The Fatherland is the native land. What is the fatherland

listen)) is widespread in Indo-European languages: Russian word semantically corresponds to words in many other Slavic languages ​​(Polish. ojczyzna, Ukrainian Vitchizna, etc.), Lat. patria(where patriotism comes from) and related Romance words, as well as English. fatherland and German Vaterland. In a number of languages, there are also slightly different synonyms derived from the word “mother” (English. motherland) and with the meaning “relatives, their places” (Russian Rodina, English. Homeland, German Heimat, Swedish fosterland(et) etc.).

Evolution of meaning

Word fatherland, fatherland in Old Russian and Central Great Russian until the 17th century. meant not only “country of fathers”, but also “clan”; "chosen country"; and “hereditary, ancestral rights.” The same name was given to one of the editions of the iconographic image of the New Testament Trinity (where God the Son is depicted as a youth on the knees of the Father); the word patronymic is of the same origin. Word fatherland of the same origin, but later; according to Sreznevsky, its terminology was also completed by the 17th century. .

Fatherland and patriotism

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

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

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

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

According to the current Charter internal service Armed Forces of the Russian Federation: “If a commander (chief), in the course of service, congratulates a serviceman or thanks him, then the serviceman answers the commander (chief): “I serve the Russian Federation,” but before the changes in 2008, instead of “I serve the Russian Federation,” the wording “Serve the Fatherland” was used !

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

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

During the wars, the call for the defense of the Fatherland was widely used by many states (the slogan “The Fatherland is in danger” during the French revolutionary wars, “For Faith, Tsar and Fatherland” in Russia until 1917, “The Socialist Fatherland is in danger!” during the Great Patriotic War, and etc.)

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

An essay by B. B. Rodoman is devoted to a critical analysis of the concepts of “homeland,” “fatherland,” and “state.”

The concept of Fatherland in fiction

• Derzhavin’s line “The smoke of the Fatherland is sweet and pleasant to us” (imitation of Horace) was subsequently used by Griboedov in “Woe from Wit” with a rearrangement of words (“And the smoke of the Fatherland is sweet and pleasant to us”) and was further quoted by other poets, including Tyutchev.

• In A. Rosenbaum (popular performer of original songs, holder of the Defender of the Fatherland medal) in the song “Romance of General Charnota”:

“Mon cher ami, we are here with you Michele,
There is no Fatherland here and there are no patronymics either,
There is no Fatherland here and there are no patronymics either...”

see also

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

Write a review about the article "Fatherland"

Links Literature

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

Notes

Excerpt characterizing the Fatherland

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

At dawn on the 16th, Denisov's squadron, in which Nikolai Rostov served, and which was in the detachment of Prince Bagration, moved from an overnight stop into action, as they said, and, having passed about a mile behind the other columns, was stopped on the high road. Rostov saw the Cossacks, the 1st and 2nd squadrons of hussars, infantry battalions with artillery pass by, and generals Bagration and Dolgorukov with their adjutants passed by. All the fear that he, as before, felt before the case; all the internal struggle through which he overcame this fear; all his dreams of how he would distinguish himself in this matter like a hussar were in vain. Their squadron was left in reserve, and Nikolai Rostov spent that day bored and sad. At 9 o'clock in the morning he heard gunfire ahead of him, shouts of hurray, saw the wounded being brought back (there were few of them) and, finally, saw how a whole detachment of French cavalrymen was led through in the middle of hundreds of Cossacks. Obviously, the matter was over, and the matter was obviously small, but happy. Soldiers and officers passing back talked about the brilliant victory, about the occupation of the city of Wischau and the capture of an entire French squadron. The day was clear, sunny, after a strong night frost, and the cheerful shine of the autumn day coincided with the news of the victory, which was conveyed not only by the stories of those who took part in it, but also by the joyful expression on the faces of soldiers, officers, generals and adjutants traveling to and from Rostov . The heart of Nikolai ached all the more painfully, as he had in vain suffered all the fear that preceded the battle, and spent that joyful day in inaction.
- Rostov, come here, let's drink out of grief! - Denisov shouted, sitting down on the edge of the road in front of a flask and a snack.
The officers gathered in a circle, eating and talking, near Denisov's cellar.
- Here's another one being brought! - said one of the officers, pointing to the French captured dragoon, which was being led on foot by two Cossacks.
One of them was leading a tall and beautiful French horse taken from a prisoner.
- Sell the horse! - Denisov shouted to the Cossack.
- If you please, your honor...
The officers stood up and surrounded the Cossacks and the captured Frenchman. The French dragoon was a young fellow, an Alsatian, who spoke French with a German accent. He was choking with excitement, his face was red, and, hearing French, he quickly spoke to the officers, addressing first one and then the other. He said that they would not have taken him; that it was not his fault that he was taken, but that le caporal was to blame, who sent him to seize the blankets, that he told him that the Russians were already there. And to every word he added: mais qu"on ne fasse pas de mal a mon petit cheval [But do not offend my horse] and caressed his horse. It was clear that he did not understand well where he was. He then apologized, that he was taken, then, presuming his superiors before him, he showed his soldierly efficiency and care for the service... He brought with him to our rearguard in all its freshness the atmosphere of the French army, which was so alien to us.
The Cossacks gave the horse for two chervonets, and Rostov, now the richest of the officers, having received the money, bought it.
“Mais qu"on ne fasse pas de mal a mon petit cheval,” the Alsatian said good-naturedly to Rostov when the horse was handed over to the hussar.
Rostov, smiling, reassured the dragoon and gave him money.
- Hello! Hello! - said the Cossack, touching the prisoner’s hand so that he would move on.
- Sovereign! Sovereign! - suddenly it was heard between the hussars.
Everything ran and hurried, and Rostov saw several horsemen with white plumes on their hats approaching from behind along the road. In one minute everyone was in place and waiting. Rostov did not remember and did not feel how he reached his place and got on his horse. Instantly his regret about not participating in the matter passed, his everyday mood in the circle of people looking closely at him, instantly any thought about himself disappeared: he was completely absorbed in the feeling of happiness that comes from the proximity of the sovereign. He felt rewarded by this proximity alone for the loss of that day. He was happy, like a lover who had waited for the expected date. Not daring to look at the front and not looking back, he felt with an enthusiastic instinct its approach. And he felt this not just from the sound of the hooves of the horses of the approaching cavalcade, but he felt it because, as he approached, everything around him became brighter, more joyful and more significant and festive. This sun moved closer and closer for Rostov, spreading rays of gentle and majestic light around itself, and now he already feels captured by these rays, he hears its voice - this gentle, calm, majestic and at the same time so simple voice. As it should have been according to Rostov’s feelings, dead silence fell, and in this silence the sounds of the sovereign’s voice were heard.

