You and I, my dear Friend, had to live in a difficult time, but at the same time in an extremely interesting and important time. Sometimes one is positively dizzy, especially when one imagines those grandiose world events of which we are destined to be contemporaries.

It is as if some new, special era in the life and history of our Russia is approaching. It is not enough, I think, only to observe and experience events; it is also useful to reflect on them. I hope that the current terrible war will be useful for Russian identity. Victory over the enemy in the present state of affairs is advantageous to the victors. But I am somehow not used to evaluating life phenomena from the point of view of profit. The ideological growth of the nation is dearer to me than economic growth and cultural success. And the growth of our national consciousness does not even depend on the outcome of the war; one clash with the West is enough. The impulse is given, and the thought is already working. In this letter I want to share with you, dear soul, my hopes for the future success of our Russian self-consciousness.

The most ardent of the Slavophiles dear to my heart, Konstantin Aksakov, exclaimed:

Always to superstitious Europe Will the Slavic race be chained? Most difficult is the spiritual captivity, There are no more painful spiritual wounds!

Is it not true that the Slavs, and in particular we Russians, are chained to Europe? After all, it is not only Griboyedov's girls who admire the West in our country. I will tell you, dear Friend, that I always felt somehow sad in my soul when I looked through the courses of "New Russian History" or the courses of "Russian Literature". "Why?" you ask. But because I caught their most general idea. Approximately this idea can be expressed as follows. Russia lived for a long time, but there was no sense in it. There was only darkness, ignorance, superstition. Finally, Peter the Great appeared. At first, he often traveled to the German Quarter, then "cut a window to Europe" and "transformed" Russia. Only with Peter did Russia see the light. In a word, "he was your god, Russia!" - as the flattering poets exclaimed. "Pre-Petrine Russia" - after all, this is already a common name. How ridiculed are the worldly ideals of our ancestors! "Domostroi" is something terrible for our Westerners. In general, without the Germans we are no good for anything and would remain forever in the darkness of ignorance. These are the thoughts that come to my mind when reading historical works. It is as if Russia has existed for only two hundred years, and what happened before can only be studied for the sake of curiosity or because it is necessary to study something. It seems to me, my friend, that the last two hundred years may be called the German period in Russian history. Through Peter's window, the Germans climbed into our hut and occupied the front corner in it. And the Russian people began to turn into Germans. At first, they threw off, and those who did not want to, forcibly took off their majestic clothes and put on a small German caftan. Ridiculous and strange clothes began to appear - camisoles, tailcoats - all of the kind of clothing that, in the words of Metropolitan Philaret, are not so much dressed as exposed. And after the clothes they began to change their souls, they began to live and think in German, they forgot even how to speak Russian. For two hundred years we worshipped the Germans. If the French were sometimes worshipped, it was again at the behest of the Germans. At that time, the German courts also listened to the tone set by the French Versailles.

Thus, my friend, we have fallen into shameful captivity. Prisoners are different. Some only think about how to escape from captivity, others cry like the Jews in the Babylonian captivity, and there are such captives that they forget their homeland and try not to remember it at all. The Russian people can be attributed to this last kind of captives. The Russians have forgotten Russian Russia. After all, you know, my friend, when Karamzin wrote "The History of the Russian State", they said about him that he discovered ancient Russia. Isn't that typical? But only a hundred years passed from ancient Russia to Karamzin. It is hardly possible to point to an example in the entire history of the world that only a hundred years ago the subject of discoveries was a past epoch!

