Panchenko “I emigrated to Ancient Russia. A collection of works by academician A.M. has been published

book one hundred and eighty one

A.M. Panchenko "I emigrated to Ancient Russia"
St. Petersburg: Zvezda magazine, 2008, 544 pages.

A collection of works by Academician Panchenko, a somewhat chaotic collection - some of the articles are clearly popular, some are quite scientific - however, it is still interesting to read, he knew how to write. The book is thick, so I will limit myself to one, but the main article (in fact, a book, two and a half hundred pages) - "Russian Culture on the Eve of Peter's Reforms" (I quoted it and). And I also want to quote in pieces - it is clearly written:

The book trade is a special trade. The manuscript and the person who produces it are connected by invisible, but inseparable bonds. The creation of a book is a moral merit, and it is not for nothing that the etiquette of the scribe's self-deprecating formula includes a request to the reader for commemoration. The creation of a book befits "purity of thought" and certain ritual techniques, such as washing hands. The printing press makes all this absurd and automatically abolishes it. It is clear that typography was perceived as a sharp violation of tradition. The inanimate device pushed the person away from the book, tore the ties that connected them. It took time for a person to come to terms with this innovation, for printing to become a habit of Russian culture, its everyday life.

Here's the thing: I read this and find out my attitude to the book and the rejection of the innovation - the e-book. Well, it's hard to read from a computer screen: the screen is too big or there are not enough dots per inch - they say that the right readers with the right fonts for the eyes are not stressful. But, my God, what kind of automatic layout is obtained there! The book turns into bare text, no aesthetics for you. Yes, I heard about "Alice", but this is not a book - a toy, for some reason with Carroll's text. But something I digress - let's go back to pre-Petrine Russia.

The point is that dynamism was not and could not be the ideal of the Orthodox Middle Ages. Since a person who lived in the sphere of religious consciousness measured his thoughts and works by the measure of Christian morality, he tried to avoid fuss, appreciated "quietness, peace, the smooth beauty of people and events." XVII century, when the new began to be valued, something that had not happened before, when the ideal of a contemplative, accustomed to "thinking strongly" man, who was being replaced by an active man, was shaken. All his deeds fell on the bowls of heavenly scales. Retribution was considered inevitable, therefore it was impossible to live “with a heavy and bestial zeal”, it was impossible to rush, it was necessary to “measure seven times”. The shepherds taught the ancient Russian man to live "stiffly and expectantly", praised inertia even in public service: "Before someone comes to the earthly king first and always stays standing or sitting at the floor, waiting for the king's origin, and stagnates, and always hesitates, and so do love to be a king." "Inertness" was equal to the church ideal of goodness, grandeur and deanery. This word acquired a pejorative connotation not earlier than the middle of the 17th century, when the new began to be valued, something that had not happened before, when the ideal of a contemplative, accustomed to "thinking strongly" man, who was being replaced by an active man, was shaken.

When you read about a medieval person, the most interesting thing about him is how much his view of the world differs from the modern one. "Smooth beauty of people and events" - how! Forever would not have come up with "smooth beauty", yes. Yes, and time flowed differently:

The church year, unlike the pagan year, was not a simple repetition, but an imprint, a "renewal", an echo. Formally, this is emphasized by the fact that direct repetition in church life occurs only once in 532 years, when the full indiction expires. In this large time span, some "echoic deformation" was inevitable. [...]
It must be emphasized that "renewal" in the old Russian sense is not "innovation", not overcoming tradition, not breaking with it. This is something completely different than the "news" of Patriarch Nikon, against which the traditionalists rebelled. If we consider “renewal” as a movement, then this movement is not only forward, but also backward, a constant look back at the ideal, which is in eternity and in the past, this is an attempt to get closer to the ideal. [...]
A person could be perceived as an echo, because he was considered the image and likeness of the former characters. In the Middle Ages, their circle was closed by Orthodox associations. Baroque broke this circle - primarily due to antiquity. So, Peter I is called the “new Hercules”, “the second Jason”, “Russian Mars”, the second Jupiter the Thunderer, Perseus, the new Ulysses.
Summing up this brief digression into ancient Russian historiosophy, we can formulate its basic principle: it is not a person who owns history, but history owns a person. The cultural consequences of this idea are extremely diverse. First of all, it should be emphasized that for the Middle Ages the historical distance (when, how long ago did this happen?) is of no particular importance. Culture, from the point of view of the Middle Ages, is the sum of eternal ideas, a kind of phenomenon that has a timeless and universal meaning. Culture does not age, it has no statute of limitations.

What came to replace the ancient Russian historiosophy? If earlier history determined the fate of a person, then on the eve of Peter's reforms, a person claimed his rights to history, tried to master it. In this case, it doesn’t matter who the “new teachers” are closer to - to Aristotle, who considered time to be a measure of movement, or to the humanists, for whom time has neither beginning nor end, being both a measure and measurable. It is important that the "new teachers" proclaim the idea of ​​a single, civilized time, as if abolishing the differences between eternity and mortal existence. The event is not dependent on God; an event is just an "application" on an infinite stream of time.

But this second time is already ours. What is called "new time" or "modern". Of course, all that has been said is not new - who just did not talk about it. Here it is important for us that the same picture is formed on the material of Ancient Russia - in this it turns out to be similar to medieval Europe. Further in the text, Panchenko analyzes the "ancient" and "new" concept of the Last Judgment - for the medieval man it was located at the end of history, the modern man pushed the Last Judgment out of the scale of historical time.

As for the zealots of ancient piety, the new historiosophy, which pushed the Last Judgment into the infinite future, turned it into a mirage, this historiosophy for them just meant the real end of the world.

This explains the self-immolation of the Old Believers - if the end of the world has come, then the usual rules no longer apply, self-mortification will no longer be suicide, this is a way to leave the world of the Antichrist.

