Love for the native land lives in the heart of every person. Love for the homeland arises in us gradually, even in childhood we were captured by the impressions of the surrounding nature. The homeland began with a thin blade of grass, with a scattering of flowers in a meadow, with an awareness of the beauty of our great and beautiful Earth. Every day we learned more and more new and interesting things, breathing together with the air a piece of our small world with a loud name - Motherland.

Homeland is, first of all, the place where you were born and uttered the first word, where you made new friends and fell in love for the first time, the place with which you are bound by wonderful and unforgettable memories. In the works of many great people, one can find an expression of love for the Motherland, its vision, an appeal to love and protect the native land.

For example, Sergei Aleksandrovich Yesenin in his work often touched upon the theme of love for the motherland, and in his poem "Rus" it is said that a true patriot will never exchange his Motherland for anything.

I also recall the poem by Alexander Alexandrovich Blok "To sin shamelessly, not awake", in which he describes the everyday life and stupidity of the Russian social system. But, in spite of this, he loves his homeland: "Yes, and such, my Russia, you are dearer than all regions to me." With his poem, A. Blok calls on to love their homeland, despite all the troubles and difficulties.

The homeland rests on the people who believe in it and sincerely love it. Homeland is a warm corner that we strive to protect. This is the place to which we will be pulled all our lives, far from which it is difficult. The homeland is the place where we always return with joy and pride. And while we are proud of our Motherland, it will be our home.

Together with the article "Essay on the theme" Love for the Motherland "read:

A lot of sincere and high-profile words have been said about this feeling.
these words, and it deserves them. It is inherent
an integral part of the steel frame on which
holds the building of social life and with destruction
which it turns into a heap of ruins.

Love for the fatherland is one of the deepest
feelings, fixed in the human soul for centuries and
millennia. “The best banner is for the fatherland, brave
ro fight, ”Homer said; “The cities, their great
many people marvel at the beauty, splendor, perfection of buildings,
but everyone loves their homeland ”- these are the words of Lucian; "Motherland
voice - the voice of the best muse ”- P. Beranger; "And the smoke
the fatherland is sweet and pleasant to us ”- A. Griboyedov;

“A person has nothing more beautiful and dearer than childbirth.
us. A man without a homeland is a beggar man "- Y. Kolas.

Love for the homeland is one of the most distinct
samples of love as such. “Our parents are dear to us,
dear children, loved ones, relatives, - says Tsitse-
ron, - but all notions of love for something
united in one word "homeland". What an honest
a person will hesitate to die for her if he
can it benefit her? "

Love for the homeland means love for the homeland
and the people living on it. These two components
common feelings usually go together, supporting and
strengthening each other. But it happens that they are tragically
diverge: a person loves his homeland, but not his own
Chechens. Homeland love opposed
love for living people, inevitably turns out to be ab-
straight and declarative. And if such a person re-
walks to the pinnacle of power, he brings disaster to his
to the people.

The foundations of dictatorship and tyranny often lie
opposing the "high interests" of the homeland (so
or otherwise identified by the dictator with their
own interests or the interests of the
a narrow group) to the interests of an allegedly unworthy
people. This is well expressed already by Sophocles in the image
dictator Creon, who, as it seemed to him, loved
well, but not her people, and who brought misfortune not only
on them, but also on himself.

The Czech philosopher of the last century J. Kolar was
is not opposed to love for the people, the nation - love
vi to the fatherland and put the first above the second. "...What
should a reasonable person love more - a country or
people, fatherland or nation? Fatherland we can easily
find, even if we have lost it, but the nation and language -
nowhere and never; homeland itself is dead
land, a foreign object, it is not a person; nation

but there is our blood, life, spirit, personal property. " Liu-
to the fatherland, to the native place seems to Kolar
blind natural instinct, inherent not only
man, but also animals and even plants, at that time
how love for the people is always ennobled by reason
and education. “... Many trees and flowers with such
affection cling to their homeland, its land,
spirit and water that immediately wither, wither and change, if
transplant them; stork, swallow and other migratory
birds return from more beautiful countries to their
cold native land, in poor nests; many
animals allow themselves to be killed rather than abandoned
liu, your territory, your cave, your home and your food, and
if we forcibly tear them out of their native conditions
life and transfer to foreign lands, they will die from
homesickness. " Love for the native land as the lowest
the stage of love for the motherland is more characteristic, he thinks
Kolar, an undeveloped person, a savage who does not know
nothing like a nation; modern, developed and
an educated person puts his nation higher. "Gro-
the common savage clings more to his poor, smoky
Noah, smoke-filled and foul-smelling shack
and to an inhospitable desert than an educated man
century to his palace and park. Homeland of the Eskimo, his
wives and children is a large ice floe floating in the
rock sea; the ice floe sways and leans on the formidable
waves, sea storms and sea currents carry her along
wide open spaces. Seals and seabirds are here
his countrymen, fish and carrion are his food. Year after year
he lives with his family in this ice homeland,
fiercely defends her from enemies and loves her so
strongly that I would not exchange her for the most beautiful
corners of the earth. The savage only knows the land that is his
gave birth, and the stranger and the enemy are called by him
one concept; the whole world is closed within the borders of his country.
Whom should we thank for the best and

the dearest that we have? Not yourself, not our land,
and our ancestors and contemporaries. "

This is hardly a colorful, but biased description.
fair. Eskimo compatriots are not only seals and
birds, and he loves not only his wife and children, but also his
people, albeit small, but people, with their special, only
his inherent language, legends, traditions,
clothes, etc.

It is also rash to claim that modern
a person's sense of their native land weakens, yielding to the
knitting to their people.

Composer Sergei Rachmaninoff and his wife, ardently
who loved Russia, finding themselves in Switzerland, created
near Lucerne, a kind of Ivanovka, a village in
which they once lived. But a complete replacement is so
Did not work out. Rachmaninov loved this place, there to him
the music returned, after a long hiatus, he again
began to compose. But one day he blurted out with longing
about the lost native places. "Are there mosquitoes? -
he cried, slapping one of them.
do not know how to pour. Not like ours, Ivanovsky - cry-
It turns out that you cannot see the light of God. "

I. Bunin told his secretary Bakhrakh: “How much
the Russians have withered away in a foreign land. From poverty, from bo-
get sick? I don't know, I think - much more from yearning for
Tverskaya street or some poor village
Petukhovka, lost among swamps and forests ... "From
Chekhov's letters from Nice to his sister Bunin
sal: “... I’m working, to my great chagrin, not enough
and not good enough, because working on the wrong side
it is inconvenient at someone else's table ... ”After reading this extract,
recalls Bakhrakh, Ivan Alekseevich was silent, looking
on the evening sky of Grasse, and somehow dim, sitting

Kolar J. On literary reciprocity // Anthology of Czech and
Slovak philosophy. M., 1982.S. 234-235.

