Speaking of the "Trans-Volga people", one cannot ignore Maximus the Greek, who was invited by John III to translate the Greek originals. This remarkable scientist, a Greek from Italy, could, according to his contemporaries, become the pride of Greco-Italian science; however, he preferred to accept the crown of the Grand Duke and go to Muscovy, where his fate was sad. Exiled for many years to remote places, he died prematurely. Charges of a political nature were brought against him, which, perhaps, had grounds. But it is characteristic that he supported the "Trans-Volga" with his authority and even managed to create a small circle of "Christian humanists" around him.   From the school of Maximus the Greek came the only more or less independent Russian theological writer of the sixteenth century, Zinovy Otensky, the author of the work "The Truth Testimony to Those Who Inquired About the New Teaching." He moves entirely in the traditions of Greek patristicism, and it is difficult to call him a more than knowledgeable compiler, but nevertheless he was the fruit of the rudiments of Russian theology, worthy of the attention of a historian. Unfortunately, he was subjected to repressions, and this tradition was not continued. From this circle later came such an outstanding figure as the first Russian emigrant, Prince Kurbsky. In the well-known correspondence between Kurbsky and Ivan the Terrible, the prince, among other things, accused Ivan of having "shut up the Russian land, that is, free human nature, as in a hellish stronghold." This emphasis on "natural law" ("free human nature") undoubtedly comes from Italy and, through Maximus the Greek, somehow echoes the more humanistic trend of the "Trans-Volga people". Ivan, in his "verbose" writings, especially emphasized the divine origin of the tsar's power and his right to "execute and pardon" at his discretion. He will give an answer only before God's judgment. 

However, it should be noted that the famous Hundred Chapters Council, convened under Ivan the Terrible, was organized on the initiative of Macarius and Sylvester, disciples of Joseph of Volokolamsk. Macarius, the main compiler of the Chetya-Minei, this encyclopedia of ancient Russian church education, was an enlightened Josephite. It is known that he exerted a good influence on the young John. This alone indicates that the Josephites, having defeated the Trans-Volga people, did not become "reactionaries" in the second generation, but to some extent adopted the Trans-Volga spirit of tolerance and humanity. But one way or another, the idea of Moscow as the Third Rome, put forward at the beginning of the sixteenth century by the monk of the Pskov monastery Philotheus, became during the sixteenth century the leading ideology of later Muscovite Russia. Two Romes have fallen, and the third is standing, and the fourth will not be." The spread of this messianic idea of a "holy kingdom" was made possible by the victory of the Josephites, who emphasized the word "Russian" in the expression "Russian Orthodoxy." It was at this time that the very expression "Holy Russia" was dogmatized.

 SCHISM

And it is only on this basis that the tragedy of the Nikon schism in the seventeenth century becomes understandable. For when the Russian Orthodox traditions began to deviate more and more from the Greek ones, Patriarch Nikon decided to compare the Russian translations and rites with the Greek sources. It should be noted that the very question of correcting some church translations was by no means new. It was stirred up during the time of Metropolitan Philaret, the father of Mikhail Fyodorovich. But under Alexei Mikhailovich, the need for such corrections, as well as for a general revision of the rites, was already ripe. Here it is necessary to note the growing role of the Little Russian Orthodox clergy, who from the time of the imposition of the Unia waged a heroic struggle for Orthodoxy. Since the Little Russian clergy had to enter into polemics with the highly educated Polish Jesuits, they were forced to raise the level of their theological culture, to study with the Greeks and to become acquainted with Latin sources. From this Ukrainian Orthodox environment came such learned defenders of Orthodoxy as Petro Mohyla and Epiphanius Slavenetsky. The influence of the Kievan monks began to be felt in Moscow, especially after the reunion with Little Russia. Greek hierarchs came to Muscovite Rus through Little Russia. All this also forced the Russian Moscow clergy to reflect on the discrepancies in the Greek and Moscow readings of the same theological texts. But this involuntarily broke the self-isolation of the Moscow Church, which was established especially after the victory of the Josephites and after the Council of the Hundred Chapters under Ivan the Terrible.

