Boris Egorov. Russian utopias. Historical guide. St. Petersburg, “Art - St. Petersburg”, 2007, 415 pp.

Beranger's poem “Mad Men” (“Les Fous”), known to us from V. Kurochkin’s translation, could serve as an epigraph to those hundreds, and perhaps thousands of studies that are devoted to the problems of utopia and utopian consciousness, its role in world history. Pathetically and with anguish, the Actor recites in Gorky’s play “At the Lower Depths”:

Gentlemen, if the truth is holy
The world won't be able to find its way,
Honor the madman who inspires
Humanity has a golden dream.

The poet found the surprisingly accurate word “le fou”, which French means both a fool and a court jester who had the privilege of sometimes telling the bitter truth. Moreover, the utopian version of this “madness” embodies a whole tangle of tragic paradoxes of human existence: people cannot help but dream of a wonderful life ( best example here is Don Quixote), they bring utopia to life and are convinced that the realization of a bright dream leads to dystopia. But utopia does not die, we are all doomed to step on the rake again and again...

Hence the eternal relevance of the topic, hence the interest in the next book dedicated to this topic. Its author is a well-known person in world philological science, one of the founders of the Moscow-Tartu semiotic school, who was for many years the closest friend and colleague of Yu. M. Lotman. B.F. Egorov also works as a culturologist, see his fundamental research “Essays on the history of Russian culture of the 19th century” 1. The book about Russian utopia is a logical continuation of this work, as well as other works of the scientist devoted to Russian literature and criticism of the century before last.

Based on a large amount of factual material, B.F. Egorov draws our attention to “classical” works like “What is to be done?” Chernyshevsky and to little-known things like the encrypted utopian projects of N.V. Kukolnik or the novel “Earthly Paradise” (1903) by K.S. Merezhkovsky, the brother of the famous writer.

The scientist experienced certain (and understandable) difficulties in trying to give his own definition to the phenomenon being studied. He writes: “I<…>I expand (or narrow?) the concept and define utopia as a dream of an ideal life in any scale and volume<...> ” (italics by the author. - V.V.). “In the utopian area I include not only printed<…>texts, but also oral stories and ideas, not only works of art, but also treatises, letters, essays<…>" In our opinion, we are not talking about any “narrowing” of the concept; on the contrary, “utopia as a dream” is actually understood as a kind of “megagenre” that essentially includes any genres. Exactly any, that is, not only verbal (speech in Bakhtin’s terminology), but also picturesque (pastoral, idyllic landscapes), musical, architectural (temple as an “earthly paradise”), gardening (garden as a hortus conclusus, a minimal resemblance to Eden) . The researcher is mainly engaged in the analysis of verbal utopian genres and the personalities of their creators, but sometimes talks about the reflection of utopian themes in other areas of art.

The author understands the paradoxical connection between utopia and dystopia. He writes that even with Swift, “polemics and satire were covered up with utopia. They, filling the entire space of the work, transform utopia into dystopia(italics by the author. - V.V.). Utopia can mix with and flow into dystopia.” Here a generalization arises - almost any utopia implicitly carries its own negation, “deconstructs” itself, in the language of Jacques Derrida. If the utopia is realized and even exists for a long time, say, in the form of a rural idyll, then it is still destroyed under the influence of external aggressive forces. Dostoevsky, as shown in Egorov’s book, brilliantly and paradoxically emphasized this point in “The Dream of a Funny Man” - one “sinner” easily destroyed an entire paradise! But this only means that destructive “germs” of all kinds of passions have always lurked in the souls of the innocent inhabitants of the blissful planet.

And - vice versa - in many dystopias, elements of utopia are preserved - the Time Traveler sees in the kingdom of the Eloi the features of communism (“Time Machine” by Wells), “Beautiful new world” Huxley is truly “beautiful” with his abundance of material goods. Let us emphasize once again that a “pure” utopia per se (in itself) is, in principle, dystopian. Which is proved, not without a bit of shockingness, by Yu. I. Druzhnikov, arguing that Thomas More’s “Utopia” actually refutes the “dream of an ideal life”! 2 More himself clearly hints at the “screaming contradiction” of his text at the end of the book, when he writes on behalf of the narrator: “Many customs and laws of this people (the Utopians) immediately came to mind. V.V.), containing extreme absurdity.” Mohr hopes: “We will have time to think more deeply about this subject.”<…>It would be nice if this ever came true!” People had a chance to think “deeper” about this topic only several hundred years after the execution of the great utopian. We currently do not have the opportunity to go into a discussion of the reasons for such a “strange” (and bringing so much suffering and disappointment to people) connection between utopia and dystopia; this is the task of a special study. But one thing, in my opinion, is clear: the point is the terrible power of alienation, or, in other words, the irony of history, which, starting from the very emergence of humanity, turns its good undertakings and plans into something opposite. In addition, every utopian, willingly or unwillingly, invests in projects universal your benefits purely personal likes and dislikes that are unacceptable to the mass of people. Author's egoism fights altruism in utopias and turns them into dystopias.