the political, social and cultural environment in which people live and work. This is a complex social phenomenon, covering a set of heterogeneous aspects of the life and activities of society: social relations, a system of political relations and organizations, forms and types of culture widespread in society, spiritual values ​​to which the masses are attached. The Fatherland is also characterized by such “eternal” elements as the territory and language of the people (see Lenin V.I. Poln. sobr. soch., vol. 26, p. 365). The socio-political nature of the fatherland in to a large extent is determined by what social relations dominate in society and what class is their bearer. Depending on this, we can talk about a capitalist and socialist fatherland. The roots of the fatherland go back to ancient times - to the primitive communal system, when for the first time there was a unification of people into relatively stable isolated communities (tribe, clan) on the basis of public (communal) ownership of the means of production, consanguineous ties and joint residence in a certain territory. The fatherland is finally formed when the division of labor occurs, classes appear and the state arises. The idea of ​​the fatherland turned out to be closely connected with the concept of “statehood”, then with the concept of “nation”. Modern fatherlands are, as a rule, nation states. At the same time, there are fatherlands associated both with pre-national forms of community of people and with the multinational form of their community (see. Soviet people). Distinctive feature of the modern capitalist fatherland - the contradictory nature of the political, social and cultural environment: antagonism of classes, intense struggle of political forces; the presence of “two cultures” in the national culture. That's why various classes have different attitudes towards the capitalist fatherland and put different meanings into the concept of fatherland. If in the minds of the bourgeois the fatherland is inseparable from the exploitative orders that ensure his privileged position, then to the proletarian, since he is aware of his class interests, the social and state side of the fatherland becomes alien. The bourgeois state, which consolidates relations of exploitation, acts in relation to the working class and the broad masses of working people as a hostile force. In this sense, workers under capitalism “have no fatherland” (Marx K., Engels F. Soch., vol. 4, p. 444). Opponents of scientific communism interpret this provision in the sense that the working class and its Marxist parties are alien to the feeling national pride, responsibility for the fate of the people and homeland. But this interpretation does not correspond to reality, for the communists have repeatedly proven their high patriotism, showing deep concern for the fate of their native country. The position “workers have no fatherland” contains the basic principle of the international proletariat - the principle of class solidarity in the struggle for liberation from exploitation, and therefore for the transformation of the bourgeois fatherland into a socialist one. The most important incentive in this struggle is hatred of the oppressors, the desire to see their homeland free, the pride of the working class in belonging to a given nation, for its revolutionary traditions. When the fatherland becomes socialist, new sides appear in relation to the working class, the working masses. The Fatherland for the working masses is socialism itself as a socio-political system, as a form of organizing social life. Socialism as a fatherland was defended by the working class and all the working people of our country during the war years. The very object of patriotism becomes broader in scope and at the same time uniform for all nations and nationalities. The morality and psychology of individualism are alien to Soviet patriotism. It is an inexhaustible source of the exploits of the working people of our country, turning heroism into an everyday, mass, nationwide phenomenon. The Fatherland as a certain socio-political phenomenon is historically transitory in nature. “Just as the idea of ​​the tribe gave way to the idea of ​​the fatherland... so the idea of ​​the fatherland must give way to the incomparably broader idea of ​​humanity. This is vouched for by... strength economic development"- wrote Plekhanov. But this is a matter of the distant future. In the modern historical era, the fatherland will continue to exist and develop as a “powerful factor” (Lenin) both in the class struggle of the proletariat and in the building of socialism and communism (see also Defense of the Socialist Fatherland).

Conversation on the topic: “Our Fatherland.”