But let us return from the end of the world to culture itself, to books. Panchenko’s most heartfelt lines are devoted to literature and books, it is felt that here the author is in the sphere of not only his interests, but also his hobbies and loves:

The southern and eastern Slavs have a common and striking feature - the absence of a period of apprenticeship. They skipped this period, dispensed with the preparatory class at the school of literature. The first generation of Bulgarian writers, called upon by the will of historical fate to preserve and increase the legacy of Cyril and Methodius, created at the end of the 9th-10th centuries. a powerful layer of works of high artistic quality. It created the "golden age" of Bulgarian literature - a "golden age" that was preceded by nothing. Arguing about it, they often say the word "miracle", and they say it for good reason. Truly, this is a miracle - to make a leap from "beechless" non-existence to the very heights of verbal art. At the turn of the X-XI centuries, a miracle was repeated in Russia. It became a book country under Vladimir I Svyatoslavich. Only a quarter of a century after his death, Russian literature produced a true masterpiece: Metropolitan Hilarion's Sermon on Law and Grace, which, in terms of the level of oratorical skill, would have done honor to Basil the Great and John Chrysostom.

There are also simply curious facts in the book - for example, how an agreement was concluded with a demon:

N. N. Pokrovsky, an expert on the common people's religious consciousness, based on the materials of the Synod, restored a typical scenario for the conclusion of such agreements. Imyarek wrote on a piece of paper about his consent to sell his soul (a signature in blood is not required - they will sort it out by handwriting), wrapped a stone in paper (the stone was taken for gravity) and threw it into the mill whirlpool, where, as it seemed, evil spirits live ("in a still whirlpool devils are found").

Such is the book. What is good about history books is that you read - and almost everything is clear. Well, that is what we are talking about. It seems like such a science is not terrible - history. Misconception, however. I read mainly those historians who also know how to write, have a literary, if not gift, then at least skill. Probably, history still requires its researchers to be able to write intelligible and preferably interesting texts. But Panchenko also stands out against this background - it is as much a pleasure to read him as it is to read Milyukov. Old school, still those people.

PS. If anyone is interested, then the text of this book

Olga Sigismundovna Popova - Doctor of Art History, Professor of the Department of General History of Art, Faculty of History, Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov. One of the world's largest experts in ancient Russian and Byzantine art. In 1973 she defended her Ph.D. thesis “Art of Novgorod and Moscow in the first half of the fourteenth century, its connections with Byzantium” and in 2004 - her doctoral dissertation “Byzantine and Old Russian Miniatures”.

“I remember childhood as a continuous difficulty”

My parents are Poles, my father was generally an emigrant from Poland, and my mother is from Poles who have long lived on the territory of present-day Belarus, that is, then Eastern Poland. My father was a journalist, and my mother is a philologist, a linguist, she was even a student of Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr, she was engaged in comparative Slavic linguistics. But she didn't have to do science. Marr taught and lived in Leningrad, and my mother also lived there.

In the post-revolutionary years, a person did not choose anything, he was ordered. So my mother, having removed her from graduate school, unfortunately, was sent to some very remote Belarusian village inhabited by Poles. In Belarus at that time there were entire nests of the Polish population, because these were border areas. And there was a Polish school, in Polish. There was nothing like this in tsarist Russia, but Lenin established it right away: gymnasiums were abolished and national schools for national minorities were created. Mom was sent, of course, objections were not accepted - to teach at this school through the Komsomol youth line. She wept bitterly, but she had to go. And when she returned from there to Leningrad, her research progress was interrupted.

People of non-proletarian origin had difficulties - an abyss. And it was necessary to overcome them in some way. For example, only the children of workers and peasants could study, while children of other classes, not to mention the nobles, of course, could not. Priests - could not. Merchants - could not. And in general, they tried to hide their origin. It was contrived. Mom of noble origin, which she hid all her life. They even destroyed all the documents.

We lived in Moscow, I was born in 1938 in very special and cruel conditions. Mom was arrested as a Polish spy. The cell was full, the female cell. And the women were divided into two parts. Some believed that it was necessary to sign everything as soon as possible - all that nonsense in which everyone is accused. And some thought that it was impossible to sign anything for anything. Mom was among the last, which saved her.

They signed... After all, everyone wanted to "kill Stalin." Terror on - this was a common charge. And my mother also had an item “Polish spy”, “Pilsudski's spy”. It was so funny to her. Funny, despite the prison conditions. Where is this Piłsudski, how could she be his spy? And she told the investigator just like that: “Don’t talk nonsense, I won’t sign anything of this.”

Mom couldn’t understand why she was released from prison until “The Gulag Archipelago” appeared in samizdat, where he explained what had happened. Yezhov was shot, Beria came to power and at first gave some relief, as they liked. And a number of people, on the whole, small in relation to the general sitting mass, were released, closing their cases. Of course, those who did not confess to anything, and my mother was one of them, so she left. With me, a little one, in my arms: I was born there.

Mom was very persecuted simply because she was of Polish nationality. I remember my childhood as some kind of continuous difficulty, you know? I have no bright and joyful memories of my childhood.

When it started, in 1941, I was three years old. Until then, I don't remember anything. The war began in the summer, we lived in a rented dacha. And at that time I was in a plaster bed, because I fell off my bicycle, and they put me in plaster in order to straighten my bones. So I didn't walk.

The dacha was in Malakhovka, and I remembered a terrible roar. Something, apparently, exploded somewhere nearby, and everyone who lived in this dacha ended up in the cellar, as in a bomb shelter. We were covered with earth from the explosion, and we were torn off, but no one was hurt. I remember the feeling of a disgusting roar and catastrophe, disaster. My first impressions of life began with an explosion nearby.

My father died very quickly in the war, he died already in the fall of 1941. He died near Yelnya, where the entire army perished. It was a terribly hopeless battle. They were very poorly armed, the survivors retreated. But there were more corpses than survivors. My father was also there. I then thought for a very long time when I realized this in an adult state. After all, he may not even be buried, you understand - and who, in fact, buried these dead? Maybe he was lying there somewhere, the crows ate it, and the bones were under a bush? Then the pioneers and Komsomol members looked for such bones.