Actually, almost the entire book of Boris Fedorovich Egorov, which is, as he himself writes, a “historical guide” to Russian utopias - from the most ancient up to the beginning of the twentieth century - is at the same time a clear guide to the “dismantling” of Russian utopian consciousness in all its varieties. This is a story full of drama, tragedy and not without comic episodes. The first section of the book is “Folk Legends and Attempts to Realize Utopias,” where the researcher gives an impressive overview of the most diverse folklore-mythological-literary products about heaven and hell, these “most ancient” forms of utopia and dystopia, about apocryphal tales about the Indian kingdom, Belovodye, the city of Kitezh, etc. At the same time, it was noted that our ancestors, forced to work a lot and hard, and even in conditions of dependence on the boyars and princes, developed a persistent aversion to work as such. Here it was worth referring to the magnificent article by E. N. Trubetskoy “The Other Kingdom” and its seekers in the Russian folk tale (1922), in which this outstanding religious philosopher and follower of Vl. Solovyova tries, in the spirit of theodicy, to reconcile the “Sophian” and “anti-Sophian” principles in Russian culture and life. “Just in a Russian fairy tale,” writes Trubetskoy, “sympathy for laziness and theft borders on the apotheosis of the lazy man and the thief” 3. Here the author condemns the Soviet government, which is implementing this “utopia of a slacker and a thief” 4. This folk utopia-dystopia, echoes of which we find in Plato’s “Chevengur”, according to E. N. Trubetskoy, is mixed with features of the Christian mood that permeates the fairy tale: the “secret of universal solidarity” of all life in the world, the “wise madness” of human sacrifice 5 .

Egorov says a lot about the Old Believers, Khlysty, Skoptsy, Doukhobors, who tried to defeat earthly wickedness and establish a divine life in this world. The random, but essentially symbolic roll call of two seemingly unrelated phenomena of Russian life is surprising. At the turn of the 17th - 18th centuries, Andrei Denisov, who “came from the impoverished Myshkin princes,” was famous among the Old Believers. Did the author of the novel “The Idiot” know anything about him? This is possible, because Dostoevsky was interested in the Old Believers. In any case, “almost namesakes,” the real Andrei Denisov and the literary hero, Prince Myshkin, are similar in their desire to find the truth of God in this sinful world.

Egorov's book sometimes reads like a fascinating novel of adventures - adventures of spirit and action. Before us appears a panorama of amazing events stretching through centuries, an endless gallery of heroes - brave, cunning, dexterous, smart and reckless, sometimes simply crazy, charming and repulsive. Such, for example, is the “colorful and mysterious” Pole Joseph Yelensky, who voluntarily lost his noble title, but came up with a grandiose plan to abolish serfdom, and at the same time to replace the “Mother Empress” with her son Paul on the throne. Paul received the throne without Elensky, but the latter was not at a loss and already under Alexander put forward a completely insane project of transforming the Russian state into a “religious, theocratic kingdom of eunuchs.” And for such an incredible audacity plan, he was simply exiled to a monastery. Wonderful are your works, Lord.