One Russian writer who lived in exile helped
minted the judgment of his fellow countryman, settled by the will of fate
in Paris: “What about this Paris? Nothing special. Here
our lands: you go for a week through the swamps and go nowhere
you will leave! "

Albeit unimportant, but dear, and modern man
century may seem better than good, but foreign
earthly.

The opposition of the homeland and its people never
did not bring and is not able to bring good. Not that
the case when the interests of the homeland are put above the interests
people, not when love for the people is given to
reverence for the love of the native land.

The feeling of patriotism makes a person a particle of greatness
who whole - his homeland, with which he is ready to
share both joy and sorrow.

Russia, beloved, they don’t joke with this,
All your pains - they pierced me with pain.
Russia, I am your capillary vessel,
It hurts when it hurts, Russia.

A. Voznesensky

With special acuteness, patriotic feelings flared up
they come when hard trials hit their homeland
tanya. “The wound inflicted on the homeland, each of us felt
he cares in the depths of his heart ”(V. Hugo). War, hunger,
natural disasters unite people, make people forget
everything private and transitory, to abandon "the former
passions and devote all their strength to one thing - the salvation of the
din.

In the fall of 1941, when the fascist armada seemed to l
uncontrollably went to Moscow, Bunin said, remembering, ?!

probably the recent revolution and civil war:
“In your home you can quarrel, even fight.
But when the bandits shoot at you, then, my friend, that's all
squabbles should be put aside and the whole world on
to strangers to gasp, so that from them fluff and feathers flew.
Here Tolstoy preached non-resistance to evil by violence,
wrote that only those in power need wars.
But if the enemies attacked Russia, the war would continue to
wedge, and with all my heart I would be sick for their own. So
a normal, healthy person is arranged, and in a different way
shouldn't be. And the Russian is overwhelmed by longing and love
to the fatherland stronger than anyone else ... ""

Admiral Kolchak, who proclaimed himself a citizen
war as the "supreme ruler of Russia", recognizing
hoped that it would be easier for him to die of cholera than
at the hands of the proletariat. “It's all the same,” he said, “
what to be eaten by domestic pigs. but
love for their people turned out to be stronger than acute
hatred of the class enemy. His beloved through
recalled for many years that when she and Kolchak you-
drove from Omsk, with them followed the Russian gold reserve,
proved fatal to the admiral: twenty-nine
Pullman wagons with gold, platinum, silver,
jewels of royal treasures. The admiral was afraid
that the gold would fall into the hands of foreigners. One day before
arrest, he said: “Duty commanded me to fight the pain
Shevik to the last opportunity. I am defeated
and gold? Let it go to the Bolsheviks, rather than
Czechs. And among the Bolsheviks there are Russian people ”2.

Defending his people, Moses, as you know,
he spoke to God himself: “And Moses returned to the Lord
I come, and said: Oh, this people have committed a great sin;

made himself a golden god. Forgive them their sin. And if
no, then blot me out of your book, into which
You wrote it in ”(Exodus 32, 31-32).

A passionate desire to serve the people, not to leave
even love can overcome him in times of misfortune
to God, if between these feelings you suddenly have to
to choose.

It's bad when a person leaves another person
in trouble or betrays him. But leave the fatherland in trouble
and even more so to betray him is a crime for which-
There is no statute of limitations, no repentance, no forgiveness.

Love for the homeland is least of all blind,
instinctive feeling, forcing mindlessly pre-
to exalt the fatherland without noticing its vices. Be in love
homeland means, first of all, to wish her well, to
to try to make it better.

One of the most remarkable patriots in history
Russia, P. Ya. Chaadaev, wrote: “More than anyone
of you, I love my Motherland, I wish her glory, I can
appreciate the high qualities of my people. Probably pat-
the riotic feeling that inspires me is not the same
it is like the one whose screams have disturbed my being-
vanie. I have not learned to love my homeland with a closed
with dark eyes, with bowed head, with
mouth. I find that a person can be helpful
his country only if he clearly sees
her. I think the time of blind falling in love is over ^
that now we first of all owe the Motherland the truth. "
Chaadaev was considered a slanderer of their homeland, ob-
revealed to be insane, forbidden to publish. His "Apo-
the logic of a madman ", from which the excerpt is taken, was
written in the mid-30s of the last century,
but in Russia it was published only at the beginning of our
century.

The idea that true patriotism should be promoted
is written by the light of critical reason, not everyone can imagine

is obvious. Love for the fatherland and now often
responds with that sugary bragging, which in Russia
these were once ironically called "leavened patriotism
mom ". You will listen to such a leavened patriot, I noticed
Gogol, and even if he is sincere, “only spit
go to Russia! "

M. Saltykov-Shchedrin was ardently, selflessly devoted to
your country. “I love Russia to the point of heartache, -
he wrote - and I can't even imagine myself anywhere
except for Russia ". And at the same time, his attitude to the country
and the people were filled with that tragic duality
ness, about which A. Blok later said in "Retribution":

And disgust for life,

And thoughtless love for her,

And passion and hatred for the homeland ...

Saltykov-Shchedrin, who saw well the economic
the political and political backwardness of Russia, which is not capable of
take advantage of the vastness of material resources
and the talents of his people, he created the most severe and
the gloomy picture of their homeland in Russian literature.
Passion for the motherland did not prevent him from condemning
denial and ridicule of her vices.

True patriotism is alien and hostile to national
arrogance and any national
static prejudice.

“... Beware of the stupid, intolerant, arrogant pat-
ryotism, because it is often only pre-
a log for the blackest deeds ... ”(J. Kolar).

Love for one's homeland, not connected with the cape-
pour on the supremacy of the universal human idea, on the
state of all peoples, regardless of the level of their social
flax and cultural development, is harmful in the first
the turn of the motherland itself. “... It is impossible not to love our home
state ... - wrote V. Belinsky, - it is only necessary that
this love was not a dead contentment that
there is, but a living desire for improvement; slo-

vom - love for the fatherland should be together and love
bovine to humanity. " “To love your homeland is a sign
chit ardently desire to see in her the fulfillment of the ide-
la mankind and as far as possible to advance
this. "" About the flawed national egoism and se-
paratism, the need to combine national with
Russian literature has always said universal humanity.
"... The moral principles of every individual people
the essence of the principles is universal ", - wrote Saltykov-
Shchedrin, and elsewhere: “An idea that warms the pat-
riotism is the idea of ​​the common good ... it is a school in which
a swarm of people develops to perceive the idea of ​​a person
party ".

The opposite of nationalism is the acceptance
the life of their homeland and their people, a kind
national nihilism exhibited in the recent
the past is almost a natural consequence of inter-
nationalism. “Unfortunately, there are forces,” noted in
In one of the interviews, the writer Ch. Aitmatov, who
among the people themselves, and this often happens, they themselves deny
myself. They are busy with self-talk. I call it national
nihilism. The phenomenon is the same reactionary
new, like nationalism itself. "

National and universal, international
cash - two interconnected parties. Without their only
there is no global process of development and rapprochement
peoples and nations that make up a single humanity.