Target: activate children's vocabulary with proverbs and sayings;

to arouse in children a sense of pride in their country, to cultivate interest in its heroic past;

introduce to major cities our Motherland, hero cities: Moscow, St. Petersburg (Leningrad), Volgograd (Stalingrad).

Material: illustrations about the war, map of Russia. The book “Victory will be ours”, “Hero Cities”, pointer, Russian flag.

“Our Fatherland, our Motherland is Mother Russia. Fatherland we call Russia because our fathers and grandfathers lived in it from time immemorial. Homeland we call it because we were born in it, they speak our native language in it, and everything in it is native to us, and mother - because she fed us with her bread, gave us drink with her waters, taught us her language; like a mother, she protects and protects us from all enemies. . .

There are many good states and lands in the world besides Russia, but a person has one natural mother - he has one homeland.” (K.D. Ushinsky)

Guys, look at the map. This is our country - Russia, our Motherland - big and beautiful. For every person, it begins at the threshold of the parental home. No matter what corner of it you were born in, you have the right to proudly say - this is my Motherland. Our Russia is very rich country. It is rich in wide beautiful rivers - the Volga, Yenisei, Don, Ural, Neva. It is rich in beautiful, small and large, noisy and quiet, old and new cities - these are Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Orel, Voronezh, Ryazan, Smolensk, Saratov and many, many others.

It is rich in minerals - gold, silver, gems, oil Gas. It is also rich in forests, fields, and meadows. But its most important wealth is its people, our compatriots. Each of them glorifies their Motherland in their own way: builders build beautiful houses, scientists make discoveries that glorify its name, and poets write their best poems about it. Listen to one of them.

Motherland

Daisies covered the whole meadow,

And clover is a fluffy bumblebee,

And it smells of pine and linden,

And the spruce flaps its wings.

Here, where everything breathes like a fairy tale,

We were born and we live

Therefore, our land is gentle

We call it homeland.

I. Vekshegonova

Guys, what is the name of our Motherland?

Russia.

What is our country – Russia – rich in?

(children answer)

What is our country like?

(children answer). If necessary, the teacher complements them: big, rich, strong, beautiful, friendly.

Our people have composed many proverbs and sayings about the Motherland. Listen to them and try to finish, say the last word.

There is no more beautiful Motherland in the world. . . (ours).

Take care of your native land like a mother. . . (favorite).

There are many different lands in the world, but there is no better place than our own. . . (no).

I have neither strength nor life for my homeland. . . (sorry).

On the topic: methodological developments, presentations and notes

Scenario of a family recreational sports festival dedicated to Defender of the Fatherland Day for older preschoolers “Sons of the Fatherland” using ICT.

The script proposes material for holding sports events in preschool educational institutions for children of senior preschool age. The developments include sport games, quizzes, relay races, riddles about sports....

Project module “Defenders of the Fatherland” Project “Defenders of the Fatherland Airport District”

IntroductionAt present, the search and development of innovative approaches to patriotic education, the implementation of which would contribute to the creation of a qualitatively new...

We are defenders of the Fatherland" (sports festival in the preparatory group together with parents, dedicated to Defender of the Fatherland Day)

"We are defenders of the Fatherland"( sports festival V preparatory group together with parents, dedicated to Defender of the Fatherland Day) Purpose: To attract parents to active participation in sports...

FATHERLAND, -a, cf. (high). The country where a person was born and where he belongs to a citizen. Love for the Fatherland. Defending your fatherland.

View value FATHERLAND in other dictionaries

Fatherland Wed.— 1. The country where someone was born. and to whose citizens he belongs; homeland 2. transfer decomposition Place of origin, origin of something.
Explanatory Dictionary by Efremova

Fatherland- fatherland, plural no, cf. country of birth this person and he belongs to the citizenry. We do not defend secret treaties, we defend socialism, we defend the socialist........
Ushakov's Explanatory Dictionary

Fatherland- -A; Wed High [capitalized]. The country where the person was born and of which he is a citizen; homeland Love your O. Serve the Fatherland. Defense of the native Fatherland.
Kuznetsov's Explanatory Dictionary

Fatherland- Formed in the Old Russian language from otts - “father” according to the tracing method from the Greek patria.
Krylov's etymological dictionary

Fatherland- (Eph 3.15) - the words “all fatherland” in the original means: “His whole family”, “all His”. (See people)
Historical Dictionary

The socialist Fatherland is in Danger!- decree-appeal of the Council of People. Commissioners, adopted on February 21. 1918. Publ. 22 Feb 1918 at the moment when Germany, taking advantage of the breakdown of peace negotiations in Brest (see Brest........
Soviet historical encyclopedia

Lev Aleksandrovich Tikhomirov

What is the Fatherland?

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

Exactly the same as an ordinary normal person in usual time can relate to the question of whether there is a Fatherland and what it is. He feels it with all his soul, he loves him: The Japanese poet Motoori perfectly expressed the state of the patriotic soul: “If someone asks what the soul of Japan (“Yamato Damassium”) is, show him a flower fragrant in the morning sun...” There is no definition here, there is a simple indication of a native and self-conscious life.

When this feeling of life is strong, a

This cup belongs to the Fatherland, friends!

The country where we are for the first time

Tasted the sweetness of life,

Fields, native hills,

Sweet light of the native sky,

Familiar streams

Golden games of the first years

And the first years of lessons,

What will replace your beauty?