Is not such a humiliation of all relatives deplorable? The national feeling, the national Russian consciousness seemed to have fallen asleep. Fell asleep, my friend, but not for everyone. It fell asleep above, in the "society", but it was awake below, among the people. If "society" considered itself only European, then the people thought and felt themselves first of all Russian. And so it seems to me that the split between the people and the so-called intelligentsia is nowhere more pronounced than in the attitude towards the West. The intelligentsia and the upper echelons of Russian society bowed down to the German, and the people always treated the German as if with condescension, always critically, distrustfully, and even ironically. After all, in the Russian language there is a completely literary word "German". And figure out what it means. In the popular dialect, all Western people are "Germans". Does not this very name, my Friend, seem to You to be condescending and ironic? After all, when a small child babbles incomprehensible, they say to him: "Ah, you are a German!" and then, how does a German appear in a folk song, in folk anecdotes? Certainly funny, stupid and cowardly. The Russian is a young man in front of him - both shrewd and brave.

My thought dwells especially on those bright phenomena when the Russian genius rebelled against the foreign yoke and boldly declared that Russia could not only be good without the Germans, but that she would be better without them, that it was still a question whether Russia was transformed in the direction of good or evil. I mean mainly the Slavophiles, these intelligent, pure and honest sons of Russia. In spite of the desperate persecution on the part of the Westernizers, in spite of the indifference of broad circles of society, Slavophilism was a noticeable phenomenon in Russian life during three-quarters of the nineteenth century. And most importantly, what wonderful people they were, Slavophiles! The names of many have gone down in history for centuries, because the enemies could not but recognize the brilliant mind and rich talents - philosophical, literary, poetic. But again it is remarkable: those who were engaged only in preaching Slavophile ideas tried to consign them to oblivion. Only those who were writers and poets could not be forgotten. It is difficult to forget N.V. Gogol, A.S. Khomyakov, I.S. Aksakov, F.M. Dostoevsky. A.F. Hilferding, K.S. Aksakov and the like? After all, some have only recently begun to be "discovered". But it is also good that more than one nation looked down on the German. The popular view was shared by the most gifted and educated people of the nineteenth century. In general, my dear Friend, along with the worship of the West, one involuntarily notices in Russian thought the constant criticism of the West and the condemnation of the West. Have you not noticed how often we talk about the ideological crisis of Europe? "The Crisis of Western Philosophy" is the title of the first serious philosophical work of the original Russian thinker V.S. Solovyov. And how much is said in our theological journals about the crisis of Catholicism or German Protestantism, about the collapse of the moral ideals of Europe! I don't know if there is anything like this in Western literature about Russia and Russians, but somehow I can't admit it. What can a German talk about when referring to Russia? He may talk about the crisis of our grain trade, about the crisis of our industry, but for a German to talk about our ideological crisis -- no, that is something that does not at all fit into my consciousness!

Thus, the consciousness of its value, its originality has not yet been eradicated from the Russian soul. However, my friend, watching the press, listening to the public mood, I nevertheless note with sadness in what fold the real Russian thought is, how timidly, as if apologizing, the Russian people think in Russian, if their thoughts do not coincide with Western thoughts. And this is where my hopes for a better future begin. We are facing the West. Undoubtedly, in this collision we will be hurt painfully. And this will make us think about our relations with the West, think about ourselves. Perhaps the end of the Russian shameful groveling before the West has come, and then they will love their native, Russian more.

It is with joy that I tell You, my Friend, that I sometimes notice favorable signs. As soon as the thunders of war with its horrors thundered, as soon as the blood of our defenders flowed, we began to talk about a "dethroned idol" and by this idol we understood German culture. Western values began to be strongly reassessed. The idols that the Russian people have worshipped for two hundred years have not yet been thrown down the steep mountains into the swift rivers, but some have already been thrown down and have floated into the sea of oblivion, although many run along the shore shouting: "Breathe out, God!"

Among the modern thinking Russian people, my friend, I see how some dishonorably drag German idols to the banks of Lethe, and how others on the banks of this river call their deaf gods: "Breathe out, God!"

