Modern Russian communities: state and prospects. Where do most Russians live abroad

According to various estimates, the Russian-speaking diaspora in the world numbers from 25 to 30 million people. But it is extremely difficult to accurately calculate the number of Russians living in various countries, since the very definition of “Russian” is unclear.

When we talk about the Russian diaspora, we involuntarily return to the rhetorical question - who should be considered Russians: are they exclusively Russians, or are they joined by citizens of the former republics of the USSR, or do they also include descendants of immigrants from the Russian Empire?

If only immigrants from the Russian Federation are counted as Russians abroad, then no less questions will arise, since representatives of numerous nationalities living in Russia will fall into their number.

Using the term "Russian" as an ethnonym, we are faced with the problem of national identity, on the one hand, and integration and assimilation, on the other hand. For example, today's descendant of immigrants from the Russian Empire living in France may feel Russian, and those born in a family of immigrants in the 1980s, on the contrary, will call themselves a full-fledged Frenchman.

Given the vagueness of the term "Russian diaspora" and the not yet well-established concept of "Russian diaspora", another phrase is often used - "Russian-speaking diaspora", which includes those for whom the Russian language is a unifying principle. However, this is not without controversy. For example, according to 2008 data, about 3 million US residents declared their Russian origin, but only 706,000 Americans speak Russian as their native language.

Germany

The Russian-speaking diaspora in Germany is considered the largest in Europe. Taking into account various data, on average it is 3.7 million people, most of which are Russian Germans. In families that arrived in Germany 15-20 years ago, Russian is still the native language, although some of the immigrants use a mixture of Russian and German, and only a few are fluent in German. It is curious that there are cases when settlers who have already begun to use the German language, again return to the more familiar Russian speech.
Now, in every major city in Germany, Russian shops, restaurants, travel agencies are open, there are even Russian-speaking law firms and medical institutions. The largest Russian communities are concentrated in Berlin, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Frankfurt am Main. However, the largest concentration of the Russian-speaking population is in Baden-Württemberg.

Argentina

The largest Russian diaspora in South America is located in Argentina. According to unofficial data, its number reaches 300 thousand people, of which about 100 thousand speak Russian to one degree or another.
Historians count 5 waves of emigration from Russia to Argentina. If the first was "Jewish", the second - "German", then the last three are called "Russian". The waves of "Russian emigration" coincided with the turning points in the history of Russia - the revolution of 1905, the civil war and perestroika.
At the beginning of the 20th century, many Cossacks and Old Believers left Russia for Argentina. Their compact settlements still exist. A large colony of Old Believers is located in Choele-Choele. Preserving the traditional way of life, Old Believer families still have an average of 8 children. The largest colony of Cossacks is located in the suburbs of Buenos Aires - Schwarzbald and consists of two settlements.
Russian Argentines carefully preserve the cultural connection with their historical homeland. Thus, the Institute of Russian Culture operates in the capital. There are also radio stations in Argentina that broadcast exclusively Russian music - Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev.

USA

According to experts, Russian is the seventh most widely spoken language in the United States. The Russian-speaking population grew unevenly in the country: the last and most powerful wave of emigration to the United States swept the republics of the USSR at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s. If in 1990 the American authorities numbered about 750 thousand Russians, today their number exceeds 3 million people. Since 1990, a quota has been introduced for citizens of the USSR - no more than 60 thousand immigrants a year.
It should be noted that in the USA it is customary to call “Russians” all those who came here from the CIS countries and have different ethnic roots - Russian, Ukrainian, Jewish, Kazakh. Here, as nowhere else, the duality of the situation is manifested, when ethnic identification and native language do not mean the same thing.
Numerous Russian-speaking diaspora is located in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Houston. But still, most immigrants prefer to settle in New York, where to a large extent the connection with Russian history, tradition and culture has been preserved.

Israel

It is not known how many representatives of the Russian-speaking diaspora would be in Israel now, if at the turn of the 1980-90s the US government had not convinced the Israeli authorities to accept the main flow of immigrants from the USSR. The Soviet leadership also contributed to this process by facilitating the repatriation of Jews to Israel.
In the first two years, about 200 thousand immigrants from the USSR arrived in Israel, but by the beginning of the 21st century, the number of emigrants from Russia had decreased to 20 thousand people a year.
Today, the Russian-speaking diaspora in Israel numbers about 1.1 million people - approximately 15% of the country's population. This is the second national minority after the Arabs. The diaspora is predominantly represented by Jews - there are no more than 70 thousand ethnic Russians in it.

Latvia

Latvia can be called a country where Russians are the most per capita - 620 thousand people, which is approximately 35% of the total number of inhabitants of the country. The Russian-speaking diaspora in Latvia is also called the “diaspora of cataclysms”, since Russians remained here after the collapse of the USSR.
It is interesting that the inhabitants of the ancient Russian lands settled on the territory of modern Latvia as early as the 10th-12th centuries, and in 1212 the Russian Compound was founded here. Later, Old Believers actively moved to the country, fleeing persecution.
After the collapse of the USSR, about 47 thousand Russian-speaking people left Latvia, although the situation stabilized very quickly. According to the sociological center Latvijas fakti, 94.4% of the country's inhabitants now speak Russian.
Most of the Russian-speaking population of Latvia is concentrated in large cities. For example, in Riga, almost half of the residents identify themselves as members of the Russian diaspora. In fact, all big business in Latvia is controlled by Russians, it is not surprising that there are six Russians in the top ten of the richest people in Latvia.

Kazakhstan

Russians in Kazakhstan are mostly descendants of exiled people of the 19th - first half of the 20th century. The active growth of the Russian population of Kazakhstan began during the period of Stolypin's reforms. By 1926, Russians in the Kazak ASSR accounted for 19.7% of the total population.
Interestingly, at the time of the collapse of the USSR, there were about 6 million Russians and other Europeans in Kazakhstan - this is more than half of the country's inhabitants. However, up to the present time there has been a constant outflow of the Russian-speaking population. According to official statistics, 84.4% of the population in the country speak Russian, but about 26% consider themselves Russian - approximately 4 million people, which is the largest Russian-speaking diaspora in the world.

We have already discussed the topic of Russian survival teams more than once. But that's in theory. Let's take a look at what practitioners have to say. They will tell about the real state of the movement for the reconstruction of Russian communities. Semyon Reznichenko talked on this topic with Alexander Kravchenko, head of the Russian Community project.

What prompted you to take up the Russian Communities project?

We have been dealing with the problem of self-organization of the Russian people for many years, and the opening of the Russian Community project has become a natural continuation of our interest in this topic. When I say “we” and “ours”, I mean a team of like-minded people involved in various public projects, primarily related to the upbringing of the younger generation.

Over the past 20 years, many interesting and unique forms of self-organization of our people have appeared in Russia. This phenomenon can be conditionally grouped under the term "community". The essence of this phenomenon can be explained as a natural reaction of the Russian Orthodox person to the obvious disintegration of modern society, its atomization and the huge number of negative phenomena associated with this. The emergence of communities is the unification of healthy Russian people to counter these negative phenomena and the process of disintegration of Russian society. The Russian Community project undertakes an attempt to combine the vast positive experience of modern communities in creating a new community on the spiritual foundations and traditions of the Russian people.

Why is the creation of Russian communities so important in our time?

The process of atomization of society, the destruction of traditional ties, horizontal and vertical, put on the agenda the solution of topical issues: the upbringing of the younger generation, the creation of a healthy living environment, the preservation of national identity and many others, including spiritual improvement. All these issues cannot be resolved alone, so the appearance of such, at first glance, exotic for modern times, forms of uniting Russian people as a community has become quite natural. The practice of recent years has shown that such an association is not only a natural form of existence of the Russian people, but also an extremely effective form of solving the problems of modern man.

On what ideological basis can Russians unite in our time?

In our opinion, Orthodoxy is such a spiritual basis. It gives the integrity of the worldview, the definition of pain points in oneself and the world around us, and ways to overcome various social problems.

How is the Russian Communities project developing? Could you please tell us about its launch and current state?

As already noted, the Russian Community project did not start from scratch, but from a serious practical basis provided by modern Russian communities. To date, the project has collected quite a lot of information on this topic. However, in our opinion, the project is still initial stage of its development. Firstly, because we do not have even a tenth of the information on this topic in modern Russia, and secondly, the information field for communication of modern practicing communities has not been created, which is what the Russian Community project is striving for. It is impossible to fulfill these tasks quickly due to the specifics of the activities of modern communities. A variety of problems related to economic, social, educational and other activities do not allow communities to be fully present in open information sources.

What motivates Russian people to unite in communities?

Observation of the practice of modern communities suggests that the main motive for people is concern for the future of their children. Most of the communities known to us were created for this very reason. Several families unite in order to lead the joint upbringing of their own or adopted children (the creation of an Orthodox school, a cadet corps, a military-patriotic club, a summer camp, or joint excursions or pilgrimage trips). Having achieved success in this field, people begin to develop other forms of social activity - cultural, economic and others. As a result, a stable public association is being formed, which we qualify as a community.

How developed is the network of Russian communities? Which regions have more of them, and which have less?