Mom stayed with me, still lying in this plaster bed, and I lay in it for three years, because the diagnosis was “bone tuberculosis of the hip joint”. My grandmother was still alive, who died later during the war. From Moscow, of course, everyone who could, left, because the Germans were getting closer and closer. And my mother decided: well, no strength, where are we going? Nowhere. And we stayed in Moscow.

There was one day when Moscow was completely empty, and the Germans were already in Fili. That is, if they were more agile and not as organized as they were, then they could break through to Moscow. But this, fortunately, did not happen. But the next day there was already a lot of resistance. This day in history is incomprehensible, it is a miracle.

War is hard for everyone. My grandmother died, I was left alone with my mother. She hung around, her passport had “Polka” written on it, and this blocked her way to work. And it was like that in life, when it was a little better, when it was completely bad. It was absolutely impossible to change this column. The war was very hard. Mom was very sick, she had tuberculosis. Why was I diagnosed with this: she had active tuberculosis, and I was a child. But mother was filled with energy, despite the physical poverty of her condition, she was a warrior, of course. Very smart, very collected. She survived - and survived.

About champignons at the Patriarchs, a communal apartment in a palazzo and captured Germans

Then I learned to walk. I was about five years old. I had thin, atrophied legs, and at first I fell all the time. But still, I am a child, all this has been replenished, and my childhood, school life has already begun.

I went to school in 1945: the war ended, and on September 1, my generation went to school. I liked learning. The school was very Soviet, and the upbringing was very Soviet. And I was brought up at home in a completely different way, because my mother did not have such an ideology. But I was careful not to talk aloud about what I hear at home.

We lived at the Patriarch's Ponds, this is my favorite place in the world, not only in Moscow. This is my home, Patricks. There passed the school, passed the university. Then I graduated from the university and came to work in the Lenin Library in the Department of Manuscripts. And all the same, "Patricks" were relatives.

Earlier, in those days, during my childhood, children walked. It is now that children do not go for walks, but go to all sorts of intellectual or sports clubs. And all the crazy parents constantly take them to one or the other end of Moscow. But then there was nothing like that, we were free-growing, wild girls and boys and spent a very good time at the Patriarch's Ponds. In winter there was a skating rink, and in summer there were boats. I just went there somehow: there is not a blade of grass, everything is licked. There were thick grasses in which we looked for mushrooms. Mushrooms grew, champignons in abundance, we brought them home.

I remember from these games on Patry, for example, such a picture. There were many German prisoners of war in Moscow, and in 1945 they built a "general's house" on the Patriarch's. It is now standing, such a beautiful one, in the old style - with columns, with lions. We all see these Germans, and they see us - children. And they call us somehow and ask for bread. They learned in Russian: “bread”. And I run home and say: “Mom, again the Germans are asking for bread. Give me some bread." Mom always gave. And not only me, others also brought them such handouts. It's unthinkable! Everyone died in the war, my dad died - and my mother gave a piece of bread to the Germans.

In general, Russians, of course, very quickly forgive and forget everything, this is typical for the Slavic tribe. We do not linger on grievances for a long time - this is a fact. The Germans were no longer treated as enemies who needed to be killed, but as unfortunates who were in trouble and were hungry here. Now modern psychology is absolutely not typical.

We lived in a house in Ermolaevsky lane: Ermolaevsky, house 17. This is a very beautiful house built at the beginning of the century, in 1908, by one of the students of the Zholtovsky school. It is in the style of Zholtovsky - with semi-columns, the so-called "colossal order". Rusticated stone clads the façade in the style of an Italian palazzo. It is engraved on the house "Moscow Architectural Society", because the architects built it for themselves. The second floor is occupied by a huge hall in the entire facade of the house. The hall where exhibitions were held at the time when the house was built. And above there were apartments, which all became communal. None of our acquaintances had any separate apartments.

There was an apartment inherited from my father: three large rooms, and three large families in them, only ours was small - we were alone with my mother. My memories are not of the apartment, but of the house. Everyone knew each other and everyone treated each other in a very human way. Mom had to leave me because she was going to work. And she left me not alone, and not even for an apartment, but for a house.

I freely walked everywhere on the stairs. For some reason, I always had a big bow on my head, so my mother liked it. And in all the apartments everyone knew me, everyone welcomed me, I knocked on someone's door, and everywhere they received me very lovingly. And they will feed, and they will give something, they will tell something good. Some apartments I even remember very well. We had "unfinished princes" - the princes Menshikov, Countess Izmailov. What does "Countess Izmailova" mean? Two God's dandelions. But they were God's dandelions from another kingdom.

There was a very human atmosphere in the house. I would be wrong if I say that this is an atmosphere of mutual assistance - everyone lived their own separate lives. Still, there was some commonality. Of course, I’m idealizing a little now, because there were people whom everyone was afraid of, and I even remember one such person very well. He lived in an apartment across the stairs. Everyone was afraid of him, because they knew that he was knocking. He often came to our apartment, asked to call by phone, because we had a phone, but he didn’t. And somehow everyone was very huddled. So the world was black and white. Then everything got mixed up. I can't say whether it's bad or good, I'm not evaluating, but simply stating the fact that the atmosphere was like that.

About the artists on Maslovka

In school, I was a humanitarian girl, it was pretty clear. I had a girlfriend who was a mathematician, I kind of existed with her. I have been reading a lot since the sixth grade. Until the sixth grade, I ran, and there was only one wind in my head. But in the transition from the fifth to the sixth grade there was a clear turning point. I suddenly stopped running, walking and began to read books. And over the summer I read the main body of the great Russian literature of the nineteenth century. She grew up right away, wised up right away. I was completely intoxicated by it all.

And another thing happened in my early life. In the early grades, when I was still stupid, for some reason my mother gave me a volume of "The History of Art" by Alexander Nikolaevich Benois. She bought this volume somewhere in a second-hand bookstore, because she did not save any of her good old books, everything was taken away from us. But Benoit's volume came to me. It was a volume that contained a piece of late Italian Renaissance and then German painting of the Middle Ages and Modern Times. I ducked and started reading.