O Holy Motherland,

What heart does not tremble,

Blessing you?..

(V. A. Zhukovsky)

In Russia we now see a completely different mood around us. All kinds of interests, all kinds of passions, all kinds of principles are put forward, but in their struggle you do not grasp either the feelings or the ideas of the Fatherland. The very word “patriot” is used rather in a mocking sense, and the reminder of the Fatherland does not have an effect on the hearts. Even doctrines appeared that denied the existence of the Fatherland. The call for “proletarians of all countries” to unite against all fatherlands comes from among the intelligentsia and finds an echo among the masses. The ardent feeling for the Fatherland is not visible in other strata of society either. He is not visible in the ruling spheres either.

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

For healthy person there is no need to prove what is evidenced by direct sensation, direct perception. But the weakening of direct perception, as if some devastation of the soul, is a disease of the century, and especially of the Russian people. Psychiatry shows an increase in patients who doubt their own existence, that is, in other words, who do not feel well about it. Moreover, in such a state of mind, the sense of social-organic processes may decrease, hence the “failure to see” the Fatherland, the weakness of the sense of it. And in this state of people, in order to cure the disease, it becomes extremely important to rely on the evidence of other mental abilities, in order to use them to correct the evidence of weakened feelings. The discussion about whether there is a Fatherland and what it consists of now acquires special significance. The help of reason, supporting the remnants of a weakened feeling, gives it time to recover, perk up in its functions and begin to grow again in souls.

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

When I say this, I am not exaggerating anything. In abstraction, one can name other comprehensive ideas: universal human solidarity, brotherhood, truth, etc. But the strength of the Fatherland lies in the fact that here an idea is united with a fact, the human soul is united with society not in an abstract idea, but in actual existence. Solidarity and brotherhood, it is true, appear in the Fatherland not in the form of abstract formulas and principles, but in living implementation. That is why the Fatherland has always been so dear to people and love for the Fatherland exalted them so much.

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

All people, great and small, all forms of states equally give us these examples. The greatest of our kings, under the cannonballs and bullets of Poltava, left his confession to posterity: “And about Peter, know that life is not dear to him; Russia would live in honor and glory." The modest peasant Susanin, who only accidentally became famous history, also gives his life for his Motherland without hesitation. The greatest revolutionary Danton does not want to save his life by fleeing the Fatherland, exclaiming: “Shall I carry the Fatherland with me on the soles of my feet?” But what can we talk about life when people give for the Fatherland and everything for which they value life - wealth, glory, love... Mickiewicz could not express the power of love stronger than with a comparison:

But there is one sweetest word in the world,

Besides just the word “Fatherland”, “love” is a word.

Except for only the word “Fatherland”... Before the Fatherland, love is erased for him, and for the Fatherland, Alf leaves him forever to Aldona...

But if it were necessary to indicate the infinity of the sacrifice that a person is capable of making for the Fatherland, I could not find anything stronger and more striking than the Apostle Paul, who did not hesitate to say almost scary words: “I speak the truth in Christ, I do not lie, my conscience bears witness to me in the Holy Spirit, that there is great sorrow for me and constant torment in my heart: I myself would like to be excommunicated from Christ for my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh, that is, the Israelites... "(Rom. 9, 1-4). This word, this confession came out of someone who would like to be separated from his body in order to live with Christ...

But in this cry of all-consuming love for his native Israel, the Apostle Paul did not separate from Christ, because the great feeling that spoke in him was sanctified by the Savior of the world Himself. He Himself wept, looking at Jerusalem and saying: “Oh, if only this day you knew what serves your peace” (Luke 19:42), “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, slaying the prophets, how often have I wanted to gather your children , like a bird gathering its chicks under its wings, and you did not want...” This sorrow did not leave the God-man even at the moment of His redemptive feat, and, bending under the weight of the cross, He said: “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for Me, but for yourself and about his children,” because before His gaze at that time appeared the image of the disasters of the Fatherland doomed to destruction according to the flesh.

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

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

Due to its beneficence for us, it cannot but arouse love in every healthy heart; due to its necessity for the moral development of a person, it cannot but receive the blessing of God.

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

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

A person - no matter what he does - is always and first of all a representative of his race. The stock of ideas and feelings that all the individuals of one people bring with birth forms the soul of the people. Invisible in its essence, this soul is very visible in its manifestations, so that in reality it controls the entire evolution of the people." The fatherland, or “race,” as Le Bon puts it in his pursuit of physiological clarity, must be considered as “a permanent being, not subject to the action of time. This permanent being consists not only of the living individuals who constitute it at the moment, but also of the long line of dead ones who were their ancestors. To understand the true meaning of race, it must be extended both into the past and into the future. Ancestors control that immeasurable area of ​​the unconscious (feelings, inclinations, instincts), that invisible area that holds under its hand all manifestations of the mind and character. The fate of the people is controlled to a much greater extent by the dead generations than by the living ones. They laid the foundation. Century after century they created ideas and feelings, that is, motives for our behavior. Deceased generations convey to us not only their physical organization, but also instill in us their thoughts. The dead are the masters of the living. We bear the weight of their mistakes, we receive the reward of their virtues.”