In general, the Russian 18th century is so saturated with utopians that it is time to call this time not only the Age of Enlightenment, but also a “fantasy” century. The tone was set by dreamer-kings and favorites like Potemkin and Zubov, “standing in a greedy crowd at the throne.” Many of their projects were implemented, but at what cost! It is difficult (and, perhaps, impossible) to say whether, for example, Peter’s reforms brought more benefit or harm. Boyar Fyodor Saltykov composed “Pronouncements profitable for the state” in 1714, in which he unfolded a grandiose plan to eliminate poverty and increase the well-being of the people. He writes a lot about the creation of libraries and the development of monumental propaganda. The projector was a peasant son, Ivan Pososhkov, who became a wealthy industrialist. In his “Book of Poverty and Wealth,” he preaches ascetic Christian norms of love and humility and condemns the “ungodly dances” introduced by Peter. Our writers were also utopians - Sumarokov, Knyazhnin, Kheraskov, Emin (Turk by origin), Radishchev and others. Moreover, each of them had their own quirks and preferences, sometimes funny, sometimes just wild. Thus, the writer and astronomer Fyodor Dmitriev-Mamonov, a distant relative of Peter the Great, in the allegorical story “The Noble Philosopher” approvingly depicts a certain ant kingdom, in which black hard-working ants consider it their highest honor to kiss the ass of their rulers. Nice utopia! However, the work also contains “softer” versions of utopias, which vaguely echo the “interplanetary” fantasies of Lucian and Cyrano de Bergerac. It’s a sad coincidence - Fyodor Dmitriev-Mamonov, like his namesake, Count Matvey Dmitriev-Mamonov (1790 - 1863), also a projector and opponent of the autocracy, were both mentally ill. At the same time, Mamonov II suffered for his attacks against the Romanov “Holsteins”: Nicholas I ordered him to be kept in custody and forcibly treated 6.

It has already been written more than once about the outstanding adventurer Maurice Benyovsky (1746 - 1786), a rebel and traveler exiled to Kamchatka, from where he fled with a group of assistants and on a captured ship reached the island of Taiwan, where he dreamed of creating the State of the Sun according to the models read from the books of More and Campanellas. Later, this dreamer built an “ideal state” already in Madagascar... As Egorov notes, these amazing deeds of the fugitive Pole begin “a sad series of Russian communist and socialist communities based on utopian plans.”

Most of B.F. Egorov’s book is devoted to Russian utopias of the 19th century, which, in terms of genre and ideological diversity, and even quantitatively surpass even the fantasies of the previous century. The artistic skill of utopian writers has grown noticeably, and new genre and thematic trends are appearing in utopian literature, for example, science fiction utopias. Attempts to practically implement utopian projects became more frequent, and here the first in the 19th century was Count Arakcheev, who carried out the “idea” of Alexander I. In the system of military settlements we find a classic example of the transition of utopia to dystopia. The count turned out to be an excellent business executive, a predecessor of the “new Russians”: he introduces Agriculture multi-field system, selection of livestock and seeds, earns crazy money and allocates a whole million rubles to the victims of the St. Petersburg flood of 1824! But he also introduces a cruel regime in his “ideal” settlements. This “projector” was branded by Saltykov-Shchedrin in the grotesque-satirical image of Gloomy-Burcheev, because of whom “history stopped flowing.”

The 19th century was a time of powerful activation of socio-political thought in Russia, which could not but affect the sphere of the “dream of an ideal life.” The rulers are doing their best to project, and the Decembrists are not far behind them. The founder of Kharkov University Vasily Karazin (1773 - 1842) turned out to be the first in Russia (and maybe in the world?) to author the idea of ​​regulating nature by controlling atmospheric electricity, which later attracted N.F. Fedorov and others. This idea was not implemented until now - yes, in my opinion, and it’s good that it did not come true, because in practice it could lead to a complete atmospheric catastrophe... Prince V.F. Odoevsky thought about the terrible consequences of radical human intervention in the structure of nature, who in one of The essays in the series “Russian Nights” (1844) depict a gigantic powder explosion splitting the globe and leading to the death of humanity. “Not even prominent authors of the 20th century reached such a dystopia,” writes B.F. Egorov.” This statement needs serious correction. As I. R. Shafarevich writes in the book “Socialism as a Phenomenon of World History” (1977), suicidal fantasies, ideas about the death of the world and its subsequent revival are characteristic of many mythologies, as well as the views of such utopians as Saint-Simon and Fourier, in the twentieth century they were picked up by G. Marcuse. Yes, and Jules Verne paid tribute to such fears in the satirical novel “Upside Down” (1889), where the heroes of a space flight around the Moon turn into crazy tycoons who want to “straighten” the earth’s axis for profit in order to change the climate and obtain unheard-of profits. Only an error in the calculations of the inventor Maston saves the globe from destruction.