So far, it is impossible to talk about the existence of a network of such organizations. Horizontal links between these organizations are still very weak. According to our estimates, there are from 300 to 400 organizations in Russia that can be safely attributed to communities. The number of some of them reaches several hundred people (the Obninsk community "Spas", the St. Alekseevskaya hermitage, the community in the village of Ivanovka, Yaroslavl region). However, most of them unite several dozen people. At the same time, it should be noted. That the Russian Community project has data on only 30 such associations, despite the fact that many of them cannot yet be called full-fledged communities. According to our data, most of the successfully developing communities are located in Central Russia, while these data cannot be called reliable. We would also like to point out a very important thing: most of the parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church are either developed communities or strive for this form of social organization, which, accordingly, can increase the number of communities in Russia to several tens of thousands, that is, we can say that this a social phenomenon also has the problem of classifying or defining the object of the phenomenon itself. However, there is a steady trend in social life - the desire of Russian Orthodox people for a communal form of being.

What are the areas of work that Russian communities are engaged in? Which of them are the most relevant?

The most relevant area of ​​work today is the upbringing of the younger generation, as has already been said. In this field, the communities have achieved the most significant results. The second most successful can be called a cultural direction - the creation of all kinds of amateur groups, mainly folklore, the holding of all kinds of traditional Russian holidays today has become widespread and massive. It should be noted here that many areas in the activities of the communities overlap. So, for example, the development of traditional arts and crafts should be simultaneously attributed to educational, cultural and economic activities. There are many interesting examples of the development of economic activities in communities. This mainly concerns consumer cooperation, construction, and agricultural production. At the same time, the economic direction, despite its importance, is in its infancy. There are attempts to develop a system of their own security, but this area is also in an undeveloped state.

What forms of Russian communities do you know? Which of them are the most effective?

This question is difficult to answer, as each community is unique. It is possible to single out communities of a pedagogical orientation, communities that exist around Orthodox parishes, as well as Cossack associations. Recently, there have been attempts to create community-type youth organizations in the urban environment. Young people are trying to build a form of mutual assistance and joint activities on community principles.

What prevents Russians from uniting in communities? What are the main problems facing the community movement?

The low level of national and spiritual consciousness, as well as inadequate perception of contemporary social problems, prevents Russian people from uniting in communities. The main problem of the modern communal movement is the lack of complete information about the activities of communities. And as a result - the lack of communication and interaction. In addition, the modern Russian Orthodox and patriotic community does not pay due attention to this phenomenon. This is an important reason for inhibition in development.

What are the prospects for the development of the Russian Communities project? What are your plans for the future?

We hope that the Russian community as a phenomenon of public life will gain strength in our country, and the Russian Community project, like other similar projects, will be in demand as a source of information and as a platform for building interaction. In addition, in the foreseeable future, we hope to establish contacts with a significant number of practicing modern communities in order to further assist in the creation of an association of community-type organizations, first of all at the regional, and then at the all-Russian level. This task, in our opinion, is the most important, since the communities do not exist in an alien environment, as, for example, the Old Believers in South America, but among their own people and can potentially become the basis of life for the entire Russian people.

The main feature of Russian life has always been considered the Russian community, and - community. A wide variety of publicists wrote about the Russian community in the 60-70s of the XIX century. V. G. Avseenko, for example, understood that the Russian community, this arch-national institution, owes its origin primarily to the weakness of personal, individual instincts in the Russian peasant: he needs this collective communal personality, because he is aware of the weakness and inactivity of his individual personality. The desire for community is understood here as a means of getting rid of fear, overcoming the meaninglessness of the life of a single person. The anonymous author of Otechestvennye Zapiski saw in the Russian community and gathering the ideal of social freedom developed by the Russian peasantry: “If the Russian peasant had not been so deeply imbued with this basic condition of social freedom, if he had not sucked it up with his mother’s milk, then communal ownership would not could become so ubiquitous and endure for so long.” The brilliant Vladimir Solovyov realized that the institution of the community is a direct expression of the idea of ​​syncretism underlying the folk spirit: “Indeed, the historical principle of the development of law, as directly expressing the general basis of the folk spirit in its inseparable unity, directly corresponds to the beginning of community, and the opposite mechanical the principle that derives law from an external agreement between all the individual atoms of society is an obvious direct expression of the principle of the individualistic. At the same time, Soloviev understands communality as an internal coincidence between the strongest development of the individual and the most complete social unity, which would satisfy the main moral requirement: that everyone be the goal of everyone. The Slavophile mythologist O.F. Miller also wrote about the same principle of communality: “In the community, everyone has in mind the good of all, the good of the whole. ... morality comes down, after all, to the fact that, defending one's personality, not only not to allow it to develop to the detriment of others, but also to consciously sacrifice oneself for Avseenko V.G. Again about the nationality and the cultural types of the common cause. A similar thought is expressed by Dostoevsky in the novel The Brothers Karamazov through the mouth of the elder Zosima. It also appears in other populist writers. Personality in such conditions is not destroyed, but, on the contrary, reaches the highest spiritual level of development, when a person consciously sacrifices himself for the sake of everyone. The community is the voluntary and supreme unity of multiplicity. F. Shcherbina even tried to give a scientific definition of the community: By "society" the people mean, first of all, the well-known union of the agricultural population, the union that binds its members together by a common interest in relation to: 1) self-government in general, 2) religious, moral and intellectual needs, 3) to serving state and public duties and 4) to the right to own and use communal land and property. Community relations, as we see, permeated all spheres of the life of a Russian person.

Populist writers (and populism was the leading ideological trend of the 60s and 70s of the 19th century) derived communality from patriarchal "primitive communism". V. Solovyov wrote: “The simplicity and monosyllabic nature of the original way of life is expressed in the economic sphere, firstly, in the absence of personal property in the strict sense, a kind of communism, and, secondly, in the simplicity and monotony of labor itself and its works. Primitive communism, in fact proved by the latest research on prehistoric culture, follows directly from the predominance of the genus over the individual. Somewhat later, already at the beginning of the 20th century, the critic E. A. Solovyov gave the following assessment of populism: “In peasant Russia, they saw the existence of such foundations, relying on which, in their opinion, it was possible to nourish the wildest hopes. These foundations were the artel, community, handicraft industry, and other remnants of "primitive communism," as Western sociologists call this phenomenon. This brought the Narodniks closer to the Slavophiles.” But if "primitive communism" directly correlates with archaic, mythological culture, then communality, therefore, also becomes the result of the activity of mythological consciousness.

This correlation of the community with primitive, patriarchal "communism" formed the basis of Dostoevsky's story. He assumed that historical progress contains three stages. In the sketch “Socialism and Christianity” (1864-1865) he wrote: “Patriarchy was a primitive state. Civilization - average, transitional. Christianity is the third and last degree of man, but here development ends, the ideal is reached ... ". In patriarchal communities, a person lives directly in masses, in the future, the achievement of the ideal will mean a return to immediacy, to the masses, but free and not even by will, not by reason, but simply by the feeling that this is very good and so necessary. This concept of Dostoevsky then formed the basis of his utopian story "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man". Apparently, under the influence of Dostoevsky, V. Solovyov expressed the same idea: “Thus, in the historical development of law, as in any development, we notice three main stages: 1) the initial unfree unity; 2) isolation of individual; 3) their free unity”. The populists, however, believed that it was possible in development to bypass the second stage (bourgeois civilization) and immediately, relying on the communal foundations of Russian life, reach a new, voluntary and free unity, a new social order. In fact, this meant a direct, albeit on a completely new level, return to mythological culture, a return to myth, since community (old, new or “future”) always corresponds to intuitive thinking and a syncretic worldview, i.e. - myth. At this new level, mythology was to be expressed in the spirituality and transcendent aspirations of the Russian people.

This new level of communality was then called "all-unity". The philosopher of unity at that time (70s of the 19th century) was V. Solovyov. He said that the desire of man for the unconditional, that is, the desire to be all in unity or to be all-one, is an undoubted fact. The philosopher recognized that a person or humanity is a being containing (in absolute order) the divine idea, that is, total unity, or the unconditional fullness of being, and realizing this idea (in a natural order) through rational freedom in material nature. Such unity (unity in the multitude) is achieved when the principle is realized that “everything is immanent to everything” (Lossky), when everything is inherent in everything and does not exist in itself, but is in the closest connection with everything, exists for everyone. Such a worldview of a Russian person is completely opposite to a European. The religious philosopher R. Guardini saw this: “In contrast to the position common “in the West”, which boils down to the formula “you are not me, I am not you”, it is assumed here that “I” is also present in “you”, although their content is different. The Russian person overcomes the opposition, binarity and replaces them with syncretism and unity. Moreover, the category of unity, as carrying the ideal, does not correlate with fleeting time, but with the same ideal eternity. Unity is therefore ontological and therefore mythological. The Russian idea is a thirst for the embodiment of unity, the unity of all people in the name of Christ and under the banner of the Orthodox Church.

Here a new aspect of the problem of Russian community and all-unity appears - the deep religiosity of Russians and catholicity. In the Russian idea, knowledge merges with faith, and this is another aspect of syncretism. At the same time, myth and religion are concepts that are close, but not the same. They can intersect and interact, interpenetrate, but in principle they belong to completely different levels and areas of the human personality. The myth occupies the subconscious, where it is in an unrevealed form, while religion belongs to the sphere of the superconscious and is always conscious. Of course, elements of myth are preserved in religion, since the superconscious interacts with consciousness, and consciousness is controlled by the subconscious. But there is no "cancellation" or "replacement" of myth by religion. It can only be about the interaction or, in rare cases, the predominance in the soul of a nation, people, tribe or individual of the subconscious (myth) or superconsciousness (religion). Russian religiosity is directly connected with mythologism and becomes one of the features of the national character. N. Ya. Danilevsky noted in the book “Russia and Europe” that “religion was the most essential, dominant (almost exclusive) content of ancient Russian life, and at present it also contains the predominant spiritual interest of ordinary Russian people ...”. From here the philosopher deduces "the Orthodox concept, which affirms that the church is a collection of all believers of all times and peoples under the leadership of Jesus Christ and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and attributing infallibility to the church thus understood." Community, taken in a religious, ecclesiastical aspect, is catholicity, on which our outstanding thinkers pinned their hopes.

It is known that Danilevsky's book "Russia and Europe" formed the basis of the reasoning of the hero of Dostoevsky's novel "Demons" Shatov, that V. Solovyov highly appreciated this profound study of the soul of the Russian people. Genuine pan-unity is possible only as catholicity, that is, in Christ and through a single catholic Orthodox Church. N. I. Aksakov wrote: “So, only in the church can the complete unity of the common be united with the complete freedom of personal conviction, for this is actually the task of the church as communion, so that in it the formation of the common will tirelessly go hand in hand with the complete freedom of each separate unit. Genuine communion is possible in Orthodox culture only as catholicity, as churchness. O. Miller believed that “both on political and religious grounds, the starting point for Slavophilism is the concept of the community - not as some kind of institution, but as a purely moral union between people. The longevity of the community is a predisposition to join the church, as a community not only "of those who have been baptized, but also have put on Christ." The same thoughts formed the basis of Leskov's novel "Soboryane" and his story "At the End of the World".

The communal Russian culture is always characterized by traditionalism. Traditionalism means the expression in certain stereotypes of the group experience of the people and their spatial and temporal transmission. It is tradition that becomes the common denominator on which individual tribes are formed into a nation. This tradition is always spiritual, always sacred and always reflects the national identity. The role of the community here is fundamental. It was she who formed, preserved, changed and passed on traditions. Community, catholicity, pan-unity mean not only the unity of people in space, but also in time. Through tradition, ancestors became contemporaries, as a person repeated or resumed their behavior, which formed the basis of tradition. The very preservation of the stability of society is impossible without the recognition by people of certain common values. As a rule, these values ​​are recognized due to their sanctification by time, experience or mode of origin. These values ​​form the basis of the tradition. Thus, tradition controls the form and even the place of life of the tribe, subordinates to itself the needs of the tribe and its history. Therefore, traditionalism rejects linear time and replaces it with cyclic time, which means that it is mythologized.

Any traditional culture is mythological, since tradition is a mythological paradigm fixed in experience and consecrated by time. In general, it is correct to divide societies not into primitive (or primitive) and modern (or developed), but into traditional, static and revolutionary, developing ones. Each of these types has its own special form of consciousness. Traditional culture corresponds to a mythological consciousness and a syncretic, undifferentiated society. Revolutionary culture is characterized by anti-traditionalism, rationalism, positivism. The Slavophiles and the Podvenniks in Russia were traditionalists; Westerners, revolutionary democrats and socialists - anti-traditionalists. Traditionalism is not just an appeal to the past, but, as we have already said, its sacralization. The rationalistic rejection of traditions is one of the forms of the revolt of the profane against the sacred. The decline of tradition leads to the rejection of the collectivist, communal foundations, to the division of a single society into separate units (pluralism). On the other hand, the development of private property and private entrepreneurship has weakened communal foundations in Russia and fundamentally undermined traditionalism.

E. Shatsky identifies the following features of the traditionalism of an agrarian society: 1) sacral-mythological or religious coloration (the prescription is consecrated by the authority of supernatural forces); 2) syncretism; the world is presented as a whole, where the natural, social, divine and space-time merge; 3) the established order is perceived as indestructible, unchanging, stable; 4) culture is perceived as something integral, and a change in each of its parts is considered dangerous for the existence of culture as a whole; in general, culture and progress are possible only within the framework of tradition; 5) non-alternativeness of established traditions, the impossibility of choosing the principles of behavior, the unambiguity of tradition; 6) unconsciousness, unconsciousness of following the tradition; tradition is experienced, but not realized, traditionalism inevitably turns out to be irrationalism. Traditionalism thus relies on the recognition, first of all, of the ritual-mythological, magical and religious essence of man. God, spirit, ancestor or cultural hero is the creator of both the cosmic and social order, and just as the cosmos is unchanged, so is society. Tradition, therefore, reveals mythological times to man and transfers them to the present. Not prescription, but holiness, the sacredness of revelation is placed at the basis of tradition. It sacralizes people's lives and helps them survive in a profane environment. Tradition is also ontological, since it relates a person to the original times, to the root causes of Being. In general, tradition acts as an intermediary between modernity and eternity, history and myth, it is a means of mythologization of life.

Tradition is close to myth in three more ways: in the presence of a paradigm, in connection with natural cycles, in the cult of ancestors. “The past,” Shatsky believes, “is a storehouse of precedents, examples, experiences, specific patterns of sensations, thinking and behavior. While remaining faithful to the predecessors, we must behave in the same way as they do, without asking why and why. Tradition carries exemplary models and itself acts as a paradigm, as a norm of behavior, that is, it carries the same functions as a myth. This can only mean one thing: the tradition has a mythological consciousness at its core, it is basically mythological. In order to maintain stability, a person has developed a complex of “the need for heritage as a paradigm”, and as a role model, tradition and myth become the goal of a person’s cultural activity and its basis, to which he completely subordinates his activity.

Like a myth, the Russian community in its life and its traditions directly depend on natural cycles. The labor rhythm, consecrated by tradition, is determined by the cyclical change of the seasons, which also underlies the mytho-ritual system. Among these ritual traditions, obviously mythological and even pagan ones have been preserved - an appeal to the first ancestors, spirits of nature and pagan deities who were supposed to provide a good harvest (Mother Earth, Yarilo, Kupala, Kostroma, Chur, brownie, field, etc.). Supernatural forces were addressed during common holidays (i.e. - "the whole society"), which had an agrarian origin. The tradition of “forbidden days” has the same deep mythological roots, when it was forbidden to work or perform certain types of work (for example: spinning on Fridays).

The preservation of tradition is combined with the cult of ancestors. Tradition is connected with continuity, i.e. with the desire of the tribe to maintain ties with the ancestors and establish them with the descendants. A nation is a union of people not only in space but also in time. No new generation is free from the values ​​and ideals developed in the past. Traditionalism includes the ideas of heritage, continuity and return to the lost ideal, the bearers or creators of which were the first ancestors. The traditionalism of the tribe lies in the fact that a person (thanks to the ritual) seeks to achieve identification with the ancestors, with the previous generations. In traditional ceremonies (weddings, funerals, agricultural holidays), the deceased directly took part in the affairs of the living. So, the idea of ​​continuity of generations, respect for previous generations, the authority of ancestors directly goes back to the mythological cult of ancestors. Hence the worship of Rod, Chur, brownie, mermaids, etc. N. Fedorov's teaching about the "common cause" - the physical resurrection of dead ancestors by the forces of science - is the apogee of philosophical discussions about the cult of mythological first ancestors. Finally, the question of the means of transmitting traditions becomes very important. There are two levels of preservation and transmission of traditions in the community - family and professional. The family, as a unit of the community, bears the brunt of the transmission of traditions; it is the family, and not the school, not the place of work, not the army or other structures that contribute to the socialization of a person. The opinion of the family and relatives acted as a regulator and incentive for behavior. Afanasiev noted the great importance of the family for understanding the worldview of the Slavs: “Due to the natural, physiological conditions that determined the initial development of infant tribes, the Slav was predominantly a kind and homely family man. In the circle of a family or clan (which was the same family, only expanded) his whole life passed, with all its daily routine and related celebrations; its most vital interests were concentrated in it and the most cherished traditions and beliefs were kept. Hence - the cult of fire, hearth, home and home patron spirits. The family was generally considered one of the main shrines among the Slavs; in the family "thoughts and feelings about the people, duty, fidelity, spiritual strength and purity of personal human thoughts merge." Family life was seen as a spiritual, religious, righteous feat, and family life is considered one of the most important features of Russian national identity associated with community.

The number of professional, specific keepers and transmitters of the traditions and testaments of the ancestors included rural righteous people and healers, craftsmen, narrators of epics and fairy tales, constant stewards in ritual games. All these persons trace their origin back to mythological antiquity, when they merged into the priestly caste.

But there was also a nationwide level of preservation of traditions. Here the main role was played by two estates - the clergy and aristocrats. Priests have always and in all cultures been the guardians of not only religion, but also the spiritual traditions of the people. Leskov spoke about this role of the priesthood in the novel The Cathedral. As for the aristocracy, it becomes at the state level the only group of persons united not by the manner of action, but by birthright (in Russia, such a situation existed before the reforms of Peter I). The aristocracy is the backbone of the traditions of the state and the collective memory of the people. The main purpose of the existence of the aristocracy is to preserve traditions. Dostoevsky's Prince Myshkin (The Idiot) and Versilov (The Teenager) become such traditionalist aristocrats. Genetically closed groups of tradition bearers (aristocracy) go back to secret societies of mythological cultures, the main function of which is the preservation of secret sacred cults and customs.

Tradition is connected with myth, and traditional culture cannot but be mythological. The task of myth is to justify and strengthen tradition, and any tradition rests on myth - the sacred tradition of the tribe. National spirits of national history, implicated in the traditionalist approach, are always mythologized. A political ideology also grows out of the myth, especially when, like conservatism, for example, it is directly connected with the idea of ​​tradition. Such conservatism is not something negative, but becomes a guarantee of natural evolutionary progress: “Even the most noble and progressive struggle for personality is obviously based on the conservatism of form, which is shown by the very word self-preservation. Conservatism is the basis and source of progress, however strange it may seem at first sight. The political ideology of conservatism emerges from mythological traditionalism and is built as a new mythology. But if a person or a group of persons (a party) chooses something specific from the past as an ideal, then it is guided by the fact that some of its elements are quite acceptable today. Such a justified tradition, chosen consciously and becoming an ideology, inevitably ceases to be "reactionary" and turns into a conservative utopia. The future naturally grows out of the past, and does not replace it by negation. If traditionalism has a religious-mythological coloring, evaluates the world as a single sensual-material cosmos, and the world order as unchanging, stable, then it becomes the basis for unity, catholicity and theocracy.

The communality and traditionalism of Russians corresponds to the agricultural, soil character of culture. “The people,” wrote R. Guardini about Russians, “stand at the origins of being. He has merged into a single whole with the earth - the earth on which he walks, on which he works and thanks to which he lives. It is organically included in the general context of nature, in the biological cycles of light and growth. And he feels, perhaps subconsciously, the unity of the universe.” , soil, nature and its cycles, indistinguishability from them, non-isolation and fusion with the Universe and especially with the native land - this is one of the components of the Russian soul. Hence the pochvenism of the brothers Dostoevsky, A. Grigoriev and N. Strakhov, who expected the fusion of all the classes of the Russian people on the basis of a single religion, on the expanses of a single land. Dostoevsky dreamed of returning the educated classes of Russian society to their native soil.

By the end of the 19th century, communality and femininity gave rise to the following character traits among Russians: tolerance, traditionalism, non-violence and non-resistance, gentleness, humility and respect for the elder, respect and love for the younger, the desire for brotherhood and justice, collectivism, family, kindness and forgiveness, humility and daydreaming, all-humanity, pity for the humiliated and offended, love that is above justice, self-sacrifice as a moral law, the thirst for happiness and the search for the meaning of life, suffering for the sake of finding the ideal and compassion for the salvation of one's neighbor, responsiveness, deep spirituality, transcendence and deep religiosity , the priority of the spiritual over the material and the appeal to the higher, ideal, divine world. All these character traits make up the mythology of the Russian nation and directly influence its entire history. The mysticism of the earth in Russian self-consciousness gave rise to a number of basic mythologems in its culture. And above all, it is, of course, the type of wanderer. Wandering is a feature of Russian self-consciousness. Russian telluric (soil) culture is characterized by a feeling of boundless space. From him comes the desire to master these limits, which occurs through movement on the ground. This is very close to the type of a mythological cultural hero who, as he moves in space, brings order into it, destroying the remnants of chaos and mastering the cosmos. The Russian wanderer does not have his own home on earth, because he is looking for the Kingdom of God. The mythological cultural hero also sees as his goal the achievement of the kingdom of the gods, or the discovery of some sacred place - the energy center of the world. Such a wanderer is directly opposite to the Russian wanderer. Wanderers appear on the pages of Dostoevsky's novels (Makar Dolgoruky in "The Teenager" and Elder Zosima in "The Brothers Karamazov"), in Leskov (Ivan Flyagin in "The Enchanted Wanderer"), in Nekrasov's poem "Who Lives Well in Russia?" and in a number of works by L. N. Tolstoy (“Father Sergius”, “Posthumous Notes of Elder Fyodor Kuzmich”, etc.).

The sacred center in the myth can be a beautiful garden of Eden - a sacred space closed to ordinary people. Usually this place is cursed or consecrated by God himself and opposes the outer, profane world. With such a cursed space we meet in the story

Leskov "Hare Remise". Dostoevsky, in his Diary of a Writer, argued that the idea of ​​the Garden is able to save everyone: “Humanity will be renewed in the Garden and the Garden will straighten out - this is the formula. Now they are waiting for the third phase: the bourgeoisie will end and the Renewed Humanity will come. It will divide the land into communities and begin to live in the Garden.” Such a utopian Garden also appears in Dostoevsky's story "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" as a beautiful, but quite achievable ideal. As you can see, the Garden's mythology is directly connected with the soil, and with the community of Russian culture, and with mythological ideas about the sacred space. The mythology of the Garden becomes a prototype of the biblical Garden of Eden and the apocalyptic New Jerusalem. The mythologeme of the plowman is very important for Russian telluric culture. Farmer, plowman - the main figure of agricultural crops. In Slavic mythology, he is always a cultural hero, freeing the earth from demonic forces (the remnants of chaos) and bringing order into space. Such is Nikita Kozhemyaka, who drowned the snake and made the Universe strictly structured (by drawing a boundary on the earth with a plow). Among the Slavs, the farmer is always opposed by a giant or a sorcerer, whom he nevertheless overcomes. The image of Mikula Selyaninovich, the hero of epics and the mighty plowman, is very important here. He wanders the Russian land (the motive of wandering) and carries earthly cravings in his bag. It is said that Mother Earth Cheese loves him, so he becomes invincible. Mikula Selyaninovich turns out to be stronger and smarter than the cunning sorcerer and hunter Volkh Vseslavich and the mighty giant and hero Svyatogor. Mikula's victory over these heroes reflected the transition from a hunting culture to an agricultural one among the Slavs, since Svyatogor is a fragment of the image of the supreme god of heaven among the Slavic hunters (Svyatovit, Svarog). Nikita Kozhemyaka and Mikula Selyaninovich are the thunder god Perun transformed into fabulous and epic images, who, writes Afanasiev, “as a generous giver of rains ... was revered as the creator of crops, the establisher of agriculture, the patron of the village plowmen, and even himself, according to folk legends , went out in the form of a simple peasant to cultivate the fields with his golden plow. The plowman also becomes a cosmic hero, since the constellation Orion in the myths of the peoples of the world is a heavenly plow, a prototype of the earthly, human. So the image of the farmer in Russian culture goes back to deep pagan antiquity and is mythologized.

Agriculture, as we have seen, in mythology is associated with the cosmic order, with the sacred world of seeds, buds, shoots, spring, flowers, fruits. The cyclical nature of the agricultural calendar underlay the stability of the world. Throwing grain into the ground (his funeral) and subsequent germination (resurrection) is the basis of the pagan cults of the dying and resurrecting god (Osiris, Dionysus, Yarila, Kostroma). But the agricultural culture also corresponds to Christianity with its idea of ​​the risen Christ. Fallen and resurrected grain, seed is one of the persistent mythologems of Russian culture. It is not surprising, therefore, that it appears in Dostoevsky's novels (the idea of ​​a fallen and reborn hero) and especially in The Brothers Karamazov, where the biblical image of fallen grain is used as an epigraph. This image is expanded by Dostoevsky to the universal level. First of all, the seed can be understood as the soul. The human body is a prison for the soul, the grave of the soul. Then the seed (soul) will not be resurrected to a new life, unless it dies (does not pass the stage of life in the body). The writer correlates the image of the seed with the concept of the idea. F. A. Stepun clarifies: “The idea is the seed of the other world; the sprout of this seed in earthly gardens is the secret of every human soul and every human destiny.” God throws an idea-seed onto the earth, which must germinate in our world. The idea-seed is a divine prototype, which receives a concrete-bodily incarnation in us. This idea-seed-prototype falls into the soul of Dostoevsky's hero in order to ascend there as an already completed system of views and completely subjugate the will of the hero to himself, make him a "monomaniac", a sufferer of the idea (such are Raskolnikov and Arkady Dolgoruky, Shatov and Kirillov, Ivan Karamazov). Here the "idea" completely takes over the person and becomes his personal myth, the mythological paradigm of the hero. The horse occupies a special place in the agricultural culture. In Russian literature, it is transformed into the image of a downtrodden nag. This mythology was creatively used by N.A. Nekrasov (the poem “Until Twilight”), Dostoevsky (“Crime and Punishment”, “The Brothers Karamazov”), Saltykov-Shchedrin (the fairy tale “Konyaga”). In all cases, the image of a downtrodden nag correlates with the theme of the downtrodden Russian people, their fate. Downtroddenness, meekness, irresponsibility and overwhelming, killing labor - this is what brings the image of a horse to the level of a national mythologeme. But the horse is also directly a mythological image. Directly connected with the earth (where all living things go after death), the horse is a psychopathic animal, a soul-bearer in the realm of the dead; he is also the image of death itself. The theme of the horse-death in myth and the theme of the slaughtered nag in Russian culture constantly intersect (in Shchedrin's Horse Horse). But in the guise of a horse, the self also appears - the eternal worker in the heavenly field in agricultural mythology. Mythologically explainable is the motive of the constant, exhausting and killing labor of a downtrodden nag. The continuity of action as a punishment is one of the constant motifs of the mythology of the underworld (the myth of Sisyphus). Thus, we see that national images and motifs grow directly from ancient mythological models and, in turn, are again mythologized.