Perhaps Le Bon, in his enthusiasm for argumentation, somewhat exaggerates the mental influence of our ancestors and reduces the importance of our independence, but at the core he points out an undoubted psychological and historical fact. It must also be added that the unity of generations, no matter how great the degree of psychological independence of each of them, is complemented by the commonality of their historical work, and willy-nilly, successively transmitted. The environment in which an individual and an entire generation develop is also a successive environment that accumulates influence from generation to generation.

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

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

They knew this at the birth of the Russian state and then they could already talk about the “homeland”, about the “fatherland” in the sense of a common origin - even, perhaps, with greater clarity than we, because they could call by name those persons from whom their origin came. relatedness. The first inhabitants, for example, of the future Great Russia knew that their ancestors came from White Rus', that they were the brothers Radim and Vyatko, and that it was from them that the Radimichi and Vyatichi came.

This community of “fatherland”, “kinship” stood before their eyes in its most vivid form. They also knew that some Finnish tribes entered their union, just as adopted people are accepted into a family family. At the time of the founding of statehood, they saw that their living conditions had equal strengths and weaknesses, so that for the common life of all clans and tribes they required one common measure. “Our land is great and abundant, but there is no order in it,” they told the princes, according to legend, “come and rule over us.”

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

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

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

This fact has the important consequence that for the development of society the life of the Fatherland is incomparably more important than the life of humanity.

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

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

Internal struggle, fierce rivalry and even wars occur in the Fatherland no less than in humanity, just as there is peaceful interaction between parts in humanity. But humanity, in neither one nor the other, has those powerful means for mutual understanding and a reasonable arrangement of the common life of parts, as happens in the Fatherland.

The consciousness of human community was born in the Fatherland at a time when various parts of humanity did not yet have even a spark of this feeling. Deliberate, reasonable adaptation of the interests of individual parts to the interests of the whole does not exist in humanity even to this day, or if it exists, it is in the most insignificant proportions. In the Fatherland, on the contrary, this constitutes the entire content of his life. The human community, thus, was born and develops precisely in the Fatherland. It was and remains a school of social feelings. It was and remains a sphere in which people truly pursue common goals, consciously setting them for themselves and systematically implementing them, not only because this is possible in one integral organism, but also because it cannot even be otherwise in it. In the Fatherland, the entire set of external, internal and psychological conditions itself forces people to come to the consciousness of their unity and act together, even if they initially did not want this. The opposite example is provided by socialism, which, having decided to place the public on the basis of universal humanity, in fact only undermines the human public, introduces disunity, hostility and struggle into it.

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

The rational social existence of man is even impossible except in this continuity of generations. Even his own interest, material or moral, cannot be associated with caring only for one day or only for those directly close to him. Today will be replaced by tomorrow; If we arrange our lives poorly today, we may suffer from this in a year or twenty years. The person we see near us today will disappear tomorrow, and another will approach us in a hostile or friendly manner, from somewhere very far away. We have to think not about one day, but about an indefinitely long period, not only about those who are standing near us right now, but about all people. This concern for everyone extends to children and grandchildren and, stimulating our moral content, becomes concern for man in general, making us think about those human beings who will live hundreds of years after us.

In the sphere of our thoughts about humanity, our personal connection with him and him with us has nothing burning, deeply affecting, or motivating to action. In the sphere of thought about the Fatherland, on the contrary, the smallest, most personal, even selfish question of life immediately connects us with previous generations, with the surrounding society and with the future. We see at every step that we owe the benefits we enjoy to the people around us or to our fathers. We also experience directly the consequences of their mistakes. We know that our own actions will certainly affect those around us and our children and grandchildren. Here, in every thought and in every step, we are thus immersed in social life, and, moreover, not abstract, but real, which with its content either gives us moral satisfaction, or arouses reproaches of conscience, or gives rise to fear for the fate of loved ones or those affairs in which we have invested our efforts and our souls. Thus, only in this life - in the Fatherland - does our social feeling powerfully arise and develop, and not in life based on universal human interests, which is almost always abstract, not visual, unable to be expressed in facts, and unable to arouse business energy.

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

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

A citizen, much less a statesman, has no task that, at the request of the day, would not be forced to logically move into some kind of reckoning with the past, with the environment and with the future. Everything that we do for the people's well-being or for mental development, for moral stability, for improving the social system or government institutions, for any economic needs, etc. - all this cannot be done without thinking about the future, about what will happen when what we are organizing ripens and bears fruit. After a very short practice, we are personally convinced that only that which is designed to be useful in the historical destinies of the Fatherland can be truly useful for the present day. Solidarity of people in one union and solidarity of generations in historical life Fatherland - this thought grows gradually with clarity and conviction in everyone. And this consciousness is the basis of any public. It is developed in us not by an abstract armchair thought about all-human solidarity, but by real personal activity, specific experiences and examples of their fruitfulness or failure.

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

This happens because the nation, state, Fatherland is a truly existing collective process, in the process of which purely natural conditions operate, inevitable for us, whether they relate to the material or spiritual side of collective existence. The implementation of these conditions requires centuries, and it is necessary because, as people of each generation see, their interests really depend on this. Hence, in the Fatherland there is continuity of historical tasks and, in accordance with this, continuity of politics.

