The death of Solomon Richter

In the Ukrainian publishing house "Folio", Roman Maxim Cantor "Red Light" came out. “This is a book about the origin of fascism. The time of action of the novel - from the October Revolution to today's imperial war with Ukraine - describes the dynamics of fascism, this philosophy of inequality, in a clash with Christian morality,” said Maxim Kantor, inthe article “Mutations of fascism” . We publish a fragment from the first chapter of the novel - "Brown Spring."

The hero of this book, Jew Solomon Richter, was dying simultaneously with democracy and Europe.

Democracy has already died several times: in Athens, in Florence, in Weimar; Democracy is not used to. Europe was dying and raised constantly - this is a form of its life. The cycles of the life of democracy and the European continent have accustomed the parties of the Gwalphs and Gibellins to stoic indifference. But for a person who lives only once, death is responsible, it was necessary to put thoughts and feelings in order.

Solomon Richter was a historian - and, like many scientists, was an agnostic. He did not recognize the afterlife life, offer him the highest mind of eternal youth, he would refuse. A couple of times it happened that he wanted to stop a beautiful moment; However, the curiosity of the historian overlapped: all the stages of spiritualized matter should have passed, up to the collapse. For a long life, he learned a lot of different things and now watched how knowledge is separated from consciousness, as if a husk falls from consciousness. Throughout his life, he was haunted by the thought that, having mastered various disciplines, he did not find the binding knowledge of the substance. And now, when knowledge fell away from consciousness, he expected with curiosity what exactly would be exposed when the shell of knowledge would disappear.

The last feeling that Richter experienced was contempt for the people.

Solomon Richter fought for equality all his life, even for some time he believed in communism. Therefore, contempt for the people was unexpected. However, this was precisely disgusting contempt for small SIM.

Richter is used to analyzing his feelings. He explained contempt like this.

They sympathize with the "simple" person because no one has the right to a sense of superiority. Sympathy for the savage is an exercise for the moral system. They sympathize with the savage contrary to its vulgarity, and not at all because vulgarity is attractive.

All this is true exactly until the moment until the vulgar person comes to a self -propelled state from what they sympathize with. The bourgeoisfriend imagines that he is chosen as a reference point. The savage begins to be proud of its vulgarity, is touched by its barbaric immediacy. At the time of self -love, it turns into cattle.

We must compassion for the beggar. But we have no right to allow the celebration of the cattle.

The ninety-year-old scientist believed that his opinion is interesting to someone and changes something in the world-he always understood a lot about himself. He was lying dying, and thought to whom to give sympathies.

Richter died on those days when the Russian people celebrated liberation from Western ideals

Jews are represented by plug -in people with thin necks; But the old man Richter was a tall and broad -shouldered man. From a long sitting at the table he became stooped, but now, spreading out in a hospital bed, stretched out to his full height and turned his shoulders. Close death removed all the excess from the face - unnecessary folds, random wrinkles. The skin covered the skull, the nose resembled the beak of the falcon, the high marble forehead was calm. The knee of Israel, to which Richter belonged, produces warriors - and Solomon Richter, before becoming a historian of philosophy, was a soldier. Now that he was lying on a bed, he recalled the military hospital under the city of Rzhev, where he was lying without movement seventy years ago. He died then, would not have watched the third act of the performance of Russian history.

The first act is a revolution. Solomon was born in the 22nd year in Buenos Aires, could not see the Russian revolution. The Jewish family came from Argentina to Russia in the 27th year to build an unprecedented country on the site of the empire in order to build an equal Republic. The ship came to Leningrad, to that berth from which the so-called "philosophical ship" went into exile in the 22nd year. Then the intelligentsia was sent, now the new economic policy called doctors of science back. The ship sailed to the USSR - and Solomon remembered his father, descending along the gangs to the shore; Moses Richter was in a blue woolen costume in which he did solemn acts: he went to prison in him, in him Moses was buried.

This was the first act. The family survived the prologue of the drama in 1905. After the revolution of the fifth year, Moses Richter was imprisoned for the first time, he campaigned among workers; Moses fled from Russia, emigrated to Argentina, became a mineralogue, and in the first act returned - to build an unprecedented state of workers and peasants. His four sons came with him.

The second act is a world war; Solomon knew the war well. Three brothers were killed, and his father was put in the camp - from the whole family he survived. Socialism defeated, but the price of victory was such that they almost forgot about the meaning of socialism. The peoples fought, and what the tribal solidarity meant was incomprehensible; They said that this is socialism.

The third act is the rejection of Russian socialism, a turn to European democracy, and then a final refusal of both Western democracy and socialism, in order to return to pre -revolutionary times, to the Russian Empire. The circle closed, and life came to an end. Curtain.

Richter died on those days when the Russian people celebrated the liberation from Western ideals. For almost a hundred years, the European performance in Russia lasted. True, the Stalin Empire is located inside this cycle; But they did not notice a return to the empire - the war saved: we fought with another empire, and it seemed that they were fighting for equality.

The socialist revolution, to the extent that it was the heiress of the French revolution, indicated the turn toward the democracy, unusual Russia, this is an unthinkable business in the serf country. The democracy was European, even French influence - the Provisional Government approved Marseeluste as a national anthem, but Marseeluste was quickly forgotten. Stalin already abandoned the republican form of government, Russia returned to the empire rapidly, but finally abandoned republican phraseology only today.

Yesterday, the liberals drove the patriots to the neck of their offices and laughed at them, yesterday the fat minister-reformer Gaidar said, commenting on the plight of the population: “If thirty million people do not fit into the market, then they themselves are to blame”-and now the patriots march with black and red banners through the city, and the liberals are pressing to the walls. And it was decided to kill the same problematic thirty million not in the market, but in war. How did it happen? Yesterday, people boasted of ties in the West, corporations cut the Russian cake with large glosses, and liberal boys swirled in the editorial office, honing dentisting on a Russian rotten share. And now the corporations were handed out to faithful patriots, and the Russian man rejoiced: from now on, his domestic, their own, native bar! And the Russian Patriot grinned with his rotten teeth to the west - and runs away, pressing his head into his shoulders, liberal. And the liberal is driven, whistle in his back! The Democrats did not go long. The distance from the cabaret to the death of the gods we walked in a short time.

Today, Russian patriots said openly: I am an imperialist. And the crowd offended by a long humiliation roared in the squares.

The first victim of the new empire was Ukraine. Russian tanks kneaded Ukrainian roads, and Russian people shouted that they would make Khokhlov repent of the fact that they betrayed the "Russian world".

What is the "Russian world" and how this world differs from the "Ukrainian world", no one could say; Russians and Ukrainians were neighbors, watched the same programs on TV, poured for football, drank the same vodka. But now they were convinced that there is a certain special "Russian world" - for its triumph it is necessary to kill neighbors.

In vain, the Russian world was given Faust's words. Taking medicine, not understanding the words on the label, is ridiculous.

Richter thought about Faust constantly. Remember, in the first action, Faust admits to his colleague Wagner, a philistine that when his father treated the peasants, he often gave them medicines, whose appointments did not know? So we, the old Richter thought, did we know the meaning of the words that the people excited? Did Moses in the years of his youth know what the word "democracy" is applicable to Russia means? There is no democracy in Russia, but there is a popular will. And popular will requires the power of Satrap. But could many hundreds of thousand innocent be killed without the will of millions?

Curious, Richter thought, did Goethe accidentally gave the surname Wagner to the school-scientist, the shadows of Faust? Does this mean that the flight of Valkyrie is invented for the philistines?

So he lay dying, and thought about the third act of the play.