Rapprochement of nations and overcoming national
borders - a regularity of the historical process. In Ev-
rope, she began to be acutely felt after the first
world war.

“Today every“ intellectual ”in Germany, in Ang-
lia or in France feels, - wrote the Spanish philo-
sof X. Ortega y Gasset, - that the borders of his state

1 Belinsky V.G. op. In 3 vols.Moscow, 1948.Vol. 1.P. 639, 640.

embarrass him, the hedgehog suffocates in them; its national
belonging only limits, belittles it ...
For the first time in its political, economic and spirit-
Noah activity the European comes across borders
their state; for the first time he feels that his life
potential opportunities are disproportionate to the boundaries of
political entity in which he is included. And here
he makes a discovery: to be English, German, French
tsuzom means to be a provincial. "

This is reasoning dating back to the late 20s
our century, Ortega sums it up as follows: “Europe is
Nikla as a complex of small nations. The idea of ​​a nation and a nation
nal feeling was her most characteristic achievement.
zheniyas. Now she needs to overcome the most
myself. Here is a diagram of the grand drama that should
play out in the coming years. "

The drama happened - the second world war,
catching Europe into two opposing parts. In every
Some of them were active integration processes. West-
European countries are now facing a decisive step
gom: economic ties are expected to expand and
complement a certain kind of political association
nenie. Rapprochement of European socialist and
capitalist countries put on the agenda
the question of creating a single "European home".

Deepening and expanding processes of integration
tions of European countries do not in any way put under
doubt neither their national identity nor their state
donative sovereignty.

Here you can recall V.S.Soloviev, back in the
tse of the last century, who outlined the main condition for unity
opinions of peoples and states: “A certain difference,
or the separation of life spheres, as an individual

1 Ortega y Gasset X. The Rise of the Masses // Questions of Philosophy. 1989.
No. 4. S. 135-136.

and collective, never will and will not
must be abolished, because such a universal
the merger would lead to indifference and emptiness, not to
the fullness of being. True connection assumes
true separation of the connected, that is, such, due to
which they do not exclude, but mutually suppose each other
friend, each finding in the other the completeness of his own
life ... Every social organism should be for
each of its members is not the outer boundary of his
ness, but a positive support and replenishment ... "1

Now that addiction has grown exponentially
nations and states apart and became gloomy
reality, the threat of the death of mankind in the event of nuclear
war, national and human with special
battle with sharpness reveal their inner, non-
breakthrough unity.

J. Renan owns the famous formula,
covering the essence of what unites people into one
nation: "Common glory in the past, common will in our
standing; remembrance of great deeds and readiness
to them - these are the essential conditions for the creation of
kind ... Behind - the legacy of glory and repentance, in-
ready - a general program of action ... the life of a nation -
it is a daily plebiscite. "

A nation is a community of blood, language, for centuries
emerging national character. Tied-
ness for one's people is based on respect for their
historical past and inherited from it
traditions. To lose your history for the nation is everything
is the same as for a person to lose memory.

But the nation is not only a "legacy of glory and repentance",
it is also and above all that which is "being done" and "will be."
This is the main thing in Renan's formula: a nation is a common
gram of the future generated by the daily

1 V.S.Soloviev Sobr. op. Vol. 7, p. 13.

popping. The past protects and sustains the nation
but its driving and forming force is the future
other. “If the nation consisted only of the past and
the present, - writes X. Ortega y Gasset, - no one became
to protect her. Those who argue with this are hypocrites
or thoughtless. But it happens that the past throws in
future bait, real or imagined.
We want our nation to exist in the future
we protect it for the sake of this, and not in the name of a common
past, not in the name of blood, language, etc. Defending our
state, we protect our tomorrow, not our
yesterday" ".

Love for your people is not limited to respectful
nomous and respectful attitude to the common past.
It presupposes, first of all, concern for the future,
on the implementation of the "common cause" program, which
is formed every day in the depths of the people's life.

Remember the priority of the future over the past in
the existence of a nation is especially important now, when
the mania of many concentrates mainly on
restoration and preservation of the historical past.
Until recently, our true national history
started in October 1917 "Peoples, Kingdoms and Tsars"
were thrown into the dustbin of history, and we found ourselves
cut off from their own past. This is not
Apparently, the historical roots must be restored.
But no matter how important this task is, one must not forget
say that no nation with a face to the past
unable to exist as a stable, having
the whole perspective.

"Ortega y Gasset X. The Rise of the Masses // Problems of Philosophy. 1989.
No. 4. P. 147.

In the text proposed for analysis, Vladimir Alekseevich Soloukhin raises the problem of love for the Motherland.

Discussing this problem, the author says that love for the Motherland is a complex feeling, that the realization of love comes only in adulthood. A person's love for the Motherland begins with the main thing - with love for nature, in the environment of which he is from childhood. For every person, love for nature is something different. For some, "nothing can be dearer than rocks and mountain streams, snow-white peaks and steep slopes", but for someone it is the sea coast, "a monotonous swampy land overgrown with lichens."

But still, everyone has something, from the mention of which the heart starts to beat faster.

Thus, the author shows that the creativity of great people who convey to us all the beauty of the world around us is of no small importance for the emergence of love for the Motherland, for nature. Both examples given, complementing each other, show that love for the Motherland begins precisely with love for nature, with the awareness of how unusual and beautiful everything in it is.

The author's position is clear: a person does not develop love for the Motherland from birth. She appears over time, then the person is already trying to figure out why he loves her. In this he is helped by painting, music, creativity of poets and writers.

It is difficult to disagree with the opinion of the author. Indeed, in order to love the Motherland, you need to look at what surrounds you, you need to come into harmony with nature, only then love arises. It is no coincidence that the works of many writers are devoted to this problem. And even if the work does not raise the problem of love for the Motherland or for nature, many writers include a description of nature in their work, since love for nature is the main component of love for the Motherland. Let us recall the work of I. S. Turgenev "Fathers and Sons", in which half a chapter is a description of the places that the main characters pass on their way home.

Thus, we can conclude that thanks to nature we discover such a great and irreplaceable feeling - love for the Motherland.

Updated: 2019-07-21

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Useful material on the topic

• Soloukhin V.A. “From childhood, from school, a person gets used to the combination of words:“ love for the homeland ”. Why is the Motherland dear to man?

Types of patriotism

Patriotism can manifest itself in the following forms:

1. polis patriotism- existed in ancient city-states (policies);
2. imperial patriotism- maintained a sense of loyalty to the empire and its government;
3. ethnic patriotism(nationalism) - based on feelings of love for their people;
4. state patriotism- feelings of love for the state lie at the base.
5. leavened patriotism (hooray patriotism)- at the base are exaggerated feelings of love for the state and its people.

Patriotism in history

The car magnet is a popular way of showing patriotism among all parties in the US 2004.

