishment of the correct "statutes" and "lessons" from the Drevlyans. In the developing relations between the classes of vigilantes and smerds, the main role was played not by violence, but by mutual necessity, the exchange of services.

And what would really have happened to these smerds without the vigilantes? Suffice it to recall the devastation of the Polovtsy in the south and various "good fellows", "ushkuiniks" of their own Russian production. The third emerging class - the commercial one - played the necessary social role, so that the very title of "guests" has become especially honorable and popular in folk songs... Undoubtedly, exploitation manifested itself both on the part of these "guests" and on the part of the druzhina-boyar class, just as the smerds were not saints, if possible, they did not refuse to profit at someone else's expense. But the reasons for the existence of the Fatherland, the reasons why all classes stood for it, consisted in their mutual services, in the achieved common good.

Throughout Russian history, individual classes worked on common task: colonization of the boundless spaces of the territory that nature intended for the inhabiting of the nation. The peasant stratum, with the weakening of the statehood that covered it, could not even enter the northern forest areas, where without the systematic support of the Suzdal princes it could not spread and hold out. The movement of the peasantry to the fertile south went on for centuries also under the cover of sentry notches, towns and service nobles with boyar children, who from decade to decade covered new and new spaces for the popular colonization stream with their towns and notches. Our then "Ukrainians" are all lined with lines of notches and noble-Cossack guard posts all the way to Voronezh and beyond. If there was no state organization with all its ranks and estates, then there would be no Russian people in general, and in particular the mighty peasantry that grew up under the guise of statehood and with the help of other classes, especially the zemstvo-servant. As for the "guests", the merchant industrial stratum, it is enough to remember that Siberia is secured in the use of the Russian people by the private efforts of the Stroganovs.

Of course, lovers of fanning human enmity can at any time and place find enough reasons for false generalizations. But it is enough to look at the general result of a thousand-year history to see that in it the laboring mass of the people who are said to have been the only object of exploitation all the time won. Where is our princely aristocracy? It almost doesn't exist. Where is the nobility? After all, for the last two centuries until 1861, it actually held the entire state in its hands. If it served itself, and not the state, it could still own the people today. But it itself undermined that serfdom, which was a bonanza for him.

In condemning the abuses of the nobility, it is unjust and unreasonable to forget its enormous cultural significance for the mass of the people, it is unfair to forget that the nobility destroyed itself as a class due to considerations of the highest truth and the common good. Meanwhile, the peasantry really took shape as a huge, powerful estate with the greatest estate organization, with the possession of a large part of Russian lands, obtained in those times most of all by the blood and agricultural labor of border service people.

In total, taking the thousand-year life of a nation, we are not here, but in general, anywhere, we always see the growth of the whole - the Fatherland, the individual parts of which, in the class sense, perform various functions necessary for the needs of the whole. At the same time, a class that finds itself in a favorable position may be tempted by exploitative aspirations, but this is not the meaning of its existence, but in the performance of some socially necessary functions. The existence of classes expresses the national division of labor, the specialization of functions. This phenomenon in itself is absolutely necessary and inevitable. Until now, we have never seen a society in the world that could exist otherwise than with such a class, estate division of national functions. The division of the parts of the whole according to specialties and their combination is the whole meaning of the organization, all its benefits. If one could imagine the existence of people of labor without division, then there would be no need for organization, and there would be no need for joint existence.

This general law specialization of labor and its combination is expressed in the division of the nation into classes and in their general combination of state power. This does not mean and are achieved not exploitation, not the interests of any one part, but the interests of all of them together, in the aggregate.

Fatherland, this great, successive environment from generation to generation, which gave birth to us, brought up, created by the concordant interaction of its classes and its organizations everything that lives around us and us with the same thousand-year concordant labor, prepared everything that we can now live with, would be beneficial for us even if it were an inanimate environment and would benefit us as well as the elements of dead nature. Even in this case, among all of us, people of all classes, love could not fail to be born to him, as it is born to the common nurse-mother earth. But Fatherland is not a dead environment of unspiritualized nature. This is a human environment that did everything it did, consciously and deliberately. The feeling of love for the Fatherland becomes even stronger at the thought that his concern for the welfare of all past and future generations and for us now living was deliberate and conscious.