And this is some kind of focus in my biography. I didn't understand anything. The names were ones I had never heard before. But I was mesmerized, I could not tear myself away from these pictures. I think that I then became an art critic. It was such a powerful push to the history of art.

And even then they helped my mother find a job, it was very difficult. She was taken to work in the Artists' Library. Now it is gone, it is a special fate, very sad, I mourn this library. It was located on Maslovka, where there was a town of artists, on the top floor of house number 15. It was an art library, at the heart of it, as I thought for a long time, was Stasov's library. Now I checked, this is not so, Stasov still lived in St. Petersburg, there were some other sources. But the library was very good, with old nineteenth century art books.

Mom worked the second shift, and after school I went with her to Maslovka to this library. In my life, of course, it was a big event, I loved going there. There was a big head of Michelangelo's David. And this was the house where the artists lived or had workshops, and of course they all went to the library. There was something like a club: they drew, wrote, talked there. It was very unusual in the Soviet years. Everyone painted the head of David. There was also a real skeleton standing there and creaking bones, especially when the windows were opened in the spring, I was afraid of him.

I was allowed to go everywhere, and I went between the cabinets and looked at the books that I wanted. There I leafed through old albums of the nineteenth century, they were printed in sepia, not black and white, on separate cardboard and fit into large folders. There were all the Madonnas of Raphael, there were folders with Durer, Indian albums, there were books about which I didn’t even know that such a thing happens in the world. From there, of course, my movement towards art began.

And adults - two women who worked there, one of whom is my mother, and artists who came to draw, write - of course, everyone really liked that a child with a bow walks around and looks at large albums. I couldn’t pull out the book I needed myself, I asked: “Uncle,” I said, “give me this book,” and they pulled me out onto the table. I think this is my professional art criticism starter.

Sometimes my mother used to tell me things. In general, my impulse towards art was from my mother, although she is not an art critic, she was a philologist. But nevertheless, since she got into such a library, she knew the history of art quite well. She told me about the artist Uccello and showed him battles, he has many scenes with battles, and there such spears stick up, very effectively. She told me about the sculptor Donatello. And I still remember those stories. For some reason, not about Raphael, not about Michelangelo ... Or maybe I remembered Uccello and Donatello because of the unusual plots and her stories.

Something additionally nourished me, the school was secondary, and my mother's work, books were primary. I used to get involved in art, and I started reading the great Russian literature when I was between twelve and thirteen years old. And it has a strong effect on the child, the beginning of reading. Just another life begins.

About the present university

The school swept, I always thought, "if only it would end faster." I was very fond of stones, geology, I even went to the geological circle at Moscow State University in the ninth grade, I decided to become a geologist. And I loved art very much, but there was no understanding that this could be a profession. And then I realized that I love stones for their beauty, for their appearance, and to study all this - it seemed to me that this was useless. And I chose the art history department of Moscow State University.

It was very small. Now a lot of people accept it, and it’s not so difficult to do it, but then it was difficult simply because it was very intimate. I did not immediately enter the first year, but they took me to the evening department, thank God, and then I switched to the day department. There were fifteen of us. And now they accept forty. But I ended up there anyway. And then there was the happiness of studying.

We studied on Herzen Street. House 5 and house 6 - it was a history department. I studied at the Faculty of History, our department was part of the Faculty of History. In Europe, usually the departments of art history are included in the Faculty of Philosophy, but in our country from time immemorial it has been in the Faculty of History. And in this building, very beloved by us, we spent our five years. And I was there in graduate school, and then I worked there.

And then we were expelled from there, moved to this building on Vernadsky Prospekt, in which we stayed all my life, except for the last five years, when we moved to the new building of the humanities faculties on Lomonosovsky Prospekt. We all do not like these buildings, the old generation - be it Vernadsky or Lomonosov. Barracks are barracks. And on Herzen it was crowded, but very comfortable.

We had very strong professors. The teaching staff was of a level that does not exist today. All of them were people born either at the end of the nineteenth or at the beginning of the twentieth century, European-educated people from the intelligentsia. It was a different level, I was very lucky that I found such a university. Now the university even physiognomically looks different. So I really liked the training itself, and it was of very high quality. It was ideologically broader and larger than what the university now offers, because such were people - with a different outlook, knowledgeable. Everyone knew Europe, European art.

Of course, among the professors there were also more communist-oriented, more Soviet, say, oriented. The Faculty of History, the Faculty of History, was very diverse: there were old professors, but the majority were, of course, new Soviet people, this is the ideological faculty. But our department lived a very special life of its own. My husband, Yuri Nikolaevich Popov, studied at the same time at the Faculty of Philology, there was nothing like that. There were no such professors, no such atmosphere in the department. We, the history of art, were clearly some kind of appendix. It's been holding on for a long time, they've all grown old.

My teacher is Viktor Nikitich Lazarev. He was a very prominent scholar, a world-famous specialist in Byzantine art and the Italian Renaissance. Byzantine art, I must say, he did not teach, never read such a course. He gave us a course on the Renaissance - early and high - that was his business. He possessed the same qualities as all of them, that is, a very broad outlook and high cultural content. He also possessed great correctness in relation to the image, to art, to the monument, which he taught us. Not everyone was like that, some of them choked on emotionality and allowed themselves many liberties. Viktor Nikitich never had this; he was a collected, reserved person.

I also loved then the professor who taught us antiquity, Yuri Dmitrievich Kolpinsky. He was a complex nature, he worked simultaneously at the Academy of Arts, in a completely different environment, so that he sold himself so ideologically a little, for which others, such as Lazarev, of course, did not like and despise him. But he was very talented. He lectured so well! I have never heard such lectures in my life. Thanks to him, I knew and remembered ancient Greece for the rest of my life. When for the first time in my life, and it was very late in my life, I came to Greece, I realized that I remember Kolpinsky's lectures. He created images of art equal to this art. This is a very rare gift.

Then the department was divided into two - foreign art and Russian art. But then everything was one, and at the head of everything was Professor Alexei Alexandrovich Fedorov-Davydov, also a brilliant lecturer.

It was a time when people were very afraid, now no one among the youth understands this. Therefore, a person often did not unfold in the size of his data, according to his capabilities. People were constrained, they were afraid to say an extra word, they were afraid of those who were nearby. In general, the atmosphere of fear and downtroddenness was unusually strong, what can I say. And Kolpinsky, he is also one of those people who were simply afraid. And since most of them were of “so-so origin” from the point of view of the Soviet authorities, there were many reasons for such fear.

Here is Fedorov-Davydov - a very bright person, with all my dislike for him. I did not like him, although I must admit that he was extraordinarily gifted and lectured on Russian art of the eighteenth century, and then the nineteenth century, so that I did not want to miss a single one. And if I got sick with something, for example, with the flu, I would be very sad. In general, I always grieved if I could not go to the university and listen to some lectures. We loved the university, it is typical for all of us who studied then, it was like a home for us. We loved our professors, lectures. Everyone loved art.

We lived in those years, and this is important, in an atmosphere of love for art, which I do not see at all among my students today. It's not that they don't like him - of course, everyone who came to study somehow clung to him. But they have such a functional, business-like attitude. They get a profession, then they will use it. I can't say it's bad, but it's completely different. And we were, of course, romantics. We were very romantic about art and lectures.

Here, for example, the fourth course. In the fourth year, everyone always chooses a topic for their diploma, and at the end of the fourth year, a general meeting of the course, all teachers, all students sit. Of course, everyone has already agreed with some teachers about their topics and specialization. My turn is coming, I agreed with Viktor Nikitich Lazarev that I will become his student, and my theme will be frescoes of the twelfth century in the church of St. George in Staraya Ladoga. I pronounce it all, and Fedorov-Davydov writes it down. Silently, without saying anything, does not comment in any way. And Viktor Nikitich, I must say, was afraid of the reaction. Byzantine themes did not exist then, and the old Russian was simply not good. But what happened exceeded our expectations.

Change, we all go out, pour out like peas into the corridor. Fedorov-Davydov comes out, immediately approaches me purposefully. I will never forget, I had such a big white pique collar on my dress. He takes me by the collar so a little, wanting to show that he is shaking me, and speaks loudly, everyone hears, publicly says: “What do you think, I don’t understand why you take such a topic? This is a form of rejection of the Soviet ideology for you!”

I was scared, because if someone informs further about this, it is fraught with the fact that they will not let me write a diploma, but simply kick me out. It was the spring of 1959. It didn't, but of course everyone was very impressed. Scenes like this happened from time to time. He himself, of course, thought the same as we all. “If only it all failed,” Fedorov-Davydov probably thought. But you had to be the boss.

Now young people, of course, do not understand how we lived. There was a very special atmosphere. No one went anywhere, they studied everything from pictures, mostly in black and white. There was such a healthy lantern, it was called a "camel", the boys wore it to the audience. And the big square glass slides, some of them were beaten, had cracks. They were wide, inserted into a large frame, the design went and showed on the screen. There was no color whatsoever. There were very few color books then, and they were, of course, bad from the point of view of today's printing industry. We are accustomed to, perceived black and white as a kind of convention. The colors were described by the teacher in words.

Color photographic equipment and color slides, I think, were nowhere to be found, both in Europe and here. But there people traveled everywhere. And we didn't go anywhere. The Department of Art History always has internships in the summer. Our practices are Novgorod and Pskov, Vladimir and Suzdal. Leningrad. Then we even, our course, for example, were taken in the summer to the Caucasus, to Georgia and Armenia, it was a gift of fate. Of course, no one was allowed into Europe. Therefore, we had little knowledge about real art, but a lot of fantasies.

On the romance of a generation

Western museums, the Louvre - it was the Moon. equally unavailable. But you know, an amazing thing: we loved art much more than young people today, who have access to everything. Today, excellent shooting, everyone has the most expensive digital cameras, everyone takes pictures on trips, all the museums in the world. They all drive.

Suppose I am giving a second-year course in Byzantine art. A small group comes up to me, they say: “Olga Sigismundovna, we want to say that we are now, Saturday, Sunday and plus Monday, they grab Monday, because it was some kind of National Unity Day, they say we will go to Athens ". And another boy came to me too and said: “You know, I will go to Paris. If you let me, I'll stay there. I have very good friends there, of course, it is necessary for three days, but I will stay for a week. I say: “Yes, of course, go, what are you talking about.” Well, he will miss the lectures, but he will get to Paris ...

In general, you know, I realized a long time ago that the quality of life, the prosperity of a person, a career, as everyone now says, or even the fullness of health does not necessarily contribute to intellectual development, the other side of being, the non-material one. It is difficult for me to express and I do not want to look for words for this “other side of being”. Of course, I do not want universal misfortune and poverty, not at all. I want, like any normal person, general well-being. But the abyss of pleasures of various kinds, including trips, does not increase inner interest and does not sharpen the spiritual system.

Our generation is a prime example of this. My generation is leaving, so many have already been buried. We were all poor, all powerless completely. We were not allowed anywhere, everyone was having difficulty getting information. Now press the buttons on the computer and a lot of information will come up. This was not the case, information had to be sought. And we were at the same time in a sense - I'm afraid of qualitative assessments, so that it doesn't happen that I praise myself and my generation, it's not like that - but of course, in something, sincerely, let's say, and even spiritually, - I'm a little afraid of this word, because it includes a lot, - higher. You see, higher than the possibilities of today.

My passing generation was very real, very romantic, very bright at the core. Although life was, of course, difficult.

Thaw

When the “thaw” began, the university got a little excited. We had good teachers, so there was no point in protesting against our teachers. The freshness was in the conversations. Conversations have become open and numerous, multi-component. They talked not only to each other quietly in a quiet room, but somehow even in small groups at the university. Although they were still afraid, because informers were everywhere, and everyone understood this.