The general conclusion from the wonderful book by B.F. Egorov: humanity has always dreamed and will never stop dreaming of better life on earth, and now about existence in space. And, amazingly, no matter how bitter and even terrible lessons life teaches, over and over again turning any utopia realized in practice into a dystopia, people do not learn at all from mistakes. Why? Apparently, Freud is still right: two powerful impulses of our subconscious, libido and thanatos, still subjugate the human mind, which every now and then turns into great unreason, simply into madness. Into the craving for collective all-human suicide. How else can one explain the fact that even Alexander Bogdanov, a former comrade-in-arms of Lenin, but a meek man who really wanted happiness for people, in his utopian novel “Red Star” (1908) makes the Martian communist scientist Sterni dream of exterminating all the inhabitants of the Earth!

How to stop the transformation of utopias into their opposite? Nobody knows the answer yet.

Vladimir Vakhrushev.

Balashov.

1 In the book: “From the history of Russian culture.” T. 5 (XX century). M., “Languages ​​of Russian culture”, 1996, pp. 13 - 389.

2 Druzhnikov Yu. I. The Man Who Stopped Laughing. - “Vyshgorod” (Tallinn), 2003, No. 4, pp. 142 - 165.

3 Trubetskoy E. N. “Another Kingdom” and its seekers in Russian folk tales. - “Literary studies”, 1990, No. 2, pp. 100 - 118.

4 Ibid., p. 105.

5 Ibid., pp. 106 - 108.

6 See: Lotman Yu. M. Matvey Alex. Mamonov. - “Scientific notes of the University of Tartu”. Vol. 78. Tartu, 1959, pp. 19 - 92.

1890 - the economic growth 1894 - the beginning of the reign of Nicholas the year - mass creation political parties A contradictory, anxious, crisis time. A person cannot withstand the stress, lives in a state of confusion, realizes loneliness, finds himself at the bottom of his life.

1. “You can’t kill twice” 2 “I’ll die without gasping” 3. “Here a woman is dying, her lips are already covered with earth” 4. “I’ll destroy you, devils” 5. “You have no soul, woman” 6. “Husband in a coffin, a lover in hard labor" 7. "I dream of dead people" 8. "Our nets brought a dead man" 9. "Let me at least die in peace" 10. "In Hamlet I played a gravedigger" 11. "I am tired of human words" 12 “Who loves you but the devil?” 13. “I drank away my soul, old man, I, brother, died.” 14. “Scream...roar...the dead don’t hear”

For me, not a single flea is bad. Petting a person is never harmful. Where should we feel sorry for the dead? We don't spare the living. We cannot feel sorry for ourselves. A person can teach goodness very simply. Those who seek will find! Those who really want it will find it! You just need to help them, you need to respect them!

Boris Egorov. Russian utopias. Historical guide. St. Petersburg, “Art - St. Petersburg”, 2007, 415 pp.

Beranger’s poem “The Mad Men” (“Les Fous”), known to us from V. Kurochkin’s translation, could serve as an epigraph to those hundreds, and perhaps thousands of studies that are devoted to the problems of utopia and utopian consciousness, its role in world history. Pathetically and with anguish, the Actor recites in Gorky’s play “At the Lower Depths”:

Gentlemen, if the truth is holy

The world won't be able to find its way,

Honor the madman who inspires

Humanity has a golden dream.

The poet found the surprisingly accurate word “le fou”, which in French means both a fool and a court jester who had the privilege of sometimes telling the bitter truth. Moreover, the utopian version of this “madness” embodies a whole tangle of tragic paradoxes of human existence: people cannot help but dream of a wonderful life (the best example is Don Quixote), they bring utopia to life and are convinced that the realization of a bright dream leads to dystopia. But utopia does not die, we are all doomed to step on the rake again and again...

Hence the eternal relevance of the topic, hence the interest in the next book dedicated to this topic. Its author is a well-known person in world philological science, one of the founders of the Moscow-Tartu semiotic school, who was for many years the closest friend and colleague of Yu. M. Lotman. B.F. Egorov also works as a culturologist, see his fundamental study “Essays on the history of Russian culture of the 19th century”1. The book about Russian utopia is a logical continuation of this work, as well as other works of the scientist devoted to Russian literature and criticism of the century before last.

Based on a large amount of factual material, B.F. Egorov draws our attention to “classical” works like “What is to be done?” Chernyshevsky and to little-known things like the encrypted utopian projects of N.V. Kukolnik or the novel “Earthly Paradise” (1903) by K.S. Merezhkovsky, the brother of the famous writer.

