Conservative values ​​as the basis for the development and revival of Russia. Why conservative values ​​are needed

I understand this statement of Berdyaev and I will try to explain it as follows: the conservative trend existed in every era, in every period of history and exists to this day. The goal of the conservatives is to preserve "today" as long as possible, but time does not stand still, and "tomorrow" strives to become today. This is the essence of the statement.

First, let's figure out what conservatism is. Conservatism is an ideological adherence to traditional values ​​and orders, social or religious doctrines.

As is known from the school course in social studies, along with conservatism are liberalism and radicalism. Let us assume that in state N conservative-minded people are in the apparatus of power. What to expect from such a state? The correct answer is nothing new, because conservatism rejects change, neglecting progress for the sake of stability. But this is not always a bad thing, because the citizens of every state want to be sure of what will happen to them tomorrow. If, for example, in state N the apparatus of power had a liberal political elite, then such a country would have the right to peaceful development with some degree of stability in all spheres of life. This is a positive moment, because the state, in this case, will develop without shocks.

Unlike the previous ones, the radical political elite, having come to power in state N, will turn a blind eye to stability, because the priority of the radical view has always been fundamental changes in something, regardless of methods of action or consequences. Summing up the reasoning, we can say that any of these political directions has its advantages and disadvantages: conservatism provides a person with confidence in the future, while radicalism, on the contrary, has an unstable political course, but we can call liberalism the golden mean.

The history of our homeland is full of examples for arguing this statement. Take the February Revolution of 1917, for example. The policy of Nicholas II, practically during the entire period of his reign, was conservative, since the emperor tried to maintain absolutism (dissolution of the first and second State Duma). This policy did not satisfy the growing liberal intelligentsia. As a result: with the help of an armed uprising, the liberal elite achieved the abdication of Nicholas II from the throne, and all power passed into the hands of the interim government, which consisted of the very liberals. I believe that this example of history is a shining example of the struggle of true conservatism over time.

Updated: 2017-10-19

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Nikolay Berdyaev. About conservatism.

I want to talk about conservatism not as a political direction and a political party, but as one of the eternal religious and ontological principles of human society. You are not aware of the problem of conservatism in its spiritual depth. For you, conservatism is exclusively a slogan in the political struggle. And this sense of conservatism exists, it was created both by its supporters and opponents. Conservative political parties can be very vile and can distort conservative principles. But this should not overshadow the truth that a normal and healthy existence and development of society is impossible without conservative forces. Conservatism maintains the connection of times, does not allow a final break in this connection, connects the future with the past. Revolutionism is superficial, divorced from ontological foundations, from the core of life. This stamp of superficiality lies on all revolutionary ideologies. Conservatism, on the other hand, has a spiritual depth ...

The exclusive domination of revolutionary principles destroys the past, destroys not only the corruptible in it, but also the eternally valuable. The revolutionary spirit wants to give human life to the destructive power of time. He throws all the past into the devouring abyss of the future. This spirit deifies the future, i.e. the flow of time, and has no support in eternity. But truly, the past has no less rights than the future ... The attractive beauty of the past is not the beauty of what was, what was once today and new, it is the beauty of what is, what eternally remains after the heroic struggle with the destructive power of time ... This is the depth at which the foundations of conservatism should be sought. True conservatism is the struggle of eternity against time, resistance to incorruptibility to corruption. It contains energy that does not preserve only, but also transforms.

Your revolutionary attitude towards the past is the polar opposite of the religion of the resurrection. The revolutionary spirit does not want resurrection, but the death of everything that has departed and past, because it is exclusively addressed to future generations and does not think about deceased ancestors, does not want to keep in touch with their covenants. The religion of revolution is a religion of death precisely because it is exclusively absorbed in present and future earthly life.<Но>whoever turns away from the face of death and flees from it to the newly emerging life, he is in the destructive power of death, he knows only scraps of life. The fact that the revolution buries its dead in red coffins replaces the religious funeral service with revolutionary songs, does not put crosses on the graves, and this means that it does not want the restoration of life, the resurrection of the dead, that every dead person for it is only a tool and a means, only an excuse for affirmations of today's and tomorrow's life. The religion of the revolution meekly accepts that evil law of the natural order, by virtue of which the future devours the past, the next moment displaces the preceding moment; she worships this poverty and inertia of natural life, this discord and deadly hatred. This religion of death not only willingly puts up with the death of past generations, fathers and grandfathers, but would also like to exterminate the very memory of them, does not allow the continuation of their life in our remembrance and veneration, in keeping in touch with their traditions and behests. You, people of revolutionary consciousness, who rejected any truth of conservatism, do not want to listen to that depth of yours, in which you would hear not only your voice and the voice of your generation, but also the voice of past generations, the voice of the entire people throughout its history. You do not want to know the will of all the people in its history, you only want to know your will. You are ignoble and basely taking advantage of the fact that our fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers lie in the ground and cannot give their voice. You take advantage of their absence to arrange your affairs, to use their inheritance, regardless of their will. At the heart of your revolutionary sense of life is a deep disbelief in immortality and an unwillingness to immortality. Your kingdom is based on the triumph of death. Conservatism, as an eternal beginning, requires that in deciding the fate of societies, states and cultures, not only the voice of the living, but the voice of the dead should be heard, so that real existence is recognized not only for the present, but also for the past.

<Революционным отрицанием>ties of the future with the past, ties of generations, sonship without a patronymic is affirmed. The sons of the revolution are parvenus.

When conservatism denies the creation of a new life, when it retards the movement of life and represents only the force of inertia and inertia, it also tears apart despair and filial hypostasis, it affirms a father without a son, a father who does not give birth. Fathers who rebelled against the creative and not destructive life of their sons, raising persecution against every dynamic of the life of sons, also become extinguishers of the Spirit. And therefore a conservative beginning cannot be the only, abstract beginning, it must be connected with a creative beginning, with a dynamic movement. The truth of conservatism is not in arresting the creative movement, but in preserving and resurrecting the eternal and incorruptible in the past. But in the past there was also a lot of perishable, sinful, evil, dark, and it is doomed to fire. The preservation of all the husk of the past, all its straw, all non-ontological in it is bad, evil, negative conservatism. He prepares revolutions and is the culprit for them.

False, inert conservatism does not understand the creative secret of the past and its connection with the creative secret of the future. Therefore, the reverse side of it is revolutionism that exterminates the past. Revolutionism is a punishment that lies in wait for false conservatism, which has betrayed the creative tradition. Hamism, the spirit of parvenu, triumphs in revolutionism. In true conservatism, however, there is a nobility of origin. But this nobility is the nobility of transformation by the spirit of eternity, and not of inertia, inertia and ossification.

The truth of conservatism is the truth of historicism, the truth of the sense of historical reality, which is completely atrophied in revolutionism and radicalism. Denial of historical continuity is denial and destruction of historical reality, unwillingness to know a living historical organism. The denial and destruction of historical continuity is the same encroachment on real life as the denial and destruction of the continuity of the personality, the individual human "I". Historical reality is an individual of a special kind. There is organic duration in the life of this reality. There are hierarchical levels in historical reality. And the destruction of the hierarchical structure of the historical cosmos is destruction, not the accomplishment of history. In the historical cosmos, qualities are formed and established that are indivisible and indestructible in their ontological basis. This hierarchy of qualities crystallized in history should not hinder the formation of new qualities, should not hinder creative movement. But no creative movement, no formation of new qualities can destroy and sweep away the already crystallized historical values ​​and qualities. The growth of life and the multiplication of values ​​occurs through the conservative principle, which transforms the old life for eternity, and through the creative principle, which creates new life for the same eternity.

Your exclusive belief in the future is unrighteous, deceitful and ugly. This futurism is your root sin. It tears apart and scatters the integral historical and cosmic being. That futuristic outlook, which appeared in connection with new trends in art, has the quality of radicalism, it brings to the end the revolutionary denial of the past and the deification of the future and draws the last bold conclusions from this. You, social revolutionaries of different shades, you are half-hearted, and so hopelessly superficial that you cannot deepen the futuristic sense of life. Your futurism turns out to be extreme and radical only in the social plane. But all your thinking, all your sensory perception of life is so old, so inert, your consciousness is so stifled by the categories of the past world. Your idolatry of the future belongs to and is taken from a bad past. Truly, the new soul will not sin with this idolatry; it will be free from time. What a pitiful illusion - to imagine the future painted in a light rainbow color, while the past - in a dark and black color! What a pathetic delusion to see more reality in the future than in the past! As if the reality of being and the quality of being depends on the fleeting time! Truly, in greater depth, one must look for genuine realities and qualities of being. A true and integral attitude to life must affirm the eternal, the eternal in the past and the eternal in the future, as a single lasting life, must seek the truly ontological. And truly,

An ontological, and not an illusionistic, attitude to life should open a creative movement in the depths of being, the ontological movement of absolute reality itself, and not your surface movement, tearing being apart into ghostly moments of movement ...

Culture, in its own way, seeks to affirm eternity. In culture, there is always a conservative beginning, preserving and continuing the past, and without it, culture is unthinkable. The revolutionary consciousness is hostile to culture. In its very inception, it was a dropout from the cult, from the connection established by the cult. It was originally an iconoclastic heresy, a rebellion against cult aesthetics. All of you, people of a revolutionary spirit, all of you are cultural fighters. You cannot be trusted when you say what kind of culture you are, when you found your "proletcult" and other ugliness. You need a lot from the implements of culture for your utilitarian purposes. But you hate the soul of culture, its cult soul, which maintains the fire in an inextinguishable lamp, which preserves the connection of times in eternity. You would like to take the soul out of the culture and leave only the skin behind. You want civilization, not culture. In true conservatism, the creative deeds of the ancestors who conceived and created culture are honored. You give up this veneration, you are crushed by the greatness of your ancestors. You would like to settle down and walk in freedom, without a past, without ancestors, without communication. Your revolutionary rebellion reveals your creative impotence, your weakness and insignificance. For why should the strong, who have felt the creative power in themselves, rise up against the dead creators, commit desecration over the graves? Culture presupposes a conservative beginning, a beginning that preserves the past and resurrects the dead, and this conservative beginning cannot be scary and embarrassing for the most daring creativity. The creative beginning and the conservative beginning cannot be opposed. The future is compatible with the past when the spirit of eternity wins. The revolutionary or reactionary opposition of the principles of the conservative and the creative is the victory of the spirit of decay. Culture also presupposes a conservative beginning, as well as a creative beginning, preservation and conception. And culture perishes when one of these principles exclusively triumphs and supplants the other.

Those who deny the originality of historical reality completely deny the conservative principle. The recognition of the very fact of the existence of this reality already presupposes the recognition of the conservative principle, i.e. preserving its unity and continuity. You want to replace concrete historical reality with abstract sociological reality, and therefore the conservative principle appears to you as a hindrance on the path of your distraction.

The conservative beginning does not allow in public life the overthrow of the public space formed by the creative and organizing work of history. This beginning holds back the onslaught of chaotic darkness from below. And therefore the meaning of conservatism is not that it prevents movement forward and upward, but that it prevents movement backward and downward, towards chaotic darkness, a return to a state that precedes the formation of states and cultures. The meaning of conservatism is in the obstacles it poses to the manifestations of the animal-chaotic elements in human societies. This element always moves in a person, and it is associated with sin. And you, the ideologues of revolutionism, who deny all rights behind conservatism, are yourself at the mercy of delusions and mislead others when you repeat the general passages that revolutionism is always a movement forward, and conservatism is a movement backward. Too often in history, a revolutionary movement forward has been a phantom movement. In reality, it was a movement backward, i.e. the invasion of the social space of chaotic darkness formed by the creative process of history, which pulls down. And therefore the struggle between conservative and revolutionary principles may turn out to be a struggle between cosmic and chaotic principles. But conservatism becomes a beginning that retards forward and upward movement and is negative, if it recognizes itself as the only cosmic principle of human life and becomes hostile to the creative principle. The containment of the chaotic darkness from below for the protection of the public space formed by many generations is in itself insufficient. Chaotic darkness, which has a bottomless source, must not only be contained and not allowed inside the public space, it must also be enlightened and creatively transformed. Conservative and creative principles should serve one and the same cosmic cause, the great cause of struggle against world chaos and against sin, which is leaving human societies to the power of this chaos. And if chaotic formless darkness in itself is not yet evil, but only a bottomless source of life, then it becomes evil when they try to sanction and sanctify it, when they make it the guiding principle of human life. In revolutionary ideologies, however, chaos receives rationalistic sanctions.