Thus, a new meeting with Byzantium, in which there were elements of an indirect meeting with the West, became the background for the emergence of a schism. The results are well known: the so-called Old Believers, who were almost the majority, refused to accept the "innovations", which were essentially a return to more ancient antiquity. Since both the Old Believers and the Nikonovites showed fanatical irreconcilability in this dispute, it came to a schism, to going into the religious underground, and in some cases to exile and execution. Of course, it was not only a matter of two or three fingers or other ritual differences, which now seem to us so insignificant that many explain the tragedy of the schism by simple superstition and ignorance. No, the real causes of the split lie much deeper. For, in the opinion of the Old Believers, if Russia is "Holy Russia" and Moscow is the Third Rome, then why should we follow the example of the Greeks, who in their time betrayed the cause of Orthodoxy at the Council of Florence? After all, "our faith is not Greek, but Christian" (i.e. Russian-Orthodox). For Avvakum and his associates, the renunciation of the idea of the Third Rome was a renunciation of the idea of the Third Rome, i.e. in their eyes it was a betrayal of Orthodoxy, which, according to their faith, had been preserved only in Russia. And since the Tsar and the Patriarch persist in this "betrayal", it follows that Moscow, the Third Rome, is perishing. And this means that the end of the world is coming, the "end times". This is how the Old Believers tragically perceived Nikon's reforms. It was not for nothing that Avvakum wrote that his "heart ached and his legs trembled" when he understood the meaning of Nikon's "innovations." These apocalyptic moods explain why the Old Believers went to torture and execution with such fanaticism and even staged terrible of self-immolation. Moscow — The Third Rome is dying, and there will be no fourth! Muscovite Russia had already established its own rhythm and its own way of church life, which was revered as sacred. The rite and ritual of life, the visible "decorum", the well-being of church life – in a word, the emphasized "everyday confession" – this was the style of church life in Muscovite Russia. The Orthodox clergy in Moscow was imbued with the conviction that only in Russia did true piety survive (after the death of Byzantium), because only Moscow was the Third Rome. It was a kind of theocratic utopia of the "earthly, local City". Therefore, Nikon's reforms gave the impression of apostasy from true Orthodoxy among the majority of the clergy, and Nikon himself became almost the Antichrist in the eyes of the zealots of the old faith. Avvakum himself considered him the forerunner of the Antichrist. "His deeds are already being done, only the last one is where the devil has not been before." (And the Nikon church was spoken of in the following terms: "For the present church is not a church, the mysteries are not the Mysteries, baptism is not baptism, the scriptures are flattering, the teaching is unrighteous, and all filth and impiety." "The charm of the Antichrist shows its face.")