The concept itself had different content and was understood in different ways. In antiquity, the term patria ("homeland") was applied to the native city-state, but not to broader communities (such as "Hellas", "Italy"); thus, the term patriota meant an adherent of his city-state, although, for example, a sense of common Greek patriotism existed at least since the Greco-Persian wars, and in the works of Roman writers of the era of the early Empire, one can see a peculiar sense of Italian patriotism.

In the Roman Empire, patriotism existed in the form of local "polis" patriotism and imperial patriotism. Polis patriotism was supported by various local religious cults. In order to unite the population of the empire under the leadership of Rome, the Roman emperors attempted to form general imperial cults, some of which were based on the deification of the emperor.

Christianity by its preaching undermined the foundations of local religious cults and thereby weakened the position of polis patriotism. The preaching of the equality of all peoples before God contributed to the rapprochement of the peoples of the Roman Empire and hindered local nationalism. Therefore, at the level of cities, the preaching of Christianity ran into opposition from patriotic pagans, who saw in local cults the basis of the city's well-being. A striking example of such opposition is the reaction of the Ephesians to the preaching of the Apostle Paul. In this sermon, they saw a threat to the local cult of the goddess Artemis, which was the basis of the material well-being of the city. (Acts 19: -24-28)

Imperial Rome, in turn, saw Christianity as a threat to imperial patriotism. Despite the fact that Christians preached obedience to the authorities and offered prayers for the well-being of the empire, they refused to take part in imperial cults, which, according to the emperors, should contribute to the growth of imperial patriotism.

The preaching of Christianity about the heavenly homeland and the idea of ​​the Christian community as a special “people of God” raised doubts about the loyalty of Christians to their earthly homeland.

But later in the Roman Empire there was a rethinking of the political role of Christianity. After the adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire, she began to use Christianity to strengthen the unity of the empire, countering local nationalism and local paganism, forming the idea of ​​the Christian Empire as the earthly homeland of all Christians.

In the Middle Ages, when loyalty to the civic collective gave way to loyalty to the monarch, the term lost its relevance and re-acquired it in modern times.

In the era of the American and French bourgeois revolutions, the concept of "patriotism" was identical with the concept of "nationalism", with a political (non-ethnic) understanding of the nation; for this reason, in France and America at that time, the term “patriot” was synonymous with the term “revolutionary”. The symbols of this revolutionary patriotism are the Declaration of Independence and the Marseillaise. With the emergence of the concept of "nationalism", patriotism began to be opposed to nationalism, as a commitment to the country (territory and state) - commitment to the human community (nation). However, these concepts often act as synonyms or close in meaning.

Rejection of patriotism by universalist ethics

Patriotism is rejected by the universalist ethics, which believes that a person is equally bound by moral ties with all of humanity without exception. This criticism began even by the philosophers of Ancient Greece (the Cynics, the Stoics - in particular, the Cynic Diogenes was the first to describe himself as a cosmopolitan, that is, a "citizen of the world").

Patriotism and Christian tradition

Early christianity

The consistent universalism and cosmopolitanism of early Christianity, its preaching about a heavenly homeland as opposed to earthly homelands and the idea of ​​the Christian community as a special “people of God” undermined the very foundations of polis patriotism. Christianity denied all differences not only between the peoples of the empire, but also between the Romans and the "barbarians". The Apostle Paul instructed: “If you are resurrected with Christ, then seek something higher (...) putting on a new<человека>where there is no Hellene, no Jew, no circumcision, no uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, but Christ is all and in everything. "(Colossians 3:11). According to the apologetic Epistle to Diognetus attributed to Justin Martyr, “They (Christians) live in their own country, but as newcomers (...). For them, every foreign country is a fatherland, and every fatherland is a foreign country. (...) They are on earth, but they are the citizens of heaven "... The French historian Ernest Renan formulated the position of the early Christians as follows: “The Church is the homeland of the Christian, as the synagogue is the homeland of the Jew; a Christian and a Jew live in every country as strangers. A Christian hardly recognizes a father or mother. He owes nothing to the empire (...) The Christian does not rejoice in the victories of the empire; he considers social disasters to be the fulfillment of prophecies that doom the world to destruction from barbarians and fire ".

Modern Christianity about patriotism

The opinions of contemporary theologians and Christian hierarchs about patriotism diverge to some extent. Patriarch Alexy II, in particular, stated:

Patriotism is undoubtedly relevant. It is a feeling that makes the people and each person responsible for the life of the country. There is no such responsibility without patriotism. If I don't think about my people, then I have no home, no roots. Because a home is not only comfort, it is also a responsibility for order in it, it is a responsibility for the children who live in this house. A person without patriotism, in fact, has no country of his own. A "man of the world" is the same as a homeless man.

Let us recall the Gospel parable of the prodigal son. The young man left home, and then returned, and his father forgave him, accepted with love. Usually, in this parable, attention is paid to what the father did when he adopted the prodigal son. But we must not forget that the son, after wandering around the world, returned to his home, because it is impossible for a person to live without his foundations and roots.

<...>It seems to me that the feeling of love for one's own people is just as natural for a person as the feeling of love for God. It can be distorted. And mankind throughout its history has more than once distorted the feeling put by God. But it is there.

And here one more thing is very important. The feeling of patriotism should in no way be confused with the feeling of hostility towards other peoples. Patriotism in this sense is consonant with Orthodoxy. One of the most important commandments of Christianity: do not do to another what you do not want to be done to you. Or as it sounds in the Orthodox doctrine in the words of Seraphim of Sarov: save yourself, acquire a peaceful spirit, and thousands around you will be saved. The same is patriotism. Do not destroy in others, but create in yourself. Then others will treat you with respect. I think that today we have this is the main task of patriots: the creation of our own country.

On the other hand, according to the Orthodox theologian Hegumen Peter (Meshcherinov), love for the earthly homeland is not something that expresses the essence of Christian teaching and is obligatory for a Christian. However, the church, at the same time, finding its historical existence on earth, is not an opponent of patriotism as a healthy and natural feeling of love. At the same time, however, she "does not perceive any natural feeling as a moral given, for man is a fallen being, and a feeling, even such as love, left to itself, does not come out of the state of fall, but in the religious aspect leads to paganism." Therefore, "patriotism has dignity from the Christian point of view and receives ecclesiastical meaning if and only if love for the motherland is an active fulfillment of the commandments of God towards it."

Contemporary Christian publicist Dmitry Talantsev considers patriotism to be anti-Christian heresy. In his opinion, patriotism puts the homeland in the place of God, while "the Christian worldview implies the fight against evil, upholding the truth completely regardless of where, in what country this evil occurs and avoiding the truth."