The life of individuals, human societies and all of historical humanity is eternally receiving new sources of renewal from the still untold dark, chaotic, barbaric forces. New human races and new human classes are joining the historical cosmos. This is an inevitable and benign process. Darkness must enter the kingdom of light, but in order to enlighten and support the sources of light with new forces, and not in order to cast down all the lamps and expand the kingdom of darkness. The entry of new forces into the historical cosmos and historical light is an organic process, not a mechanical one. Like any organic process, this process presupposes hierarchical principles, a hierarchical life structure. The complete overthrow of the hierarchical principle overturns all the lamps and extinguishes the light obtained with such labor and pain. Lamps must be guarded so that darkness joins the kingdom of light, and does not overthrow the kingdom of light. There is a bottomless chaotic foundation in space, and a source of new forces gushes out of it. But the cosmos must preserve its hierarchical structure, its central source of light, so as not to be finally overturned by chaotic forces, in order to fulfill its divine destiny, so that darkness becomes enlightened, so that chaos joins the cosmos. The revolutionary consciousness does not understand this deep relationship between chaos and the cosmos, hidden under all social upheavals and changes. A pure, abstract revolutionary consciousness unnaturally and monstrously combines the chaotic and the rationalistic; it worships both chaos and rationalism at once. It is opposite to the cosmic and mystical-organic. The revolutionary consciousness does not want to reckon with the organic nature of man and human society, with their physiology and psychology, which are very stable. It does not want to know that this physiology and psychology has a deep "mystical" basis. This is a trait of extreme rationalism, it leads to the rationalistic rape of nature, which avenges itself. Social development and social changes must reckon with organic nature and its immutable laws. But this rationalistic rape of the organic nature of man and society is accomplished through chaotic forces that leave the cosmic rhythm or have not yet entered it. This combination of chaos with rationalism is one of the paradoxes of social philosophy, which speaks of the contradictions of human existence. But chaotism and rationalism in the life of human societies is the result of evil human freedom, that arbitrary freedom, which is a sign of human slavery. The laws of nature, restraining chaos in space, descend on human society, which has embarked on the path of chaotic and rationalistic violence, and return a person to the dungeon of his old physiology and psychology, a revolution that has not been defeated and not overcome. Chaos cannot free man, for he is the source of man's slavery. The revolution is powerless to change human nature; it leaves it organically decrepit, subordinated to the old and insurmountable physiology and psychology, but claims to mechanically create an entirely new society and life out of this old human nature. This makes revolutions largely illusory, without roots. This impotence of revolutionary chaos to change human nature, to overcome the laws of its physiology and psychology, this isolation of it from the mystical depth of organic life and substantiates the truth and rights of conservatism. If revolutionism had the power to really and significantly change and transform human nature and create a new and better life, then it would be justified. But since revolutionism lies that it can do this, since its achievements are illusory, the reaction of conservatism against it is a necessary reaction of a raped, but not transformed nature.

The conservative principle is not a violent principle and should not be. This is a free organic principle. It has a healthy reaction against violence against organic nature, against the attempted murder of a life that wants to last. The conservative principle in itself is not opposite to development, it only requires that development be organic, so that the future does not destroy the past, but continues to develop it. The fate of that country is unhappy, in which there is no healthy conservatism inherent in the people itself, there is no loyalty, there is no connection with ancestors. Unhappy is the lot of the people who do not like their history and want to start it all over again. So unhappy is the fate of our country and our people ... When conservatism is associated in the popular mind with an obstacle to development and with hostility to creativity, a revolution is being prepared in the country. Guilty of this are both those conservative forces that allowed mortification and ossification in themselves, and those revolutionary forces that have risen to eternal principles, to enduring values ​​and shrines. Conservative energy must be as immanent to the people as creative energy; it cannot be exclusively external to them. Revolution means the extreme transcendence of everything divine and spiritually valuable. Spiritual upheavals in the life of the people are not accomplished in the same way as revolutions are accomplished.

B.N. Chicherin

Various types of liberalism. 1861 g.

If we listen to the public dialect that is heard from all over Russia, both secretly and openly, both in clubs, and in drawing rooms, and in the press, then, despite the variety of speeches and trends, we can easily notice one general system that reigns over everything. There is no doubt that at the present moment public opinion in Russia is decidedly liberal. This is not an accidental direction, not a frivolous hobby of society. The liberal movement arose out of vital necessity; it is generated by the power of things. The denial of the old order was a direct consequence of its failure. It became obvious to everyone that one cannot do without a certain amount of freedom in a comfortable state.

Such a phenomenon cannot fail to please those who have a feeling of freedom deeply engraved in their hearts, who nurtured and cherished it in the silence of their thoughts, in the secret cache of their souls, at a time when it was expelled from society as outrageous and criminal. Freedom is the best gift given to a person; she elevates him above the rest of creation; she makes him a rational being, she puts a moral stamp on him.

Indeed, what deed has a price in our eyes? To what act do we attribute moral beauty? Not one that is performed according to an external prescription, out of fear or out of blind worship of the ruling powers, but one that flowed out of the unattainable depth of conscience, where a person, alone with himself, independent of alien influences, decides, consciously and freely, what he considers good and debt.

The moral greatness of a person is measured by this unshakable inner strength, inaccessible to suggestions and temptations, this firm determination, which unswervingly follows the free voice of truth, which is not moved from its place by the cries of the crowd, threats, violence, or even torment. Christian martyrs died for the inner freedom of man. And human thought flows from the unknown depths of free mind. That thought is strong, fruitful, capable of acting at will and passes into a life that is not imposed or borrowed from the outside, but has been processed in the crucible of consciousness and is an expression of a person's free convictions. An infinite free world is revealed inside consciousness, in which, as in the center, the universe is reflected. Here man is the sovereign master; here he judges both the violence that puts a hand on him and the madness that wants to drown out the voice of reason; here those ideas are developed that are destined to change the face of the earth and become a guiding principle for the most distant generations.

Freedom of conscience, freedom of thought — this is the altar on which the divine fire inherent in man burns inextinguishable; this is the source of every spiritual force, every vital movement, every rational arrangement; that is what gives man an infinite meaning. All human dignity is based on freedom; the rights of the human person are based on it. As a free being, a person proudly raises his head and demands respect for himself. That is why, no matter how low he may fall, human features are never blotted out in him; the moral law does not allow looking at him from the point of view of the benefit or harm that he brings to others.

Man is not a means to other people's ends, he himself is an absolute goal. A free person also enters society. Limiting his will to the joint will of others, submitting to civic duties, obeying the authority representing the idea of ​​social unity and a higher order, he here too retains his human dignity and the innate right to the unhindered manifestation of his reasonable powers. Human societies are not herds of dumb animals that are entrusted to the care of a shepherd until they are slaughtered. The goal of human unions is for the benefit of the members, not the benefit of the owner. Power over free citizens gives the pastors of nations that high dignity to which people bow with respect, and there is no more beautiful, no holier vocation on earth, there is nothing that could fill a person's heart with such a sense of pride and responsibility.

The idea of ​​freedom concentrates in itself everything that gives the value of life, everything that is dear to a person. Hence the charm that she has for exalted souls, hence the irrepressible strength with which she engulfs especially young hearts, in which still all the ideal heat that separates man from the earth is burning. He is deeply unhappy, whose heart in his youth never beat for freedom, who did not feel the readiness to die for it with joy. Unhappy is the one in whom everyday vulgarity extinguished this flame, who, becoming a husband, did not retain respect for the dreams of his youth, according to the poet:

Sagen Sie Ihm, daft erfur die Traume seiner Jugend

Soll Achtung tragen, wenn er Mann sein wird.

(Tell him that he should be respectful of the dreams of his youth if he is a man (s)).

In adulthood, the idea of ​​freedom is cleansed from frivolity, from enthusiasm, from irritable anxiety, from arrogant denial, from self-will that does not recognize the law over itself, it is restrained by an understanding of life, it adapts to its conditions; but it does not disappear from the heart, but, on the contrary, takes root deeper and deeper in it, becoming a solid principle that does not subject to hesitation and calmly controls a person's life.

Whole nations are feeling this powerful influence of this idea, as history shows. Freedom suddenly embraces with its breath the people, as if awakened from sleep. A new life opens up before him. Shaking off the shackles, he gets up, reborn. Like a frenzied Pythia, uttering prophetic words, preaching woe to the powers of the earth, he overthrows all obstacles with irresistible force and carries the flame that he ignites to all ends of the world. But iron necessity soon restrains these impulses and returns freedom to that harmonious harmony, to that rational order, to that conscious submission to power and law, without which human life is unthinkable. Agitated and murmuring, the stream gradually enters its channel; but freedom does not cease to bubble up and give freshness and strength to those who come to quench their spiritual thirst at this source.

We old liberals, nurtured by the love of freedom, rejoice at the new liberal movement in Russia. But we are far from sympathetic to everything that is said and done in the name of freedom. Sometimes you don't recognize her in the face of her most zealous adorers. Too often, violence, intolerance and madness are hidden behind the name of a charming idea, like underground forces donning the armor of an Olympic goddess. Liberalism appears in the most varied forms, and those who cherish true freedom retreat with horror and disgust from those ugly phenomena that are being promoted under its banner.

Let's designate the main directions of liberalism, which are expressed in public opinion.

The lowest level is occupied by street liberalism. This is more a perversion than a manifestation of freedom. The street liberal wants to know nothing but his own willfulness. He loves noise first of all, he needs excitement for excitement. This he calls life, and calmness and order seem to him death. Where furious screams, unintelligible and inexhaustible curses are heard, there must be a street liberal swaying and indignant. He eagerly guards every riot, he slaps at every lawlessness, for the very word: law, he hates. He is overjoyed when he learns that somewhere there was a liberal scandal, that there was a street fight in Madrid or Naples: know ours! But do not expect tolerance, respect for thought, respect for others' opinions, for the human person, everything that constitutes the essence of true freedom and the decoration of life. He is ready to wipe out anyone who does not share his unbridled impulses from the face of the earth. He does not even suggest that someone else's opinion could be the fruit of free thought, a noble feeling.

A distinctive feature of the street liberal is that he considers all his opponents scoundrels. Low souls understand only mean motives. Therefore, he is not picky about money either. He advocates for freedom; but here is not a thought that opposes thought in a noble battle, breaking spears for truth, for an idea. Everything revolves on personal antics, on curses; shameless interpretations, poisonous innuendos, lies and slander are used in business. Here they try not to prove, but to trim, hurt or spit on.

Sometimes the street liberal pretends to be a gentleman, puts on fawn gloves and seems to be preparing to reason. But at the first collision, he throws away thoughts unusual for him, he enters his real role. Drunk and mad, he grabs at everything, throws anything, forgetting any shame, having lost all sense of decency.

The street liberal does not tolerate conditions imposed by living rooms; he only feels at home in a tavern, in the mud with which he tries to shower anyone who wears a clean dress. Everyone should come to the same level, equally low and vulgar.

The street liberal harbors an irreconcilable hatred for everything that rises above the crowd, for all authority. It never occurred to him that respect for authority is respect for thought, for work, for talent, for everything that gives the highest meaning to a person; and maybe it is precisely for this reason that he does not tolerate authority, because he sees in him those educated forces that constitute the pride of the people and the adornment of mankind.

To the street liberal, science seems to be a violence inflicted on life, art - the fruit of aristocratic idleness.

Few have separated from the crowd, directing their flight to the upper regions of thought, cognition and activity, as already in the liberal swamps one can hear the hissing of reptiles. The despicable reptiles raise their snake heads, twirl their tongues, and in impotent rage try to pour out their poison on everything that does not belong to their envious family.

No, not in the evil hissing of reptiles, not in the drunken ardor of a fist fighter, do we recognize the features of that bright goddess whom a person worships in his best thoughts, in his ideal aspirations. The ray of freedom never penetrated this dark realm of lies, envy and slander. Freedom dwells in the realm of truth and light, and when people drive it out of their homes, it does not hide in underground holes, but withdraws into the hearts of the chosen ones, who keep for better days the precious covenant obtained by suffering and love.

The second kind of liberalism can be called oppositional liberalism. But, my God! What a motley mixture of people appears here! How many heterogeneous motives, how many diverse types - from Sobakevich, who assures that one prosecutor is a decent person, and even that pig, to a landowner who is indignant at the seizure of serfdom, to a nobleman who fell into disfavor and therefore rushed into opposition, until he shines a smile above him that will turn him to power again!