The scientist experienced certain (and understandable) difficulties in trying to give his own definition to the phenomenon being studied. He writes: “I expand (or narrow?) the concept and define utopia as a dream of an ideal life in any scale and volume<...>”(author’s italics - V.V.). “In the utopian field I include not only printed texts, but also oral stories and ideas, not only works of art, but also treatises, letters, essays.” In our opinion, we are not talking about any “narrowing” of the concept; on the contrary, “utopia as a dream” is actually understood as a kind of “megagenre” that essentially includes any genres. Exactly any, that is, not only verbal (speech in Bakhtin’s terminology), but also picturesque (pastoral, idyllic landscapes), musical, architectural (temple as an “earthly paradise”), gardening (garden as a hortus conclusus, a minimal resemblance to Eden) . The researcher is mainly engaged in the analysis of verbal utopian genres and the personalities of their creators, but sometimes talks about the reflection of utopian themes in other areas of art.

The author understands the paradoxical connection between utopia and dystopia. He writes that even with Swift, “polemics and satire were covered up with utopia. They, filling the entire space of the work, turn utopia into dystopia (author’s italics - V.V.). Utopia can mix with and flow into dystopia.” Here a generalization arises - almost any utopia implicitly carries its own negation, “deconstructs” itself, in the language of Jacques Derrida. If the utopia is realized and even exists for a long time, say, in the form of a rural idyll, then it is still destroyed under the influence of external aggressive forces. Dostoevsky, as shown in Egorov’s book, brilliantly and paradoxically emphasized this point in “The Dream of a Funny Man” - one “sinner” easily destroyed an entire paradise! But this only means that destructive “germs” of all kinds of passions have always lurked in the souls of the innocent inhabitants of the blissful planet.

And - vice versa - in many dystopias, elements of utopia are preserved - the Time Traveler sees in the kingdom of the Eloi the features of communism (“The Time Machine” by Wells), Huxley’s “Brave New World” is truly “beautiful” with an abundance of material goods. Let us emphasize once again that a “pure” utopia per se (in itself) is, in principle, dystopian. Which is proved, not without a bit of shockingness, by Yu. I. Druzhnikov, arguing that Thomas More’s “Utopia” actually refutes the “dream of an ideal life”!2 More himself clearly hints at the “screaming contradiction” of his text at the end of the book, when he writes on behalf of the narrator: “I immediately came to mind many customs and laws of this people (Utopians - V.V.), which contain extreme absurdity.” More hopes: “We will have time to think more deeply about this subject. It would be nice if this could ever come true!” People had a chance to think “deeper” about this topic only several hundred years after the execution of the great utopian. We currently do not have the opportunity to go into a discussion of the reasons for such a “strange” (and bringing so much suffering and disappointment to people) connection between utopia and dystopia; this is the task of a special study. But one thing, in my opinion, is clear: the point is the terrible power of alienation, or, in other words, the irony of history, which, starting from the very emergence of humanity, turns its good undertakings and plans into something opposite. In addition, every utopian, wittingly or unwittingly, invests in projects for the common good his own purely personal preferences and antipathies, which are unacceptable to the mass of people. Author's egoism fights altruism in utopias and turns them into dystopias.

Actually, almost the entire book of Boris Fedorovich Egorov, which is, as he himself writes, a “historical guide” to Russian utopias - from the most ancient up to the beginning of the twentieth century - is at the same time a clear guide to the “dismantling” of Russian utopian consciousness in all its varieties. This is a story full of drama, tragedy and not without comic episodes. The first section of the book is “Folk Legends and Attempts to Realize Utopias,” where the researcher gives an impressive overview of the most diverse folklore-mythological-literary products about heaven and hell, these “most ancient” forms of utopia and dystopia, about apocryphal tales about the Indian kingdom, Belovodye, the city Kitezh, etc. At the same time, it was noted that our ancestors, forced to work a lot and hard, and even in conditions of dependence on the boyars and princes, developed a persistent aversion to work as such. Here it was worth referring to the magnificent article by E. N. Trubetskoy ““The Other Kingdom” and its seekers in the Russian folk tale” (1922), in which this outstanding religious philosopher and follower of Vl. Solovyova tries, in the spirit of theodicy, to reconcile the “Sophian” and “anti-Sophian” principles in Russian culture and life. “Just in the Russian fairy tale,” writes Trubetskoy, “sympathy for laziness and theft borders on the apotheosis of the lazy man and the thief”3. Here the author condemns the Soviet government, which is implementing this “utopia of a slacker and a thief”4. This folk utopia-dystopia, echoes of which we find in Plato’s “Chevengur”, according to E. N. Trubetskoy, is mixed with features of the Christian mood that permeates the fairy tale: the “secret of universal solidarity” of all life in the world, the “wise madness” of human sacrifice5.