Contemporary criticism of patriotism

In modern times, Leo Tolstoy considered patriotism to be a feeling "coarse, harmful, shameful and bad, and most importantly - immoral." He believed that patriotism inevitably breeds wars and serves as the mainstay of state oppression. Tolstoy believed that patriotism was deeply alien to the Russian people, as well as to the working representatives of other peoples: in his entire life he had not heard any sincere expressions of the feeling of patriotism from the representatives of the people, but on the contrary, he had heard expressions of contempt and contempt for patriotism many times. One of Tolstoy's favorite expressions was Samuel Johnson's aphorism:. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin repeatedly wrote that "the proletariat has no fatherland." In his April Theses, he ideologically denounced the "revolutionary defencists" as compromisers with the Provisional Government. University of Chicago professor Paul Gomberg compares patriotism with racism, in the sense that both presuppose moral obligations and human ties primarily with representatives of "their" community. Critics of patriotism also note the following paradox: if patriotism is a virtue, and during a war, parties are patriots, then they are equally virtuous; but it is for virtue that they kill each other, although ethics forbids killing for virtue.

Tell people that war is bad, they will laugh: who does not know this? Say that patriotism is bad, and most people will agree to this, but with a small proviso. -Yes, bad patriotism is bad, but there is another patriotism, the one we hold on to. - But what is this good patriotism, no one explains. If good patriotism consists in not being conquering, as many say, then any patriotism, if it is not conquering, then certainly retaining, that is, that people want to keep what was previously conquered, since there is no country that would not be based on conquest, and it is impossible to keep the conquered by other means than by the same ones by which something is conquered, that is, by violence, murder. If patriotism is not even retaining, then it is restorative-patriotism of the conquered, oppressed peoples - Armenians, Poles, Czechs, Irish, etc. And this patriotism is almost the worst, because it is the most embittered and requires the greatest violence. They will say: "Patriotism has bound people into states and supports the unity of states." But people have already united into states, this deed has been accomplished; why now maintain the exclusive devotion of people to their state, when this devotion produces terrible disasters for all states and peoples. After all, the very patriotism that brought people together into states is now destroying these very states. After all, if there was only one patriotism: the patriotism of some Englishmen, then it could be considered unifying or beneficent, but when, as now, there is patriotism: American, English, German, French, Russian, all opposed to one another, then patriotism is no longer connects and disconnects.

Ideas for the synthesis of patriotism and cosmopolitanism

The opposite of patriotism is usually considered cosmopolitanism, as the ideology of world citizenship and "homeland-world", in which "attachment to one's people and fatherland seems to lose all interest from the point of view of universal ideas." ... In particular, such oppositions in the USSR during Stalin's time led to the struggle against the "rootless cosmopolitans."

On the other hand, there are ideas of a synthesis of cosmopolitanism and patriotism, in which the interests of the motherland and the world, of our people and humanity are understood as subordinate, as the interests of a part and a whole, with the unconditional priority of universal human interests. Thus, the English writer and Christian thinker Clive Staples Lewis wrote: "Patriotism is a good quality, much better than the selfishness inherent in an individualist, but universal brotherly love is above patriotism, and if they come into conflict with each other, then brotherly love should be preferred." The modern German philosopher M. Riedel finds such an approach already in Immanuel Kant. Contrary to the neo-Kantians, who focus on the universalist content of Kant's ethics and his idea of ​​creating a world republic and a universal legal and political order, M. Riedel believes that Kant's patriotism and cosmopolitanism are not opposed to each other, but mutually agreed, and Kant sees both in patriotism, so also in the cosmopolitan manifestation of love. According to M. Riedel, Kant, in contrast to the universalistic cosmopolitanism of the Enlightenment, emphasizes that a person, in accordance with the idea of ​​world citizenship, is involved in both the fatherland and the world, believing that a person, as a citizen of the world and the earth, is a true “cosmopolitan” in order to “contribute to the welfare of the whole world must have a penchant for affection for his country. " ...

In pre-revolutionary Russia, this idea was defended by Vladimir Solovyov, polemicizing with the neo-Slavophil theory of self-sufficient "cultural-historical types". ... In an article on cosmopolitanism in ESBE, Soloviev argued: “Just as love for the fatherland does not necessarily contradict attachment to closer social groups, for example, to one's family, so loyalty to universal interests does not exclude patriotism. The only question is in the final or supreme yardstick for assessing this or that moral interest; and, without a doubt, the decisive advantage should here belong to the good of the whole of humanity, as including the true good of every part. "... On the other hand, Soloviev saw the prospects of patriotism as follows: Idolatry regarding one's own people, being associated with actual hostility to strangers, is thereby doomed to inevitable death. (...) Everywhere, consciousness and life are preparing for the assimilation of a new, true idea of ​​patriotism, derived from the essence of the Christian principle: “by virtue of natural love and moral obligations to his fatherland to believe his interest and dignity mainly in those higher benefits that do not divide, but unite people and nations " .