Who is not familiar with this critical mood of Russian society, this excess of oppositional outpourings, which appear in such diverse forms:

In the form of scolding displeasure with a patriarchal and innocent character;

In the form of contemptuous irony and a venomous grin, which show that the critic is somewhere far ahead, infinitely above the world around him;

In the form of mockery and anecdotes exposing the dark intrigues of bureaucrats;

In the form of violent attacks, in which at the same time, with the same fury, completely opposite things are required;

In the form of poetic love for the elective principle, for self-government, for publicity;

In the form of oratorical effects, accompanied by majestic poses;

In the form of lyrical complaints that cover laziness and emptiness;

In the form of a restless urge to speak and fuss, in which grieved pride is visible, a desire to give oneself importance;

In the form of malevolence at every bad measure, at every evil that befalls the fatherland;

In the form of freedom, always ready for despotism, and independence, always ready to crawl and worship. You cannot reiterate the innumerable shades of opposition with which the Russian land amazes us. But we do not want to talk about these vital manifestations of various human inclinations; for us, oppositional liberalism is important, as a general beginning, as a well-known trend that is rooted in the properties of the human spirit and expresses one of the sides or the initial degree of freedom.

The most moderate and serious liberal trend cannot but stand in opposition to what is illiberal. Every thinking person criticizes those actions or measures that do not agree with his opinion. Otherwise, he renounces freedom of judgment and becomes a juror of power. But it is not this legitimate criticism caused by this or that fact, we mean by the name of oppositional liberalism, but that liberal trend that systematically becomes opposition, which does not seek to achieve any positive demands, but enjoys the very splendor of the opposition situation.

In this there is a kind of poetry, there is a feeling of independence, there is courage, there is, finally, the possibility of a more captivating activity and a broader influence on people than those presented in the tight circle outlined by ordinary practical life. All this involuntarily seduces a person. Let us add that this kind of direction is learned much more easily than any other. It is incomparably more convenient and pleasant to criticize than to understand. There is no need for intense work of thought, careful and distinct study of the existing, reasonable comprehension of general life principles and social structure; you don't even need to act: just talk with enthusiasm and pose with some effect.

Oppositional liberalism understands freedom from a purely negative side. He renounced this order and remained with this renunciation. Cancel, allow, destroy - that is his whole system. He does not go further, and he does not need to go. To him the height of prosperity seems to be liberation from all laws, from all constraints. This ideal, unrealizable in the present, he transfers to the future, or to the past. In essence, they are one and the same, for history, in this view, is not a real fact to be studied, not a life process from which the modern order flowed, but an imaginary world into which anything can be accommodated. The opposition liberal is not a hunter before the real story. Denying modernity, he therefore himself also denies the past that produced it. He sees in history only a game of arbitrariness, chance, and, perhaps, human madness.

To the same mood of thought belongs the worship of unknown forces that lie in the mysterious depths of the people's spirit. Than a known beginning is further from the existing order, than it is general, more indefinite, the deeper

Lurking in the darkness of vague ideas, the more amenable to the whim of fantasy, the more dear it is for oppositional liberalism.

Keeping in the negative direction, opposition liberalism is content with a very uncomplicated war projectile. He selects for himself several categories, on the basis of which he judges everything; he composes several labels for himself, which he sticks entirely on the phenomena, thereby denoting praise or censure. All social life is divided into two opposite poles, between which an impassable and unchanging line is drawn. Praise means labels: community, peace, people, electoral leadership, self-government, publicity, public opinion, etc.

What positive facts and institutions are meant by this, only God knows, and even then it is unlikely. It is known that everything goes as well as possible when people do everything themselves. Only unnatural historical development, and aristocratic prejudices, which must be got rid of, are to blame that we do not sew our own clothes, prepare dinner for ourselves, repair carriages. One return to primitive economy, to primitive self-government can bring prosperity to the earth. These light principles, the kingdom of Ormuzd, are opposed to the spirits of darkness, the kingdom of Ahriman. These dark demons are called: centralization, regulation, bureaucracy, state.

Horror envelopes the opposition liberal at the sound of these words, from which all grief to the human race. Here again it is not necessary to analyze what is meant by them; why such work? It is enough to stick a label, to say that this is centralization or regulation, and the case is irrevocably condemned. For most of our opposition liberals, the entire stock of thoughts and mental strength is depleted by this game of shortcuts.

In practical life, opposition liberalism adheres to the same negative rules. The first and necessary condition is not to have the slightest contact with power, to stay as far away from it as possible. This does not mean, however, that one should give up lucrative jobs and ranks. For the nature of a Russian person, such a requirement would be too heavy. Many and many opposition liberals sit in warm places, don court uniforms, make excellent careers, and nevertheless feel it their duty to scold the government they serve and the order they enjoy whenever the opportunity arises. But for an independent person to dare to say a word in favor of power - God forbid! Here such a hubbub will rise that you don't even recognize your own. This is servility, ambition, venality. It is known that every decent person must certainly stand in opposition and swear.

This is followed by a plan of opposition actions. Their goal is not at all to counteract positive evil, but in a practical way, considering the possibility of achieving correction. The opposition does not need content. The whole business of social movers is to agitate, lead the opposition, make demonstrations and manifestations, throw out liberal tricks, arrange something against someone, pick up an article of the code of laws, having arrogated to themselves the right of arbitrary interpretation, to convict the quarterly of that he beat the cabman, bypass the censorship with an article with mysterious hints and liberal effects, or even better, print some kind of abuse abroad, gather around him all sorts of dissatisfied people, from the most opposite camps, and with them take away their souls in innocent fury, especially to protest, to protest at the slightest excuse and even without any reason. We are big hunters for protests. True, it is completely useless, but at the same time it is harmless, and yet it expresses noble indignation and delightfully affects the grieved hearts of the public.

The opposition, which is more serious than the one we have, often falls into a routine of oppositional actions and thus undermines its credit and blocks the possibility of influencing public affairs. The government will always remain deaf to those demands that treat it purely negatively, losing sight of its own position and the conditions surrounding it. This kind of attitude almost always occurs in countries where the opposition party does not have the opportunity to become a government itself and acquire a practical acquaintance with the meaning and conditions of power. Constant opposition inevitably makes a person narrow and limited. Therefore, when the field for action finally opens, the leaders of the opposition often turn out to be incapable of ruling, and the liberal party, out of old habit, begins to oppose its own leaders, as soon as they became ministers.

If the liberal trend does not want to confine itself to idle talk, if it wants to get a real influence on public affairs, it must look for other principles, the principles of building, positive; it must adjust to life, draw lessons from history; it must act, understanding the conditions of power, not becoming systematically hostile to it, not making reckless demands, but maintaining impartial independence, prompting and delaying where necessary, and trying to inherit the truth by cold-blooded discussion of issues. This is defensive liberalism.

Freedom does not consist in one acquisition and expansion of rights. A person only has rights because he bears responsibilities, and vice versa, he can be required to fulfill duties, only because he has rights. These two beginnings are inseparable. The entire meaning of the human person and the rights arising from it is based on the fact that man is a reasonably free being, who carries in himself the consciousness of the supreme moral law, and by virtue of his free will is capable of acting on the basis of duty. The absolute meaning of the law gives the absolute meaning to the human person, who is aware of it. Take away this consciousness from a person - he becomes in a row with animals that obey the instincts and have no rights. You can have attachment, compassion, and not respect for them, because they do not have the infinite element that makes up human dignity.

But the supreme moral law, the idea of ​​good, is an indispensable condition for freedom, does not remain an abstract principle that acts on the conscience, and to which a person can obey and disobey at his own discretion. The idea of ​​goodness is realized in the outside world; it connects people into social unions, in which persons are linked by a permanent bond, obeying a positive law and established authority. Every person is born a member of such a union. He receives in it positive rights, which everyone is obliged to respect, and positive duties, for the violation of which he is punished. His personal freedom, being inextricably linked with the freedom of others, can live only under the shade of civil law, obeying the power that protects it. Power and freedom are just as inseparable as freedom and moral law are inseparable. And if so, then every citizen, without unconditionally bowing to power, whatever it may be, in the name of his own freedom is obliged to respect the essence of power itself.

"A little philosophy," Bacon said, "turns away from religion; a deeper philosophy returns to it." These words can be applied to the beginning of power. A purely negative attitude towards the government, systematic opposition is a sign of the childhood of political thought. This is her first awakening. Having renounced unconscious immersion in the environment, for the first time feeling independent, a person rejoices in immense joy. He forgets everything except his freedom. He guards her eagerly, like a recently acquired treasure, fearing to lose the slightest piece of her. External conditions and restrictions do not exist for him. Historical development, established order, all of this is rejected antiquity; it is a dream that preceded awakening. Man sees in himself the center of the universe and is filled with boundless confidence in his powers.

But when the feeling of freedom has matured and is deeply rooted in the heart, when it has become firmly established in it, then a person has nothing to fear for his independence. He does not fearfully guard her, because this is not a new, not an external acquisition, but the very life of his spirit, the brain of his bones. Then the relation of this inner

Center to the outside world. He does not abandon the latter in a willful impulse, but, while maintaining infinite freedom of thought and unshakable firmness of conscience, he is aware of the connection between his inner world and the outer one; he comprehends the dependence of his external freedom on the freedom of others, on the historical order, on the positive law, on the established authority. History and modernity do not seem to him to be a product of endless arbitrariness and chance, an object of hatred and denial. Respecting the freedom of others, he also respects the general order that flowed from the freedom of the people's spirit, from the development of human life.

Negation is followed by reconciliation, by the detachment from the principles that dominate the world - a return to them, but the return is not unconscious, as before, but reasonable, based on comprehending their true essence and the possibility of further progress. Reasonable attitude to the world around us is a positive fruit and the highest manifestation of human freedom. It is also a necessary condition for its establishment in society.

Freedom does not appear among people who make of it a pretext for noise, or an instrument of intrigue. Violent cries chase her away, opposition without content is unable to evoke it.

Freedom finds its dwelling place only where people know how to value its gifts, where tolerance, respect for man and worship of all higher powers, in which the free creativity of the human spirit is expressed, has been established in society.

The essence of protective liberalism is to reconcile the beginning of freedom with the beginning of power and law. In political life, his slogan: liberal measures and strong power: liberal measures that provide society with independent activity, ensure the rights and personality of citizens, protect freedom of thought and freedom of conscience, making it possible to express all legitimate desires; a strong government, a guardian of state unity, binding and restraining society, protecting order, strictly supervising the implementation of the law, suppressing any violation of it, instilling confidence in citizens that there is a firm hand at the head of state that can be hoped for, and a reasonable force that will be able to defend public interests against the onslaught of anarchist elements and against the outcries of reactionary parties.

In reality, a state with a comfortable hostel is always held by strong power, unless it tends to fall or undergoes a temporary breakdown. But a temporary weakening of power leads to a more energetic restoration of it. Bitter experience teaches the peoples that it is impossible for them to do without a strong power, and then they are ready to throw themselves into the hands of the first despot. Experience, however, exposes the entire inconsistency of oppositional liberalism. Hence the usual phenomenon that the very same liberals who, in opposition, fought against the government, having received rule into their own hands, become conservatives. This is considered a sign of double-mindedness, servility, ambition, renouncing one's beliefs.

All this, no doubt, is too often true; but there are also deeper reasons here which compel the most honest liberal to contradict himself. The need to govern in practice reveals all those conditions of power that are overlooked in the opposition. It is not enough to carry out agitation - it is necessary to do the work; it is necessary not to destroy, but to arrange, not to oppose, but to fasten, and this requires positive views and positive force.

A liberal, invested with power, is involuntarily forced to do exactly what he rebelled against, being in opposition. I happened to hear on this occasion from the famous Bunsen the following characteristic anecdote, which shows how statesmen in free countries look at it ...

When O "Connell was elected mayor of Dublin, Bunsen, then the Prussian envoy in London, asked Sir Robert Peel, then First Minister, whether he was worried about this choice?" Quite the opposite, answered Sir Robert Peel, there is no demagogue to pacify better means than to give him some kind of power in his hands; he becomes her protector by necessity. "

B. Chicherin. Several contemporary questions. M., 1862.

Chicherin Boris Nikolaevich (1828-1904) - Russian philosopher, historian, publicist and public figure, professor of the Department of State Law at Moscow University (1861-1868).

True there is conservatism fight eternity with time, resistance incorruptibility decay.

N. Berdyaev

In fact, these lines of one of the greatest Russian philosophers, Nikolai Berdyaev, reflect the entire deep essence of conservatism. This saying can be divided into two parts: first - eternity and time; the second is incorruptibility and decay. I proceed from the fact that in our world there are values ​​on which a person is held, a culture, without which they cannot develop and live.