Egorov says a lot about the Old Believers, Khlysty, Skoptsy, Doukhobors, who tried to defeat earthly wickedness and establish a divine life in this world. The random, but essentially symbolic roll call of two seemingly unrelated phenomena of Russian life is surprising. At the turn of the 17th - 18th centuries, Andrei Denisov, who “came from the impoverished Myshkin princes,” was famous among the Old Believers. Did the author of the novel “The Idiot” know anything about him? This is possible, because Dostoevsky was interested in the Old Believers. In any case, “almost namesakes,” the real Andrei Denisov and the literary hero, Prince Myshkin, are similar in their desire to find the truth of God in this sinful world.

Egorov's book sometimes reads like a fascinating novel of adventures - adventures of spirit and action. Before us appears a panorama of amazing events stretching through centuries, an endless gallery of heroes - brave, cunning, dexterous, smart and reckless, sometimes simply crazy, charming and repulsive. Such, for example, is the “colorful and mysterious” Pole Joseph Yelensky, who voluntarily lost his noble title, but came up with a grandiose plan to abolish serfdom, and at the same time to replace the “Mother Empress” with her son Paul on the throne. Paul received the throne without Elensky, but the latter was not at a loss and already under Alexander put forward a completely insane project of transforming the Russian state into a “religious, theocratic kingdom of eunuchs.” And for such an incredible audacity plan, he was simply exiled to a monastery. Wonderful are your works, Lord.

In general, the Russian 18th century is so saturated with utopians that it is time to call this time not only the Age of Enlightenment, but also a “fantasy” century. The tone was set by dreamer-kings and favorites like Potemkin and Zubov, “standing in a greedy crowd at the throne.” Many of their projects were implemented, but at what cost! It is difficult (and, perhaps, impossible) to say whether, for example, Peter’s reforms brought more benefit or harm. Boyar Fyodor Saltykov composed “Pronouncements profitable for the state” in 1714, in which he unfolded a grandiose plan to eliminate poverty and increase the well-being of the people. He writes a lot about the creation of libraries and the development of monumental propaganda. The projector was a peasant son, Ivan Pososhkov, who became a wealthy industrialist. In his “Book of Poverty and Wealth,” he preaches ascetic Christian norms of love and humility and condemns the “ungodly dances” introduced by Peter. Our writers were also utopians - Sumarokov, Knyazhnin, Kheraskov, Emin (Turk by origin), Radishchev and others. Moreover, each of them had their own quirks and preferences, sometimes funny, sometimes just wild. Thus, the writer and astronomer Fyodor Dmitriev-Mamonov, a distant relative of Peter the Great, in the allegorical story “The Noble Philosopher” approvingly depicts a certain ant kingdom, in which black hard-working ants consider it their highest honor to kiss the ass of their rulers. Nice utopia! However, the work also contains “softer” versions of utopias, which vaguely echo the “interplanetary” fantasies of Lucian and Cyrano de Bergerac. It’s a sad coincidence - Fyodor Dmitriev-Mamonov, like his namesake, Count Matvey Dmitriev-Mamonov (1790 - 1863), also a projector and opponent of the autocracy, were both mentally ill. At the same time, Mamonov II suffered for his attacks against the Romanov “Holsteins”: Nicholas I ordered him to be kept in custody and forcibly treated6.

It has already been written more than once about the outstanding adventurer Maurice Benyovsky (1746 - 1786), a rebel and traveler exiled to Kamchatka, from where he fled with a group of assistants and on a captured ship reached the island of Taiwan, where he dreamed of creating the State of the Sun according to the models read from the books of More and Campanellas. Later, this dreamer built an “ideal state” already in Madagascar... As Egorov notes, these amazing deeds of the fugitive Pole begin “a sad series of Russian communist and socialist communities based on utopian plans.”

Most of B.F. Egorov’s book is devoted to Russian utopias of the 19th century, which, in terms of genre and ideological diversity, and even quantitatively surpass even the fantasies of the previous century. The artistic skill of utopian writers has grown noticeably, and new genre and thematic trends are appearing in utopian literature, for example, science fiction utopias. Attempts to practically implement utopian projects became more frequent, and here the first in the 19th century was Count Arakcheev, who carried out the “idea” of Alexander I. In the system of military settlements we find a classic example of the transition of utopia to dystopia. The count turned out to be an excellent business executive, the predecessor of the “new Russians”: he introduced a multi-field system, selection of livestock and seeds into agriculture, earned crazy money and allocated a whole million rubles to the victims of the St. Petersburg flood of 1824! But he also introduces a cruel regime in his “ideal” settlements. This “projector” was branded by Saltykov-Shchedrin in the grotesque-satirical image of Gloomy-Burcheev, because of whom “history stopped flowing.”

The 19th century was a time of powerful activation of socio-political thought in Russia, which could not but affect the sphere of the “dream of an ideal life.” The rulers are doing their best to project, and the Decembrists are not far behind them. The founder of Kharkov University Vasily Karazin (1773 - 1842) turned out to be the first in Russia (and maybe in the world?) to author the idea of ​​regulating nature by controlling atmospheric electricity, which later attracted N.F. Fedorov and others. This idea was not implemented until now - yes, in my opinion, and it’s good that it did not come true, because in practice it could lead to a complete atmospheric catastrophe... Prince V.F. Odoevsky thought about the terrible consequences of radical human intervention in the structure of nature, who in one of The essays in the series “Russian Nights” (1844) depict a gigantic powder explosion splitting the globe and leading to the death of humanity. “Not even prominent authors of the 20th century reached such a dystopia,” writes B.F. Egorov.” This statement needs serious correction. As I. R. Shafarevich writes in the book “Socialism as a Phenomenon of World History” (1977), suicidal fantasies, ideas about the death of the world and its subsequent revival are characteristic of many mythologies, as well as the views of such utopians as Saint-Simon and Fourier, in the twentieth century they were picked up by G. Marcuse. Yes, and Jules Verne paid tribute to such fears in the satirical novel “Upside Down” (1889), where the heroes of a space flight around the Moon turn into crazy tycoons who want to “straighten” the earth’s axis for profit in order to change the climate and obtain unheard-of profits. Only an error in the calculations of the inventor Maston saves the globe from destruction.

The general conclusion from the wonderful book by B.F. Egorov: humanity has always dreamed and will never stop dreaming of a better life on earth, and now of existence in space. And, amazingly, no matter how bitter and even terrible lessons life teaches, over and over again turning any utopia realized in practice into a dystopia, people do not learn at all from mistakes. Why? Apparently, Freud is still right: two powerful impulses of our subconscious, libido and thanatos, still subjugate the human mind, which every now and then turns into great unreason, simply into madness. Into the craving for collective all-human suicide. How else can one explain the fact that even Alexander Bogdanov, a former comrade-in-arms of Lenin, but a meek man who really wanted happiness for people, in his utopian novel “Red Star” (1908) makes the Martian communist scientist Sterni dream of exterminating all the inhabitants of the Earth!

How to stop the transformation of utopias into their opposite? Nobody knows the answer yet.

Vladimir Vakhrushev.

Balashov.

1 In the book: “From the history of Russian culture.” T. 5 (XX century). M., “Languages ​​of Russian culture”, 1996, pp. 13 - 389.

2 Druzhnikov Yu. I. The Man Who Stopped Laughing. - “Vyshgorod” (Tallinn), 2003, No. 4, pp. 142 - 165.

3 Trubetskoy E. N. “Another Kingdom” and its seekers in Russian folk tales. - “Literary studies”, 1990, No. 2, pp. 100 - 118.

4 Ibid., p. 105.

5 Ibid., pp. 106 - 108.

6 See: Lotman Yu. M. Matvey Alex. Mamonov. - “Scientific notes of the University of Tartu”. Vol. 78. Tartu, 1959, pp. 19 - 92.

Essay Gorky M. - At the bottom

Topic: - “You can’t always cure a soul with truth...” (Based on M. Gorky’s play “At the Depths.”)