By the way, my mother was fired from the library in 1949, when there was a campaign against cosmopolitanism, and of course, she would have gone to the camp as a cosmopolitan. But she was quickly fired, wishing her not to be in the public eye. For some time she was without work at all, and then she found a place in the House of Artists on Kuznetsky Most. Exhibitions were opened there, catalogs of these exhibitions were compiled, and she was engaged in this. And when the thaw began and everyone began to buzz a little, the artists, through their mother, told us, the students, to fight.

With whom they fought, it was unclear - with the dominance of Stalinism in art history. There was such a terrible figure - the president of the Academy of Arts and the director of the Institute of Art History of the Academy of Arts Kemenov. But it was not a university, it had nothing to do with us. Alpatov was, as it were, persecuted, so it was necessary to be for him. But in this way, to us, the youth, the older generation conveyed greetings, support and sympathy, the hope that the younger generation would enliven life a little. Nothing we could revive, of course. But there was a thaw.

It was an amazing day in my life that I remember reading Khrushchev's letter to the Twentieth Party Congress. That was, of course, at the level of shock. Read to everyone: in different organizations, at different faculties. There was an order from Khrushchev for everyone to familiarize themselves. And we were all placed in the history department in a large, large hall, reading took several hours. And the daughter of Poskrebyshev, Stalin's personal secretary, studied with us in the group, who in this letter was very cursed by Khrushchev and mixed with slop, which, of course, is correct. Natasha Poskrebysheva was a stupid but good girl, she studied in our group. We even felt sorry for her, but what to do, the name of Poskrebyshev sounded.

But when this letter was read in the House of Artists, and terrible passions, terrible facts are described there, my mother became ill, she lost consciousness. And they interrupted the reading of the letter, brought her to her senses, and only then continued. She felt bad because she had reasons for this.

This is how we lived in the Soviet era. Survived. Look, the whole country has survived. Survived, despite such a monstrous test in the form of Soviet power, which was given to the Russian tribe.

Emigration from Russia to Byzantium

We were all distributed, it was impossible to go to work wherever you wanted. And I was assigned - it was a very high appointment - to lead excursions to the Pushkin Museum. And I really didn't like it. I left there, pretended that I had a sore throat, got some kind of medical certificate, and left. Not because the museum is bad, it is very good, but because I was attracted to another world, the ancient Russian one. And I began to look for a job and, fortunately, I found it unexpectedly, and very extraordinary. I went to work in the department of manuscripts of the Lenin Library. I learned about such a place quite by accident from a housemate who had my future boss as a friend.

I came to Pashkov's house and was completely fascinated. Around on the shelves stood and lay in piles of huge manuscripts. It was felt that there was an atmosphere of some special life there, which was completely non-standard for Soviet Moscow. I was assigned to the “ancient” group, where there were two philologists, a historian, a paleographer, a linguist, and myself as an art critic. I was a girl with a scythe right after university, and everyone was very learned people. I didn’t know anything, I just never saw any manuscripts. It was difficult for me to get through the personnel department, I was almost hacked to death because of the Polish nationality. They asked for a long time where my relatives were in Poland, so that I would confess. So they said: "confess." But still they took it.

I worked in the Lenin Library for five years. It was happiness. I learned a lot of things there, and still the manuscripts are my love. I learned a lot there, not only art history. Well, she got out of it later. There were almost no Greek manuscripts.

I wanted to go to graduate school, but it was impossible. I came to this very killer Fedorov-Davydov and said that I would very much like to study the ancient Russian topic in graduate school, Viktor Nikitich Lazarev agrees. He looked at me and said: “Well, you understand, your topic is completely irrelevant. Old Russian art in graduate school, we can not. Refusal. And then a remarkable event happened for me: Viktor Nikitich, who could no longer tolerate this Fedorov-Davydov and this general department, and he was on very good terms with the rector, arranged a division into two departments. And there was a department of foreign art, and my Lazarev was already at its head, and I came to graduate school in 1965, five years after graduating from the university.

By that time, I had already oriented myself: not purely Russia or Byzantium, but the connections of Russian art with Byzantine art. This really interested me, I wrote a lot of papers on this topic. But in order to be in graduate school, I had to leave the department of manuscripts of the Lenin Library. It was a very difficult moment, I was condemned there as a traitor. Quite seriously, the team condemned. My boss, Ilya Mikhailovich Kudryavtsev, a very formidable man, with a club, said: "The sailors do not leave the ship." And I was that "sailor" who betrayed the ship in order to transfer to another, more convenient for me. Kudryavtsev pounded with his fist and club, but I still left.

And then Viktor Nikitich, who did a lot for me in general, created a course in Byzantine art. Previously, Byzantium was in the form of several lectures given by a referent member of the Central Committee of the party Polevoy. But Viktor Nikitich created a long semester course on Byzantine art and left me to teach this course at the university. And this turned me, my ship, my sail from Ancient Russia towards the center, towards Byzantium. In a way, I emigrated from Ancient Russia to Constantinople. And very satisfied with it. I myself am Byzantine by nature, I am central, I love metropolitan Byzantine art in its highest versions.

Then there was a time when Viktor Nikitich slipped me another big deal. My colleague and friend in the department, Ksenia Mikhailovna Muratova, taught a course on the Western Middle Ages in parallel with me. In the early seventies, she fled Moscow to the West: she married an Italian and left forever, now she lives in Paris. And the course of the art of the Middle Ages remained an orphan. And Viktor Nikitich offered me to read it.

I have always been very fond of the Western Middle Ages, but I was not a specialist, I did not have the necessary preparedness. I took this course and read both Byzantium and the Middle Ages for a very long time in parallel. For the Middle Ages, I did only this for a year, I read an abyss of books on the Middle Ages, I prepared myself. This is also a very important page of my biography. So I was in a rare position. There is no such thing anywhere, I must say, in the world, this is not accepted. In universities, a specialist in either medieval Europe or Byzantium, this is rarely combined. There was another Greek, he has now died, who taught both courses in Canada and then in Greece. In general, this is not accepted.

