Nationality of the Lord

Thinking about what Russia's special path should be is as uninteresting as proving that it doesn't exist. It is curious to understand something else: why do so many people among us believe in a special way? It is worth delving into the mental histories of other countries, as it immediately becomes clear that it is the search for a special path that brings peoples together.

Thinking about what Russia's special path should be is as uninteresting as proving that it doesn't exist. It is curious to understand something else: why do so many people among us believe in a special way?

It is worth delving into the mental histories of other countries, as it immediately becomes clear that it is the search for a special path that brings peoples together.

As early as the 16th century, the Portuguese took up this business. “As it turned out, the very existence of Portugal was originally part of the plan of God. He personally descended to Earth to create a new state, and talked about this with military leader Afonso Henriques. In the writings of various authors, one can find that the Portuguese heroes are superior to all others, including Alexander the Great, Trajan, etc. “There is no people on the Earth known to us to whom all people would be more indebted than to the Portuguese,” noted one of the apologists.

Poland also had a “special path”. It expressed itself in the so-called ideology of Sarmatism, which flourished in the 17th century and assumed that the gentry descended from the ancient Sarmatians. The essence of the theory was the belief that God himself patronizes the Commonwealth. And therefore, among the gentry, the myth of Poland as a stronghold of Christianity was popular, the belief that it was the Commonwealth that was called upon to protect the Christian world from its many enemies.

The Serbian myth of a special path is the opposite of the Polish one. Since Serbia could not become famous for great deeds on earth, the special path of the people began to be interpreted as the path of building a “Heavenly Serbia”, which was formed by millions of righteous people, thereby achieving the goal set before the people by the Lord himself. And what is the purpose? Orthodox peoples, believed St. Nikolay Serbian, it is necessary to save mankind.

The special suffering that the Serbs had to endure, according to the interpretation of St. Nicholas, are a sign of God's chosenness, "for whom God loves, he will punish." Other peoples have suffered much in their lifetime, but not one has endured such torments. Even the Russians did not suffer by a third, like the Serbs.

The British also believed at one time that they were not like everyone else. In the middle of the 16th century, one could hear strange statements that God has a nationality. “The Lord is an Englishman,” said, for example, the future Bishop of London, John Aylmer. He urged his compatriots to thank the Lord seven times a day for the fact that he created them as Englishmen, and not as Italians, French or Germans. "The Lord with his angels fought on her (England's) side against foreign enemies," the bishop recalled.

More clearly formed the idea that the British were chosen by the Lord for a special mission, in the era of the revolution. Just as the Jews of the Old Testament had a special pact with God, so the English of the Puritan rebellion considered themselves a second Israel, constantly returning to this metaphor in parliamentary speeches and pamphlets, as well as in church ceremonies.

Finally, Germany. The Germans for a long time opposed their great Culture to the pernicious Civilization of the Western countries. Even the best intellectuals felt like representatives of another world.

Max Weber believed that the cultural task of Germany was to prevent Americanism from dominating the world. “To ask a German to be committed to what the peoples of Europe call freedom,” wrote Thomas Mann, “would be ... tantamount to asking him to commit violence against his nature.”

Where did all this come from? As a rule, the era of "aggravation" of the search for a special path among all peoples fell on times of disaster. For Portugal, these are the years of absorption by Spain. For Poland - the "flood", the Swedish intervention. For England, it means revolution and the disintegration of the old state. For Germany, it was the era of modernization, when attempts were made to catch up with successful Western rivals.

A frustrated society seeks inner comfort in a special way. A calmly developing, successful society ceases to engage in such a philosophy, since it no longer performs a therapeutic function.