Gentlemen! If the truth is holy
The world will not be able to find its way, -
Honor the madman who inspires
A golden dream for humanity!
Jean-Paul Beranger

Truth and lies... Two opposite poles, connected by an unbreakable thread. What is more necessary for a person? It's strange to ask such a question. After all, from childhood we are instilled with the concept of truth as a positive quality, and of lies as a negative quality.
In a normal situation, perhaps it is not always so important what they tell you: the truth, the truth - or they lie to you again.
And if it concerns, for example, a patient and a doctor, when the doctor has no doubt that the patient will not live to see the next day. He doesn’t know what to do: say everything to his face or remain silent and hide it. This is the eternal philosophical question. The question of truth and holy lies... This problem is also raised by M. Gorky in his play “At the Depths”.
In the 1900s, a violent outbreak broke out in Russia. economic crisis. Under the pressure of severe economic oppression, he sank to the “bottom” of life. great amount of people. In the play “At the Lower Depths” M. Gorky paints us stunning pictures of life
capitalist “bottom”, which is presented in the form of Kostylev’s flophouse.
The main conflict of the drama is the conflict in the souls of the characters, in their perception of the world, man, truth, the conflict between the real and the desired. This is where the debate about truth begins.
In an interview with a correspondent of the Petersburg newspaper, M. Gorky, touching on the problems of his play, said: “Is it necessary to take compassion to the point of using lies, like Luke? This question is not subjective, but general philosophical.” So
M. Gorky poses the problem.
Luke and Satin reflect on man, his strength, his truth, his attitude towards man: “Man is the truth.”
Onion…. With the appearance of this person in the shelter, the souls of its inhabitants become excited, their thoughts become more intense and collected. Luke is a wanderer who preaches kindness, love and respect for people. This is a person who likes to think. To him
you can’t deny the mind, it strives for truth.
Luke doesn't main character plays. He is only the compositional center of the drama around which the main conflict is built. Luke's appearance is the beginning of the play, his disappearance is the climax.
Luke is an interesting hero, causing a huge amount of controversy around him. In order to try to understand who he is, let’s turn to the author. M. Gorky himself argued that Luka is a swindler, a deceiver, and his name is Luka - “evil.”
Luka is a subtle psychologist. He immediately guesses what people need, and immediately provides them with that comforting wisdom, that fairy tale, which for the inhabitants of the shelter becomes a balm that heals all wounds. Thus, Luke does not strive to
a change in social foundations, but to lighten the cross that ordinary people bear.
Compassion is the highlight through which Luka wins the sympathy of those around him. Pity and the instillation of a false, fleeting illusion in the hopeless life of a hole, a bottom, an abyss from which one can no longer get out! Who knows, Luka understands this better than anyone!
He himself does not believe in his “truth”. And he knows that everything he said is nonsense, fiction or an impossible idea, but does he care? Does he think about the consequences of his comforting tale?
No! He's not interested! And he proves this by his disappearance. Yes! He disappears, dissolves just at the moment when the people whose heads he turned need his words, his advice, these very inventions more than anything else.
Luka, instead of gathering and uniting forces for a long and difficult struggle, on the contrary, relaxes the inhabitants of the shelter.
Each of the heroes is trying to escape. And Luke strengthened this desire of theirs. But how bitter it becomes for everyone after realizing the complete discrepancy between the social status of the heroes and their inner world.
No, people at the bottom don’t need Luke’s “truth.” It takes away the strength to fight reality in order to achieve happiness, for which man was created.
The inhabitants of the shelter are weak, they are insolvent: with the disappearance of Luke from their field of vision, their dream of a new life, kindled by the wanderer, goes away. Everything remains the same.
A completely different human type, a completely different life position is represented in the image of the tramp Satin. Satin is a fighter for justice. He went to prison because he stood up for his sister’s honor. Human injustice and years of terrible need did not embitter Satin. He sympathizes with people no less than Luke, but he does not see a way out, an alleviation of suffering in the simple consolation of people. It is in his mouth that the writer puts a monologue in defense of man and human rights:

“A person is free, he pays for everything himself.”

The image of Satin leaves a dual feeling, a feeling of contrast between high thoughts, noble aspirations and the general passive existence of the hero. He is superior to everyone in intelligence and strength of character, but still feels comfortable in the Kostylevo shelter.
What is the truth of Satin? He does not have any positive program, but, in contrast to Luke’s position, Satin resolutely and irrevocably denies lies, calling it “the religion of slaves and masters.”
So what does a person need: real truth or a comforting lie? Argue, critics! Argue, philosophers! Will you find a single answer? No, probably. Because from time immemorial people have been trying to find a solution to the problem and will continue to search for a long time...