I am a Byzantine to the marrow in my original devotion to Byzantium, but I also love the West very much. I am not one of those who say that the truth is only in Orthodoxy. For me, the two Christian worlds - Orthodoxy and Catholicism - exist on an equal footing, and only together they give completeness. Then, with age, it all became a big overload. And I gave the course of the Western Middle Ages to a young man. He is now a medievalist, and I am a Byzantine.

About the KGB and national art

I am not a preacher, but a scientist, so there was no such active preaching beginning. But I never looked for the Aesopian language. Previously, a lot of foreign people went to listen to lectures. There was such a sensation in Moscow: the great Byzantine course. And one of those present once said to me: “You know, Olga Sigismundovna, I must tell you, there is a man sitting here who is a full-time KGB officer.” He showed me this man. He went regularly to all the lectures, this KGB officer.

And I thought: so what, let him sit. A little, of course, jarred me. I told my mom at home, she says: “Fine. Let them sit and write. You, I hope, there do not call for something? Towards an armed uprising against Soviet power?” I say "No". She says, “It's all right. Let them listen, why not? Well, he walked, maybe he was interested, I don't know.

I do not think that under the Soviet regime there was a danger in Byzantine lectures and sermons, no. And the government didn't see it that way either. It's kind of a creepy old thing. Old Russian is even a little worse, because it is a national soil. For example, there was also such a plot. After all, at first I read Byzantium and Ancient Russia, then I left Old Russian art. And these lectures were attended by people from the Rublev Museum.

After a while, Viktor Nikitich says to me: “You know, Olya, be careful, because Polevoy, this is the Central Committee assistant, has already reported to me that you are presenting ancient Russian art as dependent on Byzantium.” I say: "Viktor Nikitich, but this is how it really is." He says: “Of course, but you can’t say that. It must be emphasized that this is all special, national.” I say: “How do you know this, and how does Polevoy know this?” “And he,” he says, “was told in the Rublev Museum by those who heard your lectures.”

The interpretation was very vicious. Then everyone understood that it was all dangerous, so the people who presented it in this light, of course, understood that they were putting me at risk. And then Viktor Nikitich called the activist from the Rublev Museum on the phone and told her firmly, as it should.

About the Church

In general, I believe that life is a gift. A gift given to all of us for some reason. Life is very interesting. And, in general, fine, if not a prison. Here the prison, of course, turns everything upside down.

At school and as a student, I was an unbeliever. Mom was a Catholic by birth, and at first, when she settled in Moscow, she went to the church. Moreover, my grandmother was alive, and my grandmother, of course, was very religious. She was very quickly summoned to the KGB and asked which Western power she was an agent of.

Who came to the church? Any foreigners. Well, partly Russian, there were old Russified Polish grandmothers, such as my grandmother, for example. Why did the young woman come to the church? So she's an agent, somebody's agent. She got off, but she never went to church again, of course, never, it made a very strong impression. Especially since she had such a flawed past. My grandmother was generally imprisoned in some 1938 for, as they put it, religious propaganda. Of course, she did not conduct any propaganda, but simply a lot of Polish and Latin church books were found at her house - that was enough.

Mom, perhaps, believed in God, because if there was some kind of trouble, I fell ill, for example, she began to quickly read Polish prayers, asking God for recovery. But in general, she was absolutely not a church person, just like my teacher Viktor Nikitich Lazarev. In the department of manuscripts there were church books, I was surrounded by written objects related to church tradition. True, the people were unbelievers, this whole “ancient group” of mine, and even the actively unbelieving boss - Yuri Mikhailovich Kudryavtsev. His father was a priest in Fili, so he hated the church, which happens to the children of priests.

But I remember the first time something happened to me. I was in Leningrad, then Leningrad, on a business trip from the Department of Manuscripts. There I had my own circle of acquaintances, and we went on a day off to the grave of Akhmatova. And before that we stopped at Pargolovo, Leningraders wanted to show me that restaurant on the shore of a huge lake, where Blok wrote The Stranger. And in Pargolovo there was a small church - I don’t know if it has survived now or not, where the service was going on. This is obviously 1962 or 1963.

We went in, and there was an audience in this church, about five people, all of them were believers, but I was not. I don't know what happened, I don't understand it. But some special bright feeling came over me, something called enlightenment. I stood in this church, nothing special seemed to happen, the usual service. But I felt a surge of extraordinary light forces and some kind of spiritual delight, I flew straight. And she cried a lot, tears poured themselves - not from grief, but from joy. And then I realized that it was a religious feeling, the acceptance of a world that I did not know. It happened for me in this way, in the form of an extraordinary instant illumination.

I experienced a similar feeling and similar tears one more time in Moscow, in the Church of All Who Sorrow Joy, near the Novokuznetskaya metro station, there, too, this happened to me at one of the services. I did not attach any importance to this, but something in my soul had changed. Before, I even ran to church as a schoolgirl to light a candle to God, especially in the spring, when my mother had exacerbations of tuberculosis. And then I ran to the temple and put candles, quite childishly. And then I realized something like that and began to go to church sometimes. Always went to Easter.

My husband Yuri Nikolayevich was a believer since childhood, but he did not impose anything on me. Then we started walking together. Further more, then we met a priest with whom we were very friends, Father Nikolai Vedernikov. Now he is alive, but very old already.

I wasn't baptized, that's the thing. How can I be baptized? The family is Catholic, but we live in an Orthodox country. Mom didn't want to, and besides, how to baptize? Carrying a child to church or bringing a girl was very dangerous, everyone tried to avoid this. All the more, she with its such a past. And I was baptized at home, my friends helped me with this. I was baptized by my Buevsky friends in 1971 or 1972.

Already Yuri Nikolayevich and I baptized the Averintsevs with Father Nikolai Vedernikov, with whom we were very friendly. That was the story of entering the church.