The element of conscious care for the whole, in all its existing members and classes and in a whole series of generations, on eternal times, it is precisely that gives the Fatherland its sublime and "paternal" character.

In the whole of humanity, individual parts of it and the changing peoples of history also turn out to be useful to the entire human race, but this happens unconsciously, without intention. In the Fatherland, on the contrary, we in the most distant ancestor see concern for the same whole in which we now live. The thought of Saint Vladimir or Monomakh about the Russian land spread in their feelings and to us, unknown to them and did not exist then in the world. Just as an individual, in caring about the present day, tries to foresee the interests of his entire future life, so in the Fatherland, taking care of himself, a citizen and an activist take care of future generations.

Thought and concern for the collective life of the Russian land lived from the most distant times of its birth. The thought of the Russian land dominates the consciousness of all the best figures, the spokesmen for what the Fatherland is alive with. The fathers acquired the Russian land, we and future generations must return it - this is a constant reminder of them to our contemporaries.

“Here I am moving away from the light, - said the dying Yaroslav to his children. - Love each other, because you are family brothers ... If you live in love with each other, God will be with you ... if you begin to hate each other, then you yourself will perish, and you will destroy the land of your fathers and grandfathers, which they obtained with great labor your own. " To live for the Russian land, to die for it is the thought of all the best princes. Blind Vasilko expounds his dreams, destroyed by the atrocity: he recalls how he wanted to ask the troops to step on human land and avenge the Russian land (for the raids of Boleslav), how he later wanted to go to the Polovtsi and thought: “Either I’ll find glory for myself, or I'll lay down my head for the Russian land. " Vladimir Monomakh's motto was: "I do not want dashing, but good to the brothers and the Russian land." He describes his ascetic working life for the Russian land, to give instruction to children, and about whom does he care, whom does he serve? "Above all, do not forget the poor, justify the orphan and the widow yourself, do not let the strong destroy a person."

He himself never "allowed the strong to offend either a thin stinker or a poor widow." In his eyes, the Russian land was one whole, for the benefit of which he sacrificed his personal feelings. Tormented by grief over the murder of his son, in the name of the good of the Russian land, he turns to the culprit of his grief, Oleg, with the words of reconciliation: “Come to Kiev so that we can settle order about the Russian land before the bishops, abbots and people of the city and defend the Russian land from the rotten ". Vyacheslav Vladimirovich, persuading the princes to stop strife, says: “Do not shed Christian blood, do not ruin the Russian land. Although they have offended me, they have done me both dishonor, and although I have regiments, and have the strength, but for the sake of the Russian land and Christians I forget all this. "

The thought of the good of the Russian land reigned over the mind and conscience of all her best sons. She lived the same way in the citizens. The embassy of Kiev citizens told the princes under Svyatopolk: “If you start to fight with each other, the nasty ones will be delighted and take the Russian land, which your grandfathers and fathers acquired: they fought on the Russian land with great difficulty and courage, and they were looking for other lands, and you want to destroy yours too. " The thought of the Russian land fills the soul of the author of "The Lay of Igor's Campaign": he does not think about any interests of princes or warriors, but about the good of the whole land, the poet reproaches the princes for ruining it, and sings the glorious death of the soldiers who in a bloody feast "you have nailed your matchmakers and you yourself will go for the Russian land" ...

The patriots' concern for the Russian land, whole in all its members and estates, was the reason for the collapse of the appanage system and the rule of the princely aristocracy. They were irrevocably condemned to destruction by the popular consciousness for the defeat of Russia by the Tatars. Do I need to remember that after this, all the national efforts of Russia and the Grand Dukes of Moscow were absorbed in the thought of the future of the Fatherland?