Quotes from famous people

• My friend, let us devote beautiful impulses to the Fatherland! - Alexander Pushkin
• Those who happily march in formation to the music (...) got a brain by mistake: for them, a spinal cord would be enough. I so hate heroism on command, senseless cruelty and all the disgusting nonsense of what is united under the word "patriotism", as well as despise the dastardly war that I would rather let myself be torn to pieces than be part of such actions - Albert Einstein.
• Patriotism is one of the most profound feelings, enshrined for centuries and millennia of isolated fatherlands. - Vladimir Lenin
• Patriotism is an amazing feeling that does not exist among people who say this word out loud. - Igor Guberman.
• Patriotism is mainly the belief that a given country is the best in the world because you were born in it. You will never live in a calm world until you knock patriotism out of the human race. - Bernard Show
• Whether she is right or not - this is our country. - Stephen Decatur
• The soul and essence of what is usually understood as patriotism is and always has been moral cowardice - Mark Twain.
• To be a patriot, one had to say and repeat: “this is our country, whether it is right or not,” and call for a small war. Isn't it clear that this phrase is an insult to the nation? - Mark Twain
• A patriot is a person who serves the motherland, and the motherland is, first of all, the people. - Nikolay Chernyshevsky
• Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for vulgar reasons - Bertrand Russell
• Patriotism is not an explosion of emotions, but a calm and lasting devotion that lasts throughout a person's life. - Adlai Stevenson
• In my opinion, it is a terrible humiliation if the soul is controlled by geography - George Santayana
• Rulers should not blame people for the lack of patriotism, but do everything in their power to make them patriots. - Thomas Macaulay
• Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious - Oscar Wilde
• Those who do not belong to their Fatherland do not belong to humanity either. N. G. Chernyshevsky
• Is the feeling of national pride alien to us, Great Russian class-conscious proletarians? Of course not! We love our language and our homeland, we work most of all to raise its working masses (that is, 9/10 of its population) to the conscious life of democrats and socialists. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
• Our revolution fought against patriotism. In the era of the Brest Peace, we had to go against patriotism. We said: if you are a socialist, then you must sacrifice all your patriotic feelings in the name of the international revolution. "(VI Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 37, p. 213).
• Patriotism is a feeling that is associated with the living conditions of small owners. (V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 38, p. 133)
• It is the duty of the class-conscious proletariat to defend its class cohesion, its internationalism, its socialist convictions from the rampant chauvinism of the patriotic bourgeois clique (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 26, p. 17)
• The fate of his country (the proletariat) is of interest only insofar as it concerns its class struggle, and not by virtue of some bourgeois, completely indecent in the mouth with<оциал>-d<емократа>"patriotism" (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 17, p. 190)
• There are no patriots when it comes to taxes. George Orwell
• Don't ask what your homeland can do for you - ask what you can do for your homeland. John F. Kennedy
• Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Samuel Johnson (Johnson's biographer, citing this oral statement, explains that it was not about genuine love for the fatherland, but about false patriotism).
• Patriotism doesn't have to be rebellion: you can hate your king and still not love your country, Samuel Johnson.
• Patriotism is a fierce virtue, because of which ten times more blood is shed than from all vices combined. A. I. Herzen.
• Patriotism is the belief that people living on one side of a certain conventional line drawn on the surface of the planet should be treated better than those living on the other side. And everything else is a choice of arguments why this should be so. Victor Olsufiev
• “Patriotism” is an immoral feeling because, instead of recognizing himself as the son of God, as Christianity teaches us, or at least as a free man guided by his own reason, every person, under the influence of patriotism, recognizes himself as a son of his fatherland, a slave of his government and commits actions that are contrary to your reason and your conscience. L. N. Tolstoy.
• They say to me: “Die for Ireland”, and I answer: “Let Ireland die for me” James Joyce.
• There can be no patriotic art or patriotic science. Johann Wolfgang Goethe
• We are first of all gentlemen, and only then - patriots. Edmund Burke
• My patriotism is not a lock on one nation; it is all-encompassing, and I am ready to abandon the kind of patriotism that builds the well-being of one nation on the exploitation of others. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
• Measuring an inch by your yardstick is patriotic, but exhausting. V. A. Shenderovich
• Love for our own good produces in us love for the fatherland, and personal pride - the pride of the people, which serves as the support of patriotism. N. M. Karamzin
• Patriotism is a destructive, psychopathic form of idiocy. George Bernard Shaw
• Every citizen is obliged to die for the fatherland, but no one is obliged to lie for his sake. Charles Louis Montesquieu
• A true patriot is a person who, having paid a fine for incorrect parking, is happy that the system is operating effectively. Bill Vaughan
• Others praise their country as if they dream of selling it. Hot Petan
• If your mother gave birth to you on a ship, then would you try to stay at sea forever? Elchin Hasanov
• It is important that you are willing to die for your country; but more importantly, you are willing to live your life for her. Theodore Roosevelt
• In recent times, patriotism consisted of praising all that is good in the fatherland; nowadays this is not enough to be a patriot. N. A. Dobrolyubov
• In Dr. Johnson's famous vocabulary, patriotism is defined as the villain's last resort. We take the liberty of calling this refuge first. Ambrose Gwyneth Beers
• I happened to talk about patriotism, pointing out its incompatibility with Christianity. And I've always met one answer. Bad patriotism - yes, but there is good. What is good, no one said. As if patriotism, like selfishness, can be good and agreeable with humanity and Christianity. L. N. Tolstoy
• Patriotism is defined by the measure of shame a person experiences for crimes committed on behalf of his people. Adam Michnik
• Patriotism is the virtue of a wicked person. Oscar Wilde
• Patriotism is not given to a person, but given to him, he must be washed from all the selfish, self-dying abomination that sticks to him. With some pedal pressure, one could say that patriotism must be "endured", otherwise it is worthless. Especially Russian patriotism. G.V. Adamovich
• Intellect, patriotism, Christianity and firm trust in Him, who have never left this blessed land, are still able to best resolve all the difficulties we have today. Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861
• Patriotism means supporting your country. This does not mean that it is patriotic to support the president or other officials. Only to the extent that they serve the interests of the country. Theodore Roosevelt

Notes (edit)

1. in Brockhaus and Efron contains words about P. as a moral virtue.
2. The example of public opinion polls shows that the majority of the respondents support patriotic slogans.
3. "Culture Shock" of August 2, discussion on Russian patriotism, Victor Erofeev, Alexey Chadayev, Ksenia Larina. Radio "Echo of Moscow".
4. on the VTsIOM website.
5. An example of the interpretation of patriotism: "Archpriest Dimitri Smirnov: 'Patriotism is love for one's country, not hatred for someone else's'" - Interview of Archpriest of the Russian Orthodox Church Dimitri Smirnov to Boris Klin, Izvestia newspaper, September 12. Among the theses of the interviewee: patriotism is not associated with a person's attitude to state policy, patriotism cannot mean hatred of someone else, patriotism is cultivated with the help of religion, etc.
6. Informational material of VTsIOM. Public opinion poll report of the year on Russian patriotism. In this report, there is no common understanding of society about patriotism and patriots.
7. An example of the interpretation of patriotism: The virus of betrayal, unsigned material, an article from a selection of the website of the ultra-right nationalist organization RNU. Contains the opinion that it is the responsibility of a true patriot to support anti-Zionist actions.

Nudity and alienation. Philosophical essay on human nature Ivin Alexander Arkhipovich

7. Love for the homeland

7. Love for the homeland

A lot of sincere and high words have been said about this feeling, and most often it deserves them. This feeling is an integral part of the iron frame on which the building of human life is supported and with the destruction of which it turns into a heap of ruins.

Love for the fatherland is one of the deepest feelings, enshrined in the human soul for centuries and millennia. “The best banner is to fight bravely for the fatherland,” Homer said; “Many marvel at the cities, their greatness, splendor, perfection of buildings, but everyone loves their homeland” - these are the words of Lucian; “The voice of the motherland is the voice of the best muse” - P. Beranger; “And the smoke of the fatherland is sweet and pleasant to us” - A. S. Griboyedov; “A person has nothing more beautiful and dearer than his homeland”, “A man without a homeland is a beggar man” - Y. Kolas.

Love for the homeland is one of the clearest examples of love as such.

We are dear to parents, dear children, loved ones, relatives, says Cicero, but all ideas about love for something are united in one word "homeland." What honest man would hesitate to die for her if he could do her good?

Love for the motherland means love for the native land and the people living on it. These two components of the same feeling usually go together, supporting and reinforcing each other. But it happens that they tragically diverge: a person loves his homeland, but not his compatriots. Love for the homeland, as opposed to love for living people, inevitably turns out to be abstract and declarative. And if such a person ascends to the pinnacle of power, he brings enormous disasters to his people.

The foundations of dictatorship and tyranny are always the opposition of the “high interests” of the homeland (one way or another identified by the dictator with his own interests or the interests of a narrow group standing behind him) with the interests of an allegedly unworthy people.

This was already well expressed by Sophocles in the image of the dictator Creon, who, as it seemed to him, loved his homeland, but not its people, and brought misfortune not only to them, but also to himself.