State science gives us a whole series of such historical tasks, for the fulfillment of which several generations work one after another.

This is, for example, a territorial task. Human society is able to live and develop only if it has the necessary material conditions and internal freedom to dispose of itself, independence in organizing itself. To do this, society first of all needs to determine and occupy its natural territory, one without which it cannot have sufficient resources and independence. Such a territory is indicated by external nature itself. The state does not arbitrarily choose certain borders for itself, but willy-nilly strives to achieve the so-called natural borders. It is obligatory for it to reach them, but it is almost impossible for it to cross them without harm and inconvenience.

These natural boundaries in countries, for example, rich and mountainous, are usually less extensive. In Russia, for example, they, on the contrary, force us to cover a huge space from the Baltic and the Carpathians to Pacific Ocean, from the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea, the Caucasus, Turkestan, Altai and Manchuria. In this entire space it is impossible to live except in one state union; Every nation, having begun life here, is forced, willy-nilly, to strive step by step to natural borders, covering a territory well delimited from its neighbors, allowing for international relations and naturally containing various resources for the existence of the nation. As is known, such a desire to spread to the entire specified space characterizes our history both in the instinctive movement of the masses and in state policy. Our territorial policy has had the same trend for a thousand years. Much has changed among us, but the tasks of territorial policy remained the same, which is why they created the same policies for all governments, no matter how different they were in the intelligence and energy of the rulers.

The same successively transmitted task is constituted by economic policy - the determination and implementation of methods for the material existence of the people. This task begins with distant ancestors and continues with their great-great-grandchildren, remaining very similar in its main principles. Here, for example, in Russia, since ancient times it has been reduced to processing as much as possible large quantity land and at the same time, whenever possible, achieve internal processing of products. I will not dwell on the detailed description of this difficult task, which has faced Russia monotonously for centuries. My purpose is only to point out the involuntary continuity of this age-old task, in the solution of which each generation was constantly forced to reckon with the past and think about the future.

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

This is not a task of any “taste”, but of necessity. An unfinished nation, which has not completed the unity of its psyche, language, spiritual unity, cannot create its external life harmoniously and comfortably. Every generation feels this. It feels that its life, harmonious, harmonious, friendly, and therefore prosperous, suffers from every manifestation of unfinished national unity. We are currently, as it sometimes seems, on the brink of destruction precisely because we have allowed the elements of national unity to weaken and allowed non-national elements, included in one way or another into the composition of our Fatherland, but not yet merged, to rage. The policy of national unity in all states is a task that is successively transmitted and implemented throughout the life of the nation. And this task of national unity is very complex: it includes many constituent elements, each of which must be developed with the same continuity and systematicity, otherwise we will immediately feel the effect of decay, disrupting all the functions of common life. On this basis, the life and concerns of each generation, whether it wants it or not, constitute only one moment of the integral existence of the Fatherland.

The same long-term, slowly developing and successively transferred task is the organization of general management, the organization of the state.

States cannot be founded at any moment, at any moment. A generation that sees itself without a state immediately feels that it is in danger of destruction in the most literal sense of the word if it does not create a state. But it is impossible to create a state except by adapting its plan to the tasks of the centuries, and, however, it is impossible to completely predict the conditions of the future, and most importantly, it is impossible to immediately create those feelings and auxiliary institutions, without which a well-functioning state is unthinkable. Thus, in achieving this task, the efforts of all generations must be combined, starting it according to a known plan and constantly completing the building begun, adapting it to the conditions of the time, and at the same time inevitably conforming to the influence of what was done earlier by previous generations.

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

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

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

But in sick times, the question arises in sick minds: is the interest and good of all really being achieved in this process? components the whole? Isn’t this just a successive system of exploitation of some classes by others, as modern socialism claims? This slander against the Fatherland constitutes a slander against the entire human community, which has never been carried out except in the form that the Fatherland represents.

To admit such a thought means to admit that the entire human society is nothing more than a system of exploitation of some classes by others. But we know very well that people are not capable of living except in society, that otherwise they perish, and therefore they, in the person of all classes, in all the millennia of existence of thousands of human tribes, saw this so clearly that they certainly created society and recreated it , if it started to collapse somewhere. We must therefore conclude from this that exploitation is necessary condition so that people do not die out, but can live in the world. But then we would have to admit that exploitation constitutes the greatest human good! These are the absurdities that lead to that civically demoralized and historically ignorant point of view, which slanders the relationship of the common Fatherland to the interests of its individual parts.

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

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

But this is no longer the law of life of the Fatherland, but a violation of the law. Of course, the fact of exploitation is very common in the human community, as certain as the fact that fire produces fires and burns. But it is completely untrue that any society was ever built on this. In cases where exploitation develops strongly, society, on the contrary, begins to collapse as a result, because it is basically maintained mainly by the voluntary submission of everyone to a given system and the voluntary support of everyone for it, and when the system of society becomes exploitative, it is no longer supported.