Of course, they saved themselves, but what gave them energy, gave them strength to endure all humiliation and trials and fearlessly suppress many, in their then views, legitimate aspirations of local particularism - it was the thought of the future, of that distant future liberation and the glory of their native land, which they doted and could not see with their own eyes. The entire era of collecting and re-creating Russia was the conscious and systematic work of the ancestors for future generations, for the benefit of the integral future of the Fatherland.

With such care, the kingdom of Moscow was created, the state philosophy of which was so excellently set forth by Ivan the Terrible in his correspondence with Prince Kurbsky, and this philosophy is all imbued with the idea of ​​the common good.

No matter how one evaluates the form in which the Moscow era imagined state means of achieving the common good, there is no doubt, in any case, that the goal was the common good. No individual estates were allowed to prevail in it. The Tsar motivated and justified his entire struggle against the boyar aristocracy with the idea of ​​the common good, the protection of the people from exploitation. And he defined himself as a servant of God on the protection of the common good.

But the idea of ​​the Fatherland, conscious work for the future in connection with the affairs of the ancestors was soon solemnly declared in an incomparably more significant nationwide act on behalf of the entire Russian people, who came together in the person of their representatives at the Great Zemsky Sobor in 1613. The "approved letter" of this Council, which restored the Russian statehood, destroyed by the terrible times of hard times, shows us the political consciousness of the nation, expressed by it itself.

How does the Russian people in this unique historical act determine the meaning of their existence? The diploma testifies that the people in the state were one whole for a thousand years, from the time oldest princes, and that during all this time he lived by the same state idea. The Council explains that this idea was shaken in the era of troubles by sins, selfish aspirations, disunity and crimes, and that now the Russian people are again restoring the correct course of life. This is the meaning of literacy. Linking itself with the entire past of Russia, the generation of 1613 also declared that it was establishing order for eternal times, for which it was drawing up an "approved letter." It is repeated three times in it that the structure is being erected for future times: "May it henceforth be strong and motionless and steady forever, as it is written in this approved letter."

All the ranks of all the people of the reigning city of Moscow and all the Russian lands put in, so that "nothing should be different, but to be so in everything according to how it is written in this approved letter." If someone does not want to ever fulfill this decree of 1613, then he is subject to church excommunication and "revenge" of the civil law. In the very conclusion of the letter, it is again repeated that it was decided to put the letter in storage in a safe place, “may it be firm and indestructible for future years, in childbirth and childbirth, and may not a single line pass, and not one iota of everything written in it ".

If people of some other people had brought ingratitude and injustice to their ancestors to deny that they care about future generations, then we Russians certainly have no right to do so.

At the Council of the Whole Earth, our ancestors documented that they lived spiritually in alliance with the most ancient founders and builders of the Fatherland and that they saved the Fatherland not only for themselves, but also for their most distant descendants, bequeathing to us that nothing of their great structure would be lost for “ of the future ”times, but remained the basis of the Russian Fatherland from generation to generation and forever.

If the Russians of our generation decided to destroy their Fatherland, then, in any case, they dare not say that they are destroying only an empty phrase, legend or fiction. No - the charter of the Council of 1613 will remain an eternal denunciation against them: whoever destroys the Russian Fatherland will kill a living social body that consciously and reasonably arranged the life of his own and his descendants. The conciliar signatures of 1613 say that the Russian Fatherland was, lived rationally and consciously, in the care of the common good and forever.

The denial of the Fatherland as the same for all the sons of his near, dear and dear is made from two points of view.

One - broad-cosmopolitan - opposes all of humanity to it. The other, narrow-class (created by socialism), asserts that the unity of people exists only within the classes, and in the totality of them that makes up the nation does not exist at all, since the nation supposedly consists of the exploiting class, keeping the exploited class under its control. As if there is no solidarity between these classes, and therefore there is no Fatherland common to all.

The broad cosmopolitan idea comes to the denial of the Fatherland, in essence, only through a misunderstanding. There is no opposition between humanity and the Fatherland. On the contrary, the Fatherland only realizes the idea of ​​humanity, gives real organized solidarity of people, which actually did not exist and cannot exist in humanity until it merged into one state whole. Whether it will ever happen or not, but in the course of history, the nation and the state have so far constituted the only actually achievable union of people into one whole, which, according to the brotherhood of its members, forms a single Fatherland for them.