So why are some values ​​perishable and others not? Because incorruptible values, as their name implies, do not lose their essence under the influence of time. For example, gold and iron. The first can be stored for millions of years without changing its essence, while the second oxidizes and disintegrates in a matter of decades due to the fact that the mechanism of self-destruction is embedded in their very essence, as, for example, laid in the essence of a wooden building: it will rot in 200 years, and monolithic, for example, the Egyptian pyramids, will stand hundreds of thousands. Similarly, peoples that have forgotten how to protect their interests and are disintegrating into a "society of free individuals" who live one day do not think about future generations according to the principle "after us, even later." They are, in fact, doomed, for they will degenerate and cease to exist under the onslaught of other peoples.

In the modern world, in comparison with the past, there has been a downright hypertrophied complication of all aspects of human life. For example, the more technology and the general complexity of our life, the, naturally, the greater the risk of part of the elements out of order - for example, hacking e-mail, car breakdown, loss of a bank card, etc. leads to the accumulation of general fatigue and psychological wear and tear of a person, and there are no effective means of overcoming this, because there is almost no time left for realizing oneself. And, as a result, there are no answers to the main questions of human existence: where am I going and what is the final result and result?

In my opinion, the meaning of conservatism is to carry through time the essence of a people and a nation, values ​​that have proved their incorruptibility and viability by the course of history and its experience, bringing them to life, despite the absence of this minute benefit or result, or even directly contradicting them.

We should not equate conservatism and historical habits, which, although they have a certain historical “age,” nevertheless cannot be considered an element of conservatism and positive historical experience. For example, the “custom of drinking” alcohol cannot be considered something like a national tradition that should be carefully protected, since it is, say, more than 100 years old. After all, we are not returning to the practice of human sacrifice in pagan Russia and serfdom in tsarist Russia.

The principles laid down in conservatism are universal for every time, just as the laws of physics are the same both for water, which turns the millstone of a 12th century water mill, and for a hydroelectric power plant in the 21st century. For example, for the principle that the family is the foundation of society and that marriage is a union between a man and a woman, it makes no difference whether she is made up of peasants who are farming or nuclear scientists. The principle that everyone should do everything in their power for the common good, or even sacrifice their own interests, is the same both for Ivan Susanin and for the official who controls the observance of environmental standards in the territory entrusted to him. Fundamental values ​​often come into conflict with immediate benefits - for example, the life of a child, for whom it is necessary to bear responsibility until his adulthood, when he himself will provide for his parents in old age and terminate pregnancy in order to extend a serene life for another 10-1 years 5 before old age.

The essence of our time is globalization - the process of transforming the world into a single whole, unification (generalization of its components). Is this good or bad? To answer this question, it is necessary to understand in what forms globalization is taking place. If we are talking about the globalization (unity) of science, the unification of scientific knowledge, the minds of mankind to overcome common difficulties, this is undoubtedly good. But what about the unification of culture and, in fact, national independence? Generalization assumes that a single whole will be created from several elements, some will contradict each other. That is, if we have to sacrifice something, our partners should also give up something. The first question is why we need it at all - to change our thousand-year-old culture and customs for the sake of something global. The second question is that Western civilization imposes on us its norms of life and values, not recognizing ours, justifying this by the fact that they do not correspond to global standards, for the most part created by the same West. A classic example of a "conflict of ideas" is the attitude to moral values. Suffice it to recall the 2003 exhibition "Caution, Religion", during which the Christian symbols of our culture and faith were vilified and insulted. For us it became a spit in the soul, an insult, for Europe - a manifestation of freedom of speech and "self-expression". Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill, at a meeting with rectors of universities at Kiev State University, gave the following description of civilization and its development: “Civilization is determined primarily by how people answer eternal questions - about God, about the world and about man,” he said patriarch. That is, civilization, being a kind of shell of the political system, nevertheless determines its essence. Naturally, over the thousand-year history of the state and society, we have accumulated a huge historical experience and formed stable cultural and historical traditions and, in fact, worldview.

In my opinion, any social process has at least two components - cause and effect. Therefore, the ulcers of our society - corruption, immoralism and much more - are only a consequence of problems, but not their primary source.

According to the patriarch, the destruction of the traditional foundations of human existence began in the era of the Reformation, when any person was given the right to interpret the truth in his own way.

“Without absolute moral criteria, we will plunge humanity into chaos,” the patriarch believes. “Therefore, we cannot cope with corruption when we live by the principle: if there is no God, then everything is allowed, and everyone has their own truth,” he said.

In fact, the values ​​and initial foundations of modern Russian civilization, a kind of basis for the national idea of ​​modern Russia, are indicated in the preamble to the Constitution of our country:

1. The entire multinational population of Russia is a single people.

2. The eternal unity of the Russian land and its peoples is emphasized.

3. Affirmation of human rights and freedoms, civil peace and harmony.

4 . Preservation of the historically established state unity.

5. Recognition of the universally recognized principles of equality and self-determination of peoples.

6. Respect for the memory of ancestors who passed on to Russians love and respect for the Fatherland, faith in goodness and justice.

7. Affirmation of the inviolability of the democratic foundation of Russia.

8. Striving to ensure the well-being and prosperity of Russia.

9. Recognition of responsibility for their homeland before present and future generations.

10. Awareness of oneself as a part of the world community.

History tends to repeat itself many times. The fact is that with all the differences in the people living on our planet, we still have a lot in common, which determines the similarity of various political and social processes. For example, the rampant crime in our country in the 1990s of the last century resembles a similar era in the early 1920s and 1930s in the United States. The characters, including Al Capone in the United States and the Solntsevo organized criminal group, are different, but the reasons and consequences are similar.

The wisdom of every civilization consists not only in living with its own mind, but also in borrowing from the rest of the world everything that is necessary and useful for a given civilization, correlating it with its civilizational values.

Comparing processes in different countries, it is necessary to take into account the geographical and historical factor as fully as possible.

For example, when comparing the defense potential of the United States and Russia, it must be borne in mind that the United States has oceans from the west and east. From the north - a peaceful and relatively sparsely populated Canada, from the south - Mexico, which poses a threat only in drug smuggling and illegal immigration. The history of our country says the opposite: only in the 20th century there were two world wars and many armed clashes practically along the entire perimeter of the borders of the former USSR.

After the end of the First World War, Turkey, which became a fragment of the collapsed Ottoman Empire, was in deep decline, in fact representing an analogue of modern Afghanistan, albeit without a drug economy. Even the future of this state was in doubt. In 1923, the founding father of modern Turkey, M.K. Atatürk said: “If we want the world to show respect to us, we must first of all show respect to our person and people. Respect should be manifested in feelings, thoughts and movements. Nations that do not know their essence will always be a victim of other nations. " Moreover, as history shows, the end of the existence of peoples in most cases occurs in the process of their degeneration, not by military means, but by dissolution in other ethnic groups, stronger and more viable.

By the end of Ataturk's life, in 1938, the country actually became what we see it now: a modern economy, developed industry. But the most important thing is that during the modernization of the Turkish state and society, the spiritual values ​​of the people were not thrown aside. After all, the main difficulty in modernization lies precisely in separating the "wheat from the chaff", taking the positive from the past, without taking evil from it; absorb the positive experience of foreign countries, while comparing it with their values.

According to Ataturk, “if the people for their existence and rights do not unite spiritually and materially, if they cannot win their right to existence and non-dependence, then they will irreversibly become a toy in the wrong hands” and “if we we want the world to show respect for us, we must first of all show respect for our person and people. Respect should be manifested in feelings, thoughts and movements. Peoples that do not know their essence will always be a victim of other nations. " Contrasted by these quotes from the side of the conquerors, another formula appears - “divide and rule”. In my opinion, the fullness of the tragedy of this saying was embodied at the turn of the XX-XX1 centuries with Serbia. The reasons for the Balkan War that followed the collapse of Socialist Yugoslavia in the early 1990s are complex and contradictory, and it is wrong and impossible to look for the right and the wrong, using only legal concepts and largely prejudice. The tragedy of Serbia is that society has not found the strength to live its own mind and live in a truly independent country. I do not dare to judge whether the late president of the country, Slobodan Milosevic, is guilty or not of war crimes, but the extradition of his former president in exchange for a loan from Western countries was, in fact, an act of helplessness in Serbia's internal decline. By this, the country showed its weakness, and the fate of the weak in the modern world, with all the development of international law, is not enviable. Further - on the rise - the recognition of the independence of the Serbian region of Kosovo. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, during her visit to Belgrade, named three preconditions, the fulfillment of which will allow Serbia to join the European Union, which it wants to join. One of the conditions is the liquidation of the authorities "parallel" to those operating in Kosovo. Since the majority of Western countries have recognized the independence of this self-proclaimed republic from Serbia, then the presence of "parallel" government bodies they see as superfluous, i.e. in fact, the EU is trying to get Belgrade to renounce all territorial claims. “We look at Serbia as a future EU member and will try to do everything possible so that the country, having passed all the procedures based on common European principles, joins our union,” said Angela Merkel, primarily referring to the recognition by the European Union self-proclaimed Kosovo as an independent state.

In the history of Serbia's attempts to join the EU, the initial conditions of the EU were the extradition of the country's citizens accused of committing crimes in the course of a series of conflicts that erupted in the expanses of the disintegrated Yugoslavia. Now that Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic have been extradited by the Serbian authorities at the request of the international community, new conditions have emerged that resemble extortion in their essence.

According to Ataturk, “complete independence is independence in politics, finance, jurisprudence, military forces, culture, etc. The absence of at least one of the above aspects means the lack of complete independence in everything ", and" a person can voluntarily give up his personal freedom, but if his actions endanger the freedom and independence of an entire people, which has a great history, destroys the people, takes away freedom from the hands of future generations, then under no circumstances can the actions of this person be legitimized. Of course, this action is not! can be done under the pretext of freedom. "

As you know, the assessments of a politician within the country during his lifetime and after leaving power can be very different. In modern Turkey, seven decades after his death, the authority and respect for Ataturk is higher than ever, which is the best confirmation of his chosen course. In this regard, we can cite the words of Winston Churchill that "the difference between a statesman and a politician is that a politician is guided by the next elections, and a statesman is oriented toward the next generation."

The tragedy that occurred in Norway in July 201 1, when many of the participants in the youth camp were killed, shook the whole world. On this occasion, I will cite an excerpt from the articles of Alexander Krutov, editor-in-chief of the Russian House magazine: “The inner world of people like Breivik was brilliantly revealed by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky in Crime and Punishment. Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov believed that historically there were two groups of people: "trembling creatures" and people who bravely violate the moral norms accepted by society in the name of establishing new norms and laws. Ordinary people "must live in obedience, do not have the right to break the law," they only have the right to "give birth to their own kind." Extraordinary people "have the right to commit crimes and in every possible way to break the law", to commit a great deed, to say a "new word." They drive progress. Moreover, the second group is great personalities. They don't stop at victims, violence and blood. They are considered criminals only by their contemporaries, and history justifies the victims. The world is arranged in such a way that the development of society is always accomplished by trampling the "creatures trembling" by these great people. "

In this article, I have made an attempt to understand the causes and origins of the problems and threats facing our country and the whole world. The first thing that, in my opinion, needs to be done on the way to healing a person and society, along with understanding the need for such, is information security. In fact, most of the media in our country are like a viper, every second injecting the poison of depravity and permissiveness into the minds of our fellow citizens. I believe that the efforts made by the state and healthy social forces to educate the younger generation, under existing conditions, are for the most part doomed to failure: at school, in classes on spiritual and moral education, a young person hears one thing, and in musical performances, TV shows, etc. - concepts with a completely different meaning.

The greatest philosopher of Ancient Greece So-krat drank poison on the verdict of the court precisely on charges of corrupting the youth. I will not judge whether the Athenian court was right or wrong in the context of those historical conditions and whether Socrates himself was guilty. I will only note the importance given in ancient times to the education of young people, if those who led her astray were punished with death.

And in conclusion, a simple question: where are these fundamental deep values ​​that have not perished over the centuries, which I wrote about in this article?

In my opinion, their essence is reflected in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, namely in the Decalogue of Moses and in the Sermon on the Mount of our Lord Jesus Christ, where He sets out the Beatitudes.

Victor Maslennikov

Nikolay Berdyaev
THE PHILOSOPHY OF INEQUALITY

LETTER FIVE
ABOUT CONSERVATISM

I want to talk now about conservatism not as a political direction and a political party, but as one of the eternal religious and ontological principles of human society. You are not aware of the problem of conservatism in its spiritual depth. For you, conservatism is exclusively a slogan in the political struggle. And this sense of conservatism exists, it was created both by its supporters and opponents. Conservative political parties can be very vile and can distort conservative principles. But this should not overshadow the truth that a normal and healthy existence and development of society is impossible without conservative forces. Conservatism maintains the connection of times, does not allow a final break in this connection, connects the future with the past. Revolutionism is superficial, divorced from ontological foundations, from the core of life. This stamp of superficiality lies on all revolutionary ideologies. Conservatism, on the other hand, has a spiritual depth, it is directed to the ancient sources of life, it binds itself to the roots. He believes in the existence of an incorruptible and indestructible depth. Great geniuses and creators had this conservatism of depth. They have never been able to stay on the revolutionary surface.

The emergence of great creative individuals is impossible without a conservative environment. How many creative geniuses do you count among the ideologues of extreme revolutionism? The best people weren't with you. They all drew creative energy from the depths of life. And if external and political conservatism was alien to them, then the beginning of deep and spiritual conservatism can always be found with them. The biggest people have this conservative depth. XIX century, it is in Goethe, Schelling and Hegel, Schopenhauer and R. Wagner, Carlyle and Ruskin, J. de Maestre, Villiers de Lisle Adam and Huysmans, Pushkin and Dostoevsky, K. Leontiev and Vl. Solovyov. It is there for those who yearn for a new, higher life and do not believe in revolutionary ways to achieve it.

The exclusive domination of revolutionary principles destroys the past, destroys not only the corruptible in it, but also the eternally valuable. The revolutionary spirit wants to create a future life in cemeteries, forgetting about the tombstones, wants to settle on the bones of dead fathers and grandfathers, does not want and denies the resurrection of the dead and dead life. The revolutionary spirit wants to give human life to the destructive power of time. He throws all the past into the devouring abyss of the future. This spirit deifies the future, that is, the flow of time, and has no support in eternity. But verily, the past has no less rights than the future. The past is no less ontological than the future; deceased generations are no less ontological than future generations. In what has been, no less from eternity than in what will be. And we feel the feeling of eternity more sharply in our appeal to the past. What is the secret of the beauty of the ruins that attracts us? In the victory of eternity over time. Nothing gives such a feeling of incorruptibility as ruins. The crumbling, moss-covered walls of old castles, palaces and temples seem to us to be a phenomenon of another world, shining through from eternity. In this other world, the truly ontological resists the destructive flow of time. The destructive stream of time demolishes everything that is too temporary, everything arranged for earthly well-being, and the imperishable beauty of eternity is preserved. This is the secret of beauty and charm of the monuments of the past and the memory of the past, the magic of the past. Not only ruins give us this feeling of the victory of eternity over time, but also preserved old temples, old houses, old clothes, old portraits, old books, old memoirs. All this bears the stamp of the great and wonderful struggle of eternity with time. No modern, recently built temple, even if it represents a perfect copy of the style of ancient temples, can give that quivering and weary feeling that an ancient temple gives, for this feeling is born in us because time tried to put its fatal seal and receded. And we perceive it as imperishable beauty, not the destruction and destruction of time, but the struggle of eternity against this destruction and destruction, the resistance of another world in the process of this world. Everything new, today, recently created and built does not yet know this great struggle incorruptible with the perishable, the eternity of another world with the flow of time of this world, it does not yet have this seal of communion with higher being, and therefore there is still no such image of beauty in it. It is necessary to ponder more deeply into this magic of the past, into its mysterious charm. This attractive and strange magic is found in old estates, and in old parks, and in family memories, and in all material objects that speak of old human relationships, and in old books, and in the most mediocre portraits of ancestors, and in all material remains ancient cultures. Nothing new, today and tomorrow, can give such a keen feeling, for the great struggle of the world of eternity with the world of time has not yet taken place in it. The attractive beauty of the past is not the beauty of what was, what was once today and new, it is the beauty of what is, what eternally remains after the heroic struggle against the destructive power of time. I well know that in the past not everything was so beautiful that there was a lot of ugliness and ugliness in it. But the mystery of the beauty of the past is not explained at all by the fact that we idealize the past and imagine it not as it really was. The beauty of the past is not at all the beauty of the present, which was in reality three or five hundred years ago. This beauty is the beauty of the present that is now, after the transformation of this past by the struggle of eternity against time. The beauty of the old temple, like the beauty of family traditions, is the beauty of a transformed temple and a transformed family life. The image of beauty is no longer the image of the temple that was built a thousand years ago, and it is not the image of that family life that two hundred years ago passed on the earth with all the sins, vices and ugliness of man. We know more beauty than our ancestors. This is the depth at which the foundations of conservatism should be sought. True conservatism is the struggle of eternity against time, resistance to incorruptibility to corruption. It contains energy that does not preserve only, but also transforms. You don’t think about it when you judge conservatism by your criteria.

Your revolutionary attitude towards the past is the polar opposite of the religion of the resurrection. The revolutionary spirit is incompatible with the religion of Christ, because it wants not the resurrection, but the death of everything that has departed and past, because it is exclusively addressed to future generations and does not think about the dead ancestors, does not want to keep in touch with their covenants. The religion of revolution is a religion of death precisely because it is exclusively absorbed in present and future earthly life. The religion of Christ is the religion of life precisely because it is addressed not only to the living, but also to the dead, not only to life, but also to death. He who turns away from the face of death and flees from it to the newly emerging life, he is in the destructive power of death, he knows only shreds of life. The fact that the revolution buries its dead in red coffins replaces the religious funeral service with revolutionary songs, does not put crosses on the graves, and this means that it does not want the restoration of life, the resurrection of the dead, that every dead person for it is only a tool and a means, only an excuse for affirmations of today's and tomorrow's life. The religion of the revolution meekly accepts that evil law of the natural order, by virtue of which the future devours the past, the next moment displaces the preceding moment; she worships this poverty and inertia of natural life, this discord and deadly hatred. This religion of death not only willingly puts up with the death of past generations, fathers and grandfathers, but would also like to exterminate the very memory of them, does not allow the continuation of their life in our remembrance and veneration, in keeping in touch with their traditions and behests. You, people of revolutionary consciousness, who rejected any truth of conservatism, do not want to listen to that depth of yours, in which you would hear not only your voice and the voice of your generation, but also the voice of past generations, the voice of the entire people throughout its history. You do not want to know the will of all the people in its history, you only want to know your will. You ignoble and basely take advantage of the fact that our fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers lie in the ground, in their graves and cannot give their voice. You do nothing to make them rise from their graves, you use their absence to arrange your affairs, to use their inheritance, regardless of their will. At the heart of your revolutionary sense of life is a deep disbelief in immortality and an unwillingness to immortality. Your kingdom is based on the triumph of death. Conservatism, as an eternal beginning, requires that in deciding the fate of societies, states and cultures, not only the voice of the living, but the voice of the dead be heard, so that real existence is recognized not only for the present, but also for the past, so that communication with our dead is not broken. ... The doctrine of N.F. Fedorov about the resurrection of dead ancestors is the direct opposite of revolutionism, there is a religious basis for the truth of conservatism. The truth of conservatism is not a beginning that holds back the creativity of the future, it is a beginning that resurrects the past in its imperishable. Fedorov's doctrine of resurrection contains a lot of utopian fiction. But his main motive is unusually deep. And in comparison with Fedorov's radicalism, everything seems so moderate and superficial.

The revolutionary denial of the link between the future and the past, the link between generations, in its religious meaning, is a denial of the mystery of the eternal link between the Son and the Father, the mystery of Christ as the Son of God. In the revolution, sonship without a patronymic is established; the Son of Man has no father. Sons of the revolution parvenus ... Revolution, by its spiritual nature, is a rupture between fathers and sons. It destroys the secrets of the unity of the Holy Trinity in the world, in history, in society. And truly, the Divine Trinity operates not only in heaven, but also on earth. And humanity can be in the unity of the Trinity or come out of it and rebel against it. In Christianity, the eternal relationship between the Father and the Son is affirmed, the Son is born of the Father. But the violation of this connection can come from two sides, it can have two opposite sources. When conservatism denies the creation of a new life, when it retards the movement of life and represents only the force of inertia and inertia, it also tears apart despair and filial hypostasis, it affirms a father without a son, a father who does not give birth. The fathers who rebelled against the creative and not the destructive life of their sons, raising persecution against every dynamic of the son's life, also destroy the unity of the Divine Trinity, just like the sons, revolutionary breaking all connection with the fathers, destroying the past. They become quenchers of the Spirit. And therefore a conservative beginning cannot be the only, abstract beginning, it must be connected with a creative beginning, with a dynamic movement. The truth of conservatism is not in arresting the creative movement, but in preserving and resurrecting the eternal and incorruptible in the past. But in the past there was also a lot of perishable, sinful, evil, dark, and it is doomed to fire. The preservation of all the husks of the past, all its straw, all non-ontological in it is bad, evil, negative conservatism. He prepares revolutions and is the culprit for them. Putrid, decomposing processes of the past have no right to be protected.

The nature of the conservative principle is poorly understood not only by its enemies, but also by other supporters of it. There is a type of conservative who has done most of all to discredit any conservatism. There must be a transforming energy in true preservation and protection. If there is only inertia and inertia in it, then this is evil, not good. Historical tradition and tradition are of great importance. But in tradition and tradition there is not only a conservative, but also a creative principle, there is positive energy. Tradition and tradition are eternally created, maintaining continuity. Thus, in church life, everything is based on sacred tradition. But tradition does not mean inert conservatism. There is a legend about religious creativity, there is a creative tradition, creative conservatism. And loyalty to legend means the continuation of the creative work of fathers and grandfathers, and not a stop. In the past, there was a creative movement in the life of the church, there was an initiative, there was a beginning human activity. And loyalty to the legends of this past means the continuation of the creative movement, the initiative, the beginning of human activity. The founders and creators were the apostles, martyrs, church teachers, saints. And we are not faithful to the legend about them if we do not feel in ourselves the nascent creative religious energy. The same can be extended to all cultural and state life. False, inert conservatism does not understand the creative secret of the past and its connection with the creative secret of the future. Therefore, the reverse side of it is revolutionism that exterminates the past. Revolutionism is a punishment that lies in wait for false conservatism, which has betrayed the creative tradition. Hamism triumphs in revolutionism, spirit parvenu ... In true conservatism, however, there is a nobility of ancient origin. Historical prescription has religious, moral and aesthetic value. Everyone is forced to recognize the nobility of the consecrated antiquity in the best moments of life, when they are freed from the intoxication of today. But this value and this nobility of the old, ancient, ancient, age-old and millennial is the value and nobility of transformation by the spirit of eternity, and not inertia, inertia and ossification. We religiously, morally and aesthetically respect life in everything ancient and ancient, and not death, a life greater than the fleeting moments of today, in which being is not yet separated from non-being, grains of the incorruptible are mixed with a huge amount of corruptible.

The truth of conservatism is the truth of historicism, the truth of the sense of historical reality, which is completely atrophied in revolutionism and radicalism. Denial of historical continuity is denial and destruction of historical reality, unwillingness to know a living historical organism. The denial and destruction of historical continuity is the same encroachment on real life as the denial and destruction of the continuity of the personality, the individual human self. Historical reality is an individual of a special kind. There is organic duration in the life of this reality. There are hierarchical levels in historical reality. And the destruction of the hierarchical structure of the historical cosmos is destruction, not the accomplishment of history. In the historical cosmos, qualities are formed and established that are indivisible and indestructible in their ontological basis. This hierarchy of qualities crystallized in history should not hinder the formation of new qualities, it should not hinder the creative movement. But no creative movement, no formation of new qualities can destroy and sweep away the already crystallized historical values ​​and qualities. The growth of life and the multiplication of values ​​occurs through the conservative principle, which transforms the old life for eternity, and through the creative principle, which creates new life for the same eternity. The rupture of fatherland and sonship, which is accomplished by false conservatism and false revolutionism, is a weakening of life, there is a spirit of death for the past or for the future.

Your exclusive belief in the future is unrighteous, deceitful and ugly. This futurism is your root sin. It tears apart and scatters the integral historical and cosmic being. That futuristic outlook, which appeared in connection with new trends in art, has the quality of radicalism, it brings to the end the revolutionary denial of the past and the deification of the future and draws the last bold conclusions from this. You, social revolutionaries of different shades, you are half-hearted, and so hopelessly superficial that you cannot deepen the futuristic sense of life. Your futurism turns out to be extreme and radical only in the social plane. But all your thinking, all your sensory perception of life is so old, so inert, your consciousness is so stifled by the categories of the past world. Your idolatry of the future belongs to and is taken from a bad past. Truly, the new soul will not sin with this idolatry; it will be free from time. What a pitiful illusion - to imagine the future painted in a light rainbow color, while the past - in a dark and black color! What a pathetic delusion to see more reality in the future than in the past! As if the reality of being and the quality of being depends on the fleeting time! What slavery is felt in such an attitude to life! Truly, in greater depth, one must look for genuine realities and qualities of being. A true and integral attitude to life must affirm the eternal, the eternal in the past and the eternal in the future, as a single lasting life, must seek the truly ontological. And truly, an ontological, and not an illusionistic, attitude to life should open a creative movement in the depths of being, the ontological movement of absolute reality itself, and not your surface movement, tearing existence apart into ghostly moments of movement. The conservative principle has a religious meaning, as the affirmation of the father's hypostasis, eternally valuable and existential in the past, as the will to resurrect the past in eternal life. And it does not in the least contradict the creative principle, also directed to eternity in the future, and affirming the filial hypostasis. The revelation of radical futurism was inevitable and should even be welcomed. In it, the lie of the revolutionary attitude to the past and the future is finally exposed, the abyss of non-being is revealed, which half-hearted and superficial revolutionaries do not see.

There is not only a sacred tradition of the church, but also a sacred tradition of culture. Without tradition, without tradition, without continuity, culture is impossible. Culture originated from a cult. In the cult, there is always a sacred connection between the living and the dead, the present and the past, there is always reverence for ancestors and the energy aimed at their resurrection. And the culture inherited from the cult is the veneration of gravestones and monuments, this is the maintenance of the sacred connection of times. Culture, in its own way, seeks to affirm eternity. In culture, there is always a conservative beginning, preserving and continuing the past, and without it, culture is unthinkable. The revolutionary consciousness is hostile to culture. It went from enmity to cult, in its very inception it was a dropout from the cult, from the connection established by the cult. It was originally an iconoclastic heresy, a rebellion against cult aesthetics. All of you, people of a revolutionary spirit, all of you are cultural fighters. You cannot be trusted when you say what kind of culture you are, when you found your "proletcult" and other ugliness. You need a lot from the implements of culture for your utilitarian purposes. But you hate the soul of culture, its cult soul, which supports the fire in an inextinguishable lamp, preserves the connection of times in eternity, addressed to the dead, as well as to the living. You would like to take the soul out of the culture and leave only the outer shell of it, only the skin. You want civilization, not culture. In true conservatism, the creative deeds of the ancestors who conceived and created culture are honored. You give up this veneration, you are crushed by the greatness of your ancestors. You would like to settle down and walk in freedom, without a past, without ancestors, without communication. Your revolutionary rebellion reveals your creative impotence, your weakness and insignificance. For why should the strong, who have felt the creative power in themselves, rise up against the dead creators, commit desecration over the graves? Culture presupposes a conservative beginning, a beginning that preserves the past and resurrects the dead, and this conservative beginning cannot be scary and embarrassing for the most daring creativity. The creative beginning and the conservative beginning cannot be opposed. New temples should not necessarily destroy old temples. The future is compatible with the past when the spirit of eternity wins. The revolutionary or reactionary opposition of the principles of the conservative and the creative is the victory of the spirit of decay. Culture also presupposes a conservative beginning, as well as a creative beginning, preservation and conception. And culture perishes when one of these principles exclusively triumphs and supplants the other. The flowering of culture requires both a reverent attitude towards the graves of the fathers, and creative daring, conceiving an unprecedented.

The image of Rome is the eternal image of culture. The complex structure of Rome, the layering of many cultural eras in it, the traces of world history preserved in it teach us to cognize this eternal, conservative-creative nature of culture, this great connection of times, this is the preservation and transformation of the past in the present and the future. In Rome, monuments of human creativity, historical monuments have become a natural phenomenon. The ruins of Rome give a powerful and exhilarating sense of eternity. This sweet feeling permeates you with particular acuteness when you look at Campania, the Appian Way, at the ancient tombs. There is the kingdom of the dead, there the country does not give birth, but the past inherited eternity, entered the undying life of the cosmos. There it is learned that human history is an inseparable part of cosmic life. You will see many complex temples in Rome, combining several cult and cultural eras. A temple of early Christians was built on the ruins of an ancient pagan temple, and on it the later Christian temple. Such is, for example, a lovely temple St. MariainCosmedin and better known St. Clemento ... This gives an exceptional sense of the indestructible, everlasting reality of history. The structure of Roman culture is similar to the geological structure of the earth; it is a phenomenon of a cosmic order. Rome greatly deepens the sense of historical life. In it, the graves are the kingdom of life, not death, the catacombs speak of the eternal foundations of our culture and history, of the possibility of their transition into eternity. All this difficult and painful for the first perception of Rome, the combination and cohabitation of Ancient Rome, Primary Christian Rome, Renaissance Rome and Baroque Rome convincingly speaks of the eternal connection of times in culture and history, of the combination and fusion of conservative and creative principles. The revolutionary denial of all conservatism is barbarism. And the revolutionary element is a barbaric element. The revolutionary spirit is the reaction of the barbarian elements against culture, against cult tradition. But culture can become stagnant, dry out of creativity, which makes this reaction inevitable. All European culture, which is primarily Latin culture, is based on the tradition of antiquity, on an organic connection with it, and therefore already contains a conservative principle. You do not feel this because you are indifferent to culture, that your ideal of the public is not a cultural ideal. Those who deny the originality of historical reality completely deny the conservative principle. The recognition of the very fact of the existence of this reality already presupposes the recognition of the conservative principle, that is, the preservation of its unity and continuity. You want to replace concrete historical reality with abstract sociological reality, and therefore the conservative principle appears to you as a hindrance on the path of your distraction.

The conservative beginning does not allow in public life the overthrow of the public space formed by the creative and organizing work of history. This beginning holds back the onslaught of chaotic darkness from below. And therefore, the meaning of conservatism is not that it prevents movement forward and upward, but that it prevents movement backward and downward, towards chaotic darkness, a return to a state that precedes the formation of states and cultures. The meaning of conservatism is in the obstacles it poses to the manifestations of the animal-chaotic elements in human societies. This element always moves in a person, and it is associated with sin. And you, the ideologists of revolutionism, who deny all rights behind conservatism, are yourself at the mercy of delusions and mislead others when you repeat the general passages that revolutionism is always a movement forward, and conservatism is a movement backward. Too often in history, a revolutionary movement forward has been a phantom movement. In reality, it was a movement backward, that is, an invasion of the social cosmos formed by the creative process of history of chaotic darkness, which pulls down. And therefore the struggle between conservative and revolutionary principles may turn out to be a struggle between cosmic and chaotic principles. But conservatism becomes a beginning that retards the movement forward and upward and negative, if it recognizes itself as the only cosmic principle of human life and becomes hostile to the creative principle. The containment of the chaotic darkness from below for the protection of the public space formed by many generations is in itself insufficient. Chaotic darkness, which has a bottomless source, must not only be contained and not allowed inside the public space, it must also be enlightened and creatively transformed. Conservative and creative principles should serve one and the same cosmic cause, the great cause of struggle against world chaos and against sin, which is leaving human societies to the power of this chaos. And if chaotic formless darkness in itself is not yet evil, but only a bottomless source of life, then it becomes evil when they try to sanction and sanctify it, when they make it the guiding principle of human life. In revolutionary ideologies, however, chaos receives rationalistic sanctions.

The life of individuals, human societies and all of historical humanity is eternally receiving new sources of renewal from the still untold dark, chaotic, barbaric forces. These forces renew the decrepit and chilling blood of humanity. New human races and new human classes are joining the historical cosmos. This is an inevitable and benign process. Darkness must enter the kingdom of light, but in order to enlighten and support the sources of light with new forces, and not in order to cast down all the lamps and expand the kingdom of darkness. The entry of new forces into the historical cosmos and historical light is an organic process, not a mechanical one. Like any organic process, this process presupposes hierarchical principles, a hierarchical life structure. The complete overthrow of the hierarchical principle overturns all the lamps and extinguishes the light obtained with such labor and pain. Lamps must be guarded so that darkness joins the kingdom of light, and does not overthrow the kingdom of light. There is a bottomless chaotic foundation in space, and a source of new forces gushes out of it. But the cosmos must preserve its hierarchical structure, its central source of light, so as not to be completely overturned by chaotic forces, in order to fulfill its divine destiny, so that darkness is enlightened, so that chaos joins the cosmos. The revolutionary consciousness does not understand this deep relationship between chaos and the cosmos, hidden under all social upheavals and changes. A pure, abstract revolutionary consciousness unnaturally and monstrously combines the chaotic and the rationalistic; it worships both chaos and rationalism at once. It is opposite to the cosmic and mystical-organic. The revolutionary consciousness does not want to reckon with the organic nature of man and human society, with their physiology and psychology, which are very stable. It does not want to know that this physiology and psychology has a deep "mystical" basis. This is a trait of extreme rationalism, it leads to the rationalistic rape of nature, which avenges itself. Social development and social changes must reckon with organic nature and its immutable laws. But this rationalistic rape of the organic nature of man and society is accomplished through chaotic forces that leave the cosmic rhythm or have not yet entered it. This combination of chaos with rationalism is one of the paradoxes of social philosophy, which speaks of the contradictions of human existence. There is no chaotism or rationalism in the growth and color of the tree. The same is the nature of human society, immersed in the bowels of cosmic life. But chaotism and rationalism in the life of human societies is the result of evil human freedom, that arbitrary freedom, which is a sign of human slavery. The laws of nature, restraining chaos in space, descend on human society, which has embarked on the path of chaotic and rationalistic violence, and return a person to the dungeon of his old physiology and psychology, a revolution that has not been defeated and not overcome. Chaos cannot free man, for he is the source of man's slavery. The revolution is powerless to change human nature; it leaves it organically decrepit, subordinated to the old and insurmountable physiology and psychology, but claims to mechanically create a completely new society and life out of this old human nature. This makes revolutions largely illusory, without roots. This impotence of revolutionary chaos to change human nature, to overcome the laws of its physiology and psychology, this isolation of it from the mystical depth of organic life and substantiates the truth and rights of conservatism. If revolutionism had the power to really and significantly change and transform human nature and create a new and better life, then it would be justified. But since revolutionism lies that it can do this, since its achievements are illusory, the reaction of conservatism against it is a necessary reaction of a raped, but not transformed nature.

The conservative principle is not a violent principle and should not be. This is a free organic principle. It has a healthy reaction against violence against organic nature, against the attempted murder of a life that wants to last. The conservative principle in itself is not opposite to development, it only requires that development be organic, so that the future does not destroy the past, but continues to develop it. The fate of that country is unhappy, in which there is no healthy conservatism inherent in the people itself, there is no loyalty, there is no connection with ancestors. Unhappy is the lot of the people who do not like their history and want to start it all over again. So unhappy is the fate of our country and our people. If conservatism exists only in power, cut off from the people and opposite to the people, while the people themselves do not have it, then the entire development of the people becomes painful. In conservatism, as a connection with eternity, there should be not only strength, but also truth, attracting the heart of the people, grounded in its spiritual life. The hateful and repulsive conservatism is powerless, it can rape, but it cannot attract and lead. And unhappy is the country in which all conservatism has become hateful and violent. When conservatism is associated in the popular consciousness with an obstacle to development and with hostility to creativity, then a revolution is being prepared in the country. Guilty of this are both those conservative forces that allowed mortification and ossification in themselves, and those revolutionary forces that have risen to eternal principles, to enduring values ​​and shrines. Conservative energy must be as immanent to the people as creative energy; it cannot be exclusively external to them. Revolution means the extreme transcendence of everything divine and spiritually valuable. In the end, any healthy conservative trend, without which there can be no preservation of the public space, has support in the millennial feelings of the people, which cannot be destroyed in one day, minute or year. Spiritual upheavals in the life of the people are not accomplished in the same way as revolutions are accomplished. The greatest spiritual revolution in the history of mankind - the appearance of Christianity in the world - was not a revolution in your sense of the word. The greatest freedom for a person is given by the combination of the conservative principle with the creative principle, that is, the harmonious development of the social space. New revelations of the spiritual world arise on a different plane that eludes your eyes. And you want to preserve the memory of yourself in future generations, and you want longevity in your historical life. And by this you are confirming some kind of truth of the conservative principle. And if you want your memory to be preserved and that you continue to live, then you must preserve the memory of your dead ancestors and must resurrect them for eternal life. "Honor your father and your mother, and it will be good for you, and you will be durable on earth." In the depths of religion, the beginning is conservative. The creative principle is also laid there.

[N.A. Berdyaev] | ["Philosophy of Inequality" - Table of contents] [Milestones Library]
© 2001, Library "Vekhi"

The fifth letter

About conservatism

I want to talk now about conservatism not as a political direction and a political party, but as one of the eternal religious and ontological principles of human society. You are not aware of the problem of conservatism in its spiritual depth. For you, conservatism is exclusively a slogan in the political struggle. And this sense of conservatism exists, it was created both by its supporters and opponents. Conservative political parties can be very vile and can distort conservative principles. But this should not overshadow the truth that a normal and healthy existence and development of society is impossible without conservative forces. Conservatism maintains the connection of times, does not allow a final break in this connection, connects the future with the past. Revolutionism is superficial, divorced from ontological foundations, from the core of life. This stamp of superficiality lies on all revolutionary ideologies. Conservatism, on the other hand, has a spiritual depth, it is directed to the ancient sources of life, it binds itself to the roots. He believes in the existence of an incorruptible and indestructible depth. Great geniuses and creators had this conservatism of depth. They have never been able to stay on the revolutionary surface.

The emergence of great creative individuals is impossible without a conservative environment. How many creative geniuses do you count among the ideologues of extreme revolutionism? The best people weren't with you. They all drew creative energy from the depths of life. And if external and political conservatism was alien to them, then the beginning of deep and spiritual conservatism can always be found with them. This conservative depth is found in the greatest people of the 19th century, it is found in Goethe, Schelling and Hegel, Schopenhauer and R. Wagner, Carlyle and Ruskin, J. de Maestre, Villiers de Lisle Adam and Huysmans, Pushkin and Dostoevsky , K. Leontiev and Vl. Solovyov. It is there for those who yearn for a new, higher life and do not believe in revolutionary ways to achieve it.

The exclusive domination of revolutionary principles destroys the past, destroys not only the corruptible in it, but also the eternally valuable. The revolutionary spirit wants to create a future life in cemeteries, forgetting about the tombstones, wants to settle on the bones of dead fathers and grandfathers, does not want and denies the resurrection of the dead and dead life. The revolutionary spirit wants to give human life to the destructive power of time. He throws all the past into the devouring abyss of the future. This spirit deifies the future, that is, the flow of time, and has no support in eternity. But verily, the past has no less rights than the future. The past is no less ontological than the future; deceased generations are no less ontological than future generations. In what has been, no less from eternity than in what will be. And we feel the feeling of eternity more sharply in our appeal to the past. What is the secret of the beauty of the ruins that attracts us? In the victory of eternity over time. Nothing gives such a feeling of incorruptibility as ruins. The crumbling, moss-covered walls of old castles, palaces and temples seem to us to be a phenomenon of another world, shining through from eternity. In this other world, the truly ontological resists the destructive flow of time. The destructive stream of time demolishes everything that is too temporary, everything arranged for earthly well-being, and the imperishable beauty of eternity is preserved. This is the secret of beauty and charm of the monuments of the past and the memory of the past, the magic of the past. Not only ruins give us this feeling of the victory of eternity over time, but also preserved old temples, old houses, old clothes, old portraits, old books, old memoirs. All this bears the stamp of the great and wonderful struggle of eternity with time. No modern, recently built temple, even if it represents a perfect copy of the style of ancient temples, can give that quivering and weary feeling that an ancient temple gives, for this feeling is born in us because time tried to put its fatal seal and receded. And we perceive it as imperishable beauty, not the destruction and destruction of time, but the struggle of eternity against this destruction and destruction, the resistance of another world in the process of this world. Everything new, today, recently created and built does not yet know this great struggle incorruptible with the perishable, the eternity of another world with the flow of time of this world, it does not yet have this seal of communion with higher being, and therefore there is still no such image of beauty in it. It is necessary to ponder more deeply into this magic of the past, into its mysterious charm. This attractive and strange magic is found in old estates, and in old parks, and in family memories, and in all material objects that speak of old human relationships, and in old books, and in the most mediocre portraits of ancestors, and in all material remains ancient cultures. Nothing new, today and tomorrow, can give such a keen feeling, for the great struggle of the world of eternity with the world of time has not yet taken place in it. The attractive beauty of the past is not the beauty of what was, what was once today and new, it is the beauty of what is, what eternally remains after the heroic struggle against the destructive power of time. I well know that in the past not everything was so beautiful that there was a lot of ugliness and ugliness in it. But the mystery of the beauty of the past is not explained at all by the fact that we idealize the past and imagine it not as it really was. The beauty of the past is not at all the beauty of the present, which was in reality three or five hundred years ago. This beauty is the beauty of the present that is now, after the transformation of this past by the struggle of eternity against time. The beauty of the old temple, like the beauty of family traditions, is the beauty of a transformed temple and a transformed family life. The image of beauty is no longer the image of the temple that was built a thousand years ago, and it is not the image of that family life that two hundred years ago passed on the earth with all the sins, vices and ugliness of man. We know greater beauty than our ancestors. This is the depth at which the foundations of conservatism should be sought. True conservatism is the struggle of eternity against time, resistance to incorruptibility to corruption. It contains energy that does not preserve only, but also transforms. You don’t think about it when you judge conservatism by your criteria.

Your revolutionary attitude towards the past is the polar opposite of the religion of the resurrection. The revolutionary spirit is incompatible with the religion of Christ, because it wants not the resurrection, but the death of everything that has departed and past, because it is exclusively addressed to future generations and does not think about the dead ancestors, does not want to keep in touch with their covenants. The religion of revolution is a religion of death precisely because it is exclusively absorbed in present and future earthly life. The religion of Christ is the religion of life precisely because it is addressed not only to the living, but also to the dead, not only to life, but also to death. He who turns away from the face of death and flees from it to the newly emerging life, he is in the destructive power of death, he knows only shreds of life. The fact that the revolution buries its dead in red coffins replaces the religious funeral service with revolutionary songs, does not put crosses on the graves, and this means that it does not want the restoration of life, the resurrection of the dead, that every dead person for it is only a tool and a means, only an excuse for affirmations of today's and tomorrow's life. The religion of the revolution meekly accepts that evil law of the natural order, by virtue of which the future devours the past, the next moment displaces the preceding moment; she worships this poverty and inertia of natural life, this discord and deadly hatred. This religion of death not only willingly puts up with the death of past generations, fathers and grandfathers, but would also like to exterminate the very memory of them, does not allow the continuation of their life in our remembrance and veneration, in keeping in touch with their traditions and behests. You, people of revolutionary consciousness, who rejected any truth of conservatism, do not want to listen to that depth of yours, in which you would hear not only your voice and the voice of your generation, but also the voice of past generations, the voice of the entire people throughout its history. You do not want to know the will of all the people in its history, you only want to know your will. You ignoble and basely take advantage of the fact that our fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers lie in the ground, in their graves and cannot give their voice. You do nothing to make them rise from their graves, you use their absence to arrange your affairs, to use their inheritance, regardless of their will. At the heart of your revolutionary sense of life is a deep disbelief in immortality and an unwillingness to immortality. Your kingdom is based on the triumph of death. Conservatism, as an eternal beginning, requires that in deciding the fate of societies, states and cultures, not only the voice of the living, but the voice of the dead be heard, so that real existence is recognized not only for the present, but also for the past, so that communication with our dead is not broken. ... The doctrine of N.F. Fedorov about the resurrection of dead ancestors is the direct opposite of revolutionism, there is a religious basis for the truth of conservatism. The truth of conservatism is not a beginning that holds back the creativity of the future, it is a beginning that resurrects the past in its imperishable. Fedorov's doctrine of resurrection contains a lot of utopian fiction. But his main motive is unusually deep. And in comparison with Fedorov's radicalism, everything seems so moderate and superficial.

The revolutionary denial of the link between the future and the past, the link between generations, in its religious meaning, is a denial of the mystery of the eternal link between the Son and the Father, the mystery of Christ as the Son of God. In the revolution, sonship without a patronymic is established; the Son of Man has no father. The sons of the revolution are parvenus. Revolution, by its spiritual nature, is a rupture between fathers and sons. It destroys the secrets of the unity of the Holy Trinity in the world, in history, in society. And truly, the Divine Trinity operates not only in heaven, but also on earth. And humanity can be in the unity of the Trinity or come out of it and rebel against it. In Christianity, the eternal relationship between the Father and the Son is affirmed, the Son is born of the Father. But the violation of this connection can come from two sides, it can have two opposite sources. When conservatism denies the creation of a new life, when it retards the movement of life and represents only the force of inertia and inertia, it also tears apart despair and filial hypostasis, it affirms a father without a son, a father who does not give birth. The fathers who rebelled against the creative and not the destructive life of their sons, raising persecution against every dynamic of the son's life, also destroy the unity of the Divine Trinity, just like the sons, revolutionary breaking all connection with the fathers, destroying the past. They become quenchers of the Spirit. And therefore a conservative beginning cannot be the only, abstract beginning, it must be connected with a creative beginning, with a dynamic movement. The truth of conservatism is not in arresting the creative movement, but in preserving and resurrecting the eternal and incorruptible in the past. But in the past there was also a lot of perishable, sinful, evil, dark, and it is doomed to fire. The preservation of all the husks of the past, all its straw, all non-ontological in it is bad, evil, negative conservatism. He prepares revolutions and is the culprit for them. Putrid, decomposing processes of the past have no right to be protected.

The nature of the conservative principle is poorly understood not only by its enemies, but also by other supporters of it. There is a type of conservative who has done most of all to discredit any conservatism. There must be a transforming energy in true preservation and protection. If there is only inertia and inertia in it, then this is evil, not good. Historical tradition and tradition are of great importance. But in tradition and tradition there is not only a conservative, but also a creative principle, there is positive energy. Tradition and tradition are eternally created, maintaining continuity. Thus, in church life, everything is based on sacred tradition. But tradition does not mean inert conservatism. There is a legend about religious creativity, there is a creative tradition, creative conservatism. And loyalty to legend means the continuation of the creative work of fathers and grandfathers, and not a stop. In the past, there was a creative movement in the life of the church, there was an initiative, there was a beginning human activity. And loyalty to the legends of this past means the continuation of the creative movement, the initiative, the beginning of human activity. The founders and creators were the apostles, martyrs, church teachers, saints. And we are not faithful to the legend about them if we do not feel in ourselves the nascent creative religious energy. The same can be extended to all cultural and state life. False, inert conservatism does not understand the creative secret of the past and its connection with the creative secret of the future. Therefore, the reverse side of it is revolutionism that exterminates the past. Revolutionism is a punishment that lies in wait for false conservatism, which has betrayed the creative tradition. Hamism, the spirit of parvenu, triumphs in revolutionism. In true conservatism, however, there is a nobility of ancient origin. Historical prescription has religious, moral and aesthetic value. Everyone is forced to recognize the nobility of the consecrated antiquity in the best moments of life, when they are freed from the intoxication of today. But this value and this nobility of the old, ancient, ancient, age-old and millennial is the value and nobility of transformation by the spirit of eternity, and not inertia, inertia and ossification. We religiously, morally and aesthetically respect life in everything ancient and ancient, and not death, a life greater than the fleeting moments of today, in which being is not yet separated from non-being, grains of the incorruptible are mixed with a huge amount of corruptible.

The truth of conservatism is the truth of historicism, the truth of the sense of historical reality, which is completely atrophied in revolutionism and radicalism. Denial of historical continuity is denial and destruction of historical reality, unwillingness to know a living historical organism. The denial and destruction of historical continuity is the same encroachment on real life as the denial and destruction of the continuity of the personality, the individual human self. Historical reality is an individual of a special kind. There is organic duration in the life of this reality. There are hierarchical levels in historical reality. And the destruction of the hierarchical structure of the historical cosmos is destruction, not the accomplishment of history. In the historical cosmos, qualities are formed and established that are indivisible and indestructible in their ontological basis. This hierarchy of qualities crystallized in history should not hinder the formation of new qualities, should not hinder creative movement. But no creative movement, no formation of new qualities can destroy and sweep away the already crystallized historical values ​​and qualities. The growth of life and the multiplication of values ​​occurs through the conservative principle, which transforms the old life for eternity, and through the creative principle, which creates new life for the same eternity. The rupture of fatherland and sonship, which is accomplished by false conservatism and false revolutionism, is a weakening of life, there is a spirit of death for the past or for the future.

