About the waters of life

Usually complaints are that in Russia they steal from top to bottom, lie, deceive and cheat in elections, do not value human life, are cruel to the weak, but are proud of the strength of their state, despise foreigners, although they envy them, love their own despots and They don’t value freedom and human rights defenders, they are stuck on the question: is this only in Russia or are there other countries with a similar fate?

Let's start from afar. At one time, Veniamin Iofe, a clever and political prisoner, in the article “Waters of Life” examined a seemingly strange question: how and how do the countries of Europe differ in relation to the system imposed on them, which was then called real socialism , although real nor socialism neither never was. But in any case, he imposed this so-called socialism on the USSR, in which this system appeared, and imposed it on his brothers in “socialist” misfortune - Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Romania, Lithuania, and so on. Yes, almost all of these countries acquired a semblance of the Soviet system after the war (the Baltic countries in two stages), with the active assistance of the occupying Red Army, but later the attitude towards the imposed system turned out to be significantly different. In some countries, such as Hungary or Lithuania, it came to armed resistance, to serious uprisings and riots, in others, all this disgrace was endured with gritting teeth, limited to civil resistance, and in others, the innovation took place, as they say, with songs - from the shadow of European freedoms were abandoned almost instantly and no objections were expressed until everything itself fell apart at the end of the 80s of the last century.

Since in almost all countries the predominant religion was Christianity, Iofe divided the attitude towards the imposed system according to confessional affiliation - Catholicism, Protestantism and Orthodoxy. And it turned out that there were uprisings and riots in mostly Catholic countries (Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, Western Ukraine), civil resistance in mostly Protestant countries - Estonia, Latvia, East Germany, but complete and enthusiastic acceptance took place in such Orthodox countries , like Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova. As for Yugoslavia, the main protagonists of the new collectivist way of life were Orthodox Serbs, and the main opponents were Catholics and Croats. If we remember that Russia itself is a country of historical Orthodoxy, the picture turns out to be very eloquent.

Iofe does not stop at the confessional division; he finds another series of triads, but he no longer talks about religions, but about ideologies in their specific relation to the earthly, human and the so-called higher , heavenly. And again he identifies three currents, three trends. Or personal-mystical, individualistic, and sometimes revolutionary principles begin to dominate in this or that society. Or, on the contrary, the principles are earthly, human, and then at the output we get humanistic, liberal and reformist movements. Or “collective” principles dominate, and then the result is communal, orthodox, statist movements. The fact that this corresponds with confessional preferences - Protestantism, Catholicism and Orthodoxy - is already clear.

That is, the origins of our Russian preference for the state over the individual, collectivism (not to be confused with social sanity) over individual freedoms, disrespect for private property and private life, and the list goes on, lies in our Byzantine origin. Iofe did not live to see the economic crisis of our time, otherwise he would certainly have noticed that this crisis affected different countries of Europe in a completely special way. That it was the Orthodox countries, such as Greece, that suffered the most; the situation is quite tense in Catholic countries such as Portugal, Spain, Italy; and everything is in relative order in Protestant countries - hello to Max Weber with his ethics of capitalism, although he has been exposed many times today.

It is clear that the story of confessions is actually much more complicated than the operation of dividing by three. In fact, in any society there are people with very different ideological, moral and social attitudes. And in Protestant countries they steal, lie and rape, and in Catholic countries there are their own collectivists and haters of freedom, and in Orthodox countries there are people who will never, under any circumstances, steal and hate lies in any guise. But trends undoubtedly exist, because, of course, it was not at all by chance that the denominations were chosen that, as a result, took root and became seemingly completely natural.

The question, of course, is not about who believes in God better or more correctly - papists, Lutherans or our very Orthodox citizens, although in Russia a version of the faith has taken root that looks more like proof of one’s own national rightness and pride than anything else. or otherwise. We are talking, however, about the social dimension of religion as a way of organizing life, as a moral marker that emphasizes some values ​​and disdains others.

And it is absolutely no coincidence that in today’s Russia, with its obvious crisis of power, suddenly - seemingly unexpectedly - it was the Orthodox Church that fell, and from its aristocratic-bureaucratic top, revealing its social and moral vices - hypocrisy, lies, money-grubbing, sycophancy before power, respect for the strong and rich and disdain for the weak and poor. When the church, from year to year, from century to century, supports state-centric tendencies and does not at all value individual, private, human principles; when humanism and liberalism are synonymous with curses; when xenophobia, nationalism, great power turn into a tool of professional competition and a way to earn the praise of a cruel and corrupt government, there is no need to roll your eyes and ask: has God abandoned Russia, or are we living on a cursed land where even spring refuses to come? Alas, we need not only reform and a change of government, we need a radical reform of the church, no matter what it is called. Church as a value system. Otherwise, we will build a house on sand or carry water in a sieve - moral, or more precisely, normal life begins with dominant values, if the values ​​themselves are turned upside down, then there is no point in blaming the mirror.