Thus, a cosmopolitan in the noble sense of the word, out of love for humanity, cannot but love the Fatherland as an organized part of humanity and as an organ of its development.

As for the class denial of the Fatherland, it constitutes a gross error in social and historical relations, while in the moral sense it brings with it the idea of ​​human demoralization, the denial of universal human solidarity, brotherhood and love.

The unity that arises between persons of the same class is qualitatively different from the unity created by universal human solidarity.

In the closeness that exists between members of the same class, the connecting factor is the community of external interest, and not at all solidarity in the spiritual unity and closeness of human beings. And yet only this latter is based on moral feeling and develops moral feeling. Unification on the basis of interest can also arise between people who hate each other and the most immoral, because here a person loves his interest, and not any person at all.

In itself, unity on the basis of interests is natural according to practical calculations and does not contain anything bad in itself. But when it begins to deny purely human unity, when it begins to inspire us that it is not a person who should be close and dear to us, not his high and noble qualities, but only the benefit that he gives us, then this turns into a doctrine of immorality, into preaching the grossest selfishness.

The idea of ​​the Fatherland and the fact of its existence create, on the contrary, such a unity, such solidarity, which equally avoid both ethereal cosmopolitanism, which easily turns into a simple phrase, and that gross egoism that the class idea can lead to. The unity of people in the Fatherland remains sensitive to the interests of these people, and at the same time contains elements of universal human solidarity, closeness and kinship of people as people - people of different classes and interests, but in all classes and among all private interests that remain close to each other and related in their human nature.

That is why, above, I called the idea of ​​the Fatherland the greatest of the ideas of the public, since it actually constitutes the natural basis of the public and its best school for people.

Already in its very concept, the Fatherland gives the idea of ​​a community of origin, that is, the community and the same nature of people. The word "Fatherland" comes from the word "father". It is equivalent to the word "homeland" - from the word "to give birth." It expresses where we come from, what we are generated by, expresses the concepts of connection, love, mutual care. What does it mean to act like a father? It means doing things with love, consideration, and authority. "Fatherland" means the name of the father. "Fatherland" is a heritage from a father, something successive, passing from father to son, from great-grandfathers to great-grandchildren. The word "domestic" means "own", "natural", "born". "Motherland" means "dear land" that gave birth to us. All "native" "kindred" means their own, similar and close in spirit and feeling. Our folk proverbs explain this by saying that "the sea is for the fishes, the air for the birds, and the universe is the circle of the Fatherland for the man," therefore, "they lay their belly for the fatherland" and "the bones cry for their homeland" if they are folded in a foreign land ...

In such a unity of their nature, their feelings, interests and all life, nations emerged, and their social and state ties developed, which created the fact of the Fatherland. Our feelings and concepts only reflected and expressed the content of a real socio-historical fact.

Fatherland arose in the world precisely from such a human community and solidarity, higher than any private ties generated by a community of occupations or interests. There is unity in the class, and in the trading company, and similar areas of private interest. But only the Fatherland has a universal interest, and, moreover, not limited to the available people of the moment. It is an eternal union, which creates a dwelling on earth not for those living today, but also for future great-great-grandchildren, with whom the living people are connected by a community of eternal union, where people change from generation to generation, but the idea of ​​their solidarity in the unity of a human being remains immortal. , the unity of social tasks, carried by each board through its life and passed on from generation to generation for eternal times.

The life of the Fatherland, thus, reflects in itself the life of mankind in an organized unity at every given moment and for millennia. Ego is the highest actual manifestation of the unity and solidarity of people, and therefore the highest school of the noblest feelings of man.

That is why the feeling of love for the Fatherland is so great and fruitful. That is why it could live even in the heart of the God-man and in His person receive a blessing from above. Apart from our life with God, what can more rightly receive the blessing of Heaven? Where can our blessings be more justifiably directed?