Petr Smirnov

Smirnov Petr Ivanovich
Saint Petersburg State University
Professor of the Department of Theory and History and Sociology

Smirnov Petr Ivanovich
Saint-Petersburg State University
Professor of the Chair of Theory and History of Sociology
Email: [email protected]

UDC - 3.30.31.316

RUSSIAN RURAL COMMUNITY: ORIGIN, BASIC FUNCTIONS AND VALUES

ABSTRACT: The article describes the origin and development of the Russian community, gives the author's version of its main values, shows a hypothetical connection between these values ​​and the main functions of the community, presents the ways of self-realization of a person in the community

Keywords: Russian community, origin, function, value, self-realization

RUSSIAN RURAL COMMUNITY: THE ORIGIN, MAIN FUNCTIONS AND VALUES

ABSTRACT:This article describes the origin and development of the Russian community, presents author’s version of its core values, illustrates a hypothetical link between these values ​​and community basic functions; and describes ways of human self-realization in the community.

Key words: Russian community, origin, functions, value, self-realization

RUSSIAN RURAL COMMUNITY: ORIGIN, BASIC FUNCTIONS AND VALUES

Literature devoted to the Russian community is truly boundless. The origin of the community, its role in Russian life, the possibility of using communal principles to build a more just society, including the possibility of non-capitalist development in Russia, the impact of community life on the mental makeup of Russian peasants, etc. considered in the works of historians, economists, philosophers and publicists of various trends and trends. It was given attention by Slavophiles and Westernizers, revolutionary democrats and staunch supporters of the autocracy, populists and Marxists, as well as researchers who shunned the party struggle. This is no coincidence. The Russian rural community had a great influence on the existence of Russia and the Russian people, since it coexisted with the service-home civilization and was quite harmoniously "built into" it. According to Berdyaev, Russia was a "huge peasant kingdom", and Russian peasants lived mainly in the community. However, the category of "value" was not used as a special theoretical tool to analyze the life of the community. Therefore, in the next two articles it is supposed to outline the relationship between the fundamental values ​​and functions of the community and describe the impact of its life on the history of the country and the formation of the national character. The immediate goals of this article are a brief description of the origin and development of the Russian community, a presentation of the hypothetical relationship of its basic values ​​and functions, as well as ways of self-realization of a person in the community.

Origin and development of the Russian community.

The question of the origin of the community caused great controversy among researchers. In Russian bourgeois historiography of the last century, the concept of the late fiscal-serf origin of the community was popular. In accordance with this concept, the Russian landed community was not "native", naturally arising. The peasants were bound into tax unions - "mirs" - by the state on the principle of mutual responsibility for the sake of the convenience of collecting taxes. However, this view is contradicted by historical analogies. As the well-known researcher of land relations in Russia V.P. Danilov notes, it would be surprising if in Russia the community arose as a phenomenon accompanying serfdom, while in other countries it arose naturally.

Much more convincing is the version of the "native" origin of the Russian rural community. According to this version (according to V.A. Alexandrov), the Russian community went through a number of stages in its development. From its original form, the Old Russian neighborhood community ( ropes), it evolved through the black-mallow community ( parish), characteristic of the period of the formation of the Moscow principality, to the actual rural land community, which became the main form of self-organization of Russian peasants in Tsarist Russia.

Verv, as the most ancient form of the Russian community, is also known from Russkaya Pravda. It united small rural producers of that time and directed all their economic, social and private life. Such a variety of functions of the community was associated with the development of the lands of the Russian Plain by the Slavs, but the function of economic land use invariably took first place. And later in history, communal traditions played an important role in the life of the Russian peasantry, regardless of the social status of the members of the community - whether they were free (black-haired) farmers or personally dependent peasants.

Since the 14th century, the peasant community in Russia has been known under the name volosts uniting neighbors, on whose behalf the representatives of the community spoke before the princely administration.

The Chernososhnye community-volost lived on the basis of the principles of self-government. She herself elected her officials (starosts, sots, fifties, tenths), who led public life, monitored the state of communal lands - wastelands, meadows, forests, water estates. The community disposed of free plots of land that had to be brought into a cultural state, transferring them to newly arrived settlers or members of the community who separated from the family. However, the lands that had already entered into economic circulation - courtyard, arable and hayfields - were privately owned by individual communal households and were inherited. This norm of customary law (household-hereditary land use) was protected by the community in every possible way.

In the XIV-XV centuries in the Russian principalities there was an intensive process of strengthening private feudal land ownership. Monasteries and secular feudal lords expanded their possessions both legally, seeking land grants from the supreme power, and by direct seizure of volost lands. The volost communities stubbornly defended their rights to land in court, litigating and often achieving success, but they did not shy away from using force to return the land seized from them.

The resistance of the volosts to the transfer of their lands into private feudal ownership was due to very important reasons. In particular, the very fact of changing the legal status of their lands did not meet the interests of the peasants, since this threatened the very existence of the volost as an independent legal and economic unit. And this, in the long run, threatened to change the legal status of the peasants themselves - from personally free people they could turn into dependents. But it was also extremely important that the order of land use was changing. And in general, with the change of jurisdiction, the volost could lose certain functions.

It is no coincidence, therefore, that at the end of the 15th century, when Novgorod lost its political independence, the Novgorod communal peasants sought to preserve their territorial organizations after their lands were transferred to Moscow service people. In some cases, the change of the supreme owner of the land did not affect the interests of the peasants, and the local communities-volosts did not react to this fact in any way. This happened under Ivan III, when the Yaroslavl specific principality peacefully ceased to exist, the land holdings of the local princes became the lands of the Grand Duke, but at first no significant changes occurred in the status of the communities.

The greatest blow to the existence of the chernososh community-volost in central Russia was caused by the introduction in the 15th-16th centuries. local system - the basis for providing the armed forces of the Moscow state. The local system (as a form of land ownership associated with the performance of military service) was created at the expense of the black-sowed peasantry of the regions adjacent to Moscow. The Moscow prince simply had no other opportunity. This circumstance, in the final analysis, decided the fate of the black-haired community. As communal lands passed into local ownership, the community-volost ceased to exist as an independent legal and economic unit, i.e. state institution directly connected with the central government. However, the community was preserved as a form of association of peasants, while undergoing major changes. From a volost, it turned into a rural one within the boundaries of a certain estate or estate.

Changes in the legal status of the community meant not only the loss of its direct connection with state institutions. The rural community, more and more subject to the will of its landowners, gradually lost some of its economic and administrative functions. In particular, her managerial activities could be carried out only within the boundaries of the estate. In addition, the community now had less opportunity to allocate to its members the lands they needed, which was associated with an increase in duties in favor of the landowner, an expansion of the wedge of landlord plowing, and the allocation of land for the landowner's personal economy.

The decrease in the land fund owned by the community forced it to change the norms of peasant land use. Particularly important changes have been made to the principle of land ownership. The community member, as before, owned arable land and hayfields, but no longer by household-hereditary, but by household-conditional right. This means that the possession of the yard by any land now had a purely conditional character. The peasant used them only as long as he could bear the tax. When a peasant household for some reason (demographic, for example) could not ensure the fulfillment of the duties and payments imposed on it, part of the tax was removed from it, but, accordingly, part of the land was cut off. These lands were transferred to more prosperous households, but again for temporary use, and the former owner could, in a changed situation, demand their return.

This practice of land use resulted in the fact that during the 17th century the former community-volost turned into a land-redistributed community in the landowner's village with a household-conditional right to own communal lands. In the XVIII century. this type of community became dominant in central Russia on the lands of the landowners-nobles. At the same time, the features of housekeeping in individual estates also significantly affected the functions of the community. On quitrent estates, the community retained great rights in the disposal of land, and on corvée estates, its role was reduced to almost nothing, since the economic use of the land was determined by the will of the landowner.

The noted changes in peasant land use and the formation of a land-redistribution community were at that time of a regional nature. In the Russian North, where private feudal ownership of land was not widespread, the original community-volost was preserved and developed. As a result, different types of peasant communities appeared in Russia with different principles of land use, which was determined, first of all, by the presence or absence of serfdom of peasants in a particular area. The North Russian, Ural, Siberian peasantry, as well as a significant part of the South Russian (“odnodvortsy”, officially included in the state peasantry in the 18th century) retained the principle of household-hereditary land use in their communities-volosts. The peasantry of central Russia, who found themselves in serfdom, ran a household on the basis of a conditionally household principle of ownership using an equalizing redistribution of land in a rural redistribution community.