The only way out is to go into the religious underground. But the most extreme defenders of the old faith did not stop there. They claimed that the "last times" had come and that the only way out was a voluntary martyr's death in the name of Christ. They developed a theory according to which repentance alone is no longer enough, it is necessary to leave the world. "Death alone can save us, death", "in our time Christ is unmerciful, He does not accept those who come to repentance". All salvation is in the second, fiery baptism, that is, in voluntary self-immolation. And, as is known, wild of self-immolation took place in Russia (one of the themes of Mussorgsky's opera Khovanshchina). Fr. George Florovsky is right when he says that the mystery of the schism is not a rite, but the Antichrist is a fiery (in the literal sense) expectation of the end of the world, connected with the practical collapse of the idea of Moscow as the Third Rome.   It is well known that both sides have shown passion and fanaticism in this struggle. Patriarch Nikon was an extremely domineering and even cruel hierarch, by no means inclined to any compromises. In essence, the schism was a great failure, for in it the Old Russian tradition was replaced by the Modern Greek. The protest of the Old Believers against Nikon was aptly described by Vladimir Solovyov as the Protestantism of the local tradition. If the Russian Church did survive a schism, it was thanks to the ineradicable Orthodoxy of the Russian spirit. But the wounds inflicted by the schism did not heal for a very long time, and these traces were visible until recently. The schism was a revelation of the spiritual trouble of Moscow. In the schism, the local Russian antiquity was elevated to the level of a shrine. In this regard, the historian Kostomarov speaks well about the schism: "The schism chased after the old, tried to adhere to the old as closely as possible, but the schism was a phenomenon of new, not ancient Russian life." "This is the fatal paradox of the raskola..." "The schism is not old Russia, but a dream of antiquity," Florovsky remarks in this regard. Indeed, there was something of the peculiar heroic romanticism of antiquity in the schism, and it was not for nothing that the symbolists of the early 20th century, kindred to the romantics in spirit, were so interested in the schism – the philosopher Rozanov, the writer Remizov and others. In Russian fiction, the life of the later schismatics was especially vividly reflected in Leskov's remarkable story "The Sealed Angel".   Needless to say, the schism terribly undermined the spiritual and physical strength of the Church. The strongest in the faith went into schism. And it is not surprising, therefore, that the weakened Russian Church offered such weak resistance to the later church reforms of Peter the Great, who abolished the former independence of the spiritual authority in Russia and introduced the Holy Synod instead of the patriarchate on the Protestant model, in which a secular person, the chief procurator of the Synod, was introduced. But Nikon himself, as is known, fell out of favor with Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich even in the process of schism. The immediate reasons for this disfavor lay in Nikon's extreme authority. But there were also ideological reasons: Nikon began to claim not only the role of the Russian first hierarch, but also the role of the supreme head of the state. For the first time in our history, alien to the Western struggle between the state and the church, the church in the person of Nikon encroached on power over the state. Nikon, as is known, compared the power of the patriarch with the light of the sun, and the power of the tsar with the light of the moon. This is the paradoxical coincidence of Nikon's thoughts with Latinism, which also claimed earthly power. In connection with this, the Slavophile Samarin wrote that "behind the great shadow of Nikon stands the terrible ghost of papism." The philosopher Vladimir Solovyov, before his enthusiasm for Catholicism, also believed that in the person of Nikon the Russian Church had come together, though for a short time, by the temptation of Rome – earthly power. This encroachment of Nikon was rejected by the tsar with the support of the majority of the clergy.   One way or another, the Russian Church, as is known, offered passive resistance to the reforms of Peter the Great. The desire for the Europeanization of Russia, for a way out of national self-isolation, was then perceived by the majority of the clergy as a betrayal of the cause of Orthodoxy. For the representatives of the official, non-schismatic church were close in spirit to the Old Believers with their pathos of isolating Moscow from the West. The West was a temptation, a forbidden fruit for Russia during the XVII century. Everything European had an inexplicable charm for those who ate its fruits. It was this passive resistance to the church that prompted Peter to cut the Gordian knot and abolish the independence of church authority. When Stefan Yavorsky, who welcomed Peter's external, political reforms, began to oppose the extremes of his Western passions, Peter appointed in his place Theophan Prokopovich, the author of the apologetic "The Truth of the Monarch's Will". Theophan himself was a highly educated man and an ardent admirer of Peter, but he can be reproached for being too susceptible to Peter's church reform with all its extremes. Later, Yuri Samarin in his dissertation argued that Stefan Yavorsky represented a Catholic deviation in our church, while Theophan Prokopovich represented a Protestant deviation. This can be argued, but there is no doubt that the church since the time of Peter has lost its former independence and found itself under the tutelage of the state. This guardianship was friendly, for the state itself considered itself Christian and Orthodox. Therefore, the analogies that are now sometimes drawn between the situation of the Church in the Soviet Union and under Peter the Great are devoid of positive meaning. But the general secularization and Europeanization of life gradually led to the rupture of living ties between society and the church and to a decrease in the authority of the church.

Peter's reforms, historically justified and creating the Russian Empire out of Muscovite Russia, meant too sharp a break with the former Muscovite tradition. High society began to Europeanize, while the merchants, peasants and clergy continued to live in the pre-Petrine way. This led to a new great split between society and the people, and later between society and the state, in which one must see the historical background of the possibility of revolution. To deduce the Bolshevik revolution only from Russian conditions of life, to regard Bolshevism as an inner-Russian phenomenon, is a great mistake. After all, Marxism is still the dominant doctrine in the USSR, and Marxism is clearly a Western product, a poison prepared in the laboratory of the West. Even such a historian as Toynbee, whose judgments about Russia, generally speaking, leave much to be desired, nevertheless always emphasizes the fact of the Western origin of Bolshevism.