A certain amount of coercion, that is, violence, is inevitable in society. It itself creates power, which receives the right and obligation to act forcibly. But coercion is only an aid to the voluntary maintenance of a given system, which is carried out by the entire mass of society. No power and no class can hold on by force alone, even if it seizes power. Each class maintains itself by providing some kind of service to other classes. Even in cases of pure conquest, such as England by the Normans, the conquerors strive to socially justify their rule and take on some function necessary for society. In England, as we know, the conquerors created such an excellent society with such internal freedom that no other people had. The conquered themselves harbored discontent in their souls more because of national pride, but in all other respects they could not help but admit that the conquerors had built their land better than they could do themselves. This is where the remarkable circumstance arose that the English aristocracy - the descendants of the Norman conquerors - enjoys the deep respect of the people even to this day.

So, if violence and exploitation exist between people, if in society there is also exploitation of one class by another, then this is not the essence of society, but in the mutual services of classes and people. The system of these mutual services constitutes society, and not exploitation, which is a by-product, abnormal, harmful, illegal and can be destroyed to the best of our ability. The true law and basis is the common good of all members and classes of society, which, to the best of our ability and understanding, has always been realized in the Fatherland.

The task of the common good based on the exchange of services between classes is what creates society. This is how it happened in history.

When at the dawn of Russian history Oleg says to the Radimichi: “Don’t give tribute to the Khazars, give it to me instead,” this is nothing more than an offer of his services as a judge and warrior, and the Radimichi agree - obviously finding that it is more profitable for them to be under Oleg than under the Khazars. When Igor collected tribute from the Drevlyans for the first time, this was recognized as services included in the exchange, but when he came another time, they killed him, saying that he was acting like a wolf; his act, therefore, was already recognized as exploitation. Olga avenged her husband’s death, but immediately set about establishing correct “statutes” and “lessons” among the Drevlyans. In the emerging relations between the classes of vigilantes and smerds, the main role was played not by violence, but by mutual necessity and the exchange of services.

And what would really happen to these stinkers without the vigilantes? Suffice it to recall the devastation of the Polovtsians in the south and various “ good fellows", "ushkuinikov" of our own Russian production. The third class that was emerging - the merchant class - played the necessary role in exactly the same way. social role, so that the very title of “guests” became especially honorable and popular in folk songs. There is no doubt that exploitation was manifested both on the part of these “guests” and on the part of the druzhina-boyar class, just as the smerds were not saints; if possible, they did not refuse to profit at the expense of others. But the reasons for the existence of the Fatherland, the reasons why all classes stood for it, lay in their mutual services, in the common good achieved.

Throughout Russian history, individual classes have worked towards a common task: the colonization of the boundless spaces of the territory that nature intended for the nation to inhabit. The peasant layer, with the weakening of the statehood that covered it, could not even enter the northern forest spaces, where without the systematic support of the Suzdal princes it could not spread and survive. The movement of the peasantry to the fertile south went on for centuries also under the cover of outposts, towns and serving nobles with the children of the boyars, who from decade to decade covered with their towns and fences new and new spaces for the people's colonization flow. Our “Ukraines” of that time were all lined with lines of stakeouts and noble-Cossack guard posts all the way to Voronezh and beyond. If it weren't for government organization with all its ranks and classes, then there would be no Russian people in general, and in particular that powerful peasantry that grew up under the cover of statehood and with the help of other classes, especially the zemstvo-serving class. As for the “guests”, the merchant industrial layer, it is enough to remember that Siberia was secured for the use of the Russian people through the private efforts of the Stroganovs.

Of course, lovers of fanning human enmity can find ample reasons for false generalizations at any time and in any place. But it is enough to look at the overall result of a thousand-year history to see that in it, perhaps most of all, it was precisely that working mass of the people, about whom they say that they were constantly the subject of exploitation. Where is our princely aristocracy? She almost doesn't exist. Where is the nobility? After all, for the last two centuries until 1861, it actually held the entire state in its hands. If it served itself, and not the state, it could still rule the people. But it itself undermined serfdom, which was a bonanza for him.

Condemning the abuses of the nobility, it is unfair and unreasonable to forget its enormous cultural significance for the mass of the people, it is unfair to forget that the nobility destroyed itself as a class because of considerations of the highest truth and the common good. Meanwhile, the peasantry really emerged as a huge, powerful class with the greatest class organization, with ownership of a large part of Russian lands, obtained in those days most of all through the blood and agricultural labor of border service people.

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

This general law of specialization of labor and its combination is expressed in the division of the nation into classes and in their general combination state power. In this case, what is meant and achieved is not exploitation, not the interests of one particular part, but the interests of all of them together, in the aggregate.

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

The element of conscious care for the whole, in all its present members and classes and in a whole series of generations, for eternity, is precisely what gives the Fatherland its sublime and “fatherly” character.

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

The thought and concern for the collective life of the Russian land has lived since the remotest times of its birth. The thought of the Russian land dominates the consciousness of all the best figures, exponents of what makes the Fatherland alive. The fathers acquired the Russian land, we and future generations must return it - this is their constant reminder to their contemporaries.