Imperial government in the 18th century tried to spread the system of communal redistributed land use in the northern provinces inhabited by state peasants. But this undertaking did not have much success at that time, the peasants stably retained the land use by the occupiers and households. Even at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries, unlimited communal land use was preserved in the northern Russian, as well as in the Novgorod and Nizhny Novgorod provinces. And the Stroganov land magnates, who owned huge estates in the Northern Urals, in the first half of the 19th century came to the idea of ​​the need to provide the communities with broad rights in the disposal of communal lands; the peasants were given the right to sell, bequeath, mortgage their plots inside the estates.

Peasant land tenure in Siberia was connected by its principles with northern Russian communal forms. At the initial stage of the development of Siberia, the peasants formed communities for clearing the land, which subsequently remained in collective ownership. The peasants distributed the cleared land among themselves depending on the labor invested. These plots passed into hereditary possession on the basis of customary law. Communities for clearing the land over time turned into rural communities that controlled economic life within the same village. These communities received new settlers, set the deadlines for field work, and dealt with the resolution of disputes.

Separate villages, territorially adjacent to the settlements, formed a community-volost. The elected volost administration monitored the safety of the complex of lands assigned to individual villages in the process of their development, and considered land disputes between individual villages and peasants. She also decided on the allotment of land to certain villages and the redistribution of land between them, leased free land.

The household-hereditary principle of land ownership was preserved in Siberia quite steadily, which was facilitated by the abundance of free land, which was initially seized, developed, and then officially assigned to individual villages or households. However, since the middle of the XVIII century the situation has changed. When, as the population grew, little free land remained around individual villages, arable land could already be redistributed by the community. But more often the lack of arable land was overcome by the formation of zaimok on the hereditary right of ownership.

At the end of the 19th century, after the reforms of the 1860s, the positions of communal land use were strengthened. The communities were recognized as subjects of the law in force, and the government did not allow the development of private peasant ownership of land. Under these conditions, communities of various types (while retaining some features of regional identity) evolved towards the classical redistributed land community, which was largely facilitated by population growth and the resulting shortage of land. The administrative functions of the community were increasingly strengthened. In particular, the rights of borrowers to dispose of the plots developed by them were limited, the right of peasants to sell the estate was limited, although courtyard plots of land from time immemorial were considered the property of the peasant household, the community established more and more complete control over hayfields, etc. The attempt made by P.A. Stolypin to destroy the redistribution community by transferring the land into private ownership to the peasants, thereby excluding the land plots of individual households from its custody, did not have a decisive success. The peasants themselves, for the most part, were afraid to break with the community.

In the initial period of Soviet power, the community survived. It was seen as a union of free equal users of nationalized land. The choice of forms of land use was left to the communal peasants themselves, who for the most part adhered to the traditional rules for the redistribution of land.

The rural community has shown amazing resilience throughout Russian history, adapting to a variety of conditions. And until the thirties of the XX century, the community remained a body of peasant self-government on the ground, regulating the individual agricultural economy. Only the state policy of creating collective farms led to the final liquidation of rural self-government and to the absolute nationalization of the land funds of the countryside, which were now disposed of not by the peasants, but by local state bodies.

Fundamental values ​​and functions of the Russian community.

It is not possible to take into account all the originality of the forms determined by the specific historical and geographical conditions in which the Russian rural community empirically manifested itself. Therefore, further we will talk about the ideal type of the redistribution Russian rural community, the functions and values ​​of which must be recreated. With the help of this ideal type, it seems possible to show the “embeddedness” of the Russian community in the service-home Russian civilization, to take into account the influence of the community on the formation of the Russian national character, the regularity in the appearance of certain personal types of it, etc. The version proposed below regarding the most important values ​​and functions of the community is debatable.

The first and most important value of the Russian community- herself community, "peace" that associated with a number of important functions of the community in the life of the country and people.

home from functions - function survival. The historical fate of Russia, especially during the period of the formation of the Muscovite state, in every way contributed to the formation of the Russian people's idea of ​​the team (including the community) as a more important value compared to the individual. Before the pacification of the steppe, in the conditions of constant onslaught from the East (as well as from the West, and the latter was even more dangerous in terms of ideological influence), it was possible to survive and remain the owner of one's native land only through collective efforts and by sacrificing the interests of the individual to collective interests. Only this type of behavior allowed the largest number of Russian people to survive, and the Russian people to survive as an original ethnic group. It is not at all accidental that the fantastically rapid growth in the number of Russians after the external danger was eliminated to a decisive extent. If in the time of Ivan the Terrible the population of the Muscovite state was about 5.5 million people, then by the reign of Nicholas II, the number of Russians proper was at least 100 million. And this despite the terrible losses in the Time of Troubles, in the era of Peter's reforms, due to constant hunger strikes, epidemics, and numerous wars. Such an increase in numbers over the same period does not give any of the European peoples. And the role of the community in this process is extremely great, since it was the main type of social organization of the Russian peasants.

Second the most important function communities - function resettlement ( or colonization). The community was the best suited for the development of the vast wild spaces of Eurasia, which was the historical task of the Russian people. Settlement by "flight" (Klyuchevsky), when the outback stretched between the old and new settlements without roads and regular communication, turned the community into a kind of "colonization unit". To master the wild forest desert, a human association must have a certain measure of self-sufficiency, the ability to expand the reproduction of a full-fledged population and quick mutual assistance. In the harsh Russian conditions, these tasks were optimally solved by the community.

Third from these functions- function protection of land holdings peasants against encroachments of other landowners on their lands. Only by uniting could they oppose the large landowners in endless disputes over land, although not always with success. Numerous lawsuits of the peasant world with the Kirillo-Belozersky monastery, which attacked the communal peasant lands in the 15th - 16th centuries, are known. .

Finally, the community streamlined legal and economic turnover of land, transferring land plots into the possession of individual peasants and setting deadlines for field work.

Given these functions, it is understandable why the community itself was an important value. In addition, implicitly, the Russian community carried the highest human values. In particular, for the Russian peasant, it was a concrete embodiment of such a value as humanity(human race) or at least native people. Making efforts to preserve the community, "suffering for the world", a person contributed to the preservation of the entire people as a whole.

The community also concretized for its members another highest value - society, often understood as motherland or Fatherland. Man as a person, as a social being, is possible only in society. For the process of socialization, the formation of the individual, society is necessary for a person as a decisive precondition. But in order not to lose his roots, to keep in touch with his ancestors, he needs a certain type of society, close to the one in which his ancestors lived. Otherwise, there is a danger of mass “mankurtization”, which is fraught with all sorts of troubles (the image of a mankurt was introduced by Ch. Aitmatov: a mankurt is a person deprived of memory and ready to slavishly serve the owner). Therefore, the evolution of society must be rather slow. And if the community reproduced Russian people as precisely Russians, it should have been kept and preserved by them as a fundamental value. So it was, because it was noted that in the last third of the 19th century, in some places where the redistribution of land was introduced according to the soul, the peasants agreed to it not out of selfish motives (the opportunity to use someone else's property), but in an effort to preserve the community as a form of life. Yes, and in Siberia, where the peasants at first often led a pseudo-farm, “loan” economy, as the population density increased, the community was restored as a social institution for regulating land relations of peasants and interacting with state power.

The community is connected with the most important functions and its second highest value myself community member in both of its guises: both as a biological being whose life is needed by the “world” for reproduction and existence, and as a subject of activity, a “worker”, whose efforts lighten the common burden.

Considering both incarnations, one cannot let a person die of hunger, especially an orphan child (for "an orphan feeds - a worker for the world grows"). But even a lonely helpless person must be supported, provided with food and shelter. To do this, he must "walk the world", feeding more or less alternately from the peasants and doing what he can about the house. And in case of serious need, a hard-working peasant could resort to a widespread and very peculiar type of social mutual assistance in Russia - “going to pieces”. The essence of this method is that the peasant, who at the moment did not have bread, went to neighboring yards and villages, asking for bread. And he was served "pieces", larger or smaller parts of the loaf. It was not a loan accepted in the countries of market civilization, because there could be no question of any return of debt, the very concept of "debt" in this case is not applicable. Nor was it begging, which is a kind of craft. And if with the help of "pieces" the peasant managed to "get by", he found work and bought bread, then he "returned" it to any other peasant who found himself in a difficult situation.

As for the "credit" that existed in the Russian countryside, it also did not look like Western European. Market credit is not intended to turn the debtor into a source of cheap labor in the event of default. On the contrary, the kulak "credit" in the community had hardly the main goal of enslaving the debtor so that he could be used as an object of exploitation.

Third value, recognized by the community - justice, understood as the original social equality, based on the equality of people (at least men) in relation to the earth. In itself, this value is instrumental, but in the community it has acquired the status of a goal, which can be considered a distortion of the “normal” hierarchy of values.

According to the peasants, the land is "God's", therefore any person born on it (within the community) has the right to his own, and equal with everyone, share of the land and all its wealth, which the "world" owns. However, the attitude to the earth as a "gift of God" is not specifically Russian. On the African continent, in a number of communal cities, it was also considered a "gift of God" available to each and every citizen of a given urban and rural community. Probably, such an attitude towards the land is characteristic of society at a certain stage of development. In any case, regular redistribution of land in accordance with the requirements of egalitarian land use was recorded as early as the 3rd - 4th millennium BC. e. in the countries of Mesopotamia, Asia Minor and Egypt.

Real data on the redistribution of land in Russia show that in the community justice was understood not as an abstract principle, but as a practical imperative. In particular, an egalitarian redistribution of land according to the soul would not have been possible in one of the localities where it was carried out for the first time, if it had not been supported by 42 percent of those peasants to whom it was directly disadvantageous, since it led to a decrease in the allotment that was already in their use. Most of those who suffered significant damage during the redistribution forgot their offense and argued, together with the rest, that “it’s better than heart to heart - it’s not necessary: ​​everyone is now equal, now at least some bread, but we all eat, but in the old way (i.e. without redistribution - PS ..) many would now have to die. ”

The second basis of equality in relation to land is the equality of the state tax in accordance with the size of the land. The land allotment could change its owners as much as it wanted, but it always remained part of the "worldly" allotment and the "world" tried to prevent the site from being empty. It was noted that with the feudalization of society, the allotment of land was overgrown with duties, and the right to use it was combined with the obligation to pay taxes.

Thus, both from the point of view of God's and human justice

an individual person could only be the owner of the land, but not its full and undivided owner. "Peace" remained the supreme manager of the earth. Any transactions with the land - renting, selling, seizing for temporary use - were carried out in principle with the consent of the community, although in practice this principle was constantly violated in accordance with the temporary rules of customary law. But in decisive cases, the last word always rested with the community. No one dared to “give away his plot to a stranger, not for one year, not for one summer: if he gives it away, he loses his plot, which is taken away into the world.”

Therefore, the remark is partly true that on the "soil of the communal structure" it is very easy "to grow a complete disregard for the person." Although the author of the quoted words here exaggerates somewhat, since the community nevertheless took into account the interests of the community member as a worker and individual, although, to be sure, significantly limiting them. But the community really neglected the person as a subject of economic activity.

In this regard, we can name such an additional value as the power of "peace". It is clear that individual members of the community tried to use this power in their own interests, and they often succeeded, but the very principle of the supreme power of the world remained quite stable. It was supported by all communal traditions. The power of the world manifested itself primarily in the disposal of the land. On the basis of common decisions, the main field work was also carried out, forced and identical crop rotations were introduced, which was largely due to the conditions of livestock. The peasant was obliged to harvest in time, to cope with haymaking, because then the field and meadow were used as a pasture. Such economic practice in the community limited the freedom of the peasant in running his own household, thereby hindering the development of individual skills in agriculture. There was also an informal old people's court that decided many issues of customary law.

Acquisition of social significance in the community . People in their mass cannot live as social beings without receiving social recognition and without achieving social significance on "legal" and "moral" principles. Otherwise, the mass degradation of the personality is inevitable, the transformation of people into social nonentities and the loss of their incentive to work. Due to what did a person get what he was looking for in the conditions of the Russian community? What legal and moral ways of gaining social significance existed in it? What modes of significance were available to the Russian peasant in the community?

Firstly, people who corresponded to the moral ideal of the peasants turned out to be especially significant, bearers of righteousness or even holiness(which was sometimes attributed to holy fools, "blessed"). Faith was the prerequisite for righteousness. They judged a person’s faith by visiting church, observing fasts and rituals, going to pilgrimages, reading daily prayers, but especially by observing moral standards in general. “There is no cross on you” - they said to the one who committed an unworthy act. On the contrary, “lives like a god”, “lives like a Christian” - they talked about merciful and conscientious people. The youth were taught to go to church. This was followed not only by the family, but by the entire community as a whole.

Russian peasants put forward a number of figures who, in one way or another, aspired to a righteous life. The most common type was pilgrims. Leaving the community for pilgrimage was a stable and widespread practice throughout the territory of Russian settlement. At the same time, the journey itself, in order to be pleasing to God, had to be quite difficult.

The so-called cell-attendants, i.e. people who, for some reason, decided to limit their communication with the world, without leaving their native places. They themselves or their relatives built special hut-cells, in which the cell-attendants retired. Some of them could take part in field and domestic work, dine with their families, others rarely left their cells. But all the cell-attendants strictly observed the fasts, while others always ate only fast food.

Peasant girls, striving for a righteous life, became blueberries, whose position was close to that of cell attendants. To become a blueberry, one had to take a vow of celibacy while the suitors were still wooing. Otherwise, the girl was considered age-old, i.e. remained in girlhood not by vow, but spontaneously. In a conflict situation, the community supported a girl who wanted to become a blueberry against the will of her parents.

Figures also emerged from the peasant milieu elders(spiritual ascetics, according to the people, bearers of holiness). It happened that the future elder received his first spiritual lessons in the family, in the cell of an older relative, followed by a pilgrimage to holy places, hermitage and cell work in his native lands. Other well-known spiritual figures began with a pilgrimage, then took a vow of obedience, became elders or abbots in monasteries. Numerous biographies of famous ascetics, as well as monastic chronicles, speak of the close connection between spontaneous folk piety and outstanding spiritual ascetics. The influence of the elders on the spiritual life of Russia, including the figures of Russian culture, is simply enormous.

Secondly, this fame, fame, acquired most often at the expense of "suffering", "feat" in the name of peace. “Suffering for the world” means perpetuating one’s name as a truly moral person and gaining authority in worldly affairs, because fellow villagers gain confidence that this person will judge the case “justly” and for the common good. We have listened to the “honored person” and are still listening.

Thirdly, this knowledge, wisdom related to the spiritual culture of the people, that is, knowledge of legends, epics and customs, rules of conduct in society, as well as knowledge of economic practices - the timing and rules for field work, procurement of supplies, use of forests, etc. Often such knowledge was associated with the possession of the word. In the Russian village "there was a cult of the word", possession of it to some extent determined the social position of a person, was a cause of respect, and for others "an object of envy". To this can be added the knowledge of written literacy.

Table

Similarity of signs of the Russian service-home civilization and the Russian rural community

№	Features and properties	Service-home civilization in Russia	Russian rural community
1	Origin factors	External danger and other reasons	Natural conditions, external danger, colonization function
2	core value	Faith, Tsar, Fatherland	community, community member, justice
3	Leading activity	Service	Service (state tax, corvee, dues), collective
4	Availability for a person of modes of significance	Available all as a representative of the estate based on the service	Available Not all in connection with the dominance of the value of "justice"
5	Leading modes	Power, glory, holiness, knowledge, including sacred	Holiness, glory, folk wisdom, posterity
6	Less accessible mods	Wealth, economy, skill	Wealth, market economy, skill in agriculture
7	social recognition procedure	Personal expertise	Personal expertise
8	instrumental values	Discipline and duty	Natural and spiritual qualities, diligence
9	economy	homemade	homemade
10	Development	Uneven (ideally, slow)	Slow (under the pressure of external circumstances)
11	Existence	short	long
12	Relationship with neighbors		Predominantly defensive

Fourthly, economic activities in the house and around it (garden, apiary, etc.), homeliness, as well as the craft accompanying the peasant business, in general, the ability to do something, talent. But skillful housekeeping did not involve making a profit, it was aimed only at providing the means of subsistence for a peasant family. It was believed that “the Russian peasant farmer is a poor agricultural entrepreneur ... he, as a representative of the natural economic regime, is deprived - as a general rule - of that desire for higher profits that inspires any entrepreneur. ... He earns money only for the state and for the landowner, he himself is indifferent to them. In other words, the peasant economy was a domestic type.

Fifthly, happiness, luck, luck, manifested in different ways (find a treasure, raise many hard-working sons, harvest a rich harvest, etc.).

Finally, natural and social qualities: heroic strength, always respected by the people, beauty, intelligence, dexterity, as well as diligence, the ability to work hard.

Thus, social significance in the community could be obtained on legal and morally justified grounds only at the expense of its higher modes - knowledge, holiness, glory (and in very specific forms) and at the expense of natural and social qualities. In the value system of the Russian community, there was a big gap between personal and natural qualities, on the one hand, and the highest modes of social significance, coupled with the highest universal values, on the other.

By themselves, the highest modes of social significance are quite acceptable as ways of human self-realization. Moreover, it is necessary for society and for individuals that holiness, knowledge, glory be available to any person striving for them. But without the core economic activity and without the values ​​associated with it, society is, as it were, deprived of its roots. Higher modes are not enough to make its development sustainable (under conditions of a sufficient amount of natural resources), because material activity, no matter what they say about it, forms the basis of all social life. In addition, the lack of a legal opportunity to achieve wealth, farming, and skill in the peasant business deprived people inclined to achieve them of morally justified goals in life and worthy ways to achieve them. Not everyone agrees, for the sake of wealth or a well-established economy, to indulge in deceit, violence, etc. Perhaps that is why the Russian people often became "hostages of the sublime, striving for the brilliance of peaks without proper equipment."