However, the schism between society and the people, which had been brewing since the time of Peter, created favorable prerequisites for the possibility of a new Pugachevism, as in his time it created the prerequisites for the emergence of the first Pugachevism. Peter's reforms were necessary for Russia, for its entry into the path of historical life. And it is not for nothing that the St. Petersburg period of our history – the period of the Russian Empire – was the most brilliant period in Russian history. Without Peter, there would be no Lomonosov, no Pushkin, no Dostoevsky. There would have been no later flowering of the Russian culture. But Russia's entry onto the path of history and culture was bought at a high price. And Vladimir Solovyov is right: "When Muscovite Russia was in danger of misunderstanding its destiny and becoming an exclusively Eastern kingdom, Providence laid on it the heavy hand of Peter."

By Peter's reforms and a number of later schisms, we had to pay for the separation from Byzantium and the West, which we noted at first.

Therefore, without understanding the meaning of the events that took place in Ancient Russia, it is impossible to understand the later Russian history and, in particular, it is impossible to understand the emergence of Russian thought in its Slavophile and Western key in the 19th century. The themes of the meaning of history, of the separation of secular civilization from spiritual culture, which occupied Russian thought in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, were historically suggested by the whole of Russian history. The review I have made does not yet give a history of Russian thought—it is not for nothing that I have made a reservation that I shall first speak of the precursors of Russian thought, of the historical and cultural subsoil of its origin and development. But these preludes, this subsoil, are extremely important for understanding what follows. And in this regard, I would like to conclude this brief review with the words of Klyuchevsky, said by him just about the events of the 17th century: "Russia is an untidy, rustic cradle, in which the world future restlessly fusses and shouts."

Essay Two EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The Moscow period of Russian history ended with Peter the Great's reforms, which led Russia to the path of historical life from centuries-old stagnation. But the crisis of Muscovite Rus was brewing long before the reforms. In the 17th century, the Moscow tsars had to use the services of German mercenaries, who were more versed in "military affairs" than the difficult Moscow archers. The superiority of Western technology, not yet so noticeable in the fifteenth century, now made itself felt. The influence of the then higher Polish culture also slowly seeped in, despite hostile political relations with Poland. (Under Tsar Fyodor Alexeyevich (1676-1682), Polish morals and Polish books were very influential at the royal court.) Finally, the church schism itself was caused by Greek and Little Russian influences, for it was precisely the orientation towards the Greeks and Little Russians, who were more learned than the Moscow clergy, that served for Nikon as the main reason for the revision of rites and church translations. The influence of higher Western enlightenment, Western mores, freer, knocked irresistibly at the door of Moscow, frozen in a semi-Asiatic sleep. The idea of the Russian sacred kingdom, the idea of "Holy Russia" as the Third Rome, although it was not officially abolished, was burned at the stake of self-immolating schismatics. Under Mikhail and Alexei, the first renegades of Moscow culture were already appearing. Thus, under Michael, the trial of a certain Khvorostinin took place, who asserted that the Moscow people were "stupid" and that in Moscow "there was no one to live with." Under Alexei, the embassy clerk (secretary) Grigory Kotoshikhin deserted to Sweden, who then wrote a lampoon on Moscow morals, which he ridiculed. These, of course, were the national-cultural deserters of Moscow, from whom such figures as Nashchokin or Matveyev, who respected Western enlightenment, but adhered to the religious and everyday relations of Moscow morals, differed favorably. In the 16th century, the first Russian emigrant, Prince Kurbsky, protested only against the excesses of Ivan the Terrible, while he himself remained a Muscovite in his way of life and culture and, as is known, did a lot for the cause of Orthodoxy in Western Russia. The need for Europeanizing reforms was prompted by life itself, and if it had not been for Peter's reforms, Russia would probably have faced the fate of India or China. On the other hand, there is no doubt that many reforms are harsh and excessive, especially in the ecclesiastical question. If under Nikon and Stefan Yavorsky there was a certain Catholic influence, then Theophan Prokopovich was more Protestant in spirit than Orthodox. In his writings, his lack of understanding of the nature of the Church as the mystical body of Christ is striking, and his excessive obsequiousness to secular power is also striking. Peter himself sympathized with Protestantism, although he remained Orthodox, and it is not surprising that later Catherine, who was not very versed in religious affairs, claimed that she saw "almost" no difference between Lutheranism and Orthodoxy. In general, the situation of the Orthodox Church almost throughout the entire 18th century left much to be desired. In theological seminaries, predominantly Western Russian, Little Russian scholars prevailed, because they did not yet have their own. And the Little Russians, being Orthodox, nevertheless brought with them a significant share of the Catholic spirit (emphasis on Latin, on catechisms compiled according to Catholic models, although claiming to be Orthodox). At the top of the Orthodox hierarchy, a mixed Protestant-Catholic influence was established, which was in contradiction with the Orthodox church spirit and way of life. Theological seminaries reeked of scholastic boredom, and the low clergy lost the art of preaching, confining themselves only to church Orthodoxy. It is no accident, therefore, that during the second half of the eighteenth century, numerous sects were formed—the Molokans, the Khlysts, the Skoptsy, etc.—who fell out of Orthodoxy. Prof. Florovsky correctly characterizes this period as a gap between theological scholarship and living church experience. A turn for the better occurred at the end of the XVIII century, mainly due to the renewal of the influence of Athos and the tradition of the Trans-Volga elders. This religious renaissance was the work of two remarkable elders, Paisius Velichkovsky and St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, who served, among other things, as the main prototype of the image of Zosima in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. But we will talk about this later. Now let's deal with the development of secular culture in Russia in the XVIII century. Secular Western culture was implanted by Peter the Great, mainly from the practical, military-technical side. Nevertheless, Peter understood that the practical use of technology was impossible without a culture of scientific thinking, and therefore the Academy of Sciences was founded in Russia before universities, which was supposed to train future Russian scientists. The fact that Peter also understood the benefits of secular literature is proved by the support he gave to the first Russian secular writer, Kantemir. Lomonosov could appear and make his way to glory only in the post-Peter the Great conditions. However, it took Russian society almost half a century for us to finally have cadres of the intelligentsia, to have an environment conducive to the development of thought and literature. Such an environment in the era of Catherine the Great was the nobility, which until the beginning of the 19th century was the only bearer of Russian culture of that time. The noble intelligentsia was highly patriotic, and at the same time culturally they adhered to a Western orientation - after all, at that time Catherine the Great, an admirer of Voltaire and Western enlightenment, was on the throne. Interestingly, her "Mandate" was banned in pre-revolutionary France as an overly liberal book. The alliance between the (noble) intelligentsia and the government was broken later, by the end of the reign of Alexander I and especially after the Decembrist uprising. But the very patriotism of the Russian intelligentsia of the Catherine the Great era was already recularized. "Catherine's Eagles" were inspired not so much by "Holy Russia", "the Third Rome", as by "Great Russia", the pathos of imperial construction. The very mission of the Russian Empire was understood as the affirmation of the political greatness of Russia, its transformation into an enlightened power. These cultural claims of Russia were well expressed by Lomonosov in his famous poems about the fact that "the Russian land can give birth to its own Platons and quick-minded Newtons." Lomonosov himself (1711-1767), as is known, was a brilliant scientist who, among other things, anticipated the law of conservation of matter and energy before Lavoisier. His knowledge was encyclopedic in nature, and it was not for nothing that Pushkin said about him that he not only founded the first Russian university (under Elizabeth in 1755), but was also our "first university". At the same time, Lomonosov was a religious man, although he was more of an enlightened deist than an Orthodox in spirit. But it is characteristic that he no longer saw the contradiction between science and religion. "A mathematician is wrong if he wants to measure God's will with a compass, but a theologian is also wrong if he thinks that astronomy and chemistry can be learned from the Psalter," he wrote. For him, the scientific study of nature and the Gospel are two ways of revealing the Godhead: one is external, the other is internal. In this, Lomonosov followed the tradition of the Western rationalists, Descartes and Leibniz, for whom science, philosophy, and religion do not exclude each other, but complement each other. True, here God turned into a philosophical Absolute and ceased to be the living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.