If the impoverished soul of a person or his undermined mind no longer find blessings even for the Fatherland, then this means that such a person is not capable of loving anything with ardent, selfless love.

Maybe he is able to hate and curse, maybe he is still capable of selflessness, revenge and destruction. But the selflessness of love, the selflessness of creativity, which is given only by love, can no longer be in a person who has lost the sacred feeling of love for the Fatherland, that is, for the entire totality of millions of people around them with hundreds of millions of ancestors, with hundreds of millions of future generations, jointly doing one thing.

We cannot have, with the loss of love for the Fatherland, and funds for any public creativity, and without such creativity, without life for people there is no moral life from the person himself.

We are going through a difficult, painful time when the feeling of love for the Fatherland is undermined by many demoralizing influences. This time of endless calamities that gripped us is agonizing ... But we can say that nothing is lost among people if they preserve the feeling of love for the Fatherland. Everything can be corrected and resurrected if we retain love for the Fatherland. But everything is lost if we allow it to collapse in our heart.

Let us cherish this feeling by all means that people have: by counteracting false feelings, by the arguments of reason, by remembering the innumerable benefits we received from our ancestors, by remembering the covenant that they repeated to each other:

“Fathers and grandfathers acquired our land with great labor, great suffering, great deed. Do not destroy it with your base selfish aspirations and strife, personal or class. Support the Motherland in its aggregate integrity, otherwise prepare graves on its ruins even for your own selfish interests. "

the political, social and cultural environment in which the people live and work. This is a complex social phenomenon that encompasses a set of diverse aspects of the life and activities of society: social relations, the system of political relations and organizations, forms and types of culture prevalent in society, spiritual values ​​to which the masses are attached. Fatherland is also characterized by such "eternal" elements as the territory and language of the people (see Lenin V. I. Poln. Sobr. Soch., Vol. 26, p. 365). The socio-political nature of the fatherland is largely determined by what public relations dominate in society, which class is their bearer. Depending on this, one can speak of a capitalist and socialist fatherland. The roots of the fatherland go back to ancient times - to the primitive communal system, when for the first time people were united into relatively stable isolated communities (tribe, clan) on the basis of public (communal) ownership of the means of production, kinship ties and cohabitation in a certain territory. The fatherland was finally formed when the division of labor took place, classes appeared and the state arose. The concept of the fatherland turned out to be closely related to the concept of "statehood", and then to the concept of "nation". Modern homelands are, as a rule, nation states. At the same time, there are fatherlands associated both with the pre-national forms of the community of people, and with the multinational form of their community (see. Soviet people). A distinctive feature of the modern capitalist fatherland is the contradictoriness of the political, social and cultural environment: the antagonism of classes, the sharp struggle of political forces; the presence of "two cultures" in the national culture. That's why different classes have different attitudes towards the capitalist fatherland and put different meanings into the concept of fatherland. If, in the minds of the bourgeois, the fatherland is inseparable from the exploitative order that ensures his privileged position, then the proletarian, since he is aware of his class interests, the social and state side of the fatherland becomes alien. The bourgeois state, which consolidates the relations of exploitation, acts in relation to the working class, the broad masses of the working people, as a hostile force. In this sense, the workers under capitalism "have no fatherland" (K. Marx, F. Engels Soch., Vol. 4, p. 444). Opponents of scientific communism interpret this position in the sense that the feeling of national pride and responsibility for the fate of the people and homeland is alien to the working class, its Marxist parties. But this interpretation does not correspond to reality, for the communists have repeatedly proved their high patriotism, showing deep concern for the fate home country... The position "workers have no fatherland" contains the main principle of the international proletariat - the principle of class solidarity in the struggle for liberation from exploitation, and therefore for the transformation of the bourgeois fatherland into a socialist one. The most important stimulus in this struggle is hatred of the oppressors, the desire to see their homeland free, the pride of the working class for belonging to this nation, for its revolutionary traditions. When the fatherland becomes socialist, new aspects appear in the attitude of the working class and the working masses to it. For the toiling masses, the fatherland is socialism itself as a socio-political system, as a form of organizing social life. Socialism as a fatherland was defended by the working class and all the working people of our country during the war years. The very object of patriotism is becoming broader in scope and at the same time the same for all nations and nationalities. The morality and psychology of individualism are alien to Soviet patriotism. It is an inexhaustible source of the exploits of the working people of our country, it turns heroism into an everyday, mass, nationwide phenomenon. Fatherland as a definite socio-political phenomenon is historically transitory. “As the idea of ​​the tribe was replaced by the idea of ​​the fatherland ... so the idea of ​​the fatherland must recede before incomparably more broad idea humanity. This is guaranteed by ... the power of economic development, "wrote Plekhanov. But this is a matter for the distant future. In the modern historical era the fatherland will continue to exist and develop as a "powerful factor" (Lenin) both in the class struggle of the proletariat and in the building of socialism and communism (see also Defense of the Socialist Fatherland).

) is widespread in Indo-European languages: the Russian word semantically corresponds to words in many other Slavic languages ​​(Polish. ojczyzna, ukr. vitchizna, etc.), lat. patria(where patriotism comes from) and related Romance words, as well as English. fatherland and it. Vaterland... In a number of languages, there are also slightly different synonyms derived from the word "mother" (eng. motherland) and with the meaning "relatives, their places" (Russian Motherland, eng. Homeland, it. Heimat, Swede. fosterland (et) etc.).

Evolution of meaning

Word fatherland, fatherland in Old Russian and Middle Great Russian until the 17th century. meant not only "land of the fathers", but also "family"; "Chosen country"; and "inheritance, ancestral rights." The same name was given to one of the versions of the iconographic image of the New Testament Trinity (where God the Son is depicted in the form of a youth on the lap of the Father); of the same origin, the word patronymic. Word homeland of the same origin, but later; according to Sreznevsky, his terminology was also completed by the 17th century. ...

Fatherland and patriotism

The concept of the Fatherland is one of the most important national values ​​in the basic laws of a number of countries, for example, Russia and the Czech Republic:

Determined to build, preserve and develop the Czech Republic in the spirit of the inviolable values ​​of human dignity and freedom as a fatherland (vlast) of equal free citizens, aware of their duties towards others and their shared responsibility ...
Constitution of the Czech Republic, Preamble

The commentary to the Constitution of the Russian Federation states: “... The names Russian Federation and Russia are defined as equivalent, that is, as synonyms. In the same sense in the preamble and in Art. 59 the words "Fatherland" and "Motherland" are used. "

The word "Fatherland" is part of the refrain of the Anthem of the USSR and the Anthem of the Russian Federation. The term acts as a designation for the Russian state in a number of other names: Defender of the Fatherland Day, Order of Merit for the Fatherland, school and university course “History of the Fatherland”.

According to the current Charter of the Internal Service of the Armed Forces Russian Federation: "If the commander (chief) congratulates the serviceman or thanks him in the course of his service, then the serviceman answers the commander (chief):" I serve the Russian Federation ", but before the changes in 2008, instead of" I serve the Russian Federation "the wording" I serve the Fatherland! "

The article by N.P. Ovchinnikova is devoted to the discussion of the relationship between the concepts of fatherland and patriotism.

Word Fatherland(like Motherland, Motherland) is often written with a capital letter, and this tradition dates back to XVIII century... "According to the Lomonosov tradition, the word Fatherland is written with a capital letter everywhere, with the exception of tragedies and the phrase Father of the Fatherland."

During the wars, the call to defend the Fatherland was widely used by many states (the slogan "Fatherland is in danger" during the French Revolutionary Wars, "For Faith, Tsar and Fatherland" in Russia until 1917, "Socialist Fatherland is in danger!" During the Great Patriotic War, and etc.)

The liberation wars themselves in historiography often receive names associated with the Fatherland - the Patriotic War of 1812, the Great Patriotic War.

BB Rodoman's essay is devoted to a critical analysis of the concepts of "homeland", "fatherland", "state".

The concept of Fatherland in fiction

• Derzhavin's line "Fatherland and the smoke is sweet and pleasant to us" (imitation of Horace) was later used by Griboyedov in "Woe from Wit" with a permutation of words ("And the smoke of the fatherland is sweet and pleasant to us") and was further quoted by other poets, including Tyutchev.

• A. Rosenbaum ( popular performer author's songs, holder of the medal "Defender of the Fatherland") in the song "Romance of General Charnota":

“Mon cher ami, we are here with you Michely,
There is no Fatherland and no patronymics either,
There is no Fatherland and no patronymics either ... "

see also

• Fatherland is one of the iconographic versions of the icons of the Holy Trinity.

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References Literature

• Dal V.I.
• Makarov V.V. Fatherland and patriotism. - Saratov: Publishing house Sarat. University, 1988

Notes (edit)

An excerpt characterizing the Fatherland

- No more? - remarked Bolkonsky.
- But all the same Bilibin found a serious title of the address. And a witty and intelligent person.
- How?
“To the head of the French government, au chef du gouverienement francais,” Prince Dolgorukov said seriously and with pleasure. - Isn't that good?
“Good, but he won't like it very much,” remarked Bolkonsky.
- Oh, and very much! My brother knows him: he dined with him more than once, with the current emperor, in Paris and told me that he had never seen a more refined and cunning diplomat: you know, a combination of French dexterity and Italian acting? Do you know his jokes with Count Markov? Only one Count Markov knew how to handle him. Do you know the history of the headscarf? This is lovely!
And the talkative Dolgorukov, turning now to Boris, now to Prince Andrey, told how Bonaparte, wanting to test Markov, our envoy, purposely dropped his handkerchief in front of him and stopped, looking at him, probably expecting a service from Markov and how Markov immediately he dropped his handkerchief beside him and raised his without lifting Bonaparte's.
- Charmant, [Charming,] - said Bolkonsky, - but that's what, prince, I came to you as a petitioner for this young man... Do you see what? ...
But Prince Andrew did not have time to finish, as the adjutant entered the room, who called Prince Dolgorukov to the emperor.
- Oh, what a shame! - said Dolgorukov, hastily getting up and shaking hands with Prince Andrey and Boris. - You know, I am very glad to do everything that depends on me, both for you and for this lovely young man. - He once again shook Boris's hand with an expression of good-natured, sincere and lively frivolity. “But you see… until another time!
Boris was worried by the thought of the closeness to the higher power, in which he felt himself at that moment. He recognized himself here in contact with those springs that guided all those enormous movements of the masses, of which in his regiment he felt himself a small, submissive and insignificant part. They went out into the corridor after Prince Dolgorukov and met a short man in civilian dress who was coming out (from the door of the sovereign's room into which Dolgorukov entered), with an intelligent face and a sharp line of jaw thrust forward, which, without spoiling him, gave him a special liveliness and resourcefulness of expression. This short man nodded as to his own Dolgoruky and began to gaze with a cold gaze at Prince Andrei, walking straight at him and apparently expecting Prince Andrei to bow to him or give him a way. Prince Andrew did neither one nor the other; anger was expressed in his face, and the young man, turning away, walked along the side of the corridor.
- Who is this? Boris asked.
- This is one of the most wonderful, but the most unpleasant people to me. This is the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prince Adam Czartorizhsky.
“These people,” said Bolkonsky with a sigh, which he could not suppress, while they were leaving the palace, “these are the people who decide the fate of peoples.
The next day, the troops set out on a campaign, and Boris did not have time until Austerlitz battle to visit neither Bolkonsky nor Dolgorukov and stayed for a while in the Izmailovsky regiment.

At the dawn of the 16th, Denisov's squadron, in which Nikolai Rostov served, and who was in the detachment of Prince Bagration, moved from an overnight stay to business, as they said, and, having passed about a mile behind the other columns, was stopped at the big road... Rostov saw how the Cossacks, the 1st and 2nd squadrons of hussars, infantry battalions with artillery passed by him, and generals Bagration and Dolgorukov with their adjutants passed by. All the fear that he, as before, experienced before the deed; all internal struggle through which he overcame this fear; all his dreams about how he would distinguish himself in the hussar way in this matter were in vain. Their squadron was left in reserve, and Nikolai Rostov spent that day bored and dreary. At 9 o'clock in the morning, he heard firing ahead of him, cries of hurray, saw the wounded brought back (there were not many of them) and, finally, saw how in the middle of a hundred Cossacks led a whole detachment of French cavalrymen. Obviously, it was over, and it was obviously small, but happy. The soldiers and officers who were passing back spoke of the brilliant victory, the capture of the city of Vischau and the capture of an entire French squadron. The day was clear, sunny, after a strong night frost, and a cheerful shine autumn day coincided with the news of the victory, which was conveyed not only by the stories of those who participated in it, but also by the joyful expression on the faces of the soldiers, officers, generals and adjutants who rode there and from there past Rostov. The more painful the heart of Nicholas, who had unnecessarily endured all the fear that preceded the battle, and had spent this joyful day in inaction, ached all the more.
- Rostov, come here, let's drink from grief! - Denisov shouted, sitting down on the side of the road in front of a flask and a snack.
The officers gathered in a circle, eating and talking, near Denisov's cellar.
- Here's another one! - said one of the officers, pointing to a French prisoner of dragoon, who was being led on foot by two Cossacks.
One of them was leading a tall and beautiful French horse taken from a prisoner.
- Sell the horse! - Denisov shouted to the Cossack.
- Please, your honor ...
The officers stood up and surrounded the Cossacks and the captured Frenchman. The French dragoon was a young fellow, Alsatian, who spoke French with a German accent. He gasped with excitement, his face was red, and when he heard French, he quickly spoke to the officers, referring to one or the other. He said that he would not have been taken; that it was not his fault that he was taken, but the fault of le caporal, who sent him to seize the blankets, that he told him that the Russians were already there. And to every word he added: mais qu "on ne fasse pas de mal a mon petit cheval [But do not offend my horse,] and caressed his horse. It was evident that he did not understand well where he was. He then apologized, that he was taken, then, assuming before him his superiors, he showed his soldier's serviceability and solicitude for the service. He brought with him to our rearguard in all the freshness of the atmosphere of the French army, which was so alien to us.
The Cossacks gave the horse for two ducats, and Rostov, now, having received the money, the richest of the officers, bought it.
"Mais qu" on ne fasse pas de mal a mon petit cheval, "the Alsatian said good-naturedly to Rostov when the horse was handed over to the hussar.
Rostov, smiling, calmed the dragoon and gave him money.
- Hello! Hello! - said the Cossack, touching the prisoner by the hand so that he went on.
- Sovereign! Sovereign! - was suddenly heard between the hussars.
Everything ran, in a hurry, and Rostov saw from behind on the road several riders approaching with white sultans on their hats. In one minute everyone was in their places and waiting. Rostov did not remember and did not feel how he ran to his place and got on the horse. Instantly passed his regret for not participating in the case, his everyday disposition in the circle of peering faces, instantly disappeared all thought of himself: he was completely absorbed in the feeling of happiness arising from the proximity of the sovereign. He felt that this closeness alone was rewarded for the loss of this day. He was as happy as a lover waiting for the expected date. Not daring to look around at the front and not looking back, he felt his approach with an enthusiastic instinct. And he felt it not only from the sound of the horses' hooves of the approaching cavalcade, but he felt it because, as he approached, everything brighter, more joyful and significant and festive became around him. This sun moved closer and closer for Rostov, spreading rays of gentle and majestic light around him, and now he already feels himself captured by these rays, he hears his voice - this gentle, calm, majestic and at the same time so simple voice. As it should have been according to Rostov's feelings, there was a dead silence, and in this silence the sounds of the sovereign's voice were heard.