In general, the signs and properties of the Russian community were in many respects similar to those of the Russian service-home civilization, as can be seen from the table above. The greatest similarity is observed in terms of occurrence factors, higher and less accessible modes of social significance, the leading type of activity, and the type of economy. There is a similarity in relations with neighbors (although the scale and methods of protective actions are different). Both social organisms differ most in terms of "duration of existence" and "speed of development", which is due to various reasons, some of which are supposed to be covered later. But we can draw the main conclusion that due to the similarity of many features and properties, the Russian rural community integrated quite harmoniously into the Russian service-home civilization, and the vital activity of both social organisms formed the spiritual warehouse and behavioral norms of the Russian people, different from Western European ones. The most important consequences of the functioning of the Russian rural community on the basis of its fundamental values ​​and some of its properties will be highlighted in the next article.

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The community, apparently, is a natural and necessary form of self-organization of people in solving such problems as the development of a new territory, protection of common interests, maintaining law and order, ensuring personal security, etc., when the national authorities do not act for some reason and right. The experience of the colonization of the North American continent by white settlers, in particular, the territory of the United States, very clearly reflects the role of communities of various kinds in solving these problems.

Firstly, the newly-minted Americans, moving to the West, organized “settlement communities” (to protect themselves from the Indians and provide mutual assistance along the way). Such a community was a "wagon caravan", which could be up to three miles long, and the total value of the transported cargo was $ 200,000.

Secondly, during the economic development of the land, “application clubs” were organized to protect the interests of the first settlers. After all, from the point of view of formal law, the people who occupied land were squatters, i.e. claimants to land ownership by virtue of the very fact that they were the first to occupy the land, without proper legal registration, which was constantly late. So that the occupied lands would not be taken away from the first settlers, bid clubs were organized, which practically guaranteed the right to own the land for the first owner.

Thirdly, “communal communities” were also formed in the gold mines. With the help of “vigilance committees” and judicial decisions, which were often made by the entire community, personal security was ensured, property was protected, and sentences were carried out. In general, gold digging was a collective activity. The "lone seeker" is more of a myth than a real figure.

The Russian diaspora is one of the largest and most widespread in the world. Its number today is about 25 - 40 million people scattered all over the world outside the Russian Federation. It first began to form in the middle of the 19th century, when some of the nobles created a small ethnic community in Paris.

The Russian diaspora received a special expansion during the unrest and destruction of the Russian Empire, as well as during the Civil War and in the early years of the formation of the Soviet Union. In the next 50 years, the Russian diaspora abroad practically did not grow, since it was problematic to migrate from the USSR at that time.

The second stage of rapid growth occurred during the "thaw" in the USSR. However, the largest number of migrants joined the diaspora in the 90s and 2000s, when the Union collapsed, and the economic, political and criminal situation in the country left much to be desired. There was also a significant increase in new migrants in 2011. Since 2014, the Russian diaspora has been constantly growing due to the increased number of migrants from Russia.

But it is not entirely clear who should be included in the Russian diaspora - ethnic Russians or simply former citizens of the Russian Federation, whether the descendants of migrants from the Empire, as well as immigrants from other countries of the former USSR (especially Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan) belong to this diaspora.

The first citizen of the Russian Empire who settled permanently in Australia (more precisely, in Tasmania) was a Belarusian who was arrested in England in 1804 and sent to hard labor in the Australian colonies. After serving the term, the prisoner remained to live in the country on a permanent basis.

It is believed that he was the progenitor of the Russian diaspora in Australia. However, according to the colonial authorities of Australia, in 1820 there were already 4 Russian-speaking families living on the continent, consisting of former prisoners, so it is impossible to accurately identify the progenitor of the Russian diaspora.

The mass flow of immigrants from the Russian Empire (later the USSR and the Russian Federation) and territories controlled by it began at the end of the 19th century. The first wave of migration lasted 25 years from 1880 to 1905. During this period, Russian Jews mainly moved from the territory of the Baltic states and the South-Western regions of the Empire, fleeing the wave of anti-Semitism that swept Europe at that time.

In 1901, the year the Commonwealth of Australia declared its formal independence from the British Crown, the number of Russians in the country amounted to about 3.5 thousand people.

There were waves of migration during the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, unrest and Revolution at the decline of the Russian Empire and during the Soviet era. Basically, these were people who disagreed with the current political course of the state, deserters and counter-revolutionaries. Moving to the Green Continent continues now.

Today, about 30 thousand people from the countries of the former USSR live in Australia, and about 60 thousand people are descendants of Russian immigrants.

Today in Australia there are 3 newspapers in Russian and two TV programs.

If we talk about the Russian diaspora in New Zealand, then it is more numerous in relation to the local population than in Australia (20 thousand Russians for 4.6 million indigenous people in New Zealand and about 30 thousand Russians for 30 million inhabitants of the Union). The first migrants from Russia to New Zealand appeared somewhere in the middle of the 19th century (there is no exact data).

Today, most of the ethnic community is concentrated in Auckland and Wellington. The country has a Russian cultural center in Christchurch.

The first mention of Russians in China dates back to the 14th century. The main peak came during the construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway, the Russo-Japanese War and during the period of unrest and the overthrow of the monarchy in Russia.
But many Russians became citizens of China not entirely of their own free will, because earlier the Russian Empire controlled part of the northern provinces of the Celestial Empire, and after the Soviets came to power, these lands seceded from Russia and for some time were under the control of the occupying authorities of Japan, and later China. However, many Russians left the area.

But also some Russian emigrants considered China as a transit zone for the country of South America. During the peak period, the number of Russian settlers in China amounted to 125 thousand people. However, due to the very low standard of living in the country, various unrest, famine and the Cultural Revolution, many migrants moved to other lands or returned to their homeland, due to which their number decreased to 20 thousand people by 1953. And also a great contribution was made by the disdainful attitude of the Chinese towards foreign settlers, which could be traced until the 80s of the last century.

Today, about 15-20 thousand Russians live in China on a permanent basis. China may become an attractive country for Russians to move in the foreseeable future, as industry and business are developing at a rapid pace. In addition, in the Celestial Empire, our compatriots are now treated very well.

There is a TV channel that broadcasts around the clock in Russian, several newspapers, as well as the Russian version of the famous Chinese newspaper Renmin Zhebao, Russian schools and schools are being opened to adapt to the local environment.

The most "favorite" territories of the settlement of Russians are Shanghai, Harbin, Dalian.

Russians in South America

The largest number of Russians in South America in 2019 is concentrated in Argentina and a small part in other countries - Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay.
The first and second waves of migration to South America were Germans, Jews, as well as representatives of various Slavic nationalities who did not want to serve in the Russian army and / or were persecuted in Russia for some reason. By the end of the second wave (approximately 1905), the number of immigrants from Russia in South America was about 160 thousand people (150 thousand of whom lived in Argentina).

During the third wave of immigration, seasonal workers, mostly peasants, came here from Russia, who subsequently remained here for permanent residence. Just at that time, Orthodox temples and churches began to be actively built in the country; by the end of the third wave, the Russian population of South America varied from 180 to 220 thousand people.

With the advent of the first unrest in the Russian Empire and the beginning of the October Revolution, the flow of emigrants increased significantly.

The fourth and fifth waves are already less global in nature, they have been going on now, since 1917. In the 4th wave, former prisoners of fascist concentration camps left for South America, their number was only about 10 thousand people.

The fifth wave falls on the years of perestroika, the collapse of the USSR and the modern period. In the first case, migration was more of an illegal nature, since officially the citizens of the Union went to work. Today, about 320,000 Russians live in South America (of which 300,000 live in Argentina).

France is home to one of the largest Russian diasporas in the world, with approximately 500,000 people. A certain part of the emigrants and their descendants are Russian Jews who, for various reasons and circumstances, settled in France.

And also the country reached the peak of Russian immigration of 1.5 million people. Over time, most of the settlers left for neighboring states, or returned to their homeland.

For the first time, migration to France from Russia arose in the early to mid-19th century, and continues to this day. The first immigrants to France from the Empire were Russian aristocrats who loved to relax in Nice. And at the beginning of the 20th century, the French experienced a rapid population growth thanks to Russian emigration, which amounted to 1.5 million people between 1905 and 1930.

The main part of the settlers was concentrated in Paris and other large cities of the country. In the 1930s, the term "Russian Paris" was even introduced. For emigrants, various schools were organized in Russian, hobby groups and Russian newspapers. Unfortunately, no one was seriously engaged in the adaptation of immigrants to French society.

During the war period, some Russians tried to move to the United States, some were sent to concentration camps during the Nazi occupation of France. After the defeat of the Axis countries, part of the Russian concentration camp prisoners remained for permanent residence in France and other European countries (most often with the help of not very legal methods). In the days of the USSR, until the beginning of Perestroika, there was no significant emigration to France. At this time, it has its own difficulties.

During Perestroika, during the collapse of the USSR and in subsequent periods, there was a serious increase in the movement of Russians into the country.