Czech philosopher of the 19th century J. Kolar was inclined to oppose love for the people, nation - love for the fatherland and put the first above the second: “... What should a reasonable person love more - a country or a people, a fatherland or a nation? We can easily find our fatherland, even if we have lost it, but the nation and language - nowhere and never; the homeland itself is a dead land, a foreign object, it is not a person; the nation is our blood, life, spirit, personal property. " Love for the fatherland, for native places seems to Kolar to be a blind natural instinct inherent not only in humans, but also in animals and even plants, while love for the people is always ennobled by reason and education: “Many trees and flowers cling to their the homeland, its land, air and water, which immediately wither, wither and change if transplanted; stork, swallow and other migratory birds return from more beautiful countries to their cold native land, to poor nests; many animals allow themselves to be killed rather than to leave their land, their territory, their cave, their home and food, and if we forcibly tear them out of their native living conditions and transfer them to foreign lands, they will perish from homesickness. "

Love for the native land as the lowest level of love for the motherland is more characteristic, Kolar thinks, of an undeveloped person, a savage who does not know anything like a nation; the modern, developed and educated person puts his nation higher: “The rude savage clings more to his poor, complete, filled with smoke and bad smells shack and to the inhospitable desert than an educated person to his palace and park. The homeland of the Eskimo, his wife and children is a large ice floe floating in a wide sea; the ice floe sways and leans on formidable waves, sea storms and sea currents carry it across wide expanses. Seals and seabirds are all his fellow countrymen, fish and carrion are his food. Year after year, he lives with his family in this ice homeland, fiercely defends her from enemies and loves her so much that he would not exchange her for the most beautiful corners of the earth. The savage knows only the land that gave birth to him, and the foreigner and the enemy are called by him one concept; the whole world is closed within the borders of his country. Whom should we thank for the best and noblest that we have? Not ourselves, not our land, but our ancestors and contemporaries. "

This is hardly a colorful, but biased description is true. The Eskimo's compatriots are not only seals and birds, and he loves not only his wife and children, but also his people, albeit a small one, but a people, with its special, unique language, legends, traditions, hopes, etc.

It is also rash to assert that modern man's sense of his native land is weakening, giving way to affection for his people.

Composer Sergei Rachmaninov and his wife, who deeply loved Russia, once in Switzerland, created near Lucerne a kind of Ivanovka, a village in which they once lived. But a complete replacement did not work out. Rachmaninov loved this place, so music returned to him, after a long break he began to compose again. But one day he let slip with melancholy about the lost native places. “Are these mosquitoes? He cried, slapping one of them. “They don’t know how to sting. Not that our Ivanovsky will cry, you cannot see the light of God. "

One Russian writer who lived in exile recalled the judgment of his fellow countryman who settled down in Paris by the will of fate: “And what about this Paris? Nothing special. These are our lands: you go through the swamps for a week, go, go and not go anywhere! "

Even inconspicuous, but dear, and a modern person may seem better than good, but foreign.

The opposition of the homeland and its people has never brought and is not capable of bringing good. Not when the interests of the homeland are put above the interests of the people, nor when love for the people is preferred over love for the native land.

The feeling of patriotism makes a person a part of a great whole - his homeland, with which he is ready to share both joy and sorrow:

Russia, beloved, they don’t joke with this,

All your pains - they pierced me with pain.

Russia, I am your capillary vessel,

It hurts when it hurts, Russia.

A. Voznesensky

With special acuteness patriotic feelings flare up when hard trials hit the homeland: “Each of us feels the wound inflicted on the homeland in the depths of our hearts” (V. Hugo). War, famine, natural disasters unite the people, make them forget all that is private and transitory, abandon their old addictions and devote all their efforts to one thing - the salvation of the homeland.

In the fall of 1941, when the fascist armada seemed to be marching uncontrollably towards Moscow, Bunin said, recalling, probably, the recent revolution and the civil war: “In your home you can quarrel, even fight. But when the bandits come at us, then, my friend, all squabbles must be put aside and the whole world must gasp at the strangers, so that down and feathers will fly from them. Here Tolstoy preached non-resistance to evil by violence, wrote that wars are needed only by those in power. But if the enemies attacked Russia, he would continue to curse the war, and with all his heart he would be sick for his own people. So a normal, healthy person is arranged, and it should not be otherwise. And the Russian person is struck with longing and love for the fatherland more than anyone else ... ”.

Admiral Kolchak, who proclaimed himself the "supreme ruler of Russia" in the civil war, admitted that it would be easier for him to die of cholera than at the hands of the proletariat. "It's all the same," he said, "being eaten by domestic pigs." His beloved voluntarily followed him to the Irkutsk prison, and then spent thirty years in camps and exile, but did not give up her love even for the dead. She recalled that when she and Kolchak left Omsk, they were accompanied by a Russian gold reserve, which turned out to be fatal for the admiral: twenty-nine Pullman carriages with gold, platinum, silver, jewels of the royal treasures. The admiral was afraid that the gold would fall into the hands of foreigners. The day before his arrest, he said: “Duty commanded me to fight the Bolsheviks to the last opportunity. I am defeated, and gold? Let it go to the Bolsheviks rather than the Czechs. And among the Bolsheviks there are Russian people. "

Love for one's people turned out to be stronger than acute hatred for the class enemy.

Defending his people, Moses, as you know, contradicted God himself: “And Moses returned to the Lord and said: Oh, Lord! This people have committed a great sin, made themselves a golden god; forgive them their sin; but if not, then blot me out of your book, in which you wrote me "(Exodus, 32, 31–32).

A passionate desire to serve the people, not to leave them in a time of misfortune can overpower even love for God, if you suddenly have to choose between these feelings.

It is bad when a person leaves another person in trouble or betrays him. But leaving the fatherland in trouble and even more so betraying it is a crime for which there is no statute of limitations, no repentance, no forgiveness.

Least of all, love for the motherland is a blind, instinctive feeling that makes one thoughtlessly extol the fatherland, not noticing its vices. To love your homeland means, first of all, to wish it well, to strive to make it better.

One of the most remarkable patriots in the history of Russia, P. Ya. Chaadaev, wrote: “More than any of you, I love my Motherland, I wish it glory, I can appreciate the high qualities of my people. Perhaps the patriotic feeling that inspires me is not quite the same as the one whose screams disturbed my existence. I have not learned to love my Motherland with my eyes closed, my head bowed, my lips closed. I find that a person can be useful to his country only if he sees it clearly. I think that the time of blind falling in love has passed, that now we, first of all, owe the truth to the Motherland. "

Chaadaev was considered a slanderer of his fatherland, declared insane, and banned from publishing. His Apology of the Madman, from which the excerpt is taken, was written in the mid-30s of the last century, but in Russia it was published only at the beginning of this century.

The idea that true patriotism should be permeated with the light of critical reason is not obvious to everyone.

Love for the fatherland even now often echoes with that feigned boast, which in Russia was once ironically called "leavened patriotism." You will listen to such a leavened patriot, Gogol noted, and even if he is sincere, "you just spit on Russia!"

N. Saltykov-Shchedrin was ardently, selflessly devoted to his country. “I love Russia to the point of heartache,” he wrote, “and I cannot even imagine myself anywhere other than Russia.” And at the same time, his attitude towards the country and the people was filled with that tragic duality, which A. Blok later said in "Retribution":

And disgust for life,

And thoughtless love for her,

And passion and hatred for the motherland ...