I do not believe that there was no information at the history department that I go to church. Knocked all around everyone at everyone. But in general, I behaved quietly, I did not protest about it.

I have never been an atheist. Therefore, my lectures and what I wrote always contained an element of great gratitude, devotion to this world.

But a very strong outburst of religious feeling, which really influenced everything that I write and everything that I say, happened in the nineties. Because my son died in 1990. And I became very religious-church. And verbally too.

All the colleagues around me understood that something had happened to me related to an event in my personal life. But everyone looked favorably, because the origins were clear. And my writings have taken on a special hue. Well, let's say, there was an article about Sergius of Radonezh and the icons of his circle, of course, very ecclesiastical, unnecessarily ecclesiastical. Later I reprinted it in a collection of articles, removed some verbiage, which seemed to me already superfluous. But it was such an impulse of the soul under the influence of the events of life. I was looking for a way out and salvation in this.

About the first meeting with the Parthenon

I'll tell you a little funny real case. It was not my first trip abroad, but the first time to Greece. We went with a large Russian team to a conference on the island of Crete, the Cretan leaders staged a huge exhibition of post-Byzantine icons there. Not in Byzantine times, but after, when the Turks captured Byzantium in the middle of the fifteenth century, Greek artists from Constantinople went to emigration to Crete, so a whole school of icon painting was formed in Crete, and a lot of icons were created at the end of the fifteenth, in the sixteenth century. They arranged an exhibition of such icons, and I was also invited.

There were a lot of people from Russia, because the icons came from here, from all the museums. I said: “I can’t about post-Byzantine art, I can’t. I don’t get into it, it’s not my love - post-Byzantine art.” And then the organizers of the exhibition, the Cretans, the Greeks, said to me: “Well, everyone will talk about post-Byzantine art, and we allow you alone to talk about late Byzantine art.” And I went with a report about Theophan the Greek.

We flew to Athens, and from Athens we had to fly to Crete at night by a local plane. It was evening and there was some time to see Athens. And the four of us got into a trolleybus and drove somewhere in Athens. And suddenly I saw the Acropolis outside the window. I saw a living real Acropolis! And the Parthenon stands. Not in the picture, but all marble, alive! And I, with a cry of “Acropolis! Let's go!" at the stop, the first of the four of us rushed down to the sidewalk, and I was already with a stick, leaving my bag in the trolley bus. Three behind me. We went to the Acropolis. Without a bag. I didn't even realize that I had left my bag. The trolleybus has left, the Acropolis is in front of us. You can’t climb on it, because it’s late, in the evening, but here it is. Happiness is complete. I'm completely blown away by this.

The happiness was strong, but fleeting, because at night everyone would fly to Crete, except for me. In general, all my belongings are in the bag: tickets to Crete, around Greece, back to Moscow, passport, all documents and all photographic equipment, which was very good at that time. Everyone, I am nobody, I am nobody at all.

And we split up. Volodya Sarabyanov went to look for something, we are two elderly ladies waiting at the bus stop for the trolley bus to make a circle and return here. In all passing trolleybuses, firstly, we hope to recognize the driver, and secondly, to ask where is the one in which we left the bag. Ahoy situation, of course, absolutely. The situation was saved by Olga Etingoff. She somehow realized that she had to go to the police. And I found out that there is such a round-the-clock police that deals with foreigners, and they speak excellent English there.

The police found out that this trolleybus would not come to the stop, because it had run out of flights, and it would rest until the morning. And Olya grabbed a taxi and rushed to the lodging for the night trolleybuses. Yes, the police warned: you can’t wake up the driver. His sleep, his rest is sacred. He's sleeping tonight, you can't wake him up. She rushed to where all the sleeping trolleybuses stand and prayed, apparently, told the story to those who were on duty there - and they opened it. They opened it, the bag was untouched.

A big leather bag, made of thin leather, swollen with things. Now think about how long this lonely bag full of beautiful goods would have stood in our trolleybus? Olya grabbed this bag and rushed to the airport already. And we arrived there sadly - there were no mobile phones, and I did not know that the bag was found. I have already worked out a plan for myself that I will go to the Greek Patriarchate to surrender. I will say that this way and that, I am Russian, Orthodox, I got into such a bind: there are no documents, no money, nothing, and all my colleagues are in Crete. I don't think they'll kick me out. But it wasn't necessary, fortunately.

That's how I first saw what I was taught at the university. I was in a state of shock, just shock, of course. At the same time, I shouted at the whole trolley bus that the Parthenon.

Interviewed by Ksenia Luchenko

Photo by Evgeny Globenko

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The Zvezda Publishing House published a collection of works by Academician A.M. Panchenko “I emigrated to Ancient Russia. Russia: History and Culture.

Academician Alexander Mikhailovich Panchenko (1937-2002) - an outstanding Russian philologist, researcher of Russian literature and culture at the turn of the Middle Ages and the New Age, author of 350 scientific papers and publications, laureate of the State Prize of Russia. Scientific biography of A.M. Panchenko was fully associated with the Pushkin House, where he worked for over 40 years.

The works of this outstanding researcher are mostly devoted to literature and culture of the late Russian Middle Ages and the Petrine era. The choice of this scientific profile was directly related to the social and cultural conditions under which in the early 1950s. there was an entry of the future scientist into life and science, and which required the search for spiritual asylum and shelter, what he would later call "the forced separation of man from history." “The one who hid well lived well,” this reminiscence from Epicurus, as well as from Stefan Yavorsky’s letter to Dimitry Rostovsky, often appeared on the lips of A. Panchenko, explaining his attitude to the occupations of Ancient Russia as a way to escape from the social hardships of our time. Ancient Russia, according to him, turned out to be a beautiful and saving country.

This publication is a collection of works of the academician, which are devoted to the issues of history, philology and cultural studies. With special attention, the scientist examines those pages of Russian history that depict the most difficult, turning points in the fate of our country.

The book will be of interest to a wide range of readers and anyone who studies the history of Russian culture.

"Orthodox book" / Patriarchy.ru