Your exclusive belief in the future is unrighteous, deceitful and ugly. This futurism is your root sin. It tears apart and scatters the integral historical and cosmic being. That futuristic outlook, which appeared in connection with new trends in art, has the quality of radicalism, it brings to the end the revolutionary denial of the past and the deification of the future and draws the last bold conclusions from this. You, social revolutionaries of different shades, you are half-hearted, and so hopelessly superficial that you cannot deepen the futuristic sense of life. Your futurism turns out to be extreme and radical only in the social plane. But all your thinking, all your sensory perception of life is so old, so inert, your consciousness is so stifled by the categories of the past world. Your idolatry of the future belongs to and is taken from a bad past. Truly, the new soul will not sin with this idolatry; it will be free from time. What a pitiful illusion - to imagine the future painted in a light rainbow color, while the past - in a dark and black color! What a pathetic delusion to see more reality in the future than in the past! As if the reality of being and the quality of being depends on the fleeting time! What slavery is felt in such an attitude to life! Truly, in a greater depth, one needs to look for genuine realities and qualities of being. A true and integral attitude to life must affirm the eternal, the eternal in the past and the eternal in the future, as a single lasting life, must seek the truly ontological. And truly, an ontological, and not an illusionistic, attitude to life should open a creative movement in the depths of being, the ontological movement of absolute reality itself, and not your surface movement, tearing existence apart into ghostly moments of movement. The conservative principle has a religious meaning, as the affirmation of the father's hypostasis, eternally valuable and existential in the past, as the will to resurrect the past in eternal life. And it does not in the least contradict the creative principle, also directed to eternity in the future, and affirming the filial hypostasis. The revelation of radical futurism was inevitable and should even be welcomed. In it, the lie of the revolutionary attitude to the past and the future is finally exposed, the abyss of non-being is revealed, which half-hearted and superficial revolutionaries do not see.

There is not only the sacred tradition of the church, but also the sacred tradition of culture. Without tradition, without tradition, without continuity, culture is impossible. Culture originated from a cult. In the cult, there is always a sacred connection between the living and the dead, the present and the past, there is always reverence for ancestors and the energy aimed at their resurrection. And the culture inherited from the cult is the veneration of gravestones and monuments, this is the maintenance of the sacred connection of times. Culture, in its own way, seeks to affirm eternity. In culture, there is always a conservative beginning, preserving and continuing the past, and without it, culture is unthinkable. The revolutionary consciousness is hostile to culture. It went from enmity to cult, in its very inception it was a dropout from the cult, from the connection established by the cult. It was originally an iconoclastic heresy, a rebellion against cult aesthetics. All of you, people of a revolutionary spirit, all of you are cultural fighters. You cannot be trusted when you say what kind of culture you are, when you found your "proletcult" and other ugliness. You need a lot from the implements of culture for your utilitarian purposes. But you hate the soul of culture, its cult soul, which supports the fire in an inextinguishable lamp, preserves the connection of times in eternity, addressed to the dead, as well as to the living. You would like to take the soul out of the culture and leave only the outer shell of it, only the skin. You want civilization, not culture. In true conservatism, the creative deeds of the ancestors who conceived and created culture are honored. You give up this veneration, you are crushed by the greatness of your ancestors. You would like to settle down and walk in freedom, without a past, without ancestors, without communication. Your revolutionary rebellion reveals your creative impotence, your weakness and insignificance. For why should the strong, who have felt the creative power in themselves, rise up against the dead creators, commit desecration over the graves? Culture presupposes a conservative beginning, a beginning that preserves the past and resurrects the dead, and this conservative beginning cannot be scary and embarrassing for the most daring creativity. The creative beginning and the conservative beginning cannot be opposed. New temples should not necessarily destroy old temples. The future is compatible with the past when the spirit of eternity wins. The revolutionary or reactionary opposition of the principles of the conservative and the creative is the victory of the spirit of decay. Culture also presupposes a conservative beginning, as well as a creative beginning, preservation and conception. And culture perishes when one of these principles exclusively triumphs and supplants the other. The flowering of culture requires both a reverent attitude towards the graves of the fathers, and creative daring, conceiving an unprecedented.

The image of Rome is the eternal image of culture. The complex structure of Rome, the layering of many cultural eras in it, the traces of world history preserved in it teach us to cognize this eternal, conservative-creative nature of culture, this great connection of times, this is the preservation and transformation of the past in the present and the future. In Rome, monuments of human creativity, historical monuments have become a natural phenomenon. The ruins of Rome give a powerful and exhilarating sense of eternity. This sweet feeling permeates you with particular acuteness when you look at Campania, the Appian Way, at the ancient tombs. There is the kingdom of the dead, there the country does not give birth, but the past inherited eternity, entered the undying life of the cosmos. There it is learned that human history is an inseparable part of cosmic life. You will see many complex temples in Rome, combining several cult and cultural eras. A temple of early Christians was built on the ruins of an ancient pagan temple, and on it the later Christian temple. Such, for example, is the lovely church of St. Maria in Cosmedin and the more famous St. Clemento. This gives an exceptional sense of the indestructible, everlasting reality of history. The structure of Roman culture is similar to the geological structure of the earth; it is a phenomenon of a cosmic order. Rome greatly deepens the sense of historical life. In it, the graves are the kingdom of life, not death, the catacombs speak of the eternal foundations of our culture and history, of the possibility of their transition into eternity. All this difficult and painful for the first perception of Rome, the combination and cohabitation of Ancient Rome, Primary Christian Rome, Renaissance Rome and Baroque Rome convincingly speaks of the eternal connection of times in culture and history, of the combination and fusion of conservative and creative principles. The revolutionary denial of all conservatism is barbarism. And the revolutionary element is a barbaric element. The revolutionary spirit is the reaction of the barbarian elements against culture, against cult tradition. But culture can become stagnant, dry out of creativity, which makes this reaction inevitable. All European culture, which is primarily Latin culture, is based on the tradition of antiquity, on an organic connection with it, and therefore already contains a conservative principle. You do not feel this because you are indifferent to culture, that your ideal of the public is not a cultural ideal. Those who deny the originality of historical reality completely deny the conservative principle. The recognition of the very fact of the existence of this reality already presupposes the recognition of the conservative principle, that is, the preservation of its unity and continuity. You want to replace concrete historical reality with abstract sociological reality, and therefore the conservative principle appears to you as a hindrance on the path of your distraction.

The conservative beginning does not allow in public life the overthrow of the public space formed by the creative and organizing work of history. This beginning holds back the onslaught of chaotic darkness from below. And therefore, the meaning of conservatism is not that it prevents movement forward and upward, but that it prevents movement backward and downward, towards chaotic darkness, a return to a state that precedes the formation of states and cultures. The meaning of conservatism is in the obstacles it poses to the manifestations of the animal-chaotic elements in human societies. This element always moves in a person, and it is associated with sin. And you, the ideologists of revolutionism, who deny all rights behind conservatism, are yourself at the mercy of delusions and mislead others when you repeat the general passages that revolutionism is always a movement forward, and conservatism is a movement backward. Too often in history, a revolutionary movement forward has been a phantom movement. In reality, it was a movement backward, that is, an invasion of the social cosmos formed by the creative process of history of chaotic darkness, which pulls down. And therefore the struggle between conservative and revolutionary principles may turn out to be a struggle between cosmic and chaotic principles. But conservatism becomes a beginning that retards the movement forward and upward and negative, if it recognizes itself as the only cosmic principle of human life and becomes hostile to the creative principle. The containment of the chaotic darkness from below for the protection of the public space formed by many generations is in itself insufficient. Chaotic darkness, which has a bottomless source, must not only be contained and not allowed inside the public space, it must also be enlightened and creatively transformed. Conservative and creative principles should serve one and the same cosmic cause, the great cause of struggle against world chaos and against sin, which is leaving human societies to the power of this chaos. And if chaotic formless darkness in itself is not yet evil, but only a bottomless source of life, then it becomes evil when they try to sanction and sanctify it, when they make it the guiding principle of human life. In revolutionary ideologies, however, chaos receives rationalistic sanctions.

The life of individuals, human societies and all of historical humanity is eternally receiving new sources of renewal from the still untold dark, chaotic, barbaric forces. These forces renew the decrepit and chilling blood of humanity. New human races and new human classes are joining the historical cosmos. This is an inevitable and benign process. Darkness must enter the kingdom of light, but in order to enlighten and support the sources of light with new forces, and not in order to cast down all the lamps and expand the kingdom of darkness. The entry of new forces into the historical cosmos and historical light is an organic process, not a mechanical one. Like any organic process, this process presupposes hierarchical principles, a hierarchical life structure. The complete overthrow of the hierarchical principle overturns all the lamps and extinguishes the light obtained with such labor and pain. Lamps must be guarded so that darkness joins the kingdom of light, and does not overthrow the kingdom of light. There is a bottomless chaotic foundation in space, and a source of new forces gushes out of it. But the cosmos must preserve its hierarchical structure, its central source of light, so as not to be completely overturned by chaotic forces, in order to fulfill its divine destiny, so that darkness is enlightened, so that chaos joins the cosmos. The revolutionary consciousness does not understand this deep relationship between chaos and the cosmos, hidden under all social upheavals and changes. A pure, abstract revolutionary consciousness unnaturally and monstrously combines the chaotic and the rationalistic; it worships both chaos and rationalism at once. It is opposite to the cosmic and mystical-organic. The revolutionary consciousness does not want to reckon with the organic nature of man and human society, with their physiology and psychology, which are very stable. It does not want to know that this physiology and psychology has a deep "mystical" basis. This is a trait of extreme rationalism, it leads to the rationalistic rape of nature, which avenges itself. Social development and social changes must reckon with organic nature and its immutable laws. But this rationalistic rape of the organic nature of man and society is accomplished through chaotic forces that leave the cosmic rhythm or have not yet entered it. This combination of chaos with rationalism is one of the paradoxes of social philosophy, which speaks of the contradictions of human existence. There is no chaotism or rationalism in the growth and color of the tree. The same is the nature of human society, immersed in the bowels of cosmic life. But chaotism and rationalism in the life of human societies is the result of evil human freedom, that arbitrary freedom, which is a sign of human slavery. The laws of nature, restraining chaos in space, descend on human society, which has embarked on the path of chaotic and rationalistic violence, and return a person to the dungeon of his old physiology and psychology, a revolution that has not been defeated and not overcome. Chaos cannot free man, for he is the source of man's slavery. The revolution is powerless to change human nature; it leaves it organically decrepit, subordinated to the old and insurmountable physiology and psychology, but claims to mechanically create a completely new society and life out of this old human nature. This makes revolutions largely illusory, without roots. This impotence of revolutionary chaos to change human nature, to overcome the laws of its physiology and psychology, this isolation of it from the mystical depth of organic life and substantiates the truth and rights of conservatism. If revolutionism had the power to really and significantly change and transform human nature and create a new and better life, then it would be justified. But since revolutionism lies that it can do this, since its achievements are illusory, the reaction of conservatism against it is a necessary reaction of a raped, but not transformed nature.

The conservative principle is not a violent principle and should not be. This is a free organic principle. It has a healthy reaction against violence against organic nature, against the attempted murder of a life that wants to last. The conservative principle in itself is not opposite to development, it only requires that development be organic, so that the future does not destroy the past, but continues to develop it. The fate of that country is unhappy, in which there is no healthy conservatism inherent in the people itself, there is no loyalty, there is no connection with ancestors. Unhappy is the lot of the people who do not like their history and want to start it all over again. So unhappy is the fate of our country and our people. If conservatism exists only in power, cut off from the people and opposite to the people, while the people themselves do not have it, then the entire development of the people becomes painful. In conservatism, as a connection with eternity, there should be not only strength, but also truth, attracting the heart of the people, grounded in its spiritual life. The hateful and repulsive conservatism is powerless, it can rape, but it cannot attract and lead. And unhappy is the country in which all conservatism has become hateful and violent. When conservatism is associated in the popular consciousness with an obstacle to development and with hostility to creativity, then a revolution is being prepared in the country. Guilty of this are both those conservative forces that allowed mortification and ossification in themselves, and those revolutionary forces that have risen to eternal principles, to enduring values ​​and shrines. Conservative energy must be as immanent to the people as creative energy; it cannot be exclusively external to them. Revolution means the extreme transcendence of everything divine and spiritually valuable. In the end, any healthy conservative trend, without which there can be no preservation of the public space, has support in the millennial feelings of the people, which cannot be destroyed in one day, minute or year. Spiritual upheavals in the life of the people are not accomplished in the same way as revolutions are accomplished. The greatest spiritual revolution in the history of mankind - the appearance of Christianity in the world - was not a revolution in your sense of the word. The greatest freedom for a person is given by the combination of the conservative principle with the creative principle, that is, the harmonious development of the social space. New revelations of the spiritual world arise on a different plane that eludes your eyes. And you want to preserve the memory of yourself in future generations, and you want longevity in your historical life. And by this you are confirming some kind of truth of the conservative principle. And if you want your memory to be preserved and that you continue to live, then you must preserve the memory of your dead ancestors and must resurrect them for eternal life. "Honor your father and your mother, and it will be good for you, and you will be durable on earth." In the depths of religion, the beginning is conservative. The creative principle is also laid there.