Saltykov-Shchedrin, who well saw the economic and political backwardness of Russia, unable to take advantage of the enormous material resources and talents of its people, created the most severe and gloomy picture of his homeland in Russian literature. Passion for the motherland did not prevent him from condemning and ridiculing her vices.

True patriotism is alien and hostile to nationalist arrogance and any kind of nationalist prejudice.

In one of F. Dürrenmatt's plays, the last Roman emperor Romulus Augustulus remarks: "When the state begins to kill people, it always calls itself the homeland."

It was according to this formula of preserving power that Stalin acted, having resorted to what was then, as it seemed, a forbidden weapon - Russian patriotism. Again “great ancestors” were required: Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy, Ivan the Terrible, Peter I, Ivan Susanin, citizen Minin and Prince Pozharsky. It became commendable to glorify the fatherland, to belittle and even ridicule other states and peoples.

V. Mayakovsky recklessly joined this campaign of unrestrained praise of everything that is domestic and Soviet and inciting hostility towards everything abroad, which is treated as "immature", class and socially backward, and did not unravel its sinister essence:

Fatty animals.

Lobos.

Europeans,

what do you have pollen on?

Chaplin antennae

what Europe has

left of the face?

Here we can recall the writer J. Kolar, who warned against stupid, intolerant, arrogant patriotism, because "it is often only a pretext for the most black acts."

Love for one's fatherland, not combined with the idea of ​​the supremacy of the universal human idea, of the equality of all peoples, regardless of the level of their social and cultural development, harms, first of all, the motherland itself.

“... One cannot but love the fatherland, - wrote V. Belinsky, - only it is necessary that this love be not a dead contentment with what is, but a desire for improvement; in a word - love for the fatherland should be together with love for humanity. To love your Motherland means to ardently wish to see in it the fulfillment of the ideal of humanity and, to the best of your ability, to advance this ”.

Russian literature has always spoken about the flawedness of national egoism and separatism, the need to combine the national with the universal. ". The moral principles of any individual people are the principles of universal humanity," writes Saltykov-Shchedrin. Elsewhere he says: "The idea that warms up patriotism is the idea of ​​the common good. It is a school in which a person develops to perceive the idea of ​​humanity."

The essence of nationalism is the recognition of national exclusivity and the resulting opposition of a given nation to others. Nationalism boils down to the recognition of "our" nation as an "exemplary nation" or "a nation with the exclusive privilege of state building."

There is almost always a huge distance between the formally proclaimed equality of nations and their actual equality. That is why in every, in essence, multinational state there are laws, by virtue of which any event, carrying out in any way the privilege of one of the nations or the rights of a national minority, is declared illegal and invalid.

The opposite of nationalism is the belittling of one's homeland and one's people, a kind of national nihilism, which in the recent past was presented as an almost natural consequence of internationalism. “Unfortunately, there are forces,” noted the writer Ch. Aitmatov in one of his interviews, “which among the people themselves, and this often happens, deny themselves. They are busy with self-talk. I call this national nihilism. This phenomenon is as reactionary as nationalism itself. "

The national and the universal, or international, are two interconnected sides. Without their unity, there is no world process of development and rapprochement of peoples and nations that make up a single humanity.

The rapprochement of nations and the overcoming of national borders is a regularity of the historical process. In Europe, it began to be acutely felt after the First World War.

“Today, every“ intellectual ”in Germany, England or France feels, - wrote the Spanish philosopher H. Ortega y Gasset, - that the boundaries of his state constrain him, he suffocates in them; his nationality only limits, belittles him ... For the first time in his political, economic and spiritual activities, a European comes across the borders of his state; for the first time he feels that his life opportunities are disproportionate to the boundaries of the political entity in which he is included. And then he makes a discovery: to be English, German, French means to be a provincial. "

Ortega sums up this line of reasoning dating back to the late 1920s: “Europe emerged as a complex of small nations. The idea of ​​a nation and national feeling were its most characteristic achievements. Now she needs to overcome herself. This is the outline of a grand drama that is set to unfold in the coming years. "

A drama took place, but of a different kind - the Second World War, which split Europe into two opposing parts. Each of them was undergoing active integration processes. Western European countries are now facing a decisive step: economic ties are supposed to be expanded and supplemented with a certain kind of political association. The rapprochement of European countries has put on the agenda the issue of creating a single "European home".

The deepening and expanding processes of integration of European countries in no way question their national identity or their state sovereignty.

Here you can remember V.S.Solovyov, back at the end of the 19th century. who outlined the basic conditions for the unity of peoples and states: “A certain difference, or separation of life spheres, both individual and collective, will never and should not be abolished, because such a universal merger would lead to indifference and to emptiness, and not to completeness being. True union presupposes a true separateness of the connected, that is, such, by virtue of which they do not exclude, but mutually suppose each other, finding each other in the other the fullness of his own life ... Every social organism should be for each of its members not an external boundary of his activity, but positive support and replenishment. " ...

Now, when the dependence of peoples and states on each other has increased many times and the threat of the death of mankind in the event of a nuclear war has become a gloomy reality, the national and universal with particular acuteness reveal their inner, indissoluble unity.

J. Renan owns the famous formula that reveals the essence of what unites people into one nation: “Common glory in the past, common will in the present; remembrance of great deeds and readiness for them - these are the essential conditions for the creation of a people. Behind is the legacy of glory and repentance; ahead is the general program of action. The life of a nation is a daily plebiscite. "

A nation is a community of blood, language, a national character that has developed over the centuries. Affection for one's people is based on respect for their historical past and traditions inherited from them. For a nation to lose its history is the same as for a person to lose memory.

But a nation is not only a "legacy of glory and repentance", it is also and above all that which is "being done" and "will be." This is the main thing in Renan's formula: a nation is a common program for the future, worked out by daily voting. The past protects and supports the nation, but the future is its driving and forming force.

“If the nation consisted only of the past and the present,” writes H. Ortega y Gasset, “no one would defend it. Those who argue with this are hypocrites or insane. But it happens that the past throws bait into the future, real or imagined. We want our nation to exist in the future, we defend it for this, and not in the name of a common past, not in the name of blood, language, etc. Defending our state, we defend our tomorrow, not yesterday. "

Love for your people is not limited to a respectful and caring attitude towards the common past. It presupposes, first of all, concern for the future, for the implementation of the “common cause” program that is formed every day in the depths of people's life.

Remembering the priority of the future over the past in the existence of a nation is especially important now, when the attention of many is concentrated mainly on the restoration and preservation of the historical past. The communist regime of our national history was ordered to begin in October 1917. "Peoples, kingdoms and kings" were thrown into the dustbin of history, the people were cut off from their own past. The historical roots must, of course, be restored. But no matter how important this task may be, we must not forget that not a single nation, facing the past, is capable of existing as a stable, perspective whole.