“Here I am leaving the light,” the dying Yaroslav said to his children. - Love each other, because you are brothers... If you live in love with each other, then God will be with you... if you begin to hate each other, then you yourself will perish, and destroy the land of your fathers and grandfathers, which they obtained with great labor yours." To live for the Russian land, to die for it - this is the thought of all the best princes. Blind Vasilko sets out his dreams, destroyed by the crime: he remembers how he wanted to ask for troops to step on human land and avenge the Russian land (for Boleslav’s raids), how he wanted to then go against the Polovtsians and thought: “Either I will find glory for myself, or I will lay down my head for the Russian land.” Vladimir Monomakh’s motto was: “I don’t want evil, but goodness for my brothers and the Russian land.” He describes his ascetic work life for the Russian land in order to give instruction to children, and who does he care about, who does he serve? “Above all, do not forget the poor, justify the orphan and the widow yourself, do not let the powerful destroy a person.”

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

The thought of the good of the Russian land reigned over the mind and conscience of all its best sons. She lived exactly the same way among citizens. The embassy of Kiev citizens told the princes under Svyatopolk: “If you start fighting with each other, then the filthy ones will rejoice and take the Russian land, which your grandfathers and fathers acquired: with great difficulty and courage they fought across the Russian land, and they also sought other lands, and you you want to destroy yours too.” The thought of the Russian land fills the soul of the author of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”: he does not think about any interests of the princes or warriors, but about the good of the whole land, for the ruin of it the poet reproaches the princes, for the feat in its favor he sings of the glorious death of the warriors who in a bloody feast, “I got the matchmakers drunk and they themselves fought for the Russian land”...

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

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

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

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

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

How about the Russian people in this one of a kind historical act determines the meaning of its existence? The certificate testifies that the people in the state have been one for a thousand years, since the time of the ancient princes, and that during all this time they have lived by the same state idea. The Council explains that this idea was shaken during the era of unrest by sins, selfish aspirations, disunity and crimes, and that now the Russian people are again restoring the correct course of life. This is the meaning of literacy. Linking itself with the entire past of Russia, the generation of 1613 also declared that it was establishing order for eternity, for which it drew up an “approved charter.” It is repeated three times that the structure is being erected for future times: “Let it henceforth be strong and motionless and standing forever, as it is written in this approved charter.”

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

If people of some other nation carried ingratitude and injustice towards their ancestors to the point of denying them concern for future generations, then we Russians certainly have no right to do this.

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

If the Russians of our generation decided to destroy their Fatherland, then, in any case, they do not dare to say that they are destroying only an empty phrase, a legend or a fiction. No - the document of the Council of 1613 will remain an eternal denunciation against them: whoever destroys Russian Fatherland, he will kill a living social body that consciously and intelligently organized its life and its descendants. The cathedral signatures of 1613 say that the Russian Fatherland lived wisely and consciously, caring for the common good and forever.

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

One - broadly cosmopolitan - opposes all of humanity to it. The other - narrow class (created by socialism) - claims that the unity of people exists only within classes, and in the totality of them that makes up the nation, it does not exist at all - since the nation allegedly consists of the exploiting class, which keeps the exploited class in its subordination. There is supposedly no solidarity between these classes, and therefore there is no Fatherland common to all.

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

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

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

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

In the intimacy that exists between members of the same class, the binding factor is a community of external interest, and not at all a solidarity in the spiritual unity and intimacy of human beings. Meanwhile, only this latter is based on moral feeling and develops moral feeling. An association based on interest can also arise between people who hate each other and are the most immoral, because here a person loves his own interest, and not any person at all.

In itself, unity based on interests is natural according to practical calculations and does not contain anything bad. But when it begins to deny purely human unity, when it begins to inspire us that what should be close and dear to us is not a person, not his high and noble properties, but only the benefit that he brings to us, then this turns into a teaching of immorality, into preaching the grossest egoism.

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

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

Already in its very concept, the Fatherland gives the idea of ​​a community of origin, that is, the community and sameness of the nature of people. The word "Fatherland" comes from the word "father". It is equivalent to the word “homeland” - from the word “to give birth.” It expresses where we come from, what we are generated by, expresses the concepts of connection, love, mutual care. What does it mean to act “fatherly”? This means acting with love, consideration, and authority. "Fatherland" means the name after the father. “Fatherland” is an inheritance from the father, something successive, passing from father to son, from great-grandfathers to great-grandsons. The word “domestic” means “own”, “natural”, “born”. “Motherland” means “native land” that gave birth to us. Everything “native” “related” means one’s own, similar and close in spirit and feeling. Our folk proverbs explain this by saying that “for fish the sea is for the birds, for birds is the air, and for man the Fatherland is the universe,” therefore “they lay down their bellies for the fatherland” and “bones cry for their homeland” if they are laid up in a foreign land...

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

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

The life of the Fatherland, thus, reflects the life of humanity in organized unity at every given moment and for thousands of years. This is the highest actual manifestation of the unity and solidarity of people, and therefore graduate School the noblest feelings of man.

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

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

Maybe he is capable of hating and cursing, maybe he is also capable of self-sacrifice, vengeance and destruction. But the selflessness of love, the dedication of creativity, which is given only by love, can no longer be in a person who has lost the sacred feeling of love for the Fatherland, that is, for the entire sum of millions of surrounding people with hundreds of millions of ancestors, with hundreds of millions of future generations, working together to do one thing.

With the loss of love for the Fatherland, we cannot have the means for any kind of social creativity, and without such creativity, without life for people, there is no moral life for the person himself.

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

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

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