Back in October last year, the Religious and Philosophical Society in Memory of V.S. Solovyov organized a public meeting with speeches and reports on the coming war. I, my friend, wanted to attend this meeting, but then I changed my mind. After all, I thought, the lectures and speeches would be published, and I would become acquainted with them while sitting in my cell. In fact, in the December issue of Russkaya Mysl, speeches and reports by representatives of our religious-philosophical thought were published. Have You read them, my Friend? I did not find any new revelations there, but the speeches and reports are very clever. For me, they are dear as a public confession by our modern thinkers of their views. You find out what is dear to them, what they want, what they hope for. I will not write in detail about these now printed reports. I will only note that in one way or another, the entire meeting of the religious-philosophical society turned to a criticism of Western ideals, Western foundations of life. But at the meeting the twofold relations of Russian thinking people to the West were also clearly revealed. In the speech of the chairman of the society, G.A. Rachinsky, one can still hear the voice of admiration for German culture. He said: "In our struggle not for life, but for death, we are not fighting against the ancient and venerable culture of Germany. Not with the Germany of Albrecht Dürer, Holbein and the artists who created the immortal paintings and sculptures of its ancient cathedrals, not with the Germany of Lessing, Herder, Schiller, Goethe and Novalis; it is not with the Germany of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer, these teachers of both Russian Slavophiles and Russian Westernizers, not with all this great culture of the recent past that we are fighting." Moreover, the speaker rewrites the poet's poems, attributing them to German culture:

Let him be darkened with shame The faint-hearted one who on this day He will reproach the insane Her dethroned shadow!

I read the report of Prince E.N. Trubetskoy with sorrow, especially the following lines: "Let us not now, after so many lessons of history, revive national pride and worship Russia as an idol." Completely different thoughts are expressed in the reports of V.I. Ivanov, Professor S.N. Bulgakov and V.F. Ern. "War," writes the first, "is waged for the choice of the basic paths of the human spirit. Will the now semi-free tribe, which called itself the tribe of the "word", but which from ancient times bore the evil of the slaves and was significantly renamed the tribe of slaves (Slavi - Sclavi - Sclaven), be enslaved again, and will it serve as a new layer of fertilizer for German "culture", like its innumerable ancestors, wiped off the face of the earth by the parasitic bloodthirstiness of a species once the strongest in the struggle for existence? Professor S. N. Bulgakov sees in the war "the crisis of modern history and the failure of the cause of modern European civilization," because the spirit of the new European man has broken away from the mystical center, departed from the Church, rationalized and mechanized life. In this spirit, non-religious humanism and Protestantism, which has dried up, impoverished and secularized Christianity, prevail. "Russia did not actively participate in the sin of new Europeanism, it was only infected with it. It was not it that made the Protestant substitution of Christianity by reducing it to practical, worldly morality. It can reject these beginnings of new history and go its own special way. She can renounce the tower of Babel and desire the city of God. It can take up the feat of earthly construction not in its own name, but in the name of the coming Christ. It can be kindled by holy zeal for the cause of God, which will help Europe to turn the bricks of the crumbling Tower of Babel into the stones of the city of God. Russia has not yet been able to remake itself in the style of the new Europe, because it cannot find a real taste for it, because it hears a vaguely different call, another command: to desire the incompatible, the impossible, the miraculous, to thirst for earth and heaven together, to languish in holy languor." "A great and in its significance amazing fact has happened: we have again believed in Russia! And we owe this spiritual rebirth to the holy war and the humble sacrifice of the great Russian army." This is how S.N. Bulgakov defines the meaning and significance of the war. You can imagine, dear Friend, with what consolation I read these truly "Russian thoughts"! This is the title of S.N. Bulgakov's report. V.F. Ern entitled his report "From Kant to Krupp". Here he traces the history of the last days to philosophical principles and protests against the "simplified understanding of world history," according to which "German culture is one thing, and atrocities are another." Ern concludes his report with a prayer "that the catharsis of the European tragedy may be experienced by us in all its depth, and that we may forever overcome not only the periphery from the brutal manifestations of German culture, but also become free from its deepest principles, which are now being exposed to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear."