The incarnations of the Antichrist are not exhausted by the boundaries of a particular person. For commenting on the historical presence of the Antichrist in the world, the contour scale of his incarnations is not so important at all. In a maddened mob or an ambitious dictator, a labor army or a camp empire, in a senseless war or a "general crisis of the nation"—in each of these cases we are dealing with the disintegration of the individual and with the transformation of a people into a conglomerate of massoid beings. In the audience of bullfights and auto-da-fé; in the fans at the stadium and in the enthusiasts at the rally; in the inhabitants of the soldiers' barracks and the convict barracks; in flocks of bored teenagers and in a store queue; in the station crowd and in the smoke of a communal apartment; in the souls and bodies of those who make up the super-large audiences of radio and television communication — in all these topoi of mass behavior, the anti-miracle of the birth of the Antichrist takes place; the impersonal spirit of collective possession [we digress here from the distinction between the crowd, the public, and the collective, proposed in the studies of J. Ortega y Gaceta, "The Revolt of the Masses" (1930) and E. Canetti, "The Mass and Power" (1960)].

When a person loses face, self-control, and personal will in a crowd, it means that in the huge, many-armed, and many-headed body, the masses exhibit a Common He-face: the thousand-eyed Argus, the thousand-mouthed source of choral shouting. Such an ant creature is not capable of creativity. Even when it digs canals and levees dams in obedience to an external will, its work remains a mimicry of inspiration, and its results are insignificant and useless. There is no place for creativity, since activity is carried out in the absence of a volitional choice of decisions; it is not inspired, but provoked by the slogan rhetoric of motivation. It is a desperate cyclopean impulse made under the pressure of an extreme (often far-fetched) necessity, which is vaguely recognized by the executors as a condition for survival. The moment of self-consciousness in such a titanic Hive Being is absent, because there is no organ of self-consciousness. The creative rhythm is imitated by the drum of the mode and the simple rhetoric of the summoning.

Mass consciousness is the anthropological synopsis of the Antichrist, explicitly unfolded on the scale of the nation. This Antichrist, scattered in impersonal and de-willed bodies, is sure to "gather" in someone's personal consciousness (leader, tyrant, ideologist). Let us allow ourselves not the best analogy: isn't it the same way that the reader of the novel "collects" his personality in communication with its characters and the author, becoming the master of the meaning of the text, which has finally taken place in the reader's consciousness and within the framework of the "I" of its owner?

The historical personifications of the Antichrist are vampnrically nourished by the sight, touch, fear and ecstatic love (the inversion of the "Fear of God") of the units of the ant Body that have given themselves to him. In the world of independent personalities, the Antichrist is lonely, surrounded by demons, he is bored, as he is bored with loneliness in the world of mirrors. From the crowd that gave birth to the personal Antichrist, each pair of eyes of the thousand-eyed Argus-Body lustfully contemplates its Antichrist, seeing in him the best version of its own unfulfilled personality.

The reason for the historical continuity of the generation of Antichrists by the Crowd is that the experience of dumbing down one generation does not serve as a lesson for the next. The memory of an anthill is discrete, it indifferently accepts as authentic pictures of the past fabricated for it. The Antichrist is a chronophage and a devourer of the past. The eschatological tension of the historical process is its native element, but it is experienced by the "man of lawlessness" not as a problem (for the true creators of history, eschatology is the problem of the meaning of history), but as a necrotic ousting from the world of its materiality and dense materiality. The future of the Antichrist is an ontological veil, a vertical plane behind which there is nothing, there are the backstage of the world, behind them the garbage of the previous scenery has accumulated. All the wealth of the Antichrist is in this rubbish, this is the wealth of the dead, the collector and guardian of the undead. The Antichrist is an ontological Plyushkin, the lord of dust and a symbol of the lower entropy of the Cosmos.

In the same way, in the socio-historical sphere, the Antichrist guards the crisis states of society and stands at the gates of human despair. Possessed by the Antichrist, man begins a struggle with the Good as a principle of ethical equality in the good. If the Good is the dangerous truth of an adequate world, then I do not want such an adequate Good and a dangerous common "truth" – so think Dostoevsky's "paradoxists". Individualism carries the evil of personal righteousness, which in a strange way becomes a source of power (in Evil there is a cosmic alternative to knowledge about the world – such that no one knows except the evil and powerful). In Evil, humanity and its institutions differ, and in it is the principle of distinguishing individual wills. Good does not have national forms, but the evil principle of the nation expresses itself in specific forms (cruelty, for example). Good is not an alternative, it is effective, and in this sense it is unrealizable or dead, like any result. Evil is ambivalent and inventive. Equality in Evil generates a sense of place. The consolidation of people in the face of danger" is possible only in a hierarchical world, N. Berdyaev, who was convinced of the freedom of World Evil as a condition of universal freedom, insisted on this idea. Unusual, outwardly unmotivated actions of evil people towards their neighbors are driven by a feeling of vindictive equalization: if I feel bad, let everyone feel bad. On the sublimation of the feeling of revenge grew the entire sentinel demonology of punishment and retribution. When everyone is unhappy, the measure of unhappiness (the boundary bar of the last sorrow) is pushed back into the indefinite future, and the present is evaluated as good.

Good is absolute, Evil is relative. In striving to become universal, Evil wants to coincide with the ontological contours of Good; when it succeeds, it is annihilated in its own abundance and becomes its opposite, the Good. This is the meaning of Tyutchev's theme of erotic suicide; a similar context is revealed by the words JI. Karsavin's remark that "to love is always violence, always the thirst for the death of the beloved in me" [47], or the remark of the hero, the bearer of the Antichrist consciousness, from A. Remizov's novel "The Pond": "You hate me with all your heart, hate me with all your soul, kill me, and love will come" [48].

On the "inherently evil in human nature" the phantom of the Antichrist is erected. The collective evil will that takes hold of the crowd is the real source of energy that sustained the forces of antichrists like Mao, Stalin, Trotsky, Pol Pot. The term "noosphere" arose from theological ideas about good humanity. But it is opposed by a much more powerful energy of universal Evil (the socialized Antichrist). The Antichrist is the counter-osphere monster of the socially evil in society and history. His orientation towards the possession of the whole world is specifically reflected by Saltykov-Shchedrin (a writer extremely sensitive to the historical presence of the Antichrist, as D. Andreev has shown). His Judas, the dark genius of acquisitiveness, in ecstatic visions of universal power (the whole world is his estate) feels wings growing behind his back. Pobedonostsev's "owl wings" stretched out over Russia are this Blok's image from the same series.

The ambivalence of Evil found its profound analysis in M. M. Bakhtin's book The Work of Rabelais and the Folk Culture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Moscow, 1965). A. F. Losev, who called Rabelais's novel a phenomenon of "satanic realism" (his laughter is also "satanic"), was not too far from the truth. From E. Mapy's book "Witchcraft" we have recently learned about Ernest Crowley (1875-1947), the founder of the orgiastic sect of the Satanails. In 1920, he organized the "Abbey of Thelema" in Sicily. His letters, like Nietzsche, he signed: "Antichrist." Let us recall that the image of the Abbey of Theleme (a society of humanists-anarchists with the motto "Do what you want!") — in the center of Rabelais's utopia.

Одна из центральных ролей Антихриста — быть объектом социального страха. С ним связана мифология государственной власти и ее носителей. Античеловечность государства–Левиафана выражается в его безличной множественности, т. е. в специфично бесовском атрибуте. Антихрист — всего лишь чиновник Люцифера и бюрократический послушник Сатаны. Антихрист стабильно проецируется на сущность властных структур и на персонажей высшей власти: царя и церковного иерарха. Страх перед деревенским колдуном (его положено бояться и уважать) перенесен на страх перед попом (он хоть и ближе к Богу, а все же встреча с ним на дороге не сулит хорошего). Сакральная санкция, определяющая неотмирность священника, приближает его, по логике мирского сознания, и к знанию темных пределов мира! Церковь — популярное место обитания нечисти. Священник до начала XX в. — проводник решений государственных властей, сплошь неправедных. Отсюда и порча веры, которой бежали старообрядцы. Внецерковная и внегосударственная вера — это вера, свободная от внушений Антихриста. По иронии ситуации, ереси сатана ил ов, хлыстов и чернобожников родились за церковной оградой.

Страх социально–природен; его механизм чрезвычайно древен и связан с множеством реликтовых, атавистических и бессознательных привычек. Он неискореним до конца и, как регулятор поведения, внедрен во все планы человеческой деятельности. Героизм и подвижничество могут быть описаны как архаические сублимации страха, а культура — как сублимация стыда. Стыд страха и страх стыда вывели человека из «естественного состояния» в мир культуры и творчества. Смех защитил его от страшного и ужасного. Ирония эстетизировала кошмар жизни. Остроумие и парадокс развенчали пугающую важность и ложную значительность. «Обезьяной Бога» назвало дьявола христианство.<…>Дьявол, названный обезьяной, перестает быть чем‑то невыносимо страшным, ибо смех подтачивает его силы.<…>Если дьявол — обезьяна Бога, то Антихрист — обезьяна Христа» [50]. Антихрист — гротескное существо, над ним можно смеяться, но его исторические явления катастрофичны и непререкаемо неизбежны. Да, он карикатура Христа, гений интеллектуального плебейства, Божий Хам и Балда Божья. Но он, последний враг, одолеваемый пред искупительным финалом дольней истории, знаменует апофатическую надежду бессмертия. В Антихристе сосредоточен ужас перед Страшным Судом и последним испытанием, страх смерти второй и неисследимой тьмы Геенны. Тоской небытия веет от Антихриста, необъятной пустотой бесконечного одиночества, ледяным отчаянием тлена, гниения и смерти. Вся мстительная ненависть к живому собрана в нем. В черных лучах его Вселенная и человек в ней предстают глупой шуткой и онтологическим маскарадом. Безнадежность тупика (у Достоевского образ вечности: угол бани, затканный пауками), слепое кружение миров в серой мгле мировой бессмыслицы — вот что стоит за Антихристом, сыном погибели и воплощенным страхом Ничто.

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Несколько слов о национальном характере Антихриста. Этот аспект может показаться неожиданным: о каких качествах можно говорить применительно к персонажу, чья задача — перечеркнуть Всякую качественность? И что в нем может быть «национального» при отсутствии минимального контрастного фона или на фоне общехристианской традиции? Насколько правомочен особый статус отечественного образа Антихриста? Наш ответ на все три вопроса будет примерно следующий:

а) прояснить суть национального характера весьма затруднительно в режиме автоописания. Для этого нужен взгляд иностранца, на худой конец — эмигранта (см. опыт такого рода текстов — от А. Герцена до Н. Лосского). Но внутри национальной культуры работают механизмы «остранненного» метаописания, которое является экзотическим в пределах своего языка и манер мировосприятия. Эти механизмы могут работать, выполняя функции самосознания культуры, в сфере коллективного творчества (эклектическая субкультура русского масонства), в форме экстремального отрицания обыденного (исихазм, юродство, «уходы»), в виде восприятия своего как чужого (П. Чаадаев) или чужого как своего (А. Пушкин);